Mr President, last night I sought a committee stage for a GST bill. I now realise that I was thinking about another GST related bill and I do not require the committee stage. So, if that is of any assistance to you, you might pre-empt the clerks.

I am sure that is of great assistance to the government.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time.

Question agreed to.

The Superannuation Amendment (PSSAP Membership) Bill 2016 enables certain members of the Public Sector Superannuation Accumulation Plan, PSSAP, who move to non-Commonwealth employment to choose to remain a contributory member of the scheme. Labor supports this bill.

The PSSAP, which was established on 1 July 2005, is the current default fund for new Commonwealth employees and employees of prescribed Commonwealth entities. The introduction of the PSSAP was a sensible modernisation and brought public servants' superannuation into line with community expectations and the superannuation accumulation arrangements available to most people. However, at present PSSAP members are unable to remain as contributory members of the scheme when they move to non-Commonwealth employment. They must either maintain multiple superannuation accounts or consolidate their super by moving the monies in their PSSAP account to another superannuation account.

This bill removes the restrictions on ex-public servants who choose to move to other industries and want to continue contributing to their existing superannuation account. The bill will enable PSSAP members who move to non-Commonwealth employment to maintain, contributory membership of the scheme. This means that PSSAP members who move to non-Commonwealth employment will not be forced to maintain those multiple accounts or move their balances to other accounts. The changes will better align PSSAP with superannuation schemes in the superannuation industry which commonly enable members to remain contributory members when they change employment. The changes will reduce transaction costs for these individuals, increase their retirement income and enhance the flexibility of the superannuation arrangements. We are supporting this bill, which will remove those restrictions on ex-public servants who want to remain within the PSSAP scheme.

I thank Senator Gallagher for her contribution to this debate. The Superannuation Amendment (PSSAP Membership) Bill 2016 enables members of the Public Sector Superannuation Accumulation Plan, a fully funded scheme that has operated as a default fund for new Commonwealth employees since 2005, to maintain contributory membership of the scheme if they move to non-Commonwealth employment. This change will bring PSSap into line with accumulation schemes in the broader superannuation industry, which commonly allow members to remain as contributory members when they change employment. In recent years there have been a range of government initiatives aimed at reducing administrative costs borne by scheme members. The changes in the bill complement these initiatives, as PSSap members who move to non-Commonwealth employment will no longer have to incur the cost of maintaining multiple superannuation accounts or rolling the moneys held in their PSSap account over to a new superannuation account.

The ability to maintain PSSap contributory membership on ceasing Commonwealth employment will be subject to some restrictions. In particular, a person must have been a Commonwealth employee or office holder for a continuous period of at least five months and be engaged in employment in respect of which their new employer has a superannuation guarantee obligation. Specific superannuation arrangements have been established for persons in various non-employee roles with the Commonwealth. These include, for example, members of the Australian Defence Force. Those who move from Commonwealth employment to such roles are not affected by the changes. They will continue to be subject to the Commonwealth superannuation arrangements established specifically for these persons.

The changes in the bill will ensure that Commonwealth superannuation arrangements remain contemporary and complement broader initiatives aimed at reducing the administration costs borne by scheme members. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I rise to speak in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (GST Integrity) Bill 2017. The bill amends the A New Tax System (Good and Services) Act 1999 to address exploitation of the goods and services tax law as it relates to precious metals. The bill introduces a mandatory reverse charge for taxable supplies between suppliers and purchasers of gold, silver and platinum. This removes the opportunity for the purchaser to make fraudulent input tax credit claims and for the supplier to avoid paying goods and services tax to the Commissioner of Taxation by liquidating. These amendments also establish a framework for parties to voluntarily reverse charge suppliers of such precious metals whether or not they are required to under the GST law.

The bill also clarifies the GST law to ensure that entities cannot exploit the special tax treatment for second-hand goods to claim input tax credits by changing the form of a precious metal. This ensures that input tax credits cannot be claimed for acquisitions of valuable metals in situations inconsistent with the policy underpinning the second-hand goods rule.

Labor supports measures that strengthen the integrity of the tax system and that ensure the tax system operates as intended. Tax evasion and avoidance by multinational companies threaten Australia's tax base. When tax loopholes are exploited by multinational companies, Australians ultimately have to either pay higher taxes or suffer cuts to vital services.

I have to say, Madame Deputy President, that this is one of those issues that come up all the time when I am talking to constituents. The vast majority of Australians pay a decent amount of tax and, when they see and read articles around high-wealth individuals and large multinational companies making large profits, and read that they are not paying or are minimising or avoiding their tax payments to Australia, it really causes a lot of distress, particularly when we have got the budget in the state that it is in. All revenue that goes into consolidated revenue is important in maintaining services, in paying for services and in making sure that people get the support they need without further cuts to services.

Labor has always taken the issue of tax avoidance and tax evasion very seriously, and I would point out that the previous Labor government began the task of tightening loopholes, including implementing the Tax Laws Amendment (Cross-Border Transfer Pricing) Bill (No. 1) back in 2012, so some five years ago, that was integral to the recent Australian tax office victory over Chevron. It is unfortunately to the government's shame that, in opposition, the coalition voted against Labor's measures to reduce multinational tax avoidance and in government have failed to take any serious action on this problem.

In 2015, Labor announced a comprehensive multinational tax package, which I could probably go through in detail, which focused on closing down debt deduction loopholes. This is part of Labor's view that we need to ensure that people pay the right amount of tax. Those tax receipts are then used by government in the provision of services to the Australian community. Labor has always prioritised this and we have been doing a lot of policy work from opposition to make sure that the policy settings are right, that people are paying the right tax, that we do not have massive loopholes that allow multinational companies to basically evade or avoid paying the right amount of tax.

While governments around the world are taking steps to shut down corporations' ability to inflate their debt deductions to minimise tax, this government have refused to back Labor's package or take any action. They simply will not act. We all know that tax havens threaten Australia's tax base, and that for every dollar lost to a tax haven, a taxpayer either has to pick up the tab or essential services like health and education have to be cut. We see that both in the debates we are having in this chamber today and with the release of the budget over the last few months. Those critical services like health and education do take up large amounts of the Commonwealth budget for good reason. I think if you asked people, health and education are priority issues. Health, education and the economy are usually Nos 1, 2 and 3 along with things like national security, and will be the top issues when you are out and about talking with people. We will have some disagreements on that later of the week in the week, particularly about education, it appears. People want these services funded appropriately and they can only be funded appropriately if our tax system does not have loopholes that can be driven through, if the policy settings are right and if everyone in this community—from businesses to individuals to households—contribute to the common good. That would allow those vital services like health and education that matter to every single household in Australia to be funded appropriately. Every dollar lost to a tax haven, a taxpayer pays the price; they pick up the tab, or we face cuts to the budget or cuts to service delivery.

Certainly the shockwaves from the Panama papers and similar scandals involving corporations and high-net-worth individuals aggressively minimising their tax are not issues just faced by Australia but they are issues that are being faced by countries right around the world. We would argue on this side of the chamber that not enough has been done to address the aggressive minimising of tax. What we are seeing is continued rising inequality, rising government debt, a significant structural deficit to the budget. At the same time, if you open the paper on any day of the week, you will read a story about some high-end tax avoidance scheme that has been going on.

We know that it is those on lower, modest and average incomes who pay the price for this, with most households having to cover the cost of aggressive tax-minimising regimes. In opposition, the government voted against Labor's measures to reduce multinational tax avoidance. We would argue that in government they have failed to take serious action on this.

I will just reflect in my speech for a short amount of time around what Labor would do to improve the bottom line and to make sure that we are tightening those multinational rorts. Back in May, Labor announced a whole series of initiatives—that we hope the government looks at—that certainly form part of our policy and would improve the bottom line by $5.4 billion over the decade through reforms to ensure that multinational companies no longer are given a free pass to use the Liberals' tax loopholes. Labor's five-point plan would restore integrity to the Australian tax system through stronger laws which would close those loopholes and increase tax scrutiny.

There are five measures to Labor's package, which we have called Their Fair Share. It includes tightening the debt deduction loopholes used by multinational companies, improving the budget by $4.6 billion over the year; increasing compliance activity by the Australian Taxation Office; removing tax advantages and inconsistencies between multi-entry consolidated groups and Australian-owned ordinary consolidated groups; delivering more tax transparency by restoring Labor's $100 million threshold for public reporting of tax data for private companies—this threshold was raised to $200 million in another deal with the Liberals and the Greens political party; and appointing a community sector representative to the Board of Taxation to ensure that community sector voices are heard in the design of tax arrangements and review processes.

As I said earlier in my speech, Labor's laws helped to deliver a victory to the Australian Taxation Office against Chevron. They were laws that were passed back in 2012, which the government voted against at that time. Whilst in this budget we see an attempt by the government to continue with their handout to big business and the banks, with their $65 billion tax cut to those at the big end of town, we would argue that they should have a look at our policy as outlined and stand up and fight for those Australian workers and businesses who do pay their fair share—or sit by as the budget revenue and those dollars slip away.

There is an opportunity straightaway to improve the budget by $5.4 billion over a decade through some straightforward reforms that the government could adopt. They certainly form part of Labor's policy. We have been doing the work, whether that has been in Senate committees or the policy work that is being led by the shadow Assistant Treasurer, the member for Fenner, Dr Andrew Leigh. They are a series of policy initiatives that the government could adopt to address some of the issues around how everyday, ordinary Australians feel ripped off when they are paying the right amount of tax: close those loopholes for multinationals, millionaires and those that can afford to aggressively minimise, avoid or evade paying the right amount of tax.

In conclusion, Labor will support this bill. We do support measures to ensure the integrity of the tax system. We do support measures that clamp down on people who use those current loopholes to their own benefit at the cost of the community. This is a bill that seeks to do that; however, we do believe that the government could be doing a lot more. We do believe that they could take this issue seriously, adopt some of the policies that we have put out, improve the budget at the same time and deal with maintaining key services for the Australian community by making people pay their fair share and do the right thing. It is not hard; it is not rocket science to ensure that people pay the right amount of tax and that services can continue to be delivered at the same time that you are dealing with budget repair. Were the government to choose to take that path, the Labor Party would happily support them in it. Certainly, in relation to this bill, we are happy to support it in this instance, but we would like the government to be doing a lot more in this space.

I thank Senator Gallagher for her contribution to this debate. This bill amends the GST law to give effect to changes announced by the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, the honourable Kelly O'Dwyer, on 31 March this year. These changes will take effect from 1 April 2017. The bill provides that entities buying gold, silver and platinum that have been supplied as a taxable supply for GST purposes will be required to apply a reverse charge. They will remit the GST to the ATO instead of the seller. The bill further clarifies that gold, silver and platinum are not second-hand goods.

Under arrangements that applied prior to 1 April 2017, the entities were able to exploit the different tax treatments applying to precious metals and scrap metals. But, generally, the supply of precious metals is not taxable, whereas the supply of scrap metals will be a taxable supply. Precious metals are gold, silver, platinum and other prescribed metals meeting particular investment form and fineness requirements. However, precious metals can be altered to turn them into scrap metals. Gold bullion, for example, can be defaced by scratching to remove logos in order to convert it into scrap gold.

The first type of avoidance activity, referred to as the 'missing trader', involves entities altering precious metals to turn them into scrap metal so that when the metals are onsold the entity can charge GST on the sale. That entity then goes missing or phoenixes to evade the liability to remit the GST to the ATO, yet the buyer might still claim a GST input tax credit. Applying a reverse charge to supplies involving these metals ensures the purchaser becomes responsible for remitting the GST to the ATO. This removes the opportunity for purchasers to claim an input tax credit without a supplier remitting the corresponding GST that is payable.

The second type of avoidance activity involves entities that are not required to be registered for GST buying bullion GST-free then defacing the bullion to convert it into scrap gold. When onsold, the scrap gold is treated as second-hand goods but the GST registered buyer buying the scrap gold claims an input tax credit without the unregistered seller paying any GST to the ATO. The GST law allows entities to claim input tax credits for second-hand goods bought from the public, with the policy rationale that GST is embedded in the price when dealers purchase these goods. However, the scrap metals—broken jewellery and other items that are bought for their valuable metal content by second-hand dealers—are very unlikely to have any GST embedded in the price. Therefore, allowing an input tax credit in such situations is not consistent with the policy underpinnings the second-hand goods rules. The elaborate arrangements involving both the missing trader scheme and the second-hand goods scheme had no commercial purpose, and organised crime was becoming involved. The opportunities had been created by exploiting the different tax treatments applying to pure versus scrap gold. This measure will benefit legitimately refiners and gold traders who comply with the law as they would no longer be at a competitive disadvantage. The reverse charge will have an impact on the cash flow of refiners and dealers. Both stakeholders will move to a cash flow neutral position.

The measure, as I indicated, was announced on 31 March 2017 and will have effect from 1 April 2017 onwards. The minister engaged in consultation in the draft legislation, which occurred in early May. Written submissions were received from five stakeholders and verbal submissions from two future stakeholders. The main concerns stakeholders raised involved the application of the 10 per cent valuable metals threshold test, definitional issues surrounding the terms 'collectables' and 'antiques', and concerns surrounding the retrospective application of the law. Minor legislative amendments were made, responding to some of those comments raised.

Of course, a prior consultation had also taken place in the week following 1 April 2017, with information sessions held in Sydney and Melbourne via webinar. This provided an opportunity for industry participants to understand the new arrangements in greater detail from 1 January 2017 onwards. The ATO also provided a voluntary reverse charge arrangement to gold industry supply chain participants so that the GST they would ordinarily pay to the supplier of the gold would be remitted to the ATO. The amendment in this bill will provide the industry with certainty as to the intent of the law and prevent future revenue leakage. The measure is estimated to have an unquantifiable gain to revenue and associated payments to the states and territories over the forward estimates period.

In summary, as I have indicated, this bill amends the GST law to give effect to these changes which Minister O'Dwyer announced earlier this year. It provides entities buying gold, silver and platinum that have been supplied as a taxable supply for GST purposes will be required to apply a reverse charge, and they will have to remit the GST to the ATO instead of the seller. The bill further clarifies that precious metals are not second-hand goods. These changes deal with two types of tax avoidance activities which allowed entities to exploit the different tax treatment applying to precious metals and scrap metals. This bill clarifies the law to ensure it operates as intended and this avoidance and, at times, phoenixing activity is stopped. The bill is targeted to address the mischief of tax avoidance and fraud and contains provisions and protections to ensure that the effect on business activity is minimised.

The government is committed to protecting the integrity of the tax system and ensuring everyone pays their fair share of tax. By making these changes to GST treatment of precious metals the government is securing additional funding for state and territory governments that provide the crucial services, such as hospitals and schools, that Australians rely on. This is, of course, part of a broader approach by the government to ensure that we crack down on tax avoidance wherever it occurs and because it is important that all of the taxpaying Australian individuals and all of the taxpaying Australian business know that everyone pays their fair share of tax consistent with the laws of our lands. That is the revenue that in the end helps to secure the necessary funding for all of the essential services that Australians expect their government to deliver.

This is also part of the government's broader fiscal strategy, which involves getting the budget back to surplus as soon as possible. Based on current projections the budget is projected to return to surplus by 2020-21. That is despite all of the additional funding commitments we have made, in particular, to schools, with the $18.6 billion in additional funding we have provided to schools, committing to genuine needs-based funding reforms. That is despite the additional funding we have provided to health, restoring indexation of relevant Medicare benefits schedule rebate items progressively over the forward estimates period. That is despite us having delivered—three years early—a return of Defence funding as a share of GDP to two per cent of the share of GDP, given that it had previously been reduced to unacceptably low levels.

The government continues to work to get federal government spending onto a more sustainable and affordable trajectory for the future. When we came into government in 2013 we were on track to have government spending as a share of GDP heading for 26.5 per cent and rising within the decade. In this budget government spending as a share of GDP is down to 25.2 per cent in this year and is projected to be reduced to 25 per cent towards the end of the forward estimates period. We do need to continue to work hard to ensure that the Australian government can live within its means, that we do not have to live at the expense of our children and grandchildren and that we are able to fund the day-to-day living expenses of government, so to speak—the recurrent expenditures of government—on the basis of the revenue that we can sensibly raise out of the Australian economy.

Obviously, making sure that all Australians pay their fair share of tax and that all Australian businesses and all of the businesses operating in Australia and generating profits in Australia pay their fair share of tax is a fundamental part of our economic plan—our National Economic Plan for Jobs and Growth—as a government. That plan also involves our commitment to making our tax system more growth friendly. That includes our Ten Year Enterprise Tax Plan, designed to reduce the corporate tax rate to 25 per cent over a 10-year period for all businesses, which also includes the accelerated depreciation arrangements for small businesses with a turnover of up to $10 million, which were passed by the Senate last week. It also includes, of course, our ambitious Infrastructure Investment Program. It includes our ambitious free trade agenda, and it also includes the government's focus on our national energy policy framework. In particular, when it comes to our national energy policy framework, we need to ensure that we bring down the cost of electricity, that we guarantee and are able to guarantee and provide for reliable and secure energy supplies and that we do all of that in a way that still helps us meet our emissions reduction targets.

I am just wondering whether we are about—

Keep going.

Sure. I know that the Labor Party is quite keen to hear me talk about the government's national economic plan. Maybe we should go into committee on this bill. That might help proceedings. I might be assisted if somebody from the table is able to give me some indication of time. But—

Opposition senators interjecting—

Indeed. The government's national economic plan is focused on making sure that our economy is as internationally competitive as it possibly can be. That means that we have to have an internationally competitive tax arrangement. We have to ensure, as part of that arrangement, that everyone pays their fair share of tax according to our laws. But it also means that, across all areas of government policy, we are focused on making every post a winner—that we are in the best possible position to take advantage of the opportunities coming our way, in particular from being part of the Asia-Pacific, which is where most of the global economic growth will be generated for years if not decades to come. But we also need to ensure that we are as resilient as possible in the face of inevitable future global economic headwinds coming our way.

It is very good news, of course, that the global economic outlook is improving. Indeed, in recent years, I have had the privilege of attending International Monetary Fund meetings. On every occasion, the International Monetary Fund had just downgraded their global economic growth outlook, until April this year. In April this year, based on a more positive outlook for the United States, based on a more positive outlook for Europe, based on a generally more positive outlook for emerging markets, the International Monetary Fund upgraded their global economic growth outlook and upgraded their growth outlook for Australia, which is good news indeed. Given that Australia is an open trading economy, what happens to the rest of the global economy very much matters to us. The stronger the growth in the global economy as a whole, the better the opportunities for Australians, who benefit from the upsides that come with that.

Part of the reason why we pursue such an ambitious free trade agenda is that we want both benefits for our exporting businesses and benefits for Australian consumers. We want exporting businesses in Australia to be able to sell their outstanding products and services into key markets all around the world, the more the better. Australia is an important market, but it is a comparatively small market. Obviously the global economy is a very, very significant market for Australian exporting businesses to access, and we want Australian businesses to have the best possible, most competitive possible access to these key markets around the world. That is why we continue to pursue free trade agreements with countries around the world. In our first few years in office, we were able to finalise free trade agreements with China, South Korea and Japan. We have also been able to further enhance our partnership with Singapore, and Minister Ciobo is pursuing free trade agreements with Indonesia, India and the European Union.

Being an open free-trading economy is also particularly beneficial for consumers, because consumers in Australia are able to access high quality products from around the world at competitive prices. Both of those elements—the benefits for businesses exporting out of Australia and the benefits for consumers in Australia—have contributed substantially to our economic performance as a nation over the last 26 years in particular, and to the lifting of living standards in Australia over that period. It is indeed a great achievement for Australia that we have now been able to record 26 years of continuous growth. The improving global economic growth outlook will stand us in good stead. On top of that our official cash rate continues to be comparatively low by Australian historical standards. Our exchange rate is comparatively low compared to where it has been, which helps with our international competitiveness. On top of that, the Australian government is pursuing a pro-growth agenda across four facets of government policy, whether it is reforming our tax system, whether it is in pursuing pro-growth trade policies, whether it is pursuing productivity-enhancing investments into our nationally significant infrastructure or whether it is indeed the policy work that we are currently doing in the energy space.

All of this is underpinned by making sure that governments can raise the necessary revenue to fund the important and essential services that governments provide sustainability into the future. It is for that reason that, from time to time, we need to ensure that we pursue the necessary integrity measures wherever malfeasance is detected, wherever there is evidence of systemic malfeasance and the policy response is warranted. Our government and governments before us have taken the necessary steps to protect the revenue base of the Commonwealth, and that is what this bill before us is all about. This is what this bill is designed to achieve.

In summary, as I believe I have indicated, this bill does amend the GST law to give effect to changes that were announced earlier this year by the relevant minister, the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, the Hon. Kelly O'Dwyer. The bill does indeed provide that entities buying gold, silver and platinum that have been supplied as a taxable supply for the GST purposes will be required to apply a reverse charge, and they will have to remit the GST to the ATO instead of the seller. The bill also further clarifies that precious metals are not second-hand goods. These changes deal with the types of avoidance activities that have been detected. I think that might have some—

Keep going.

It's very interesting. Tell us more.

And with these few words I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

This bill amends the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Fees Imposition Act 2015 to implement a streamlined and simplified foreign investment fee framework.

This is part of the coalition government's actions to ensure we have a foreign investment regime that meets community expectations, appropriately scrutinises applications but also balances these needs with supporting foreign investment that is good for Australian jobs and investment.

This bill gives effect in part to regulatory reforms that the government is undertaking to ensure Australia's foreign investment framework is robust and operates efficiently.

Fees were introduced as part of the 2015 reform package to ensure that Australian taxpayers are not funding the cost of administering the system. Since this time, the government has sought ongoing feedback on how the reforms are working in practice. In response to stakeholder feedback, the government is simplifying the fee framework.

The amended fee framework will reduce complexity, achieve more equitable fee outcomes and minimise the regulatory burden on stakeholders, without compromising the integrity of the review system. The changes are broadly revenue neutral, ensuring that foreign investors continue to meet the costs of funding the system.

The fee framework will reduce the number of fee tiers for some categories and implement a standard fee for low, medium and high value acquisitions. The new fee structure will also legislate some existing discretionary fee waiver arrangements to provide a more transparent and consistent approach.

The changes to the framework are not intended to encourage or discourage any specific investment category, but instead aim to ensure fees payable for different investment categories are applied on a more consistent basis for like transactions.

The bill will also introduce a 10 per cent fee increase for residential property applications to fund the establishment of the Critical Infrastructure Centre.

Full details of the measure are contained in the explanatory memorandum.

I do not think anyone has ever been as pleased as the Minister for Finance to see a message from the House. I do not think we all understood how happy we would be to see the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Fees Imposition Amendment (Fee Streamlining and Other Measures) Bill 2017 since it arrived this morning. I think it is worth commenting on the fact that more than 20 bills have passed this chamber in the last two or three days. The Senate has been hard at work doing its job.

I do rise to speak in support of this bill. The bill gives effect to the government's 2017-18 budget measure to streamline fees for foreign investment in business. The bill intends to simplify the foreign investment fee framework, minimise regulatory burden and allow the foreign investment framework to operate more efficiently. From 1 July 2017, a series of fees will be modified, with increases due to indexation and the creation of new fee tier structures as well as the simplifying of existing fee tier structures involved. These changes will simplify and streamline the existing fee structures in the fees act, and better align fees payable with consideration paid to the relevant acquisition through a simplification of fee tiers and the introduction of flat fees for various acquisition types. Stakeholders have noted that different fees for different transaction categories have created complexities and caused delays in ascertaining the correct fee, which in turn delays processing. Some acquisitions are subject to multitiered fees—for example, agricultural land—and other transactions are subject to flatter fee type tiers such as with business acquisition like the acquisition of mining or production tenements. Further, a number of low-value transactions are subject to fees disproportionate to the value of the transaction.

According to the explanatory memorandum, the amendments are informed by a public consultation process and stakeholder feedback, and they implement the preferred option of a flatter fee structure and legislated fee-relief arrangements. The fee regulation will also be amended to give effect to the changes to simplify the commercial fees framework. The explanatory memorandum to the bill further states that amendments to streamline and simplify the commercial fee framework will not apply to the framework for residential property. However, there are amendments that increase residential property fees, which are said to fund the implementation of the Critical Infrastructure Centre.

The changes to the fee framework are broadly revenue neutral, with a small cost to revenue of $400,000 over the forward estimates. Some examples of fee changes under the bill include the fee for applying for an exemption certificate for new dwellings that will increase from $25,000 to $25,700. There will be a 10 per cent increase to the six-monthly fee paid by developers for developing new dwelling acquisitions made by foreign persons under the exemption certificate provided the consideration for each new dwelling is $10 million less. The fees applying for an exemption certificate for foreign persons will be streamlined into a single fee of $35,000 from the current two-tier structure of $25,000 for consideration of purchases less than $1 billion and $100,000 for consideration for purchases more than $1 billion.

Labor will always support sensible streamlining measures and a robust investment framework. I presume that there will be other speakers to this bill, because my comments are rather brief. I am going to leave it there. I think all of us are very happy to have seen the message arise and for this bill to come before the Senate, none more so than the government, who—I do not know how—have managed to stuff up their program so the Senate almost ran out of business just before.

That was a very unkind remark by Senator Gallagher. I have been extremely grateful for the great level of cooperation across the chamber. I think what the chamber has shown—and I include all parties in this, and all those represented in the chamber right now, in particular people like Senator Gallagher and, indeed, Senator Whish-Wilson—is that we have all been working together exceptionally well. I think we have shown up our colleagues in the House of Representatives on all sides of parliament, and I think that, as a Senate, we should be proud of the fact that we have proven that we can be more efficient in passing legislation through this place than our colleagues in the other place.

Specifically, in relation to the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Fees Imposition Amendment (Fee Streamlining and Other Measures) Bill 2017, I would like to thank Senator Gallagher for her contribution to this debate. This bill amends the Foreign Acquisitions and Takeovers Fees Imposition Act 2015 to implement a streamlined and simplified foreign investment fee framework. In particular, this bill gives effect to regulatory reforms that the government is undertaking to ensure the foreign investment framework for Australia is robust and that it operates efficiently. The amended fee framework will reduce complexity, achieve more equitable fee outcomes and minimise the regulatory burden on stakeholders. The changes are broadly revenue neutral, ensuring that foreign investors continue to meet the cost of funding the system. The fee framework will reduce the number of fee tiers for some categories and implement a standard fee for low-, medium- and high-value acquisitions, and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I move:

That these bills may proceed without formalities, may be taken together and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a first time.

I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Charges) Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017 and I move:

That these bills be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speeches incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speeches read as follows—

NATIONAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING REGULATOR (CHARGES) AMENDMENT (ANNUAL REGISTRATION CHARGE) BILL

Today I also introduce the second Bill in the package of Bills to amend the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator legislation - the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Charges) Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017.

As I outlined in the principal Bill, the Bills combine to ensure ASQA is sufficiently resourced to continue its broad ranging compliance monitoring activities and operate as a high performing regulator.

I commend the Bill.

NATIONAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING REGULATOR AMENDMENT (ANNUAL REGISTRATION CHARGE) BILL 2017

Today I introduce the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017 and its companion Bill the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Charges) Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017.

The government is committed to the vital role vocational education and training (VET) plays in ensuring Australia has the skilled workforce it needs to drive innovation and economic growth.

Australia's economic prosperity depends upon the quality of our graduates, the outcomes of the training they receive and whether they are skilled in the way employers need them to be skilled.

The quality and reputation of our VET sector is therefore critical to the success of our country, our workers and our businesses.

It is essential that we give the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) the flexibility, resources and support it needs to provide high quality regulation of the sector through proper cost recovery arrangements.

ASQA has a wide range of legislated responsibilities under the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 (NVETR Act) and the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act).

Those responsibilities include;

Activities such as intelligence collection and data analysis, which inform targeted monitoring, are core elements of ASQA's risk-based regulatory approach.

These activities benefit the quality of the whole sector rather than individual RTOs.

This Bill amends the NVETR Act and the companion Bill amends the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Charges) Act 2012 (NVETR Charges Act).

Combined, these amendments will ensure that ASQA can recover the costs of critical compliance monitoring and intelligence analysis work it undertakes to protect and enhance quality in VET.

These amendments will create the appropriate legal structure for the recovery of costs associated with ASQA's broader regulatory activities.

The amendments replace the current annual registration fees collected by ASQA under the NVETR Act with an annual registration charge collected under the NVETR Charges Act.

I do want to be clear – there will be no additional financial costs or impacts on businesses or ASQA's revenue as a result of the amendments.

The charge simply replicates the current fees calculated and applied by ASQA.

The amendments are consistent with annual charges under the ESOS Act and the VET Student Loans Act 2016 and a validation provision in the companion Bill is included to make sure there is no confusion about the validity of previously collected fees.

Similar to current arrangements, the amount or calculation of the charge will be determined by the Minister through a legislative instrument and agreed by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Industry and Skills Council (CISC).

Exposure drafts of the Bills were released to state and territory officials who supported the amendments.

The Bills include amendments to ensure providers are notified of amounts owing at the time of their registration, timeframes for payment of the charge and refund arrangements where a provider's registration ends during the course of a financial year.

They also make clear that charges are recoverable as debts owed to the Commonwealth and that past cancellations for failure to pay will continue after the fees are replaced with a charge.

Last year, around 4.5 million people participated in the VET system.

Investing in Australia's workforce by supporting high-quality VET is central to our country's success.

The Bills support this commitment and maintain a revenue basis for ASQA to adopt a regulatory approach that enhances the quality and integrity of the Australian VET system.

I commend the Bill.

I rise to support the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator (Charges) Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017 and the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Annual Registration Charge) Bill 2017. These are necessary amendments to make sure that the Australian Skills Quality Authority's funding has certainty and that industry-funded regulation of vocational education can continue. Providers currently pay an annual registration charge to ASQA; they also pay fees if complaints are substantiated or audits discover breaches.

ASQA's regulatory techniques have developed over time to include intelligence collection and data analysis. These activities are now a core part of ASQA's business, and while they inform targeted compliance and enforcement they are not in themselves services for which a fee or charge can be directly attributed to a particular provider. As a consequence, there is a risk that the charges levied by ASQA could be considered taxes under section 55 of the Constitution rather than a fee for service.

The bills will amend ASQA's establishing legislation to clarify that annual registration fees are collected under an act dealing with the subject of taxation for the purpose of section 55 of the Australian Constitution. This will mitigate constitutional risk and put the continuation of the current funding arrangements for ASQA beyond doubt. Intelligence collection and data analysis are increasingly used in parts of modern regulatory systems, and it is important that ASQA is able to continue to fund these activities. The regulation of quality training in the VET sector matters to students, to providers, to industry and, ultimately, to our national economy.

Labor supports these straightforward amendments. Notwithstanding this, dodgy practices, illegality and profit before students in the vocational education sector in recent years have done significant reputational damage to the sector and left thousands of student victims. To repair that damage, it is essential that the effectiveness of the regulation system is assured. Confidence in the ability of ASQA to ensure quality training provision is central to that trust.

The government's recent announcement of a review of VET regulation is long overdue. Labor is calling on the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to ensure it leads to real improvements in the sector. We welcome the appointment of Professor Valerie Braithwaite, a respected expert, to lead the review. It is essential that this is a genuine, credible attempt to rebuild the reputation of the VET system, which in recent years has been trashed by unethical practices and systematic rorting. To do this, the terms of reference of the review must go beyond a shallow assessment of ASQA's performance within the current rules. It must address the structure and regulation of the system and it must do that more broadly so that only the highest-quality providers can deliver services and gain access to public funding. We need a system that drives excellence, not merely compliance.

This review comes after ASQA itself identified that in key sectors, like early childhood and aged care, the competitive training market has become a race to the bottom on quality. It is in the national interest to get rid of dodgy, low-quality providers once and for all. Students and the community deserve so much better, and Labor will be standing up for quality and for students.

The Liberals have an absolutely disgraceful record on vocational education and an illogical ideological opposition to TAFE. Since they came to office, they have cut more than $2.8 billion from TAFE, skills and apprenticeships. This is austerity policy gone mad. In this year's budget, the Prime Minister and the Liberals cut a further $637 million from TAFE and vocational education over the next four years. Australia now has over 140,000 fewer apprentices and trainees than it did when the government was elected.

TAFE and vocational education funding and the number of supported students are lower than they were a decade ago. This is despite an increasing number of jobs that require vocational skills. In too many towns and regional centres across Australia, TAFE campuses have been degraded and closed, courses have been scaled back, and fees have been increased. Between 2013 and 2015, employer dissatisfaction with the availability of vocational education in regional and rural areas more than doubled. Investment in TAFE and vocational education capital infrastructure fell by almost 75 per cent. The hours of training delivered by TAFE fell by over 25 per cent.

All of this happened while those opposite simply ignored the massive sums of public money being ripped off by dodgy providers. The Government Actuary estimates that $1.2 billion in debt has been inappropriately issued, and the ANAO found that thousands of tax file numbers were handed in bulk to providers. We have seen evidence from ASQA, the education department and the ACCC that concerns about VET loans and providers were raised in late 2014. In fact, it took the estimates process to reveal that there were cross-government meetings at that time as departments tried to work out what to do about the failing administration of the scheme. But no action was taken by this government for another two years, when regulatory changes were brought into the parliament late in 2016. The implementation of these changes has been rushed, and the consequences of this catch-up job are starting to show.

It is political incompetence that the system was so badly and so poorly administered by this government for so long, when students and taxpayers should have been coming first, not dodgy providers. Rather than resolving this issue, the government changed the minister responsible for vocational education five times. It is very telling that the one constant feature of the education portfolio from late 2014 through to now was Senator Birmingham. While the minister did have different roles in the portfolio during this time, there are serious questions that remain to be answered: what did he know, when did he know it, and what action did he take?

In recent days we have seen leaked reports reveal just what damage this government's botched implementation of the loan changes is doing to TAFE. This year, diploma enrolments at TAFE NSW have dropped by over 50 per cent as a result of the coalition cuts. This is a result of the massive gap payments of as much as $8,000 that students in New South Wales now face just to go to TAFE. It is clear those opposite are happy to see the downward spiral of TAFE funding and enrolment continue to get worse—anything to justify more cuts. This latest attack on TAFE means either that students will be forced into the hands of cheap and dodgy providers who cut corners or that we will face skills shortages as people just give up study altogether. TAFE was not the cause of the problems in the sector, and TAFE students do not deserve to be punished.

The leaked report from TAFE NSW also reveals the damage the government's proposed higher education changes would do to TAFE by setting up a two-tiered funding system for diplomas and advanced diplomas, where universities get more public funding and TAFE students are left with unfair up-front fees. All this will serve to do is undermine TAFE yet again. Our tertiary education system needs more coordination and better collaboration, not some kind of false and rigged competition between TAFE and universities. We need to recognise the strength of our TAFE system and build on it.

When it comes to ongoing funding for VET, the Liberals clearly do not have a cohesive plan. This mob would rather put up with dodgy private provision than support a public education sector. It is clear what a low priority TAFE and VET are for this government. The minister is badgering the Senate crossbench to pass his school funding cuts because he wants them to come into effect in six months, but the current TAFE funding agreement comes to an end in a matter of days and it is still not clear what is happening. They just wish TAFE and VET would disappear.

We do not know any details of what the government really has in mind for the replacement of the national partnership, but we do know these three things. One: they will only train local people and possibly fund TAFE on the condition that more foreign workers are imported. That is absurd policy. What government would make the training of Australia's young skilled workforce subject to the importation of foreign labour? That is exactly what this mob have done. It is, as I said, absolutely absurd policy. Two: they will not do what Labor is doing and guarantee that two thirds of public funding, state and federal, will go to TAFE. We believe the TAFE system is so important in metropolitan, regional and rural areas across the country that we say two-thirds of public funding should go to TAFE and not to the shonky private providers that have been ripping the system off. Three: they will cut at least $637 million from TAFE funding. The latest budget shows a further cut of $637 million from TAFE funding, when countries all over the world are looking at ensuring that the skills, facilities and training are there to make their countries internationally competitive.

As if more evidence were necessary of the governments deep-seated problem with TAFE, recently the Adult Migrant English Program and Skills for Education and Employment service have been ripped away from TAFE in regional New South Wales, in Tasmania, in Melbourne and in Adelaide. Other areas where AMEP and the SEE programs have been taken off TAFE and given to private providers include the capital region, Canberra; the Illawarra and South Coast; north-east Melbourne, south-east Melbourne and the peninsula; Somerset in Queensland; and North Perth. These TAFE colleges are so important in these communities, and we see support and funding being ripped away by this coalition government and handed over to private providers. In some areas there are double and triple subcontracts, not approved by the department, that will see foreign-owned for-profit companies take the place of trusted and quality TAFE provision. It is just another way the government are trying to privatise TAFE when we should be going in the other direction.

Labor has policy alternatives to the low expectations and sorry apologies from those opposite. One: we will invest an additional $637.6 million into TAFE and vocational education, reversing the government's 2017 budget cuts in full. Two: we will guarantee at least two-thirds of public vocational education funding for TAFE. We should be putting public money into public institutions as important and necessary as the TAFE system. Three: we will invest in a new $100 million Building TAFE for the Future Fund to re-establish TAFE facilities in regional communities, meet local industry needs and support teaching for the digital economy. Four: we will set a target of one in 10 apprentices on all Commonwealth priority projects and major government business enterprise projects. We are not just talking the talk; we will walk the walk, and we will say that if you are on a government project you will employ one apprentice for every 10 employees on the job.

Five: we will invest in pre-apprenticeship programs, preparing up to 10,000 young job seekers to start an apprenticeship to be delivered by TAFE. What could be more important in areas where there is over 20 per cent youth unemployment than to provide support and opportunities for young Australians to actually get into TAFE, to get an apprenticeship and to actually build a life of security for the future, for themselves and for their families?

Six: we will establish an advanced entry adult apprenticeships program to fast-track apprenticeships for up to 20,000 people who are facing redundancy or whose jobs have been lost, and that would be delivered by TAFE. An example: this mob over here basically chased away General Motors and Toyota—told them they were not wanted in Australia—and now we will get thousands of skilled workers on production lines who have the engineering skills and who could be fast-tracked into apprenticeships and fast-tracked into trades and could continue to make a positive contribution to the Australian economy.

In conclusion, TAFE and vocational education is in Labor's DNA. Generations of Australians have secured decent jobs because they trained at TAFE or did an apprenticeship. In our fast-changing world, a modern, adaptable TAFE and vocational education system will not be just a good thing to have; it will be essential to jobs and economic growth. While Labor supports the bills before the Senate today, there is so much more to be done for TAFE and vocational education, but so little will be done by those opposite.

Just look at my example: I am here as a senator for New South Wales on the basis of being able to have an apprenticeship. I do not have any tertiary qualifications. I do not have university training. What I have is a trade certificate, and my trade certificate gave me the opportunity to get skilled up in the equivalent of TAFE in Scotland, to actually understand engineering principles and problem solving principles and to be able to take my trade from Scotland and come to Australia and work as a tradesperson here, and to move from that position with the skills that I had learned to represent working people for 27 years in the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union—look after the penalty rates, look after their rights, look after their conditions on the job, make sure they had dignity at work. That is what my trade did for me. It allowed me to move anywhere in the world with my trade certificate. When I came to Australia I had the opportunity to move to South Africa, to move to New Zealand, to move to Canada or to go to Germany. I chose to come to Australia because we were an egalitarian country, because this country provided opportunities for tradespeople.

We should be giving that same opportunity to young Australians, not simply bring more and more foreign workers into the country when young people are crying out for the opportunity for an apprenticeship. We should be looking after Australia's young workers with a decent TAFE system. On that basis, we support these bills.

As one who started his journey in Australia as a foreign worker, following on from another who started his journey in Australia as a foreign worker, let me thank Senator Cameron for his contribution to this debate on the national vocational education and training regulator legislation. I commend the bills to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.

As no amendments to the bills have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bills be considered in Committee of the Whole.

I move:

That these bills be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a third time.

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

PASSPORTS LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (OVERSEAS TRAVEL BY CHILD SEX OFFENDERS) BILL 2017

On 30 May, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Justice announced that the Government would introduce tough new laws to combat the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children overseas by Australian child sex offenders.

Today I am pleased to introduce the Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017 to do just this.

This Bill responds to community concern about Australian child sex offenders travelling overseas to sexually abuse vulnerable children in countries where the law enforcement framework is weaker and their activities are not monitored.

This concern is justified – in 2016 more than 770 Australian registered child sex offenders travelled overseas. Half of whom were registered by State and Territory Police as being medium to high risk offenders. And a third violated an obligation to notify police of their intended travel.

These offenders have a high propensity to re-offend in countries where they are not monitored and where child sexual exploitation is rampant. Registered child sex offenders are subject to reporting obligations in Australia specifically because of their ongoing risk to children.

Existing measures are clearly ineffective.

This Bill will address current deficiencies and will prevent Australian registered child sex offenders with reporting obligations from travelling overseas by:

(1) denying offenders a passport; and

(2) by making it an offence for offenders to travel overseas without permission from authorities.

The passport measures introduced under this bill will apply to the approximately 20,000 registered child sex offenders with reporting obligations in Australia. It will also apply to future child sex offenders registered annually.

Once an offender's reporting obligations have ended they will be able to apply for a passport. If there are good reasons to justify overseas travel an offender can seek permission from the authorities for such travel.

These laws will make Australia a world leader in protecting vulnerable children from child sex tourism.

Passport measures

The Bill will amend the Australian Passports Act 2005 and the Foreign Passports (Law Enforcement and Security) Act 2005 so that upon request by a 'competent authority' as defined in the Passports Act the Minister for Foreign Affairs will be required to: refuse to issue or cancel an Australian passport or demand the surrender of a foreign travel document when an Australian citizen is on a State or Territory child sex offender register with reporting obligations.

The decision to refuse to issue or to cancel a passport will be mandatory and not reviewable following a competent authority request – this is appropriate as the competent authority has the expertise and full details of the circumstances of the offender to make such decisions.

A new offence

This Bill will also amend the Criminal Code Act 1995 to make it a Commonwealth offence for a registered child sex offender with reporting obligations to travel, or attempt to travel, overseas without permission from a relevant authority.

The new offence is an important complement to the passport measures. The new offence ensures that child sex offenders can be prosecuted should they try to evade the passport measures. It will have a particular role to play in helping to prevent Australian dual nationals from travelling illegally on foreign passports.

Other measures to deal with child sex offenders

This bill is just one of the measures that the Government is progressing to address the serious community concerns regarding child sex offenders.

The Government is also developing a package of legislative reforms to the Criminal Code 1995 and the Crimes Act 1914 to criminalise emerging forms of child sexual exploitation and strengthen the sentencing and management of Commonwealth child sexual offenders.

This will strengthen the laws we have to protect children in Australia.

I expect that this will be brought forward in the Spring sitting.

Conclusion

This Bill reflects the seriousness with which this Government is addressing child sex tourism.

These tough new measures send a strong message to child sex offenders that they cannot use overseas travel to sexually exploit and abuse children. Such abhorrent crimes will not be tolerated.

The opposition will be supporting the Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017. This bill is intended to prevent Australians, including dual nationals, listed on a state or territory child sex offender register with reporting obligations from travelling overseas to sexually exploit or sexually abuse vulnerable children in overseas countries where the law enforcement framework is weaker and their activities are not effectively monitored. It goes further than the existing provisions, which currently provide for a child sex offender's passport to be refused, cancelled or surrendered on the basis of a competent authority's assessment of the offender's likelihood to cause harm.

The government argues that the existing process is impractical, with the states and territories not utilising it. Labor strongly agrees that the principle expressed in the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, that countries must protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse. In our platform, Labor commits to act against the exploitation, including sexual exploitation, of children either in Australia or overseas. Labor also has a platform commitment to support international campaigns to end sexual exploitation of children, including sex tourism and trafficking.

The opposition recognises that this bill provides a means to sharply reduce the opportunity for reportable offenders to engage in sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children overseas. Whilst this bill will provide increased power to the Minister for Foreign Affairs or the minister's delegate, this is only to be available following a request by a competent authority, such as a court, sex offender registry or the police. Currently there are 20,000 registered child sex offenders and an additional 2,500 offenders are added to these registers each year.

The bill also insert a new offence into the Criminal Code which will apply to an Australian registered child sex offender with reporting obligations who travels overseas without prior permission from the relevant competent authority. Whilst these are strong restrictions, the amendments contained in this bill will not amount to a permanent travel ban for persons who are listed on the register. Child sex offenders who are listed on a register will only be subject to passport restrictions for the period that they are subject to reporting obligations under the register. The reportable offender may also seek permission from the relevant competent authority to travel overseas.

We all agree that sexual abuse and exploitation of children is a scourge at home and abroad. Labor supports legislative action that aims to limit the capacity of registered child sex offenders to travel overseas, where reporting and investigative practices are often not as robust as they are here in Australia.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this very important debate on a very important issue. Before I do, I would like to echo the sentiments expressed by the finance minister on a previous bill: it is pleasing to see the Senate in such a state of productivity, churning through important bills on this very productive morning. This follows a very productive week, last week, where we passed a number of important bills. I am hopeful that this positive trend will continue. I hope we see more productive work of the Senate over the rest of the week and more important bills passed. I echo the finance minister's thanks to all senators in the chamber, from all parties, for their assistance in ensuring the government's legislative agenda passes with appropriate speed through the chamber. Let me also say that I think, once again, it demonstrates the superiority of the Senate over the House of Representatives, which all senators should be concerned about, and I hope we continue to maintain that.

With respect to the bill that is before us today, I think it is appropriate at the outset to particularly acknowledge and recognise the work of my Senate colleague from Victoria, Senator Derryn Hinch, on this issue and on related issues. While it is true that, ultimately, only a government can implement policies like this and only a government can act in a decisive way like this to achieve these outcomes, it would be churlish not to recognise the lifetime of activism that Senator Hinch has devoted to this issue. He has been a passionate crusader for the protection of children from sex offenders for his entire career, and that has come at some personal cost to him, particularly during his time in the media. We should all recognise the particular advocacy and passion that he has brought to this issue and be grateful for it.

Onto the bill itself—as senators will be aware, on 30 May the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Justice announced that the government would introduce tough new laws to combat the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children overseas by Australian child sex offenders. What this bill seeks to do is to respond to the genuine, widespread and heartfelt community concern about the fact that Australian child sex offenders have been travelling overseas. Sadly, we know that in many cases they do so to sexually abuse vulnerable children in countries where the law enforcement framework is not as strong Australia's, where it is weaker than Australia's and unfortunately they may not have the capacity or ability to monitor the activity of these convicted sex offenders in the way that a prosperous country like Australia with strong rule of law framework is able to do.

The concern that the community holds is absolutely justified; they are absolutely right to hold that concern. We know that last year, in 2016, more than 770 Australian registered child sex offenders travelled overseas. That is a very sobering statistic. I am advised that over half of them were registered by state and territory police as being medium- or high-risk offenders, and one-third of them violated an obligation to notify police of their intended travel. So the community concern about this issue is well founded.

Sadly, we know that these offenders have a high propensity to reoffend, and that propensity is particularly high when they are in countries that do not have the capacity to monitor them and where child sexual exploitation is rampant for a variety of reasons. Registered sex offenders are subject to very tough—as they should be—and onerous reporting obligations in Australia, because we know that they do represent an ongoing risk to children. Regrettably, that is not something that the Australian government can provide if the sex offenders travel overseas and, regrettably, it is not something that every nation is in the same position as Australia to provide.

The existing measures that are in place, which are designed to prevent overseas travel by child sex offenders, have clearly been proven by the statistics to be ineffective. It is entirely appropriate that the government respond to community concern about this issue, and to the demonstrable evidence that suggests this is an issue, to act to address the ineffective aspects of the current regime. The bill seeks to do that in two important ways. By these two methods, it will effectively prevent Australian registered child sex offenders who have reporting obligations from travelling overseas. The first method is the most obvious, which is to deny those offenders a passport. They will no longer be able to obtain a passport, which is obviously a necessary precondition for travel. The second method is to make it an offence for these offenders to travel overseas without the permission of authorities. So we are not just taking away the means of travelling overseas by taking away their ability to have a passport; we are also making it unlawful for them to do so and having penalties for them if they do so, which I think is entirely appropriate.

The passport measures introduced under this bill will apply to the approximately 20,000 registered child sex offenders who have reporting obligations in Australia. That is a very sobering statistic for all of us in this place to bear in mind: 20,000 registered sex offenders who have reporting obligations. Importantly, this bill and these new measures will also apply to future child sex offenders who are registered annually—so, the existing cohort of sex offenders who we know are a problem and any future ones who are added to that list. If offenders who have reporting obligations have good reasons to travel overseas there will be an ability for them to obtain permission from authorities to travel overseas, but only if there are very good reasons and the authorities are satisfied that those are valid reasons. Once their reporting obligations have concluded and they are judged to have abided by those reporting obligations for the duration of their time, they will then able to apply for a passport in the usual way, as other Australians are. So it is not a lifetime ban on travel; it is a ban for the time at which they are judged a risk to the community and have reporting obligations. What these laws will do is in fact make Australia a world leader in protecting vulnerable children from child sex tourism, and that is something I think we should all be proud of.

I will now turn to the detail of the measures themselves. The passport measures part of the bill will amend the Australian Passports Act 2005 and also the Foreign Passports (Law Enforcement and Security) Act 2005. They will do so, so that, upon the request by a competent authority as defined in the Passports Act, the Minister for Foreign Affairs will be required to: firstly, refuse to issue; or, secondly, cancel an Australian passport; or, thirdly, demand the surrender of a foreign travel document when an Australian citizen is on a state or territory child sex offender registry and has reporting obligations. The decision to refuse to issue or cancel a passport will be mandatory and not subject to administrative review, following a competent authority request. This is an appropriate measure as the competent authority has the expertise and the full details of the circumstances of the offender to make such decisions.

The bill will also, as I mentioned before, establish a new offence, and in order to do so it will amend the Criminal Code 1995 to make it a Commonwealth offence for a registered child sex offender with reporting obligations to travel or attempt to travel overseas without permission from a competent authority. The new offence is an important complement to the passport measures—and a necessary one. The new offence ensures that child sex offenders can be prosecuted should they try to evade the passport measures. It is, in effect, an extra measure to ensure that the passport measures alone, if not successful, have an important backup. It will have a particular role to play in helping to prevent Australian dual nationals from travelling illegally on foreign passports. Obviously, the Australian government does not have the power to take a foreign passport off a dual national. We only have the power to restrict their ability to have an Australian passport. So this law, which will make it an offence for them to travel overseas, should help ensure that those attempts to travel overseas are captured by this bill.

There are other measures that the government is progressing to deal with child sex offenders and to respond to these serious community concerns about them. The government is in the process of developing a package of legislative reforms to the Criminal Code 1995 and also the Crimes Act 1914 to criminalise emerging forms of child sexual exploitation and strengthen the sentencing and management of Commonwealth child sex offenders. This will strengthen the laws that we have in place to protect children in Australia. I am advised that these measures will be brought forward in the spring sitting of the parliament.

This bill reflects the very serious way in which the government is responding to the scourge of child sex tourism. These tough measures will send a strong message to child sex offenders that they cannot use overseas travel to sexually exploit and abuse children. Such abhorrent crimes will not be tolerated. I notice that Senator Hinch has joined us in the chamber, and I anticipate he might have a few words to say on this matter, so as we are approaching question time I will conclude my remarks there.

This is one of the greatest days of my life—to stand here and speak on the Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill. I want to pay tribute to Anthony Foster and his daughters Emma and Katie and his wife Chrissie. Anthony Foster was a great fighter against child sexual abuse. His family has experienced a great tragedy and personal loss, and he died only a few weeks ago and was quite rightly awarded a state funeral in Melbourne.

The current situation goes back less than one year. In July 2016 I was fortunate enough to be a senator-elect, and my first public appearance as a soon-to-be ex-journalist was at the Melbourne Press Club. Just before I got up to speak, Michael Rowland, who was the MC, said to me, 'Do you know Rachel Griffiths, the actress?' I said. 'Yes—I have known her since she was a teenager.' He said, 'She says she knows you and she gave me this to give you.' As I walked up to the microphone he handed me this note, which said:

Dear Derryn,

Firstly, congrats—so proud of you being alive and making a difference. I want to reach out to you regarding a child trafficking and human rights issue. I have talked to Julie Bishop, who was setting it up with Brandis to discuss—but you would be our key advocate. We want to take passports permanently from convicted sex offenders. Child sex tourism is on the rise as local opportunities, schools et cetera, are shrinking. We are constantly dealing with victims of Australian offenders.

She concluded by saying:

If we can take a passport off a bankrupt, why can't we stop our paedophiles travelling to Myanmar? I'd love to discuss this with you. Congrats … How are we going to get this done?

Rachel

I read that out to start my speech that day and I said I did not believe it could be true—surely people who are on the child sex offenders register cannot be allowed to go overseas? I checked with Foreign Affairs Minister Bishop, the Minister for Justice, Michael Keenan, and the Australian Federal Police, and I discovered that that year 800 men on the child sex offenders register had gone overseas and about 350 of them had gone to places like Myanmar, Cambodia, the Philippines and Indonesia on what I called deliberately—because this is what they are—child rape holidays. Many of you will have been to these places. A couple of years ago I went to Siem Reap and Phnom Penh in Cambodia, and you see middle-aged Caucasian Australian men there with young local kids and you know they are not there to go to Angkor Wat and look at the temples. That is why I started moves to get this passport ban on sex offenders brought into place. I discovered, as Senator Patterson said, that 20,000 names—mostly men, a few women—were on the register and more than 3,000 of them were on the register for life.

This passport ban is just the start. As has been alluded to, in the spring session we plan more legislation to try to cut down on cybercrime, on men who now, if they cannot leave the country, will start using their credit cards and Skype to hire children, sometimes from their own parents, in the Philippines to have live sex acts sent between Australia and the Philippines. That will come up in the next legislation. I know we are going to question time, so I would like to speak for a short time later in conclusion on one of the most important issues I have ever been involved with in my life.

Debate interrupted.

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham. In an article entitled 'Confidence in Liberals lost over education reforms, say Catholics', The Australian reports that, in a meeting with the Catholic Education Commission, the minister was told:

'In the 50 years we have been dealing with governments, we have never had a government not engage with us on major changes to policy.'

Given the Catholic Education Office has labelled the minister as the worst in five decades—please pay attention, Minister; I am asking you a question—how can his colleagues have any confidence in him?

I thank Senator Farrell for his question, because I am confident that we will deliver fair, consistent, needs based school funding across Australia—that we will put in place the types of measures that the Labor Party commissioned. It was the Labor Party who went out and asked David Gonski and a panel to come up with a report talking about how it is we can fund all Australian schools fairly. It was the Labor Party who then received that report. But what did they do? They put in place 27 different special deals and special arrangements and so on.

What the Turnbull government have been seeking to do is make sure that we take additional funding, $18.6 billion of additional funding, that we invest it across Australian schools and that we do so in a manner fair and according to need, that has received endorsement from David Gonski himself, and that in doing that we provide the additional resources and support that children in schools of need across every education system—

Order! Pause the clock. Point of order, Senator Farrell?

I asked a very specific question of the minister, and he has not answered it so far. The question, if I can repeat it, is: how can his colleagues have any confidence in him?

I think the minister was trying to demonstrate how they could have confidence in him. It is a very broad question, Senator Farrell. The minister is in order.

As I was saying, there is additional resourcing for public schools of high need, additional resourcing for independent schools of high need and, yes, additional resourcing for Catholic schools—additional resourcing that will see Catholic school systems enjoy funding growth from $6.3 billion this year to $9.7 billion by 2027—a $3.4 billion increase in terms of what those schools receive—and will see their capacity to then invest that in the schools of need that they identify to ensure that those students and those schools receive the resourcing necessary so their students can excel and so they can get the excellent education that they deserve and that we are committed to ensuring they receive.

Senator Farrell, a supplementary question.

This morning, The Daily Telegraph reports that Senator Abetz could join the very good Senator Back in voting against the Turnbull government's education package, and quoted him as being 'very concerned about the Catholic sector'. How many of the minister's colleagues are considering voting against his package as a result of his failure to deal appropriately with the Catholic sector?

I am confident that we will see all members of the coalition vote to support a package that delivers fairness to all school systems across all states of Australia, because we are wanting to make sure we deliver something that provides for record and growing levels of funding into the future, and that that record and growing investment is distributed fairly, according to need, across those different systems and across those different schools. That is why it is a reform that has received significant endorsement—endorsement from many of the impartial stakeholders and endorsement from David Gonski himself. It is those endorsements and those commitments that demonstrate the fairness in this, as well as, of course, the additional investment that those school systems—the Catholic school systems in particular—will be able to continue to distribute across each of their schools to make sure that they have the support they need to deliver what their students deserve and what their families deserve.

Mr President, I have a final supplementary question. Isn't it clear that the Catholic Education Commission is correct when it says that the government would 'wear this like an albatross around its neck until the day of the next election'?

Lots of different things are said in the heat of campaigns, but I am confident that hardworking Catholic school parents and Catholic schools will see—as funding grows in the Catholic education systems in South Australia, in New South Wales, in Western Australia, in Tasmania, in Queensland and in Victoria, as each of those systems receives extra funding each and every year into the future—that they are getting a fair deal. They will see that they are getting the type of resourcing necessary to keep doing the outstanding things that so many Catholic systemic schools do and to keep doing more, with an increasing share of funding and with increasing funding ahead of inflation and ahead of wages growth that allows those schools to support their children to be their best—which, of course, is what everybody in this chamber should rightly want.

My question is to the Minister for Employment representing the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Senator Cash. Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches to the government's proposed changes to Australian citizenship requirements?

I thank Senator Hume for the very important question. Australian citizenship is a great privilege, and it is something that we should all value and not take for granted. The government's package of reforms to strengthen the test for Australian citizenship has widespread support, and includes some very important measures to ensure that people demonstrate integration into the Australian community and an understanding of Australian values of respect, equality and freedom.

Unfortunately, to respond to Senator Hume's very important question, I think we are all now aware of alternative approaches to these very sensible reforms. Today, the Australian Labor Party and Mr Shorten, in typical fashion, have confirmed that they have caved to the left wing of the Australian Labor Party in a desperate effort to appeal to Greens voters. Through you, Mr President, Mr Shorten's extraordinary backflip in relation to the government citizenship changes shows that, quite frankly—through you, Mr President—he is a weak leader who is not able to put our national interest first. Who can recall that, but a few weeks ago, on 21 April 2017, Mr Shorten, when he heard about the changes, was initially supportive of them. In fact, he said:

… if there is a discussion about making sure that prospective citizens have got a reasonable grasp of English, well, that's fair enough.

He further went on to say:

If they want to have a discussion about waiting times before you become an Australian citizen, well we will hear the detail of that.

The bad news is he then heard the detail about Mr Albanese and the fact that Mr Albanese wants to be the Leader of the Opposition. So it is quite clear that Mr Shorten has now backflipped to protect his own interests instead of putting the national interest first.

Senator Hume, a supplementary question.

Can the minister explain to the Senate why it is important that the requirements to become an Australian citizen are strengthened?

Australian citizenship involves a commitment to our great country, its people and our shared values. It is a privilege, and it is one that on this side of the chamber we do not believe should be taken lightly. It is also important as a government to ensure that we continue to maintain public confidence in our immigration and citizenship programs by demonstrating that the government is committed to the highest levels of integrity. The reforms we have proposed will ensure that a priority is placed on respect for Australian values and on demonstrating an ability and willingness to integrate. This is in the national interest and also for the benefit of aspiring citizens. English language proficiency is essential for economic participation, social cohesion and integration into the Australian community.

Michaelia, I think you would fail that English test!

Senator Cameron, I might fail, but we will fail together!

Senator Hume, a final supplementary question.

Can the minister explain to the Senate what risks arise from the opposition's newly announced opposition to the government's citizenship proposals?

As I have said, the Australian citizenship reforms will strengthen the requirements for applicants to commit their allegiance to Australia and Australian values and to demonstrate their contribution to the Australian community. The reforms we have proposed are designed to maintain public confidence in the citizenship program and to support a safe and secure Australia.

We define ourselves and our nation by our commitment to the fundamental principles of allegiance to Australia, integration and unity and the Australian values which people have fought and died for: democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, the rule of law, rejection of domestic and family violence, education for boys and for girls, equality of opportunity and of course the great Australian value of a fair go for all.

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham. Yesterday the Liberal member for Menzies, Kevin Andrews, said that the Turnbull government's modelling that showed a $4.6 billion cut to Catholic schools 'has not been provided to the party room; I hope it will be provided tomorrow'—which is today. Has the minister now come clean with the coalition MPs and senators and provided his department's data showing a $4.6 billion cut to Catholic schools?

Mr President, on a point of order: since when does the DLP get the first and third question in this Senate chamber? The last time I checked, Senator Madigan had already left the Senate!

There is no point of order. The Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham, has the call.

I had great pleasure in talking to the coalition party room this morning about how it is that Labor's $22 billion that they run around the country talking about is just funny money, how it is that the $22 billion that they claim was money that of course was never in the budget, was never paid for, was never funded and is funding that nobody could ever have possibly banked upon, in contrast to what those opposite claim, as they run around, plucking figures out from the $22 billion and saying, 'This much may have been for this sector; that much may have been for another sector.' The coalition is firmly committed to providing—

Mr President, a point of order on relevance: the question was, has the minister now come clean with the coalition MPs and senators and provided his department's data showing a $4.6 billion cut to Catholic schools? He has not addressed that.

Well, thank you, Senator Cameron. The minister did go to address the fact that he has spoken to his colleagues this morning, and I think we need to give the minister, in his remaining one minute and 19 seconds, a bit more of a chance to flesh out that answer.

I was very directly addressing Senator Collins's question in that I explained to the coalition party room this morning that people can roll out all of these different bits of the $22 billion of pretend money, of funny money, of fake money that the Labor Party runs around saying that they had there somewhere for schools on the never-never horizon. But compare it with the Turnbull government, which has presented a clear model, which is proposing legislation for a clear model, which has put in place the budget savings to ensure we can address and put in the $18.6 billion extra we are proposing. Those opposite keep running around with their fantasy money, Senator Collins, with the fantasy $22 billion—

Pause the clock. Senator Cameron, a point of order?

Mr President, you did indicate that you would give the minister some time to try to deal with this. Well, he now has 36 seconds left and he has not dealt with the question. He should be drawn to the question.

The minister has partially addressed the question. I will call the minister again.

Indeed, I think the explanations were very clear about the fact that people plucked out of this $22 billion magical figures to say that this group of schools could have gotten this much or that group of schools could have gotten a different amount. In the end we all know, of course, that the Labor Party never delivers on their promises, that they budget things that they can never afford to pay for and that in this instance once again the Labor Party are making promises that they will never keep in the future.

Senator Collins, a supplementary question?

I am a bit young for the DLP! But on a more serious note—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order on my right. Reset the clock.

On a far more serious note, one Liberal MP has said it was 'a major mistake' to provide the data to the Senate crossbench but not to the coalition party room. Was it a mistake, Minister, or was the minister intentionally withholding the data that reveals a $4.6 billion cut to Catholic schools?

I will take Senator Collins at her word that she is too young for the DLP, but I certainly will not take her at her word when it comes to talk about cuts, because time and time again in this place I have been very clear about the additional funding growth that is there. In relation to the Catholic education system in Australia, there is $3.4 billion of growth built in over the next 10 years—year on year growth for Catholic education systems across each of the states of Australia. This is a growth factor that ensures each of them will ultimately be treated equally, fairly, across the Commonwealth, regardless of the state boundaries but based on the needs of those individual systems. That is why it provides faster rates of growth to Catholic education systems in states like Western Australia and Tasmania—to ensure that for the first time ever they will be treated fairly relative to their Catholic education system cousins in Victoria and New South Wales, to deliver a fair, consistent approach— (Time expired)

Senator Collins, a final supplementary question?

Given that the minister's own party room colleagues do not trust him to deliver a fair system of school funding, why should the parents of Australian schoolkids?

Parents of hardworking Catholic education families, hardworking families in the public education system and hardworking families in the independent education system should absolutely trust that the Turnbull government's legislated model for school funding will put an additional $18.6 billion into schools across Australia. They should trust the fact that that funding will go at the fastest growth rate to the schools that need and deserve it the most, so that those around 4½ thousand Australian schools will receive a growth rate in excess of five per cent per student per annum over the decade into the future. This is strong growth for those schools that need it most. It is fair growth for all schools in Australia. It is about providing a model that actually is consistent, that reflects need, that gives additional support to students with disability, that gives additional support to Indigenous students and that gives additional support to rural and regional schools. It gives the support where it is needed most to the children who need it most.

Is () (): My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Brandis. Last Friday the parliament of Japan unanimously passed a bill regarding the implementation of commercial whaling. Is the government aware of this bill? If so, please advise the Senate if the government sees this as an escalation of Japan's whaling efforts and what action you are taking in this regard.

Thank you for that question, Senator Whish-Wilson. I am aware that on 16 June Japan passed a new domestic law affirming the Japanese government's responsibility to support special permit or scientific research and ensure public funding for whaling research. That legislation makes it likely that scientific whaling is for the purpose of obtaining knowledge to implement commercial whaling. The new law also included measures to improve security provided by the Japanese fisheries agency to the Southern Ocean whaling fleet during the whaling season in response to anti-whaling activities of activists, in particular Sea Shepherd. I am aware also, Senator Whish-Wilson, of your observations that Japanese whaling is an assault on Australia's interests, our marine life, our territorial interests and our pursuit of a rules based global order.

The government is concerned about the recent passage of that legislation in support of so-called scientific whaling. The Australian government does not consider that Japan's whaling program is for the purposes of scientific research nor is it convinced that the program is consistent with the principles of the International Court of Justice's 2014 decision or of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. The Australian government will continue its efforts in the International Whaling Commission to promote whale conservation and uphold the general global moratorium on commercial whaling.

Senator Whish-Wilson on a supplementary question.

As noted by Senator Brandis, this whaling bill includes provisions giving the right for Japanese government agencies to dispatch government vessels to prevent interference in whaling activities from organisations like Sea Shepherd. Does the Australian government support Japan in despatching customs or naval vessels to the Australian Whale Sanctuary to provide security for whaling vessels?

I do not have a brief on that particular issue. I told you that the government is disappointed with the law that was passed by the Diet last week. In relation to the specific issue of protection of the Japanese whaling fleet as provided for, as you say, by the bill, I will get some specific instructions from Minister for Foreign Affairs and come back to you.

Senator Whish-Wilson on a final supplementary question.

Thank you, Minister. Yesterday in Senator Payne's statement on maritime security and our trilateral defence cooperation with the US and Japan, she said that both these governments share our commitment to the rules based order and to strengthening our regional security architecture that underpins our region's stability and prosperity. Does the minister consider that thumbing your nose at the International Court of Justice ruling that Japanese whaling is illegal is a commitment to a rules based order by Japan? (Time expired)

I can emphatically reaffirm what Senator Payne told the chamber yesterday. The relationship between Australia and Japan is a very important relationship for us and for them. We are strategic partners. We have common interests. We are like-minded as democracies. We are important powers in the East Asian region. And both governments, the Japanese government and the Australian government, are committed to a rules based global order. That is not to say, however, that from time to time friendly and like-minded governments which share a commitment to a rules based global order will not have differences. We do have a difference with the Japanese government about whaling. We point out to the Japanese government firmly but civilly the position of the Australian government. We contest the Japanese government's position in international tribunals including the International Court of Justice and the International Whaling Commission. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham. Could the minister inform the Senate how the Turnbull government's new schools funding reforms will benefit Australian school students such as those in my home state of Tasmania, including in public and Catholic schools?

I thank Senator Duniam for his question and his passionate commitment to ensure the best for schoolchildren in Tasmania and particularly the best of school funding for schoolchildren across Tasmania.

Under our reforms, children across all school systems in Tasmania will be beneficiaries of a fairer funding model. In particular, as I alluded to before, take the Catholic education system in Tasmania: it will see funding growth of an average of 4.4 per cent under the Turnbull government's reforms. That is a higher level of growth than for some other Catholic education systems because, historically, Tasmania has had a raw deal under previous funding arrangements. Our application of consistency across the country helps to ensure that students in Tasmania—Mr President, it is your home state as well, I acknowledge—get fair and equal treatment from the federal government, as they should across every state and territory. That 4.4 per cent funding growth for the Tasmanian Catholic education system will see growth from $149 million this year to more than $180 million for Catholic education in Tasmania by 2021—growth of around 21 per cent over that four-year time horizon.

Equally, Tasmanian public schools in the government system will see strong growth as well—four per cent growth above inflation and above wages growth. It is a commitment to ensure that they receive a common share of the schooling resource standard and, indeed, with the commitment and investment from the Tasmanian government, that they will reach the schooling resource standard as a result of the combined efforts of the Commonwealth and the Tasmanian governments.

Take Andrews Creek Primary School in Wesley Vale, for instance, with just around 140 students. That school will receive an estimated $3,255 per student in Commonwealth funding in 2018 under the Turnbull government's reforms, but that will grow to more than $4½ thousand dollars per student over the period to 2027—a $1,400 increase per student over that time. (Time expired)

Senator Duniam, a supplementary question.

I thank the minister for that answer. Could the minister apprise the Senate of the support received for the new schools funding reforms?

There has been strong support. A good example of that comes from Tasmania. There is a national body, the Australian Council of State School Organisations, representing parents of government school systems across the country. Their president, Mr Phillip Spratt, who is based in Tasmania, has described the Turnbull government's reforms as 'deeply gratifying' because, as he acknowledged, they are addressing peculiar advantages and providing for everybody on a consistent, fair, needs based platform.

Of course, today we see news that even a former president of the Australian Education Union, Dianne Foggo, has come out urging the Labor Party and the education union to back the Turnbull government's reforms. That is right: there is a split in the education union ranks because, of course, finally people there are realising that the best thing for public education and the neediest schools in Australia is to ensure that the Turnbull government's reforms pass, to give the best additional support to the schools who need it most, particularly those in public education systems. (Time expired)

Opposition senators interjecting—

Order on my left!

Senator Cameron interjecting—

Senator Carol Brown interjecting—

Order, Senator Cameron and Senator Brown! Senator Duniam, a final supplementary question.

I am pleased my Tasmanian colleagues are so active on this issue. Finally, I will ask the minister if he is aware of any alternative proposals for school funding being put forward?

The only alternative proposal that I am aware of is the embarrassing proposition of those opposite, who pretend that there is a bunch of funny money out there that they can keep giving away, who want to embed 27 different arrangements and who want to see a situation where government school students in Western Australia continue to get a raw deal from the federal government relative to government school students elsewhere in the country, or where Catholic school students in Tasmania get a raw deal relative to Catholic school students elsewhere in the country. We want to ensure they are all treated fairly, equally and consistently by the Australian government as Australian school students, regardless of the state boundaries that exist. That is what our proposal seeks to do. Of course, we have the situation, as I have said, with the AEU starting to splinter. Indeed, the Grattan Institute has described the official AEU position as being a bizarre position of arguing for less money for government schools. That, of course, would be the effect if the AEU got their way. I just hope that the AEU and the Labor Party change their minds and get on board with the proper reform. (Time expired)

My question is also to the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham. Since announcing his education package some seven weeks ago, this minister has consistently stated that he would not be blackmailed or bullied by any sector into doing what he called 'special deals'. Has the minister done a so-called 'special deal' with the Catholic education sector?

There have been no deals. As we have been very clear, the government continues to have discussions with a range of interested stakeholders and parties and will keep having those discussions. But, equally, our commitment to ensure consistency and a needs based approach to funding is resolute and will not waver.

Senator Wong, a supplementary question.

Reports indicate that the independent schools sector is considering withdrawing its support for the minister's education policy if concessions are made to Catholic schools. Doesn't this demonstrate yet again that this minister cannot convince the education sectors, let alone his own colleagues, of the merit of his education package?

I am very pleased to see that there are strong endorsements for the Turnbull government's reforms. We can start from day 1 in terms of what it is that David Gonski himself said and note that David Gonski said 'the Turnbull government has accepted the fundamental recommendations of our 2011 report, and particularly regarding a needs-based' funding arrangement. We have seen before endorsements from other representatives of both government school organisations and non-government school organisations. They absolutely do want to see consistency, fairness, equity and needs based treatment. That, as I said before, is precisely what the Turnbull government is committed to delivering and what we will deliver.

Senator Wong, a final supplementary question.

Given that this minister has announced an educational policy without any consultation, has provided data his own department has said is flawed, was not honest with his own party room and is desperately pursuing a special deal with one sector despite saying that he would never do so, is it any wonder that this minister has lost the trust of public schools, independent schools, Catholic schools and his own party room to deliver his schools package?

The Turnbull government will deliver the schools funding package. It is a schools funding package that puts record investment into Australian schools, ensures that record investment goes to the schools that need it most and treats people fairly and equally—school-system students in particular—regardless of the state borders that they may be in. That is absolutely our intention, that is our resolve and that is what we will keep working to do. We want to make sure that, rather than continuing a mess of different deals, different arrangements and special treatment that those opposite put in place, we do address school funding and that we do target it to those kids who need it most and those schools that need it most, because they are the ones who will benefit most from a fair and equal outcome for all Australian schools.

My question is to the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, Senator Canavan. What action has the government taken to ensure the security and reliability of Australia's domestic gas supply?

I thank Senator O'Sullivan for his question. It goes to an issue that affects many of the regional businesses—manufacturing businesses in particular—in the senator's state. Today, we have taken significant action as a government to introduce gas export licences in Australia. This is significant action from the government, but it is action in response to a significant problem. I am sure many in this place have heard of the shortages of gas that are afflicting our manufacturing sector and also causing difficulties in energy markets and pushing up electricity prices. I myself have met many of them. Senator McKenzie took me to north-east Victoria recently where companies like Uncle Tobys, with 550 workers, are struggling. I went to Shepparton after that where Pactum Dairy also have pressures in terms of supplies of gas. AKD timber in Colac with 330 people are facing pressures for gas, and big businesses like Incitec Pivot and BlueScope Steel, with thousands of jobs at risk, also need adequate supplies of gas.

We as a government are focused on making sure that our manufacturing sector has the gas it needs to protect these jobs. We made mistakes. When the Labor government was in charge, no-one did an assessment on whether or not the expansion of LNG exports on the east coast of Australia was going to compromise our domestic energy security. We are living with the legacy of that, but we as a government are focused now on finding solutions and making sure we take the actions necessary to rectify those matters. We will do so by introducing this licensing system which will allow the Commonwealth government to ensure there is sufficient gas in Australia to serve our needs. It is unsustainable to have a situation where we are going to become the world's largest exporter of gas but have some of the highest prices in the world. That is not sustainable for our gas industry. It is certainly not sustainable for our manufacturing sector. That is why the government is acting to rectify the problem.

Senator O'Sullivan, a supplementary question?

Can the minister explain how the Australian domestic gas security mechanism will operate?

From 1 July this year, once these regulations are in place, the Minister for Resources and Northern Australia will have the power to notify when a shortfall year should be considered to be called. Over a number of months, the minister for resources must take advice from the Australian Energy Market Operator and the ACCC and consult with the industry and other stakeholders to determine whether that shortfall should in fact be declared and to what extent it should be. If it is the case that a shortfall is declared, a licensing regime will be put in place for a full calendar year to align with the shipping profiles of the LNG industry. They can be reset on an annual basis or when any licence conditions are breached.

We are making sure this is a temporary measure. This is not something we see as a long-term solution to the issue. It is something we can significantly take action on now to relieve the pressure, but the regulation is due to sunset after five years and there will be a review after two years to provide certainty to the industry that we are focused on making sure we have long-term solutions to our gas supply problems.

Senator O'Sullivan, a final supplementary question?

This one is a doozy. What is standing in the way of more gas supply and lower prices?

We have to have a clear understanding of what is happening to gas markets in this country. We are faced with a situation where traditional supplies of gas, domestic sources of gas, are declining. Over the next year, the Australian Energy Market Operator projects that Bass Strait will lose a sixth of our domestic consumption of gas due to declining reserves. So 100 petajoules will be lost to our domestic supply situation because of a declining market in Bass Strait.

It is only because of the investments in Queensland that have massively expanded our industry that we have the flexibility to respond in this case through this licensing regime. But that is a more costly gas to extract and, over the long term, we need to find a new supply of gas that is hopefully as prosperous as Bass Strait has been for us for many decades. That is why the government is open to ensuring we consider the Great Australian Bight as an option for oil and gas. It is very prospective in terms of the world stage. That is why we are doing a use-it-or-lose-it review in Bass Strait—to see what other resources we have there. It is why state and territory governments need to develop their own resources— (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training. Does the minister expect to capture a greater number of students with a disability under the new system? If so, how many more? Can the minister also provide the number of students expected to be captured by the supplementary category, the number of students expected to be captured by the substantial category and the number of students expected to be captured by the extensive category?

I say to Senator Lambie—through you, Mr President—that I do not have all of those numbers with me in the chamber. I am happy to take that on notice and provide them to her at the earliest opportunity. I can say on the proposal to implement this use of the nationally consistent collection of data on students with a disability that it will capture more students across Australia and therefore provide more support for students with disability across Australia. We have growing funding that will be available to support those students with disability around Australia. It is designed to ensure that the support for students with disability actually targets and meets the needs identified by the classroom teachers and schools in terms of the level of adjustment assistance that an individual student requires. It has been long worked upon and long advocated for by those opposite and others that we should move to funding on the basis of NCCD data, and that indeed is what we seek to do in this model which will capture and support record numbers of students in the future by providing support based on identification by their schools and their classroom teachers.

Senator Lambie, a supplementary question.

Minister, under your proposal principals and teachers will determine which student with a disability fits into which category—supplementary, substantial or extensive—under the nationally consistent collection of data. Given that the NCCD is still new, and given that funding driven by what is primarily self-reporting can often lead to rorting, how does the minister propose to prevent questionable reporting?

Senator Lambie has raised a very important question. That is addressed through ensuring there is a consistent moderation approach applied across each of the states and territories and across each of the different schooling systems in Australia. That moderation approach has been developed by each of those states. It is overseen by a working group that comprises representatives of all states and territories and the Catholic and independent education systems. They will continue to work to refine that. I note that, in Tasmania, the moderation approach is regarded as reasonably well advanced in some of the independent auditing that has been undertaken of the NCCD process to date. All schools across Australia have participated in this data collection process for the last couple of years now, so they are well versed in what it means, how to apply it and the reporting arrangements for it. Of course, we will work very hard with the states and territories to continue to improve that, including the moderation around that data to ensure there is no rorting of it. (Time expired)

Senator Lambie, a final supplementary question.

Under the coalition's Australian Education Amendment Bill, Tasmanian students with a disability are reported to lose a total of $12 million across all sectors in 2018. When the education sector already considers students with a disability to be under-resourced, how can you justify making these cuts?

As I outlined in response to Senator Duniam earlier, the overall rate of increase for Tasmanian school students is in excess of four per cent per annum. That is net of all the different changes, including the impact of using the national existing collection of data on students with disability. As I said, that data does capture more students across the country; but it is correct that the reporting rates from schools in Tasmania have been lower than elsewhere around the country. In that sense, it is a demand driven loading; as long as schools are reporting according to the methodology, for students who genuinely need that support and assistance in the future, that support will flow into their schools, their systems—whichever they are—across all of the different sectors. That is reflective of the need identified by each of their schools and classroom teachers rather than a model which, at present, is one flat loading which does not adjust for the relative need of different students with disability. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Birmingham. The Department of Education and Training has revealed that funding for students with disability loading in Tasmania will fall from $36 million in 2017 to $24 million in 2018. When asked in question time yesterday why his government was cutting funding for students with disabilities in Tasmania by around one-third, or $12 million, in 2018, the Prime Minister said, 'I reject the assertion.' Who is correct, the Department of Education or the Prime Minister?

The government is providing almost $1.6 billion this year for students with disability support across Australia, which is around half a billion dollars more than was the case back in 2014—strong growth that has been there under the coalition government in terms of support for students with disability and strong growth that will continue into the future under our reforms that will see additional funding for students with disability across Australia and more students captured as a result of the use of the NCCD report. I have just answered a question from Senator Lambie in relation to data particular to Tasmania. I committed to the Senate to come back with that answer and, of course, that is what I will do.

Order! Pause the clock. Senator McCarthy, a point of order.

The question was: who is correct, the Department of Education and Training or the Prime Minister?

Minister, have you concluded your answer or do you have more to offer?

I can add—

In that case, I just will remind you of the question that was asked by Senator McCarthy.

I can add that estimated Commonwealth funding in Tasmania will continue to grow from $409 million to $427 million next year, to $594 million by 2027—

Order, Minister! Senator Wong, a point of order?

The point of order is direct relevance. The question did not relate to aggregate funding, which are the figures that the minister is giving us. It was a very specific question about the Prime Minister's answer in question time yesterday where he denied evidence which was given by the department. The minister is being asked a simple question: who is correct, the department or the Prime Minister?

I will remind the minister of the question.

I have not seen what the Prime Minister's question or answer was in question time yesterday. I am absolutely confident that the Prime Minister would absolutely have given accurate information reflective of the growing rate of funding that school students in Tasmania receive. As I indicated to Senator Lambie, I will, of course, happily provide specific information to her.

Senator McCarthy, a supplementary question.

Why is the Turnbull government cutting funding for students with a disability in the Northern Territory public schools by $10 million, or 40 per cent, in 2018 at the same time that it is giving millionaires a $16,400 tax cut?

The Turnbull government has committed very clearly that we will maintain and increase funding to public schools in the Northern Territory. Of course, there is an overall increase in funding support for schools in the Northern Territory that is quite substantial. We have recognised that there are unique circumstances in relation to the Northern Territory, and we will back the Territory government in terms of continued funding support for those schools. Often, though, we hear those opposite run ideas that contrast with the Turnbull government's policies in relation to tax reform as well and our Enterprise Tax Plan.

It is also very clear that we need to make sure that, as well as making sure that today's school students receive fair funding and an excellent education, there are jobs for them at the end. We absolutely will not apologise for driving policies that help create jobs and help create investment across the Australian economy to ensure that, as well as getting a great education, there are great opportunities for today's students when they are tomorrow's employees.

Senator McCarthy, a final supplementary question.

How is it fair that the Turnbull government is cutting funding for students with a disability in South Australia by $24 million, or 20 per cent, in 2018 at the same time as it is handing $65 billion in tax cuts to big business?

Under our reforms, we will provide around $21.2 billion over the next decade to support students with a disability to provide them with the assistance they need right across Australia. There is continued year-on-year growth in the support for students with disabilities. In fact, there is an average growth rate of support for students with disabilities across this package of 5.9 per cent each year across Australia. That is a demonstration of the additional funding that is there and the reality that it captures more students than has ever been the case before because of the utilisation of the NCCD data. This is about delivering a fair model of funding that is applied consistently and, in the case of South Australia, as indeed with the Northern Territory and as indeed with Tasmania, sees schools, including public school systems, receive more funding overall.

My question is to the Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Senator Fierravanti-Wells. Can the minister please advise the Senate of how the 2017 budget supports Australia's overseas development assistance program?

I thank Senator Reynolds for her question. We have not only stabilised our overseas development assistance in this 2017 budget but also, actually, increased it. We recognise that we have to live within our means, and that is, of course, in contrast with those opposite and their six years of fiscal vandalism. They cranked up their overseas development assistance with their spend first and then ask questions later approach. In this budget, our overseas development assistance will increase by $84 million to $3.9 billion. There will be a further increase in next year's budget to $4 billion, and then to deliver our budget surplus in 2020-21 overseas development assistance will stay at $4 billion for two years.

We deliver targeted and focused overseas development assistance. We focus on affordable incomes, with good international relations. For example, we will spend almost $400 million next year on protracted crises and emergencies—a $60 million increase. And we know that addressing protracted crises and emergencies is critical, because these are the fundamental causes of extremism, of insecurity and of economic instability. We are also focused on providing stability in the Middle East. There is our $100 million over three years for humanitarian support for stabilisation efforts in Iraq. This follows on from our commitment last year of $220 million to Syria and neighbouring countries for humanitarian needs, and that is in addition to contributions that we are making in Somalia, Sudan and Myanmar. Ninety per cent of our budget will continue to be spent in our region to add to regional stability, prosperity and security.

Senator Reynolds, a supplementary question.

Can the minister also explain the importance of Australia providing overseas development assistance to countries in our own region?

Our budget stands for fairness, opportunity and security, and it also responsibly supports a strong, prosperous and secure region, especially in our Indo-Pacific area. Our ODA is focused on quality outcomes, because we know that providing good aid, particularly in our region, is good for Australia's national security interests. ODA contributes to sustainable economic growth, poverty reduction and stability. Australia will benefit if citizens in our region are healthy, well educated and making an economic contribution in their own country. If our neighbouring countries are stable, well governed and open to trading opportunities, our overseas development assistance complements the other steps that the government is taking to ensure that we live in a safe and prosperous region.

Senator Reynolds, a final supplementary question.

Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches to overseas development assistance?

Of course, Labor has had so many different positions. In the 2016 election, you promised to increase the aid budget by $800 million over four years. Your Deputy Leader Plibersek has previously promised to increase foreign aid spending by almost $20 billion. Where were you going to get the money for that? You boasted of almost doubling the aid budget during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. That was at the time you were pursuing a seat on the UN Security Council. But, of course, your promises cannot be trusted. As soon as the UN Security Council vote was over, you cut your aid budget by $5.7 billion.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Order! A point of order, Senator Brandis.

Mr President, I am loath to take a point of order, but throughout this question time, as yesterday and as usual, Senator Wong has been yelling throughout every government answer. The chamber; you, Mr President; and those colleagues who are answering questions deserve common courtesy, which she has conspicuously failed to show.

I will remind all senators that it is disorderly to, certainly, shout, but even to interject. Senator Fierravanti-Wells, you have the call.

Under the Gillard government, $750 million was diverted from your overseas development assistance to pay for your border protection blowout. This made you the third-largest recipient of your own aid budget. (Time expired)

My question is to Minister Birmingham, as education minister. Earlier in question time, Minister, you informed the Senate that further discussions are to be held with the Catholic Education Commission. Minister, what changes are you considering as part of these discussions?

I did earlier in question time indicate that discussions with a range of stakeholders and parties continue, as is the case when ministers are bringing forward reform packages. Those discussions will continue, but I will treat them with the respect they deserve—I undertake those discussions in private with those different stakeholders and parties.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Gallagher, a supplementary question.

Minister, what will be the budget impact of any changes to the current package?

I refer the senator to my previous answer, but I would also refer the senator to the fact that the Turnbull government, as always, makes sure that its budgets stack up, unlike the types of funny-money promises those opposite make all of the time.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Gallagher, a final supplementary question.

Minister, as part of these further discussions, will there be any changes required for the independent school sector as a result of any special arrangements with other stakeholders, including the Catholic Education Commission?

I refer the senator to the answer to the primary question, as well as the answers to earlier questions in question time.

My question is to the Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Senator Sinodinos. Can the minister explain how the government's 10-year strategic partnership with the European Southern Observatory, announced in the budget, will benefit the Australian astronomy and industry sectors?

I thank Senator Fawcett for his interest in the topic not just of astronomy but also of space science. He is a former test pilot and does a great job for South Australia. The Turnbull government is providing Australia's astronomers with long-term access to the world's best optical and infra-red telescopes at what is known as the European Southern Observatory, in Chile. Apparently Chile is the best place in the world to do this sort of stuff. The skies there are really good. This global partnership will enable us to tackle big questions in fundamental science, to make groundbreaking and inspiring discoveries, and to lift international collaboration. As part of this measure we are providing $26.1 million of new funding for optical astronomy, research excellence, industry engagement and instrumentation, a commitment of $120 million over 10 years. It reflects this government's commitment to excellence in research and the benefits that it brings through stimulating innovation and opening doors to new types of industry engagement.

This has come after widespread consultation with our optical and radioastronomy organisations and provides a solution to the most pressing unmet need in Australian astronomy. We are particularly pleased to have the support of Australia's university and research sector, who will be co-investing in the project. Australian astronomers will have competitive, merit based access to all of the ESO telescopes at the La Silla and Paranal observatories. The benefits will spread across many industries, because Australian companies and institutions will have the right to tender competitively for valuable ESO work packages at the Chile sites. Australian astronomers and industry will develop their capabilities over the coming years to capture scientific and commercial opportunities in the next generation of extremely large telescopes. The detail of this significant, big-picture, big-future strategic partnership will be negotiated in the coming months. (Time expired)

Senator Fawcett, a supplementary question.

Can the minister outline how this new measure presents an opportunity to reshape Australia's domestic optical astronomy capabilities?

The ESO strategic partnership is an opportunity for the advanced instrumentation capability currently part of the Australian Astronomical Observatory to be positioned for the future. New university consortia and institutional arrangements will be put in place to continue the Anglo-Australian Telescope operations and to deliver Australia's national instrumentation capability. Being part of a university-led consortium rather than a government department will give rise to competitive grant opportunities that are not currently available. The Australian Astronomical Observatory will be better placed to cultivate new industry linkages and to commercialise and develop spin-offs from technological innovations. Our domestic optical and radio telescopes, like the Anglo-Australian Telescope, will be important test beds for key technologies and new optical instrumentation, which can then be designed and built for the world-class ESO under competitive tender.

Senator Fawcett, a final supplementary question

Can the minister explain how the ESO strategic partnership demonstrates the Turnbull government's long-term commitment to supporting Australia's science and research capability?

The ESO strategic partnership is vital for advancing our scientific and industry capabilities. These capabilities take time and dedicated work to develop. This is a long-term measure. The initial phase will happen over 10 years, and we expect that Australia will then transition to full membership of the ESO. Support for astronomy and the development of innovative astronomical instrumentation is entirely in line with the Turnbull government's National Science Statement, which I released at the Press Club earlier this year. It outlines our broad agenda of investing in science and research, enabling ideas, innovation and commercialisation to flourish, growing businesses and jobs, improving productivity and, importantly, building globally competitive industries. It also complements the work that we have already completed with the National Innovation and Science Agenda. It will increase the capacity for research and industry to collaborate and foster new Australian skills and capabilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

On that celestial note, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.

by leave—I move:

That—

(a) immediately after valedictory statements, government business be called on and the following bills be considered till 7.10 pm:

Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017

Social Services Legislation Amendment (Queensland Commission Income Management Regime) Bill 2017

Fair Work Amendment (Repeal of 4 Yearly Reviews and Other Measures) Bill 2017; and

(b) at 7.10 pm the Senate shall return to its routine of business.

Question agreed to.

I have some further information from the Minister for Social Services for an answer that I provided to Senator Siewert yesterday. In question time yesterday Senator Siewert asked about the potential sites for the drug testing trial, referring to speculation in a story aired on A Current Affair on 15 June. I can inform the Senate that I am advised the government has not yet announced the locations of the trial sites. The selection of the sites will be carefully considered to ensure the trial is targeted at supporting regions with a high incidence of drug use and will be based on the best available evidence and data, including the AIHW's 2013 National Drug Strategy Household Survey, treatment availability, state and territory government crime statistics in relation to drug use and possession, administrative data from the Department of Human Services on jobseekers that identify drug dependency issues, and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission's 2017 National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Programreport. Wastewater analysis is widely applied internationally as a tool to measure and interpret drug use within national populations. The government recognises the benefits of wastewater analysis and has partnered with established scientific expertise within academic institutions through this program to build the evidence base on illicit drug use across Australia.

Pursuant to standing order 74(5), I ask the Minister for Defence for an explanation as to why an answer has not been provided to question on notice No. 407, which is overdue, having been lodged on 17 March this year. Some notice was provided to the minister, so I am hoping that she has something to tell us.

Thank you, Senator Ludlam. I have been advised that the answer is overdue. I was unaware of that previously. I will ensure that the answer is tabled this week.

I appreciate that, Senator Payne, and I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

Colleagues, the question that I put to Senator Payne and the department is one of fundamental importance. I am not surprised that the Minister for Defence and her advisers have been so slow to respond, because the answer would have required facing up to some important truths: 72 years after more than 200,000 people were killed in the twin attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki it is still Australian government policy to endorse the threat and the use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations.

My question to the minister went to precisely that matter—whether the Department of Defence was part of the reason why Australia is boycotting the most hopeful moves to a nuclear weapons ban that the world has seen in decades. I must admit that they have been slow to come up with an answer. It is in the Defence White Paper, and it has been there for years. It goes by the bloodless term 'extended nuclear deterrence'. That means, in practice, that if you commit indiscriminate mass murder on our population, collapse our economy, irradiate our food and fresh water and unleash a cancer epidemic that will overwhelm your health system—if you do that to us, we will do it to you. And we will do it with weapons a hundred or a thousand times the destructive yield of the ones that turned those wartime Japanese cities to ash.

All of us here have lived under this obscene global suicide pact for our entire lives—so long that it has come to be seen as normal. It was a visceral truth in the global mass consciousness during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Everyone knew that in a very real sense a miscalculation or aggression by one side or both could kill tens of millions of people over the course of a few hours and leave the survivors to try and make it through the nuclear winter. The nuclear-armed states want us all to believe that this agreement will hold forever, until some imaginary future time when the weapons will be stood down. In the meantime we are meant to believe that the command and control structures will never fail; that these weapons will remain in the hands of rational state actors forever; that the leaders with executive control over this global suicide pact will be sensible, caring people; and that on no single day will a false alarm, slip-up, breakdown or act of malice loose one of these weapons and provoke an escalation.

This is the definition of insanity. These weapons must be banned before they are used. Nobody is pretending that this will be easy, but nobody should imagine that it is impossible. The alternative, that one of these weapons is actually used, has been treated as unthinkable. Right now I invite the Senate to consider, to think, as our parents and grandparents used to think, about what happens if one of these weapons is used. What happens on the day that a 100-kilotonne bomb, roughly eight times the explosive yield of the bomb that flattened Hiroshima, is detonated over central Sydney? Everything and everyone between Balmain and Double Bay disappears under a radioactive fireball hotter than the sun. Out to a radius of five kilometres—say between Petersham and Mosman—the blast wave kills nearly everyone, most structures are torn apart, and anything flammable ignites. Out to 10 kilometres—say between Rockdale and Manly Beach, half the population dies of blast trauma or burns, and the remainder will be at the highest risk of radiation sickness from the neutron flash or the fission products that will soon begin to fall out. Out to at least 80 kilometres—the distance to Wollongong—depending on wind direction and the height of the blast, people begin to fall sick from acute radiation sickness. Children and the elderly, as always, are the hardest hit. Law enforcement, the health system and emergency services cease to exist.

I have described one detonation over one familiar city. Hydrogen bombs a hundred times more powerful are deployed right now, at this moment, in the arsenals of the nine nuclear weapons states who hold this threat over everybody else. Colleagues, it may not be Sydney: it may be Karachi, St Petersburg, Seoul or New York. In a full-scale nuclear exchange, in which the hideous agreement of mutually assured destruction is realised, 100 million people die in first half-hour of our species' final war. This is how the World Health Organization describes the aftermath:

It is obvious that no health service in any area of the world would be capable of dealing adequately with the hundreds of thousands of people seriously injured by blast, heat or radiation from even a single one-megaton bomb. Whatever remained of the medical services in the world could not alleviate the disaster in any significant way. To the immediate catastrophe must be added the long-term effects on the environment. Famine and diseases would be widespread, and social and economic systems would be totally disrupted. Therefore the only approach to the treatment of the health effects of nuclear explosions is primary prevention of such explosions.

With this horror front of mind the global disarmament community has spent decades organising mass mobilisations and building the political will to support diplomatic efforts around test bans, the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty and demobilising and disarming certain categories of weapons. I want to use this opportunity to acknowledge three generations of those organisers from all over the world—leaders and mentors like former senator Jo Valentine and also countless others who played their part in organising a global disarmament movement that reached from street demonstrations all the way to negotiating tables in Geneva and New York.

Most recently, at the urging of organisations like the International Red Cross, fed up with 40 years of sandbagging and delay, the international community began the process of negotiating a formal ban on nuclear weapons. Australian diplomats, firstly under Prime Minister Abbott and then Prime Minister Turnbull, have spent three years trying to sabotage this process—or, as the DFAT spokesperson put to me in estimates, 'bringing balance to the agreement'. Having pulled a disastrous and counterproductive vote in the UN open-ended working group late last year that simply polarised international opinion against Australia, 130 governments resolved to draft such a treaty—and it shames me as an Australian to know that, with those talks underway right now, having failed to disrupt the process Australia is boycotting those talks.

These negotiations are underway now, and this is happening at long last. In a few days, in the absence of an Australian delegation, I intend to join them in New York to see firsthand what the global community can do when we join together in a common cause. Australians have played a major part in this process, even if not at a formal level. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN, was conceived in suburban Melbourne and is now a global network that has breathed new life into this movement, now in its third the generation, to stand down these genocidal weapons and to redeploy hundreds of billions of dollars into human security, health care, education and economic development. Think about a familiar place—think about your home town. Think about how you will feel on the day that one of these weapons is used before this ban is sealed and think about what you can do to make that ban happen with foresight and with wisdom rather than with regret.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Education and Training (Senator Birmingham) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to schools funding.

I have to declare a bit of an interest in the questions that were asked. I did start at a Catholic school, Saint Therese's at Colonel Light Gardens in South Australia, where I was taught by the very dedicated Dominican sisters. I then went on to be educated at Blackfriars college in Prospect, where I was taught by the Dominican fathers. I had three daughters who all went to Catholic schools—the older two went to Saint Raphael's School, an excellent school, in Parkside and then all three of them went on to study at Loreto College in Marryatville. As a parent, I was asked to join the board of Saint Raphael's School, so I believe I do have some firsthand knowledge of how the education system works in South Australia but more particularly how the Catholic education system works. I have a pretty good understanding of the dedication of the teachers in that system.

I do not say that this is limited to Catholic schools, but I have seen it firsthand in my own experience the hard work, sacrifice and dedication of parents who choose to send their children to Catholic schools, because of course there is a cost associated with that decision. We are lucky in Australia that we can get a choice of education through a variety of systems, and those parents who make that decision to send their children to the Catholic schools make a contribution to the cost. And I have seen, particularly for my own children, mostly the pretty hard work the students themselves make a commitment to.

But in particular I have seen just how the small Catholic schools work. Most of them run on the smell of an oily rag. These are not wealthy schools by any means. The teachers, the parents and the students are committed to the system. So I do find it rather dumbfounding that an education minister in this government, from my home state of South Australia, should choose to take the action he has taken in respect of the Catholic school system. Over the last few days in particular, but more broadly, I have had an opportunity to talk to some of the people from the Catholic education system in South Australia. And let me tell you what they are saying about what this minister intends to do to Catholic schools in his own state. They tell me that the cuts mean that in South Australia Catholic schools will get $9 million less in 2018 and $25 million less in 2019 than they would have done under the original Gonski model. In South Australia, Catholic Education says that affordability is already cited as the reason the majority of parents take their children out of the Catholic school system. They also say that any further reduction in revenue will place enormous pressure on the viability of small schools in low-SES areas.

What does that mean? Well, already in the Catholic school system in South Australia they offer fee reductions to up to 40 per cent of parents where those parents cannot afford to pay the full fees. So, what Minister Birmingham is doing is simply making that situation more difficult for all of those parents who make a commitment to their children's education. I have to say, I do not think this minister could go two rounds with a revolving door. He has let the people of South Australia— (Time expired)

What a fine testament to the Catholic education system we see here in this chamber now: Senator Collins; Senator Farrell; our leader, Senator Brandis; my good self; and I do not know whether Senator Watt or Senator McAllister or Senator Smith—in that true spirit of openness I too have to declare that I started my schooling in 1955 with the Presentation nuns in Goomalling. I then went to the Mercy nuns in Bunbury. Deputy President, you will be interested to know that the very first school in Western Australia, in 1846, was run by a group of Mercy sisters who arrived in the heat of a January summer from Ireland. And do you know, within 20 days, using as desks the very packing cases in which they had brought their belongs from Ireland to Perth, they had started the first school for girls in Perth, including Aboriginal girls—the first Aboriginal girls educated in the then colonies. I then went on to the Marist Brothers in Bunbury and Aquinas College in Perth—for the Christian Brothers—and then, Senator Brandis would be interested to know, I spent a couple of years at Saint Leo's College, run by the Jesuits. In the room next to me was Mr Bob Katter, from the other place. That is not something that I normally publicise, but indeed he was.

I make those points too because I have observed in recent times in the interactions I have had with Minister Birmingham that he is a person who is well and truly across the issues associated with the education sector—higher education and indeed primary and secondary education, including in South Australia, which Senator Farrell has just commented upon.

One of the concerns expressed to me by the group in South Australia is the issue associated with disability funding. I can pick that one up right now, because in response to questions asked of Senator Birmingham he was able to say that over 10 years there will be $21.2 billion spent by this government—promised and actually able to be spent and not the Monopoly money that we know our political opponents throw around—which is an increase of 5.9 per cent. That is something that was of concern to them in South Australia.

Like Senator Farrell, I was on the school board of the Catholic school in Northam, when my children went to school. I went on to the Catholic Education Commission for a nine-year period only because the concept of co-responsibility came in. As a board member from a Catholic school in the bush I thought, 'How lovely. This will be the city schools trying to take money off the country schools,' and I jumped up and down so much that Dr Peter Tannock, than running Catholic Education in WA, and Mr Mike Beech, both said to me that the only way they could convince me as to what they were trying to do with co-responsibility was for me to come onto the commission. Indeed, as Senator Collins has just said, Dr Tannock himself was a co-colleague with Mr David Gonski in the original Gonski report. Where was the importance and where is the importance of the co-responsibility funding? Incidentally, it is a funding process—we call it the systemic process—that will be continued by the government, simply because it enables the system to be able to use funding from schools that are better off, either permanently or in any one year, to assist lower socioeconomic schools that may not be. The way the funding is organised in Western Australia at the moment every child in the system is a notional 103 points. I think more than 50 per cent of the children in schools above that 103 are supporting those in lower socioeconomic city, rural and regional schools. That is the absolute strength of our system. That is something—and this was stated in my discussions with Catholic Education officials and indeed in discussions I have had with Minister Birmingham—that has to be preserved, because it is the strength of the system.

I make the point that the cost of educating all children in Catholic schools in Australia is only 90 per cent of that of state schools. The capital cost of building the schools in Catholic circumstances is about 95 per cent. When a child goes into a state school, taxpayers have paid for that school. When a child goes into a Catholic school you can rest assured that the vast majority has been paid. In response to Senator Hinch, who, unfortunately, I think quite disparagingly said it was time for me to go, I can say to him that the best thing for the taxpayer is for more children to be in Catholic and independent schools. (Time expired)

On the same matter, I would like to thank Senator Back for raising the unique characteristics of the Australian education system and the special role that Catholic and other systemic schools have played for hundreds of years in Australian education—unique and needing to be preserved, unlike the changes that would occur under Gonski 2.0, which challenge their very capacity to continue to operate and produce the excellent outcomes that they have.

You saw today the revival of the school funding wars and the unfortunate sectarianism that has evolved—not only jokes about ghosts of the DLP but, equally, during the legislation inquiry on this bill we had Crikey describing me as defending Catholic schools from Gonski 2.0—a Greens and coalition tag team. In fact, I wonder whether Senator Bridget McKenzie is going to join the Greens with the way that she has been conducting herself during this debate.

I too should declare that my children and I have been across all school sectors. Probably most Australian families have experience with government and non-government schools in our unique Australian education system. There is a role for all of them and they should be able to continue to operate without the attacks that we have seen in Gonski 2.0.

I hope that Senator Back is right, but we did not hear much from the minister today giving any assurance as to what changes might be being contemplated. Indeed, all we have seen so far is probably best described by an article online in the Australian Financial Review by Phillip Coorey. It says:

Senator Birmingham left the door open for the compromise earlier on Tuesday morning when he said the government was working through 'technical issues'.

He just describes them as minor technical issues. Those of us who understand these matters know that they are far more significant. That is why Senator Back has been prepared to take the risks that he has. Senator Birmingham remains upset at the Catholic sector, which faces a funding cut only because it was overfunded by Labor's Gonski model in order to reach a political deal. This is simply untrue. This is the misinformation that Senator Birmingham goes on to decry when he says:

There's a lot of misinformation that has been spread by vested interests—

No, by him—

who are keen to get better deals, extract extra dollars during this process. What we want to see though is a final model that puts in place the type of principles that the Gonski report advocated for.

Again, this is simply untrue. The Gonski report advocated exactly the arrangements that were put in place for Catholic systemic schools. They advocated that, until the SES model had been reviewed, they continue to operate with a system-weighted average. It advocated that we be very careful with the shape of the measure on capacity to contribute. But no, this minister, to make cuts, has unilaterally changed all of that without consultation, modelling and proper policy work.

Even worse than that, I mentioned the correction that the associate secretary needed to make to the evidence provided to the Senate committee looking into this bill yesterday. Today, I look forward to seeing the minister's correction to the comments that he made today in answer to Senator Farrell, because he is simply wrong. Let me quote to you from an early Hansard what the minister said in question time today. He described the fine work the Catholic systemic schools do and purported that they should be able to continue to do so. What he went on to say is that they can keep doing more with an increased share of funding. Catholic systemic schools do not get an increased share of funding. Under the proposals in this bill, they get a cut in their share of funding. What everybody knows when they understand the figures here is that that is why their growth is so much less than the growth for private schools and less than the growth for government schools. That is why there is this cut in the share of funding for Catholic schools. The minister will need to come into this place and correct what he said on the record today because it is wrong. There is no increasing share of funding for Catholic schools. (Time expired)

But they get more money—

But they grow—

Order on my right!

Mr President, I did not appreciate that you were going to come back into the chair. I thought that the Deputy President was going to be in the chair. I know, being a Lionel Richie fan, she would want to share with me in wishing a Lionel Richie a very happy 68th birthday.

Hello—

Hello—I am more of an easy man, Senator Watt. I am more of a Commodores man.

In all seriousness, it has been quite revealing to hear the contributions from Senator Collins and Senator Farrell this afternoon. That is because Senator Collins has admitted that there is in fact growth happening in the Catholic education system, but, if you listened to Senator Farrell's contribution, you would have thought that there was no growth in the Catholic education system. It has been quite revealing.

As a boy who went to a state school in a pretty tough part of Perth's northern suburbs it has been interesting for me to listen to people in this place sing the praises of Catholic education—interesting for two reasons. The first is that the Catholic education system in this country does deserve to be praised. The second is: but does it deserve to funded at the expense of other education systems in this country? Absolutely not.

If Senator Farrell and Senator Collins want to take forward their arguments about the funding of education in this country, particularly the funding of the Catholic education system, then do you know where they should take them? It is not in here to the Senate, not to Senator Birmingham, but to the Catholic education system itself, because the Catholic education system retains the authority to fund Catholic schools. It is interesting that, in Senator Farrell's and Senator Collins's contributions, they did not talk about the $1.2 billion growth in the Catholic education system that will happen as a consequence of this government's education reforms. That is $1.2 billion over the next four years, and $3.4 billion over the next 10 years. There is growth in the Catholic education system, and Labor should at least be honest in admitting that.

This is an important point. It has been lovely to hear people's lovely stories about their experiences with the Catholic education system. But many children in this country are educated in other systems, and the families of those children deserve to be supported and the school councils for those children deserve to be supported, and that is what this government is doing. What is needed now, and what we are providing, is a dispassionate view of the best way to fund education in our country—dispassionate because we are putting needs first and dispassionate because we are putting a focus on those values that are important.

We have heard everyone come in here and talk about their love for the Catholic education system because that is where they were raised and that is where their children were raised. Big deal. Many other children in this country deserve to have their schools funded properly as well. If someone wants to come into this place and argue that the Catholic education system is being defunded, then I want to hear about it, because in fact—and Senator Collins admitted this; you can see it in the Hansardthere is growth in the Catholic education system. If people are concerned about sectarianism and those sorts of things, I have a very, very simple answer: step back and approach this issue more dispassionately, because we do not want to get into a debate in this country about Catholic versus non-Catholic, or government versus non-government education. What we are interested in is how we best fund each student in each school.

Let me share this with you. I think a great virtue—and, Senator Watt, I hope you agree with me, putting the politics aside for a second—of education in this country over the last 10 or 20 years perhaps has been the growth in low-fee schools to give parents options about sending their children to government schools or non-government schools. Now, my parents would have loved the option of sending me to a low-fee school, but they did not exist when I was going to high school. I went to a state school, and Mr Stitt, Mr Ragan, Ms Kellow and Mr Stone were great teachers. It was an ordinary school in a tough part of Perth, but it was blessed with great teachers.

I was blessed with parents that put value on education. I could go on and on about this, but—

Thank you, Senator Smith. You cannot, because your time has expired.

I would have very happily listened to you go on and on, Senator Smith, for some time! But there will be other times for that. I also rise to take note of answers by Minister Birmingham to questions asked by a number of opposition senators today concerning the government's proposed arrangements for the funding of schools in Australia.

Last night, I gave a short speech in the debate on the Medicare Guarantee Bill, and one of the points that I wished I had made—had I thought of it—was that, as well as being a great national institution, Medicare is a great symbol of what governments can do to bring us together as a community. By properly funding public health care that all Australians can receive no matter what their background, we are actually making sure that our community stays together. Similarly, the theme of my contribution today is that the proper and fair funding of all schools in our society is a very important way of making sure all people in our society get an opportunity and, therefore, we help to bring our community together.

Unfortunately, what we are seeing from the Turnbull government right now is not taking us in that direction. We know that their forebears, particularly in the Howard government, rejigged school funding arrangements to advantage wealthy private schools at the expense of public schools and poorer Catholic schools. That is to their eternal shame and it is one of the great contributors to rising inequality within our society today. It is a fact that children from wealthier backgrounds going to more privileged schools have had all sorts of opportunities arising from previous funding arrangements put in place by the then Howard government that in many respects continue to this day.

Of course, the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments attempted to correct this by changing our funding arrangements for schools again to ensure that some of the most disadvantage schools in our community actually got the proper support they needed and, more importantly, that the kids who attended those schools got the support they needed. We are actually seeing the benefits of that come through right now. One of the duty electorates that I represent is the electorate of Forde, which is on the southern outskirts of Brisbane in the Brisbane-Gold Coast corridor. There are many quite disadvantaged areas in the community. I know from personal experience that some of the schools have been using that funding to employ speech therapists and teacher aides to provide much more individualised education and support for children who really need that support in order to reach their own potential. These are the kinds of things that kids from wealthier backgrounds do not necessarily need, and that is what the purpose of this funding was.

Minister Birmingham and the Prime Minister want us to believe that their new funding arrangement is going to continue this sort of support; but, of course, they do not want to acknowledge that their very own policy documents state very clearly that they are going to be taking $22 billion out of the education funding system compare to what Labor in government had proposed to spend. We know that public schools will be worst affected by this; but also there has been significant debate in recent times about the impact on Catholic schools, which also disproportionately service poorer communities, disabled children and children in Indigenous communities, the very kids who most need federal government support and stand to lose most if this funding package get through.

I mentioned that our approach to schools and school funding should be something that binds our community together. But not only is the minister, with his stubborn approach on this funding arrangement, driving individual schools further apart; he is also driving school sectors apart. We have seen the Catholic Education Commission publicly criticise this minister in a way we have not seen for a very long time. In fact, they were reported today as saying that this minister's consultation is the worst they have seen in 50 years. So I guess that makes him an even worse education minister than Christopher Pyne, which is really saying something. The independent schools sector, having supported the government's arrangements up until this point, can see the writing on the wall, can see this minister backing away from his previous statements that he will not be cutting special deals.; and they have warned that they are going to walk away from this funding arrangement if the Catholic schools sector gets some sort of special arrangement from the minister.

So every single school sector is now expressing deep concern about this package. In addition to that, we all know that the minister is driving his own government apart with an increasing number of backbenchers coming out publicly expressing serious concerns and flagging the possibility that they will cross the floor and vote against this legislation. This is no surprise when the minister has been revealed to be providing to the crossbenchers, in order to gain their support, departmental modelling data that he will not even share with his own side of politics. This minister needs to come up with a fair funding arrangement rather than the unfair one he is proposing. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to a question without notice asked by Senator Whish-Wilson today relating to Japan and whaling in the Southern Ocean.

I might start with the response by Senator Brandis to my third question. Just as a little bit of background, last week on Friday the Japanese parliament unanimously passed a new bill essentially authorising what they call 'scientific whaling' to facilitate commercial whaling. We all know that this guise of scientific whaling has been found to be illegal by the International Court of Justice. This issue has been dealt with by the International Whaling Commission, but it seems as though the Japanese government and the Japanese parliament are flexing their muscles.

My question to Senator Brandis was about Senator Payne's comments in the chamber just yesterday that were assuring us that countries like Japan and the US, who we have what is called a trilateral defence relationship with, are countries that are committed to the rules based order and to strengthening regional security architecture that underpins our region's stability and prosperity. So it seems to me that we have a very clear and very concerning contradiction here where one of our regional allies is happy to be a defence partner and part of the architecture of defence in the South China Sea and in our region but, in the same breath, is now passing a bill unanimously through parliament not only authorising and legitimising commercial whaling in the Southern Ocean but also enabling them to send security vessels with their whaling fleet—with their harpoon boats—which means patrol boats and, potentially, naval vessels.

I do not know how that is a commitment to a rules based order by our partner Japan. It does not make sense to me. No doubt, if Japan is getting on their high horse and talking about issues in the South China Sea, people might want to be aware of what they are doing in the Southern Ocean in our own whale sanctuary. I have been very vocal about this, as have the Greens for many years—in fact, as have both parties of government. The Liberal-National Party went into the election in 2013 with a policy that they would send a customs vessel to the Southern Ocean every year to monitor the Japanese whaling fleet. What are we going to do this summer if the Japanese government send an armed naval or customs vessel with their whaling fleet? This is a significant point of concern.

Sea Shepherd go down there, and have been going down there for many years now, to do the government's job for us and for the Australian people—that is, monitoring the activities of the Japanese whaling fleet and going even further to do whatever they can to prevent the slaughter of whales, many of them pregnant whales with calves, by grenade-tipped harpoons. We know this has been a very controversial issue for Australians, but, nevertheless, we are united in our opposition to illegal Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean. In fact, many of us oppose whaling anywhere in this day and age, as does most of the world. So this is concerning.

I am thankful for Senator Brandis's answer. I am glad the government is concerned and they acknowledge this new legislation. No doubt I will be following this up with them as to what issues they have raised diplomatically at the highest levels. This is something that the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, should be directly raising with Shinzo Abe in Japan. I actually met Shinzo Abe at an official function a few years ago here in Parliament House and gave him a letter from Paul Watson asking him to cease and desist with his government's illegal whaling in the Southern Ocean. Luckily for me, it did not set off any diplomatic incidents. But, nevertheless, I do believe the message was clear, not only on behalf of Sea Shepherd but also all Australians, that, in this day and age, we do not have to kill whales to conduct scientific research.

During our estimates, it was made very clear, from our Antarctic division and from our science and research institutions, that we can actually do research on whales using non-lethal methods. It is absolute rubbish that they need to kill whales for research. Nevertheless, this bill that passed through the Japanese parliament last week is clearly saying they want to continue commercial whaling. So what does that mean now that humpback whale numbers have recovered? Does that mean humpback whales are now going to be commercially harvested by the Japanese government for food? This is totally unacceptable, and I would expect Senator Brandis's strong words to be backed up with action by this government to send the strongest possible signal to Shinzo Abe but this is not acceptable for the Australian people. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Pursuant to notice, I withdraw business of the Senate notice of motion No. 2 standing in my name for today, relating to the disallowance of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (Specialist Disability Accommodation) Rules 2016 made under the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013. I thank the government for engaging in discussion over the special disability accommodation rules, for a satisfactory response which I am given to understand the sector and all stakeholders are very happy with, and for resolving that matter.

Does any senator wish to put the question on any of those proposals? There being none, I shall now proceed.

by leave—I move:

That leave of absence be granted to Senator Gallacher for 19 June 2017 and today, on account of personal reasons.

Question agreed to.

On behalf of Senator Sinodinos, I move:

That the following bill be introduced: A Bill for an Act to amend the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Act 1987, and for related purposes.

Question agreed to.

I present the bill and move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

I table the explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2017 will provide Australia' s national nuclear science and research agency, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, or ANSTO, the flexibility required to successfully establish an Innovation Precinct adjacent to its Lucas Heights campus in southern Sydney, and to potentially establish additional precincts in association with its other campuses. More broadly, the bill will facilitate enhanced collaboration between industry, universities, researchers and ANSTO across all its sites.

Driving Australian innovation, and the Australian economy, through greater synergies between science and business is a key Government priority. As such, we want to give Australian industries every opportunity to collaborate, partner and engage with our world-leading research agencies and our universities, and remove any impediments that may limit the flexibility of organisations such as ANSTO in doing so. This is at the heart of the Government' s National Innovation and Science Agenda and the National Science Statement.

Nationally and globally, nuclear science and technology is a major basis for innovation across a range of industries. ANSTO operates much of Australia' s landmark research infrastructure, including the OPAL multipurpose research reactor, the Australian Synchrotron, the Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering and the Centre for Accelerator Science. This infrastructure places Australia at the forefront of innovation for the benefit of public health, the environment and industry, and is used by researchers and industry from around Australia and the world.

The proposed ANSTO Innovation Precinct will co-locate and crowd-in scientific partners, knowledge-intensive businesses, high-tech industry and science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine graduates, or STEMM graduates, around Australia' s centre of nuclear capabilities and expertise. The proposed ANSTO Innovation Precinct will have three major components – a Graduate Institute, an Innovation Incubator and a Technology Park. These three core components will enable ANSTO to act as a conduit between research, industry and universities. It will support the achievement of science, innovation and technology excellence, and foster research and industry linkages, technology development, commercialisation, entrepreneurship and STEMM education. These changes to ANSTO' s governing legislation support the vision of the ANSTO Innovation Precinct and enhanced collaboration.

This bill makes minor amendments to the ANSTO Act to provide flexibility around ANSTO' s ability to use its property or facilities for the purposes of an Innovation Precinct or for collaboration. This includes the use of ANSTO' s property to bring together start-ups, high-tech industry and university graduates to create synergies and cross-fertilisation of ideas and knowledge; and the flexibility to use its property to support a graduate institute, for example.

The proposed Technology Park will crowd-in SMEs, high-tech industry and knowledge-intensive business, which will have the benefit of close access to ANSTO' s unique capabilities, nuclear applications and research infrastructure. Businesses that have already approached ANSTO regarding possible co-location include those in high-end medical manufacturing, next generation food production and 3D data capture. The bill also supports the establishment of an Innovation Incubator, which will be the first nuclear science and technology incubator in the world, and will become the home of knowledge exchange, commercialisation, innovation and entrepreneurship at ANSTO.

The Graduate Institute will establish a more formal program of postgraduate training and development in partnership with universities. Through co-location with ANSTO and industry, the Graduate Institute will focus on deepening skills in translational research and the application of nuclear techniques for real-world problem solving. It will also foster cross-disciplinary work amongst the STEMM disciplines. The bill supports ANSTO using its knowledge, resources, property and expertise, for example, for the development of a Graduate Institute as part of an Innovation Precinct; and provides greater flexibility to allow for the potential construction of post-graduate accommodation and facilities, for example, which may not necessarily be undertaken on a commercial basis.

The introduction of the bill also provides an opportunity to update and expand the constitutional limits provision in the ANSTO Act, to support ANSTO' s expanded functions.

Industry groups, universities, state and local government have all been actively engaged in the planning process for the ANSTO Innovation Precinct and are excited about the opportunities it will bring. This includes smart jobs, a boost to the local economy, industry experienced graduates and a drive in Australian innovation. On 14 June, I, like many of my parliamentary colleagues, attended the ANSTO-hosted breakfast event, which showcased the vision for the ANSTO Innovation Precinct and the vital role ANSTO plays in driving innovation and contributing to Australia' s economy.

This bill will enhance ANSTO' s capacity to contribute to the creation of smart jobs and economic growth in Australia. It provides greater flexibility for ANSTO to fulfil its mandate to support and instigate innovation and research that will benefit the Australian community, industry and broader national objectives. As a Parliament, in passing this bill, we are providing ANSTO with every opportunity for the successful establishment of its proposed Innovation Precinct, and for others that may follow.

I commend this bill to the Chamber.

Ordered that further consideration of the second reading of this bill be adjourned to the first sitting day of the next period of sittings, in accordance with standing order 111.

I move:

That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the following bills, allowing them to be considered during this period of sittings:

Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Broadcasting Reform) Bill 2017

Commercial Broadcasting (Tax) Bill 2017

Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017

Social Services Legislation Amendment (Queensland Commission Income Management Regime) Bill 2017

Treasury Laws Amendment (2017 Measures No. 3) Bill 2017.

Question agreed to.

At the request of Senator Singh, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) that 20 June 2017 is World Refugee Day,

(ii) the theme for 2017 is #withrefugees,

(iii) that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that there are 65.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, and 21.3 million refugees,

(iv) that Australia has an obligation under international law to support refugees and to make a fair contribution to the international efforts to aid refugees, and

(v) the extremely significant social and economic contribution refugees have made and continue to make to all aspects of Australian life; and

(b) calls for:

(i) a reasoned, principled and facts-based approach to the issue of asylum seekers and refugees,

(ii) Australia to continue to work with other nations and the United Nations (UN) to address the complex global and regional challenges associated with displaced people worldwide that cannot be addressed by countries acting on their own,

(iii) the Turnbull Government to match Labor's policy of increasing Australia's refugee intake to 27 000 by 2025, and

(iv) Australia to actively participate in the UN High Level Meeting on Refugees and Migrants, scheduled for 19 September in New York.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The coalition government fully supports World Refugee Day but cannot support this motion in its current form. It is disappointing that Labor would seek to politicise World Refugee Day in this way. It was this government that successfully delivered an additional intake of 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees and the largest offshore humanitarian program in more than 30 years in 2015-16. The coalition government is increasing Australia's refugee intake in a compassionate and responsible way. The number of places available under the humanitarian program will rise to 18,750 in 2018-19.

I seek leave to make a one-minute statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The Greens will be supporting this motion; however, we note that Australia's humanitarian intake should be raised to 50,000 annually, not 19,000 or 27,000. But as it is World Refugee Day I would be remiss if I did not point out that Labor, along with the Liberal and Nationals parties, continues to support the indefinite detention of refugees and people seeking asylum on Manus Island and Nauru. So, to the reasonable senators of the Labor Party: no, you might not be verbally defending these policies, but you keep voting for them, and every time you vote for them you endorse them. So, stop voting to endorse torture, stop voting to endorse offshore detention, stop voting for misery, look at what is happening around the world and start voting for the values you were elected on.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) the statement by Buckingham Palace on 4 May 2017 that His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh will no longer carry out public engagements from August 2017,

(ii) that, since 1956, the Duke of Edinburgh has been the Patron and Chairman of Trustees of the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award, which encourages the personal development of young people,

(iii) that, over the years, more than four million people in over 60 countries have been involved in the program, including over 250 000 young Australians who have completed their Award since it began,

(iv) that, in 2015 and 2016, approximately 23 000 young Australians commenced either a Bronze, Silver or Gold Award – there are currently over 37 000 active Award participants in Australia,

(v) the 2016 Western Sydney University research report, Research into Outdoor Education Learner Attribution Theory: The Effects of the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award on Learning, which found that participation in the Duke of Edinburgh's International Award led to improvements to participants' self­-confidence, ability to cope with change and leadership skills, and

(vi) that, since 1954, the Duke of Edinburgh has been a regular visitor to Australia having visited 26 times, criss-crossing the nation and meeting people from all walks of life, with his last visit being in 2011 at the age of 90; and

(b) expresses Australia's sincerest gratitude for the long and dedicated service His Royal Highness has provided to his many roles over his many years of service, and for the tremendous service and public dedication His Royal Highness has shown Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I amend general business notice of motion 361 in the terms circulated in the chamber and move the motion as amended:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) the High Court in McCloy vs New South Wales (2015) upheld a ban on political donations from property developers in New South Wales,

(ii) the High Court stated that the particular concern was that reliance by political candidates on private patronage may, over time, become so necessary as to sap the vitality, as well as the integrity, of the political branches of government, and

(iii) large political donations from both foreign and domestic donors threaten the integrity of Australia's democratic institutions; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) ban foreign donations and place caps on domestic donations to protect the integrity of Australia's democratic institutions,

(ii) cap election expenditure per seat, and

(iii) mitigate any caps with increased public funding.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The coalition government believes that it is important that only Australians and Australian entities can participate in our elections. Following the 2016 election the Special Minister of State referred a range of issues to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters for inquiry. The committee, in an interim report tabled in March, recommended banning foreign donations. The government welcomed this interim report and has committed to ban foreign donations. It will introduce legislation later this year. With regard to the wider donation restrictions proposed in this motion, this is, as previously outlined, a subject for wider reference to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for Education and Training (Senator Birmingham), by no later than 7.20 pm on 20 June 2017, the following documents provided by him to any senator or their staff:

(a) all documents, including correspondence and any other communication, relating to the cost of implementing the amendments provided for in the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 produced by or for, or provided to, the Minister for Education and Training;

(b) all documents, including correspondence and any other communication, relating to the cost of implementing the amendments provided for in the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 produced by or for, or provided to, the office of the Minister for Education and Training; or

(c) all documents, including correspondence and any other communication, relating to the cost of implementing the amendments provided for in the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 produced by or for, or provided to, the Department of Education and Training.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) recognises that sexual and family violence cause terrible trauma to women, men and children throughout Australia, destroying the lives of individuals, their families and communities;

(b) acknowledges the tragedy that, despite national campaigns, the rate of violence against women and children in particular continues to increase throughout Australia;

(c) recognises the extraordinary work of specialist trauma counsellors and other workers who provide crisis intervention and other vital support to those who live with and survive violence;

(d) notes that Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia provides a unique service, including specialist trauma counselling services, to 1800RESPECT and to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and is recognised internationally as providing the benchmark in provision of specialist sexual assault and family violence trauma counselling;

(e) notes that serious concerns have been raised about the new 'triage' model implemented by Medibank Health Solutions (MHS) which is a private, for-profit company delivering 1800RESPECT on behalf of the Federal Government; and

(f) calls on the Federal Government to directly fund Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia to deliver 1800RESPECT with sufficient and sustainable funding so that it can employ sufficient specialist sexual assault and family violence trauma counsellors, and procure sufficient and appropriate accommodation and infrastructure to continue to provide this essential, lifesaving service.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The government has made significant improvements to the 1800RESPECT service to ensure that those calling the service receive appropriate support. We have introduced a triage service which has seen the number of calls answered grow from 33 per cent prior to the service being reformed to currently over 90 per cent of calls being answered. This change has also seen the average call wait time reduced from 10.3 minutes to the current average of 51 seconds. Importantly, these changes have allowed Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia to focus on what they do best: provide specialist trauma counselling to those people who need it while other calls, including calls for general information, are responded to by trained counsellors who have a minimum three-year degree in a related field and two years of counselling experience.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) 20 June 2017 is World Refugee Day,

(ii) currently there are men, women and children on Nauru and Manus Island who sought Australia's protection,

(iii) Department of Immigration and Border Protection statistics of 30 April 2017 show that:

(A) of the 1 015 Refugee Status Determinations on Manus Island, 711 were positive and 224 negative, and

(B) of the 1 209 Refugee Status Determinations on Nauru, 1 034 were positive and 175 negative, and

(iv) the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants stated that: 'considering the incredible hardship that most of these asylum seekers and refugees have already endured in their countries of origin and in transit countries on their way to Australia, and considering that Australian authorities have been alerted to such serious issues by numerous reports from international organizations such as the United Nations and civil society organizations, Australia's responsibility for the physical and psychological damage suffered by these asylum seekers and refugees is clear and undeniable'; and

(b) calls on the Australian Government to close the camps on Manus Island and Nauru and bring every man, woman and child to Australia.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The coalition government will not weaken our strong border protection measures. The Greens forget that it was our measures that made Australia's generous response to the global humanitarian crisis possible. Our strong border policies enabled an additional intake of 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees in the largest offshore humanitarian program in more than 30 years in 2015-16. Under Labor and the Greens 50,000 people risked their lives at sea on more than 800 boats. At least 1,200 people drowned and 8,000 children entered detention. It was a catastrophic moral failure. We cannot return to those disastrous days. The coalition government's strong and consistent border protection policies will not change.

The question is that the motion moved by Senator McKim be agreed to.

I, and also on behalf of Senator Hanson, move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) 20 June 2017 is World Refugee Day,

(ii) the United Nations 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees is irretrievably broken,

(iii) people smuggling is a crime and nations must secure their borders, and

(iv) national security must always come before accepting refugees; and

(b) calls upon the Government to:

(i) withdraw from the Refugee Convention immediately; and

(ii) reflect upon incidents of domestic terror and foreign fighters, and the refugee history of those persons, and strengthen national security and immigration policies accordingly.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The safety and security of the Australian community is the first priority of the coalition government. The coalition government has secured Australia's borders and returned integrity to our migration programs. We have taken back control from the people smugglers. Our offshore humanitarian programs are some of the most generous in the world, but they are also some of the most stringent. Applicants are subject to rigorous security screening processes carried out with security agencies in conjunction with our international partners. The coalition government is committed to honouring Australia's responsibilities under the refugee convention in a way that is both compassionate and secure.

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Bernardi be agreed to.

I ask that general business notice of motion No. 363, relating to Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen, be taken as a formal motion.

Is there any objection to this motion being taken as formal? Formality has been denied.

I seek leave to make a brief statement in lieu of moving to suspend standing orders.

Is leave granted? Leave is granted for one minute.

I hope Senator McGrath will stand and give us one of his insulting little contributions, and I am assuming that it would involve the fact that this is a complex foreign policy matter—and I understand that it is. Australia is complicit in the horrific war that has been engaged in by Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen at the moment, in which more than 10,000 civilians have already been killed. The motion references the fact that in January of this year an expert panel reported to the UN Security Council that it was almost certain that the Saudi-led coalition had violated international humanitarian law and that some airstrikes may amount to war crimes. I would like to know why Minister Christopher Pyne is conducting arms deals with this regime on behalf of the Australian people. We can establish no information at all about why he is doing that, or what kind of material is being transferred to Saudi Arabia. The motion calls on the government to immediately suspend military exports to Saudi Arabia, and I will have more to say about this later tonight.

I seek leave to make a short statement for 90 seconds.

Is leave granted? Leave is granted for one minute.

I table my statement.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Is leave granted? Leave is granted for one minute.

Labor denied formality to this motion as it is a foreign policy motion that deals with matters that are complex and contested. We believe it is not suitable for determination by the Senate without the opportunity for proper debate. Labor is deeply concerned by the Saudi Arabian-Yemeni conflict, including reports of attacks on civilian schools and hospitals. Labor condemns all violence and urges both parties to de-escalate the conflict and resume negotiations consistent with UN Security Council resolution 2216.

In addition to the conflict situation, Labor is also deeply concerned by both the famine and the recent cholera outbreak in Yemen. The World Food Program reports that 17 million Yemenis, or 60 per cent of the population, are food insecure and that the level of hunger and hardship faced by the current population is unprecedented in Yemen. The cholera epidemic is also of unprecedented proportions and is rapidly spreading, with the UN estimating that 130,000 people have been infected and almost 1,000 people have died since April.

That concludes the discovery of formal business.

I inform the Senate that, at 8.30 am today, 14 proposals were received in accordance with standing order 75. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Dastyari:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I propose that the following matter of public importance be submitted to the Senate for discussion:

"The Turnbull Government's unfair Budget that delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires while hurting every Australian family."

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today’s debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

The Turnbull government's unfair budget that delivers tax handouts to multinationals and multimillionaires will hurt everyday Australian families. You do not need to have a poll to know that Malcolm Turnbull and his government are so out of touch with the Australian people—they are the most out of touch government we have seen in recent history. The Turnbull government's budget offers nothing positive to everyday Australian families. It puts big business and the big end of town before the Australian community. We all know that Mr Turnbull likes rich people, and this budget proves just how out of touch he is with everyday Australians' ambitions and the difficulties they have in balancing their weekly budgets. You have to ask yourself what sort of Prime Minister rips money out of our kids' schools and out of our health budget just to give the big end of town and millionaires their tax cuts.

At what cost is that? That leads me into the disaster that we have before us. We have seen evidence of that again today in this place, where the minister, Minister Birmingham, has a civil war going on in his own caucus, because he has been caught out not giving all the relevant information to his own caucus. Then he expects them to come into this place and support him and his proposition in the other place. We have seen numerous House of Reps members saying that they are not happy with this. We have had senators in this place coming out and saying that they may cross the floor. In the last week in this place Senator Back is threatening to cross the floor because this is flawed policy. It is unfair policy—that is what it is. We have also had Senator Eric Abetz, from my home state of Tasmania. Once again, he understands and values the education system, particularly what the Catholic education system does for our home state. It is very disappointing that Senator Bushby and Senator Duniam have chosen to be quiet on this and not speak up for Australian kids, and in particular for Tasmanian schools. It is just extraordinary that this minister has been referred to—I would like to quote—this is what the Australian Catholic education sector is saying about Senator Birmingham as a minister: 'He has been told that in the last 50 years we have been dealing with governments, we have never had a government not engaged with us on major changes to policy.' They actually referred to Minister Birmingham as the worst education minister.

What is even more alarming is that it demonstrates how out of touch the Turnbull government is with what is happening in the Australian community and in our schools. Can I just remind people that under Mr Turnbull's policy 85 per cent of public schools will not reach their fair level of funding, even in 10 years. I have already spoken about it in this place, yesterday and last week, that unfortunately the Turnbull government does not even understand what the word 'fairness' means, because they have done nothing to demonstrate it in any of their budgets, going back to the Abbott government and through the Turnbull government—and who knows whether Abbott is going to come back or not—but they certainly have not delivered anything in the way of fairness to the Australian community.

The Catholic education sector has officially declared a loss of confidence in this government. They have already put on the public record and told the minister that they will campaign every day until the next election, because they will not forget the betrayal that this government has committed. It demonstrates again that this government takes different sectors of our community for granted.

Let's turn to another issue that has come out of this budget. That is the government's failure to stand up for some of the most vulnerable, lowest-paid workers in this country. It is now is some 10 days until 1 July, when Tasmanian and Australian workers will lose their penalty rates. We are talking about people working in the hospitality industry, some retail sectors, hairdressers—the list goes on. We know that under the criteria of this government there is no sector, including the aged care sector, that is off limits for taking away penalty rates for carers and nurses working in that sector, because aged care workers and nurses are not considered to be essential services.

This is very serious. We know that in Tasmania alone, from 1 July, there are going to be some 40,000 Tasmanians who will lose up to $77 a week from their take-home pay. I have attended committee hearings and heard firsthand, because I talked to people in the community. They are devastated that this government has allowed this to happen. This government has ample opportunity. In the House of Representatives they could have voted for the legislation that the opposition, with Mr Shorten, introduced to protect Australian workers from these cuts to penalty rates. But they have failed to do that.

We will see the impact from this roll out into the community and to small businesses. Those on the other side always speak up to say they are the only ones in this place who understand what small business is about, but small businesses are the ones who are going to lose out, because people on very low wages—the people who rely on penalty rates to pay their mortgage, to put food on the table and to support their children through school excursions et cetera—are the ones who spend all their money every single pay. It is not the millionaires. They are not the ones who keep the local economy and small businesses on the move—not at all.

Yesterday, this government, when moving their legislation to make changes to Medicare, had the opportunity, through the amendments I moved, to withdraw it, come back to the drawing board and then come back and give real guarantees for the funding of Medicare and to give real funding to our hospitals. What did they do? They voted against it.

We know, as the Australian people know, that this crowd sitting on the government benches promised so much before the last election. They promised things they could never deliver and they have broken that promise to the Australian people, because they have made cuts to schools.

This minister has bungled any reforms. If he had just stuck with Gonski. The sector and the government and opposition in the past all had an agreement that we would roll out Gonski. But what did these people do? They turned their back on it. Now they have not only the Catholic education sector but also the private schools—the sandstone buildings of Melbourne and Sydney and the prestigious school Friends' in Tasmania, which I am sure Senator Bushby will understand—not getting an increase in their funding. They take away from the state schools in Tasmania and give more funding to Friends'. That is what these people are supporting. So you can never use 'Turnbull government' and 'fairness' in the one sentence.

Not only has the minister been misleading this chamber but he has also been misleading the Australian community. The minister cannot even come to the table with accurate data and give his own caucus a full briefing. That is why you have the situation with Senator Abetz and Senator Back. And I know that Senator Seselja will not be feeling too comfortable, either, because he will have to go out and face the Catholic schools in his community here in the ACT. From the contact I have had with the Catholic Education Commission in my state of Tasmania, I know that they will not rest until they get their funding. After all, the Catholic education system in this country educates one in five Australian children, and most of the time in rural and regional areas, the most disadvantaged areas. In some remote areas it is the only school available to Australian kids.

Our kids come first for us on this side of the chamber. We will fight this every day until the next election. We will fight with the sector to get fair funding for the education sector in this country. (Time expired)

We have done more than any other government to ensure that multinationals pay their fair share of tax. I want to go back to basics. I think low tax is good and lower taxes are even better. I think small government is good and smaller government is even better. I think freedom is good and more freedom is even better. When it comes to the history of the world and of Australia, when the four horsemen of the apocalypse come, which they surely will, we are going to be divided into two camps: those who believe in freedom and those who do not; those who believe in giving people the liberty to look after themselves and those who want to chain them up through the regulations of government.

It is disappointing that we have this modern Labor Party who like spending—throwing away—other people's money like drunken, horny sailors on shore leave, compared with the pious, sensible Liberal-Nationals government, who believe in spending people's money sensibly, in ensuring that taxes are as low as possible and that services are delivered properly. We believe that lower taxes are good, because that gives the man, the woman or the kids earning money the right to decide how they spend their money. But we do believe that multinationals, corporations, should pay their fair share of tax. We believe that society operates better when people pay their fair share of tax. But we also believe that government should manage that money well, because it is not government's money; it is the money of the people who worked for it. It is not the money of Canberra, not the money of this Dubai-esque four-star Hilton that masquerades as our national parliament sometimes; it is the money of the taxpayers of Australia. It is the money of those who are on their tractor at the moment, listening—poor souls!—in Queensland, to this. It is the money of those who are in their trucks driving around Queensland. It is the money of people at home who are trying to have a nap in the winter sun but have been interrupted by this puerile debate that has been brought on by a puerile Labor Party.

Here we have a Labor Party who look at themselves in the mirror and get a bit of a fright and then move on, because they refuse to look at history. They refuse to look at how they have run this country when they have accidentally won an election, when they have got into power. What they do is they destroy the economy. And I will give you a lesson in history, although I am sure you already know this. Let's talk about the Scullin government of 1929 to 1931. They got into power and then drove Australia into not just a recession but a depression. So, we had to get the Tories—my side—the United Australia Party, along with the Country Party, to get into office and clean up Labor's mess. The same thing happened in 1949, when Labor, under the soft velvet hand of the communists, wanted to nationalise Australia's banking industry. It took a reformed Liberal Party of Australia and a Country Party to win the 1949 election and stay in power for a record 23 years and provide this country with record economic growth.

And then we had the Whitlam experiment. Gough Whitlam danced into office like a fairy on steroids and spent money—wanted to borrow money from the Ba'athist party in Iraq because they had run out of money to steal from Australia or borrow from Australia. So they went to Iraq, of all places, and knocked on someone's door and said: 'How about it? Give us the money.' That sums up the Labor Party: let's go to Iraq and borrow money. It took Mr Fraser, in the 1975 election, to get the Liberal Party—and I think by then the National Country Party—to win that election and clean up Australia again.

Then there was Mr Hawke and Mr Keating, who won in 1983. It took them 13 years, because they were slow learners, to drive the Australian economy into dust. We had the recession that we had to have. We had interest rates that went through the roof. And we had Paul Keating, who racked up $96 billion of taxpayers' money as federal government debt. Mr Howard came in with the right attitude, and Mr Fisher and the Liberal-National government, and they cleaned up Labor's mess once again. They made sure they dealt with taxes. They made sure companies paid their fair share. They looked after the families of Australia.

And when Mr Howard was asked by the people of Australia to choose a nice font for his CV, in 2007, and Labor came in under that paradigm of economic responsibility—Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and the other members of that circus—what did they do? They were like drunken kids on a tractor, just having so much fun, hooning around the paddock, spending all these people's money, having a ball of a time. These people had never had a real job. They had gone to university, been a student union activist, got a job in a union office, got a job in a lawyer's office. And we do not talk about what happened to former Prime Minister Gillard and that lawyers' office, do we? The lawyers get involved, because of the lawyers' fight in the lawyers' office.

And they have racked up hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. They once again have taken the Australian economy to the brink. So it is up to the Liberal-National Party—because history repeats itself—to come in and clean up Labor's mess. We have said: 'Righto, we're going to clean up the mess again. Off you go, Labor people. You have trashed the Australian economy. We'll come in here and clean it up.' We're the ones who will make sure we look after the money that comes in from the taxpayer. We on this side of the chamber are the sensible party. We understand that, while there should be taxes, they should be low. Those taxes are there to pay for public services. But we will not spend money that we do not have. We will get this debt down, we will get this deficit down, because we are cleaning up Labor's mess. (Time expired)

If it were Friday afternoon, you could be forgiven for thinking we had had a claret run in this place. Then again, I suppose it is good to let off some steam. While we are having some fun, perhaps we can play our own version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? My first question is: which big parties in this 45th Parliament voted for a tax cut for millionaires? I will give everybody five seconds to think about it. Which two big parties in this parliament voted for a tax cut for millionaires?

Senator Polley interjecting—

You are right, Senator Polley; it was the Labor Party and the Liberal Party. Not long ago we had the Treasury Laws Amendment (Income Tax Relief) Bill, one of the first bills that passed through this Senate, which gave a tax cut to everyone in this country on an income above $87,000. So it is fascinating that we have this debating topic today, put up by the Labor Party—

Senator Polley interjecting—

I will call out hypocrisy when I see it, Senator Polley; no doubt you are working very hard to cover up for that. But let us not forget. Let's go to question 2 of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?Which party fought really hard and publicly opposed the most significant legislation we have seen tackling multinational tax avoidance, 'the Marles laws'? That was in the 44th Parliament, to add a degree of difficulty to the question. Which big party opposed the most significant legislation this parliament has seen on multinational tax avoidance?

Senator Dastyari interjecting—

Yes, you are correct, Senator Dastyari; it was the Labor Party. In fact, not only did they oppose the laws which increased tax transparency in this country; Senator Dastyari put up billboards in Sydney saying that the Greens voted down tax transparency in the Australian parliament. Every chance we get we ask the ATO at estimates—

Senator Dastyari interjecting—

Are you doing a war dance, Senator Dastyari? I cannot hear exactly what you are saying.

Order! To the chair, please.

Senator Dastyari interjecting—

Senator Dastyari!

I have obviously hit a raw nerve. Senator Dastyari seems very agitated. The Greens took carriage of that bill, as we did for the tax transparency bills, and we opposed the tax cuts for millionaires in this parliament for the simple reason that we know we have rising inequality in this country. We as a parliament owe it to the Australian people, to those who are less well-off in this country, to at every chance call out inequality, and legislation that adds to inequality, and do everything we possibly can to combat that. That is why my party, the Greens, has taken a consistent stance to always oppose tax cuts for millionaires, as we will for any future legislation.

We have also put up some very positive policy solutions to raise revenue—none less so than this week in which this parliament, which I never would have thought possible even six months ago, passed legislation taxing the big banks. That is right. We have gone to the big end of town, some of the most profitable banks in the world, to raise billions of dollars to pay for schools and hospitals. We know the track record of this Liberal government in the last four years has been zombie cuts targeted at the most vulnerable in this country—pensioners, students, the unemployed, the sick and the elderly. Well, we managed to get money off the big banks.

But guess who are throwing mud every chance they get at taking money off the big banks? It is the last question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Yes, it is the Labor Party again. They are throwing mud at the first opportunity that I have seen in my time in parliament to get legislation up and put in place to take money off big, powerful corporations—$5 billion to $6 billion to help pay for schools and hospitals. So if we are going to be consistent today let's not forget that the Greens are in this parliament and in the Senate to hold big politics to account when they get in bed with big business.

You have to hand it to Senator Whish-Wilson. He is perhaps the only Green I have ever seen who could take a motion with the terms 'the Turnbull government's unfair budget that delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires while hurting every Australian family' and turn it into a soliloquy—

You wrote it—

I am sorry that English is my second language, Senator Whish-Wilson! You keep going on about this! That was in jest. I withdraw any inference there. I think Senator Whish-Wilson understands that that was in jest.

But to turn a topic like that into a love letter to this government is just disappointing. I get what is going on here. It is obvious. It is the mating dance. It is the mating ritual that is going on at the moment between the government and the Greens. This happens every time we get to the end of a session. All of a sudden Senator Whish-Wilson starts attacking the Labor Party. That is what he does. Then he starts laying the groundwork. Now we know that Senator Hanson-Young and others are in negotiations at the moment about doing an education deal with the government. They have done it before. It happens at the end of every session. There is nothing that the Greens seem to like more than a dirty deal done dirt cheap late with the government. It happens all the time. That is fine. We see this happen at the end of every session.

Let's be clear: the Labor Party voted for the MAAL. But before that we did everything we could to make sure it was going to be a stronger piece of legislation. What we said at the time—and I stand by this—was that it was a bad deal. We had all the cards for those who wanted very strong action taken on international and multinational tax minimisation and tax avoidance. There had been a crossbench coalition of many parties working together, and the Greens had been part of that. All of it came through inquiries, one of which the Greens had a huge role in. I have consistently acknowledged the previous Greens leader, Senator Milne, who was very, very strong on this and actually brought the issue to my attention and to the attention of many other senators over a number of years. At the end of it, there is nothing better for the Greens political party than to snap defeat from the jaws of victory. They did it once again, and they will perhaps do it again on the issue of education. That is really a matter for them. I understand that they are in a position now where they are holding more meetings than the Liberal Party are these days, and the best of luck to them.

The issue at hand is that there is at the moment a fiscal issue when it comes to where we are going to raise revenue and what we are going to spend it on. We had Senator McGrath before using motherhood statements like, 'We believe that people should be paying their fair share of tax.' Everybody agrees with that principle. The debate in this chamber is: what is fair? Through you, Mr Acting Deputy President, Senator Leyonhjelm and the libertarians have consistently said that people should be paying their fair share of tax. Now, I believe that the libertarian perspective and perhaps my perspective on what is fair for different people to pay is wholly different, though I note that Senator Leyonhjelm's position is increasingly becoming more and more like mine as time goes by.

It's the ageing process!

I note that as Acting Deputy President, Senator Leyonhjelm, you cannot comment in a debate or interject! When you reach a debt of half a trillion dollars but are still too weak on taxing multinationals, saying, 'We are going to have $65 billion'—$65 billion!—'in tax cuts for big business', while, at the same time not funding education to the extent it needs to be funded, then you have a government that is lost, a government that has its priorities mixed up and a government that has lost touch in governing for all Australians. It should not come as a surprise. Here we are on the Tuesday of the last week of sitting for this session. We are about to go off for a seven-week break, and those of us sitting here on this side of the chamber are not even clear what the government's position on school funding is going to be 24 hours from now. Why? Because the government itself has no idea.

Let's be clear: in politics, within parties and in the Senate there is always negotiation, and nothing is settled until it is settled. What the government is facing at the moment is not a question of what they have to negotiate with other parties on for the passage of legislation; it is what they have to negotiate with themselves on to actually have a position that is going to be passable. At 5 o'clock today we will be saying goodbye to Senator Back. Formal speeches will be made about his contribution, which I think has been a considerable one in his time in the Australian Senate. I understand that there will be an opportunity to say a few words about him then. But Senator Back came out this week and made it very clear that he has issues with the education policy as it has been structured. Senator Abetz, and Mr Andrews and Mr Abbott in the other place, and others have raised their concerns repeatedly. Why? Because they are highlighting what is their fundamental problem when it comes to priorities.

There are principles that we all agree on, and the facts are these: budgets are about priorities, and governments have to make decisions with limited finite resources. What this motion is saying is that if you accept that as the basic principle then why is it that the actions that are being taken on multinational tax minimisation are still so weak? I have said before that I believe the government has done some good things in this area. I think we are in a better position now because of some of those measures than had we not done them. I believe a lot of that happened because the government was dragged kicking and screaming to that position, but there has been some good legislation. Do I believe it goes far enough? No. Do I believe there is a lot more that can be done? Yes. There is a lot more that can be done. But to turn around and look at giving tax cuts to big business at the same time as having a debate about how you are going to fund schools and not put on the table the resources that are needed to properly fund our schools shows a complete lack of direction and judgement. When it is the government's own members—the government's own backbench—who are raising and highlighting these concerns, it shows how lost and out of touch the government is.

Tax office data from 2014-15 shows that one in three large firms in Australia pay no tax—one in three. That includes 109 companies that pay no tax despite reporting more than $1 billion in total income. Let's be clear: you only pay tax on profit. Those companies have claimed that they have not made a profit. There are companies, including big companies, that have good years and bad years. There are big companies that occasionally do not make a profit and legitimately have a reason to pay no tax. When you see numbers as large as this, the concern is that there are companies—and we know this happens; we have seen evidence of this happening—who are gaming the system and creating a pretence in their books through accounting tricks and strategies. Many of these practices are legal, but some are dubious and some are—I think the term used in the industry is—'sharp practices', where companies give the pretence of not being profitable or where they appear on paper as not being profitable for the sole purpose of minimising their tax obligations. Many companies have done this. We have had Senate report after Senate report and inquiry after inquiry, including one large inquiry with many, many hearings, that has exposed this. Frankly, all the measures that have been taken have not been enough. The government's priorities are wrong, and the government has lost direction.

I commiserate with you, Mr Acting Deputy President Leyonhjelm, having to sit there silently in the chair while Senator Dastyari verbals you in a most egregious and defamatory way for having moved positions on issues of economic freedom towards Senator Dastyari. I am pleased to be able to exonerate you of such crimes, Chair. As far as I am aware, you have not done so, and I would certainly be alarmed to learn if it were the case. I hope it is never the case.

No issue better highlights the economic illiteracy of the Australian Labor Party than the issue of taxation, and this motion before us today moved by Senator Dastyari is yet more evidence of it. On what economic planet does a tax cut which returns money earned by people back to those same people constitute a handout? On what planet is it a handout to allow people to keep their own money? There are two initiatives of the Turnbull government that have returned money earned by individuals and companies back to them. I want to talk about why those are important and positive initiatives and why they do not constitute in any way or in any form a handout.

A handout is a gift by government of someone's money to someone else in society. For example, if the government were to provide a bailout or assistance to industry in the form of a subsidy that would be a fair description of a handout. What is not a handout is the taking of a little bit less tax than you used to take from someone the previous financial year, and the Turnbull government has done this in two ways. The Turnbull government has ensured that the temporary budget deficit levy enacted in the 2014 budget has come to an end, as it was scheduled to come to an end after two financial years, having collected extra revenue for the government. It means that an income earner earning more than $180,000 a year will go from a tax rate, including the Medicare levy, of 49½ per cent to 47½ per cent. On what planet is allowing people to keep only 47½ per cent of their income over $180,000 a handout? On what planet is confiscating nearly half of someone's income a handout? It is a strange place, indeed, if you seriously think that is a handout. My view is that it is a very good thing that that levy has come to an end, and I hope it is the first of many more reductions in personal income tax rates for all income tax earners at all levels, because the truth is that Australian individuals are relatively highly taxed by world standards. We are relatively highly taxed in our region. We are relatively highly taxed among our competitors. When looking at our top income rate, we are, believe it or not, even relatively highly taxed compared to the OECD, which has been described not by me but by others as a club of high taxing countries. So that is indeed quite an achievement.

The other way in which the Turnbull government is returning to taxpayers money that they have earned is through the enterprise tax plan, which reduces the tax rate to 27½ per cent for small- and medium-sized businesses with revenues of up to $50 million. It means that, instead of the government taking 30 per cent of the profit that companies make and spending it, the government will now take only 27½ per cent. That, in any plain language understanding of English, does not constitute a handout in any way, shape or form. It is a very important initiative because, as we know, there will be significant economic benefits that will flow from that. Companies, knowing that they will receive a lower rate of tax on their profits in the future, can have confidence today that the investments they make will earn them better returns than they would have earned otherwise. They can have confidence today that they will have the capacity to invest in their businesses by employing more people today, and we know the economic benefits that will flow from that.

But you do not have to take my word for it, as I have said in these sorts of debates before, because, happily and helpfully, we have extensive comments on the public record from the Labor Party themselves. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, and the shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, have been extensive in their praise of the idea of tax cuts, including for companies. I will cite just two examples, although there are dozens and I have cited them before in these sorts of debates. It was in the House of Representatives on 23 August 2011 that Bill Shorten said:

Cutting the company income tax rate increases domestic productivity and domestic investment. More capital means higher productivity and economic growth and leads to more jobs and higher wages.

Amen, Mr Shorten. You were absolutely spot-on, then, and you would be spot-on today if you had upheld that position. His colleague the shadow Treasurer, Chris Bowen, said:

… it's a Labor thing to have the ambition of reducing company tax, because it promotes investments, creates jobs and drives growth.

I could not have put it better myself. I could not have put it more eloquently myself. Chris Bowen is absolutely right to say that all those benefits will flow from reducing the company tax rate. Unfortunately, it seems that the Australian Labor Party have been caught by the siren's song of Corbynism, the economics of Bernie Sanders and perhaps the Australian Greens, and have gone to the populist far Left on these issues and are now railing against the things they once believed in and advocated in this very place.

Most important, though—and I think it goes to the heart of Senator Dastyari's motion today—is the suggestion that, in some way, tax cuts for businesses and individuals do not benefit families. Nothing could be further from the truth. Families benefit more than anyone else from a competitive company tax rate that ensures that companies have the incentive and the certainty to invest and to employ more people. No-one benefits more than families from a reduced income tax burden that will make it easier for them to balance the household budget. If we are really concerned about the cost-of-living pressures facing Australian families, if we are really concerned about their ability to make ends meet, then the best thing we can do is give them back their money which they earned through their own hard work. That is the best thing we could do to help them afford all the many pressures they have in their family household budgets.

Finally, I want to turn to the issue of so-called multinational tax avoidance that Senator Dastyari and others have talked about this debate. Firstly, let us start with some economic theory and talk about why it would be that a company would choose, if it were able to, to try and avoid paying tax in Australia. Of course, the government has a number of tough measures to ensure that there are no legal means of doing so. But what are the economic reasons why a company would seek to place its profits elsewhere in the world?

They would do so if they were able to get a better return on their investment elsewhere in the world. In a modern, capitalist economy, where so much of the benefit derived from a company's innovation is in the form of intellectual property, and that intellectual property can be based anywhere in the world, it makes sense that companies will choose to base their intellectual property in countries which have lower rates of company income tax because that ensures that they get a better return on the investment for that intellectual property. They are acting in the interests of their shareholders when they do so because it is their obligation to return the best investment to their shareholders.

So, if we really want to ensure that companies are booking more of their profits within Australia, that their taxes are being paid in Australia, the best thing we can do is ensure that our company tax rate is internationally competitive. While ever it is the case that there are like jurisdictions that offer secure property rights and competitive tax rates—Ireland is one such example—that are far lower than Australia's, then there will be an economic incentive for companies to try and move their profits elsewhere. We could ensure that that was not the case by further lowering our own company tax rates here in Australia.

One person who is not an economic illiterate is my great colleague and friend from Western Australia Senator Back. I will not be contributing to the valedictory debate later on, so I take the opportunity now to say what a pleasure it has been and what an honour it has been to serve with him for just a little bit over a year, and how sorry I am to see that he is retiring. We would have loved to continue having his company and his service here in the Senate. He has been a distinguished servant of the people of Western Australia. He has been a dedicated member of this Senate, he has upheld its traditions in the proudest way and he is a great Liberal, and I have been very proud to serve with him.

This matter of public importance is blaming the Turnbull government for the unfair budget that delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires while hurting everyday Australian families. They do not need a budget for this to hurt everyday Australian families. I find it very hypocritical that Labor are actually blaming the government for this because I remember that, when I spoke in the other chamber in 1996 about multinationals not paying their fair share of tax, I was basically looked down upon, laughed at and ridiculed. If I recall correctly, it had been years under Labor—the Hawke government and the Keating government—and 1996 was the year when the Howard government took over.

I do not believe it just comes down to what is in the budget and looking after the multinationals. I think it goes further than that, right across the board in government legislation. I actually had a meeting today with a gentleman from Queensland. His name is Kane Booth. He is a farmer, he has a wife and he has two children. Actually, Mr Booth is in the chamber. Welcome. Mr Booth has an issue with government which is all about the fact he has a property at Chinchilla—he has 1,100 acres—that has been taken over by coal seam gas mining.

We actually have to look at this. This gentleman, for seven years, has been fighting this. It is about the multinationals. Labor talks about multinationals, and here you have APA Group, who own the gas piping on Mr Booth's property. APA Group have most of the gas pipes and are the most profitable gas company. But APA group have donated $10,492 to the Labor Party. It is the Labor Party in Queensland—the state government—who are not doing anything about Mr Booth's problem, which is an environmental problem. Mr Booth has gone to the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection to put in a complaint. They have investigated, but they have not brought down their report after 10 months. It has been 10 months, and they are still waiting. It should have been brought down, under legislation, within 40 days. Why are they shutting it down? So we do not need to really look at the budget here.

There is another thing I must tell this chamber and the people of Australia. They know what I am talking about, because the people of Australia have been very angry about the multinationals and what is happening in our country: the sale of our land, foreign ownership and the question of the gas off the North West Shelf. We are getting nothing from it, and we are paying dearly for it because of the multinationals and what is happening in Australia. Also, a small number of petroleum companies in Australia donated $300,000 to the Labor Party. Should I also mention Sam Dastyari and his $5,000 for legal expenses or his $1,600 for travel expenses?

Both sides of politics need to clean up their act to what the public expects. There is a pub test here. To Mr Booth and his family, I will continue to fight for your right to have justice and for those many other Australians, especially around Chinchilla. Because of the coal seam gas and the state government allowing for these wells to be put in, I have seen children with their noses running with blood and black under their eyes. They are sick, and no-one is taking responsibility for this. We cannot allow multinationals to take over our country and have control of it and have their tax benefits and cuts and not be paying taxes in this country. I would like to finish by saying that this is not just the Turnbull government's problem. It is the problem of both sides of this parliament. It is the Liberals', the Labor Party's and the Nationals' problem, for consecutive years, for not reining in and making the multinationals pay their fair share of tax.

I rise to speak in this matter of public importance debate to wholeheartedly condemn the Turnbull government's unfair budget, which delivers tax handouts for multinationals and millionaires while hurting every Australian family. The facts do not lie. In this budget, every worker who earns more than $21,000 a year will pay more tax, and at the same time millionaires will receive a tax cut of over $16,000 a year. Multinational businesses have been let off the hook. In this budget, workers in receipt of the minimum wage face a tax increase of at least $170 a year. Teachers, nurses and many small-business people face a tax increase of over $300 a year. The premise of the budget is quite simple: reduce taxes on the rich and increase taxes on the lower and middle-income earners—at the same time as wages are now falling in real terms.

What is truly remarkable with this budget is that it actually goes one step further. The budget locks in a wage cut for 700,000 of Australia's lowest-paid workers—workers who give up valuable time on the weekends, late at night, early in the morning and on public holidays. These workers face losing hundreds of dollars a year in wage cuts, and in some cases thousands, and they are facing a tax increase to boot. And the Prime Minister and those opposite have the gall to talk about cost of living pressures as an excuse for their inaction on Australia's energy crisis. What is clear is that the Australian people are watching, and for the 14th poll in a row the Turnbull government trails the Labor opposition on a two-party preferred basis. This budget is completely out of step with Australian values and completely out of step with what Australians want.

Turning to some specifics about my home state of Tasmania now, we have the Mercy hospital deal, which hands back the hospital to the Tasmanian government and locks in a reduced rate of Commonwealth funding over the coming years. It sets the Tasmanian government up to rely on the stock market to meet the funding gap over the coming years. The funding package that the Tasmanian Liberal senators are so confident about is supposed to last for 10 years, when in fact this money will last that long only under a high-return and low-inflation scenario. So, if the Tasmanian government is unable to achieve a high return, or if the cost to the hospital services continues to rise at a rate above the budget inflation rate, then the Turnbull government appears to be expecting the Tasmanian government to just foot the bill. Who knows what the Turnbull government's plans are if the Tasmanian government's investors lose money on their investments. It might have been a nice announcement for the Prime Minister to make, but we are watching the progress of this deal with detail. Relying on the stock market to fund a vital hospital service might be innovative but it is definitely risky, and it is no wonder the Tasmanian Premier did not bother to attend the announcement. It just gets worse with health—with over 8,000 people in north-west Tasmania saying they will skip going to a GP because of cost, yet the Turnbull government's budget fails to drop the Medicare freeze immediately.

For our schools and TAFEs, this budget locks in a cut of $85 million from Tasmanian schools and millions of dollars of cuts to TAFE and training programs. This is leaving thousands of Tasmanians behind and leaving Tasmanian industry without the skilled workforce that it needs. Tax cuts for millionaires and multinationals will not grow jobs in Tasmania. What Tasmania needs is strong growth, strong economics, strong investments in education and training, and support for industry to grow. Yet there is no money for the Cradle Mountain Master Plan, with the Turnbull government continuing with a pointless feasibility, when Deloitte Access Economics have already completed one which shows that the project would create around 140 jobs and $29 million worth of investment. It is the No. 1 project for the Tasmanian tourism industry, yet the Turnbull government has failed to give it due attention in its budget. It is a budget based on a strange set of ideologies. It fails the Australian people. It is clear—very clear—that the Turnbull government have prioritised millionaires and multinationals over Australian families yet again.

Mr President, I think I might need protection from some of my colleagues on both sides of the chamber. Can I say how amazed and humbled I have been at the gestures of goodwill that have been extended to Linda and me. I am starting to worry, in fact, if it might not be an encouragement for me to go.

It is just incredible the number of invitations I have had. Only last Thursday, Senator Whish-Wilson invited me to join the Greens, until such time as I could not vote for his banking bill, then he withdrew the offer. Of course my colleagues here in the National Party all wanted me to join the National Party, but only until Thursday, when they thought they might be able to get the casual vacancy. That has been withdrawn. But I do have to say how appreciative I am of the goodwill that has been expressed.

The eleventh of February 1990 was a day of enormous international significance, not because it was my 40th birthday, but because it was the day on which Nelson Mandela, after 27 years in prison, including 18 years on Robben Island, was released. For those of you that need to reflect on that, he lived most of his time, 23 hours a day, in a cell that was about the size of the bathrooms in our suites. He had the opportunity of one visit a year and he could send one letter a year. I want to focus on the fact that on the night that he was elected to the presidency of South Africa in April 1994 he said:

I hold out a hand of friendship to the leaders of all parties and their members and ask all of them to join us in working together to tackle the problems we face as a nation. An ANC government will serve all the people of South Africa, not just ANC members.

I make that point because, as I leave, I have to say to you that I feel there are some enormous challenges ahead of us in this country, and it is going to fall to the Senate, on behalf of the people of Australia, to step up to the plate and perform what I will call a 'Mandela moment'. On those occasions when it is necessary that the wellbeing of the people of Australia and this community is to the fore, I ask you to recall the statements of Mandela and please put the country ahead of all else.

While I am on that topic I want to reflect briefly on some of the standards that we have been seeing in the Senate at present, particularly in relation to the personal attacks on people that sometimes occur. I can do nothing better, as usual, than to turn to the library. This quote was given to me yesterday; it is from the 19th century English historian, Henry Thomas Buckle. He said: 'Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.'

Can I urge that this parliament is the senior place in this country. It is from here that the standards are set. It is fantastic that we have had great robust discussions over time. I look at my colleague Senator Doug Cameron. We have gone toe to toe in this place, but on each and every occasion we have walked out and we have made sure that we have had an amicable discussion in the corridor. I do urge that I think that is a reasonable way to go.

What have you got that I have not got?

That is the case, Senator Hanson. I cannot understand, when I had this outpouring of invitations from the Greens and the National Party, where was the Xenophon party, where were the Hansons, and where were the Bernardis inviting me?

I express my appreciation to the state council of the Liberal Party in WA. They preselected me and got me back here three times. It was certainly the rural and regional members that were able to do that for me. I express my appreciation to the electors of WA, who had that level of confidence. I recognise my staff Pierette Kelly and Lisa Brooks, who have been with me since the beginning of the journey. I especially thank Alex Nicol for being here today. Alex Nicol, in fact, was a staff member for our lovely departed Senator Judith Adams, and Owen Grieve is back in Perth holding the fort. I appreciate them greatly.

It has been a privilege to serve representatives of specific industries. Coming in here as the first veterinarian in the Senate, I could never have dreamed how proud the profession would be. While I am not using props at all, I want to say to Senator Leyonhjelm that I am passing over to you, Senator Leyonhjelm, those marks of our profession that I hope will manage to keep this group under control, as indeed I have.

It has been a great pleasure to represent the agricultural industry, particularly the livestock producers of Australia, and indeed to see agricultural productivity and profitability improve so dramatically. The oil and gas industry from which I came most recently—I have been very proud to prosecute on behalf of that industry in this place.

I recognise, if I may, the permanent secretaries of the Senate, those who support us here, our clerks and the Hansard staff, and I particularly comment on the Comcar drivers because I think they are just such an invaluable resource for us.

I know we all have our discussions and our fights in Senate estimates, but I do go back to the words of my late mother, and they are, 'You'll always catch more bees with honey than you will catch with vinegar.' I am reluctant to mention any by name except for the service chiefs: Chief of Defence Force Mark Binskin; his deputy, Ray Griggs; the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell; the Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett; and the Chief of Air Force, Air Commodore Leo Davies. They have an enormous challenge ahead of them to be able to meet the objectives that we in the parliament have of them.

We are all very proud of our family, as of course I am. We have three children, and I do not know why they all left to go overseas. First of all I thought it was the fact—

And they took their dogs!

Yes, and they took their dogs! I thought it was the fact that we charged them rent and board and they would not pay that, so they just did not leave. Then I knocked the house down in 2000 and 2001. So, if anyone wants to know how to get rid of the kids: you've got to knock the house down! Our daughter Elizabeth, with her husband, Peter, and our grandson, Christopher, are in Panama, where I am very proud to say that Elizabeth is Australia's honorary Consul-General—honorary because she does not get paid. But Elizabeth is doing a phenomenal job representing the people of Australia. You would not believe the increase in trade. She is working, of course, with David Engel, our ambassador in Mexico City. But I have also got to say to you that, as she is an excellent mergers and acquisitions lawyer, in 2011 the executive of Meat & Livestock Australia were very pleased to have the depth of Elizabeth's knowledge in corporations law when they got themselves into a problem out of which she was able to resurrect them.

Our older son, Mike, is a very successful wine merchant in Singapore. He certainly enjoys the company of enormous numbers of expats up there. And it is not only Australian wines. In fact I do not think there are any Tasmanian wines in the stable, Mr President, but you had occasion recently to share a day with Mike, and I think you will confirm his knowledge of wine marketing. With his advice to me in terms of the international wine market and the work that Senator Ruston has been doing in the wine equalisation tax, I have been really appreciative of his advice and assistance.

Our youngest son, Justin, married to Courtney in Dallas, Texas. Justin was a combat officer in the Light Armoured Corps of the Royal Australian Army. He led the first group into Iraq in 2003 as a lieutenant and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal as a result of that work and then went into Afghanistan in 2006 as a combat officer. As I say, he is now running a large emergency services company in Dallas, Texas, and of course Linda and I are incredibly proud of him as we are of their spouses and our grandchildren.

Justin has provided constant attention and assistance to me in all of the issues that we have had associated with those various aspects of the ADF. He maintains a very close contact with his network of serving and past members of the ADF. As I say, we are looking forward to spending a lot more time with them.

You reflect on where things have gone well, and I have got to say to you that it has been in the committee that we have done biosecurity issues that protect Australia's borders, the increase in agricultural activity across Australia and the work that we have done in beef levies and other areas. The live export ban was a sad moment in the history of this place, and I am very proud to say that work that was done by colleagues across the chamber with the secretariats and, of course, the input of people who so kindly make submissions. Marine plastics is an area in which I never knew that I could express an interest—until I was drawn into it. It was led by Senator Whish-Wilson. And there is the space of suicide in ADF personnel and military veterans, and I credit Senator Lambie for her knowledge and enthusiasm in bringing that particular topic. It is a sadness for me that I will not be here for the actual report and presentation, but I know that Senator Gallacher, Senator Fawcett, Senator Moore, Senator Kitching and Senator Lambie, together with the excellence of the secretariat, will bring together a report with recommendations of which the Senate, I am sure, will be proud.

The one that I want to focus on most, however, is cancer in firefighters. It was the case that a fireman burnt in a fire would be compensated but someone who got a cancer had to prove which fire it was where they picked up the carcinogen four or five years earlier that was now killing them. Of course I commend the work of my friend Senator Gavin Marshall. It was the firefighters union that came to us requesting that seven cancers be recognised. Indeed, it was as a result of the presence of the chief officer from Alberta in Canada, Mr Ken Block, who came to Perth as a witness and convinced us that there were no rabid increases in workers' compensation claims but that there was a decrease. Block told us that 13 cancers were recognised by medicine internationally, and I remember turning to Senator Marshall and saying, 'They have requested seven; if 13 are valid then we should go with 13.' I give credit to people on my side and I am sure that Senator Marshall does as well. It was a day, 25 November 2011—I am sure one of the blackest days in this place—where we time managed bills. We stopped for an hour, debated that bill and passed it unanimously. Of course it only applied to federal legislation but very quickly it passed through to the states. Only last year, Mr Block came back to Canberra to tell Senator Marshall and me that, whilst he was responsible for giving us the evidence, there was no legislation but that legislation passed in this place—the Australian parliament—has become the benchmark for similar legislation throughout the provinces of Canada, the United States and Europe. That is what I call a Mandela moment because we were doing exactly what the people of Australia wanted us to do. I think that has been absolutely amazing.

There have been a couple of disappointments of course: national bushfire mitigation. I came into this place straight after the Black Saturday fires, having come out of the Bush Fires Board of WA. Led by Bill Heffernan, we had a tremendous inquiry into the impact of major bushfires around Australia. I have always vowed that I would not leave this place until such time as we had policy in place nationally to mitigate against the risk of bushfires. I did not succeed. My Criminal Code Amendment (Animal Protection) Bill 2015 sits on the statute and is not going to be debated, I suspect, within the next 48 hours. Of course, the other one—for a Western Australian particularly—is the inconsistency that rests with the goods and services tax distribution. That is a matter nationally, not just for our state, that needs to be addressed.

It was about this time of the year in March 1972 that I was a young veterinarian in a town called Merredin, halfway between Perth and Kalgoorlie. I came to learn—you would think I would have been a bit quicker as she turned up in the February—about that time of year that an absolutely gorgeous young English teacher had arrived in Merredin, at the high school, and by an amazing coincidence she happened to be living in the street behind me. It is true to say that I did have an ulterior motive—as you probably suspect I may have—in wanting to go around and see this young lady and make myself known to her. But it is not the motive that you may have thought. I turned up, a little nervous—only Senator Leyonhjelm would relate to this because he has probably tried the same one-liner—knocked on the door and said, 'Would you like to come and help me do a caesarean operation on a cow.' Fortunately for me she did say 'yes' and she did not faint at the first sight of blood, and, indeed, the cow lived—and I always thought that was wonderful. And 45 years later, Linda has been with me every step of the journey, through eight careers, seven states and territories, six countries, two children and two grandchildren and one on the way. Linda is the glue that holds our family together. She cannot be here today and I suppose that is one of the challenges associated with travel from Western Australia. Her 92-year-old father faces cardiac surgery tomorrow and, as an old RAAF airman who saw service on Lancaster bombers over Germany right through the war, her priority, quite rightly, is with him. I do hope, of course, that our second date will also last for 45 years. That is going to start on an old Dutch barge on a French canal in a very few number of weeks.

I conclude with the same Irish prayer I used when I finished my first speech, on St Paddy's Day in 2009:

May the road rise up to meet you.

May the wind always be at your back.

May the sun shine warm upon your face,

and rains fall soft upon your fields.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you safe in the palm of His hand.

Valedictory occasions are those occasions when we pause from partisan conflict and remind ourselves, or are gently reminded by those who are leaving our number, why we are really here, and there could have been no better reminder of that than Senator Back's evocation of the Mandela moments in the eight years he spent serving the people of Western Australia in the Senate.

Chris, you have been a marvellous colleague. That is evident from the fact that not only have all the government senators come out this evening to bid you farewell but so many opposition senators and so many crossbench senators have done you the honour of coming into the chamber for your valedictory remarks. That does not always happen. The fact that it has happened for you is a tangible mark of the esteem in which you are held.

You have brought so much this place. You are a gentleman, you are a professional man—as you reminded us, the first veterinarian to serve in the Senate—you are an Irishman and of course you are a proud Western Australian. All of those different characteristics have blended in you to create someone who became over the eight years you have been our colleague a great adornment to this chamber.

You came to the Senate, of course, with a very, very diverse background. As I said, you are a professional man—a veterinarian—and a graduate, I am glad to say, of the University of Queensland. You practised your profession both in private practice and as a university teacher at Curtin University. You also worked at the University of California. You were, however, not merely a professional veterinarian; you have occupied a number of other roles. For some years, you were the Chief Executive Officer of the Rottnest Island Authority as well as, for several years, the Chief Executive Officer of the Western Australian Bushfires Board, and you have had important roles in commerce as well. We pride ourselves—and this is a point that you made this morning in the party room, if I may breach the confidence of the government party room for a moment I am sure I may be forgiven—that one of the great strengths of the coalition is the diversity of the backgrounds of those who come to serve in this parliament for the Liberal Party and the National Party. And you yourself, Chris, are the living embodiment of that diversity—that range of skills and life experiences that you brought to this chamber.

As a senator, you have given distinguished service through the Senate committees as Chair of the Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee and, more recently and importantly, as Chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. Since the time began when I represented the foreign minister in this chamber, I appeared before your committee in that role, and I have noticed with admiration the iron rod with which you ruled the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee. It is not a small thing in this chamber, which depends upon committee work for so much of its work, that a senator is an excellent chairman and, of all the many, many skills and competencies that you brought to this place, Chris, it is not a small thing that you have been such an outstanding and such an impartial and competent chairman of that and other important committees.

You brought to the parliament the expertise that comes with having been a professional, and, of course, one of the keys to authority in a place like this is to be the person who speaks with specialist knowledge. I remember, on occasions, your contributions to the government party room—or, in the bad old days for us, the opposition party room—in your areas of specialist knowledge were some of the most authoritative contributions, some of the best contributions, I ever heard. When the previous Labor government made the catastrophic decision to ban live cattle exports to Indonesia, I recall that, from opposition, you prosecuted the case against the former minister, former Senator Ludwig, the minister for agriculture, who, history should record, was not, in the end, really to blame for that terrible decision, but, nevertheless, of course took responsibility for defending it in this chamber. You prosecuted that case through question time and through parliamentary debate in a way that nobody else could have done nearly so effectively, because specialist knowledge beats all the rhetoric in the world. You had it and you nailed the issue as nobody else could have done. You did that with so many other issues, because you have a scientific mind. You trained in one of the professional sciences, and you brought that scientific mind to bear on such a range of practical issues, which have left a tangible legacy.

You are, if I may say so, a marvellous speaker. You bring all that Irish charm to bear in your presentations to the chamber, as we have just seen in your valedictory speech, but it is the granularity of your contribution on specific topics, whether it be the subject of cancer in firefighters, whether it be the investigation of bushfires, whether it be—an issue you raised with me more than once—the health effect of windmills, or whether it be a range of other specific issues—specific issues on which, as always, you spoke with authority as a man of science. Because you spoke with authority you shaped, and, may I say, dominated the course of the debate.

You made your maiden speech in this place, fittingly enough, on Saint Patrick's Day in 2009. As we do on the occasion of colleagues' valedictories, I read through your maiden speech earlier in the day. You began by quoting Sir Robert Menzies and his call for 'a true revival of liberal thought which will work for social justice and security, for national power and … progress, and for the full development of the individual citizen, though not through the dull and deadening process of socialism'.

The topics you touched on in your maiden speech presaged the contribution that you would make over the ensuing eight years. You spoke first of your experience as the CEO of the Western Australian Rural Fires Board. Then you spoke about the ADF; and of course we know that, through your sons, you have an important family involvement with the ADF and had always taken a deep interest in their affairs even before you chaired the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Subcommittee. And then, quite remarkably for a Western Australian senator, you made some remarks about how Western Australia was not getting its fair share of the GST! I have never heard that from a Western Australian senator! It was quite a heretical remark that you made in your maiden speech, coming from that state—I have never heard that before! And you finished by talking about the energy sector and then you dwelt on the contribution of the Irish to Australia and, in particular, Western Australia. In your concluding words, before you blessed us with the Irish blessing that you have just recited, you said:

There are three criteria by which the citizens of any country have the right to judge their government and the parliament generally. These are: firstly, transparency, accountability and standard of governance; secondly, social justice for the whole community; and, thirdly, wealth creation for future generations. …

My vision for Australia is simple. It is for an Australian community in which every member is safe, feels valued and contributes to a sustainable future. In this place, I undertake to support that which promotes these principles and to oppose that which diminishes them.

That is a very simple mission statement, Chris, but one which, in the eight years that have gone by since, you have fulfilled, in one way or another, in every single contribution you have made in this chamber, in your committee work and in your work in Western Australia as a champion and advocate of liberal values. You leave this chamber with the esteem of your colleagues from all parts of the chamber, with genuine friendships which I am sure you will cherish as we will cherish our friendship with you, and in the knowledge that you have fulfilled richly the task that you set yourself. All of us wish you and Linda a long, happy retirement from politics, and I trust that, in that long and happy retirement, you will remember your days among us, you will stay in touch with us, but you will not allow the affairs of the Senate in the years to come to intrude too much upon your contentment.

I rise on behalf of the opposition to make some valedictory remarks for Senator Chris Back. I open my comments with his words—a reflection to all colleagues that there needs to be mutual respect across this chamber, all for each other:

We can come in here with spirited and different views, but the simple fact of the matter is that, when mutual respect for colleagues is lost, this Senate, which is the senior chamber of the Australian parliament and the Australian people, is the poorer for it.

These are Senator Back's words, I think from last week, and they are an eloquent summary of the approach that has defined his career as a senator. And today in his valedictory he reprised the same principles and values.

Regardless of different points of view—and I think Senator Back and I would agree that we have a lot of points of difference on the things in which we believe—he has always conducted himself with dignity and courteously. This does not mean he has shied away from robust argument. In fact, if you look at the record, he has been a passionate speaker. On occasion I have been in the firing line, so I can attest to that. But he has approached debate in this place without personal rancour. I think that is the reason, amongst others, that he is a senator who is so liked and so respected across this chamber. I know his friendly demeanour is appreciated by senators and staff alike and I want to thank him for the approach he has brought to this place.

Senator Brandis made some comments about Senator Back making his first speech on Saint Patrick's Day. I did wonder if that was timetabled deliberately. I assume so. In his opening statement he said he was overwhelmed by the fact that a kid from the Western Australian wheat belt, whose grandfathers were, respectively, an Irish farmer and a Fremantle wharf labourer, could aspire to stand for the Senate, and he talked about his pride in that. I have to say, with that pedigree, we are surprised that he did not end up here as a member of the Labor Party. Anyway, such is life. He has always been a proud product of his background, a proud advocate for the people he represents and proud of his Western Australian heritage.

Perhaps, as Senator Brandis has said, the best known aspect of his life before politics is his qualification as a vet, although the stuff he brought out today I reckon really ought to have been banned—scary! He keeps telling us he is the first vet elected to the Senate. I have not verified it, but I will take him at his word. In the statement announcing his retirement, Senator Back noted the special privilege he has found in representing his profession. He made particular mention of doing so at the time a number of his colleagues unfortunately were struck down by the Hendra virus in Queensland. We have seen his advocacy in many matters associated with his former profession, including in relation to live export, which we have discussed. He has been a regular contributor on issues affecting the agricultural and agribusiness community, the resources sector, bushfire and emergency services personnel, education representatives and the equine industry, which reflects his interests, background and prior professional experience.

I want to make particular mention of Senator Back's service as the chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee. It is probably in this context that I have come in most recent times to work most closely with Senator Back, and it might surprise some to know that actually we got on very well. I want to place on record that he is a dignified, even-handed, calm and fair chairperson. Those of us on this side of the chamber have appreciated that greatly and respected your work greatly. We are going to be suggesting that we bring you back for training of chairs in the weeks to come.

Like many, Senator Back's announcement caught certainly me, and perhaps many of us on this side of the chamber, by surprise. This is an enormous privilege, the life we have and the service we provide, but it also takes a toll on one's personal life and one's family. Whilst all bear that, we often speak about those colleagues from Western Australia or the Northern Territory, for whom I think this is an even more arduous task. Senator Back acknowledged this in his statement of his intention to retire.

Senator Back has been a passionate advocate for the causes in which he believes through his time here. He has been a frequent participant in the debates in this chamber across a wide range of topics. He has contributed the benefit of many experiences and many careers, as he outlined today in the contribution he has made to the Senate. But above all, he has been an unfailingly courteous and decent senator. He has been a good bloke, and it is for this that he will be best remembered. Senator Back, on behalf of the opposition I thank you for your service to the Senate and to the nation. I anticipated you would reprise the same Irish blessing that you ended your first speech with, so I return that in much more prosaic form: may your journey succeed.

I just want to make a short contribution. I sat for many hours with Senator Back around a committee table on the rural and regional affairs and transport committee, with Senator Heffernan chairing—and anybody who knows former Senator Heffernan will know how long our regular RRAT meetings used to be! I miss our RRAT meetings now that I am no longer a member of the committee.

We're having one tomorrow. You can come too!

That's okay. I have plenty to do tomorrow, thank you very much, Senator Sterle! It was one of the committees I always enjoyed so much, because everybody around that table all agreed. Whether we were coalition—Nationals or Liberals—Labor, Greens, or, later, Nick Xenophon, when he joined the committee, we all had the same focus. Sometimes it was hard to know who had the strongest position on particular issues like biosecurity, for example. We were all together. We also had some very vigorous discussions. I remember, Senator Back, the one about live cattle exports, where we all gave as good as we got. Although we had vehemently differing views, I appreciated and valued the courteous way that Senator Back always kept on issue, and we did not get personal in that debate. We had some fairly fiery meetings of the committee and also when we were at the hearings.

I also remember participating very keenly in the committee when we were looking at how to get more people working in agriculture—and agricultural scientists, in particular. I should declare that, having an agricultural science background myself, I had a particular interest in this. Also, Senator Back worked in the department of agriculture in Western Australia, a very good department in its day, and I also worked in that department, so there were many people we knew in common. When Senator Back first started in the Senate we would go, 'Oh, yes, I know that person'. We both have a love of agriculture and want to see agriculture succeed, particularly in our home state of Western Australia. We have a lot in common, working on the same issues, and we want to see more people make agriculture their profession, because there are very serious issues in this country in that area.

Senator Back, you mentioned and commented very strongly on the issue of cancer in firefighters. We were heavily involved in that. It was one of those very important occasions in this place where we all agreed and we worked across party lines to deliver an outcome. I have said in this place before that it is when we do that sort of thing that I love this place the most—when we are working together on issues to achieve outcomes. That was another one where we did that, and, as you have said, we produced a very good outcome there. Again, on issue of veteran suicide: you were right in commending Senator Lambie for bringing that issue to this place. It is a very serious issue, and I think that committee is doing very important work. The reporting deadline has now been extended to August, and I am sorry that you are not going to be here for that. I was rereading some of the evidence just the other day, and there was some really important evidence given to that inquiry. Again, it is a situation where we are all working together.

Senator Back, you have always contributed to those areas where we can work together. We have had our strong disagreements. I have bellowed across the chamber at you on many occasions—I freely acknowledge that—but I have also valued the time we have worked together and the time we spent on the plane on those long trips. Through those I have learnt of your strong love and support for your family. I really hope that you get to spend a very long time with your family, in whichever country they happen to be at the time, with Linda by your side. I got to know her during that time as well, so, as I said to you in the chamber, please give her our love. She has been there every step of the way. I will miss you; this place will miss you. I wish you good luck into the future and hope you spend, as I said, many long years with your family.

I rise as the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate to pay tribute to senator Chris Back and to acknowledge his outstanding record as a senator for Western Australia for the past eight years. I also would like to associate myself with the wonderful contributions that have already been made.

Since beginning his term in this place Senator Back has served this place, all the committees and his party with respect, hard work and sincerity—and, I would have to say, a bucketload of humour. In the vernacular you are indeed a funny bastard, mate—you really are! The number of times everything was very serious and Backie would lean over and deliver a one-liner—and you knew it was coming and you knew he would make you laugh, no matter what the situation. Thank you so much for that attribute.

On behalf of my mob—and I know they will say this to you in their own words, Chris—again, thanks so much for your work and your friendship over the time. We always need leaders who are able to work in a real multi-partisan way. It did not really matter who you were, what your background was or what your politics were, Chris was there working in what he thought was the very best way to get an outcome.

We particularly appreciate the focus you made, mate, on some of the regional issues. Your role in many of the debates in agriculture—and we have already spoken a lot about that—added a great deal to this place. I guess it is for the future, but people should acknowledge—and George spoke about this—your wealth of life experience. The more life experience, the better and the sharper the contribution you can make in this place. Your history has been such a broad brush of life experiences and we have been very lucky to have had the benefit of that. I was reading that you introduced the first equine management course in Australasia, back in 1976. When I read that I was thinking that trying to deal with half-mad horses must have prepared you pretty well for committee work, mate! You did very well—maybe that is part of your incredible patience. Indeed.

I know you have always been a really busy man in this place, wherever you were. I would always reflect with my staff that you would leave this place and suddenly there was a bit of a gap—quick, there was a second, and Back would stand up and have not an idea and not a clue—I was speaking to him a little earlier about the possibility of that happening—but sound as erudite as possible and talk about something different. You are always the man of the moment, mate, and I am sure that will continue to be the case.

Mate, I have to say that Western Australian owes you a lot. You have worked so hard giving your contribution to the Senate, and always tying it back in. It might have been good for Australia but you always tied it back into Western Australia. That is what you are here to do and I think you have made a remarkable contribution. Some of the stuff we have had to deal with in this place was very difficult. I can recall some of the very difficult debates, such as legalised assisted suicide. These are very difficult matters that had to be handled with respect and I think we will all remember the decency of your contribution.

You did not really wear your heart on your sleeve, but we were never very shy about ensuring that your personal values and beliefs in the people around you shone out. You and your family and Western Australians should be proud that on every occasion there was no question about what you stood for. You were not there to be cajoled or seduced into a slightly different view, and I think I might have tried it on a couple of occasions—unsuccessfully. You know exactly what you stand for and that is so important in this place.

You should know that your time here has helped to keep Australians safe. You have supported farmers particularly to regain and to access economic opportunities—we have talked about some of those matters already—and you have contributed to a more sustainable future for Australia's families. Your efforts in this place are valued and together in this place I am sure we all wish you well in the next chapters of your life's service to this nation. Given the number of careers that you have already engaged in, I hope that those new chapters are as exciting as some of your previous journeys. Mate, it has been absolutely fantastic working with you, and certainly on behalf of the Nationals, and I know the place more generally, I can say you have ensured that your mark has stuck on a part of all of us. So congratulations, thank you and all the best, mate.

I would also like to pay tribute to Senator Chris Back—not only a good friend and valued colleague from the great state of Western Australia but also, and this may be less well known, a fellow parishioner of St Benedict's Parish in Applecross. In this place, we are fortunate to count many among us who have come from many different walks of life. Not many would have had a more diverse journey on their way to the Senate than Senator Chris Back. Chris Back is a proud fifth generation Western Australian who grew up in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. As has already been mentioned, he started his career as a veterinarian in private practice and has had a very distinguished and incredibly varied career in business and public service over many, many years before finding his way to the Senate.

His pursuits throughout his career have reached into different forms of community service. He served his community with distinction as the chief executive officer of the Rottnest Island Authority and CEO of the Bush Fires Board of Western Australia—both leadership roles which saw him drive change for the better, whether it was the development of critical new infrastructure at Rottnest Island or the introduction of a water-bombing aircraft for the Bush Fires Board. In particular, I note his worthy receipt of the Prime Minister's Gold Award for technological achievement, which recognised his pioneering work in the use of satellites to track wildfires in remote and regional locations—a practice that continues to save lives today.

Rounding off his preparliamentary life, Senator Chris Back was a great success in the oil and gas sector, which saw him take on executive roles throughout South-East Asia, India and the Middle East. In Senator Back's first speech in this place, he set out a very clear aim. He said:

… for an Australia which is egalitarian in approach, which rewards independence in outlook and encourages interdependence as a necessary quality of a mature economy but which works actively to eliminate dependency as a long-term outcome. No policy should have the objective of denying a human being their right to support themselves and/or their family …

That, of course, sums up very much the Liberal Party's philosophy, values and principles. There is no question that Senator Back has consistently followed this principle in his approach to policy issues and to debate in this place.

Nowhere was Chris's concern more evident, and this also has already been mentioned, than in his passionate defence of our nation's live export industry after what can only be described as a disastrous decision by the then Commonwealth government in 2011 to ban live exports. Senator Back marshalled his wealth of experience as a livestock veterinarian who served on vessels in the 1980s to deliver amongst the most eloquent, passionate and well-informed rebuttals of this policy at the time. Moreover, his commitment to aiding the recovery of that industry in the years since the ban's removal speaks of his clear concern for those Australians whose livelihoods depend on that industry and for the welfare of Australian livestock more broadly.

Senator Back, of course, has been a very strong and vocal supporter of the coalition government's recently announced $8.3 million investment into the Livestock Global Assurance Program and, in very recent days, has continued to work towards renewed access to former export trade markets like Saudi Arabia. I am sure that, even after he departs this place, he will continue on as a strong advocate for the new jobs and opportunities for regional Western Australia and regional Australia more broadly. The tributes that continue to flow for Senator Back from agricultural industry bodies such as Meat & Livestock Australia and the Cattle Council of Australia leave no-one in any doubt that the sector is very keenly aware of the champion that they had in Senator Back here in the Senate.

I would also like to join those who recognise Senator Back's significant contribution as the chair of multiple Senate standing committees, reviewing and contributing to the improvement of legislation that has been critical to the coalition government's efforts towards building a stronger, safer and more prosperous Australia. In particular, I note that as chair of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee in recent years, the committee released important reports on legislation dealing with military justice enhancements and the civil nuclear transfers to India, among others. Respectively, these bills have improved the processes for inquiries, complaints and reviews in Australia's military justice system and ensured that the burgeoning and highly promising Australia-India nuclear trade was consistent with our nation's international obligations and values. For his efforts on these important reforms, Senator Back is indeed to be commended.

Senator Back has also made a significant contribution to the Liberal Party cause in the great state of Western Australia. In particular, in supporting our campaigning efforts across important seats for the Liberal Party in Western Australia, like Durack and O'Connor, and in working successfully with other WA Liberal Senate colleagues in those efforts. The fact that we have strong representatives in O'Connor with Rick Wilson and in Durack with Melissa Price is in no small part thanks to the great campaigning efforts and support that Senator Back provided in those very important campaigns.

Chris, you have made an outstanding contribution to the Senate, in particular, on rural, agricultural and resource policy issues and as the chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee. You have been a strong voice for regional Western Australia here in the Senate. Looking at your track record so far, we believe that you still have a few careers in you, moving forward; but, in the meantime, we wish you and Linda and your family in all the corners of the world all the very best for your future. Thank you.

I just want to share this with the Senate. I first met Chris when he came here in 2009, full of bravado. At Senate estimates he was going to go in there and bring the government down. Unfortunately for Chris and the rest of us, the minister at the table was Senator Conroy, who carried on like a pork chop, as normal. Chris took offence. I dragged him aside and said: 'Chris, just ignore him. It's Conroy. We do too, mate.' He got over that. He was a fantastic member of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport committees until we lost Chris's involvement a few years ago when the Abbott government won power and he moved over to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade committees.

One thing that never surprised me about Chris was that every time he opened his mouth I found that he had another job he used to do. I have just found out that you were in the Middle East. I didn't know that one, mate! One thing I do know is that you are going to be absolutely sorely missed. One thing about Chris with his experience as a vet on the SRRAT committees—where we also had farmers and truckies, me and former Senator Heffernan, and now following in those great shoes, Senator Barry O'Sullivan—was that every time we had a difficult inquiry, Chris would come in, mention big long words, and we would all think: 'Easy. It's fixed. Chris knows everything that's going.' He could have been speaking Latin for all we knew. Mate, you will be sorely missed. I wish you and Linda all the very best from Fiona and me. I am going to miss getting on the plane on Sundays with you and talking about how you and I should start our preseason with South Fremantle, because it is about time we pulled the boots back on. Chris, all the best, brother.

Many words have been spoken tonight about Chris much more eloquently than I could, and I genuinely endorse them all. Such is Chris's influence for good in this chamber and everywhere he goes that I found myself for the first time perhaps in my life fully agreeing with Senator Wong in the contribution she made tonight. Chris's speech tonight was so much Chris Back. The humility, the good sense and the good cheer that he mentioned in his speech is just so Chris and why we all like him so much. His comment that great minds discuss great ideas is again so typically Chris. I am afraid I come into the third category of the three you mentioned, but following your speech, Chris, I will try to elevate slightly. Chris, as everyone has said, is a man without rancour. He always focused on the issue and how he could help to resolve things and make Australia a better place.

Chris will not like me saying this, and if I were a bit more sensitive I would not, but I do want to say that I despair that people with genuine talents like his were never called upon by Liberal prime ministers to administer departments so that Australia could benefit from their organisational ability, good sense and wide experience over many years. Chris was never a player in politics, and regrettably these days being a player seems to be a prerequisite for advancement. Australia and this parliament, and particularly the government, is poorer for the fact that you were never called upon, Chris, to do what I know could have been a power of good for Australia in the role of minister.

Loyalty and commitment are qualities that come to mind when anybody mentions Chris, and you can add to that knowledge and a real appreciation of people. As you know, Chris, I class you as one of my closest friends ever in this chamber, and I have been here a long time and seen a lot of people come and go. I have always had the greatest admiration for you and I have valued your friendship. I am still almost not speaking to you because of the fact that you have decided to go early, and I am distressed that you will not be with us. I might also say that my wife Lesley is distressed not only that you are going but also that she will see less of Linda, who she formed a very close relationship with over the time you were here. I know Lesley will miss her enormously when you have moved on. On the other side, of course, your children in far-flung places around the world will be the winners. One of the reasons Chris is leaving is to spend more time flying across the Pacific to Fort Worth and Panama, and to Singapore, and I know Chris and Linda particularly feel the absence not only of their children but also of their grandchildren. Hopefully they will be able to spend more time with those that they really love. I look forward to some time catching up with you on your Dutch canal boat on the French rivers, and hopefully we might even catch up with you sometime later this year. I do wish you all the very best in the future.

I would not dare to compare myself with Chris in any category, although we did share a passion for rural and regional Australia and in that category, as well, a passion for the Liberal Party. We shared a passion for Northern Australia, and I know the contribution Chris has made there and in so many other ways. Chris and I do share one attribute or quality, or calling perhaps, and that is that, whenever the government needs an additional speaker to fill in a bit of time while a bill comes across from the other side or for some other reason we need to delay things quietly, often Chris and I will be called upon to fill in that time. The only difference is that when Chris gets up to speak he actually knows what he is talking about. I admire him for that, and that comes from his very wide experience, his learning and his real understanding of people and issues. I conclude by saying farewell good and faithful servant of Western Australia and indeed Australia generally. From Lesley and I, au revoir, my friend.

My contribution to these valedictory speeches for Senator Back will be quite short, because I may be the only senator today who is expressing some joy that Senator Back is leaving us in the near future. In a late-night moment, I shared with Senator Back some anxiety that I will refer to as 'secret men's business', and he indicated to me that whilst he was not a medical practitioner he did have the requisite skills to be able to allay some of my fears, for those of us who are aged six decades or so. So, you can imagine how I felt when I came in today and found that he had left me a gift on my desk about the fight against prostate cancer and then looked over to express my gratitude and saw that fierce, stainless steel instrument and that pair of gloves! For my part, I hope you are not regarding me as unfinished business in the Senate!

Again, I want to attach myself to all the remarks. As a newbie here, in essence, I attached myself to you, Chris, on matters and relied upon you significantly, as you know, on some very complex matters of science of which I had no knowledge and still have no knowledge. I have a blind faith in the guidance you have provided. I said to Senator Macdonald the other night that if there was one word I had to use to describe you it would be the word 'solid'. It takes everything in, solid. You cannot be solid unless you are competent. You cannot be solid unless you are genuine, polite and a statesman, and you are solid. I, too, wish you and your wife all the very best as you go into the future.

Chris, it has been wonderful working with you in the Senate. I was immediately attracted to your philosophy, which is about making a difference, getting things done, rather than getting your name in the newspaper. For that I thank you, and for that we worked well together. I really do appreciate the cooperative way you worked on the committees with me, particularly. We got to travel together. We did some amazing work together, and I think it has made a difference. As I said, that was where you started. You are a man of enormous dignity. You are a good bloke; you are an honest bloke. And I am so very proud to be your friend.

Senator Back, we first met at the preselection committee that decided to make you a senator for Western Australia in the place of the former senator, Chris Ellison. We competed in that race, and that was the first time I got to know Senator Chris Back. And while I was a younger person, I was disappointed with the result, having been here with you, having watched the way you have done your job as a senator for Western Australia, having watched the great clarity of your thinking and the great conviction with which you have met many of the challenges, some of them easy and some of them difficult, in this place. But to be travelling around Western Australia and constantly reminded of those strengths of friendships that you and Linda have had with many, many people across regional Western Australia, I cannot help but reflect on the wisdom of state council at that meeting in December 2008, I think it was.

We have enjoyed some battles in this place together, and I am pleased to say that we have been winning some battles here together. I think the most notable was when you and I and some others joined in tackling our own party in arguing against its position to join with Labor in recognising local governments in the Constitution. I think for me that brought home in a very stark way why senators in the coalition must always stay vigilant and must always keep at the forefront of their considerations their commitment to Australian federalism. That was a battle that was unpopular. It was not easy. But it was an important battle that we were successful in winning.

Just reflecting on the commentary of others this afternoon, it is interesting how when we end we sort of go back to where we started. In your very first contribution in the Senate you talked about the contribution of the Irish to Western Australia, citing CY O'Connor's considerable commitment. You talked about the importance of the bushfire service in Western Australia, and how many of us can remember you actually donning the jacket of the bushfire brigade when Esperance endured those devastating bushfires.

And, of course, we are reminded too of how some things just do not change. You talked about GST distribution reform. But what was powerful about your 2009 contribution in regard to GST distributional reform was that no-one else was talking about it at that time. You showed tremendous perseverance and courage, because it is not an easy issue to tackle.

Chris, you mentioned how grateful you were to the state council of the Western Australian Liberal Party. As a party man of 30 years, I think I can stand here and extend to you and Linda the heartfelt gratitude and appreciation of the Liberal Party WA state council for the great work you have done in representing Western Australia, in standing up for the traditions and privileges of the Senate and, most importantly, for representing regional Western Australians.

I think this is a first for me, Senator Back: saying something nice about any of you over on the other side!

Oh, Dougie!

Maybe your time will come, Senator Fierravanti-Wells, but do not hold your breath!

I think yours might come before mine.

I want to indicate that the discussions I have had with Chris outside of the Senate have always been very, very warm. As Chris has indicated, he and I have gone toe to toe on many occasions in this chamber and in the various committee forums that we have been in. I do not agree with many of your political choices or your political views, Chris, but as a human being you have been an absolute gentleman. I wish you well for the future. I wish you and Linda well. It will be great that you can get around and see your family. You have been a great warrior for your side of politics. You have been one of the hardest working senators in this place. You do not take your bile or your arguments outside of this chamber and continue it on. I think you have been fantastic in the contribution that you have made. Again, I do not agree with much of the contribution that you have made, but you have been a terrific warrior for your side of politics and you will be missed.

Chris, I associate myself with all of the comments that have been made by our colleagues. I think the thing that we will miss most about you is your wonderful sense of humour. I remember one evening when we sat very, very late—I think it must have been about three o'clock in the morning—when Chris and Wacka regaled us with funny stories. Chris had funny stories about veterinarians and Wacka about all matter of things agricultural. It was very, very funny.

I should have twigged, Chris, recently when you did your sailing course at Pittwater. I should have twigged then that something was in the offing. I am sure you and Linda will enjoy your time not just with your children but also with all of the lovely golden retrievers in the Back family I know that there are golden retrievers in Mexico, in Singapore and all over the place, and I am sure that they will enjoy their time with you. John and I wish you and Linda all the very, very best, and I hope that we meet sailing at some stage in the future.

Order! Pursuant to standing order 12, I lay on the table a warrant nominating Senator Smith as an additional Temporary Chair of Committees when the Deputy President and the Chair of Committees are absent for the remainder of the 2017 winter sittings.

I remind senators that earlier today we moved a motion relating to the routine of business.

I will conclude my comments on this crucial and urgent bill amending the Australian Passports Act—the Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017. Last Wednesday morning, I was privileged to sit in the roped-off guest section in the other place to watch the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop, introduce the changes—my changes—to the passport act which will take passports off all convicted paedophiles on the child-sex offender register and curtail the perverts going on child-rape holidays in South-East Asia.

I want to thank the Minister for Foreign Affairs; the Minister for Justice, Michael Keenan; and the Prime Minister and his office for allowing me to participate in the drafting of this legislation and for the speed with which it has come before this chamber. I know that in this town the wheels of justice can sometimes grind exceedingly slowly. I also want to thank the Australian Federal Police for their input about this disgusting trade, which has stained Australia's reputation throughout South-East Asia for decades. We will get our good reputation back, because this is the first country in the world to impose such travel restrictions. I have already had preliminary discussions with the foreign minister about approaching her counterparts in New Zealand, in Canada and in the UK—and I have debated it on the BBC—and maybe even in the USA, where they have had a national public register of convicted sex offenders for more than 20 years.

This is just a start. As I mentioned earlier, the government is working with me on more-protective laws for our most vulnerable here at home, for the spring session of parliament. I also say thanks to the Nick Xenophon Team. Because of them we now have Carly's law, aimed at internet stalkers. As I speak, I know that there are deviants right here in Australia using their credit cards and Skype for real-time sex crimes. I was given evidence today of an Australian paedophile in Australia hiring a baby from her mother in the Philippines for less than $100 for his real-time gratification on Skype, and that baby was three months old.

I will be working closely in the months ahead with a group called IJM Australia, International Justice Mission Australia, to fight what they called cybersex trafficking in our region. I know that the Xenophon team, through Senator Kakoschke-Moore, has an amendment to cover cybersex traffickers. Going forward, I will happily work with her on all of this, and with the government.

Finally, I stand here tonight a very proud man. I am very proud of you all, in both houses, for rescuing hundreds and thousands of children from a truly evil and depraved culture. Thank you.

I rise to speak on the Passports Legislation Amendment (Overseas Travel by Child Sex Offenders) Bill 2017. The Nick Xenophon Team supports this bill, which responds to increasing community concern about Australian convicted child sex offenders travelling overseas to sexually abuse vulnerable children in countries where the law enforcement framework is weaker and the activities of offenders are not monitored. That community concern is justified. We must never be complacent where the innocence, safety and exploitation of children are at stake. I acknowledge Senator Derryn Hinch's contribution to the genesis of this bill, and his strong advocacy for the measures contained in it.

This bill will amend the Australian Passports Act and the Foreign Passports (Law Enforcement and Security) Act so that, upon request by a competent authority as defined in the Passports Act, the Minister for Foreign Affairs will be required to refuse to issue or required to cancel an Australian passport, or demand the surrender of a foreign travel document, where an Australian citizen is on a state or territory child sex offender register with reporting obligations. The decision to refuse to issue or the decision to cancel a passport will be mandatory and not subject to administrative review following a request by the competent authority—namely, a state or territory court, sex offender registry or police.

This bill will also amend the Criminal Code Act 1995 to make it a Commonwealth offence for a registered child sex offender with reporting obligations to travel or attempt to travel overseas without permission from a relevant authority. The new offence is crucial and complementary to the passport measures. The new offence ensures that child sex offenders can be prosecuted, should they try to evade the passport measures.

The bill also amends the Foreign Passports (Law Enforcement and Security) Act by inserting new law enforcement grounds for a competent authority to request the minister to order the surrender of a foreign travel document because the person is an Australian citizen. This is intended to prevent Australian dual nationals from travelling overseas on foreign passports to sexually exploit or sexually abuse vulnerable children in overseas countries.

There are about 20,000 registered sex offenders in Australia who, having served their sentence, are subject to supervision and reporting obligations because they remain a risk to the community and innocent children. Approximately 2,500 child sex offenders are added to the list each year. The passport measures introduced under this bill will apply to the existing cohort of registered child sex offenders with reporting obligations, and they will also apply to future child sex offenders registered annually. The Nick Xenophon Team remains satisfied that, if there are compelling reasons such as bereavement, offenders with reporting obligations will be able to obtain permission from authorities to travel overseas.

The Nick Xenophon Team will always fight to protect vulnerable children who are the victims of terrible abuse. Convicted child sex offenders must be stopped from fuelling the child sex trafficking trade, which flourishes overseas. The statistics are alarming, with more than 770 Australian registered child sex offenders travelling overseas in 2016. Alarmingly, a third of them violated an obligation to notify police of their intention to travel. Under existing laws, a failure to report intended overseas travel or to comply with other obligations can result in up to two years imprisonment. However, the penalties handed down by the courts are generally warnings or small fines which provide little incentive to comply. This is completely unacceptable and clearly ineffective. These offenders have a high propensity to re-offend in countries where they are not monitored and where child sexual exploitation is rampant.

Registered child sex offenders are subject to reporting obligations in Australia specifically because of their ongoing risk to children. This bill will address current deficiencies and will prevent Australian registered child sex offenders with reporting obligations with the measures I have outlined. Once their reporting obligations have concluded, offenders will be able to apply for a passport in the usual way. While the Nick Xenophon Team supports the bill, we are concerned about the unintended consequences of the measures fuelling cybersex trafficking, which is why I will be moving amendments to the Criminal Code to tighten existing sections of the code to prevent these unintended consequences emerging. I will move those amendments during the committee stage.

I would like to thank all senators for their contribution to this debate on this bill, which will combat the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children overseas by Australian child sex offenders. In particular I would like to commend Senator Hinch for his dedicated contribution to this debate over many years. I also thank the senators from the Nick Xenophon Team for their proposed amendments to the bill. We appreciate your shared concerns in ensuring that vulnerable children are protected from the dangers posed by child sex offenders. However, the government would like to consider those proposed amendments in further detail to ensure that they function with the existing provisions. We will progress this as part of the package of child sex offender reforms being progressed for the spring sittings.

This bill reflects the seriousness with which the government is addressing child sex tourism. These tough new measures send a strong message to child sex offenders that they cannot use overseas travel to sexually exploit and abuse children. Such abhorrent crimes will not be tolerated. The risk posed to vulnerable children overseas by Australian child sex offenders is utterly and completely unacceptable. There is currently no effective mechanism to stop Australian child sex offenders from travelling overseas to countries with weaker law enforcement frameworks where their activities are not monitored.

The measures are intended to capture all Australian registered child sex offenders with current reporting obligations. When an offender's reporting obligations end, they can apply for a passport as usual. This is necessary and appropriate because registered child sex offenders are subject to reporting obligations in Australia specifically because of their ongoing risk to children.

For these measures to be effective in stopping child sex offenders from travelling overseas to commit horrific acts against children, it is essential that passport decisions are mandatory and not subject to merits review following a competent authority request for passport denial. Unless these tough new laws are introduced, Australian child sex offenders will continue to travel overseas and be in a position to commit those offences. These laws will make Australia world leader in protecting vulnerable children from child sex tourism, and I urge senators to support this legislation as a matter of urgency.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

by leave—I move the Nick Xenophon Team amendments on sheet 8158:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (table item 2), omit " Schedule 1 " , substitute " Schedules 1 and 2 " .

[cybersex trafficking]

(2) Page 7 (after line 27), at the end of the Bill, add:

Schedule 2—Cybersex trafficking

Part 1—Sexual offences

Criminal Code Act 1995

1 Paragraph 272.8(2) (b) of the Criminal Code

After "presence of the person", insert "(including presence by a means of communication that allows the person to see or hear the child)".

2 Paragraph 272.9(2) (b) of the Criminal Code

After "presence of the person", insert "(including presence by a means of communication that allows the person to see or hear the child)".

3 Section 272.10 of the Criminal Code (heading)

Repeal the heading, substitute:

272.10 Aggravated offence—mental impairment, under care of defendant, young child, multiple persons, torture or payment

4Paragraph 272.10(1) (b) of the Criminal Code

Repeal the paragraph, substitute:

(b) any of the following applies:

(i) at the time the person commits the underlying offence, the child has a mental impairment;

(ii) at the time the person commits the underlying offence, the person is in a position of trust or authority in relation to the child, or the child is otherwise under the care, supervision or authority of the person;

(iii) at the time the person commits the underlying offence, the child is, or reasonably appears to be, under 10 years old;

(iv) more than one person (other than the child) is present (including by a means of communication that allows a person to see or hear the child) at the time the person commits the underlying offence;

(v) at the time the person commits the underlying offence, an act of torture, cruelty or degrading treatment is done to the child;

(vi) the person pays a fee or reward, or provides another benefit, in relation to the underlying offence.

5 Paragraph 272.12(2) (b) of the Criminal Code

After "presence of the person", insert "(including presence by a means of communication that allows the person to see or hear the young person)".

6 Paragraph 272.13(2) (b) of the Criminal Code

After "presence of the person", insert "(including presence by a means of communication that allows the person to see or hear the young person)".

7 Paragraph 474.26(3) (e) of the Criminal Code

After "in the presence", insert "(including by a means of communication that allows a person to see or hear another person)".

8 Paragraph 474.27(3) (f) of the Criminal Code

After "in the presence", insert "(including by a means of communication that allows a person to see or hear another person)".

Part 2—Internet service providers and internet content hosts

Criminal Code Act 1995

9Section 474.25 of the Criminal Code

Before "A person", insert "(1)".

10 Paragraph 474.25(c) of the Criminal Code

Omit "refer details of the material", substitute "provide the information mentioned in subsection (2)".

11 Section 474.25 of the Criminal Code (penalty)

Omit "100", substitute "800".

12 At the end of section 474.25 of the Criminal Code

Add:

(2) The information is:

(a) details of the material; and

(b) the address, telephone number and email address of the internet service provider or internet content host; and

(c) the following information, to the extent it is in the possession or control of the internet service provider or internet content host:

(i) information relating to the identity of any person who appears to have accessed the material, including but not limited to email address, internet protocol address, URL, user name or any other identifying information;

(ii) information relating to when and how the material was uploaded, transmitted, received or accessed;

(iii) information relating to when and how the material was reported to or discovered by the internet service provider or internet content host;

(iv) information relating to the location of any person who appears to have uploaded, transmitted, received or accessed the material, including but not limited to:

(A) internet protocol address; and

(B) billing address; and

(C) any geographic information provided to the internet service provider or internet content host by the person;

(v) any image of the material;

(vi) if the material was in a communication, the communication, including but not limited to:

(A) any data or information regarding the transmission of the communication; and

(B) any images, data, or other digital files contained in, or attached to, the communication.

(3) Nothing in this section limits any requirement applying to an internet service provider or internet content host under any law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory.

In Australian households and workplaces paedophiles are paying to direct the live sexual abuse of children located anywhere in the world. I will let that sink in for a moment: Australians are paying for children in developing countries such as the Philippines to be sexually and physically abused for their gratification while they sit in their homes watching and directing the abuse. Sadly, this despicable act is not being committed by just a few. The crime is known as cybersex trafficking—a form of trafficking that is transnational and involves offenders in Australia who commission the abuse of children in developing countries on a pay-per-view basis.

Cybersex trafficking is much more common than people may think. According to the International Justice Mission, the annual number of tips to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children rose from 4,560 in 1998 to 76,584 in 2006. In 2015, that figure ballooned to 4.4 million. Australian law enforcement agencies are well aware of the prevalence of this crime and are doing what they can to combat it. They face significant hurdles given that this crime is transnational and they must work with international authorities and laws.

The unintended consequence of the bill before us was highlighted in The Sydney Morning Herald on 3 June 2017 in a piece by Lindsay Murdoch entitled 'Children as young as two rescued from Philippines cybersex abuse dens'. The article states:

Detective-Inspector Rouse said more cases of child cybersex are being uncovered because of the increasing capabilities of law enforcement agencies, including in tracing financial transactions.

"We are detecting it more because we are looking for it more," he said, adding that Australians have been known to be involved in the online sexual exploitation of children for almost a decade.

Asked whether the involvement of Australians was growing, Detective-Inspector Rouse said "it is already quite an established market".

The International Justice Mission (IJM) helped rescue 201 children who were forced to participate in online sexual exploitation between 2011 to May 2017.

More than half of the victims were under 12 and 70 per cent involved parents, relatives or close family friends of the victims.

I pause again to let that sink in: parents are sexually exploiting their children for the gratification of Australians. The article continues:

Evelyn Pingul, IJM's director of communications in the Philippines, said the alarm needs to be sounded that online sexual exploitation of children has become an epidemic in the Philippines.

"We need the police to continue rescuing these children, we need the prosecution to continue convicting more sick criminals," she said.

IJM's National Director Samson Inocencio called for law enforcement agencies to be given more resources "to fight this horrific crime against children".

One such resource is the ability of Australian law to capture this type of behaviour so that it can be successfully prosecuted and offenders properly analysed. Not only is IJM carrying out life-saving work on the ground in South-East Asia; IJM director of corporate and legal, Kimberly Randle, has also identify the gap in the law which exists here. Despite the number of instances of cybersex trafficking in Australia, the Criminal Code does not adequately address the specific nature of this crime. Prosecutions of cybersex trafficking occur under sections 474.26, 474.27, 272.8 and 272.9 of the Criminal Code Act 1995. According to I JM, sentences for these offences have tended to be significantly lower than hands-on offences and do not currently reflect the fact that the sexual exploitation of the victim is being conducted in real time. The offences of sexual intercourse or activity with a child outside Australia were intended to capture Australians travelling overseas and engaging in sexual intercourse in person. In the case of cybersex trafficking, the physical abuse inflicted on children occurs overseas but is commissioned, directed and paid for by a perpetrator in Australia. That is why I have moved an amendment to these sections of the code which will make it abundantly clear that a person committing an offence under these sections does so when they are out in the presence of the child by means of communication that allows the person to see or hear the child. In other words, committing the offence virtually should make them no less culpable.

It is important to note that in two recent cases of cyber sex trafficking the defendants pleaded guilty. Had they pleaded not guilty, and the Criminal Code in its current form been tested in its ability to capture their online pay-per-view crimes, then they may have gotten away with their dreadful acts. In the much-publicised case of Bryan Beattie it has been reported that he was charged with cyber sex trafficking, but as this does not exist, what he did plead guilty to was 21 counts of causing a child under 16 to have sexual intercourse outside Australia in the presence of himself, as well as other charges. The offences occurred between 2012 and 2014 and involved his paying amounts ranging from $12 to $540 to watch 17 children being sexually assaulted in the Philippines via Skype. These children were between the ages of eight and 15. He also gave instructions on the type of abuse he wanted to see. Beattie was sentenced in March 2017 to a maximum of 10 years imprisonment, but he will be eligible for parole in February 2021.

Kyle Dawson pleaded guilty to offences of procuring a child to engage in sexual activity outside Australia as well as child abuse material offences. He paid approximately $60 to watch the abuse of children in the Philippines via Skype. His victims were girls aged about six, 10 and 12 and a boy who was about eight. He recorded the sessions to view at a later date and possibly to share. His defence counsel said he had an addiction to child sexual abuse material. The AFP, who arrested Dawson, examined his computer, were able to trace the location from where the live streaming was taking place and provided the information to police in the Philippines. IJM assisted in the Philippines in arranging a sting operation where the offender was captured. The offender was the aunt of some of the victims. The total sentence was five years of imprisonment with a two year non-parole period.

In another recent case Queenslander Stephen James Sheriff started sending money to the mother of two girls, the youngest aged 10, residing in the Philippines. The mother sent sexually explicit images to Sheriff, and he was convicted of soliciting and accessing child exploitative material. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment but was ordered to be released forthwith upon paying a $500 fine and being of good behaviour for three years. One has to wonder how that is a deterrent.

I have been told of cases involving babies, multiple children present at one time who are forced to abuse each other, and other situations that can only be considered torture. It is for this reason that I will move, through my amendment, to expand the types of aggravating factors in section 272.10. The new factors that will be considered aggravating factors include where the child is, or reasonably appears to be, under 10 years of age. This is designed to capture offences committed against very young children, such as those who are three or four, quite clearly under the age of 10, because it recognises it may be difficult for law enforcement agencies to obtain birth certificates to confirm the exact age of a victim.

The aggravated offences will also include where more than one person is watching the abuse being committed against the child. This recognises that often paedophile networks are involved in the abuse of children. The aggravating factors will also include where an act of torture, cruelty or degrading treatment is done to the child while the underlying offence is being committed. This is necessary, because I have heard of cases involving babies having hot wax dripped on them in the course of the offence. Where a person pays a fee or reward for the abuse to be perpetrated against the child, this will also be considered an aggravating factor. Not all abuse against a child is paid for, but this amendment recognises that, where a fee or reward is paid, profit is essentially being derived as a result of a child being abused.

I will also move amendments which relate to the obligation of internet service providers and content hosts to report to the AFP if they become aware that the service provided can be used to access child exploitation material and pornography. Currently the maximum penalty for this offence is equivalent to $18,000. As it currently stands the offence does not specify particular information required to be reported, such as IP addresses or personal details of the subscriber. Accordingly, the proposed amendments to sections 474.25 include the specific information to be provided to the AFP and an increase in the penalty units for noncompliance with their request. It is the case that cyber sex criminals are utilising the infrastructure of telcos to commit their crimes. I believe it is therefore incumbent upon—and even a social duty for—those telcos to ensure that they do everything in their power to assist the AFP in tracking, identifying and building a case, through the online footprint captured by the ISPs, against people using their service to offend.

The amendments will seek clarity for ISPs about the type of information they need to provide and, for avoidance of any doubt, about how vital the provision of this information to the AFP is; the penalty for noncompliance has increased. There is no excuse for allowing this activity to go on under our noses. Our law enforcement agencies should be armed with everything they need in order to do their job without the hardship of a Criminal Code that has not kept up with the online environment for ISPs who may not see this as a priority.

In conclusion, my amendments plug a gap in the Commonwealth Criminal Code that is expected to be exploited even further once passports of registered sex offenders are stripped. While the government's bill to stop registered child sex offenders from travelling overseas to commit despicable crimes is supported by the NXT, the unintended consequences of the increase of exploitation crimes being committed from Australian lounge rooms instead, as I have just described, should be dealt with now. The fact that the abuse is happening virtually should be no barrier to a predator being charged and prosecuted, yet the law as it stands does not make it clear that a person need only be in the virtual presence of a child. The crime might be virtual, but the children are being sexually abused in the real world. And in our world, I believe it is our duty as lawmakers to ensure that Australian laws adequately protect children no matter where in the world they live. Thank you, and I commend the amendments to the Senate.

I certainly agree with Senator Kakoschke-Moore that it is our job to ensure that our laws protect children, wherever they are in the world. However, while the government supports in principle what these amendments are trying to achieve, we need to undertake the necessary due diligence, examine any possible unintended consequences and consult with our law enforcement agencies and industry. We have only just received these amendments, and we are not prepared to make a judgement on the spot, given the potential for the unintended consequence of weakening existing child sex offences.

As outlined in the second reading speech, the Minister for Justice will be proceeding with a further tranche of reforms to strengthen our child sex offender laws in the spring sitting. In the drafting of this upcoming bill the government gives an undertaking that we will consider these amendments that have been put forward. Our government has a strong track record on protecting children from child sex offenders. It was just last week that the Senate passed the protecting minors online bill, which will target online predators who are preparing or planning to cause harm to procure or engage in sexual activity with a child. But we will not allow the strengthening of child sex tourism laws to be delayed any further, not with two registered child sex offenders travelling overseas every single day. This bill must be passed today. We thank the Nick Xenophon Team for their continued support in this area, but the government is not in a position to support these amendments today until we undertake the necessary due diligence.

Senator Kakoschke-Moore, I believe my office has been in contact with you and explained our position. We also are not supporting these amendments in the form they are in tonight. We acknowledge the work you have done in this space, and we share your concerns. However, we believe that this particular bill has a focus around these sex offender registry and people travelling on passports overseas. Work needs to be done on the Criminal Code about the areas you have covered, and we commit that we will look forward to discussing these future amendments with you as soon as we can. But for tonight we are not supporting the amendments.

It is with a certain amount of regret that I, on behalf of the Australian Greens, am unable to support these amendments either, but certainly we do support the intent. The Australian Greens will be supporting this bill, and I do want to acknowledge the work of Senator Derryn Hinch for bringing this matter before us tonight and also the passion and commitment with which Senator Kakoschke-Moore has stated her case and that of the Nick Xenophon Team—and indeed everyone in the chamber tonight. It is one of those issues, when I first became aware that the government had brought this bill forward, where you wonder why this is not already part of Australian domestic law. So, I do acknowledge that the government has brought it forward, and I look forward to committing the bill to the chamber.

Through no fault of Senator Kakoschke-Moore—because the government flipped around the order of business tonight rather rapidly and without warning—we have had less than an hour to assess the amendments that have been brought forward by the Nick Xenophon Team. We are very happy to work with crossbenchers, the government and the opposition to assess these amendments, which are far reaching. Having just heard the harrowing case that was put by Senator Kakoschke-Moore on the horrors that have been perpetrated against very young children here and around the world, anything this parliament can do to make it harder for people to do these horrifying things to young children anywhere in the world, we should do. Whether these things are being carried out on Australian shores or overseas or they are enabled by the internet, it should not be possible for this to take place, and it should certainly not be possible for it to fall through a legal loophole. We do not think that child sex offenders should benefit from ambiguities, if they exist, around the information that ISPs must provide to authorities relating to offences.

So it is through no fault with the intention of what you have brought forward; it is simply that, having only had such a brief time to consider this amendment, we are unable to support it at this time, but we are willing to work with anybody of good intent and goodwill to bring an amendment, or indeed a bill, whether it be a private senator's bill or a government bill, forward to close these loopholes as they exist. We look forward to that being committed to the chamber.

Can I indicate that I make these remarks in the spirit of this debate, where there is enormous goodwill in the chamber to pass an important piece of legislation necessary to protect children. I commend unreservedly the work of Senator Hinch in relation to this. I also commend the way in which the government has acted and the spirit in which the opposition and my crossbench colleagues have dealt with this.

In relation to this specific amendment from Senator Kakoschke-Moore, this is something that was raised by the International Justice Mission Australia. It is something that has long been advocated by them in terms of reform, that the act of cybersex trafficking falls within the definition of trafficking under the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking of persons, especially women and children, to which Australia is a party. They have said—and I think they have been saying this for quite some time—that section 270 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code needs to be updated to include cybersex trafficking and the application to child victims. Given the harrowing example given by my colleague Senator Kakoschke-Moore, the enormous sympathy that the government has for this particular amendment, the fact that the International Justice Mission of Australia—among others—have said we need to sort this out and that we have been a party to this protocol for some time, my question to the government is—and, again, I say this with absolute goodwill and in the spirit in which this legislation is being dealt with by the chamber—can the minister indicate whether the government is broadly supportive of and committed to changing the law to cover the sorts of circumstances dealt with in this amendment by the end of this year?

Thank you, Senator Xenophon. I have already indicated that on behalf of the government. The government does support—as I have indicated in principle—what these amendments are trying to achieve. The government will be considering the intent of these amendments. We will look to pursue those amendments in the context of the further reform in this area that we intend to bring forward in the spring session. The justice minister is already working on a further tranche of reforms to strengthen our child sex offender laws in the spring sittings and, subject to the due diligence indicating that there are no unintended consequences from the amendments that have been put forward, it would be our expectation to proceed along those lines.

Through the chair, Senator Xenophon, I do have a commitment from the government that in the spring session amendments will be brought in that are being worked out now that will cover a lot of the areas that Senator Kakoschke-Moore has raised today.

The CHAIR: The question is that amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 8158 moved by Senator Kakoschke-Moore be agreed to.

Question negatived.

I have a couple of questions for the minister to clarify something that has come up in discussion. Can we be advised that, in states and territories where sex offender registries capture offences other than just child sex offences—the registries only list people as 'sex offenders', without definition—the bill will impact only on people who have a child sex offending history and not everyone caught up in the various laws?

I can confirm that these amendments will only capture offenders who have been found guilty of registerable offences involving children, and that is it.

Would that be done at the state level? Would they filter the registries so that only people with registered child offences would go through the process?

Yes.

Can the minister give the committee any advice on the review mechanisms that might apply to decisions made at the state or territory level, such as from police or courts?

This bill will not affect decisions at the state and territory level. Rights to review will remain the same, and registered offenders will be able to apply for a limited validity travel document in exceptional circumstances.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendments; report adopted.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

On behalf of the Chair of the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, Senator Duniam, I present the report of the committee on the provisions of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Queensland Commission Income Management Regime) Bill 2017, together with the documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

SOCIAL SERVICES LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (QUEENSLAND COMMISSION INCOME MANAGEMENT REGIME) BILL 2017

This Bill will amend the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 to allow the Income Management element of Cape York Welfare Reform to continue for two additional years until 30 June 2019.

Income Management ensures welfare payments are used to meet the essential needs of vulnerable people and their dependents.

Income Management sets aside a percentage of a recipient's welfare payment to ensure it can only be spent on priority goods and services such as food, housing, clothing, education and health care.

People on Income Management are also provided with support to improve money management skills. Centrelink assists Income Management participants to identify expenses and helps them budget so their welfare payments can meet these expenses.

Income Management supports 25,693 vulnerable people in locations across Australia, including individuals referred by child protection authorities.

Funding for Income Management was due to cease on 30 June 2017. Government has decided to extend Income Management in all existing locations until

30 June 2019.

Extending Income Management for two years ensures continuity of support for vulnerable participants while allowing Government time to work through future directions for welfare quarantining.

There are high risks associated with ceasing Income Management without a mechanism to replace it.

An influx of cash into Income Management sites could lead to an increase in levels of violence, hospitalisation and abuse.

Income Management also increases food security in communities as it encourages community stores to stock plenty of food and household goods. If Income Management ceased on 30 June 2017, this could be compromised.

Income Management in Cape York is the only Income Management measure with a legislated sunset date. Current legislation allows for all other Income Management measures to continue beyond 30 June 2017.

Cape York Welfare Reform is a partnership between the communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge, the Australian Government, the Queensland Government and the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership. It aims to restore local Indigenous authority, rebuild social norms, encourage positive behaviours, and improve economic and living conditions.

Income Management is an important component of Cape York Welfare Reform. Currently, a person can be placed on to Income Management after a decision by the Family Responsibilities Commission made before 1 July 2017. Where welfare recipients are referred to the Commission, the Commission can also discuss the issues with the individual and link them with relevant support services.

Cape York Welfare Reform commenced in the four partnership communities on

1 July 2008.

In 2016, Income Management was extended to the community of Doomadgee. Doomadgee is not formally part of the Cape York Welfare Reform Partnership, however the same referral pathway for Income Management applied in the four communities applies in Doomadgee.

There are currently 196 participants on Income Management in Cape York and Doomadgee.

The Income Management component of the Cape York Welfare Reform is a powerful tool, designed to be used both as a mechanism for ensuring that welfare payments are spent on necessities and as an incentive for individuals to engage with social supports and make positive behavioural change.

The approach of Cape York Welfare Reform has yielded positive results for both individuals and communities.

Participating communities have seen significant improvements to their economic and living conditions.

A 2012 evaluation of Cape York Welfare Reform found that progress has been made at the foundational level in stabilising social circumstances and fostering behavioural change. This was particularly in the areas of sending children to school, caring for children and increasing individual responsibility.

The evaluation also found there was evidence that Income Management assists in reducing behaviours that lead people to being referred to the Family Responsibilities Commission.

Further, 78 per cent of income managed people surveyed reported that the program had made their lives better.

This Bill extends the date before which the Families Responsibilities Commission can make a decision to place a person on Income Management to 1 July 2019. This enables Income Management to continue in Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale, Mossman Gorge and Doomadgee for a further two years.

This amendment aligns with the end date of Income Management in all existing locations across Australia.

The proposed approach to the extension of Income Management in Cape York was discussed with Queensland Government and the Cape York Partnership which agreed this was the best approach and met the needs of Cape York Welfare Reform at this time.

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Queensland Commission Income Management Regime) Bill 2017. This bill amends the Social Security (Administration) Act to enable a two-year continuation of the income management element of Cape York welfare reform in the communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge. The Cape York Welfare Reform is an initiative of the Cape York Partnership, an Indigenous organisation that has led a wide-ranging reform agenda in Cape York. And although not formally part of the Cape York Welfare Reform partnership, this bill also applies to the community of Doomadgee. The Commonwealth government announced in the 2017-18 budget that it will extend income management in all five locations for two years until 30 June 2019, so this bill extends by two years the income management component of the Cape York Welfare Reform.

Labor will support this bill following consultations with local communities, and as a result of a Senate committee inquiry that Labor insisted on so that the parliament was able to receive submissions from the local stakeholders in the Cape. The feedback from local groups is that income management in Cape York is working and having a positive impact on the local communities. I want to detail some of those views for the Senate. The BBN Aboriginal Corporation in Mossman Gorge says:

There is a broad base of support in Mossman Gorge for the direction of the reform journey that we have been on and need to stay on. Welfare Reform has supported good progress but still there is still a lot to be done.

In their submission, the Coen Regional Aboriginal Corporation said:

Giving local people real power to hold other community members to account through the FRC gets our 100% support.

They note that:

Coen now has the best school attendance of any Indigenous community school in Queensland and we are the only one that can beat the Queensland Average School Attendance.

The Aurukun Shire Council said:

The FRC must stay strong for our people. In Aurukun we have been down a hard road but we need to keep on going to make more positive changes.

The Hope Vale Aboriginal Shire Council stated:

In Hope Vale the FRC has done some very good work since 2008, especially in terms of school attendance … The FRC and Cape York Welfare Reform have made big, transformational changes to our community and this is very clear to people that knew this place beforehand and now.

The Cape York Institute made it clear:

Income Management applied through the FRC model gives Indigenous people the power and authority to help their own community members build basic capability to understand their primary obligations to their children and their community, and their obligation to use welfare payments to pay the rent and electricity, and to provide food and clothing for the household.

They further note:

A number of people, particularly women stay on Income Management because it protects them from humbugging. This is not a sign of further dependency, but a sign of people wanting to meet their basic responsibilities using the best methods available to them.

The Cape York Institute also expressed concern that many of the advances made as a result of income management in the region would be lost if the system was to abruptly end on 30 June 2017.

This last point is an important one. The existing arrangements are due to expire on 30 June, and the manner in which this government has handled this legislation has been disappointing. Unfortunately, this legislation has been rushed through by the government, allowing only a very short Senate inquiry. The government could have introduced this legislation into the parliament months ago so as to enable a more thorough consultative process. The last evaluation of the Cape York Welfare Reform was released in 2012, so in our view it is time that an updated evaluation be carried out. There really should have been a further evaluation before this extension. We call on the government to make sure that a proper independent evaluation is done in the next two years. Nonetheless, we are satisfied that the continuation of income management does have the support of the leadership of the local communities and we will support this bill today.

Labor believes in community-driven approaches to deal with chronic alcohol abuse. Any legislation that extends income management in a particular jurisdiction must be driven and supported by the local community. We understand that the vast majority of social security recipients are more than capable of managing their personal finances. However, where individual communities believe that income management can make a positive difference we will discuss it with them. Labor's position on income management is very simple. We do not believe it should be rolled out on the national scale. We do not believe it should be imposed on communities that do not want it.

Shadow Minister Macklin has personally spoken with the mayors in each of the communities in the area affected by this legislation. They believe that income management is a positive thing for their communities and they support its continuation. As the Indigenous affairs minister in the previous Labor government, Shadow Minister Macklin was responsible for working with the Aboriginal leaders in the Cape to deliver these changes. The Cape York Partnership's work is based on the principles set out in Noel Pearson's 2005 Cape York agenda. The Cape York Welfare Reform Agenda aims to support people in the communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge to take responsibility for the wellbeing of their families and their communities. The primary aim is to ensure that kids are safe, fed and educated.

The Family Responsibilities Commission was established under Queensland legislation in 2008. As the Family Responsibilities Commission's submission sets out, local commissioners are elders or respected community members who encourage individuals appearing before the commission to take the necessary steps to make lasting changes that will benefit their health, wellbeing, home and community life. The submission goes on to say:

The Local Commissioners have continued to grow in local authority since 2008 with the majority of conferences being conducted in the four Welfare Reform Communities without the presence of the Commissioner or his Deputy Commissioner in the financial year to date.

All Commissioners have equal authority in the decision-making process.

The authority of the FRC is the strength of its Local Commissioners, with decisions in conference involving community members (FRC clients) being made by their own Indigenous leaders.

The commission commenced operating on 1 July 2008 and conferencing began on 12 August 2008, with the first sitting being held in Coen. The primary objective of the commission, as set out in the FRC Act, is to hold conferences with community members to encourage individuals and families to engage in socially responsible standards of behaviour whilst promoting the interests, rights and wellbeing of children and other vulnerable persons living in the community.

The commission may work with a community member who is a social security recipient living in an area prescribed by regulation as a welfare reform community, if the person or their partner is in receipt of certain welfare payments. The FRC can direct part of an individual's income support payments to be managed by Centrelink to pay for the priority needs of their family. The percentage of payment income managed varies between 60 per cent, 75 per cent or 90 per cent.

Since Cape York Welfare Reform began in July 2008, the four communities have seen improved school attendance, care and protection of children and community safety. A 2012 evaluation of Cape York Welfare Reform found that progress has been made at the foundational level in stabilising social circumstances and fostering behavioural change, particularly in the areas of sending children to school, caring for children and increasing individual responsibility.

I want to reiterate that the most recent evaluation of income management was in Cape York in 2012. A further evaluation is overdue. We thank the various local community groups for making submissions to the Senate inquiry at very late notice. Those submissions have played an important role in showing that the communities support the continuation of income management in Cape York. On that basis Labor will support this bill.

I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Queensland Commission Income Management Regime) Bill 2017. This bill extends the income management element of the Cape York Welfare Reform initiative for a further two years. The Greens, as I am sure everybody in this place knows, have opposed compulsory income management since it was introduced by the Howard government in 2007. In fact, the 10th anniversary is tomorrow, and I will speak further on that in my adjournment contribution. This will occur in the communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale, Mossman Gorge and Doomadgee. Income management there is part of a sanction that can be imposed by the Families Responsibilities Commission on individuals who have breached their obligations. I should note here that this is a very different sort of approach to addressing some of the issues in communities, and it is very different to the Northern Territory intervention. However, it still includes a compulsory income management component. We do not support that. Income management is also intended to act as a deterrent to encourage individuals to uphold their obligations.

There was an extremely short Senate committee inquiry into this bill, where no hearing took place. I am extremely critical of that for two reasons. One is because we received very few submissions. We received no submissions from individuals, because they simply did not have time and there was not time to adequately contact them. Those are the people that I want to hear from—the people that this affects. We heard from organisations, but we did not hear from other organisations that we would have heard from if there had been more time. We also would have had time to listen to the evidence about outcomes from this process. There were only seven submissions received, none of which provided any documented evidence. There was a lot of talk about perceptions about how things are better. I clearly remember that that is what happened during the intervention and some of the evaluations there. There were perceptions that thing were better. When those were actually tested, in fact the outcomes in those communities were the same as comparable communities that did not have income management. So I am very wary when we talk about 'perceived as better' when that is not properly evaluated through properly conducted, peer reviewed evaluations.

The major source of information about income management in Cape York is the evaluation report commissioned by the government in 2012. In fact it was unable to demonstrate conclusively that income management in Cape York had met its stated aims. This is the same thing that happened with the Northern Territory intervention, where the final evaluation in fact showed that the intervention met none of its objectives. The evaluation found that there had been some improvements in areas such as school attendance and reductions in crime. However, income management is just one of the number of measures that have been implemented by the Cape York Welfare Reform initiative, and which contributes to these changes. Two of the evaluation report's authors, Ilan Katz and Margaret Raven, subsequently noted in the Indigenous Law Bulletin that it is difficult to draw conclusions from this given that many other Indigenous communities in Queensland have also shown the same improvements. In other words, you cannot prove that income management is the tool that has driven these particular changes. In the report it states:

… the evidence suggests that the impact of the local FRC Commissioners is in their listening, guiding and supporting role, rather than in the exercising of their punitive powers to order income management.

It also states in the report:

The data indicate that some community members had become habituated to income management or had found ways around it. This appears in some cases to have produced unintended consequences, such as clients on income management harassing relatives for access to alcohol or drugs. It appears that for this group income management (and welfare reform more generally) has little effect.

The evaluation report also notes that there is some community dissent about income management and the basics card, including concern about the paternalistic nature of the intervention. The majority report said that the committee inquiry points to a survey conducted as part of the evaluation, saying that 78 per cent of people said that they felt their lives were better. I refer again to the Northern Territory intervention where people said that they felt their lives were better when, in fact, a proper qualitative and quantitative analysis showed that there was not any difference between the outcomes in that community and other communities.

On the weight of evidence, the Australian Greens believe that income management is a failed and expensive policy that the government is persisting with in the absence of real justification. Compulsory income management is a paternalistic top-down approach. Voluntary income management is something different and should be treated differently. There are a number of other programs that are not coercive in nature, such as Centrepay, that could be used to help people manage their money better. I also think that the sorts of supports that the FRC provides, which is that guidance and that support that was articulated in the report, mean we can better support people, offer wrap-around services and ensure they get access to the services that are needed.

We do support direct investment in programs and communities that address the underlying causes of disadvantage that people are facing, rather than income management which is expensive to implement and does not address the underlying causes. Money spent on income management around Australia could be better invested directly in communities in order to provide specialist direct programs—for example, to better assist the FRC in terms of better access to programs such as financial management, some of those wrap-around services, education and better access to fresh food et cetera.

We do not believe that the evidence supports the continuation of compulsory income management. We do not support this bill, but we do acknowledge the work of the Families Responsibilities Commission. We do acknowledge that it was a different approach taken to the intervention; however, we do not think compulsory income management works. The evidence is not there. There has not been any further evaluation to back up the government rolling out another two years of income management—there has been no evaluation of that program since 2012. The evaluation of the Northern Territory intervention, which was subsequent to that, shows that the Northern Territory intervention and new income management did not meet their objectives. I think we need to be better evaluating Cape York, and look at where we can invest the resources that are committed. I do not mind the resources being committed; I just object to the way that those resources are being committed. We do not support this bill.

I thank all senators who have contributed. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I ask that the Greens dissent be recorded.

The Greens dissent is so recorded.

As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I have a bit of homework to do here! Pursuant to order and at the request of the chairs of the respective committees, I present reports from legislation committees, except the Education and Employment Legislation Committee and the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, in respect of the 2017-18 budget estimates, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committees.

Ordered that the reports be printed.

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Trade and Investment Growth, I present the report of the committee on the trade relationship between Australia and Indonesia. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Question agreed to.

I present the 171st report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties on international trade in endangered species, women in combat duties and generation IV nuclear energy. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I seek leave to incorporate the tabling statement into Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

Report 171: International Trade in Endangered Species – Amendments; Women in Combat Duties – Reservation Withdrawal; Generation IV Nuclear Energy - Accession

Mr President, today I rise to make a statement concerning the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties' Report 171 which contains the Committee's review of three separate treaty actions:

Mr President, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora is a multilateral convention which regulates the international trade in endangered species. Endangered species are listed in three appendices to the Convention according to the need for protection.

In 2016, the 17th Conference of the Parties agreed to 51 listing proposals, of which only 11 species are relevant to Australia. These include six terrestrial species and five marine species.

The amendments appear to receive broad support within industry and the community.

The majority of the amendments automatically entered into force 90 days following the Conference of the Parties, on 2 January 2017. The amendments therefore became binding on Australia prior to their presentation into the Parliament and before the Committee was able to conduct its review of the proposed amendments.

The Committee reiterates previous concerns about the timeframes for the Committee's consideration of CITES amendments. We cannot perform a proper oversight role if treaties come into force before being tabled in the Parliament.

On previous occasions the Committee has been notified of amendment proposals prior to the Conference of the Parties. This lessens the risk associated with the automatic entry into force clause of the Agreement.

In this report, the Committee asks the Department to notify it of future proposed amendments prior to the Conference of the Parties.

If the Department is unable to do this, the Committee recommends that the Government lodge reservations to amendments adopted at future Conferences of the Parties so that the parliamentary review of such treaty actions can be conducted before Australia is legally bound.

The report notes that this is the approach of other parliamentary democracies, including Canada.

Mr President, the Committee's report also considers the withdrawal of Australia's reservation to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

In 1983, Australia became a signatory to the Convention with two reservations. The first reservation relates to maternity leave. The second reservation relates to women in combat roles and is the subject of the proposed treaty action.

In 2011, the then Government removed restrictions on women serving in combat roles within the Australian Defence Force. The reservation to the Convention is therefore inconsistent with current policy and is unnecessary.

The Committee strongly supports the commitment of successive governments to gender equality.

The Committee heard evidence about the current steps the ADF is taking to recruit and retain women; including the introduction of more flexibility during each period of a working life. However there is still a significant road ahead before gender balance is achieved. The ADF must make the most of the many talented women currently serving in the ADF and those who may join in the future. While not every woman will be capable of serving in combat roles, neither is every man. Access to such roles should be based on merit and ability, not gender.

Therefore, the Committee strongly supports the proposed treaty action to withdraw the reservation with respect to women serving in combat roles and recommends that binding treaty action be taken.

Lastly Mr President, the Committee's report considers Australia's accession to the Framework Agreement for International Collaboration on Research and Development of Generation IV Nuclear Energy Systems.

The Framework Agreement establishes the basis for international cooperation to develop generation IV nuclear reactors. These reactors will use fuel more efficiently, reduce waste production, be economically competitive, and meet stringent safety standards.

Australia possesses a technological lead in the development of materials that are expected to be used in generation IV reactors. The Framework Agreement appears to offer significant opportunities for Australian research and technology for many years into the future.

On that basis, the Committee supports Australia's accession to the Framework Agreement and recommends that binding treaty action be taken.

Mr President, on behalf of the Committee, I commend the report to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

I present report No. 1 of 2017 of the Senate Standing Committee of Senators' Interests.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I present the report of the Community Affairs References Committee on the future of Australia's aged-care sector workforce together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

We have made 19 recommendations in this report. I really thank everybody who made a contribution to the inquiry. I thank the secretariat. Senator Polley wants to continue talking. I will expand later when I get another opportunity, but I want to make sure everyone else gets an opportunity to make sure we get the business of the Senate done.

I just want to thank Senator Siewert for the way in which she chaired this inquiry. It was a long overdue inquiry. I want to put on record our thanks to all of those who made submissions—particularly those who took the time to come and be witnesses before us. This inquiry is so important. I sincerely urge people to read that report. It is a unanimous report, so it has been signed off by government senators, the Greens and Labor. I think there are very important issues around the workforce and where we need to go forward.

Obviously, we do not have a lot of time tonight, because I understand there are speakers on other issues, but it is really important that the new minister, who has said numerous times that he wants to work with the sector and he wants to work together to ensure that the aged-care sector has a strong workforce going forward, now has these 19 recommendations. I urge as many people as possible to read that report not only from within the sector but also family members of those who are already in care or anticipating that they will be in care, because I think it is really useful and a very important report. It is an enormously important sector.

I want to also put on record my thanks to the Community Affairs References Committee secretariat. We all know that the Community Affairs References Committee is a committee that has an enormous workload—it sincerely does—so I want to put on record my appreciation for the secretariat and the staff there and thank them very much for what they are doing.

I also put on record that we should never forget that the framework for the changes that have happened over the last three to four years have been brought about by us, when we were in government and Mark Butler was the Minister for Mental Health and Ageing. In consultation with and with the support of the opposition of the day, who are now the government, as well as the sector, he brought about a new framework and foundation for the future of aged care in this country. With the best intentions of the best framework that you have, you must always remember that there needs to be review. We are all waiting with anticipation for the report from David Tune, who is conducting an inquiry that was legislated to review what is happening in the aged care sector. On top of that, we know that there is an enormous issue facing this sector and the Australian community. We are an ageing population. We are all living longer, which is a good thing, but it means that people who want to age in their own home need more support to be able to do that. What we also know about people as they age in their home is that when they do go into residential homes for care it is at the high end of medical conditions. There are usually a number of morbidities that they have to face.

Also critical to any changes going forward is the workforce. The government has set up a task force to look at workforce issues. The government must take the leadership role in this. They are the major contributors from a financial point of view and they have a moral obligation to ensure that moving forward we have the best aged care system that we can have. Quite clearly, there needs to be a national accreditation for those people who are working in this sector and there also needs to be more incentives for people to gain further skills, whether they are working as carers on the floor or whether they are nurses working in the sector. We need to ensure that those people are recognised. For years we have needed to ensure that people working in this sector receive the remuneration that they deserve. We need to ensure that older Australians have the respect that they deserve in their later years. Whether people are being supported at home or are in a residential home, we need to ensure that the workers involved in their care are acknowledged through remuneration, are respected and have the opportunity to have a career path going forward. With every change—and we have had a lot over the last three or four years—in consumer directed care, which is there to support people in their own homes and will be rolled out into residential homes, we need to ensure that the workforce does not suffer any further issues around casualisation of their employment. Those carers and the people they are looking after, older Australians, need to be supported to ensure we have the best workforce, and they need the opportunity to have a career.

Notice has now been given. The report has 19 recommendations. It is a really good report that has been brought down. It is now up to this government and this minister to ensure that we get a very speedy and comprehensive response. We have asked for a number of things to happen. One of them is obviously to ensure that this new task force has representation from unions and older Australians on it. We need everyone who is involved in this sector making those decisions going forward. We need them to examine whether a national register of carers who work in this sector or a code of conduct for health workers will be adequate. We have also asked the government to review whether or not there should be a ratio of nurses to residents in a residential home. We have not gone any further than saying that this should be examined.

There were a number of senators who participated in this inquiry. I am pleased that we went from west to north to south. We went right across the country. We went out to regional Australia. This is a very good report. I commend it not only to those in the chamber here but particularly to the Minister for Aged Care and the government as a whole. This is an opportunity to turn things around as far as having a highly skilled, accredited workforce going forward, because, after all, every one of us is going to have a loved one or find ourselves at some time in the future needing this support.

I rise on a point of order. I am sure Senator Polley sought leave to continue her remarks.

Noted.

I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the coming anniversary of the election of the Turnbull government, because whilst we are on our break the 12th month since the Turnbull government was elected will come up. We know what has happened in the last couple of weeks. We have seen the dysfunction and disunity on the Finkel report. We have seen the dysfunction and disunity this week with regard to Gonski 2.0. But I wanted to focus on what we have seen in Queensland over the last 12 months, because it really is a sorry tale that is particularly disappointing to many Queenslanders.

At a time when we know that there are some significant economic challenges in our state, this government has failed to deliver. They went through the election campaign last year, promising all sorts of projects up and down the state, but the reality almost 12 months on is there has been a failure to act on some of those key promises. The obvious one which deserves significant attention is the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. The National Party have been championing this for years. For three years they have been talking about it. For 12 months they have had it set up, yet it still has not created one job in regional Queensland and still has not spent one dollar. It has no doubt been a failure.

The other, particularly disappointing program that I highlight—Senator Nash did this—was from when they went around regional Queensland during the election campaign, promising regional jobs packages. Here we are 12 months later, still with not one job created and not one dollar spent, particularly in areas where there is significant unemployment. This government went around making promises and once again have failed to deliver.

There has also been a real slowness to act and crack down on the 457 visa issue, something that is of particular concern in regional Queensland, particularly as we are seeing an increase in labour hire and casualisation. That is another failure of this government to act.

And then of course there is the growing clamour for a banking royal commission. We are seeing lots of talk from the member for Dawson, but when push comes to shove he has always got an excuse for why he will not actually back a royal commission into banking. Again we have seen that in the other place in the last half hour. He talked a big game and he crossed the floor, but he did it on a vote that did not matter. We will absolutely be holding him to account because, when you look at those economic circumstances in regional Queensland, the looming penalty rates are going to be a real blow to those communities not only in regional Queensland but around Australia.

But the failure from this government continues. We also saw no money for infrastructure funding in Queensland out of the budget. We saw no commitment to Cross River Rail. The state Labor government in Queensland have had to go it alone on that vital infrastructure project for the growing South-East Corner. It is no surprise that the federal government did not put any money into Cross River Rail considering that in the five months before the budget was delivered the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, did not set foot in Queensland once. He had actually been to Germany more times than he had been to Queensland as he prepared that budget. It is no wonder it was a failure in the eyes of Queenslanders when the key architect of it does not spend any time in Queensland.

We also see this week cuts to education. If this is supported by this government, it will see in Queensland over the next two years a $732 million cut to public schools. They talk about innovation and agility, but how is that going to improve educational outcomes in Queensland and in particular regional Queensland, where we know the job opportunities are not as great as they are in other places? That is something we need to have a real focus on and which this government has not been able to.

And, again, the dithering on energy: we know they have failed to deliver on policies and announcements they made during the election campaign, but they have dithered on energy. They are backtracking on Finkel. They made some announcements today that are not going to have a short-term beneficial impact on the gas market that is so important to manufacturing jobs and jobs from industry—once again, another cross against this government. Here we are, almost 12 months on—a government that has failed Queensland; it will continue to fail Queensland, and we will continue to hold it to account on that matter.

This week the government is increasing taxes, such as the Medicare levy. An Australian earning just $80,000 a year will be forced to fork out an additional $400 a year. We should pause for a moment to reflect on the fact that $400 is a lot of money for Australians earning $80,000 a year. How many people on that income—or even on a somewhat higher income—could spare $400 and not notice it? This increase will make it harder for them to take a holiday, buy a car or put together a deposit for a house. So much for the better days ahead.

At the time he announced the hike in the Medicare tax, the Treasurer, Mr Morrison, described it as 'helping out a mate'. I think Mr Morrison has a funny idea of what mates do. If somebody took money from me with a threat of sending me to jail if I failed to let them, I would not call them a mate. At best, I would call them a person with a monumental sense of self-entitlement who needs to get their own house in order before getting into mine. I might call them a parasite, but certainly not a mate. There is nothing fair about a tax that is effectively a fine for doing well. Mateship is supposed to be about fairness and mutual support. It is supposed to be about give and take, but it seems that the major parties know only how to take. This government is like a deadbeat mate—the one who expects everyone else to help him move house but goes missing when it is his turn to help. It is only later that you discover that he was going out with your sister. This government is the type of mate who drinks all your beer, disappears when it is his turn to shout, and vomits on your couch. It is the kind of mate who borrows your car and ruins the gearbox.

This government is not a mate—but it could be. If it got its spending under control, the government would not need to pick our pockets. It could stop giving away billions each year to noncitizens. It could discover the wonderful world of means testing and stop handing out money to people who are not poor and do not need it. You may say I am dreaming, but I imagine a time when the government could be a real mate, a wingman who is always looking out for our best interests and never cramping our style. It could be like that person for whom we could do a favour with total confidence that the favour could be returned. And like a real friend, it would tell it like it is, instead of hiding the truth by calling something a levy instead of a tax or by describing wasteful spending as an investment. By using euphemisms and spin, the government tries to hide the truth with all the sophistry of a teenager caught shoplifting condoms at the supermarket. Who knows: if the government cleaned up its own act, it might one day be able to give some money back so that its mates could spend their own hard-earned money in the way they know is best for them. We could all shout each other a beer to celebrate. Sadly, none of the major parties seem to know what true mateship looks like, because real mates do not force mates to hand over their hard-earned money.

(   Ten years ago tomorrow I was sitting in my office with a group of senior Aboriginal women from Central Australia who had tears rolling down their faces. That was because they were responding to the just-announced Northern Territory intervention, the emergency response by the then Howard government. They had tears rolling down their faces and were extremely distressed because they knew straight away what that meant for their communities—it meant that their communities had not been consulted, that they knew nothing about it and that the government intended at that stage, and in fact did, send the Army into their communities. On that day the government said that they were going to compulsorily health check every Aboriginal child in the Northern Territory. Fortunately, that particular part of the intervention did not go ahead—it was not compulsory—but the Army did go into those communities, the intervention did take community assets away from Aboriginal communities and great big blue and white signs were put up outside 73 Aboriginal communities banning things, labelling those communities, instilling in people a deep sense of shame and humiliation.

I must say that deep sense of shame and humiliation continues for many people in the Northern Territory. They introduced government business managers into each community—mainly non-Aboriginal people in fenced off enclaves that were then responsible for a large part of the decision making process. Those government business managers quickly became known in the communities as the gingerbread men. The intervention overrode the Racial Discrimination Act, undermining the fundamental rights of Aboriginal people. It took away their control, and their sense of control, and introduced income management and the BasicsCard. People spoke to me at that time of ration days, feeling like they had gone back to the sugarbag days when people turned up to get their rations. They talked about the fact that they had to stand in separate queues in the supermarket, and how humiliating that was. They talked about the card not working, and once again they talked of the deep shame and humiliation they felt—the humiliation they felt about the blue and white signs on the main roads into towns. Of course the prescribing of those communities meant a ban on alcohol, and of course on porn.

The intervention was a clear sign to Aboriginal people that they were not capable of managing their own affairs and that the government was prepared to ride over them with no consultation, as I said when I began. The Aboriginal women who were in my office were not consulted—they were not consulted in the beginning, and they were not consulted about what they felt about the Little Children are Sacred report—the very report that the government claimed that the intervention was about implementing. But it did not implement the recommendations from that report—it was just an excuse for the government of the day, the Howard government, to dog whistle in 2007. The ALP jumped right on board and went right along with the intervention. The Greens were the only party that opposed the intervention, that opposed income management from the get-go. We looked at the evidence; we looked in vain overseas to see whether compulsory income management had changed things overseas. There was no evidence to show that. In fact the evidence from overseas very clearly showed that taking away control over some of the most basic parts of your life—the way you spend your income, the way you make decisions—in fact impacts on your self esteem and has the reverse unintended consequence of taking that sense of self-determination and control away. In other words, it has negative impacts.

There was a huge outpouring from communities about their sense of desperation to make sure that this did not go ahead. Communities knew what this meant. They were also deeply, deeply worried that their men were being accused across-the-board of being perpetrators. They wanted to make sure that communities were safe, but they did not want the AFP and the Army coming in. The Greens listened. That is why we opposed this intervention, and why we continue, to this day, to oppose this intervention and its continuing rollout. This government is going to be rolling out another two years of income management, despite the fact that there is no evidence to show that compulsory income management works. The 2014 final evaluation of this program shows that it met none of its objectives. And we know—from the awful statistics that we see, even in the media just yesterday, on the continuing rate of Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory who are going into out-of-home care—that it is outrageous that we are continuing to spend so much money on income management and these failed measures. I should say that the intervention turned into Stronger Communities thanks to the ALP in 2012. These failed measures have not worked. The final evaluation showed that, but this government continues to roll on another two years of income management.

It is a classic case of policy built on ideology rather than evidence, and, to begin with, the government did not actually have an evaluation process in place. We had to force them to put an evaluation in place. Part of me thinks that they probably did not put the evaluation in place because they never intended to listen to the evidence that came out of evaluation. That is quite plain, because if they did, after 2014 they would have called stumps. They would have said, 'It didn't meet any of its objectives.' In fact, some of the evidence suggests that it has had a negative effect and made people more welfare dependent, when this government keeps claiming that they actually want to address 'welfare dependency'—in their words.

They have spent over $1 billion on this. When you add in the rollout of the income management measure that this place just approved—we did not, of course; the Greens did not agree—and you put that $1.46 million into the pot, and you put in the $145 million that the government is rolling into the pot for rolling on income management in the Northern Territory, it is about $1.3 billion. Imagine what that $1.3 billion could have done for communities in the Northern Territory if we had actually had evidence based policy, if we had actually put sound fields in every classroom that Aboriginal kids go to in the Northern Territory. That is still not done. Imagine if we had put the money into properly addressing otitis media so it is not the pandemic that it is in Aboriginal communities in northern Australia. Imagine if we had invested that money in wraparound services, in early intervention services, in early literacy and numeracy programs for those children who cannot hear, in justice targets to ensure that we address the climbing incarceration rates in this country of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Imagine if we had actually put it into juvenile justice programs, or if we had put it into justice reinvestment so that young people did not end up in prison and we did not see those escalating rates of incarceration. I can imagine so many better ways that we could have spent that $1.3 billion. There have been 10 years of wasted opportunity in this country. It makes me want to weep, literally, along with the women who must still be weeping for the lost opportunities—those women who I saw 10 years ago tomorrow, sitting in my office, when the intervention that never should have been perpetrated on Aboriginal communities began. When we mark the 10th anniversary I, unlike the government, will be in Alice Springs on the weekend, talking to the communities and those people who were affected. I will be listening to their lived experience of those 10 wasted years.

I rise this evening to commemorate the tragic passing of a young Aboriginal woman, Alice Daiguma Eather. Alice was one of the 'stingray sisters' of her mother's clan, the Wurnal people—saltwater people. She was born in Brisbane and attended New Farm primary and Kelvin Grove high school with her sisters Grace and Noni. She was raised both in Brisbane and in her mother's country, Maningrida, in Arnhem Land.

Alice, by all accounts, was an extraordinary and inspirational woman and it is tragic that her life has been cut short. She was driven, strong and passionate, and I am proud to be able to pay tribute to her life in this way. Alice was a teacher, an activist, a poet, a songwriter, a musician, an artist and a community leader. She was deeply passionate about her language and her country.

Shortly after graduating in Maningrida as the first ever Ndjebbana-speaking teacher in history, Alice's work was recognised when she won the Indigenous Educator of the Year Award in 2016 for the Arnhem region. In 2014 Alice was also awarded the Northern Territory's Young Achiever's Environment Award, and she was the founder and leader of the Protect Arnhem Land organisation.

Alice fought to protect her country and the waters of the Arafura Sea that mean everything to her Wurnal clan from gas drilling. When she learned that an American company planned to drill the gas off the coast of Arnhem Land, she mobilised her local community and took the fight all the way to Sydney and Canberra. Alice's work was immortalised in a documentary, Stingray Sisters, which gained international acclaim.

Listening to Alice's poetry you can hear her passion and commitment to fighting for Indigenous rights and protecting country. Her celebrated poem My Story is Your Story is a powerful example of what an extraordinary woman Alice was. I would like to read a few lines of that poem:

When I see a map of Country, I see land, sea and family

When they see a map of Country, they see mining fantasies

When I see the sea-beds, I see sacred sites

When they see the sea-beds, they see dollar signs

When I see exploration permit 266, I see them trying to reduce my country into three digits …

Because of her efforts, last year the company withdrew their application.

Right across Australia, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people alike are fighting to protect their land and waters from those whose only motivation is profit. I know that, thanks to Alice and those like her, we are seeing a shift in the way our country treats our sacred places and the relationship our Indigenous people share with them and also on the importance of maintaining a healthy environment over profit.

Alice was a leader and a role model for her community. Her loss has been sorely felt, but her legacy will not be forgotten. I will finish with the final lines of that poem:

When we cry, we cry the ocean

When we sweat, we sweat the ocean

When we drink, we drink the rivers and the rain, and we wash into the ocean where the cycle starts again.

I want to now speak briefly on another important issue. For many years, Gold Coast residents have faced continued uncertainty about a proposed major casino development on The Spit. Courageous local groups, including Save Our Spit, Save Our Broadwater, Main Beach Association and Gecko, which is the Gold Coast hinterland environment organisation, have been fighting to keep this land out of the hands of greedy property developers. The Spit is the last public undeveloped coastal green space left on the Gold Coast. The proposed casino development is nothing more than a public asset sale by greedy politicians on behalf of their corporate developer mates. Seventy per cent of Gold Coast residents oppose this development on The Spit. The Queensland Labor government promised that they would listen to residents' concerns, but they have recently backflipped and now they back this development. The project's developers, the ASF Group, and their business partners have donated $110,000 to the LNP and at least $40,000 to the Labor Party since 2013. There are concerns that key steps in the EPBC Act approval process for a proposed adjacent cruise ship terminal have been skipped by the federal Minister for the Environment and Energy. There is no transparency and there is a murky network of lobbyists, politicians and political favours behind this project.

Queenslanders have had enough. It is time for an alternative vision of how we build our cities, a vision that puts people before profit and is led from the grassroots. Residents have a right to make and remake the city they live in, and it is far past time that those in power recognised that.

In the Brisbane context, residents have been dealt a really dodgy deal by Labor's Queen's Wharf mega casino proposal. The Queen's Wharf proposal is one of the biggest public sell-offs in Queensland's history and it threatens massive harm to our community. The government plans to hand the developers public land amounting to almost 10 per cent of the CBD on a 99-year lease, which is of course a public asset sale by any other name. The development includes 2½ thousand parasitic poker machines and an unlimited number of harmful, addictive electronic gaming tables. Gambling addiction, particularly from pokies, rigged and designed to addict, leads to family breakdown, violence and broken lives. Queenslanders lose almost $4 billion a year on the pokies. That is about $8,000 every minute. Research shows not only that the larger a gambling venue the more dangerous it is for problem gambling but that areas with more pokies have higher rates of domestic violence.

The Queens Wharf project also proposes thousands of luxury apartments at the same time as the city is experiencing an affordable-housing crisis. The casino developers and their business partners have given over $200,000 in donations to the Queensland Labor and LNP parties since 2013, and there is an alarming lack of transparency around this development. Key documents are being kept hidden from the public or simply do not exist. These include the casino licence, the community impact statement, community consultation reports, the cost-benefit analysis or the business case, the 99-year lease and the probity checks on the casino developers.

Earlier this year I launched the Casino Leaks campaign, which called for anyone with access to these secret documents to leak them to me to share in this place using parliamentary privilege. In a shocking abuse of process, I was referred to Queensland's Crime and Corruption Commission by the Minister for State Development for trying to uncover the truth. My message to Queensland Labor is: what are you afraid of? If this casino is such a good deal, show us the documents; show us the proof.

Let me be clear: the Greens think that the Queens Wharf site should be redeveloped, but the current proposal is a massive wasted opportunity. Why can't it be a world-renowned public open green space, affordable housing, a research precinct or a cultural precinct? Why can't we genuinely ask the community what they would like done with their public space in their capital city? Brisbane residents are already fighting back, and they are determined to stop this megacasino. And I look forward to helping them do it.

I rise tonight to again call on the federal government to commit to global women's health by making a pledge in support of the women and girls around the world. The upcoming opportunity for the government to make this urgent commitment is the Global Summit on Family Planning in London on 11 July—World Population Day. Priti Patel, Britain's current Secretary of State for International Development, has said that the UK expects the international summit to secure extra funding from the global community for family planning, just like the She Decides pledging conference that occurred in March this year in Belgium did.

Ms Patel wants this summit to represent a step change on family planning. It may even end up being the next phase of family planning's global rescue mission. Why do we need that? It is all because of President Trump's reintroduction and dramatic expansion of the global gag rule. This rule strips foreign NGOs of all US health funding if they use funds from any source to offer information about abortions, provide abortions or advocate for liberalised abortion laws. The rule now applies to 15 times as much USAID funding and is resulting in over US$9 billion of critical global health funding being cut.

The result of this damaging policy will be the dramatic reduction of available health services and a restriction of women's choices right across the developing world. This will create a crisis for the human rights of women and girls, including their health, their safety and child protection. No woman or girl should have to risk her life, but any country, like Australia, that has an objective of achieving effective coverage in health and reproductive health services, particularly in developing countries, must consider this global gag rule a threat to that objective. Any country, like Australia, that has signed the sustainable development goals to reduce maternal mortality and to empower women to make more informed decisions about their health must consider this global gag rule a threat to those goals. This is such a backward step for gender equality. It sends a message to the world that women do not have the right to make autonomous decisions.

A woman's access to family planning should not be a political football to be given and withdrawn depending on who is in government. The image—that photo—of rich white men in suits surrounding President Trump as he signed the order was awfully symbolic. But the thing is: those men will not suffer the effects of their decision. It is the poor women in the world and the poorest countries in the world who will pay the price. Women's mortality and morbidity due to illegal and unsafe abortions is likely to increase. Already an estimated 225 million women globally lack access to modern contraception. Complications in pregnancy are the second leading killer of girls aged 15 to 19, and every day 830 women die from preventable causes linked to pregnancy and childbirth. That is over 30 per hour. It is one since I started speaking. But cutting this funding will not mean fewer abortions. All the evidence from the last period when the global gag was in place shows that the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions increased when the global gag rule came in.

A study by researchers at Stanford University found that after President George W Bush's albeit weaker version of the global gag rule came into effect in 2001 in African countries that had been using this family planning funding the abortion rate increased. During its eight years the Bush global gag rule added about 36 million unwanted pregnancies to the world and 15 million abortions. In practical terms the Trump global gag rule means 21,700 mothers will lose their lives between 2017 and 2020, 6.5 million unintended pregnancies will not be prevented and 2.1 million abortions will be unsafe. In addition, expect 300,000 more pregnancy-related deaths. The Trump global gag rule means the withdrawal of treatment from 275,000 pregnant women living with HIV, whose children may miss out on crucial antiretroviral drugs at the moment of birth—a treatment shown to be extremely effective at preventing transmission of HIV from mothers to their infants. The global gag rule means 70 million condoms will not be distributed to prevent unintended pregnancies, HIV and other STIs, while 725,000 HIV tests will not be provided to enable people to know their HIV status. These are statistics that are catastrophic, but they are preventable.

In February this year I wrote to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ms Bishop, asking her to intervene on behalf of the women and girls around the world. I urged her to ensure Australia joined the governments of the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Canada, Denmark and Norway in making a significant contribution to the international funding pool designed to maintain family planning services across the developing world as best as possible. Minister Bishop responded to me that she had sent Dr Sharman Stone, our Ambassador for Women and Girls, to the March pledging conference known as 'She Decides'—but that was it. Dr Stone went to the pledging conference, but she went without any funding. In her letter, Minister Bishop committed to nothing but a motherhood statement. There was no funding committed by Australia. Well, there is an opportunity for Australia to change that outcome this time at the London pledging conference.

But why did they contribute no funding? Under the coalition Australia's development assistance has shrivelled to just a pitiful 0.22 per cent of gross national income—the lowest level since comparable records began in 1970 and well below the OECD average. By contrast, the UK's Conservative government has held fast to the principles it signed up to in the Sustainable Development Goals. In 2013 the UK met the commitment established by the UN in 1970 to spend 0.7 per cent of its gross national income on aid. In 2015 it passed a bill legally protecting that commitment. While Labor in Australia were in government, overseas development assistance increased from 0.28 per cent of gross national income in 2007-08 to 0.37 in 2013-14. Indeed, when we were in government, we were on track to reach 0.5 per cent by 2017-18. We repealed the Howard government's Reagan-lite prohibition on Australian international development assistance to organisations that deliver family-planning services, and we doubled the funding of family-planning services helping women in developing countries.

Whilst I acknowledge this government's ongoing support for the SPRINT initiative, which is funding sexual and reproductive health services in crisis settings in the Asia-Pacific, and also the government's promise of ensuring that 80 per cent of Australia's aid budget addresses gender equality, women's issues and empowerment, this is simply not enough, because our aid budget is not enough. Australia must do more by increasing our financial support for sexual and reproductive health to fill that gap created by the global gag rule and fostering financial and political support for the United Nations Population Fund. The UK summit on 11 July in London is an opportunity for Australia to start showing some regional and global leadership based on our Australian values. It is an opportunity for the government to show its commitment to gender equality. I urge this government to make Australia a significant part of the rescue mission for family-planning funding to defend freedom of choice and self-determination of women and girls throughout the world. (Time expired)

These simple yet powerful lyrics from a classic song embody my Australia:

We are one, but we are many

And from all the lands on earth we come.

We share a dream and sing with one voice,

"I am, you are, we are Australian."

We are a nation of many people, from many countries, cultures and religions, but we are all Australian. In this parliament, we have Muslims and Christians, Australian-born and overseas-born, Indigenous, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer. We are all Australian. That we are all Australian is what defines us as individuals and as a nation.

My Australia is one where we do not just tolerate diversity; we celebrate it. We understand that it makes us richer, stronger and better as a community and as a nation. I grew up and live in Melbourne's west. My office is in Coburg in Melbourne's north. I have always lived and worked in mixed, multicultural communities, and I cherish the diversity of this great country of ours and, indeed, of my own neighbourhood. As Australians we celebrate diversity because we are diversity. It is in the very fabric of our nation. Diversity means that everyone is respected and has equal opportunities and rights, regardless of their background, race, culture, religion, gender or sexuality. We celebrate diversity because in diversity we have a shared humanity.

Yet, sadly, not all Australians feel the same. There is a lot of talk about Australian values and trying to ensure that new migrants share Australian values. Some of the values that the government says that Australians share are freedom and dignity of the individual, freedom of religion and a spirit of egalitarianism that embraces mutual respect, tolerance, fair play and compassion, and equal opportunity for individuals, regardless of race, religion or ethnic background.

Let us think about that for a moment. In my experience some of the biggest challenges to Australian values come not from our newest citizens but from people who have lived here all their lives, who consider themselves dinky-di Aussies, whose behaviour does not reflect these shared Australian values and whose words and actions are prejudiced, racist and hurtful. If some of these 'true blue Aussies' were to be applying for citizenship they would fail the test because they do not behave according to these shared values. Indeed, some of the people in this very chamber definitely do not afford Muslim Australians the shared values of freedom of religion, equal opportunity regardless of religion. and a spirit of egalitarianism.

Today around the world Muslims are coming under attack from all sides. They are being attacked and killed by terrorists in their home countries and, consequently, they flee for their lives to countries such as Australia. Today is World Refugee Day. I salute the contributions of Muslim refugees who have made Australia their home, who have contributed to Australia. And may we accept many more of them—particularly those who are currently incarcerated by us in those hellholes on Nauru and Manus Island.

Yet newly arrived Muslims, and Muslims who have lived here peacefully for years and years, are told they are collectively responsible for the unconscionable behaviour of extremists. They are constantly asked to apologise for the actions of those who do not represent them—people whose violent actions they condemn. In an escalation of violence, Muslims are being attacked by non-Muslims in terrorist attacks as retaliation for the actions of extremists such as the awful attack on a mosque in London yesterday.

In the three years I have been in the Senate I have reached out to, in particular, Muslim Australians. I want all Muslims to know that the Australian Greens and I support them and extend the hand of friendship to them. It has been my great pleasure over the last weeks to reach out in friendship and join Muslim men, women and children at Iftar dinners. Iftar is the break of the Ramadan fast that takes place at sunset each day during the month of Ramadan. The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is observed by Muslim people the world over. This year, it began on Friday, 26 May and it comes to an end this Saturday, 24 June. Involving fasting from sunrise to sunset, Ramadan commemorates the first revelation of the prophet Mohammed and it is time for Muslims to give thanks and reflect on their spirituality.

My first Iftar this year was the one I had the privilege and honour of hosting myself for Muslim women and children in a community centre in Fawkner in Melbourne's northern suburbs. It was heart warming to meet, and break bread with, these women and children—some who have lived in Australia for decades and some who have recently arrived—and the food was great too. These women and children opened their hearts and their religion to me. They demonstrated the very best of our shared Australian values at this most Muslim of celebrations.

Over the last three years I have reached out in particular to Muslim women who wear a headscarf, because they so often bear the brunt of the hatred because they are obviously Muslims. I have heard their stories of being too scared to catch trams and trains because of the abuse they have received, of having cups of coffee thrown in their face through car windows, of their children asking, 'Why does the media only say bad things about Muslims?' I have joined Islamic women over morning tea to help them work out how to move forward and promote a positive view of Muslim Australians.

The second Iftar I attended this year was hosted by Muslims for Progressive Values. One of their principles is equality. They affirm the equal worth of all human beings regardless of race, sex, gender, gender identification, ethnicity, nationality, creed, sexual orientation or ability. They are speaking out for marriage equality and standing up for the rights of LGBTIQ people. They are themselves proudly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex.

My third Iftar dinner during this holy month of Ramadan was hosted by the Board of Imams Victoria. This was a grand affair with over 300 people at a reception centre in Brunswick. There I got to meet Richmond footballer Bachar Houli and eat some excellent Arabic food. I had a selfie with Bachar. Surely if I, a tragic Bulldogs fan, can cheer on a Richmond player, then other Australians can get on with their Muslim neighbours. It was at this dinner that we were privileged to hear from the Grand Mufti of Australia, who made the impassioned plea that all Muslims not be painted with the same brush because of the horrific actions of those who have hijacked Islam for their own violent ends. His words rang true. These actions of these terrorists are no more being done in the name of Islam than the actions of so-called Christians who launch violent attacks on abortion providers—or that the sexual abuse of children in Christian churches means that all Christians the are collectively guilty.

I have been to two more Iftar. My fourth was hosted by Richard Di Natale just last Sunday, and brought 200 Muslims and non-Muslims together—Greens and non-Greens. We heard from two very inspiring and impressive young Muslim women whose overwhelming message was that they just want to be seen as Australians because that is who they are. Finally, last night there was an interfaith Iftar put on here at Parliament House by Canberra's Bluestar Intercultural Centre. The same messages of respect, inclusion and celebration of diversity were the themes of the night.

Islamaphobia and conflating the actions of terrorists is having a deeply damaging impact on Muslims. The weight that Muslim Australians carry on their shoulders cannot be overstated—especially young Muslim children who grow up thinking they do not belong in Australia and that they are not Australian. Muslims, just like Christians, are a diverse group of people. Catholics, Anglicans and Seventh-day Adventists are all Christians, but they are not the same, and in fact Muslims for Progressive Values have a campaign entitled 'There are 1.6 billion ways to be a Muslim'. Just like the Catholics and Anglicans are Australian, and atheists like me are Australian, I am here to tell all Muslim Australians—I am, you are, we are all Australian.

I join this evening with Senator Waters in remembering a true warrior sister. Last week, we farewelled Alice Eather—an extraordinary woman; a woman who was with us for too short a time but whose legacy and memories will live with us forever. She was a genuine leader of her community, a fierce warrior for her country, an educator and a poet. Alice will stay with us. She was a woman from Brisbane and Maningrida—a Kunibidji woman. Her poetry and her words were used to build a bridge between two cultures. In her beautiful poem Fire is Burning, she begins by looking into the camera, deep into our eyes. She says:

I'm standing by this fire, the embers smoking, the ashes glowing, the coals weighing us down, the youth are buried in the rubble, my eyes are burning and through my nostrils the smoke is stirring.

I breathe it in. Yuya Karrabura.

I wear a ship on my wrist that shows my blood comes from convicts.

On the second fleet, my father's forefathers came, whipped, beaten and bound in chains.

The dark tone in my skin, the brown in my eyes, sunset to sunrise, my Wornow. Mother's side.

She went on:

I'm living and breathing this story of black and white. Sitting in the middle of this collision, my mission is to bring two divided worlds to sit beside this fire.

Alice's family are extraordinarily proud of her achievements and her passion. Her father, Michael, in Brisbane, and her mother, Helen, in beautiful Maningrida, share the grief but they also share the love for this young woman. Apart from her beautiful poetry, she was also an educator—the first Indigenous graduate educator who went back to her country to teach kids. Her mother says that she was always wanting to work with children. There are photographs of Alice glowing with her children in beautiful Maningrida and gathering the children around her—teaching in two languages so that the children can learn to be proud of their culture, to be proud of their community. Her father, Michael, said that tackling Indigenous disadvantage was a clear passion:

It saddens us that it's accelerating, and it saddened Alice. She tried to incorporated that message to try to stop that sadness. It came at a cost to herself.

I think many people remember Alice for her extraordinary work in fighting the fracking application for the remote community of Maningrida. When she went home, she talked with other leaders in that community, and community leader Eddie Mason said:

I didn't even know her when she first came to my place, and told me that they were wanting to come here to do fracking, and that we had to start fighting for this country.

And fight they did. I have been very fortunate in my community affairs work to have visited Maningrida a couple of times. It has a haunting and special beauty—you would probably have been there, Acting Deputy President Smith. When the community gathered together, they fought the idea of fracking coming onto that land. They gathered together and they formed the Protect Arnhem Land campaign group. Mr Mason, the community leader, went on to say:

She's the one who opened our eyes and taught us what this fracking and drilling meant. She educated my people.

And that education came with working together to look at different ways of raising awareness and bringing the fight from remote Maningrida into the capital cities of Brisbane and Sydney to raise concern and awareness about what this would do. There were massive demonstrations outside the Paltar Petroleum offices in Sydney in 2013. This brought the national media's attention to local Indigenous people who were rising up together to say that this was not what they wanted for their country. They continued to engage through social media, through the poetry that Alice presented, talking about her land and the pain that she felt at the thought of the land being attacked by this mining process. Federal minister Greg Hunt received a bark petition in Parliament House, again linking not just what was happening in Maningrida in 2013-2014 but the history of the bark petition process, again raising awareness.

The Northern Territory government in 2014 suspended the application until the company had actually reached an agreement with the Maningrida traditional owners, sitting down, talking with the traditional owners to work through the process about what was indeed traditional land. There is a film of 2014, when Alice was awarded the Northern Territory's Young Achiever Award for the environment. This film is fairly grainy but is news coverage from the Northern Territory and shows the absolute excitement and joy of the community when this decision was made and Alice won her award. She stood up and talked about this being a community experience, not just her own.

Also, in an innovative and especially impactful way, the fight against the mining at Maningrida was taken to the big screen, and with her sisters, Grace and Noni, the wonderful documentary Stingray Sisters was created. This is a truly beautiful film. It lives now and it shows the community working together. Once again we can continue to see Alice leading this campaign, using her intelligence, her strength, her wisdom and her exceptional command of poetry to get across the message about the importance of the land, the importance of community, the importance of traditional owners. I really encourage everyone to take the opportunity to look at this beautiful documentary and see the value of people working together.

One of the wonderful elements of the family coming together when they were mourning the loss of Alice is that they decided to keep the poetry performances that are available at the moment online, mainly through the ABC. They decided to keep that open so that all of us can continue to see and hear the beautiful work that Alice Eather produced. This work will continue to live for all of us.

Senator Waters read from a beautiful poem called My Story Is Your Story, where the ongoing messages are that we work together and also the different ways people see their land. There is that telling line that Senator Waters did quote:

When I see a map of Country I see land, sea and family

When they see a map of Country they see mining fantasies

When I see the sea-beds I see sacred sites

When they see the sea-beds they see dollar signs

Nothing can actually overcome the grief that so many people have at the loss of such an exceptional person. But we know that her legacy will never be forgotten—her words, her message, will be with us. And so many people who have had the real privilege of meeting, knowing and hearing Alice Eather will continue to have that chance. We will know, as her sister said:

Her legacy will never be forgotten. I will continue to fight for what Alice always fought for: country, children and education.

Over the last 15 years that rights and liberties of the Australian people have been progressively cut away in the never-ending so-called 'war on terror'. We have seen successive prime ministers reduce our privacy, restrict our freedoms, including freedom of movement, and erode the rule of law. These are rights that thousands of Australians have fought for, and in many cases have died to protect and enhance, including some of my ancestors. Every time we give away more of our precious rights we hand another victory to those who wish us harm. We are losing the so-called war on terror, just like we are losing the so-called war on drugs. Unfortunately, at least the war on the environment is going well.

At the same time that the Labor and Liberal parties jostle each other in their eagerness to hand over more of our hard-won rights—and we see it again, again and again in this place—they also join forces to throw away our independence, to march in zombie lockstep with the disastrous foreign policy experiments of the United States. There has not been a war in the last hundred years that the US has fought and that Australia did not. Given that the US is now led by a stooge of Russia, installed in the White House by Vladimir Putin in a massive impact of the US election late last year, frighteningly, it looks like this will continue.

We have seen in recent history how stupid and how counterproductive the foreign policy experiments of Australia and the US, along with others, have been. Remember the invasion of Iraq, based on the lie of weapons of mass destruction, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, many of them civilian, completely destabilised the region and in fact has created the preconditions for violent extremists to flourish. Remember the arms deals with Saudi Arabia, one of the world's biggest state sponsors of violent extremism?

Following the tragic, awful loss of lives recently in places like Melbourne, Manchester and London, we are seeing Prime Minister Turnbull choose to go down a very familiar path, a path trodden very eagerly indeed by the man he overthrew, Tony Abbott—a path of demonising people of different cultures and skin colours; a path of eroding yet more of our hard-won civil and human rights; a path that risks undermining the multicultural, harmonious society that we enjoy; a path that risks setting Australians against each other. If we as Australians choose to walk down this path with Mr Turnbull and his allies in this place, we risk a less-stable world, a country where suspicion and mistrust rule over trust and harmony. We risk losing the welcoming and laid-back country we pride ourselves in being. We risk looking upon strangers with suspicion and we risk assuming the worst in people. We risk no longer enjoying the simple things the way we should, like going to the beach, going to the footy or going to concerts in the park. We risk throwing up our shutters and refusing to help those who desperately need our help. This is the path being offered by the people whose choices have led us directly to the situation we find ourselves in now—the same people who have been consistently wrong about foreign policy and consistently wrong about how to counter violent extremism for well over 15 years now.

But there is another path—a path where we can hold our heads high and not listen to those voices which seek to sow hatred and seek to set us against each other. That is because the truth is that those people have no answers other than fear and division. We have to choose to continue to enjoy the things that make this country so fantastic and one of the most successful multicultural countries in the world, where we can enjoy mixing with people of different colours and religions and we can enjoy our beautiful environment, going to the footy and going to have fun in our cities, in our towns, in our forests and on our beaches. If we want to make those choices, we have to welcome people who were not born in this country, and we have to give them every chance to succeed in Australia. Those are the values that we cherish as the people, and we should not give them up without a fight. We certainly should not let them be eroded continually by the Labor and Liberal parties, who march in zombie lock step on those issues in this place.

We will have to stand up and defend those rights and freedoms, and the Australian Greens will. We will have to not sit silently when big politics conspire to take them away from us. We are the only Western democracy in the world without a charter of rights. We desperately need one so that we have something to use when governments come knocking to take away yet more of the rights that we fought so hard to create. We need a new white paper not on defence but on countering violent extremism so that we can measure calmly and cohesively whether this ongoing erosion of our human civil rights is actually making us any safer as a country and as a people. We need to make the government, be it Labor or Liberal, justify those ongoing erosions, if it can, so that we know that the rights, the freedoms and the liberties that our forefathers fought so hard to protect and enhance are indeed not being traded away for nothing.

I rise in the Australian federal Senate this evening to talk about the deterioration in the country of Venezuela. This is a short but very important speech. Former Greens leader Bob Brown spoke in this august chamber about his visit to both Venezuela and Brazil when he was making representations to officials about the release of Greens politician Ingrid Betancourt, who was being held captive by FARC in Colombia. The reason I am speaking tonight is because I want to draw the attention of both the Australian parliament and the Australian people to the escalating human rights abuses and deteriorating political situation in Venezuela. I have had a number of representations from the Venezuelan Australian community on this issue, and I would like to give a shout-out tonight to my sister, Kerri, who originally brought this situation to my attention.

I asked questions during the recent Senate estimates to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. They started by telling me that there are nearly 4,000 Venezuelan Australians currently living in Australia. My research suggests that that is a significant underestimate. DFAT then went on to tell me that there has been quite a long-running process of escalating civil unrest and difficulties in Venezuela. In November 2016, Australia expressed concern during the UN Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review process about the deteriorating situation. In September 2016, we joined 28 nations in making a joint statement about Venezuela at the UN Human Rights Council. In October 2016, our then ambassador to Venezuela made representations directly to the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs outlining those concerns, and officials here have reiterated our concerns directly with the Venezuelan embassy here.

I understand that the Venezuelan community here would like us to increase our representation on this dire situation. There is currently a petition circulating among the community calling on the Australian parliament to speak out, to raise the issue among the Australian and international community and to provide aid in the form of food and medicine. It lists other things, including the reopening of consular assistance to Venezuela. Let me speak plainly: the situation in Venezuela right now is a disaster. There are food and medicine shortages and hyperinflation, which has made it impossible for people to afford food even when it is available. Crime has escalated to levels that we could not possibly imagine here in Australia. Perhaps I will draw listeners attention to a recent Four Corners episode on this exact situation that can be downloaded through ABC iview.

Some of this situation stems from a sudden drop in the oil price, but much of the trauma appears to come from an increasingly antidemocratic and corrupted government under President Nicolas Maduro. It is hard for Australians to understand the turmoil that is going on right now in Venezuela. Here are some of the things that Amnesty International has documented: the government continues to use excessive force against protesters and political opponents—my understanding is that in 80 days of protest over 75 people have now been killed; there are spates of arbitrary arrest and jailing of political opponents and critics; political opponents are being accused of unfounded crimes and placed before military rather than civil courts; police and security forces may have carried out extra-judicial killings; and the national intelligence service is arresting critics for crimes against the homeland. They often target politicians and journalists. This has occurred to opposition leaders and to editors of the major newspapers.

At the heart of this is President Nicolas Maduro, seemingly doing anything he can to cling onto power. Despite losing a parliamentary election and despite attempts by the opposition to initiate recall of the president, I understand that the president has used what is in effect his own supreme court to overrule these democratic actions. This stemmed from what was called 'the mother of all marches' on 19 April this year. Millions marched that day and there have been running protests ever since that day. The president has responded by expanding the national militia to half-a-million people, all armed with rifles. It is also my understanding that the protesters are democratic and peaceful but are met with force and violence from the government.

I would like to recognise the courage of the many Venezuelans who are facing this antidemocratic regime with such dignity and strength. I hope that the Australian government will continue to advocate to the international community to apply pressure. I also hope we can work with NGOs to provide aid in the form of food and medicine.

Now to my adjournment speech that I gave last week. I would like to put a little case study together and refer directly to an article in the Tasmanian Times I referred to—in the last paragraph. The article is by Mr John Hawkins from Chudleigh, and you can download it on www.tasmaniantimes.com.au. The article is termed 'Why ...?' and was written on 20 April 2017. In this article, John Hawkins outlines that on 27 January 2006, Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz became the federal Minister for Forestry in the John Howard Liberal government. Hawkins then states:

On the 16th March 2006, some 6 weeks later, Abetz lunched with Ian Blanden, CEO of Gunns Plantation Schemes, and discussed the Gunns Pulp mill, MIS plantations and the 12 month pre-payment rule with no sunset provision.

'These matters', at the time were, 'vital to the future solvency of both Gunns's business' and many in the MIS forestry plantation industry. Hawkins notes:

This conversation was documented by the Chairman of Gunns Ltd John Gay in a letter to Abetz dated 29 March 2006 on Gunns Ltd company letterhead and sent to the Minister. (Document 1).

Hawkins also notes:

Three weeks later on 21 April 2006, Gunns gave the Liberal Party—

a donation of—

$50,000 … which was accepted.

Hawkins asks: why? He then asks:

Was this a donation made in an attempt to influence the thinking of the Minister to act in favour of the company—

Gunns Ltd. He says:

A large political donation made outside the electoral cycle is unusual. It was, I suggest, made with the sole aim of gaining the ear of the Minister for Forests, one Senator Eric Abetz.

He then goes on to say:

Abetz was in a position to protect and promote the highly-profitable Ponzi Nitens Woodlot Managed Investment Scheme … that were at this time keeping Gunns Ltd solvent. The demise of these schemes through ATO action caused their promoters to finally call in the liquidators.

I went into this in significant detail in the first half of this speech.

At the time, Senator Abetz was negotiating with Minister Peter Dutton, then Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, on changes to managed investment schemes. I just note that the $50,000 donation to the Liberal Party was authorised by Mr John Gay, the CEO at the time, who was subsequently convicted of insider trading but who was then chairman of Gunns Ltd. Mr Hawkins further states:

By 22 June at the latest … Abetz reports to Gay—

This refers to document 3, a letter from Senator Abetz to Mr Gay. Mr Hawkins continues:

Unaware of this $50,000 … donation, I wrote to the Financial Review expressing my concerns.

Mr Hawkins also comments on a letter he wrote to The Ageregarding Bob Brown. Mr Hawkins says that Senator Abetz threatened to sue him for defamation over his comments in these two letters but that Senator Abetz then withdrew. This particularly annoyed Mr Hawkins, who dug in deeper and went through FOIs to uncover more documents. In the end, he claims:

Abetz then sent two goons to my front door to threaten me. I informed them that the days of the Third Reich and jackboots were over and that they should return to their master and tell him that I would pursue him to the grave.

This is a public document on a public website and available for anyone who wants to read it.

Mr Hawkins claims that these political donations, which were made to the Liberal Party—as I outlined last week—and also to the Labor Party, were unduly influencing policy, which later turned out to be a total catastrophe for so many investors around this country, not to mention rural communities. I would note for anyone interested to read document 7, which is Mr Hawkins' letter to Mr Abetz, where he says: 'I am not saying anything about personal corruption. I am just saying that it looks really bad that you took donations of $120,000 after you became forestry minister and after you changed MIS policy which favoured these companies. His letter states:

I have no problem with corporate gifts to political parties during election campaigns, but when you back a winner after the race and the bet is accepted this is easily misconstrued and can have sinister connotations.

Your thoughts would oblige.

…   …   …   

John Hawkins

This is very important, as I stated last week, because the current matter of public interest is significant around political donations. It is not just a national issue; it very much applies to my home state of Tasmania. There is legitimate concern in the community that not everyone has the same opportunity to lobby decision-makers or to donate to political parties, and that those with the deepest pockets and the most power and connection are better able to influence policy making. The secretive way most lobbyists and donors currently operate means that the public cannot be confident that decisions are being made in the public interest and on merit, after considering a broad range of views. The Greens have before this chamber three private senators' bills for an independent ICAC, an integrity commission and donation lobbying reform. It is time that we actually got on with it. (Time expired)

I rise today to highlight what I think has been an egregious misuse of parliamentary privilege during the committee process of Senate estimates. Parliamentary privilege is an important tool which we parliamentarians have access to, and it is an important tool that we make available to those who give evidence through the Senate committee process. I believe it is an important tool that allows us to have the free-flowing debates that we need to have and that allows people the opportunity to give the type of evidence that we need to obtain. I also feel that while the Senate has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure there are protections and controls around how it is used, those who have it available to them have a responsibility to use it reasonably. I have to say to this chamber: the action by Mr Bill Morrow, who is the CEO of NBN Co, during the Senate estimates on the NBN, in what became a very personal attack on Mr Laurie Patton, was inappropriate, offensive, rude, hurtful and defamatory.

Mr Patton has taken it upon himself to use the rights that are available to people who believe that things have been said about them inappropriately through that process. But let's just think about this for a moment: Mr Morrow is paid millions of dollars of taxpayer money every single year. For Mr Morrow—in an estimates process, when asked legitimate questions about someone like Mr Patton, who runs Internet Australia and who has been a legitimate critic of NBN—to turn around and refer to him as 'a troll' on one occasion and as 'a liar' and then go on to talk about his character as an individual, is a low, despicable act. That is a misuse of parliamentary privilege. While I do not question Mr Morrow's right to be able to use parliamentary privilege to do this, the idea that someone getting paid millions of dollars to run a giant organisation like NBN Co would resort to smears and personal attacks on legitimate critics of the NBN I think highlights everything that is wrong with the NBN at this point in time.

Tonight we found out that NBN Co is withholding individual internet speeds. NBN Co has details of achievable internet speeds for every home it has connected but refuses to release the information despite the confusion of customers trying to connect. This is the culture of this organisation now, and it is best expressed and explained in the way in which they deal with their legitimate critics. People are allowed to complain about NBN Co's data speeds. People have a right to complain and highlight their legitimate concerns, especially when they are running an organisation like Internet Australia. But it is not for them to then use parliamentary privilege that is afforded to committee witnesses to attack those individuals with things—which, frankly, when I look at the details, do not even stack-up—that are just slanderous, like going around calling people liars. We have a principle that we apply in this chamber where we do not call other senators liars, and there is language that we do and do not use. What Mr Patton was highlighting turned out to be completely true. It was Mr Morrow who has been wrong. It is Mr Morrow who has been giving the wrong information to the Senate committee.

I note that Mr Laurie Patton has used the processes available to him to highlight the fact that he feels he has been slandered, and that is certainly his right. But I believe the Senate should be aware of this, and I believe Mr Morrow has a much greater responsibility that he is not meeting and that he has failed to meet, and that needs to be brought to his attention. I intend, at the next opportunity at Senate estimates and through the committee process, to continue to highlight this. I have to say: public servants and those who run organisations like NBN Co should, when they are giving us evidence, have the same right to parliamentary privilege that senators have, but they should also bear the responsibilities that come with that. Frankly, Mr Morrow's behaviour has been nothing less than disappointing, and he is clearly someone with such glass jaw that he cannot take this smallest amount of criticism.

Finally, I want to take the opportunity to touch on two matters very quickly. The commentary in the past few weeks coming out of London really highlights both the best and worst of human society. I have already spoken in this chamber before about events that I was around at Borough Market on 3 June. I want to say this: terrorism is terrorism, regardless of the person who is conducting it. The challenge here, and the challenge for all of us, is how we deal with extremism. We need to call out extremism where it is. Just as we have a responsibility to call out fundamentalism when it comes to Islam, we should also call out fundamentalism when it comes to white and other types of nationalism. Extreme nationalism is as much a problem as Islamic terrorism when it is being conducted in the way we have seen in London in the past week. All of us in this chamber should be prepared to call it out equally when it occurs. Just as I stood in this chamber and called out what I thought was a horrendous, weak, pathetic attack on Londoners on 3 June, the attacks this week are equally horrendous, horrible and despicable. Good people should be prepared, regardless of where you sit in politics, to call out this behaviour whenever it occurs and whoever has conducted it.

Finally, I want to take this brief opportunity to say that tomorrow is the 60th birthday of a very good friend of mine, Mr Harish Velji. He looks like he is still in his thirties, but he is finally turning 60. I was thinking to myself, 'What do you get a good friend who is turning 60? I cannot sing, so I was not going to write him a song. I am terrible with presents, so there was nothing really to get Harish. I thought that the only gift that I can give Harish is a few words in this chamber. So with the indulgence of the Senate, Harish, have an amazing 60th birthday. I am so proud to call you a close friend. I know the journey will always continue. I believe that Harish has finally bought a suit. The first time he wore a suit was in 1986, for his wedding. The second time was in 2013. I believe that for his 60th birthday he will finally be getting a suit. Senator O'Neill would like to associate herself with those remarks.

I want to talk about my return to Tennant Creek, which is a small town about 1,000 kilometres south of Darwin in the Northern Territory, with a population of about 3,200 people, 70 per cent of whom are Indigenous. It represents 12 language groups. It might not sound like much, but it is a very special place to me. I spent 18 months working there as a GP almost 17 years ago, and I returned there for the first time in 17 years. So many of the most inspiring, passionate and resourceful people that were there when I worked there 17 years ago are still there. In fact, it was that experience 17 years ago that really pushed me towards politics. It helped me understand that we need to do something about the structural factors that are causing Indigenous disadvantage. It was very much a formative experience for me.

When I returned there only a short time ago I was lucky enough to meet with Barb Shaw. She is the general manager of Anyinginyi Aboriginal Health Centre, and she is the Barkly Regional Council President. She is an amazing woman—a strong, passionate, resourceful person who, I have to say, was so generous with her time. I want to thank her and her EA, Cerise King, for the help and support that they gave me through this trip.

I met Ross Williams Jakamarra, who was also there back when I was there 17 years ago. He is a strong Indigenous man, very active with the football club. He is a Waramungu man. It was great to catch up with Ross again. I met with Joyce Taylor, the treasurer, and William Walker the secretary, and Pat Braun, who is an Arrente/Waramungu woman, as well.

They are terrific people doing amazing work. There is Clarissa Burgen, Marie Murfet and Allan Baldock, all doing wonderful work. But they are under incredible pressure, because the resources that they need and deserve are always limited and they are always in a position where they are facing an uncertain future.

I also had a chance to meet with many of the doctors who work as Aboriginal health practitioners, the nurses and, indeed, the head nurse, Tandeo Sakala, who showed us around—and I want to thank him for all of his time and support while we were there.

We met Marie Murfet from the Stronger Families centre. They provide culturally appropriate services for men, women and families who are struggling with issues of family violence and child abuse in the Tennant Creek community. We met the inspiring Georgina Bracken, of the Tennant Creek Women's Refuge—again, doing incredible work.

I also had the great pleasure of catching up with my old buddies from the Tennant Creek Eagles. I stepped out for a training session with some of the boys at the Tennant Creek Eagles club, down there at the footy oval. Again, I played there 17 years ago with the all-Aboriginal team, the Tennant Creek Eagles; I was the only whitefella on the team. I was lucky enough to be presented with a jumper on the occasion of my return. I caught up with the former captain while I was there, Darryl 'Tiger' Fitz, and the footy club rep, William Walkers.

They are doing great work. It was there that I came to understand the really critical importance of sport in the lives of Aboriginal people and as a way of connecting communities. There is so much talent down there, by the way, like Tiger's son, Liam Holt-Fitz, who co-captains the under-15s all-Australian team. If there are any scouts watching right now, keep your eye on this young fella. He is someone that I think has every chance of being drafted to the AFL.

I met with Steve Dawkins and Ryan Lucas, from the Barkly Regional Council, who showed us some of the work they are doing with homegrown remote youth workers. We sat down on the basketball courts and learnt a lot about the work that they do. There is also the after-hours drop-in centre, YouthLinx, doing incredible work with young people in Tennant Creek, with young kids. They run footy, T-ball, and swimming in the afternoons. They teach children life skills—how to make a curry, how to fix a bicycle—as well as just providing a safe place for kids to hang out.

It was a wonderful occasion to be reunited with my colleagues. I have to say we are still a long way from closing the gap, and I returned home with mixed emotions after seeing these wonderful people doing wonderful work but also knowing how much they struggle to be heard. (Time expired)

Earlier today I brought to the Senate a resolution on Australian government sponsored arms deals to Saudi Arabia and on the war in Yemen, and I proposed that the Senate support, among other things, a unilateral arms embargo on Saudi Arabia. The motion did not call for complex negotiations with allies or UN Security Council resolutions but for Australia to stop pouring petrol on these fires on the other side of the world. Violence has way of coming home.

Even if you are someone who could not point to Yemen on the map, Mr Christopher Pyne, the 'fixer', is leading delegations to do arms deals with the regime that is bombing Yemen into a man-made famine, and he is using your tax dollars to do it. If you believe, as I do, that Australia can play a powerful role on the world stage, standing for human rights and the rule of law, then one of our first acts should be to start by restricting the flow of weapons and military equipment to Saudi Arabia.

The origins of the civil war in Yemen are far more complex than a simple sectarian contest over a power transition in 2011. They are certainly more complex than I can do justice to tonight. The present escalation began as a combination of corruption, poverty, weak civil society and governance institutions, and exploitation by outside actors, including al-Qaeda. But, by March 2015, a Saudi Arabian led coalition had begun an aerial and ground campaign against forces loyal to the former, kleptocratic president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. Now all sides have committed human rights violations and atrocities, but at no time has this ever been a symmetrical contest.

What we see now is one of the most horrific and underreported conflicts anywhere in the world. Well over 10,000 people have died. There are more than three million internally displaced persons. Eighty per cent of the population of Yemen needs humanitarian assistance. An analysis of the conduct of Saudi Arabia and its allies reveals its chilling methods. This is not a conventional war in any sense of the word. It is instead a high-technology assault on Yemeni men, women and children. It is first and foremost a war on civilians. Saudi Arabia's advanced air force and artillery units are targeting markets, hospitals, schools, civilian businesses and mosques. They are targeting food distribution points, aid depots, railway lines, power stations, water treatment plants and ports.

An air strike on a packed market in northern Yemen in March of this year killed 97 people, all of them civilians. Twenty-five of them were children. A funeral was bombed in October of last year, killing more than 100 mourners and wounding many hundreds more. Two days ago another market in northern Yemen was hit by artillery fire, killing at least two dozen people. On 15 August last year the Saudi led coalition conducted an air raid which hit a Medicins Sans Frontieres supported hospital in Hajjah which killed 19 people. That was a hospital. It was the fourth such attack on an MSF facility. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that over 600 health facilities in Yemen have closed due to damage or direct targeting caused by the conflict and shortage of critical supplies and lack of health workers.

There is a word for this kind of horrific violence against non-military targets, and that word is 'terrorism'. Perhaps of greater significance, Saudi Arabia is maintaining a naval blockade on Yemen which is severely choking imports of food, aid and fuel. Having bombed the sparse power grid back to the 19th century in many parts of the country, Saudi Arabia is now strangling supplies of the fuel that powers generators to keep hospitals and water pumps online. The net effect of the naval blockade and the targeted destruction of water distribution infrastructure and the collapse of the health system is twofold. Yemen is now suffering the largest outbreak of cholera in the world. Between April and June of this year 124,000 cases of cholera were reported and more than 920 people have died of this easily treatable disease. The outbreak is now out of control. The UN has also warned as recently as April that 17 million people are at risk of famine unless the world sends urgent humanitarian help. How this help is meant to breach the Saudi blockade is very difficult to assess. This is an engineered famine. It is an engineered epidemic. There is a word for this, too. That word is 'genocide'.

The US, the UK and Australia have been very significant state supporters of Saudi Arabia. They provide political, military, diplomatic and media cover for what the Saudi regime has been doing. As long ago as June 2015, three months after the start of the air war in Yemen, a US military spokesperson stated that the US government was helping the coalition with:

… intelligence support and intelligence sharing, targeting assistance, advisory support, and logistical support, to include aerial refueling with up to two tanker sorties a day.

In May 2016 the US acknowledged that it had deployed troops in Yemen in a combat role against al-Qaeda. It is not just the US; it is also the UK. A UK MOD statement of last year said that it was:

… providing technical support, precision-guided weapons and exchanging information with the Saudi Arabian armed forces.

The UK government is in it up to its neck as well.

The very first visit by President Donald Trump to a foreign state outside the boundaries of the United States was to Saudi Arabia. We are all obviously very well aware of the reported arms deal somewhere between $100 billion and $300 billion. I know a lot of that was confected. It was money that was re-announced that had already been committed by the Obama administration. But, nonetheless, an official at the time spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity just before President Trump's visit and said:

… the arms package could end up surpassing more than $300 billion over a decade to help Saudi Arabia boost its defensive capabilities—

I love the Orwellian use of the word 'defensive'!

while still maintaining U.S. ally Israel's qualitative military edge over its neighbors.

Why?

Why is this happening? We are meant to be part of a global war on terror. I have lost count of the number of times Australian prime ministers have stood up in front of various numbers of flags reaffirming and recommitting to this war on terror. So tell me why—when it is so well known that Saudi Arabia, particularly through its charities, is understood to be funnelling money to organisations such as the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Islamic State linked groups and extremists in Syria and Iraq, among others. This is an open secret. This is well documented. The US State Department said in 2015:

Despite serious and effective efforts to counter the funding of terrorism originating within the Kingdom—

referring to Saudi Arabia—

some individuals and entities in Saudi Arabia continue to serve as sources of financial support for Sunni based extremist groups, particularly regional Al Qaeda affiliates.

The State Department source went on to say:

funds are allegedly collected in secret and illicitly transferred out of the country in cash.

That is from a State Department source. Just across town in Washington the Department of Defense—and the Obama administration and then the Trump administration—are engineering gigantic military transfers of weapons and other military equipment to this very same regime. There is significant support for Islamic State in Saudi Arabia; and the group directly targets Saudi individuals, some of them quite high profile, with fundraising campaigns.

In 2009, diplomatic cables published by the WikiLeaks organisation—whose lead publisher and founder, by the way, has just been forced to celebrate his fifth anniversary under political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London—revealed the following:

Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Saudi terrorist groups worldwide.

These are US State Department cables; this is what the Department of State and the Secretary of State understood as long ago as 2009. They go on to say:

While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia takes seriously the threat of terrorism within Saudi Arabia, it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.

That was as long ago as 2009.

A more recent UK inquiry into the revenue streams for extremist groups operating in the UK is thought to focus on Saudi Arabia. It has repeatedly been highlighted by European leaders as a funding source for Islamist jihadists. But we do not expect to ever see that report see the light of day—because its conclusions are likely to be too sensitive to release. And the public in the UK—like the public here and, no doubt, in the United States—would be puzzled to know why we are still transferring arms and military equipment and providing other forms of support. The US, the Brits and Australia have pretensions—don't we—of being the global champions of human rights around the world. I would have thought that our support for the kingdom should be enough to shatter that self-serving myth once and for all.

The organisation Death Penalty Worldwide conducts ongoing studies into the number of executions that take place around the world. The estimates are somewhat difficult to come by, and the estimates vary, but their findings over the last couple of years are that the Saudis behead someone approximately every second day. The right hand can be cut off at the wrist as punishment for theft in Saudi Arabia. Repeat offenders can lose both hands or perhaps a leg, for some offences. Committing adultery can lead to death by stoning. Maybe we thought we left that in the Middle Ages—but it is not so. Men are buried up to their waist and women are buried up to their breast, and the stones that are hurled at people are deliberately of a size not to kill the condemned person in just a couple of strikes. Literally 'eye for an eye' sentences have been imposed in Saudi Arabia. In 2003 an Indian guest worker was punished for his role in a brawl in which a Saudi citizen was wounded. He was punished by having his right eye gouged out. This is a barbaric place.

Do you know who stood up in Saudi Arabia for human rights and democracy, unlike the United States government or indeed our own? A blogger called Raif Badawi. It is just on five years since he was arrested and sentenced to thousands of lashes and 10 years in prison. He is still in prison—a blogger. His crime was to write of his aspirations for democracy and secular rule of law in Saudi Arabia. I don't know that the Australian government has ever spoken up for him, but we do have pretensions to being a champion of human rights.

Those statements by the United States government, and the Department of Defense in particular, on the fact that the US provides intelligence support, intelligence sharing and targeted assistance for the war in Yemen, are code for facilities like Pine Gap, in the southern hemisphere. That is what it is code for. Australia is complicit, indirectly and directly, for the horrific conduct of Saudi Arabia and its allies, because this conflict, it has been said, would come to an end tomorrow if diplomatic, military and intelligence support by the United States and the United Kingdom were cut off.

That is why I brought this motion to the parliament earlier today. Leave for the motion was denied by Senator McGrath, on behalf of the government, presumably under instructions from the foreign minister and/or the Minister for Defence. As a complex foreign policy matter, what the motion called on the Australian government to do, which I would have thought was actually a very simple foreign policy matter, was to immediately suspend military exports to Saudi Arabia, to seek to ensure accountability for past and ongoing violations in Yemen and to commit additional humanitarian funds to the crisis in Yemen. I did not hear a voice from the Labor Party, so I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt. The government denied leave on the motion to be voted on. We could have had a unanimous resolution of the Senate this afternoon that we should stop pouring petrol on the horror of the war in Yemen and stop providing this unconditional and unflinching support to the regime in Saudi Arabia that has done so much damage domestically and around the world.

This is not the end of this manner. Like many others, I was horrified to discover that Mr Christopher Pyne, an Australian minister, at taxpayers' expense led at least a small number of delegations to Saudi Arabia late last year—one that we know of for certain—at the head of a collection of arms contractors, military contactors and Australian companies looking for work, probably in places like Adelaide and Perth, to try to sign up to an arms deal. I have no idea what that is likely to be. The officials whom I confronted with this information in estimates a couple of weeks back were absolutely tight-lipped, as was Senator Payne when I put it to her in the chamber a couple of weeks previously. They claim public interest immunity: 'That is commercial-in-confidence. That could damage relations between Australia and foreign governments.' That is what they say when you ask why Christopher Pyne is leading a delegation of arms dealers to Saudi Arabia to conduct these kinds of deals with this regime that has done so much harm.

If the Australian government things that this is the end of the matter you have it quite wrong. We will discover exactly what kind of defence materiel Mr Pyne was trying to traffic into Saudi Arabia. We will discover one way or another the many other ways in which the Australian government and its allies in the United States and elsewhere are complicit in the horrors that are being inflicted on a civilian population in Yemen that poses no security threat to Australia whatsoever. We are complicit. If Australia thinks that in the next year or so we can run around the world trying to marshal votes for a seat on the Human Rights Council, we need to take a good, solid look at ourselves.

I am very pleased to say that last week was National TAFE Day, and I was thrilled to be able to celebrate it here in parliament at the National TAFE Day reception, which was hosted by the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, the Electrical Trades Union and the Australian Education Union. During the week I met with representatives from the AMWU National Skills Trade Committee. That included Charlie Clarke from WA, who is chair of the committee, AMWU national president Andrew Dettmer, Georgia Kriz from the AMWU and Nic Carlton, who is an apprentice fitter. I want to thank them for spending that time with me. Nic, as an apprentice fitter, told me in particular about how important his TAFE course has been to him. He works at Carlton & United Breweries, I think, and he told me how important his TAFE course was to his capacity to have a career. He is an apprentice fitter. He talked to me about the practical skills, from machinery operation to health and safety, that he takes back to his workplace. These are the things that allow him to make even greater contributions to his workplace and to share his ideas and skills with his workmates. He was incredibly passionate about ensuring the future of the TAFE sector in our country.

It is important that we can ensure Australians have the skills they need to gain secure employment to make a contribution to Australia's future, and we cannot do that without TAFE. The AMWU National Skilled Trades Committee told me that the influx of private companies entering the training sector means that there are fights for already limited funding and they are crowding the space with courses that simply are not providing the skills Australian kids need for the future. Why cannot they provide the skills? Simply, they often do not have the basic expertise—some of these companies—and they are also not offering access to the right equipment that young people need to train on. They also stressed the need for the federal government to support the states to provide quality public TAFE and apprenticeships. I really want to commend the work of the AMWU National Skilled Trades Committee and thank Charlie, Nic, Andrew and Georgia for spending time with me last week. I am incredibly proud to see unions like the AMWU working with businesses, TAFEs, training providers, apprentices and government to advocate for a better TAFE system and a better apprenticeship sector.

These issues are very important in my home state of WA. We know how important apprenticeships are with the mining boom now well and truly over. It is critical that we invest in giving Western Australians the skills they need in our changing economy. Sadly, under the previous Liberal government in WA, TAFE fees increased by an extraordinary 510 per cent. It simply put TAFE out of the reach of so many young Western Australians and has led to a dramatic drop in enrolments. WA Premier Mark McGowan and Education and Training Minister Sue Ellery announced last month that the WA government has frozen TAFE fees, reversing the massive fee hikes that WA saw under the previous Liberal government. The TAFE freeze will now allow more young WA people to get decent jobs and grow our local economy.

The new WA Labor government will also ensure there are more apprentices on state government projects under what is called the Priority Start program. That program is about providing local people with local apprenticeships, and it is something that was really missing in action under the previous state government. The Mark McGowan Labor government is also funding North Metropolitan TAFE to provide rail cart manufacturing training, giving WA the opportunity to manufacture rail carts not only for WA's Metronet but for our entire nation. It is terrific to see the Mark McGowan government getting on with these important priorities. It is reinforced by the fact that our opposition leader, Bill Shorten, visited WA and joined Premier Mark McGowan at Carlisle TAFE to listen to Western Australians about jobs and training. Together, Mark McGowan and Bill Shorten expressed their commitment to funding and improving the TAFE sector in WA and across the country. This was Mr Shorten's fourth visit to WA, a stark difference to our Prime Minister, who has only spent some 20 hours in WA in the last nine months. While we are seeing Labor state governments and the federal opposition making great progress towards investing in the future of training, investing in apprenticeships and investing in TAFE in our states, it is a great shame that we are seeing nothing but inaction and absolute contempt for the TAFE sector from the Prime Minister and the Liberal federal government.

At a national level Labor really knows that TAFE is a proven pathway to jobs and to growing and diversifying our economy. It is the best path to new and better jobs for our nation's young people. It is the best path to providing Australians with the skills they need to build the Australia we want in the future, from manufacturing to mining to IT and digital and to many more industries. Our Australian economy and, indeed, the global economy is changing, and Australia is going to need the training pathways that prepare Australians for the jobs of the future. This means we need to make an important and strategic investment in TAFE.

It is time now for the federal government and state governments across Australia to stop kidding themselves and start investing in education, skills and training. Sadly, this government has not. Since the Liberals were elected apprenticeships in Australia have declined by a massive 148,000. This is at the same time as we see many skilled tradespeople entering Australia on different visas. The Liberal budget last month cut out a massive $637 million from TAFE. They also cut $22 billion from schools and $3.8 billion from universities. The government's promise of 300,000 new apprentices was quickly downgraded to a hope and is contingent on insecure funding that is tied to charges on companies using foreign workers. I do not think there is any way this government can reach their target—if you could call it that—while cutting $600 million from the sector. It is simply not doable, and this is simply not good enough coming from our national government. In times of economic distress like we are certainly experiencing in Western Australia, we should be encouraging people into education and training, not ripping funding away from it.

The Liberal government has absolutely gutted our TAFE sector in our country, with fees rising and funding and enrolments dropping. Even the government's own skills regulator warned in 2015 that this was a recipe for a race to the bottom on quality in the sector. Kids are being trapped by dodgy providers that cut corners and do not provide the skills that our country needs, and that is putting people off ever going back to get the education and training that they really need.

Technical and further education, not dodgy private providers, should be the very backbone of the vocational education sector. Businesses say they are forced to bring in overseas workers because Australians do not have the skills they need. There is a reason for that. It is because this government is not doing its job. It is not investing in our TAFE sector. The solution to many of our nation's problems would be to provide that support to education and training through the TAFE sector. With unemployment being as high as it is in Western Australia now and as it was during the global financial crisis, now is not the time to be cutting money from vocational education and training.

One thing is very clear: the Turnbull government has no plan for education and training in our country. The government has undermined TAFE for years and neglected to provide Australians with the skills and apprenticeships that our nation needs for the future. This is nothing but an absolute failure to invest in Australians, especially our young people. Our country needs a strong, well-funded, publicly-provided TAFE system. We need a TAFE system that provides Australian kids with the right teachers and the right facilities that can give them the specific skills they need. That is why a Shorten government will reverse the Turnbull government's $637 million to TAFE and skills. It is why we will guarantee two-thirds of all public funding to restore TAFE as the backbone of the VET system. It is why we will set a target of one in 10 apprentices on all Commonwealth priority projects and major government business enterprise projects. It is why we will invest in pre-apprenticeship programs, preparing up to 10,000 young people with the skills they need to start an apprenticeship. We will also invest $100 million in the Building TAFE for the Future Fund to re-establish facilities in regional communities, meet local industry needs and support teaching for the digital economy.

So while the Liberal Prime Minister and the Liberal government hand out tax cuts to their mates in big business and cut money from the vocational education and training sector, Labor is about investing in the future of our nation, investing in young people and investing in our vocational education and training sector. Only Labor will provide the opportunities Australians need to get good-quality jobs, and only Labor will protect TAFE and apprenticeships.

Senate adjourned at 21 : 16