It's a great pleasure to get a chance to speak again on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill 2020.

An honourable senator interjecting—

Order! Can we start Thursday morning quietly please—

Senator Ayres interjecting—

with a bit of compliance to order, Senator Ayres.

'Death Tax Timmy' keeps interjecting. You'll need to tone it down a bit, mate. As I said last night, the superannuation industry really is like the 1930s Chicago gangland gangster wars. We've got a bunch of crooks out there running around, gouging $40 billion out of the Australian economy and the Australian worker every year, and it's about time we stood up to that. It reminds me of a scene in The Untouchables. Sean Connery was playing the role of retired cop Jim Malone, who was out to get Al Capone—who could easily be played by Senator Tim Ayres, actually. Just before the scene where he gets gunned down, he says to the criminal gangster, 'Isn't that just like a wop—you bring a knife to a gunfight.' He tells him to get out, and, of course, just as he's about to get out, he gets gunned down.

This legislation is a bit like bringing a knife to a gunfight, in the sense that it doesn't really go far enough in cracking down on the superannuation industry. We've got $3 trillion out there sloshing around in the ivory towers of Sydney and Melbourne, lining the pockets of the wealthy and the blowhards, while the battlers out there in the regions and the metropolitan suburbs of the cities are basically losing 10 per cent of their income every week. I'll have a go at my own party here. We think we believe in free markets, but markets are actually predicated on the risk-reward paradigm. This is the problem with superannuation—there is no risk-reward paradigm; there is no downside risk for fund managers. Basically, fund managers can lose the entire lot of someone's superannuation and not be held liable for the loss of capital. If we're going to get serious about increasing productivity in this country, we need to get serious about matching risk and reward. That's certainly not the case with superannuation, which, in my view, doesn't really help anyone other than the wealthy end of town.

Superannuation also provides up to almost $40 billion in tax concessions. Of course, most of those tax concessions also go to the wealthy end of town. I'll quote you some numbers. It's estimated to be about $40 billion in tax concessions. There are 13 million workers in Australia. If we were to give them a $3,000 tax cut, that would cost $39 billion. A $3,000 tax cut, from the bottom up, could basically lift the tax-free threshold from $18,200 to, off the top of my head, a bit over $30,000. Most of that money would be pumped back into the economy. You could probably get the tax-free threshold up to $35,000 or $40,000. That would be a great way to incentivise people to get back to work. I think we have a crazy system in this country. We give businesses a tax deduction for the cost of doing business but we don't give PAYG workers a tax deduction for the cost of living. It's silly, in my view, to be taxing low-income earners earning below $35,000 to $40,000 for their cost of living if we just have to give it back to them through social security. Why not let low-income earners keep that money in the first place, especially if we can give all these tax concessions to superannuation? You have to earn the money in the first place before you even pay superannuation. It would be better to actually let people earn that money in the first instance.

If you add up the $40 billion in fees and the $40 billion in tax concessions, the cost of this superannuation comes to about $80 billion. The cost of the pension is $52 billion. You've got to ask yourself: are we spending $80 billion to avoid paying out more of the pension? Really, I think we'd be better off raising the pension, getting rid of superannuation tax concessions, raising low-income tax thresholds and cutting the tax rate for low-income earners. That would enable everyone to have a better safety net when they retire, rather than having this: 'Anything goes. Pick your super fund and, if your super fund does a good job, you might get your money back, but, if it does a bad job, you don't get your money back.'

What I love about super funds is that they're allowed to short shares! I will give credit where it is due: AustralianSuper and QSuper have stopped short selling shares, and that's a very good thing. I urge all other superannuation fund managers to stop shorting shares. I am lobbying the Treasurer on this. I think shorting is a heinous practice. Fund managers have a fiduciary duty to protect the interests of their clients, and shorting shares creates a lottery. If the day you come to retire and have to cash out your super to pay off your home loan is the same day a super fund happens to shorts shares because, at the same time, a fund manager has to retire and cash out to pay for his house because he hasn't been able to pay for his house throughout the course of his lifetime because he has had to put 10 per cent of his earnings, which could be 100 per cent of his savings, into super rather than his house, you would lose out. This shorting practice is an example of how superannuation funds aren't protecting the interests of their members. It is a heinous practice, and it should be abolished.

It has been almost 30 years now since Paul Keating brought in superannuation. If we look at the number of people on the pension, including the part pension, it has dropped by only a couple of per cent in that time. You've got to ask yourself: what is the point of giving away $80 billion in tax concessions and fees, which is only lining the pockets of the wealthy and white-collar fund managers in their ivory palaces in the city and hasn't done the job it is supposed to do? It hasn't really reduced the reliance on the pension. What's worse is that, since 1992, the number of people retiring with a mortgage has increased from 10 per cent to 40 per cent. That is clear evidence that superannuation is actually making it much more difficult for people to pay off their homes. There is no greater way to retire—no better way to retire—than to have your own home. At least, if you've got a roof over your head, you know you have some security in retirement, unlike the stock market, which is extremely volatile. If you look at the last 12 months, it has been bouncing around like a buoy on the ocean. It's not effective and it certainly doesn't provide a lot of security.

The other thing about superannuation—and I think this is a really important pointer to why the pension is a much better way to protect and provide a safety net in retirement—is that it is not universal. It's not there for stay-at-home parents. It's not there for people on the disability pension or people who get unemployment benefits. It doesn't help out volunteers. If you want superannuation, we've got to get everyone back to work. What concerns me is: if everyone goes back to work, who's going to man the school tuckshops? Who's going to do all the volunteer work in the community that has to happen 24 hours a day, seven days a week? It's one of those things. I know, from when I took four years off and helped raise my children, that there's a lot of community organisations out there that do a lot of good work throughout the week. This idea that we have to get everyone back into the workforce is going to destroy our volunteer community. There's a lot to be said for having a universal pension which covers everyone, including those on a disability pension and stay-at-home parents. I think that's something worth considering. However, this bill is a step in the right direction. I would like to go a lot further. It's like taking a knife to a gun fight. Personally, I would like to bring a bazooka and a few other things.

I think it's worth discussing some aspects of this bill which are worth doing. This bill seeks to increase the accountability of underperforming super funds. It also takes aims at ERFs, which historically have served the purpose of temporary holding funds designed for lost, small or inactive superannuation accounts. This racket has been going on way too long. We have multiple accounts and we don't have portability in the superannuation industry. Why it has taken this long to fix it up is beyond me. It has just added more to the superannuation fund managers' rivers of gold at the expense of hardworking Australians. That is certainly one good thing about this bill.

But, ultimately, we've got to ask ourselves whether we want to continue the superannuation facade in this country or provide a true safety net for those in retirement through a universal pension which is guaranteed—unlike superannuation, which isn't capital guaranteed. It also raises the issue of whether superannuation is actually legitimate under the Constitution; people haven't ever been given the option of choosing whether they want to lose their hard-earned earnings. That's really one aspect of superannuation where we should look at New Zealand—and I know the Left love to quote New Zealand. New Zealand had a referendum on compulsory superannuation and they voted it down 92 per cent to eight per cent. We have had property rights destroyed here; people's wages have been taken from them without their permission. I make no secret of it: I strongly encourage a discussion on it. Personally, I would like to see a referendum on whether superannuation should be compulsory. It should be optional. People should have a choice as to how they spend it, especially if they want to pay off their home loan or their HECS debt.

When we send our kids to university they rack up tens of thousands of dollars in HECS debts. Then they come out and work and, if they earn $100, they pay $30 tax and it might cost them $50 to live. They might be lucky to save $10 or 20 out of that $100 and then they will lose most of that to a superannuation fund while their HECS debt keeps accumulating. At the end of the day, we have to put the horse before the cart: pay off your HECS debt, own your house and set yourself up for a good family life when you have your own children. When your children have grown older, you can focus on your retirement knowing you have a strong and secure safety net in the form of the universal pension.

This bill is a step in the right direction. We still have a long way to go, but I commend the bill to the Senate.

That was extraordinary. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't been sitting in here: we have someone from the government benches saying, 'We don't want everyone in a job because who's going to man our tuck shops?' For goodness sake!

I rise to speak on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill 2020. This bill contains a single schedule that amends the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act, the Retirement Savings Accounts Act and the Superannuation (Unclaimed Money and Lost Members) Act 1999 to facilitate the closure of eligible rollover funds by 30 June 2021. ERFs were designed to look after unclaimed super. Balances are typically low and accounts are inactive. This measure addresses recommendation 5 of the 2019 Productivity Commission inquiry into superannuation, which recommended that the ATO be responsible for holding lost superannuation accounts and that APRA oversee the wind-up of eligible rollover funds. It will allow the ATO commissioner to reunite superannuation accounts they receive from eligible rollover funds with a member's active account.

These changes build on the Protecting Your Superannuation 2019 legislation which saw low-balance and inactive accounts transferred by trustees to the ATO, not ERFs. Fund trustees transferring inactive or low-balance accounts to the ATO have made ERFs redundant, and this legislation provides that timetable to wrap up those remaining ERFs by 30 June 2021. The ATO have successfully reunited more than 2.1 million lost or forgotten superannuation accounts. This is a greater success rate than AUSfund over a 10-year period.

Labor will be supporting this bill. It is sensible and logical that lost super should be reunited with its rightful owner as quickly and as simply as possible without establishing any additional funds and additional accounts. Labor continues to support measures that target duplicate accounts with a stronger, fairer superannuation system. It is clear that the ATO matching has been more successful than AUSfund and it's in the members' best interests.

Let me be very clear: this bill, if it passes this chamber today, represents just one flicker of light of logic in the murky ideological darkness that is the Morrison government's attitude to superannuation and ensuring that Australians have dignity in retirement. We just heard a snippet of that from the senator in his speech prior to me. The best thing that this government could do to ensure that dignity and to work in the best interests of Australians is to move our country towards 12 per cent superannuation as legislated. That move, already delayed by this government twice and costing workers retiring today between $60,000 and $100,000 in their superannuation balance, is vital to ensure that all working Australians achieve a dignified standard of living in retirement. Australians are living longer in retirement. The changing nature of work, rising aged-care and health costs, and declining home ownership rates in retirement are key reasons why ordinary working Australians will need 12 per cent super to retire with dignity. Yet we see the Morrison government quibbling and prevaricating.

When Australia's compulsory superannuation system was first established more than 25 years ago it was done with a simple clear objective in mind, and that was to provide working Australians with some savings at retirement. Before that, most people had no nest egg at all, other than their home. Superannuation was largely the domain of higher income earners and the Public Service. Millions of Australians had nothing in super and could only look forward to the aged pension—if that's anything to look forward to.

As the cornerstone of Australia's retirement income system, compulsory superannuation is now one of our greatest success stories. The miracle of compound interest has created a significant pool of capital that is now benefiting our economy and financial system. It is a key mitigating factor against wealth inequality and it is enabling people to have a better life in retirement. But something fundamental is shifting in our country. In 2017 the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees report No place like home: the impact of declining home ownership on retirementnoted the impact of Australia's falling home ownership rates on the retirement wellbeing of future generations. The report found that more people were retiring with mortgage debt or having to rely on private rental housing, with twice as many retired households paying more than 30 per cent of their income for housing. Older retirees are forced to rent, many of them single women. They deserve both housing security and a decent income. This is further argument for the superannuation guarantee to rise as legislated.

The guarantee is legislated to increase from 9.5 to 10 per cent on 1 July this year. It will then increase in 0.5 per cent increments to 12 per cent by July 2025. But the federal government is yet to officially commit to this year's increase, with Mr Frydenberg saying in recent months that a decision will be made in the May 2021 budget. He has announced that the legislated increase of superannuation to 10 per cent in 2021 will be reconsidered following the public release of the retirement income review, along with the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. A group of coalition backbenchers have publicly expressed opposition to a rise in the super guarantee. We heard some of that just a moment ago.

The Morrison government has let it be known that it is mulling over a proposal that would allow Australians to substitute future increases in the superannuation guarantee for higher take-home pay. The Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, and the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, should stop using this pandemic as an excuse to come after wages and super. They should stop pretending that they want workers to choose between higher super or higher wages, when the truth is that the government wants neither. Workers have already lost $40 billion from their retirement savings through the government's COVID early superannuation release measures. This will translate to $100 billion over their full working lives. So we need measures to build up super savings to assist Australians who have accessed their super due to financial pressures—measures to rebuild superannuation savings, not to cut them further.

The Industry Super Australia deputy CEO, Matt Linden, has crunched the numbers and they don't look good for ordinary working Australians. This idea that the government is floating of making future superannuation guarantee rises optional not only would reduce workers' super savings but also would increase the amount of tax that they pay. This is because superannuation contributions are taxed at 15 per cent, while the average worker has a marginal tax rate of 32.5 per cent. As a result, an average family today consisting of two 30-year-old parents would pay $20,000 more in taxation over their working lives if they opted out of the superannuation guarantee rises and would have up to $200,000 less in their superannuation by retirement. Removing the 'guarantee' in the super guarantee and making it optional is a recipe for higher taxes, lower lifetime incomes, less dignity in retirement and a red-tape nightmare for business.

It is very clear that this government is exploring as many underhanded ways to renege on the superannuation guarantee as it can. In the May budget, Mr Frydenberg will reveal how far he has succumbed to the ideologues in his party, those who seek to cut workers' wages through the current IR bill, those who seek to undermine the guarantee that is designed purely to give ordinary working people security and dignity in retirement. A rate of 9½ per cent simply isn't going to get this country to a place where hardworking Australians can accumulate sufficient funds in their super accounts to have a secure, dignified retirement, and the government knows it. Leaving super at 9.5 per cent would consign low-income workers as well as millions of women and men with broken work patterns to financial hardship in retirement. It would also lead to more Australians needing to rely on the age pension. Let us all acknowledge that everyone, each elected representative in this chamber today, is receiving much more than that; we're all receiving 15.4 per cent. To deny the rest of the country a rise in their super would be the absolute height of hypocrisy. The Morrison government should acknowledge that we have a first-class retirement system and allow the superannuation guarantee to rise to 12 per cent as legislated. The Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy, Senator Hume, sits in this chamber, and she's sitting here today. She should commit to doing that today. I call on her to do so.

I urge Australians listening to this and Australians reading this in the coming weeks to seriously consider Senator Rennick's speeches last night and just a few moments ago, because, while Senator Rennick is held up to ridicule in public from time to time because of his more extreme utterances, the truth is that he does say what the majority of the Liberal Party backbench are thinking; he does represent the view of most of the people in the Liberal Party. And what a shallow, cold-hearted, miserable view that is.

Superannuation in Australia is a national achievement. It's an achievement wrought through struggle and sacrifice; through collective bargaining and legislation; through Australian employers and unions, workers and government working together to establish a $3 trillion pool of national savings.

There is much more work to be done to build a stronger bedrock of retirement savings for Australian people. I know that many people in the Liberal Party want to see working people go back to where they think working people belong—that is, dependent upon others, dependent upon the age pension, worried about their retirement security. That's where the Liberal Party want people to go back to, where they think they belong. But we on this side, and I think every working Australian, will continue to fight for a retirement savings system that treats people with dignity; gives people opportunities; allows people to continue to build a system that actually creates jobs; deepens and diversifies our national pool of savings—it is the envy of countries around the globe—deploys productive capital; and, despite all of the Liberal Party's efforts, can still invest in national infrastructure. It is easier for a Canadian super fund to invest in Australian infrastructure than an Australian one. I know the Liberal Party don't like it; they don't like the fact that workers' money can build jobs and build infrastructure in Australia. Over the next three years, industry super funds will invest $19½ billion in projects, create 200,000 jobs and save the federal budget $3 billion.

Indeed, our system does contain inequities that need reform. The gender pay gap is compounded in superannuation. Women retire with 42 per cent less super than men, and women live four to five years longer. Ensuring that Australian women in retirement are independent and have their own retirement income should be a key objective of reform. That's a direction of useful reform that the Liberal Party could engage in, but they are beyond reform; they are only interested in pursuing their ideological prejudices and biases in government and in maintaining government. If that means sopping up to Senator Rennick or Senator Hanson, they will do whatever is required in government to persist, but they will not do genuine reform in the interests of the Australian people.

Low-income workers are more vulnerable to superannuation theft. That should be an objective of reform for this government. Low-income workers are much more likely to have used the early access scheme. Billions of dollars were ripped out of retirement incomes, mostly of low-income workers. And the government continues to make it harder for Australian super to invest in Australian infrastructure. That should be an area of reform.

Our test on superannuation reform is very simple: we will support measures that make the system stronger and fairer. To that extent, we will support the legislation that's before the Senate. The bill will allow the tax commissioner to reunite superannuation accounts with amounts they receive from eligible rollover funds which have become redundant. ATO matching has recovered millions of dollars of lost superannuation so far. But the bill doesn't represent the scale of reform that's required to rebuild our superannuation system after the Liberal Party robbed it during the coronavirus pandemic. It doesn't represent the scale of reform that's required to fix the inequities that exist in the system. It doesn't begin to repair the damage done to the system by Mr Morrison, Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott.

The Liberal Party have only bad ideas for superannuation, only prejudiced ideas, only ideas that are about their own shallow ideology. They opposed compulsory superannuation when it was first proposed. Who can forget Mr Howard's period as Treasurer, where he basically pushed Australia off a cliff in terms of our economic performance? At the time, he said:

The Government has decided not to introduce the scheme of' national superannuation recommended by the majority of the Committee.

…   …   …

The major transfer of resources to the aged implied in a national superannuation scheme of the type recommended could substantially impede the Government's ability to meet other social welfare priorities.

Further, he said:

In addition, the Government believes that the freedom of choice individuals currently enjoy in arranging their affairs in respect of income in retirement should be retained.

What a miserable, straitened, confined view he had then of the possibilities for the Australian economy. And there's a straight line between that and where the Liberal Party and the Morrison government are today on superannuation. They've got the same bigoted attitudes to working families now that they had then. He drove the Australian economy off a cliff in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was on the wrong side of history then; the Liberal Party are on the wrong side of history now. The Liberal Party were on the wrong side of history when they ransacked the superannuation system last year, forcing ordinary Australians to raid their own retirement savings so that the government could scrape through the recession. It was not in the interests of ordinary Australians but in the interests of the fiscal position of the Morrison government. And the backbench enthusiasm, which reaches right into the minister's office, for Darwinian superannuation proposals means that they will be on the wrong side of this debate for decades to come.

The Morrison government are consistently wrong about superannuation because they don't understand it; they don't get it. They are incapable of empathising with the interests of ordinary people. They see $3 trillion of workers' savings and they can't understand how it got there: 'Why isn't it in the hands of our mates in the banks? Why isn't it with the spivs and the speculators?' Instead, it's supporting decent retirement incomes for Australians. It enrages them that trillions of dollars are managed cooperatively, efficiently and effectively by boards that are run cooperatively in industry sectors, by unions and employees working hand in glove in the interests of the members of the superannuation funds. Nothing gets the Liberals more twitchy than hearing about the history of superannuation and about Laurie Carmichael and Bill Kelty and Tom McDonald and Mavis Robertson and Paul Keating and the thousands of other Australians who fought to build the system, because that's not the constituency that they represent. They represent the spivs and the speculators in the finance sector.

Superannuation is a threat to their entire worldview, so when the coronavirus struck and the economy shed a million jobs in a week they decided not to let a good crisis go to waste. It was a chance to strike at the superannuation funds they'd hated for so long. The early access to superannuation scheme was a ram raid. It is reported by APRA that nearly 3½ million Australians withdrew from their super a total of $36.4 billion, and counting. Many people emptied their accounts and will retire in poverty as a consequence of the Morrison government's decision. Its target wasn't the superannuation accounts of the wealthy. CEOs still get tax breaks on their self-managed super funds. Its target was the people already struggling through the super system: casual workers abandoned by the government in terms of JobKeeper in hospitality and tourism, young people, women. They were all abandoned. Fifty-three per cent of the jobs lost in the first months of the pandemic were held by women. Women withdrew higher percentages of their superannuation balances. Most likely, most of the people who withdrew their account balances were women workers, and, as far as the Morrison government is concerned, that's a good outcome because it weakens the superannuation system.

Why did they do this? There was a spillover of anger from people like Senator Bragg. These backbench ideologues will never have to make the kinds of decisions ordinary Australians have to make. They will never have to work multiple jobs in struggling to save, or make tough decisions about which bills to pay and which bills to defer. They will never have to choose between a job that breaks their aging bodies and possibly decades of poverty. They will never have to sell their own homes to fund the specialist aged-care services that they need. The people on that side, they've got their trusts, their big houses, their 15 per cent superannuation courtesy of the taxpayer, their multiple investment properties. We've learnt from the example of the former member for Dunkley this week that they've always got a cushy job lined up around the corner—sometimes even before they have left the parliament.

I've attempted to read the book by Senator Bragg. I sent someone from my office to go and ask for it. Apparently the office didn't want to hand it over. I think it's in a safe out the back. It is a book that is full of distortions and mistruths, most of them deliberate. I've read the quotes where he makes outrageous, dishonest claims about the interaction between superannuation funds and the political system. He claims that they are big donors to political parties, which is a deliberate mistruth. Everybody knows it's a mistruth, but, in some wacky Trumpian sort of approach, people on this side think if they continue to tell a lie that it will somehow become true. Senator Bragg said, 'Since super started in 1992, every single age group has experienced lower levels of home ownership.' Well, that is a deliberate misrepresentation. The reason home ownership has declined is that the investor share of new mortgage lending has grown from 10 per cent in the early 1990s to 40 per cent. The reason young people aren't buying homes is that they have been priced out by investors and there isn't enough supply in the market. But he is determined to shift the blame somehow to the superannuation system, which is miserable indeed. Compulsory superannuation hasn't affected the capacity of people on the other side to purchase multimillion dollar properties.

Mr Wilson's new campaign is 'Home first, super second'. The only policy Mr Wilson can muster to the unequal housing situation is more speculation in the housing market. It sort of makes sense if you've led the life that Mr Wilson has led, if you've had the access to wealth and property and power that Mr Wilson has had. But he also enjoys a 15 per cent superannuation contribution. Perhaps his position ought be to really be 'Four houses first, 15 per cent super second', or perhaps 'Holiday homes first, family trusts second'. It's an inspiring message for the hardworking people of Australia: the opportunity to die in poverty because you are forced to raid your super in your 40s to scrape together the deposit to beat some joker who is backed by a tax exemption on his seventh investment property. That idea that capital belongs in speculative property markets rather than in workers' retirement incomes is a shallow, venal, narrow, cold-hearted approach to the many millions of working Australians who are relying upon government. It lacks ambition. It lacks imagination. It's all about ideology and a shallow, narrow sense of the future for working-class Australians.

Labor has always served the interests of working Australians and we continue to seek to put people first. There are so many examples of this, one in particular being the establishment of superannuation and the superannuation guarantee under the leadership of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, a measure which helped to ensure that every single Australian, regardless of their place in the workplace, was able to retire with comfort. It's not hyperbole to say that Paul Keating's stewardship of our superannuation program, as Treasurer and then as Prime Minister, will leave a lasting mark on the lives of Australians for generations to come. Thanks to the super guarantee, Australian workers now have retirement savings of close to $3 trillion. For most, they no longer have to fear the uncertainty of retirement or having to rely on the pension; indeed, it is true to say that our system is the envy of the world. Many countries wish that they had set up a superannuation scheme like this country's many years ago.

I, along with my Labor colleagues, support the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill and that's because we truly understand the value of super and what it means not just for individuals when they retire but also for the broader community. As we know, superannuation funds do a lot more than just manage super funds; they also invest back in our community. On this side of the chamber, we know the importance that super has to retiring workers in retail stores, in factories and building sites. Indeed, in my time before entering this place I saw firsthand the value of this system to Australian workers, especially those workers in retail. The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, where I worked, continues to remain one of the largest trade unions in Australia, representing workers in not just retail but also fast food and warehousing. The members of the SDA are often low-income earners, with the median weekly earnings of all Australians in 2018 being 34 per cent higher than retail workers. But for many, their retirement will still be reliant on the old-age pension and rent assistance as well as what little super they may have. The decisions made in this place about super have a direct impact not just on their lives but on the lives of their families.

While this bill will very likely prove useful to many Australians in managing multiple superannuation accounts, it is important that we don't forget that right now, in this place and in the other place, the coalition is also trying to undermine the superannuation system, an assault on the retirement security of working families. This is no surprise for some of the strongest opponents to super, and we've had quite a number of contributions in this place this morning as prime examples. Superannuation is a bedrock for many but, unfortunately, among those opposite, with the contributions we heard earlier, there are a number of senators who would like to dismantle the system.

On the surface, perhaps, some of the reforms explored in the draft could be interpreted as being of benefit to workers but when we dig just a little deeper into them, we learn that this is unlikely. In fact, the draft includes measures that directly contradict some of the recommendations and findings of the Hayne Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. As the SDA noted in their December 2020 submission to the retirement income review, with these measures, the government estimates a typical young Australian entering the workforce in their 20s could be around $87,000 better off at retirement. However, the implementation of this plan as outlined in the exposure draft presents significant barriers to achieving this projected benefit.

For five years now, the coalition has promised and failed to deliver a retirement income covenant that would ensure workers' best financial interests are put first in their retirement. The Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill supports measures that target duplicate superannuation accounts through the ATO. Labor believes that the ATO matching is in the best interests of fund members. We support measures that are in the best interests of working Australians, again, unlike many of those senators opposite.

In submission after submission to the retirement income review, stakeholders have reminded the federal government of the value of our compulsory superannuation system. For example, in a February 2020 paper, Rest Super noted:

The achievements of the compulsory superannuation system, particularly for lower-income Australians, cannot be overstated. Even for members who retire with an account balance lower than retirement adequacy standards, having access to a lump sum or superannuation pension can provide them with valuable security and an ability to plan and manage this stage of their lives. Before compulsory superannuation, these workers typically had no income in retirement beyond the Age Pension.

Surely, we all understand that making people more reliant on the age pension will: (1) cost the taxpayer more in the long run: and (2) leave future older Australians more vulnerable and living in stressful financial circumstances. Surely, it's just common sense that retaining and supporting Australia's compulsory superannuation system should be a goal actively pursued by all sides of politics.

There are some representatives in the federal coalition ranks who seem to believe that owning a home and saving for your retirement are mutually exclusive goals, and I simply do not accept that. We should be aiming, as a nation, to make it possible for working Australians to own their home as well as save for retirement. We can do both and we have shown that. We should do both; not doing both would be absolutely reprehensible.

Owning a home, the Australian dream, is a worthwhile goal. A home provides security, warmth and a place to put down roots. In retirement, having worked for a living and made a contribution to the community in whatever form, Australians should be able to enjoy a comfortable retirement in their home. I'll never accept the view that we should force people to choose between a home and a comfortable retirement, when we in this place have the opportunity to make both possible.

As I've already stated, Labor will support the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill because Labor supports a stronger superannuation system. Labor has always advocated for a stronger super scheme, and it is worth pointing out that a 12 per cent super rate was always the intention of former Prime Minister Paul Keating in designing the original compulsory superannuation model. In July 1991, as a member of the backbench, Mr Keating gave a speech to the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales. He argued that government should legislate a mandatory 12 percentage point charge to be paid by employers as part of the productivity sharing under the accord wage restraint model and, as he recalled in 2007, this speech remains the key speech in the forward design of the Australian super system. Labor believes moving forward with the already legislated increases to the super guarantee remains key to creating a stronger super system. Australian workers should be getting 12 per cent—in fact, they should be getting 12 per cent now, considering that most of us in this place enjoy the benefit of a 15.4 per cent rate.

Coalition senators, including many still here, voted against the legislation back in 2012. Today, in 2021, Australian workers are only getting 9½ per cent because the government have frozen the increases and, in arguing for the freeze, they told us it would drive wages growth. The proof is in the pudding: even before the COVID-19 pandemic, wages growth had stalled. Not only are Australian workers missing out on the future benefits in retirement that would come to them through increased superannuation; they are also missing out on increased wages, which would have been promised to them by those opposite, due to stubborn low wages growth that the coalition seems entirely disinterested in addressing.

Finally, as I've stated earlier, Labor will support the bill before us. But Labor also supports a much fairer system. Once again, this directly contrasts with the members of the coalition who continue to demonstrate, through their lack of action, that they do not believe in a fairer system. If they wanted a fairer system, we would see new proposals to address the super gender pay gap and reforms to address the fact that females are retiring with significantly less in their accounts. If they wanted a fairer system, we would see proposals to address the enormous difficulties that part-timers, insecure workers and gig economy workers are currently facing in our economy. But we don't see any of that from those opposite. Instead, we see proposals that will grow inequality, that will leave workers worse off. And we see continued attacks on our super system. But there is much more to do. Australians deserve a government that will act in their interests and they deserve a government that is on their side. It's only the Labor Party that will be able to do that.

Like my colleagues, I note our support for the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill 2020, which seeks to make it easier for the ATO to reunite superannuation rollover funds with members' active accounts. This bill addresses a recommendation of the 2019 Productivity Commission inquiry into superannuation. I note also that the ATO has successfully reunited more than 2.1 million lost or forgotten superannuation accounts, assisting Australians to afford dignity in retirement, which was the objective of the policy of compulsory superannuation.

What we must not overlook, however, is the fact that this bill sits within the broader Liberal Party agenda that they are peddling when it comes to superannuation. They are doing practically everything they can to rip the guts out of Australians' retirement savings. This is the party that brought the misleading 'your super, your choice' legislation, which took aim at mandated super in lawfully negotiated enterprise bargaining agreements, a bill that was about giving employers more choice, more freedom to undermine the choices of their workforce, leading to poorer returns and outcomes for workers. As the McKell Institute found in their submission—if the government cared to read it; but it didn't fit their ideology—in review of the bill, 'Employers and employee unions who collectively bargain for a fund are most likely to select a high-performing fund.' By reducing the scope for employers and employees to negotiate around superannuation in their agreements, the government has restricted freedom of choice for these workers and left them at the mercy of predatory retail funds and aggressive employer actions. It was clear that this bill was just a thinly veiled assault on industry super funds, all part of the Liberal agenda to move billions of assets and funds under the management of industry funds, looked over by employers and worker representatives, over to the poorly-performing for-profit retail funds and their mates.

Senator Hume interjecting—

Minister!

It was a bill based on shoddy research, driven by an ideological agenda.

Documents obtained by my office under freedom of information reveal the extraordinary lengths the government went to in order to build a case for this legislation. They provided no performance bases or rationale when selecting several funds for the Attorney-General's Department to investigate. They relied upon a sample analysis that was never intended as a representative sample. It was a select reading of enterprise agreements tied to the funds that government wanted to go after. Sadly, this bill did pass, clearing the way for the poorly-performing retail funds to seize the financial futures of thousands of Australians. The retail funds have regularly been caught out delivering poor performance and higher fees.

Senator Hume interjecting—

Did you have a point of order, Senator Watt?

Members are conventionally heard in silence. The minister is obviously very sensitive. I ask that you rein her in, please.

Senator McGrath interjecting—

Senator McGrath, you're not helping the situation. Minister, I ask you to stop interjecting.

Senator Hume interjecting—

There's no point of order. Sit down, Minister. If you want to make a contribution at your time, you can do so, and you can raise the issues that you're interjecting on. Senator Sheldon, please continue.

I repeat: these retail funds have regularly been caught out delivering poor performance and higher fees. Year in, year out, these retail funds underperform industry funds. Of course, it begs the question: why are retail for-profit funds even allowed in the superannuation space?

The Liberals' war on superannuation doesn't stop there. Their mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic left Australians with little to no choice but to draw down upon tens of thousands of dollars from their superannuation accounts. The Liberal-National parties told people who lost their jobs, many of whom were denied JobKeeper, that they had no choice but to short-change their futures to meet the demands of the present. What is the cost of this government-sanctioned vandalism of retirement savings? Almost $38 billion has been taken out of superannuation.

Liberals like Senator Bragg tried out lines like, 'Super is people's money anyway; why shouldn't they use it in times of hardship?' But the language ignores the actual hardship. We're going through a global health pandemic. We're in the midst of a recession. It's not because of market failure. People weren't forced to raid their super because they had made bad financial decisions. The vast majority of Australians accept the necessity of measures limiting travel—border restrictions—and mandating social distancing. All of these were the correct responses to a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. But there was never any justification for forcing people to effectively trade away their future now by running down their hard-earned retirement benefits. The truth is that this undermining of superannuation will hurt most of those industries who have been devastated by COVID-19, all because this government has failed to take responsibility for looking after people affected by the economic consequences of COVID-19. The Liberals like to talk about responsibility, how working people should be responsible for their lives. Well, when are the Liberals going to be responsible? When are they going to be accountable? They should take responsibility for the livelihoods of people whose jobs have been lost as a result of COVID-19.

Not content with acts of sabotage, Liberals are now trying to present a false choice to Australian workers, telling them they must choose between higher wages today or dignity in retirement. It's a false choice. Since the former Abbott government, in 2014, delayed scheduled increases in superannuation, real wage growth has been marginal. In the past five years have workers been rewarded with higher wages because of the Abbott government's delay? No. In the last decade real wage growth has only exceeded two per cent in a single year—under their watch. There is little or no evidence that employers are miraculously or generously passing on the savings of delayed superannuation payments to their workers in the form of higher wages. Whenever the election is called, workers will be given a chance to deal with this false choice presented by the coalition. What the government is really proposing is that workers choose between dignity in their retirement or an unreliable promise of further wage growth. This choice is being pushed by the renegade Liberals on the backbench—the thinly veiled work of henchmen for the big banks, put into parliament by the vested interests of Australian financial vultures. They are here to do the bidding of the big four banks and for-profit retail funds.

This government wilfully forgets the central reason for superannuation's existence. It's not a piggy bank for the government to smash open during a crisis. It is not a rainy-day fund for the government. It is the savings of the Australian community. It is to supplement and as best as possible complement the age pension for individual Australians. Paul Keating, when speaking to members of Industry Super Australia in August last year, said that superannuation was:

… a great public bargain with the community: defer consumption for your working life [and] you will get a very low rate of tax [and] ownership of the funds.

Speaking of quoting Keating, the backbencher Senator Bragg, the coalition's superannuation wrecker in chief, who is doing his best to undermine Senator Hume, has been quoting Keating of late. He tweeted in August last year:

Keating told the 1992 ACTU Congress: "You are losing your industrial muscle; I have given you the opportunity to take on financial muscle. You will get that through your superannuation funds."

The only thing is: Keating never said those words. There is no record of him saying them. You want to know why? Because there was no ACTU Congress in 1992. But I will give the senator the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's thinking of the 1993 ACTU Congress in which Keating spoke—except the transcript of that speech has been up for years, and there is no appearance of that quote. Maybe it's another speech by former Prime Minister Keating—except a pretty thorough check of all his published transcripts show no results for that quote. Maybe a Hansard search would turn something up? It turns out there's no reference to that at any time either. Could it be that Senator Bragg is mistaken? Has he had a Ronald Reagan moment? Could it be that Senator Bragg, in his relentless quest to undermine super and become the finance minister, has incorrectly and falsely quoted the former Prime Minister and Treasurer? Maybe it's another one of those conspiracy theories the senator thoroughly enjoys, like when he tweeted about the evils of George Soros and the Left's 'web of money'. Any senator caught in such a situation would, you'd think, immediately retract such a statement or offer the source for this quote. Instead, the senator sent a link to an article in the Spectator magazine that doesn't feature a direct quote, and decried all the fact-checking as 'spin'.

This is coming from the man who spent years before being elected advocating for and defending the most scandal-prone and worst-performing part of the finance industry—superannuation run for profit by the big banks. Back when he argued against a royal commission into the banks, he argued against the Future of Financial Advice laws that forced shonky financial planners to do the right thing by their customers. The only difference between then and now is that Senator Bragg is lobbying for the banks and their interests right now, while on the taxpayer's dime. Just one example of this phenomenon is Senator Bragg's bizarre attack on the news website of the industry-super-backed The New Daily and their commercial agreement with the ABC. He's a modern Liberal defender and protector of all things commercial—unless it involves the ABC and news content that he disagrees with. Bragg was happy to deliver the keynote at the 2020 FinTech Awards, where the top gong went to a payday lender, Beforepay, that charges only five per cent to lend up to $200 for a week—the equivalent of a 260 per cent annual interest rate. It says it all, doesn't it! That's the kind of commercial arrangement he likes. But he's unhappy with a commercial arrangement where a legitimate news website with respected journalists pays the ABC to use their content, just because he doesn't like their coverage. Well, presumably, he'll now go after the BBC and MamaMia—two of the many news outlets that have legitimate commercial arrangements with the ABC for non-exclusive use of their news content. Nothing has changed—different workplaces, same agenda.

He's not the only one. Bragg is joined in Canberra by the member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson, who is running an inquiry into the banking royal commission that isn't looking at the banks! Together, these stooges of junk retail superannuation are working hard to damage super, to trash the legislated superannuation guarantee—to cause as much damage as they can to Australians' retirement by opposing it rising. Their agenda is not in the public interest. Their agenda is partisan and designed to damage industry super funds, the best performing parts of the finance industry. They are on a wrecking mission, sent to this place by the banks to pursue their agenda—that's why they were sent here. But also the clutching at straws from the likes of Senator Bragg reveals how the stooges' war on super is really a culture war, based on ideological fantasies. It's absolutely not about workers and housing affordability, as they would have you believe; it's about vested interests. The stooges and the shonky end of finance are inseparable; they were inseparable before the Hayne royal commission and they are inseparable now. It begs the question: Who is running super policy in this government? Is it Senator Hume? Or, of course, is it Senator Bragg? Or is it the member for Goldstein? Are they running the show over there? It does look like the government is being dragged into lunacy by the stooges. It does look like a serious attempt to tear down superannuation, piece by piece. It does look like Minister Hume, the minister for ambivalence, has lost control of her own portfolio. With Bragg and Wilson's hands on the steering wheel, the minister for ambivalence has lost control.

Because of the compounding nature of capital growth and every day a delay, an increase to the superannuation guarantee is money our country loses when it comes to funding our nation's retirement, our community. But there is more to be done than just pass the increase. We must look to end the inequalities in superannuation, extending superannuation to contractors and gig workers, and bridging the gap in retirement incomes for men and women to take carer breaks to support their families. This is what Labor is about. We believe in building power of working people. We believe in building power in the voice of working people. We believe in dignity in retirement for everyone, regardless of their income, not just for the Prime Minister.

I'm delighted that all of the amendments presented by One Nation to the government in relation to this bill have been accepted by the government. As always, we have carefully scrutinised the proposed legislation and our representation to the government was based on our acting in the best interests of the Australian people. The amendments allow for voluntary transfers by trustees to the ATO, ensuring better efficiencies for superannuation funds. The amendments have resulted from discussions with superannuation funds generally and, as requested, to improve the original government bill.

During consultation, it was revealed the law would prevent some amounts being transferred to the ATO. This is because the relevant legislation, the Superannuation (Unclaimed Money and Lost Members) Act 1999, relies on concepts of member and account to enable transfers. An eligible rollover fund is a fund that is eligible to receive benefits rolled over, as the name suggests, from another fund without member consent. During consultation, funds advised that some amounts they would ordinarily transfer to eligible rollover funds relate to former members who no longer have accounts. The amendments rectify this situation by providing trustees the opportunity to voluntarily transfer any amount for any member, former member or non-member spouse.

Currently, eligible rollover funds can only send accounts to the ATO if they meet very specific conditions under the unclaimed superannuation regime or the protecting your super regime. These amendments will allow trustees of eligible rollover funds to voluntarily transfer any amount to the Australian Taxation Office, the ATO. Furthermore, these amendments will provide trustees a broad capacity to transfer superannuation to the ATO in circumstances where this is in the best interests of the member. We are advised that there are currently over half a million accounts in eligible rollover funds.

The rationale behind these amendments is that, by facilitating amounts eligible rollover funds transfer to the ATO, it should more proactively reunify funds to account holders rather than via eligible rollover funds with members, active superannuation accounts or, where appropriate, directly into peoples' bank accounts. Plus, superannuation held by the ATO will be held in a fee-free environment and paid interest at CPI. Therefore, by reuniting those lost accounts' members more quickly, it will result in higher account balances and account holders no longer paying multiple sets of fees by being placed in a no-fee environment where they will earn interest at CPI. The amendments provide obligations on the ATO to pay amounts received to a single fund on being satisfied in accordance with 22(b)(2) of the amendments. One Nation is supporting the amendment and the bill.

First, I would like to thank those senators who have contributed to this debate and I acknowledge my engagement with Senator Hanson and other senators around the chamber. This bill, the Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill 2020 on eligible rollover funds, is a very important bill. It's part of a broader arc of very successful reforms that this government has undertaken. We know that our superannuation system has served Australians well, yet it is highly imperfect. There still remains a proliferation of duplicate accounts, fees are way too high, insurances have been inappropriately applied and there remains a tail of underperforming funds.

The government's arc of reforms over the last two to three years has been slowly but surely, and very intentionally, chipping away at these inefficiencies. Our first legislation was around protecting your super. That addressed the disproportionate erosion of low-balance accounts, capped fees on low-balance accounts and proactively reunited lost and small balances with individuals' active accounts. That was so successful that it successfully consolidated around $3.7 billion that was held in unintended multiple accounts on behalf of almost two million Australians. I want to remind the chamber that Labor opposed that reform. The putting members' interests first bill, which was passed on 19 September 2019, implemented further protections from erosion due to the application of unnecessary insurance, particularly for those who are under 25, allowing them to opt in rather than automatically opt out of insurance. The number of accounts below $6,000 with insurance has gone from around three million accounts to around 1.5 million accounts on 31 May 2020. Again, that was a very sensible reform that Labor opposed. The your super, your choice legislation, which passed last year, extended the choice of fund to enterprise agreements and workplace determinations. That started in January just this year. It's estimated that around 800,000 employees, representing around 40 per cent of the workforce that is covered by a current enterprise agreement, are now able to freely choose where their hard-earned retirement savings are invested. Again, it was a very sensible, common-sense reform that Labor opposed. The superannuation guarantee amnesty, which was passed on 24 February 2020, was so successful that 28,000 employers took part and a total of $760 million was paid into the superannuation accounts or banks of 700,000 employees. Again, it was a sensible reform that Labor opposed. In fact, the only legislation in superannuation that we have passed so far with Labor's support was for the early release of superannuation. Again, it was a highly successful program that ensured the financial stability and security of millions of Australians. For that, I thank Labor for their support.

I thank Labor for their support of this bill, which is a very sensible and common-sense reform that will facilitate the exit of eligible rollover funds from the superannuation system by 31 January 2022. It will also allow trustees to transfer amounts to the ATO where it's in the best interest of the person to do so. This bill is highly consistent with recommendation 5 of the Productivity Commission's inquiry into superannuation and builds on the policy intent of the protecting your super reforms to reunite lost and unclaimed super with its rightful owners. Through these changes, the government is building a stronger and more efficient superannuation system and improving outcomes for members.

Yes, Senator Sheldon is right, it may well have been a Labor government that invented compulsory superannuation but, make no mistake, it has taken a coalition government to reform it. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I table a supplementary memorandum relating to the government amendments and a request for amendments to be moved to this bill.

I advise the chamber that One Nation will not be proceeding with the amendments on sheet 8892.

Can I get clarity from the minister: in tabling the material relating to the amendment, are you seeking to move your amendments now, Minister?

by leave—I move government amendments (2) to (15) on sheet SH137:

(2) Schedule 1, item 15, page 5 (line 7), omit "1 May 2020", substitute "1 May 2021".

(3) Schedule 1, item 17, page 5 (line 21), omit "1 May 2020", substitute "1 May 2021".

(4) Schedule 1, item 22, page 6 (line 22), omit "30 June 2020 and 30 June 2021", substitute "30 June 2021 and 31 January 2022".

(5) Schedule 1, item 22, page 6 (lines 27 and 28), omit "30 June 2020 (for accounts that had balances of less than $6,000 on 1 June 2020) and 30 June 2021", substitute "30 June 2021 (for accounts that had balances of less than $6,000 on 1 June 2021) and 31 January 2022".

(6) Schedule 1, item 38, page 10 (line 17), omit "1June 2020", substitute "1June 2021".

(7) Schedule 1, item 38, page 10 (line 19), omit "30 June 2020", substitute "30 June 2021".

(8) Schedule 1, item 38, page 10 (line 23), omit "1 June 2020", substitute "1 June 2021".

(9) Schedule 1, item 38, page 11 (lines 8 and 9), omit "1 June 2020", substitute "1 June 2021".

(10) Schedule 1, item 38, page 11 (line 11), omit "1 June 2020", substitute "1 June 2021".

(11) Schedule 1, item 38, page 11 (line 18), omit "1 June 2020", substitute "1 June 2021".

(12) Schedule 1, item 38, page 11 (line 23), omit "30 June 2021", substitute "31 January 2022".

(13) Schedule 1, item 38, page 11 (line 27), omit "1 June 2020", substitute "1 June 2021".

(14) Schedule 1, item 38, page 13 (line 26), omit "30 June 2020", substitute "30 June 2021".

(15) Schedule 1, item 38, page 13 (line 28), omit "30 June 2021", substitute "31 January 2022".

by leave—I move:

That the House of Representatives be requested to make the following amendments:

(1) Clause 2, page 2 (at the end of the table), add:

(16) Page 22 (after line 9), at the end of the Bill, add:

Schedule 2—Payment of other amounts to the Commissioner

Income Tax Assessment Act 1997

1 Section 301 -125

After "21E(2)", insert ", 22B(2)".

2 After subparagraph 301 -225(2 ) ( b ) ( ia)

Insert:

  (ib) under subsection 22B(2) of that Act in a case covered by paragraph (d) of that subsection; or

3 Subsection 307 -5(1) (table item 5, column 2)

After "subsection 21E(2) or (5),", insert "section 22 or subsection 22B(2) or (5),".

4 Subsection 307 -5(1) (table item 5, column 3)

After "21E(2), (5) or (6)", insert ", 22B(2), (5) or (6)".

5 Paragraph 307 -120(2 ) ( e)

After "21E(2), (5) or (6)", insert ", 22B(2), (5) or (6)".

6 Subsection 307 -142(1)

After "21E(2), (5) or (6)", insert ", 22B(2), (5) or (6)".

7 Subsection 307 -142(2) (method statement, step 1, note)

After:

A payment under subsection 21E(2) of that Act is attributable to a single unclaimed amount set out in item 3B of the table.

insert:

A payment under subsection 22B(2) of that Act is attributable to a single unclaimed amount set out in item 3C of the table.

8 Subsection 307 -142(3) (after table item 3B)

Insert:

9 Subsection 307 -142(3B)

After "21E(5) or (6)", insert ", 22B(5) or (6)".

10 Subsection 307 -300(1)

After "21E(2)", insert ", 22B(2)".

11 Subsection 307 -300(2) (method statement, step 1, note)

After:

A payment under subsection 21E(2) of that Act is attributable to a single unclaimed amount set out in item 3B of the table.

insert:

A payment under subsection 22B(2) of that Act is attributable to a single unclaimed amount set out in item 3C of the table.

12 Subsection 307 -300(3) (after table item 3B)

Insert:

13 Subsection 307 -300(3A) (note)

After "21E(5) or (6)", insert ", 22B(5) or (6)".

14 Subsection 307 -350(2B)

After "21E(2)", insert ", 22B(2)".

Superannuation (Unclaimed Money and Lost Members) Act 1999

15 After subparagraph 6(a ) ( iib)

Insert:

  (iic) certain amounts voluntarily paid to the Commissioner by superannuation providers; and

16 After paragraph 6(db)

Insert:

(dc) the matching of amounts voluntarily paid to the Commissioner by superannuation providers and persons entitled to them; and

17 At the end of paragraph 6(e)

Add:

  (vi) other amounts paid by superannuation providers on a voluntary basis; and

18 After subparagraph 6(eb ) ( iv)

Insert:

and (v) other amounts paid by superannuation providers on a voluntary basis;

19 Section 7

Omit:

Reunification of amounts held by the Commissioner

If, having taken the steps required in relation to unclaimed amounts, or amounts held by the Commissioner for lost members, inactive low-balance members or eligible rollover fund members, the Commissioner still holds an amount, the Commissioner must pay that amount to a fund in which the member for whom the Commissioner holds the amount is active, or in accordance with the regulations.

substitute:

Voluntary payments by superannuation providers

A superannuation provider may pay to the Commissioner of Taxation any amount it holds on behalf of a member, former member or non-member spouse if it reasonably believes paying the amount to the Commissioner is in the best interests of the member, former member or non-member spouse.

Later, the Commissioner must, if satisfied that it is possible to do so, pay an amount the Commissioner has received in respect of a person:

(a) to a fund identified by the person; or

(b) if the person has reached eligibility age or the amount is less than $200—to the person; or

(c) if the person has died—to the person's death beneficiaries or legal personal representative.

Reunification of amounts held by the Commissioner

If, having taken the steps required in relation to unclaimed amounts, amounts held by the Commissioner for lost members, inactive low-balance members or eligible rollover fund members or amounts paid by superannuation providers on a voluntary basis, the Commissioner still holds an amount, the Commissioner must pay that amount to a fund in which the person for whom the Commissioner holds the amount is active, or in accordance with the regulations.

20 After paragraph 19(1 ) ( dd)

Insert:

(de) amounts paid to the Commissioner under section 22 (other amounts paid by superannuation providers); and

(df) each person in respect of whom there is an amount referred to in paragraph (de) of this subsection; and

21 After subparagraph 20H(1 ) ( b ) ( iiab)

Insert:

  (iiac) the amounts (if any) paid to the Commissioner under section 22 in respect of the person; and

22 After subparagraph 20H(1 ) ( b ) ( vb)

Insert:

  (vc) the amounts (if any) paid by the Commissioner under subsection 22B(2) in respect of the person; and

23 Paragraph 20H(2B ) ( a)

After "subsection 21E(2),", insert "section 22 or subsection 22B(2),".

24 Subsection 20H(3)

After "(iiab)", insert ", (iiac)".

25 Subsection 20QF(8) (note)

After "21C(1)", insert ", 22(1)".

26 Subsection 21E(8) (note)

After "21C(1)", insert ", 22(1)".

27 After Part 3C

Insert:

Part 3D—Payment of other amounts to the Commissioner

Division 1—Payments by superannuation providers

22 Superannuation provider may pay amounts to Commissioner

(1) A superannuation provider may pay to the Commissioner an amount that it holds if:

(a) it holds the amount on behalf of:

  (i) a member of the superannuation fund, approved deposit fund or RSA for which the superannuation provider is the trustee or RSA provider; or

  (ii) a former member of that superannuation fund, approved deposit fund or RSA; or

  (iii) a non-member spouse of that member or former member; and

(b) it reasonably believes that paying the amount to the Commissioner would be in the best interests of the member, former member or non-member spouse; and

(c) at the same time as making the payment, it gives the Commissioner a statement that complies with subsection (2).

(2) The statement must be a statement, in the approved form, of information relevant to either or both of the following:

(a) the amount;

(b) the administration of any of the following in connection with the amount:

  (i) this Part;

  (ii) the Superannuation (Departing Australia Superannuation Payments Tax) Act 2007;

  (iii) the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, Part 3AA of this Act, and Chapters 2 and 4 in Schedule 1 to the Taxation Administration Act 1953, so far as they relate to this Part or the Superannuation (Departing Australia Superannuation Payments Tax) Act 2007.

(3) The amount paid must be the amount that would have been payable by the superannuation provider if:

(a) the amount had constituted an account that the superannuation provider held for the member, former member or non-member spouse; and

(b) the member, former member or non-member spouse had requested that the balance held in the account be rolled over or transferred to a complying superannuation fund (within the meaning of the SIS Act).

(4) For the purposes of subsection (3):

(a) assume that the request were made before the time of the payment; and

(b) assume that the member, former member or non-member spouse had not died before the time of the payment.

(5) This section does not apply to:

(a) an amount that is unclaimed money, and that was unclaimed money on the most recent unclaimed money day; or

(b) an amount payable to a person identified in a notice the Commissioner has given the provider under section 20C; or

(c) an amount that is held in an inactive low-balance account, and that was held in such an account on the most recent unclaimed money day; or

(d) an amount that is held in an account of an eligible rollover fund member, unless the payment under this section is made before 1 June 2021; or

(e) an amount that is held in a lost member account, and that was held in such an account on the most recent unclaimed money day.

Note 1: Unclaimed money is payable to the Commissioner under subsection 17(1).

Note 2: An amount mentioned in paragraph (5) (b) is payable to the Commissioner under section 20F.

(6) Upon payment to the Commissioner of an amount under this section, the superannuation provider is discharged from further liability in respect of that amount.

22A Errors or omissions in statements

(1) A superannuation provider who becomes aware of a material error, or material omission, in any information in a statement of the superannuation provider under subsection 22(2) must give the corrected or omitted information to the Commissioner.

(2) The corrected or omitted information must be given:

(a) in the approved form; and

(b) no later than 30 days after the superannuation provider becomes aware of the error or omission.

Note 1: The Commissioner may defer the time for giving the information: see section 388-55 in Schedule 1 to the Taxation Administration Act 1953.

Note 2: The Taxation Administration Act 1953 provides for offences and administrative penalties if the information is not given when it must be: see sections 8C and 8E of that Act and Division 286 in Schedule 1 to that Act.

Division 2—Payments by Commissioner

22B Payments by Commissioner in respect of persons for whom amounts have been paid to Commissioner

(1) This section applies in relation to a person if:

(a) a superannuation provider paid an amount to the Commissioner under section 22 in respect of the person; and

(b) the Commissioner is satisfied, on application in the approved form or on the Commissioner's own initiative, that it is possible for the Commissioner to pay the amount in accordance with subsection (2).

(2) The Commissioner must pay the amount:

(a) to a single fund if:

  (i) the person has not died; and

  (ii) the person directs the Commissioner to pay to the fund; and

  (iii) the fund is a complying superannuation plan (within the meaning of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997); or

(b) in accordance with subsection (4) if:

  (i) the person has died; and

  (ii) the Commissioner is satisfied that, if the superannuation provider had not paid the amount to the Commissioner, the provider would have been required to pay an amount or amounts (death benefits) to one or more other persons (death beneficiaries) because of the deceased person's death; or

(c) to the person's legal personal representative if the person has died but subparagraph (b) (ii) does not apply; or

(d) to the person if this paragraph applies (see subsection (3)).

Note: Money for payments under this subsection is appropriated by section 16 of the Taxation Administration Act 1953.

(3) Paragraph (2) (d) applies if:

(a) subparagraph (2) (a) (ii) does not apply; and

(b) any of the following subparagraphs apply:

  (i) the person has reached the eligibility age;

  (ii) the amount is less than $200;

  (iii) a terminal medical condition (within the meaning of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997) exists in relation to the person; and

(c) the person has not died.

(4) In a case covered by paragraph (2) (b), the Commissioner must pay the amount under subsection (2) by paying to each death beneficiary the amount worked out using the following formula:

Note: If there is only one death beneficiary, the whole of the amount is payable to that beneficiary.

(5) If:

(a) the Commissioner makes a payment under subsection (2) to a fund, a legal personal representative or a person; and

(b) the payment is in accordance with paragraph (2) (a), (c) or (d);

the Commissioner must also pay to the fund, legal personal representative or person the amount of interest (if any) worked out in accordance with the regulations.

Note: Money for payments under this subsection is appropriated by section 16 of the Taxation Administration Act 1953.

(6) If:

(a) the Commissioner makes a payment under subsection (2) to a death beneficiary; and

(b) the payment is in accordance with paragraph (2) (b);

the Commissioner must also pay to the death beneficiary the amount of interest (if any) worked out in accordance with the regulations.

Note: Money for payments under this subsection is appropriated by section 16 of the Taxation Administration Act 1953.

(7) Regulations made for the purposes of subsection (5) or (6) may prescribe different rates for different periods over which the interest accrues. For this purpose, rate includes a nil rate.

(8) This section does not apply to an amount that is to be, is or has been, taken into account in determining whether the Commissioner must make a payment under subsection 20H(2) or (3).

Note: Subsections 20H(2) and (3) provide for payment by the Commissioner of amounts equal to amounts paid to the Commissioner under subsections 17(1), 20F(1), 20QD(1), 21C(1), 22(1) and 24E(1) in respect of a person who:

(a) is identified in a notice under section 20C; or

(b) used to be the holder of a temporary visa.

22C Refund of overpayment made by superannuation provider

If the Commissioner is satisfied that an amount a superannuation provider for a fund (the first fund) has paid to the Commissioner under section 22 in respect of a person exceeded the amount (if any) that was payable under that section in respect of the person, the Commissioner must pay the excess:

(a) to the superannuation provider; or

(b) to a superannuation provider for another fund if the Commissioner is satisfied that:

  (i) the first fund no longer exists; and

  (ii) the other fund provides rights relating to the person equivalent to those provided by the first fund.

Note: Money for payments under this section is appropriated by section 16 of the Taxation Administration Act 1953.

Division 3—Various rules for special cases

22D Prescribed public sector superannuation schemes

Section 6, subsections 19(1) to (3), this Part and subsection 25(3A) apply as if:

(a) a public sector superannuation scheme that:

  (i) is prescribed for the purposes of this section; and

  (ii) in the case of a Commonwealth public sector superannuation scheme—is not a fund;

were a fund; and

Note: The regulations may prescribe a scheme by reference to a class of schemes: see subsection 13(3) of the Legislation Act 2003.

(b) the trustee of the scheme were the superannuation provider; and

(c) a member of the scheme were a member of the fund.

22E Commissioner may recover overpayment

(1) If:

(a) the Commissioner makes a payment in respect of a person under, or purportedly under, this Part; and

(b) the amount paid exceeds the amount (if any) properly payable under this Part in respect of the person;

the Commissioner may recover all or part of the excess from a person (the debtor) described in subsection (2) as a debt due by the debtor to the Commonwealth if the conditions specified in subsection (3) are met.

(2) The persons from whom the Commissioner may recover are as follows:

(a) the person to whom the payment was made (whether the payment was made to the person in the person's own right or as the legal personal representative of someone else who had died);

(b) the superannuation provider for the fund to which the payment was made;

(c) if the payment, or an amount wholly or partly attributable to that payment, was transferred to another fund—the superannuation provider for that other fund.

(3) The conditions for recovery are that:

(a) the Commissioner gave the debtor written notice, as prescribed by the regulations, of the proposed recovery and the amount to be recovered; and

(b) at least 28 days have passed since the notice was given; and

(c) the amount recovered is not more than the amount specified in the notice.

(4) Despite subsections (1) and (2), if the Commissioner gives a notice described in paragraph (3) (a) to a superannuation provider for a fund, and the fund does not hold an amount attributable to the payment, the Commissioner cannot recover from the superannuation provider.

(5) The Commissioner may revoke a notice described in paragraph (3) (a).

(6) The total of the amounts recovered from different debtors in relation to the same excess must not be more than the excess.

(7) A notice described in paragraph (3) (a) is not a legislative instrument.

22F Superannuation provider to return payment from Commissioner that cannot be credited

(1) If:

(a) a payment (the Commissioner's payment) is made to a fund under subsection 22B(2) or (5) in accordance with a person's direction; and

(b) the superannuation provider for the fund has not credited the payment to an account for the benefit of the person by the time (the repayment time) that is the end of the 28th day after the day on which the Commissioner's payment was made;

the superannuation provider is liable to repay the Commissioner's payment to the Commonwealth. The repayment is due and payable at the repayment time.

Note: The amount the superannuation provider is liable to repay is a tax-related liability for the purposes of the Taxation Administration Act 1953. Division 255 in Schedule 1 to that Act deals with payment and recovery of tax-related liabilities.

(2) The superannuation provider must give the Commissioner, in the approved form, information relating to the Commissioner's payment when repaying it.

Note: The Taxation Administration Act 1953 provides for offences and administrative penalties if the form is not given when it must be or includes false or misleading information: see sections 8C, 8K and 8N of that Act and Divisions 284 and 286 in Schedule 1 to that Act.

(3) If any of the amount the superannuation provider is liable to repay under subsection (1) remains unpaid by the superannuation provider after the repayment time, the superannuation provider is liable to pay general interest charge on the unpaid amount for each day in the period that:

(a) starts at the repayment time; and

(b) ends at the end of the last day on which either of the following remains unpaid:

  (i) the amount unpaid at the repayment time;

  (ii) general interest charge on any of the amount.

28 Section 24N

After "3C", insert ", 3D".

29 After subparagraph 24NA(1 ) ( a ) ( iia)

Insert:

  (iib) a superannuation provider has paid an amount to the Commissioner under section 22 (an amount paid by a superannuation provider on a voluntary basis) and, after applying Part 3D and section 20H, the Commissioner holds an amount under that Part in respect of the person (a superannuation amount); or

30 After subsection 25(3)

Insert:

Statement about payments by superannuation providers on a voluntary basis

(3A) The approved form of statement by a superannuation provider for the purposes of subsection 22(2) may require the statement to contain the tax file number of:

(a) the superannuation provider; and

(b) the fund; and

(c) a member or former member of the fund, or a non-member spouse of such a member or former member, if:

  (i) the statement relates to an amount, in the fund, held on behalf of the member, former member or non-member spouse; and

  (ii) the member, former member or non-member spouse has quoted the tax file number of the member, former member or non-member spouse to the superannuation provider.

31 Paragraph 29(1 ) ( aa)

After "21E(1)", insert ", 22B(1)".

Taxation Administration Act 1953

32 Subsection 8AAB(4) (after table item 33D)

Insert:

33 Subsection 250 -10(2) in Schedule 1 (after table item 69AD)

Insert:

PARLIAMENTARY COUNSEL

Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill 2020

SH137

Statement of reasons: why certain amendments should be moved as requests

Section 53 of the Constitution is as follows:

Powers of the Houses in respect of legislation

53. Proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys, or imposing taxation, shall not originate in the Senate. But a proposed law shall not be taken to appropriate revenue or moneys, or to impose taxation, by reason only of its containing provisions for the imposition or appropriation of fines or other pecuniary penalties, or for the demand or payment or appropriation of fees for licences, or fees for services under the proposed law.

The Senate may not amend proposed laws imposing taxation, or proposed laws appropriating revenue or moneys for the ordinary annual services of the Government.

The Senate may not amend any proposed law so as to increase any proposed charge or burden on the people.

The Senate may at any stage return to the House of Representatives any proposed law which the Senate may not amend, requesting, by message, the omission or amendment of any items or provisions therein. And the House of Representatives may, if it thinks fit, make any of such omissions or amendments, with or without modifications.

Except as provided in this section, the Senate shall have equal power with the House of Representatives in respect of all proposed laws.

Amendment (16)

The effect of this amendment is to provide for additional circumstances in which the Commissioner of Taxation must make payments under the Superannuation (Unclaimed Money and Lost Members) Act 1999. This will increase the amount of expenditure out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund under the standing appropriation in section 16 of the Taxation Administration Act 1953. It is covered by section 53 because it would increase a proposed burden on the people.

Consequential amendments

The following amendment(s) are consequential on the amendments mentioned above:

Amendment (1).

Treasury Laws Amendment (Reuniting More Superannuation) Bill 2020

SHEET RV137

Statement by the Clerk of the Senate pursuant

to the order of the Senate of 26 June 2000

Amendment (16)

If the effect of the amendment is to increase expenditure under the standing appropriation in section 16 of the Taxation Administration Act 1953 then it is in accordance with the precedents of the Senate that the amendment be moved as a request.

Amendment (1)

Amendment (1) is consequential on the request. It is the practice of the Senate that amendments that are consequential on amendments framed as requests may also be framed as requests.

The government amendments update the required time frames for when eligible rollover funds need to comply with the requirements of this bill to ensure that the bill doesn't operate retrospectively. The amendments also provide for a mechanism for superannuation funds to voluntarily transfer amounts to the ATO, where it is in the person's best interest for those amounts to be transferred—for example, where they may have otherwise been sent to ineligible rollover funds. The ATO will proactively reunify these amounts wherever they possibly can.

An eligible rollover fund is a holding account that's designed to receive superannuation benefits of lost members and accounts with low balances that are no longer receiving contributions. The unclaimed superannuation regime, together with the recent passage of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Protecting Your Superannuation Package) Act 2019—which redirects to the ATO small and inactive accounts that may have otherwise been paid to an ERF—means that the role of eligible rollover funds in the superannuation system has significantly diminished.

This bill facilitates the exit of eligible rollover funds from the industry. But, as a result of the timing changes in the amendments, eligible rollover funds will be required to transfer all accounts below $6,000 to the ATO by 30 June 2021, which was previously 30 June 2020, and all remaining accounts to the ATO by 31 January 2022, which was previously 30 June 2021. The removal of eligible rollover funds from the market means that superannuation funds will need a mechanism to voluntarily transfer to the ATO funds that previously may have been directed to an eligible rollover fund. These amendments allow for such transfers. These amendments are needed to avoid small and unclaimed amounts held by trustees being eroded by fees. Importantly, the ATO will work proactively to reunify these amounts where possible, together with interest, to members' superannuation accounts or, in some cases, directly to the individual.

The bill is consistent with recommendation 5 of the Productivity Commission's 2018 final report, Superannuation: assessing efficiency and competitiveness, which recommended the closure of eligible rollover funds within three years. The bill also builds on the policy intent of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Protecting Your Superannuation Package) Act 2019, which ensures that members' lost and inactive accounts are consolidated with active accounts.

I want to thank Senator Hanson for her work with the government on these changes. Through these changes the government is building a stronger and more efficient superannuation system and improving outcomes for members.

I want to indicate that the opposition will be supporting the government amendments to this bill. As a broad principle, we are of course supportive of measures that target duplicate accounts and make the system stronger, fairer and more efficient. We consider that these are small but important changes that will improve the operation of the regime, as outlined in the bill. We thank all of the participants in the debate for bringing this forward.

The question is that the requests for amendments and the amendments be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

Bill, as amended agreed to, subject to requests.

Bill reported with amendments and requests; report adopted.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

I rise to speak on the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020 on behalf of the opposition. This bill implements three provisions of the government's response to the banking royal commission. It is worth noting that the Treasurer had promised to deliver all of the provisions included in this bill last year and we're still waiting for action on many other recommendations. Labor acknowledges that there may have been other worthy calls on the Treasury's time in the past six months, given the pandemic, but we also observe that this is a government that has taken a go-slow approach to almost every consumer-friendly reform. It is a government that has dragged its feet on every measure that would keep the banking sector accountable. COVID-19 appears to have been a very convenient excuse for the Treasurer to drag his feet on delivering on recommendations of the banking royal commission, and, unfortunately, this is consistent with a longstanding pattern of inaction. This is the government that voted 26 times against establishing a banking royal commission. It is a government that continues to play down any of the problems or risks for consumers in this sector.

The provisions of this bill are worthy changes to financial services law. Labor will support them. It is consistent with our commitment to implementing the recommendations of the royal commission properly. Schedule 1 provides for some enhancements to the framework governing the provision of financial advice to clients and ongoing fee arrangements in line with recommendation 2.1 of the Hayne royal commission. Schedule 2 sets out a new disclosure requirement for financial advisers. It ensures that any adviser who is not independent must provide written advice to their clients specifying how and why they are not independent and where their interests may conflict with those of their client. Schedule 3 sets out new requirements for advice fees being charged in superannuation, prohibiting ongoing fees being charged for most super accounts and preventing advice fees from being charged without express consent from the member.

Many of the people here will remember too well the cases exposed through the banking royal commission that led to the changes before us today. In perhaps the most notable of those, it became very clear that AMP knew that, in charging fees to clients for extended periods of time for services they knew they could not deliver and were not in a position to provide, their behaviour was both unethical and illegal. These were issues that were raised by junior staff within that institution and drawn to the attention of senior staff, and senior staff proceeded anyway—they did it anyway. It's for that reason that we're here today. The unethical and systematic exploitation of customers by financial service providers who charged hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for services that were never provided absolutely undermined trust in our financial system, and it has undermined trust more generally at a time when our society needs trust more than ever. I hope these new laws do combat the sort of misconduct that led to Commissioner Hayne's findings. It is going to take more than this bill to rebuild trust in our financial system. It will require financial professionals themselves and financial services entities to commit to cleaning up their own industry and ensuring that customers really do come first. It will require a government and a Treasurer that are firmly committed to improving our financial system. Sadly, I think we lack this latter element.

The Liberal Party have never been fond of a financial system that serves Australia. They have always been first and foremost in favour of a financial system which serves the best interests of their mates in high-paying jobs in senior roles in banks. That is behind the 26 occasions when they voted against establishing the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. This is a group of people and a government that have never had a vision for financial services beyond what their mates tell them over a very long lunch.

You need only look at the other bill that was put forward by this government at the end of last year, which would have stripped responsible lending obligations from almost all consumer credit contracts. It goes directly against the first recommendation of the royal commission, which explicitly told the government not to fiddle with those obligations. Those obligations were put in place by Labor in 2009 to ensure that banks and lenders were obliged to make sure that credit products were not unsuitable for their customers, and that was to prevent the kind of behaviour that we saw in the global financial crisis. This is nothing less than a big free kick for the big banks, stripping away necessary protective legislation just to save a few bucks on paperwork.

The Morrison government did not ensure that the banking royal commission recommendations were implemented in full before the COVID crisis. They dragged their heels on that. But the Australian public rightly expect that the banking royal commission's recommendations will be implemented, not glossed over, not twisted, but actually implemented as intended.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, the Treasurer has blamed the pandemic for his go-slow on bringing forward legislation for implementation. It's an excuse that is very convenient. The reality is that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on real people living and working in the real economy. They have lost their jobs, found themselves dependent on government assistance for the very first time in their lives and endured great uncertainty. The last thing that people need at a time like this, at a time of great uncertainty, is to be exposed to financial misconduct as well. The evidence presented to the banking royal commission demonstrated in volumes the devastating impact of financial misconduct on people who have done nothing wrong—people whose trust has been abused by individuals and institutions who too often got away with unscrupulous, unethical and illegal practice. The government cannot continually delay and distort important and essential reforms. I commend the bill to the Senate.

The Greens welcome this bill, which will implement four recommendations of the banking royal commission—specifically, recommendations dealing with the ongoing disclosure of, and consent to, fees by customers and the disclosure of any lack of independence on the part of a financial adviser.

This bill, the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020, is one part of the end result of the royal commission into banks that the Greens fought for so hard for so many years. This is the royal commission that the government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to conduct, despite the fact that tens of thousands of Australians have had their businesses and their lives destroyed by the rapacious and profit-hungry conduct of the big corporate banking sector in this country.

As Senator McAllister said, the government voted against a banking royal commission 26 times. It's probably worth pointing out here that Labor voted against it on multiple occasions as well. In fact, it was only the prospect of an insurrection amongst government backbench senators that forced the government's hand. They've shown just how much their heart isn't in it by using the cover of COVID to introduce legislation that would abolish responsible lending laws, in direct contradiction to the very first recommendation of the royal commission, recommendation 1.1.

As I said, it also took the Labor Party a while to see the light, no doubt slowed up by the fact that one of their number, Ms Anna Bligh, heads up no less than the Australian Banking Association. In fact, in voting against a motion from Senator Whish-Wilson, former Senator Dastyari described Senator Whish-Wilson's motion as 'a stunt'. Well, it wasn't a stunt; it was a concerted campaign to shine a light on the misdeeds of those given the privilege of managing other people's money. If there's anyone who should be thanked for the banking royal commission, it is Senator Whish-Wilson, and he should be thanked not only for the royal commission but for this bill and other bills which implement the recommendations of that royal commission. It was Senator Whish-Wilson who in the Senate, in committees and in estimates consistently pursued the banks for their misconduct and the regulators for their complicity.

But, as welcome as the royal commission was and as welcome as the changes included in this bill are, they only scratch the surface of a fundamentally broken system. After decades of privatisation and deregulation giving everyone the freedom to be actors in markets to improve their lives, inequality has grown, employment is less secure, the provision of essential services has been eroded and the planet is cooking, and we are in the sixth mass extinction event in the geological history of the earth. Neoliberalism and trickle-down economics are both massive cons, and they have broken the Australian economy and destroyed the Australian dream of owning one's own home.

Homeownership rates today have fallen back to where they were in the 1950s. I'll say that again, colleagues. Homeownership rates today are back to where they were in the 1950s. Along with a reduction in the provision of public housing, this means more and more people are in private rental, and more and more people are in rental stress. They are paying through the nose for their rents because house prices have been inflated by tax incentives for investors and deregulated bank lending—which, by the way, the government wants to further deregulate by abolishing responsible lending obligations. Since the pandemic, bucketloads of printed money have been funnelled into the financial system by the Reserve Bank of Australia. Perversely, these high rents then prevent renters from being able to save up for their own homes. Colleagues, turning homes into an asset class, which is exactly what neoliberalism has done, has destroyed the lives of countless Australian families and is in the process of pricing most of an entire generation of young people out of the housing market in this country. And around and around it goes. As I said, this hits young people the hardest, and there is also another group of people, which is older people who have been the subject of family breakups, who find themselves stuck in the rental market and in extreme rental stress.

Part of the problem here is that Australia's house prices are among the highest in the world and our level of household debt is among the highest in the world. Conversely, even after the pandemic, Australia's level of government debt is one of the lowest in the developed world, thanks to the success of the deficit hawks in discrediting the value of government spending. As a result, we've underinvested in public infrastructure and public services and we continue to underinvest in public infrastructure and public services.

At the same time that public infrastructure and services are being neglected and people are being left to fend for themselves, workers are getting paid less. Wages growth is flat lining. The share of total national income going to workers has declined over the last two decades, and it hit the lowest rate on record recently during the pandemic. In recent years, wages growth has also been at its lowest rate since World War II, and wages have stopped growing in line with productivity growth. On the other hand, the share of income being directed to company profits is at its highest rate since World War II and was so even before the start of the pandemic. Let's revisit that. Wages growth is at its lowest rate since World War II, and the share of income being directed to company profits is at its highest rate since World War II. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Not surprisingly, wealth inequality has gone through the roof, because profits are up, benefiting people who are already wealthy enough to own shares, and because home ownership rates have declined, meaning that inflated land prices are benefiting fewer and fewer people. Wealth inequality has also increased because privatisation has concentrated the ownership of more wealth in the hands of the already wealthy. And what are the wealthy doing with all this wealth? Well, the rate of business investment has been slowing and has actually declined. This is despite record low interest rates even before the pandemic hit. Accordingly, productivity growth is also stagnant. Before the pandemic, even with the cheapest money in history, businesses were investing less and giving less to workers in wages and instead giving more to shareholders, including business executives. It has only got worse since COVID hit. So, no, the wealth is not trickling down. It's not trickling down to wages and it's not trickling down to investment and it is most certainly not trickling down to those who, because of policy choices made by this government, can't find any work or can't find enough work to make ends meet.

We are selling out far too many Australians, and particularly we are selling out far too many young Australians. Those young Australians are not just going to inherit a cooked economy; they're going to inherit a cooked planet. We need to do much, much more. The neoliberal agenda is destroying nature. It is driving species to extinction. It is cooking the planet. It is making the already obscenely wealthy even better off. It is skyrocketing wealth inequality. It is pricing young people out of the housing market. It serves nobody except those who are already wealthy and the big corporations in this country. That's why we need to make sure that the superwealthy and the big corporates pay their fair share of tax, so we can fund the essential services that people want governments to deliver—better hospital systems, better schools, better public transport systems, better support for people living with disabilities. We have the wherewithal to do those things and deliver those public services at a far higher quality than we are now and make them available to far more people than we make them available to now. We can fund it by taxing the superwealthy and the big corporates. Make them pay their fair share of tax. The superwealthy and the big corporates have been making off like bandits, trousering obscene levels of wealth, while far too many people miss out, the planet continues to cook and the war on nature continues, as it has, tragically, for so many decades.

Colleagues, the system is broken. The ecosphere that provides for all life on this planet is groaning under the strain. As a result, our social contract is beginning to fracture. This will lead to more and more people joining the ever-growing movement for real climate action to protect nature, to oppose privatisation and deregulation, to make sure that the big corporates and the superwealthy pay their fair share of tax so we can fund the public services that Australians expect and demand their governments provide. This bill is a step forward, based on the recommendations of the Hayne royal commission into banks. That royal commission exposed criminal behaviour. It exposed a toxic culture, based on greed and obsession with profit. The banks need to be hauled into line, but this government is starting to waiver.

Recommendation 1.1 of the Hayne royal commission, not to change responsible lending laws, has been screwed up and thrown in the bin by this government. While we support this legislation, we want to make sure that people understand this government is starting to go weak at the knees in terms of bringing the big banking corporations to heel. The Greens will fight them every step of the way, if they start to once again roll over and let their big corporate donors and their big corporate masters tickle their collective bellies. We're watching you. We don't trust you and we will hold you to account.

I rise to address the Senate on the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020. I start this contribution by reflecting upon where this fits into the Liberal tradition and the Liberal philosophy in Australia. We have always taken the view that we will pursue law reform, whether it be to address wrongdoing in capital or wrongdoing in a trade union. That has been our tradition. There is no doubt that it took too long to have this royal commission. Once it was up and running, it did show that there was enormous malfeasance going on in the financial sector. It is to the credit of people who pushed for that particular commission that we now have significant reforms already enacted by this parliament with more to come today.

We've already delivered quite a large number of the recommendations. By the time this bill is passed, 70 per cent of the recommended changes will be the law of Australia. The Hayne commission was a broad based review, so there are many component parts. A couple of them, which have already been enacted and which I think are quite important, include: putting your best-interest duty in for mortgage brokers; ending the gravy train of conflicted remuneration; ensuring that there is a requirement for compulsory membership for AFCA; stopping hawking; and also putting in place laws which end the trail of money between super trustees and their clients, which is known as the hostplus clause. There's been this enormous gravy train washing around in the financial adviser sector and the super sector, where all the snouts have been in the trough for far too long. These changes put an end to that. They must ensure that the financial sector is focused on the people that they serve: their clients, their customers and the workers. I think we have a particular duty to reflect upon the laws in this area very carefully as a parliament, because of the existence of this quite extraordinary experiment of compulsory superannuation, which takes away people's money and gives it to strangers to manage—usually poorly. We must make sure that the workers' money is well looked after and is not being pillaged by banks and unions.

This particular bill deals with financial advice, and its three main components are to put in place opt-in arrangements so that clients have to agree on an annual basis to fees. That is entirely reasonable. It has been the subject of much consternation over the years, but I think asking people to agree for ongoing fees makes a lot of sense. It also takes us into the territory of requiring a disclosure of independence. I would say that too few Australians access good-quality advice and I think that good-quality financial advice can actually help all Australians. But it is important that Australians can have confidence that the advice that they are receiving is in their interests and not in the interests of some other financial fizgig. That is what the disclosure requirements in this bill will require, so people will know whether or not their financial planner, their financial adviser, is conflicted in the advice that they provide. With this statement of independence, basically, a planner will no longer be able to hold themselves up as independent if they are not. This bill will define how that is to occur: the financial planner must provide the client with a statement of their independence as part of the financial services guide.

There is no doubt the financial services guides are already too long. But I think if we're going to add one more piece of paper then adding an assurance of independence is important. It is true that there has been great malfeasance in this sector, and that is to be greatly regretted. But it is a sector which is important to our economy and it's too important to let it go and allow it to go the dogs. So measures like these that are designed to bolster independence, credibility and standards are absolutely worthwhile, which is why the commissioner recommended them.

The third component of this bill puts in place arrangements in relation to MySuper accounts, which are the default super accounts, so that ongoing advice fees cannot be deducted from MySuper accounts. But the provisions will permit one-off or discretionary fees to be taken from MySuper accounts at the direction of the individual client. There can be no more of the ongoing gravy train with fees for no service that roll on for ever and ever. The only fees that will be permitted to be taken out of people's default superannuation accounts will be at their discretion and on an individual basis. That is what this bill will do. Those are effectively the three key changes which add to what is already a very good suite of reforms.

As I said, we have already delivered 70 per cent of the royal commission's recommendations, so when the Labor Party come into this chamber and say that we're dragging our feet, it's just not true. Seventy per cent within two years is a significant achievement, given the breadth and scale of this royal commission. It's also not true that we are avoiding Hayne's recommendation in relation to responsible lending. All these contributions from people who say that we're stripping away responsible lending are skin deep. Responsible lending is embedded in the prudential standards and laws of Australia and will be for all time. When an individual goes to seek a loan from a financial institution, whether it be an ADI bank or a non-ADI institution, that institution will have to assess their capacity to repay that loan. For low-income people, there will be additional protections. Unfortunately, other than to run these glib talking points, the Labor Party don't seem to be able to muster more than a skin-deep, superficial economic policy and financial policy. Responsible lending is embedded in the legal framework and the fabric of Australia and it will be after our responsible lending reforms pass this parliament.

Finally, these are all incremental changes. All of these changes from the royal commission will ultimately build confidence and improve standards in the financial sector. But it's just one set of reforms. The other reforms we need to continue pursuing include getting workers a better deal in their super, which is why structural changes were announced in the budget to further end the gravy train. This huge experiment of superannuation has sat there for 30 years, with its own book being run for its own interests, not considering the interests of the workers, on whose money it is being run.

I too rise to make a very short contribution on the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020. I won't go into the detail of the bill; Senator Bragg has done that very well. I acknowledge the presence of Minister Hume, the Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy, in the chamber. I know that Minister Hume, with the other portfolio ministers in this space, has consulted extensively on the bill.

I do have a few philosophical reflections on the way this parliament and the executive need to deal with royal commissions. I think we have to be very careful—and I'll use a phrase that's been used in other contexts here—to recognise that a royal commission report is a report to the government, not of the government. Royal commissioners and royal commissions do not have a font of pure wisdom. They do not necessarily provide recommendations that always reflect the full breadth of knowledge and information that governments need to take into account. I say that as a word of caution to those opposite and those on the crossbench. People start thinking that what a royal commissioner recommends has to be implemented 100 per cent and that that is what this parliament's job is to do. I disagree with that. I think we need to look very carefully at royal commissioners' recommendations, but then we have to do what is in the best interests of Australia. I say that in the context of an environment where I want as many Australians as possible to be able to access high-quality financial advice. I fear that the suite of changes that has been made over the past decade has created an environment where the cost of advice will increase and some Australians will not be able to afford high-quality financial advice and so will be forced into more set-and-forget products, like superannuation. I think that is a concern moving forward. As these measures are implemented, I think we do need to send a very strong message to the regulators particularly that we need to always remember that the goal here is to ensure that the financial advice that is out there in the marketplace is of the highest quality but is also affordable and can be delivered in an affordable way so that as many Australians as possible can access that advice.

In an environment where you have best-interest obligations and where you have an end to trailing commissions, perhaps something we could look at in future is whether the yearly opt-in is the right time frame. To me, one year is not a magical number. Perhaps two years is a more regulatory-friendly period to look at in the future. As a chamber, as a parliament, I would like us to keep thinking about these things. We need to create an environment where we allow Australians—Australian families, Australian businesses—to access high-quality and affordable financial advice.

Thank you for the opportunity to rise today to speak on the overdue Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020. I want to point out to Australians who are listening, who would recall the Hayne royal commission, that this is a really important discussion that's happening here today. It affects people's lives in a real and material way. People remember the royal commission. It's starting to become a bit of a 'back then' memory: 'How long ago was that? Was it two years? Was it three years?' That's the kind of conversation that will be happening in workplaces. It's taken an awfully long time for any action. Despite the outrage that people felt when they found out what was going on in the banking sector, it's taken this government way too long to do things to protect the Australian people.

I've said in speeches this week that I am sick and tired of government senators coming in here and saying: 'We understand. We understand the challenges. We care about your financial future. We will look after you. We are the really good managers of money.' I'm sick and tired of them saying how much they care but seeing how little they're actually doing to bring that care into action to provide protections and improvements for the Australian people. That's what is becoming more and more apparent with this government, day in, day out. This legislation is two years late. It shows how reticent the government is to deal with misconduct in the financial sector.

This is, in fact, a government that voted against the banking royal commission—let's remember that—26 times. And this is a government that is now attacking the industry super sector. People will have seen on the television the ads for Industry SuperFunds with the two little hands going up and down. The government thought they were going to have a really good go at attacking Industry SuperFunds, but, when the Hayne royal commission got into it, they found out that the government was actually wrong and that Industry SuperFunds is doing a really good job of looking after workers' money. They didn't like what they found then, and they'll do everything they can to try and damage the sector that got the clean bill of health from the Hayne royal commission.

That battle will continue. Today we're talking about a particular matter that concerns financial investment in this country. We see ridiculous attacks coming from those opposite, including from Senator Bragg—who has some of the most outrageous ideas about the superannuation sector—representing the party now in this place. They said from the very beginning that superannuation couldn't possibly work, that it would never happen, that it would never be good, that every small business in Australia would go under. People need to remember the attitude this government had to superannuation from the very beginning. The reality is that, at this point of time, the government is forgetting the massive misconduct in other areas of the financial industry that needs to be addressed. It wasn't the industry super funds that were charging dead customers. It wasn't the industry super funds that were found to have breached anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism financing laws 23 million times. And it wasn't the chief of staff of an industry super fund that was found to have embezzled $23 million from members. It was banks and the retail sector that did all of that.

The government was dragged, kicking and screaming, into reform of the banking and financial sector, and now its wildcat backbenchers are trying to drag its attention to the wrong industry again. I think we should be very concerned by the comments that I just picked up from Senator Brockman in his very short contribution to this debate. He is trying to tell Australians that they shouldn't pay much attention to a royal commission report. So let's be clear. This Liberal-National government voted 26 times against having a royal commission. Then they were forced to have it because there was a revolt amongst the Nats—and again I reference Senator John 'Wacka' Williams for a lot of courage on that issue. They've tried to bury it for two years. Finally, they're now having to do a couple of things. And we've got Senator Brockman saying to the Australian people: 'Don't pay much attention to royal commissions. They don't tell you everything that's important.'

But that's not what they were saying when the royal commission delivered its report. On the days after the royal commission delivered its report, the government was saying, 'We agree with the recommendations.' Now, two years later, they're hoping that Australians have forgotten what happened in that royal commission. They're trying to convince Australians, in the contributions we've heard this morning here in this place, that they know better about what to do with your money. They know better—the ones who didn't want the Hayne royal commission. They want Australians to forget it. They want to forget the recommendations. They want Australians not to notice how slow this government is in acting.

But right now we've got a government that is doing something, dragged kicking and screaming into reform, and we have a bill addressing some of the recommendations. To be clear, the bill only addresses four of the remaining 44 financial sector royal commission recommendations—not too much. Since the report was released in February 2019, five recommendations have been abandoned altogether by the government. And now they're looking to weaken the responsible lending laws, which would leave thousands and thousands of Australians open to predation from people who would exploit them.

Despite the royal commission report explicitly saying responsible lending should not be changed, that is the path the government is heading down. Treasurer Frydenberg is ignoring the expert advice, the careful investigation, done by no less than a royal commissioner with all the resources at his disposal. Mr Frydenberg is saying: 'Trust me, my mates across Australia. I'm good friends with Scotty. I'm good friends with you. I'll look after you. Trust me. Just ignore the expert advice and don't pay attention to the fact that I'm going to give dodgy lenders carte blanche to rip off ordinary Australians and leave people wallowing in debt.'

I heard evidence in the committee hearing in Townsville on the government's new IR bill that the increasing casualisation of work is making it harder and harder for many workers to get ordinary lines of credit. Because their work is insecure, banks are saying, 'We won't help you.' It's into that climate that this government is introducing further risk. Australia has one of the highest rates of household debt in the world, and the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, would rather add to that mountain than help give Australians a wage rise. The government, in this legislation and so many pieces of legislation in this place, reveal to us who are watching closely that they really don't care about workers. After seven years in government, they've still got no plan to raise wages, despite industry and the Reserve Bank begging them to do so; seven years in government and their only idea to get Australia out of recession is to cut wages; and seven years of delay and distraction on financial sector reform.

I read in the AFR that the Treasurer will further erode confidence in investors by winding back the continuous disclosure regime. This regime is allegedly to protect directors from some imagined bogeyman of class actions against directors, but, in fact, it's further obfuscating the actions of companies from their shareholders. There are people in the financial market who are paying attention to this, who are seeing exactly what is going on with this government. The thing is, though—as I've said on many occasions in this place—that, when I was growing up in Curran Road, Blacktown, in a fibro house that my mum and dad were very proud to be able to call home, there wasn't a lot of talk about superannuation. That word didn't come across our dinner table. When I think about hardworking Australians who are out there doing whatever they can, stitching together insecure work to try and feed their families, they are so busy just keeping their heads above water that they require this government to act in their best interests. There's a degree of trust that has been given to this government that is being abused, because this government should be looking after those people who are out there doing the right thing—working and working hard, but, at every turn, every opportunity they get, the government build in risk for ordinary hardworking people and constantly drive legislation through this place that advantages those who have the most.

I just can't see how what the government are doing provides any assistance at all to ordinary mum-and-dad investors. How does helping the increasing number of retail investors in the stock market assist normal mums and dads? ASIC itself has said that 'the continuous disclosure regime is a fundamental tenet of Australia's market'. For people who don't understand what a continuous disclosure regime is—and a lot of the words in this place seem to be a long way from what normal people talk about—it's about telling people the truth about what you're doing with your big business that's listed on the stock exchange. That's it, pretty much, in a nutshell. This is what's going on. and you can see what's going on. And we know that, if you know what's going on, then you can make sound investment decisions. It's pretty simple, really, even though it's dressed up in those words. We should be strengthening this pillar of continuous disclosure; we shouldn't be bringing it down—yet that is what the government is attempting to do.

Desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures, but this decision cements temporary measures used in a global recession. The government just have it wedged in there and now they are advancing it for the long term, to the detriment of Australians, to the detriment of people investing in the stock exchange and to the detriment of great super funds seeking to invest for their members in the stock market. They are weakening the measures of this regulatory regime. They think people—

An honourable senator interjecting—

Actually, they are right, I suppose: they are relying on people being too busy to pay attention while they sneak this sort of dodgy stuff through this place. I watched gobsmacked last year as the Treasurer moved to kneecap litigation funders through rushed and cramped regulations that ASIC spent tens of thousands of dollars on. They had to get legal advice to try to figure out how to implement the Treasurer's hastily made announcement, which occurred only eight days after he had called on this chamber to undertake an investigation. Everything that you look at with this government smells. Dodgy deals are being done behind closed doors. There is so much corruption, so much of a lack of transparency. Like there's some special club—I won't even call it a boys' club because the girls on the other side are in on it as well—we who have money, we who have a high education, we who live in suburbs that separate us from the riffraff of Australia, we will own this agenda, we will manage it and we will just talk to those people at the top of the tree and keep them all on side with us. They don't care about the long-term impacts on ordinary hardworking Australians. It seems to me that this government has learnt nothing from the financial sector royal commission.

Mr Morrison can put on his baseball cap and claim that he's an ordinary suburban dad as much as he likes, but what's really going on is he's much more focused on letting large financial institutions off the hook. What he's interested in, in his baseball cap, is stopping any kind of scrutiny on large companies and on large financial institutions. He can say, and he does say every day in his daggy dad routine, that he's standing up for ordinary Australians, mate, but you just get a little bit behind the door and the street angel is a house devil. A house devil over in the chamber, the green chamber—and he has got a whole lot of friends in the red chamber bringing about his agenda—

Senator Sterle interjecting—

That's true, thank you, Senator Sterle, indeed only the ones who get promoted. Mr Morrison saying he stands up for Australians is about as truthful as his responses to so many questions about his responsibility. We've got a bushfire: mate, he's not holding the hose. We've got a terrible problem in aged care: it's not his responsibility. We've got a COVID pandemic: the states can look after that. You watch him, he's going to be running from the vaccine problems that his government will inflict on this country. We've seen it already. They're days behind. They'll be weeks behind. I want that vaccine out. I want it in my community. Mr Morrison is not to be trusted and he's not to be trusted on the piece of legislation under debate today.

Firstly, I would like to thank the senators who have contributed to this debate on the Financial Sector Reform (Hayne Royal Commission Response No. 2) Bill 2020. Schedule 1 to the bill strengthens the protections for consumers who are clients of financial advisers under ongoing fee arrangements to prevent fees for no service. Under this legislation each year the client will receive a forward looking summary of the fees they will be charged and the services that they will be entitled to, in addition to the existing disclosure of fees and services. The fee recipient will need to obtain the client's express written consent prior to fees being deducted from an account held in the client's name. And ongoing fee arrangements will need to be renewed annually, instead of once every two years.

Schedule 2 of this bill introduces a new disclosure obligation to ensure that financial advisers who are not independent in relation to the provision of personal advice clearly declare that they are not independent and explain the reasons why.

Schedule 3 to the bill strengthens protections for individuals against paying fees for no service from their superannuation by prohibiting ongoing advice fees in MySuper and increasing the visibility of fees to individuals.

I would like to thank the opposition and also the crossbench for their very constructive engagement on all of these issues. The government has committed to establishing a single disciplinary body for financial advisers in line with the recommendation 2.10 of the Hayne royal commission. In expanding the Financial Services and Credit Panel to perform this function, we're committed to ensuring that advisers act in the best interests of their clients and in line with professional standards. Standards are integral to the professionalisation of the financial advice industry, and we will work to ensure that the framework that is in place for the industry to enforce these standards is strong. These are very important reforms that will restore confidence of Australians in Australia's financial system. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Minister, you're aware that I have an amendment that has been circulated. My understanding, from your summing-up, is that you intend to look at the issues that would remedy the concern that I have in my amendment.

Yes.

On that basis, I will not move my amendment.

The CHAIR: You're withdrawing it.

Bill agreed to.

Bill reported without amendment; report adopted.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Labor will support the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. This bill adopts the recommendations from the French review and aligns the current legislation with the French model code to strengthen protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australian universities. This legislation inserts a new definition of 'academic freedom' into the Higher Education Support Act and replaces the existing term 'free intellectual inquiry' in relevant provisions with the allied concepts of 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom'. These are reasonable measures.

The Labor Party supports academic freedom. University students and researchers should absolutely be free to follow their intellectual curiosity, to express their opinions and beliefs and to contribute to public debate. All universities have agreed voluntarily to adopt the French model code, and the agreement is now included in their mission based compacts. This should not be a controversial statement. Australia has world-class universities with a reputation for intellectual freedom and academic independence. Gough Whitlam told us:

Academic freedom is the first requirement, the essential property of a free society. More than trade, more than strategic interests, more even than common systems of law or social or political structures, free and flourishing universities provide the true foundation of our western kinship, and define the true commonality of the democratic order.

That is as true today as it was then. The fact is Morrison and the Liberals only like freedom of speech when it suits them. When Senator Birmingham was the minister for education, he alone vetoed more than $4 million of Australian Research Council grants because he didn't like the sound of them, an act universities called reprehensible and which undermined the impartiality of the whole grant process.

Former Chief Justice French himself says in the report:

From the available evidence … claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated.

The only reason this bill has been introduced when it has is that this government has done a deal with Pauline Hanson.

Debate interrupted.

I table a response to the Senate order for production of documents No. 1034 on the matter of the reviews being undertaken by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Pursuant to notice given yesterday on behalf of the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation, I withdraw business of the Senate notices of motion Nos 1 to 3 for the next day of sitting, business of the Senate notices of motion Nos 1 and 4 for five sitting days after today, and business of the Senate notices of motion Nos 4 and 6 for eight sitting days after today.

I withdraw general business notice of motion No. 1035 standing in my name for today.

by leave—I move:

That leave of absence be granted to Senator Keneally for Thursday 25 February 2021, for personal reasons.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I move:

That leave of absence be granted to Senator Molan for Thursday 25 February, for medical reasons.

Question agreed to.

I present the third report of 2021 of the Selection of Bills Committee. I seek leave to have the report incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The report read as follows—

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

REPORT NO. 3 OF 2021

25 February 2021

MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE

Senator Dean Smith (Government Whip, Chair)

Senator Perin Davey (The Nationals Whip)

Senator Stirling Griff (Centre Alliance Whip)

Senator Pauline Hanson (Pauline Hanson's One Nation Whip)

Senator Rachel Siewert (Australian Greens Whip)

Senator Anne Urquhart (Opposition Whip)

Senator Raff Ciccone

Senator Katy Gallagher

Senator Jacqui Lambie

Senator the Hon James McGrath

Senator Rex Patrick

Senator the Hon Anne Ruston

Secretary: Tim Bryant ph: 6277 3020

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

REPORT NO. 3 OF 2021

1. The committee met in private session on Wednesday, 24 February 2021 at 7.16 pm.

2. The committee recommends that—

(a) the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Save the Koala) Bill 2021 be referred immediately to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 December 2021 (see appendix 1 for a statement of reasons for referral);

(b) contingent upon introduction in the House of Representatives, the provisions of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021 be referred immediately to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 1 June 2021 (see appendix 2 for a statement of reasons for referral);

(c) the provisions of the Online Safety Bill 2021 and Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021 be referred immediately to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 11 March 2021 (see appendix 3 for a statement of reasons for referral); and

(d) contingent upon introduction in the House of Representatives, the provisions of the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Income Support) Bill 2021 be referred immediately to the Community Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 12 March 2021 (see appendix 4 for a statement of reasons for referral).

3. The committee recommends that the following bills not be referred to committees:

4. The committee deferred consideration of the following bills to its next meeting:

(Dean Smith)

Chair

25 February 2021

Appendix 1

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Save the Koala) Bill 2021

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To investigate the impact of a moratorium on land clearing on protecting the koala and other threatened species.

Possible submissions or evidence from: Environment Stakeholders

Community groups opposing projects in koala habitat Mining and property development industry

Scientists and Ecologists

Committee to which bill is to be referred: Environment and Communications

Possible hearing date(s):

Possible reporting date:

2 December 2021

(signed)

Senator Hanson-Young, Rachel Siewert

Appendix 2

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill: Environment

Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To examine the bill, and allow for stakeholder feedback, with regard to the recommendations from the Samuel review.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Industry and environmental stakeholders

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

To be determined by the committee

Possible reporting date:

31 July 2021

(signed)

Senator Raff Ciccone

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Amendment (Standards and Assurance) Bill 2021

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

Adequacy and effectiveness of legislation to address failures of EPBC Act and issues and recommendations of Professor Graeme Samuel's report into the EPBC Act

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Environment Stakeholders Industry Stakeholders Professor Graeme Samuel

State and Territory Environment Ministers

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Environment and Communications

Possible hearing date(s):

Possible reporting date:

30 June 2021

(signed)

Rachel Siewert

Appendix 3

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Online Safety Bill 2021

Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

Scrutiny, human rights, internet governance, regulatory remit, regulatory burden.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

List of submitters available at Government consultation pages:

https://www.communications.gov.au/have-your-say/consultation-bill-new-online­safety-act

https://www.communications.gov.au/have-your-say/consultation-online-safety­reforms

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

To be determined by the committee

Possible reporting date:

11 March 2021

(signed)

Senator Raff Ciccone

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Online Safety Bill 2021

Online Safety (Transitional Provisions and Consequential Amendments) Bill 2021

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

To establish whether this complex legal framework can adequately protect vulnerable online users whilst also having adequate regard to human rights

To scrutinise the objectives, implications, and obligations of this legal framework for law enforcement agencies

To scrutinise the objectives, implications, and obligations of this legal framework for tech companies

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Academics and thinktanks

Business groups

ICT peak bodies

Community groups

Consumer groups

Other affected stakeholder groups

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Legal and Constitutional Affairs or Environment and Communications

Possible hearing date(s):

On the papers

Possible reporting date:

6 April 2021

(signed)

Rachel Siewert

Appendix 4

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Income Support) Bill 2021

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

How decision was made to increase Jobseeker by $50 a fortnight including modelling and advice sought

Impact of changes on people living on Jobseeker, Youth Allowance and related payments

Changes to mutual obligations and new employer hotline

Possible submissions or evidence from:

ACOSS

Uniting Care

Anglicare

AUWU

COTA

Social security academics

DSS

DESE

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Community Affairs

Possible hearing date(s):

Possible reporting date:

15/3/21

(signed)

Senator Siewert

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Social Services Legislation Amendment (Strengthening Income Support) Bill 2021

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

Social and economic impacts of the Bill.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Business and community groups, academics.

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s):

One hearing in the week of 1 March 2021.

Possible reporting date:

11 March 2021.

(signed)

Senator Raff Ciccone

I move:

That the report be adopted.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That:

(a) government business orders of the day as shown on today's order of business be considered from 12.45 pm today;

(b) government business be called on after consideration of the bills listed in paragraph (a) and considered till not later than 2.00 pm today; and

(c) general business notice of motion no. 1038 be considered during general business today.

Question agreed to.

by leave—On behalf of the Chair of the Select Committee on Autism, Senator Hughes, I move:

That the Select Committee on Autism be authorised to hold a private meeting otherwise than in accordance with standing order 33(1) during the sitting of the Senate today, from 1.55 pm.

Question agreed to.

I withdraw general business notice of motion no. 1039 standing in the name of Senator Carr for today.

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Environment and Communications References Committee for inquiry and report by 30 April 2021:

The circumstances leading to the direction by the Minister for Communications to the Chair of Australia Post on 22 October 2020, that the Chief Executive Officer of Australia Post, Christine Holgate, be stood down pending an investigation into her gifting in 2018 of watches to four managers who secured a $225 million investment into the organisation, with particular reference to:

(a) if the gift of the watches was with the knowledge of the then Australia Post Chair and within existing Australia Post policy;

(b) how the gifting of four watches compares with bonuses and gifts provided during the term of the previous Chief Executive Officers and within other government owned corporations such as the National Broadband Network;

(c) actions of the Board of Australia Post following Ms Holgate's offer of resignation on 2 November 2020 leading up to the Chair's request for her to sign an amendment to her contract which would mean the immediate termination of her employment without any benefits, as against the $11 million bonus paid to her predecessor when he stepped down;

(d) the veracity of evidence provided by the Chair of Australia Post to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee during an estimates hearing on 9 November 2020;

(e) the current status of Ms Holgate's employment with Australia Post;

(f) the issues surrounding the secret review of Australia Post by the Boston Consulting Group leading to the introduction of changes to Australia Post's service model;

(g) the future of reductions to Australia Post's service model; and

(h) any other related matters.

Question agreed to.

At the request of Senator Kitching, I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee for inquiry and report by 17 June 2021:

The contribution of government funding for public research into current and emerging foreign policy issues affecting Australia, with a focus on our key interests in the Indo-Pacific, including examining:

(a) current funding by Australian Government departments and agencies in this area;

(b) the quality and diversity of publicly funded think tanks focused on foreign policy;

(c) ways of enhancing greater public understanding of foreign policy issues;

(d) how the Australian Government involves states, business, civil society, unions, universities, think tanks, diasporas and the wider community in developing and implementing foreign policy;

(e) strategies the Australian Government should adopt to build the knowledge needed to support more effective future foreign policy; and

(f) any related issues.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the following bill be introduced: A Bill for an Act to allow special recreational vessels to apply for temporary licences under the Coastal Trading (Revitalising Australian Shipping) Act 2012, 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 present the explanatory memorandum 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 Special Recreational Vessel Amendment Bill 2021 will extend the sunset date of the Special Recreational Vessels Act 2019 (the SRV Act). This Act allows foreign special recreational vessels (also known as Superyachts) to apply for a special recreational vessel temporary licence to operate on the Australian coast, if they choose to opt in to the coastal trading regulatory regime. This allows these vessels to be offered for hire or charter.

The proposed amendment means these vessels can continue to operate under temporary licences, bringing overseas dollars into regional communities around Australia. Encouraging special recreational vessels to come to Australia to charter is important, particularly for COVID recovery.

Special reactional vessels bring a range of economic benefits - Australian producers and services industries all stand to benefit from the continuation of superyacht charters. The opportunity to supply food and beverages to the vessels as well as the onshore demand for tourism, accommodation and cafes and restaurants will provide much needed business.

Extending the repeal date of the SRV Act for two years will allow more time to consult stakeholders on a longer-term solution for special recreational vessel regulation. Earlier consultation was paused because of the COVID-19 pandemic and will not be completed prior to the SRV Act sunsetting.

In the interim, the SRV industry needs certainty to continue to operate in Australia.

The Australian Government is committed to ensuring Australia's regulatory framework for our maritime industries remains fit for purpose, meets community expectations and supports Australian businesses.

The superyacht industry will no doubt make an important contribution to our post COVID-19 recovery as we look to reopen the economy and permit more leisure activities in Australia.

Conclusion

The Australian Government recognises the economic opportunities that superyachts afford Australian business, as well as regional and urban communities.

This Bill permits special recreational vessels to continue to charter in Australia and have these opportunities realised.

Debate adjourned.

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

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

  (i) Australians own vast reserves of offshore natural gas and the Australian Government manages these vast reserves on behalf of the people of Australia,

  (ii) every other country in the world receives higher payments for its gas than Australia,

  (iii) the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recently found that Australia is the only large gas producer in the world where the domestic price of gas is higher than the price of exported gas,

  (iv) the Western Australian domestic gas reserve policy has been avoided at every opportunity by foreign gas companies,

  (v) the Government's inquiry into petroleum resource rent tax legislation in 2017 made 12 recommendations of which none have been implemented, and

  (vi) the Government's gas-led recovery strategy is a fiction until the government reforms the gas laws; and

(b) calls on the Government to implement the Callaghan Report recommendations.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

In November 2018 the government announced its response to the Callaghan review, which is available on the Treasury website. The government has implemented a majority of the recommendations from the Callaghan review, including reducing the uplift rates that apply to carried forward expenditure. The government has also set up processes to address other recommendations relating to gas transfer pricing for LNG projects. Legislation giving effect to the key changes came into force on 1 July 2019.

I too seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The Greens do support this motion but we have a different view of why a gas-fired recovery would be a disaster for this country. Gas companies have sacked 10 per cent of their already small workforce. They've taken our gas resources royalty-free, polluted our atmosphere, have avoided tax but somehow kept up their political donations and shipped the rest of their profits offshore. For the last year of tax data, 28 gas companies operating in Australia generated $55 billion of revenue and did not pay one single cent of tax—$55 billion revenue; zero tax. Australians do not want these guys to be the so-called saviours of Australia's COVID recovery.

The Callaghan review only mildly reins in future gas projects, which the International Energy Agency has said we cannot allow if we want to avoid a climate breakdown. Implementing the recommendations won't touch the tax-avoiding, planet-pilfering, profit-shifting gas projects that are currently in operation. While we support the intent of the motion, even if it were adopted it would not change the exploit-and-loot culture of Australia's gas industry.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator Roberts and Senator Hanson have clearly identified the government's failure to deliver affordable gas supply to Australians. Labor has consistently advocated for robust government action to ensure affordable domestic gas supply. Despite its spin, the government has consistently failed to deliver on gas policy, contributing to record prices in recent years. This is typical of the government's chaos and division on energy policy, including 22 policies in just eight years. We won't be supporting this motion today, but the petroleum resource rent tax review made many sensible recommendations and the government should report back on their implementation.

The question is that motion No. 1029 be agreed to.

I ask general business notice of motion No. 1036 relating to juvenile crime in the Northern Territory be taken as formal.

Is there any objection to this motion being taken as formal?

An honourable senator: Yes.

There is.

I seek leave to move general business notice of motion No. 1036 and for the motion to be determined without amendment or debate.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent general business notices of motion No. 1036 being moved immediately and determined without amendment or debate.

The question is the motion to suspend standing orders moved by Senator Duniam be agreed to.

On behalf of Senator McMahon, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

  (i) property crime and personal assaults, particularly by juvenile offenders, are a major concern for Northern Territory residents and businesses; one Alice Springs business reported 15 break ins or damage from attempts since Christmas, and residents report no longer feeling safe in their communities, and

  (ii) last week the Northern Territory Police Commissioner revealed property crime has spiked by up to 50% in Alice Springs and Tennant Creek and the Commissioner also revealed 75% of offenders dealt with by members of Strike Force Viper are repeat offenders; and

(b) calls on the Northern Territory Labor Government to urgently review and overhaul the Northern Territory's weak bail laws and introduce methods to appropriately manage youth offenders.

I seek leave to make a one minute statement.

Leave not granted.

I seek leave to table my statement.

Leave granted.

I seek leave to table the Labor Party's response to notice of motion No. 1036.

Leave granted.

The question is that motion No. 1036 be agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

  (i) a key role of the Senate is scrutiny of government expenditure,

  (ii) in April 2020, Senator Patrick requested the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) prepare an aggregated annual expenditure forecast covering the Department of Defence's capital acquisitions over the future twenty year period,

  (iii) the Department of Defence has since consistently failed to supply the PBO with the complete set of project level expenditure forecasts, for each of the acquisition projects necessary for them to fulfil the senator's requests,

  (iv) the data requested will only be used by the PBO to prepare an aggregated annual expenditure forecast to financial year 2039-40, being the period covered by the 2020 Force Structure Plan, that is a single monetary figure for each financial year over the period, with no reference to any individual project,

  (v) all capital acquisition projects, which would be included in the capability acquisition program as per the Portfolio Budget Statements, and guided by the 2016 Defence Integrated Investment Program and/ or the 2020 Force Structure Plan, are to be included in the aggregation, and

  (vi) documents provided to the PBO can be handled by that office under strict confidentiality provisions and there is no expectation that any individual project's data would be disclosed to anyone outside the PBO,

(b) orders the Secretary of the Department of Defence, by no later than 5 March 2021, to provide to the PBO, program-level information for each defence capital acquisition project as outlined in paragraph (a) (v) above, for each financial year from 2019-20 to 2039-40, setting out the amount of funding:

  (i) committed for projects under contract,

  (ii) allocated for projects or future phases of projects approved but not yet under contract, and

  (iii) budgeted for acquisition projects planned but not yet approved; and

(c) requires the PBO to advise the Senate of the Secretary's compliance, or otherwise, with this order by no later than 9 March 2021.

Question agreed to.

I seek leave to move general business notice of motion No. 1040, and that it be determined without amendment or debate.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving general business notice of motion No. 1040, and that it be determined without amendment or debate.

The question is that the motion to suspend standing orders moved by Senator Gallagher be agreed to, which requires an absolute majority.

Question agreed to.

At the request of Senators Pratt, Kitching and Hanson, I move general business notice of motion No. 1040:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

  (i) between July 2020 and December 2020, NBN Co paid out $78 million in corporate bonuses with taxpayer money,

  (ii) the 2018 NBN corporate plan set a revenue target of $4.9 billion for financial year 2020; NBN Co achieved $3.8 billion,

  (iii) the 2018 NBN corporate plan set an activations target of 8.1 million by financial year 2020; NBN Co achieved 7.3 million,

  (iv) the 2018 NBN corporate plan forecast the multi-technology NBN would cost $49 billion; the forecast cost is now $57 billion,

  (v) the Prime Minister effectively sacked Ms Holgate on the floor of Parliament for spending $20,000 on Cartier watches in 2018, but had no issues with NBN Co paying out $78 million in corporate bonuses during a recession, and

  (vi) NBN Co recently refused to answer 15 questions on notice from the Senate about their finances, despite having published this information previously;

(b) considers the $78 million in NBN corporate bonuses during the COVID-19 recession to be excessive, unreasonable and lacking in justification;

(c) affirms its commitment to ensuring there is appropriate transparency over how taxpayer money is spent on the NBN; and

(d) calls on the Minister for Communications and NBN Chairman to reign in excessive spending and waste at NBN Co.

I table a statement from the government on our position on this motion.

The question is that motion No. 1040 be agreed to.

Before moving general business notice of motion No. 1041, I inform the Senate that Senator Whish-Wilson will co-sponsor this motion. I, and Senator Whish-Wilson, move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

  (i) Forestry Tasmania has refused a permit for the annual takayna Trail ultra-marathon, scheduled for 20 March 2021,

  (ii) on 19 February 2021, the Bob Brown Foundation filed an application to the Supreme Court of Tasmania against Forestry Tasmania and its decision on a permit,

  (iii) the takayna Trail ultra-marathon, which has been held for the past two years, is a highlight of the national trail running calendar,

  (iv) this annual event brings over 130 local, national, and international runners to Tasmania's takayna/Tarkine, and injects hundreds of thousands of dollars into regional Tasmanian communities,

  (v) the original custodians of takayna have given their permission and support for the event, which will raise awareness of the cultural significance of takayna to the First People of this land,

  (vi) the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has backed the legal action taken by the Bob Brown Foundation against Forestry Tasmania's decision to refuse a permit for the event to be held in takayna; and

(b) calls on the Senate to join the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, north-west Tasmanian communities, and the trail runner community in calling on Forestry Tasmania to allow this iconic annual ultra-marathon event to go ahead as scheduled.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

The Bob Brown Foundation and the Greens only have themselves to blame. As has been advised, their activity was denied because they have a history of conducting unsafe and unauthorised events on land managed by Sustainable Timber Tasmania. In contrast, those undertaking safe recreational activities are regularly welcomed to STT managed land. Runners, bushwalkers, fishers, bike riders and kayakers are among the many users who have access and, importantly, provide support to surrounding regional Tasmanian tourism businesses. STT will always welcome events organised for those who do so safely.

The question is that motion No. 1041 be agreed to.

At the request of Senator McAllister, I move:

That the time for the presentation of the Economics Legislation Committee into the provisions of the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No.1) Bill 2021 be extended to 30 June 2021.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 1042 be agreed to.

by leave—I ask that Senator Hanson's name be added to motion 1040.

The President has received a letter requesting changes in the membership of the Northern Australia Committee.

by leave—I move:

That senators be discharged from and appointed to the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia as follows:

On 2 March 2021—

Discharged—Senator Siewert

Appointed—Senator Thorpe

On 3 March 2021—

Discharged—Senator Thorpe

Appointed—Senator Siewert

On 9 March 2021—

Discharged—Senator Siewert

Appointed—Senator Thorpe

On 10 March 2021—

Discharged—Senator Thorpe

Appointed—Senator Siewert

On 19 March 2021—

Discharged—Senator Siewert

Appointed—Senator Thorpe

On 20 March 2021—

Discharged—Senator Thorpe

Appointed—Senator Siewert.

Question agreed to.

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 Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2021 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—

FAIR WORK AMENDMENT (SUPPORTING AUSTRALIA'S JOBS AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY) BILL 2020

COVID-19 has caused a health crisis in Australia that has triggered an economic crisis. At the height of the pandemic, 1.3 million people lost their jobs or were stood down on zero hours. The government is committed to putting Australia on the road to economic recovery and prosperity.

Australians have shown tremendous spirit and resilience during these testing times. But we are at a critical point in our recovery. As we navigate our way out of this COVID-19 induced economic crisis, it will be our ability to solve complex problems, working in partnership, that will drive us forward, create jobs and get Australians back to work. There is no room for policy stalemates.

That is why the government brought together unions, employer groups and experts through the industrial relations working group process—with one simple goal, that being to create jobs.

I am very pleased today to be introducing the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill to help Australia's recovery from COVID-19 by supporting productivity, jobs and economic growth. These reforms address known problems in the industrial relations system and will be crucial to securing Australia's economic recovery and safeguarding the workplace for future generations.

This bill is not ideologically based; rather, it is founded on a series of practical, incremental solutions to key issues that are known barriers to creating jobs.

They are balanced and pragmatic and seek to create a fair and efficient industrial relations framework for all Australians. I'll turn to the various schedules in the bill in turn.

Casuals and fixed terms

The first is with respect to casuals and fixed term employees. It is clear that the current state of the law in relation to casual employment has caused widespread mistakes and confusion for employers and employees, which, with the associated consequences and costs, gives rise to the genuine need for legislation to adjust the rights, claims and obligations of these employers and employees.

The statutory definition introduced in this bill incorporates key aspects of the common law as expressed in recent court decisions such as Skene and Rossato, particularly the absence of a firm advance commitment to ongoing work defining casual work.This ensures casual jobs are genuinely casual. The nature of the employment, whether casual or ongoing, will be determined at the outset, as opposed to relying on periodic assessments of the relationship as it develops over time. This will provide much-needed certainty to business, who currently have a significant potential liability hanging over their heads and are being disincentivised to hire new employees.

The bill also introduces a new entitlement to be included under the National Employment Standards, or NES, for eligible regular casual employees to convert to full-time or part-time employment—if they choose to do so. The new NES entitlement introduces a positive obligation on employers to offer conversion. As a NES entitlement, it will form part of the statutory safety net that cannot be traded away.

Clearly employees should be characterised appropriately and receive the entitlements reflecting that characterisation at law. However, the absence of a clear and certain statutory definition has led to the potential for employers to have to pay for the same entitlements twice. In order to address this, the bill introduces a statutory offset mechanism so that employers will not have to pay twice for the same entitlements.

Without this suite of casuals amendments, costly and time-intensive court processes would be needed to determine the appropriate rights and obligations of employees and employers in every individual case, imposing significant burdens. Together, these measures relating to casual employment form a package of reforms to address those issues.

Award simplification

With respect to award simplification, it is the case presently that award complexity is a significant issue for many businesses, especially small businesses. Time that businesses spend navigating the overly complex awards system—and its often convoluted processes—is time that businesses don't spend growing or creating jobs. It is critical that in the industries hit hard by COVID-19, namely the hospitality and retail industries, the government works to make it as simple as possible for business to regrow jobs.

Combined with non-legislative measures, including investment in regulatory technology solutions and award variations to be determined by the Fair Work Commission, this bill adapts specific elements of our successful COVID-19 JobKeeper flexibilities for employers and employees covered by 12 identified awards in distressed industries for a further two years. These flexibilities, which have already helped to save thousands of jobs during the pandemic, will allow employers and employees to continue to work together regarding their duties and work location to navigate the challenges of working in a post-COVID world.

Importantly, the bill also legislates increased access to part-time flexibility across the same 12 awards, allowing part-time employers and employees to work together so an employee can take on additional hours when it suits them. This vital flexibility—a genuine two-way flexibility—will be subject to strong safeguards and is expected to ensure more employees have more opportunity to work more hours in a permanent form of employment.

Agreement - making

With regard to agreement-making, if there is one aspect of the current industrial relations system for which the problems are most acute it is the enterprise bargaining system.

Recent trends show that enterprise bargaining has experienced a significant decline since 2010—there are fewer employees covered by enterprise agreements and few new enterprise agreements being made. Over the last 10 years, the number of current enterprise agreements between employers and employees has been steadily declining: from 25,150 at 31 December 2010 to 10,711 at 30 June 2020, a fall of 57½ per cent.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, this has translated to the proportion of employees being covered by enterprise agreements decreasing from its historical peak of 43 ½ per cent in 2010 to 37.9 per cent in 2018, with a corresponding increase in the direct reliance on modern awards.

This bill aims to increase the number of Australians covered by enterprise agreements—and the productivity and wage benefits they can entail—by making agreement-making and approval processes easier and faster for employers and employees, while ensuring a better balance between flexibility and fairness.

The bill will reduce the level of prescription currently imposed by the Fair Work Act and provide greater flexibility as to the methods by which employees may be provided with a fair and reasonable opportunity to consider whether to approve an enterprise agreement prior to the vote. The Fair Work Commission will be required to listen to the views of the bargaining parties in the approval process, and the intervention by other persons before the Fair Work Commission will be limited.

The bill also places greater emphasis on the importance of cooperative working relationships and places stricter requirements on the Fair Work Commission to listen to the views of the employer and employees on the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT). In applying the BOOT the Fair Work Commission will be required to consider the patterns or kinds of work that employees currently perform or could reasonably be foreseen to perform.

Greenfields agreements

The construction of major projects in Australia contributes significantly to jobs and economic growth around Australia. The risk of agreements nominally expiring during construction of a major project has contributed to uncertainty, including over unexpected delays and protracted negotiations. This uncertainty can impact investment and job creation, both of which will be key in coming years as part of our economic recovery.

The bill will double the maximum nominal expiry date for greenfields agreements made in relation to the construction of major projects, from four years to up to eight years. The bill requires longer-term greenfields agreements to include annual wage increases for employees over the nominal life of the agreement.

This will support Australia's economic recovery by attracting investment and driving job growth.

Compliance and enforcement

When it comes to compliance and enforcement, the amendments in the bill are designed to do three things: help businesses comply with the law, enable employees to recover any underpayments faster where they do occur, and ensure that the maximum penalties for noncompliance are proportionate and a meaningful deterrence from the full spectrum of wrongdoing.

The government is committed to supporting businesses, including small businesses, understand their workplace obligations, improve compliance and identify and resolve any issues early.

That is why, as part of our industrial relations reform package, we are providing $12.9 million to establish an Employer Advisory Service in the Fair Work Ombudsman, commencing from 1 July 2021, that will offer employers authoritative, written advice tailored to their individual circumstances. The service will provide small businesses with greater certainty about how to apply award and agreement provisions, reducing the likelihood of wage underpayments occurring in the first place.

Additionally, the bill will require the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Australian Building and Construction Commission to publish information about when they will commence and defer commencing litigation for underpayment matters. This will give employers certainty and the confidence to proactively identify, self-disclose and rectify underpayments quickly.

The bill will allow more underpaid employees to get repaid faster. With the confidence to rely on public policies issued by the regulators, which specify when they will commence and defer litigation for underpayments breaches, businesses will be encouraged to self-identify and self-report underpayment breaches. The bill will also make it easier and faster for employees to recover unpaid wages by increasing the small claims cap from $20,000 to $50,000; courts will also be able to refer small claims matters to the Fair Work Commission for conciliation; and parties can consent to arbitration by the Fair Work Commission if conciliation is unsuccessful.

To respond to exploitation and better deter noncompliance, the bill introduces a new criminal offence for dishonestly engaging in systematic wage underpayments, and increases the value and scope of civil penalties and orders that can be imposed for noncompliance. Courts will be able to impose adverse publicity orders on businesses that underpay, and directors convicted of the criminal offence will be disqualified.

The bill also provides further protection to employees by prohibiting businesses publishing job advertisements with pay rates below the minimum wage, and increases the penalty for sham contracting used by employers to avoid paying full entitlements.

These amendments will help businesses comply with the law, promote fair competition by ensuring that businesses who are non-compliant do not gain unfair advantage, and protect employees from exploitation.

Improvements to Fair Work Commission processes

The bill also includes amendments that will enable the Fair Work Commission to deal with certain matters more efficiently and expeditiously than is currently permitted under the act.

The bill will give the commission appropriate powers to be able to deal with vexatious applications more effectively, modelled on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal's powers to deal with vexatious applications.

The bill will also confer greater discretion on the commission to decide to deal with an appeal 'on the papers' when it considers a hearing to be unnecessary.

These amendments support the Fair Work Act's requirement that the commission perform its functions and exercise its powers in a manner that is fair, just, quick, informal, open, transparent and avoids unnecessary technicalities.

Conclusion

COVID has challenged many aspects of Australian life and this bill delivers on the government's commitment to put Australia on the road to economic recovery. This bill removes barriers that stifle the job growth of today and limits the job creation of tomorrow—if we want Australians to have access to the prosperous jobs they aspire to we must remove these barriers today. That is what this bill does.

REGULATORY POWERS (STANDARDISATION REFORM) BILL 2020

The Regulatory Powers (Standardisation Reform) Bill 2020 represents the second coordinated tranche of amendments to Commonwealth Acts to trigger the operation of the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014.

Background

The Regulatory Powers Act provides for a standard suite of provisions in relation to monitoring and investigation powers, as well as provisions regulating the use of civil penalties, infringement notices, enforceable undertakings and injunctions.

That Act commenced on 1 October 2014, but only has effect where Commonwealth Acts are drafted or amended to trigger the standard provisions.

By standardising regulatory powers across the Commonwealth, the Act is intended to:

The Regulatory Powers Act also ensures that Commonwealth regulatory powers are sufficiently certain and predictable, while being flexible, to ensure that agencies with specialised functions can operate effectively. The standard provisions of the Regulatory Powers Act represent best practice in relation to regulatory powers of general application.

The first standardisation reform Act, the Regulatory Powers (Standardisation Reform) Act 2017, amended 15 Commonwealth Acts to repeal existing provisions providing for regulatory regimes and instead apply the standard provisions of the Regulatory Powers Act. Since then a number of Acts have also independently triggered the Regulatory Powers Act's standard provisions.

Details of the amendments

This Bill amends six Acts to trigger the standard provisions of the Regulatory Powers Act. Amendments to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000, the Fisheries Management Act1991 and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 will move existing bespoke regulatory regimes to the standard provisions to align with best practice regulatory powers. Amendments to the Defence Force Discipline Act 1982, the Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act 1992 and the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 will trigger the Regulatory Powers Act to expand their regulatory powers and provide a more robust compliance and graduated enforcement scheme. Amendments to provide these Acts with standard regulatory powers will support the Acts' overarching policy objectives, including the reduction of smoking rates, the management of fisheries resources and the integrity of educational services.

Alignment with the Regulatory Powers Act also provides an opportunity to consider whether existing regulatory powers or functions are still relevant and appropriate. Accordingly, the Bill will either repeal or narrow existing regulatory provisions that do not have equivalent provisions in the Regulatory Powers Act on the basis that those existing provisions are no longer required or required in their current form. In addition, limited modifications to the standard provisions will be made to some of the Acts to tailor the standard provisions to the regulatory context of each Act.

Amendments to the Regulatory Powers Act

The Bill will also make minor amendments to the Regulatory Powers Act to ensure that the regulatory requirements and underlying penalty and offence provisions of Acts that trigger the Regulatory Powers Act can be effectively enforced.

Those amendments would:

Conclusion

Implementing the Regulatory Powers Act supports the Government's regulatory reform agenda, as that Act intends to simplify and streamline Commonwealth regulatory powers across the statute book which currently vary in breadth and detail, resulting in inconsistency or unnecessary duplication across regimes.

Standardisation provides regulatory agencies with the opportunity to use more uniform powers, and increase legal certainty for businesses and individuals who are subject to those powers. The use of the standard provisions ensures that the government exercises regulatory powers responsibly and with accountability so that the rights of individuals and businesses remain protected.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the bills be listed on the Notice Paper as separate orders of the day.

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—

NARCOTIC DRUGS AMENDMENT (MEDICINAL CANNABIS) BILL 2021

I am pleased to introduce the Narcotic Drugs Amendment (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill 2021.

The Bill amends the Narcotic Drugs Act to support an innovative Australian medicinal cannabis industry for the benefit of Australian patients by:

This Bill's measures principally give effect to recommendations of the review carried out by Professor John McMillan AO.

First, the Bill replaces the obligation for separate licences for any cultivation, production, manufacture and research activity with a single licence. Significantly, the majority of these single licences will be perpetual, thus reducing regulatory burden. For example there will no longer be a need to go through a regular licence renewal application and assessment process for potentially multiple licences relevant to an entity's business operations.

A single perpetual licence will also allow licence applicants and holders to appropriately manage their business investment and planning decisions. The obligation to hold a permit for day-to-day operations including specification of the allowed quantity of medicinal cannabis provides sufficient proportionate oversight.

The Bill maintains the current specified supply pathways for medicinal cannabis including for clinical trials under the Therapeutic Goods Act and, approvals or authorities under that Act. They are supplemented by additional pathways – for medical and scientific research additional to clinical trials, provided that it does not involve administration to humans; and the development of a reference standard. There is a separate regulation making power to prescribe additional supply pathways anticipated to ensure compliance with the good manufacturing requirements under the Therapeutic Goods Act.

Reminding us all of the reasons for the medicinal cannabis regulatory scheme, the Bill also includes a clear statement of its purpose - an assurance that medicinal cannabis products are available to patients for therapeutic purposes.

The Department has been in lock step with industry on these reforms. In addition to consultation by Professor McMillan, the Department has sought feedback through public consultation papers, conducted a number of industry forums in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and most recently held an industry information session on the measures in the Bill.

These changes maintain the careful balance the Act strikes between facilitating cultivation, production and manufacture of a cannabis drug, implementing Australia's obligations under the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to safeguard against illegal practices to provide for safe and sustainable pathways for patient access to medicinal cannabis therapies.

Ordered that further consideration of the second reading of this bill be adjourned to 11 May 2021, in accordance with standing order 111.

Earlier in my remarks I was reflecting on the reason that this bill is before us today, because former Chief Justice French has said:

From the available evidence however, claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated.

So why the rush? The truth is that this, like so many other things propagated by this government, is all about politics. The only reason this bill has been introduced is that this government has done another deal with Senator Hanson and One Nation to pass laws to cut funding to universities and to jack up fees.

Mr Morrison and his ministers are absolutely nowhere to be seen when it comes to actually standing up for year 12 students. After a year from hell—dealing with remote learning, the uncertainty of a global health pandemic, the uncertainty of the economic crises arising from the pandemic and the worst job market for decades—what is this government delivering for our year 12 students? American size debt: debts of up to $60,000 to get a basic degree. No Australian should miss out on the job they want or the education they need because they can't afford it.

We're in a recession. One in three young people are looking for work or are wanting more hours, but Mr Morrison would rather see them on the dole queue than getting an education. We should be encouraging as many young people as possible to get a university education or to study at TAFE to get the skills they need to rebuild Australia. The fact is that, despite the ridiculous rhetoric coming from the government, these changes will not deliver on what they promise. This legislation is built on perverse incentives. Experts have pointed this out. The commentators have pointed this out, including the former Liberal education minister Julie Bishop. This legislation will actually achieve the opposite of what the government says it will. It will discourage universities from offering STEM places. That's what the sector is telling us. Overall, the Liberals new funding model will cut total funding for these degrees. Science and Technology Australia have said that the Job-ready Graduates Package will cut the level of funding for universities to teach STEM courses by $690 million next year alone. It will lead to a 17 per cent drop in funding for math courses, a 16 per cent drop in funding for science and engineering courses and a 29 per cent drop for engineering courses. Universities have provided evidence that the practical effect of these changes will be to limit the number of STEM places that they offer.

At the Senate inquiry into the bill, the interim vice-chancellor at the University of Adelaide told us if a university is one science student below its quota, its cap:

Then adding one science student takes it up to its cap. A university could instead add 15 humanities students to take it up to the cap. Now the science student is going to net you $24,000 or $25,000. Fifteen humanities students will net you around $235,000.

That's $235,000 or $24,000: I think I understand what a rational actor in this system would choose. Swinburne university has told us that 46 per cent of its students are in fields that will experience reductions in net funding. These cuts will have enormous impacts on our universities and enormous impacts on our labour market. Universities have also told us that these funding changes for STEM will lead to further cuts to research staff in this sector.

Labor will always encourage students to follow their passion, to do what interests them. That is what leads to a fulfilling and productive career. That is what leads to the kind of innovation, the kind of productivity, the kind of contribution that is necessary to build a rich, deep, complex economy capable of sustaining Australian communities into the future. A student is not going to take up a degree because it's a bit cheaper. There is no evidence for this. After wide consultation, the James Cook University Student Association overwhelmingly found that their members do not pick courses based on fees. A student who is passionate about studying in the humanities will not enrol in a nursing course simply because nursing is cheaper. Early data from university admission centres is already showing us that this is the case. The Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre has shown that applications for enrolment in society and culture courses have actually increased by more than 10 per cent, and the available New South Wales and ACT admissions data tells a similar story.

Labor will support legislation that strengthens academic freedom in our universities, but it is disgraceful that Mr Morrison and the Liberal and Nationals have teamed up with One Nation to introduce this bill purely in order to get a vote, to pass their university fee hikes, making it harder and more expensive for Australians to get a university education.

I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. This bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to provide a new definition of academic freedom that enshrines in law principles of freedom of expression and substitutes the existing term 'free intellectual inquiry' in relevant provisions with the term 'freedom of speech and academic freedom' to align the language of provisions within the model proposed by Robert French.

Universities have been voluntarily adopting the model code or variations of the code since 2019, and this bill would have the effect of ensuring that the relevant academic freedom provisions of the Higher Education Support Act fairly closely reflect what is being adopted on campuses across the country. Academic freedom is essential in our universities. University staff must be free to conduct their teaching and research and feel comfortable testing and extending the boundaries of academic debate and academic inquiry. Simply, our universities should be places where the envelope can be pushed and where mainstream thinking can be challenged. Indeed, staff and students of our universities have been part and parcel of some of the great civil rights struggles in this country, from the feminist and LGBTQI movements to the First Nations justice movement in the 1960s, because they were unafraid to challenge dominant orthodoxies.

Order! It being 12.45, we move to non-controversial government business.

I move:

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

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

by leave—I move:

That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the bill, allowing it to be considered during this period of sittings.

I table a statement of reasons justifying the need for this bill to be considered during these sittings and seek leave to have the statement incorporated into Hansard.

Leave granted.

The statement read as follows—

Statement o f Reasons f or Introduction a nd P assage i n t he 2021 Autumn Sittings

National Collecting Institutions Legislation Amendment Bill

Purpose of the Bill

The proposed amendment to increase investment options addresses risks that National Collecting Institution governing bodies have identified in relation to attracting and optimising private philanthropy. The Bill also seeks to address long standing administrative inconsistencies under these institutions enabling legislations that include inefficient governance arrangements and misalignment with the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013.

Reasons for Urgency

The effects of COVID-19 on the arts sector have been profound. With our National Collecting Institutions suffering from their forced closure and substantially reduced visitation due to COVID-19, it is urgent that they are provided with greater financial flexibility as soon as possible.

The Government considers that there is urgency in providing National Collecting Institutions within the Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications portfolio greater financial investment options for privately donated revenues.

Under current requirements privately donated revenue is treated in the same manner as ordinary Government appropriations, and there are restrictions on the forms of investments of these funds. This is proving to be a deterrent to philanthropic activity, with philanthropists seeking to place their donations where they will be most productive.

It is expected private sector investment and philanthropic giving to the arts will reduce reflecting the expected slowing of the economy, reduced returns on investment capital, funds and earnings of superannuation schemes. The current legislative framework presents a further limitation to the financial sustainability of National Collecting Institutions as they are unable to maximise returns on donated funds.

As an example, the National Portrait Gallery of Australia has benefitted from the generosity of philanthropic donations in recent years and has approximately $23 million in donated funds. However the Gallery is unable to invest these funds other than in a low­ interest bearing bank account or government security. Providing greater investment options would allow the Gallery to generate returns on donated funds and provide it greater financial strength in the medium to long term.

The Government considers these amendments will allow each of the National Collecting Institutions the ability to implement investment strategies for donated funds which will enhance their long term financial strength. This will a public benefit in enabling each Institution to operate with increased financial support at no additional cost to the taxpayer.

Passage of this legislation is sought by 30 March 2021 to enable Institutions to develop broader investment strategies to commence as soon as practicable.

Question agreed to.

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—

The National Collecting Institutions Legislation Amendment Bill provides for a range of measures that reflect the Government's ongoing commitment of support for the six National Collecting Institutions within my portfolio: the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.

The bill includes two schedules. Schedule 1 includes measures that will allow these institutions to invest philanthropic donations more broadly than is currently permitted under the Public Governance Performance and Accountability Act 2013. Doing this will allow them to seek higher returns on funds associated with such donations and encourage greater philanthropic giving for the long-term benefit of those institutions, their collections and the delivery of their programs and services in the national interest.

Schedule 2 of the bill makes minor amendments to improve consistency between the six enabling Acts and reduce inefficiency in a range of administrative matters.

Investment of Philanthropic Funds (Schedule 1)

Currently, the Public Governance Performance and Accountability Act 2013 restricts the ability of corporate Commonwealth entities, including the six National Collecting Institutions in my portfolio, to invest any cash reserves not immediately required for the purposes of the entity, in low-interest bearing options such as bank accounts or securities guaranteed by the Commonwealth.

The measures in the bill will provide a mechanism for these institutions to invest funds associated with philanthropic donations in higher yielding asset classes in order to achieve greater financial returns. To do so their accountable authorities (that is, their governing Boards and Councils) must first formulate investment policies identifying their investment and risk management strategies, and benchmarks for assessing investment performance. Investment policies will also be required to be made publicly accessible on their websites for transparency purposes.

The bill does not change the current investment restrictions imposed by the Public Governance Performance and Accountability Act 2013 for those funds received from the Government, or from revenue generated by the commercial and retail activities of the institutions as part of their business. The Government considers that the provisions in the bill provide a sensible balance to enable greater financial freedom to invest those funds received by donation (which present a lower risk), while retaining restrictions on revenues from business operations that have a clear connection to appropriated funds and the ability for institutions to deliver their mandated functions.

Over many years our National Collecting Institutions have successfully attracted philanthropic giving through fundraising Foundations, endowments and bequests. This private giving is a valuable means of support for these institutions which helps them develop and deliver additional exhibitions and educational programs, enhance their facilities and purchase particular items of cultural heritage and national significance for their collections.

There is strong ongoing competition for philanthropy across many sectors. These measures respond to feedback from the National Collecting Institutions that restrictions to investing beyond low interest bank accounts was proving to be a deterrent to philanthropic giving and preventing them from realising the full financial potential of the philanthropic support that they receive. These institutions are fortunate to attract significant philanthropic interest, however individuals who are often making extremely generous donations are understandably making choices to direct their donations where they will have the greatest impact.

Expanding the investment categories for funds received by donation, gift or bequest, interest earned on those funds, and funds received from the disposal of gifts for the six institutions is machinery in nature and will have no more than minor regulatory impacts on the organisations.

The Government expects this amendment will contribute to the financial sustainability of the National Collecting Institutions by enabling them to optimise the returns on the investment of privately donated revenue and to encourage greater philanthropic support into the future.

Other Administrative Amendments (Schedule 2)

The bill also provides an opportunity to make administrative amendments to the enabling Acts of the six National Collecting Institutions, which reflect differing drafting approaches over the period 1960 to 2013 and are hence inconsistent with each other. Some of these Acts also contain provisions that are no longer necessary in light of the commencement of other legislation of broader application.

There are gains to be made through the simplification and standardisation of certain administrative requirements, contributing to improved efficiency and productivity in government operations. The amendments proposed by the bill include removing planning and reporting provisions that are additional to what is required by the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, introducing more consistent provisions related to entering into contracts and financial transactions, among others.

For example, the bill repeals a number of requirements included variously in three of the Acts in relation to corporate plans. These include a provision for the minister to give directions regarding the content of the plan, as well as particular requirements around timing, approval and tabling before Parliament. The bill also repeals requirements for one agency, related to the preparation, approval and tabling of an operational plan. These planning and reporting provisions exceed the requirements under the PGPA Act that apply to corporate Commonwealth entities and place an additional administrative burden on the affected agencies.

The bill also seeks to standardise the provisions related to entering into contracts including the financial thresholds below which ministerial approval is not required. This means both the way the provisions are described and, in some cases, the actual financial values related to the thresholds.

The proposed amendments will list six common categories of arrangement which will have corresponding threshold values listed in regulations. The six types are the acquisition and the disposal of collection material; the acquisition and disposal of property, right and privilege; building construction; and entering into a lease of land.

It is proposed that the regulations of each of the Acts will be remade, where necessary, to include a common threshold of $2 million below which ministerial approval would not be required prior to entering a contract. For three of the agencies this would represent an increase. It is anticipated that this will streamline approvals, and that specifying thresholds in the Regulations, rather than the Acts, will provide flexibility to update threshold amounts over time.

An exception to the $2 million threshold will be for the National Gallery of Australia which currently has a $10 million threshold for acquiring works of art. It is anticipated that the remade regulations will retain this amount and introduce a corresponding $10 million threshold for disposals of works of art.

The bill also seeks to introduce exemptions to the requirement to seek ministerial approval in relation to contracts for the day to day operations of the agencies. This will mean agencies will no longer be required to seek the Minister's approval prior to entering into an arrangement for services such as utilities, cleaning, security, general maintenance and replacement of capital assets. The institutions enter such contracts only after testing the market and considering what provides best value and it is sensible that they be permitted to directly manage their own operational affairs in this way.

An exemption from ministerial approval for all transactions associated with investments is also proposed by the bill. This recognises that governing bodies will be responsible for investment activities under their policies and that the requirement for ministerial approval would be contrary to the intention of the newly introduced investment provisions.

A number of amendments are also proposed with regards to governing bodies. Currently some Acts include a ceiling of nine years' service by individual members of their Board or Council. The Minister will be able to make short-term acting appointments, and an acting period will be counted in the nine years' service. The bill aims to apply this across the Acts for consistency, recognising that it provides an appropriate balance of retaining experience and renewing the skills and expertise of the membership.

The bill also seeks to repeal a requirement that the Governor-General terminate the appointment of a Senator or Member of Parliament elected to sit on the National Library of Australia Council if their term as a Senator or Member of Parliament ends. This means that such an appointment would automatically end and not require a letter of resignation or advice to the Governor-General. This reflects the arrangements already in place for Parliamentary representatives elected to the National Archives of Australia Advisory Council.

The bill removes requirements that the Australian National Maritime Museum furnish the Minister an annual operational plan, and a copy of its minutes after each Council meeting, and that the National Gallery of Australia be restricted to storing its collection within the Australian Capital Territory. These provisions are considered unnecessary to retain.

The bill standardises that the Minister may delegate specific powers to the Secretary or relevant SES of the Department. These powers expressly exclude the ability of a delegate to make a Ministerial Direction, to appoint an acting board or Council member, to approve the entering of an agreement for the purchase of land. This would enable the Minister, where he or she wishes, to delegate across the Acts the powers to appoint an acting agency head or to approve entering into contracts above specified thresholds. Both of these items are sometimes subject to short notice and providing such a delegation to the department supports greater efficiency. Some of the Acts already include this provision and are supporting current delegations of this nature. The bill will extend this provision in relation to each of the agencies.

The bill also standardises that the Minister may make a Ministerial Direction for each of the National Collecting Institutions, which removes an inconsistency where the Minister was unable to make a Ministerial Direction for two of the six institutions.

The measures that the bill proposes will offer the National Collecting Institutions an opportunity to enhance their financial sustainability through the investment of donated funding. The measures will also remove anachronistic requirements to be replaced with clearer administrative provisions. These measures aim to provide long-term benefits to those institutions and their audiences.

I commend the bill.

The National Collecting Institutions Legislation Amendment Bill 2020 impacts six of the national collecting institutions: the Australian National Maritime Museum, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery of Australia. This bill was subject to a short Senate inquiry, at which all six institutions appeared to give their views and discuss the consultation process. I thank those who appeared for their time.

There are two main parts to the bill. Schedule 1 makes a major change to the investment mandate of these institutions. Under the current Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013, the institutions are subject to a high level of restriction in terms of how they can invest any funds they receive which exceed their operating costs, such as private donations. For instance, in the current ultralow interest rate environment, some of them are having to hold these funds in cash. The inquiry heard that this was an impediment to private philanthropy, as donors wish to know that their money is being used to the maximum financial benefit for the institution. The change contained in this bill would allow for the institutions to invest in higher-risk, higher-return investments, with the hope of attracting greater private philanthropy. There would be important checks and balances to ensure funds were invested properly. Representatives of the institutions gave evidence at the inquiry that they had requested this change themselves, and so Labor accepts there is a valid need for change. I would, however, like to echo my colleague in the House the shadow minister for the arts, who raised concerns that this change must never be used as a pretext to lessen public funding for our national institutions. The government has a terrible track record in terms of funding these vital institutions, which are the keepers and promoters of Australian stories, most notably through cuts administered under the Abbott government. So Labor will be monitoring the situation closely.

Schedule 2 of the bill makes a number of changes which the explanatory memorandum of the bill explains as an attempt to harmonise the legislation that governs the six institutions so that it is more consistent. What this means is that some of the institutions are subject to rules and regulations for the first time. For instance, both the National Library and the National Gallery would join the other institutions in becoming subject to ministerial direction. Any provision which allows for potential ministerial interference in how our national institutions are run should be treated with caution. However, Labor is reassured by evidence given at the recent inquiry hearing that this power has never been used for any institution since 2013 and that any direction must be of a general nature only. Again, Labor will be monitoring the situation to ensure the expansion of this power to the National Gallery and National Library is not misused.

In summary, Labor will not stand in the way of this piece of legislation, given the supportive evidence heard from the institutions themselves at the Senate inquiry. In conclusion, however, I would urge the government not to think that its job is done by just giving the institutions what they want, in terms of legislation; they need funding after years of being undermined by government cuts. They are too important to lose. I commend the legislation to the Senate.

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

I understand there will be no Committee of the Whole stage required on this bill, unless anyone in the chamber wishes to ask for it.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Labor will support the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Refunds of Charges and Other Measures) Bill 2020. This bill enables the minister to provide regulatory fee relief through the refunding of charges in the future if special circumstances are met. It also makes administrative changes to key operational costs and registration requirements to make it easier for international students to take on additional training courses while complying with their visa rules. Labor is not opposed to these changes. However, we will continue to monitor the operation of the refunding regime to ensure that it is used only in exceptional circumstances and not just to line the pockets of dodgy providers.

I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

No amendments have been circulated. As no senator requires a Committee of the Whole stage, I call the minister to move the third reading.

I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

As I was saying earlier, academic freedom is essential to our universities. University staff must be free to conduct their teaching and research and must feel comfortable testing and extending the boundaries of academic debate and inquiry. Simply put, our universities should be places where the envelope can be pushed and mainstream thinking can be really challenged. Indeed, some of the great civil rights struggles in this country, from feminist and LGBTQI movements to First Nations justice movements in the 1960s, had staff and students at our universities as part and parcel of those movements because they were unafraid to challenge dominant orthodoxies. They expressed their free speech in support of oppressed people and in opposition to significant government positions such as Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. Sometimes free speech on campus can stray into territory that can be uncomfortable for governments and other authorities.

But academic freedom is under challenge. In recent years we have seen examples of education ministers intervening to deny funding to Australian Research Council grants. After one such incident in 2018, when the then education minister, Senator Birmingham, denied ARC funding to numerous researchers, the President of the Australian Academy of Humanities characterised the intervention as political interference which was, 'entirely at odds with a nation that prides itself on free and open critical inquiry'. We know that this government hates arts and social sciences. They actually hate universities as well; hence the Job-Ready Graduates Package of fee hikes and funding cuts.

Late last year this parliament passed new foreign interference laws that universities were deeply concerned about, given the power they provided ministers to overreach and rip up agreements between Australian universities and international organisations or governments that underpin vital research and arrangements for joint degrees, cultural and student exchanges. The Greens moved to have universities excluded from the bill, but this was shamefully not supported by either the government or the opposition.

While defending academic freedom and freedom of speech, we must be clear that these freedoms are not absolute. Hate speech is unacceptable on our campuses and everywhere else in society. Over time this parliament has passed landmark legislation, such as the Racial Discrimination Act, which acknowledges that there are limits to acceptable speech in our community. But too often in this country, and in this chamber, zealots who wish for nothing more than the freedom of expression to be hateful have bigoted views and have justified their advocacy through appeals to an overriding principle of freedom of speech at all costs. People in this community pay the cost of that. Thankfully, though, that is not what this bill will do.

Another aspect of this bill concerns criticism of universities by their own workers. University staff must be free to critique their institutions without fear of reprisals. This is particularly important at a time when higher education staff are facing substantial disruption to their workplaces. The latest estimates from Universities Australia suggest that upwards of 17,000 jobs were lost in 2020. There may be many more casual staff that aren't even being counted in these numbers as they've been collected.

Universities are embarking upon substantial and not uncontroversial job-slashing and cost-cutting plans caused at least in part by the government's failure to support the sector during the pandemic. It's important that staff feel they can criticise their institutions without any adverse consequences. The Greens support efforts to protect academic freedom. On this principle, we do not oppose this bill because it will provide some clarity on what is meant by academic freedom on our campuses. However, the bill shies away from tackling the real matter at hand: enforceable and meaningful protections for academic freedom. The government should be ensuring that academic freedom is legally protected and an enforceable part of bargaining agreements.

The Greens also have concerns about the scope of the bill. We are concerned that the current drafting is too narrow with respect to which staff the academic freedom provisions apply. I will be moving an amendment to ensure that, instead of exclusively academic staff benefiting from the provisions, the provisions relate to all staff engaged in academic activities.

As a former university professor, I know all too well that academic work is not the exclusive domain of those in the institutions who are formally classed or formally employed as teaching and research academics, and who obtain doctorates and follow a traditional academic career pathway. Much academic work is undertaken by others in the university system, perhaps most obviously professional staff who may, from time to time, deliver lectures, engage in research and otherwise contribute to academic activities of their institutions. Research assistants can also fall into this category and are employed as professional staff at certain institutions. It makes no sense for this bill to carve out academic freedom provisions to pertain only to academic staff. It does not recognise the nature of work in a modern university where many staff from across the institution may engage collaboratively in teaching, research and scholarship. I note that institutions adopting the model code have considered this limitation already. The University of Sydney, for example, has drafted its Charter of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom to encompass all staff in the course of their academic activities.

While giving our support to this bill and proposing an amendment that would expand its scope to more university workers and affiliates, I should note the Greens are under no illusions about where this bill principally came from. It was a dirty deal firstly done between the coalition government and One Nation. There has been something of a confected free speech crisis on our campuses as well, which was a favourite fearmongering campaign of right-wing culture warriors several years ago and has been kicked along for the benefit of a select few Murdoch columnists. It has to be said though that it feels a little bit stale in 2021. The French review concluded, in no uncertain terms, that claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated. So we know where the bill has come from, at least in part. But despite this, the bill does, to an extent, clarify universities' rights and responsibilities regarding freedom of speech and academic freedom so the Greens can provide our support. We look forward to discussing our amendment at the committee stage.

I rise to make a contribution on this important bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. I'd like to start my comments by referring to an opinion piece in The Australian by Professor Greg Craven on 27 July last year. He had been talking about academic freedom, most particularly in relation to Peter Ridd—and I'll come to that later. He states:

The problem is that those outside the academy increasingly suspect universities are more interested in their public image, and not upsetting their Departments of Woke, than protecting fundamental academic freedom.

He says:

Universities typically have two types of problem with freedom of academic expression. The first is corporate. This is where an academic writes something that could rile a major stakeholder: a sponsoring corporation, a government partner or—frankly —China—

and we've seen plenty of examples where that has happened. He goes on to say:

Vice- chancellors understandably, but not heroically, feel for their institutional wallet.

He says:

The second assault on academic freedom is more insidious because it is internal. An academic strikes trouble because he or she writes something counter to the accepted wisdom of their faculty or university as a whole.

This was the challenge, of course, that we saw with the Ramsay Centre and there was a lot of kerfuffle about that. As Professor Craven correctly points out, they didn't:

fit the dominant paradigm, which was once the subversive position.

An editorial in The Australian on 4 January this year said:

The blinkered, narrow approach of some universities has been clear in recent years in controversies over Chinese-backed Confucius Institutes, Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg's futile efforts to set up a centre in Australia, James Cook University's sacking outspoken physicist Peter Ridd and problems encountered by the Ramsay Centre on various campuses.

I commend those comments to the chamber.

The recent threats that we've seen from the Chinese ambassador and China itself most clearly in recent times are symptomatic—and I have said this repeatedly—of the predicament we find ourselves in, noting that there have been years of questionable, defective foreign and trade policy which has made us vulnerable to economic coercion. Those who have been responsible for our fellow-traveller foreign policy were prepared to ignore communist China's skulduggery so long as the rivers of gold continued to flow, a very bad business model. Nowhere was this more obvious than at our universities, in their failure to diversify and their reliance on overseas students, especially on the China market. In fact, it was so clear that they weren't even following the basic, 101 business practices of their own business schools in terms of diversification. They were happy to take a lot of money from China and, in exchange, were prepared to stifle free speech so long as those rivers of gold were flowing.

This was very clear in the evidence that was presented to the Senate inquiry into the foreign relations bills in which I participated. I'd like to reiterate concerns that I have previously raised and that I raised in my contribution to the second reading debate in relation to those bills. At that time, I specifically referred to the evidence that had been given by the university sector and how concerned I was to note the universities' negative attitude to the bills and to the fact that the government would even presume to affect that sector's activities through the enactment of foreign relations bills. They were very happy to take the taxpayers' coin, but not happy to conform with Australia's foreign policy and find themselves having to comply with a set of norms and parameters. More importantly, they were happy to take the taxpayers' money but not conform to principles of allowing free speech on their campuses. As I said, the university sector, together with a wide chorus of business men and women, have urged us to effectively ignore the communist regime's many excesses in favour of the continuation of the rivers of gold.

What has been happening on our university campuses? We know that many of the universities in Australia have relied on funds from the Chinese Ministry of Education, through what is called the Hanban, through the Confucius institutes. Let's not forget that the Confucius institutes at our universities provide teachers, textbooks and operating funds. The first institute was established in Australia in 2005, and there are now 14 Confucius institutes located on 13 university campuses. One only has to look at the disgraceful conduct of universities and university academics, led by the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland, and what happened to young Drew Pavlou, to see the insidious way in which the Chinese communist regime has infiltrated our universities.

Let's look at the tentacles that the communist regime has inserted into our university sector through the Thousand Talents program. We know that universities often do incredibly important research and they receive large sums of public money. Of course, we need to protect that intellectual property. We need to protect it from cyberattacks and incursions, especially on free speech. As I said, it's been very, very clear that quite a number of our universities here in Australia have been happy to turn a blind eye to the activities of the communist regime so long as those rivers of gold were flowing into their coffers. That necessitates this government now enacting a freedom of speech bill. The fact that we actually have to do this reflects poorly, I think, on the university sector.

This bill will provide protections in relation to academic freedom and freedom of speech. It gives effect to the recommendations of the French review, the 2009 Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers. The bill will provide a new definition of academic freedom that enshrines in law those principles of freedom of expression that are so important to the life of universities, both for academic staff and for students. The definition closely aligns with the recommendation of the French review but it also includes some modifications recommended by the University Chancellors Council, which were developed in consultation with former Chief Justice French. The definition excludes one element:

That was part of the definition originally recommended by Mr French and included in the proposed model code. As part of the consultations on the proposed definition it has been suggested that this element is more about freedom of speech than academic freedom and ought not be conflated with the definition of academic freedom. I have some concerns about that. Whilst I appreciate the argument for a clear delineation between academic freedom and freedom of speech, that is what we're really talking about here. I will reserve my comments on that for another time.

I'm very pleased to see that in the Illawarra, where my electorate office is based, the University of Wollongong was very quick to respond to the findings of the French review. It completed its own internal review of its existing policies and procedures to ensure that it fully complied with the model code proposed by the French review. I'm also very pleased that the University of Wollongong was at the forefront with the establishment of its own Ramsay-backed degree in Western civilisation. Whilst there was some controversy, I have to commend the university for the way that it handled that and the rather smooth transition to the establishment of the Ramsay degree at the University of Wollongong.

Of course, one of the very nasty episodes that we have seen in relation to freedom of speech concerns Professor Peter Ridd. In an article in The Sydney Morning Herald on 28 October 2020, the former Minister for Education Dan Tehan was quoted as saying that the legal definition of academic freedom which had been resisted by some universities would have prevented the sacking of the marine physics academic Peter Ridd. He said on Sky News:

The legal advice that I have is that they wouldn't have been able to prosecute Peter Ridd if these laws had of been in place.

The Australian's editorial on 9 December last year, titled 'Time for action on uni free speech', noted:

Nothing better epitomises the conformist climate on our campuses than the appalling treatment of Peter Ridd by James Cook University. Professor Ridd reluctantly became the focal point in the battle for intellectual freedom on our campuses following his termination by JCU.

It goes on to say:

That there is a crisis of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech in universities is beyond dispute and the Ridd case is but the most conspicuous symptom of the malaise. For years the anecdotal evidence has mounted of trigger warnings, safe spaces and the "no platforming" of figures such as Bettina Arndt who challenge the modern canon of identity politics.

Indeed, I'm very pleased now to see that the High Court will be making a determination in relation to Peter Ridd, and I do sincerely hope that it does come down in his favour.

I want to conclude my remarks today by saying that I hope that this model code will change practices on university campuses. However, I won't be holding my breath, when I see incidents like the two that I'd like to put on the record. One was referred to in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald of 4 August last year, and it relates to the University of New South Wales, which boldly urges its students to 'bring your difference'. However, recent experience, the article says:

… that the university might be more interested in damage control than an open marketplace of ideas. But this is a test of academic freedom that UNSW can't afford to fail.

Of course it relates to the actions taken in relation to Australia Director at Human Rights Watch and adjunct lecturer at the university Elaine Pearson and the disgraceful behaviour of the university in relation to what she had been saying as to the Chinese government's threats to academic freedom in Australia.

But I conclude with something that really appalled me, and was on the front page of The Daily Telegraph which said: 'Woke kills mum & dad: uni's radical new gender neutral parenting guide'. I cannot believe that my former alma mater, the Australian National University, is prepared to go down the road with this sort of garbage. Can I say to its chancellor: after having served in this place for so long, how can you possibly allow this sort of thing to happen at one of our universities which is supposed to be one of our leading ones?

This bill, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020, inserts a definition of academic freedom and freedom of speech into the Higher Education Support Act. Including such a definition was a recommendation of the French review of freedom of speech in higher education. Most in the university sector are prepared to live with this bill, although I'm pretty sure that they are tired of the government devoting so much of its time in higher education to culture wars on student campuses. Including it was also a condition of One Nation's support for the job-ready graduates program—another example where this government has made concessions to One Nation. We should retain some vigilance about the government's tendency to reach agreements with the One Nation party.

The genesis of this bill tells us a great deal about the government's priorities. The bill, as I said, is the product of the French review. A great deal of time, attention and government resources have been spent responding to a single protest at the University of Sydney. In September 2018, Bettina Arndt was invited by the Sydney University Liberal Club for a talk entitled, 'Is there a rape crisis on campuses?' as part of her 'fake rape' tour across university campuses. The talk was picketed by members of the University of Sydney Women's Collective, an organisation that was founded before some of the senators in this place were born and has played a very good role at the University of Sydney, advocating for women's rights. That exclusively women's picket of an organisational event, mostly of men, became violent, and police were called.

Ms Arndt has a history of extreme views on sexual assault and domestic violence. She has repeatedly downplayed domestic violence; she claims it's a myth and a feminist narrative. She has claimed that the high incidence of sexual assault and rape on university campuses is a fiction cooked up by Australian feminists. She has repeatedly lied about being a clinical psychologist. In 2005, Arndt, in an article in The Courier Mail, described convicted paedophile Robert Potter, a scoutmaster who had molested four boys, as 'a good bloke' and argued that such 'minor' abuse rarely has lasting consequences. In 2017, Arndt interviewed a twice-convicted paedophile on YouTube, a 17 minute video with Mr Nicolaas Bester, a teacher convicted of raping his former student. The title was 'Feminists persecute disgraced teacher'. Ms Arndt accused the victim of 'sexually provocative behaviour'. She said: 'The question that remains for me is whether there's any room in this conversation for talking to young girls about behaving sensibly and not exploiting their seductive power to ruin the lives of men.' The victim of that assault was Grace Tame, who is now the Australian of the Year. Most recently, she suggested that Rowan Baxter, who murdered his wife and three children in a Brisbane street, 'might have been driven too far'.

It is quite reasonable that students who are concerned about the treatment of women in universities would object to those views being spread on their campus, particularly since, only a year earlier, a survey was released reporting that 25 per cent of women in University of Sydney residential colleges had reported sexual harassment—an endemic culture of violence and harassment. Rather than being ashamed that a university branch of their own political party would be associated with such views, the Morrison government decided that it reflected 'a crisis of left-wing protesters shutting down speech on campuses'. The then minister, Mr Tehan, said:

We must ensure our universities are places that protect all free speech, even where what is being said may be unpopular or challenging.

And so the retired High Court Justice Robert French was appointed to lead a review of freedom of speech. And as a lingering insult to those students, to the victims of sexual assault on campus and to women across the country, the Morrison government awarded Ms Arndt the Order of Australia medal for her services to gender equality.

'There is no crisis of freedom of speech on Australian university campuses.' Those aren't my words. Robert French is very clear in his final report. He said:

From the available evidence however, claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated.

He went on to say:

This Review has been instigated in part because of a perception by some in government, and by elements of the community, of a restrictive approach to freedom of speech at Australian universities in its free-standing sense and as an aspect of academic freedom. That perception has developed as a response to a relatively small number of high profile cases …

Those are the words of a government initiated report chaired by their hand-picked justice.

This confected, self-serving grievance narrative from people on the other side about freedom of speech on campuses—just because someone who was smarter than you at university told you you were wrong in a tutorial doesn't mean there's a crisis. They might have actually done the reading. They might have actually done the work. They might have got there on merit and they're entitled to their view. If you want to be self-appointed warriors for free speech, here are some real causes. You could defend journalists who risk prosecution to report on war crimes in Afghanistan. You could stand up for the right of public servants to express political opinions on their private social media. You could reform our outdated defamation laws, which are too often abused by the rich and powerful. But that would involve standing up for people who are not on your side. For those on the other side, it's not a matter of principle, it's a matter of retribution. And there are consequences that flow from this.

The reason this bill is before the Senate today is that a university Liberal club wanted to hold an event saying that women lie about rape. Disgracefully, they weren't the only such club. The La Trobe University Liberal Club, the Macquarie University Liberal Club and the University of New South Wales Conservatives all hosted events saying that women lie about rape. What an indictment of the youth wing of your political party! If they tolerate those views in their university societies and reward those views with their highest civilian honours, what message does that send to the young women who work here?

After Bettina Arndt's comments about the death of Hannah Clarke and her three children, senators on the other side finally did the right thing. Exactly one year ago today, every senator bar the One Nation Party voted to support this motion:

That the Senate—

  …   …   …

(b) agrees that:

(i) Ms Arndt's comments are reckless and abhorrent, and

(ii) the values that underpin Ms Arndt's views on this horrific family violence incident are not consistent with her retaining her Order of Australia.

The motion was sent to the Governor-General and the Governor-General did nothing. In Senate estimates we found out why. While the Governor-General does have the power to unilaterally rescind the Order of Australia, the Governor-General's secretary said:

… in practice the Governor-General does always act on the advice and recommendations of council.

And who selects the council of the Order of Australia? The Prime Minister does. Every coalition senator in this place vowed to strip Bettina Arndt of her Order of Australia, and so they should. Bettina Arndt still has our highest civilian honour because the Prime Minister wouldn't pick up the telephone. As we learnt from the last few weeks, the Prime Minister is all too happy to look away when it comes to matters of violence against women. He obfuscates, he hides and he apparently only acts on the advice of his wife. He will not do anything for Australian women that requires an iota of moral courage. Then, one month ago, he stood up and awarded Ms Tame Australian of the Year—Grace Tame, who fought for and won the legal right to tell her story of her sexual assault; Grace Tame, who would know what it actually means to fight for freedom of speech; Grace Tame, who Bettina Arndt blamed for her own sexual assault. It was Bettina Arndt's sympathetic public interview with a convicted paedophile, with the man convicted of Ms Tame's rape, that precipitated Ms Tame's legal battle in the first place. I don't know how the Prime Minister could look her in the eye.

The previous year, Ms Tame had this to say about Bettina Arndt's Order of Australia:

It might seem trivial to take away one individual's award, but it's about a principle. There is a principle at stake here and it's about demonstrating to people that we cannot reward people who validate abusers and people to capitalise on the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of others.

Those are words that should echo throughout the halls of this building. It's not a crisis of freedom of speech on university campuses that should concern this government; it's a crisis of the moral courage of this government to deal with violence against women, and it comes from the very top.

In my maiden speech to the Senate in 2019, I spoke about the importance of free speech in an open and democratic society and my deep concerns regarding the steady decline of academic freedom and diversity of thought on campus. I said in my first contribution to this chamber that true freedom of speech means the right to express your views and the right of others to respond and say that they find your views ridiculous but not to run off to some authority and take action against you on the basis of disagreement. I said at the time: surely universities should be places that encourage consideration and debate on a range of views, not places that dismiss certain perspectives out of hand while endorsing other views without scrutiny. Now more than ever we need universities to be committed to those principles of academic freedom and diversity of thought.

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 is an incredibly important piece of legislation. Nothing can be more fundamental to the prosperous future of our universities and, indeed, our society as a whole than the protection and promotion of freedom of speech.

In recent years, we've seen the emergence of social justice theories that suggest that individuals and groups need to be protected from certain ideas; that words alone can constitute literal violence and cause distress and harm; that, if a particular group takes issue with someone's ideas or comments, then those ideas constitute hate speech and must be banned. Universities around the world have been enthusiastic adopters of these theories, have rushed to create ideological safe spaces and have assured their students and staff that they shouldn't be subjected to certain ideas they don't like or disagree with. Clearly, this creates an environment where free speech and rigorous intellectual debate is under serious threat. That's why, last year, a group of 150 of the world's most prominent academics, writers and activists signed an open letter expressing deep concern that a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments are weakening norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favour of ideological conformity. Many universities seem to have forgotten that the only kind of free society worth having is one in which the people you disagree with can speak freely. The old free-speech idiom, 'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it', has fallen completely by the wayside on our university campuses. Nowadays you're more likely to hear staff and students saying, 'I disagree with what that person is saying. It's a breach of the code of conduct. How dare the universities provide a platform for these views?'

Reports into academic freedom and censorship in the UK have shown that radical activists within universities are generating and coordinating formal complaints and protests that agitate for academics to be fired or deplatformed. Too often the response by the university in question is not to support the academic freedom of its own academics but to give in to a Twitter pile-on. As a result, academics and experts are increasingly self-censoring and staying away from topics that may draw the ire of activists and may result in attempts to have them sacked. That is a hugely concerning and anti-intellectual trend that must be arrested.

Conspiring to have an academic fired or make it impossible for them to give a public speech or presentation are not the actions of people who support free speech. Criticise all you want; even better, engage with the point someone you disagree with is making and seek to rebut their stance with facts and logic. But seeking to have someone sacked for having a different opinion is fundamentally inconsistent with the principles of free speech. Alternative views to your own and facts that don't fit with your narrative on an issue are not hate speech. They are not literal violence. Clearly, if you are not exposed to ideas you don't agree with or ideas that you find challenging, you're not receiving the rigorous kind of tertiary education that university is supposed to provide. If academics aren't prepared to engage in good faith with different ideas and think and discuss matters beyond the current orthodoxies, how can they help to inform the challenges of today and the future?

In my maiden speech, I shared with honourable senators my own experience as a university student, and a well-known conservative university student at that. A decade ago, the views I espoused in my political science classes were regarded with shock at best and with complete disregard at worst by tutors and fellow students alike. My opinions were dismissed on the basis of my political affiliation, as if that meant my views were of less value because I'd seemingly been indoctrinated by members of my own party. Setting aside that we have reached a very sad state in our democracy if we're at the point of denigrating someone's views purely because they're a member of a political party, the fact that any alternative viewpoint was disregarded in an academic environment should be of concern to most Australians. Our students go to university to grow and develop their ideas about how the world works and the impact they want to have on society. This simply cannot happen if they aren't able to have those ideas challenged and, in turn, challenge the views of others.

As I said in my maiden speech, I found my experience as a conservative on university campus to be one that was intellectually galvanising. It only strengthened my political convictions. But in the intervening decades since I was at university, the state of free speech on campus has degraded even further. These days, it isn't just the ridicule of fellow students or the disregard of lecturers that students must withstand. Time after time we are seeing the progressive shutdown of debate on any issues that challenge that very same ideological conformity that those 150 prominent academics referenced in their open letter last year.

The Morrison coalition government has quite rightly been concerned about academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus for some time. That's why, in 2018, the former education minister, Dan Tehan, initiated a review into free speech at universities, which was undertaken by former Chief Justice of the High Court, the Hon. Robert French AC. Unfortunately, the take-up of the French model code has been less than adequate. A review of the implementation of the code by Professor Sally Walker AM found that only nine of the nation's 42 universities had adopted policies aligning with the code. That is, by any measure, an incredibly poor response by the Australian university sector collectively. It's abundantly clear that, when it comes to free speech, our universities either don't get it or don't want to get it. It's going to take firm leadership by this government to continue to push universities towards understanding the importance of free speech. That's why this bill that we are debating here today is an important step; it amends the Higher Education Support Act to better incorporate the principles outlined in the French model code.

I congratulate the former minister and the current minister for education, Alan Tudge, for their work in promoting freedom of speech on university campuses, and I commend the bill to the Senate.

The Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 seeks to implement the recommendations of the Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers, commonly known as the French review, which reported to the then Minister for Education in March 2019. In assessing the bill, it's important to begin with some facts. The former Chief Justice Robert French stated in his report:

… claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated.

He reiterated:

There is no evidence … of a 'free speech crisis' on campus.

Former Chief Justice French was quite clear. I will repeat it: there is no evidence of such a crisis. The government knows that, yet here we are once again pursuing the fantasies of the hard right of this government.

What we have is debate on a crisis that doesn't actually exist except in the imaginations of the right-wing culture warriors of this government. It's a confected crisis which the government is happy to pursue—and it has done so for seven years or so—because it helps develop what is in fact the unrelenting and systematic hostility of this government towards universities. That's an irony, given so many of the government's own members are products of the university system itself. It's extraordinary that so many members of this government who were employed in universities feel that those universities are such threatening places. It's ironic that they regard these institutions as places that harbour people with dangerous ideas who seek to undermine our way of life. It's a paranoid view of the world impossible to take seriously if you know anything about how universities actually function. Surely you would expect, given the breadth of experience of any government, that the government benches would know better?

Of course, the point of all of this is that this is a government that needs to secure the votes of One Nation senators to pass critical legislation, as the job-ready graduates bill was an indication of. It was a bill that in fact cut the funding for student places by a billion dollars, that severed the nexus between the funding of undergraduate places and the funding of research, and that clearly demonstrated that the question of the long-term funding of research in Australia has yet to be resolved. It is a question that neither the Minister for Education at the time, Mr Tehan, nor his successor, Mr Tudge, have been prepared to answer. Mr Tehan justified the legislation by saying that the revised student charges that were introduced would create incentives to enrol courses needed in the modern economy and to avoid other courses, such as the humanities, that supposedly don't produce job-ready graduates.

Labor proudly opposed that legislation. We did so because we knew the damage that was going to be done to our universities by the hostile, punitive approach to universities that has been persistently pursued by this government. We opposed the bill—and it should have been defeated; it was carried by only the one vote, which was provided by One Nation—simply because its underlying assumptions were wrong, as they had been in the previous iterations of that bill throughout the lives of the conservative governments of the past seven years.

Humanities graduates do have job-ready skills, and the Business Council, of all people—again, hardly a centre of Bolshevik agitation—acknowledges how important the humanities are to the future of the country. The fact remains that price signals are an ineffective means of influencing student choices. We've already seen the government's ill-considered plan is unravelling. A report on the front page of The Australian earlier this week by Richard Ferguson stated:

Demand for university humanities and law courses is growing despite the Morrison government more than doubling course fees in a bid to redirect students to critical employment areas for the post-pandemic recovery.

Enrolments in courses in society and culture and in the humanities and social sciences have been hit by increases in student fees by 113 per cent under the job-ready legislation, yet enrolments in these courses are up by six per cent for the 2021 academic year. With the government's spin machine in overdrive, the increased enrolments in some categories of courses, agriculture and health care, would seem to be some sort of vindication. But that's been the trend for years. It's not just something that happened this year; it has happened for some time. Mr Andrew Norton, former Liberal adviser and conservative academic at the Australian National University, made the very simple point in The Australian: 'The government has managed to plunge universities into a funding crisis without as much as a gain in the terms of its own objectives.' With the bill before us, we have the price the government's prepared to pay in its arrangements with One Nation.

We're not going to oppose this bill because it implements the French review's recommendations. It does very little in real terms, but it foresees a circumstance where you can maintain a rhetorical war, a cultural war, against the universities. That's its main purpose—isn't it?—a public propaganda war against intellectualism and against the university system. Just as there's no evidence of a crisis in free speech on Australian university campuses, what we saw was a proposal adopted for a model code setting out principles of academic freedom and free speech. Universities in principle have accepted the code, although Professor Sally Walker, in another report commissioned by the government, has criticised them for being too slow on the uptake. This is the irony here: the government talks about how important it is for universities to have autonomy, but when they don't take up the proposition of a voluntary code, there is something allegedly wrong with the universities themselves.

In The Australian, ANU professor and former University of Melbourne vice-chancellor, Professor Glyn Davis, a very fine Australian and a leading public intellectual in this country, made the point that there is an arrogance and an ignorance in this government. He said:

There is irony in government deciding to investigate academic freedom [when the] government frequently emerges as the largest threat to such freedom.

Professor Davis criticised the attitude of Mr Tehan. He said:

Minister Tehan accepted the recommendations from Justice French and called on universities to act … He would become more insistent in later media statements, criticising universities for using their autonomy.

It should be remembered why Mr French recommended the model of the code. Mr French said:

… there is a range of diverse and broadly framed institutional rules, codes and policies … which leave room for the variable exercise of administrative discretions and evaluative judgments. These are capable of eroding the fundamental freedom of speech and that freedom of speech which is an essential element of academic freedom.

He said that if that were to happen it would make 'the sector an easy target for criticism'. That led to the backbench agitation and prompted the government to commission the French review. We know that the real deal is what pushed this through, the real deal being the deal with One Nation. We know the incidents were reported in the media. We know the situation—for instance, the unfair dismissal case involving Dr Peter Ridd at James Cook University. We know the case which is being heard by the High Court. I do presume, that you, Senator Abetz, still regard the High Court as part of the legal process in this country. I'm sure you would appreciate how important it is—

An honourable senator interjecting—

You would commend them with regard to Cardinal Pell. You would commend them when they bring forward their judgement with regard to Dr Peter Ridd. We have seen appeals with regard to Dr Ridd, which found that the position he'd taken was that he had breached his employment contract. It was not at all a question of freedom of speech. We should remember that the university insisted that Dr Ridd was sacked for denigrating colleagues and science organisations. The university argued that his attacks on colleagues went beyond academic disputation. We all know how academics like to squabble and argue the toss about the number of angels on pins, but we do also understand how important these codes of conduct are within universities. We understand how important it is not to damage the reputation of universities or violate the codes of conduct. Dr Ridd argues that he was taking the action that he did at university because of the guarantees that he believed he had with regard to intellectual freedom and his contract of employment. I think this case will be resolved through due process at the High Court.

It's interesting to note that the bill this government has presented to us removes a clause from the original model code, which was actually proposed by the French review itself. That clause, contained in the code's definition of 'academic freedom', stated:

This clause was removed by the government in consultation with the sector.

An honourable senator interjecting—

No, this is because the government withdrew that clause. It's claiming that it's now implementing the French review, when it clearly is not. It has done so with regard to its consultation with the sector. Universities were, in fact, concerned that if we remove their ability to sanction staff for misconduct or damage to the institution it would conflict with their terms of employment.

I find it extraordinary that this is a government that's going to pursue this line of argument in the name of freedom of speech when, of course, what we're dealing with here is a position that the freedom of speech and academic freedom uses existing language of the higher education standard act, which reads, 'free intellectual inquiry in learning, teaching and research'. The bill inserts into the higher education standard acts a definition now which is different. The definition states that 'academic freedom' means:

That's an interesting idea for a government that's been so opposed to voluntary student unionism—

None of these should be contentious—none of them—for anyone who genuinely holds freedom of speech. What the definition, the adoption of the model code by the universities, does is replace a variety of institutional rules and measures with a common set of terms, as the French review recommended. That should clarify academic freedom is understood. The good thing here is, we must remember the French review—I'll repeat this—found that there was no crisis of freedom of speech in Australian universities, despite the fact that the right-wing zealots and cultural warriors within this government had sought to confect one. It's time for the government to stop listening to the cultural warriors and to start talking to people who actually know something about education—(Time expired)

Colleagues and those listening in might be forgiven for thinking that was actually a speech against the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 but, as I understand it, the Australian Labor Party are committed to supporting it, if I'm correct? Is that correct, Senator Carr?

Senator Kim Carr interjecting—

You will be voting for the bill. What a wonderful speech in favour of the bill!

Hear, hear!

It now seems almost superfluous for me to speak because it was so articulately put as to why people ought to be voting for this legislation. The fundamental point surely is this: each of us, hopefully, in this place believe that we are all possessed of a God-given or human right of freedom of speech. And that freedom of speech, if it is to be allowed anywhere, should surely be allowed to prosper at our universities and tertiary institutions in this country. The sad thing is that it hasn't happened. It is a matter of genuine regret that legislation of this nature has to be brought to the parliament and legislated to ensure and guarantee that which for centuries universities have prided themselves on—namely, freedom of speech, freedom to express opinions, to be able to lock horns with interlocutors and argue points, sharpen each other up with the activities that should be part and parcel of universities, rather than this groupthink which is now pervading through our universities.

Are there issues within the universities? Senator Carr would tell you everything is great in the garden. Let's look at what happened at the University of New South Wales just as one example. An academic posted on Twitter—and might I add a left-wing academic—supporting the pro-democracy people of Hong Kong, and what did the university do? They took it upon themselves to take down that tweet. Then they took it upon themselves to issue an apology, acknowledging that what they had done was wrong. They put out one apology in English and another in Mandarin. Guess what? You try to translate the two and they don't marry up—talk about a fundamental lack of integrity. When I had the opportunity of questioning Professor George Williams about this at a Senate hearing, all he could assert was that a mistake had been made. But when I pursued him further as to whether or not this was just an accidental mistranslation, no, no, this was about nuanced messages—in other words, narrowcasting to the English-speaking community one version of events and narrowcasting another version of events to the Chinese-speaking community. The person of whom I speak, the academic, is a Ms Pearson.

Human Rights Watch were also concerned as to what the University of New South Wales had done. The reason for this was because pressure had been brought to bear on this university through that rag known as the Global Times. Global Times said: UNSW is 'under attack from its Chinese student cohort after publishing an article denouncing the human rights issue in Hong Kong' Although the article was soon deleted, students are still furious and demand an apology. I know where that talk comes from because I've been subjected to it myself from similar rags that are simply the mouthpiece for the communist dictatorship in China. But when you have got a university dancing to the tune of an organisation such as that—taking down tweets, sending out different messages—you know you've got a problem.

Let's go to my old university, the University of Tasmania, where an article presented by a very, very accomplished academic, Professor Patrick Parkinson—from Queensland, Senator Scarr—was rejected. Professor James Allan, a Garrick Professor of Law at the University of Queensland, who may also be known to Senator Scarr, had a look through it all. Professor Allan was the sole editor of the G8 university UQ's law review for 13 years. For a decade he was the sole editor of New Zealand's oldest law review at the University of Otago. So, with almost a quarter of a century under his belt as an editor of leading law reviews, I think he might know his way around peer review and law publishing. He had a look at this banned article because the assertion was made that it was not up to scratch. For anybody who knows Professor Parkinson and his credentials—and Professor Allan with his credentials—the only conclusion you can come to is that politics trumped the open expression of views that were presented. It was very clear that the editors of that particular law review disagreed with Professor Parkinson's views on the topic of transgender law in Tasmania. It was de facto censorship. I've written to the University of Tasmania seeking an explanation. We've got all the verbiage in the world but no justification as to why Professor Parkinson's clearly acceptable article in terms of its intellectual integrity, acuity and robustness was rejected. What the University of Tasmania's law review has to accept and understand is that, if you don't like somebody's view, you don't shut them up; you don't censor them. You actually respond and say, 'We disagree with this article because—'. And then you have the engagement which is so vital for any genuine university. Sadly, my own university failed that fundamental test.

We can go to other academics who have felt constrained to speak out as they should because of the funding that might be coming their way. They're too scared to speak out. A researcher, Michael Shellenberger, who was an activist in the climate change area for 30 years, wrote a book, Apocalypse Never, in which he debunked a lot of the myths that have been perpetuated by far too many universities and academics. When asked the fundamental question as to why he hadn't spoken out earlier, he was willing to admit that one of his reasons was his fear of losing funding. In other words, if you don't whistle the right tune for the university or the research institution and you present a counterview, you will be denied funding. Is that really what we want in our research institutions or in our universities?

It is great to see Senator Wong has come in to listen to my contribution.

Senator Wong interjecting—

And you are still frozen in opposition, Senator Wong! I'm more than happy to be here. But I supposed I invited that exchange.

Our universities are struggling with the question of integrity in that fundamental area of freedom of speech. That is why the government, quite rightly, has taken it upon itself to deal with this issue, to seek to ensure that those fundamental freedoms are maintained. One of the freedoms that the legislation seems to guarantee is the freedom of students to participate in student societies and associations. I'm sure that also means the freedom not to participate in student societies and associations if that is what the student wants, because one of the great freedoms of freedom of association—

Order! Senator Abetz, you will be in continuation upon resumption.

Sadly, my question is to the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services, Senator Colbeck. Two days before Christmas last year, Lea received a call from her 86-year-old father's aged-care home, Regis Nedlands in Perth, telling her he was in an ambulance to the hospital. Her father, Brian Hunter, was:

… slumped over in the bed, and his back was exposed. I could see his back was really terribly burnt, his whole back was burned. And he was not speaking to us. He was semi in and out of consciousness.

Brian, a double amputee who had lost both legs due to diabetes, had been left out on a rooftop terrace, on a 40-degree day, for two hours. Nobody noticed he was missing for two hours. Brian tragically died on 20 January this year, more than 12 months after the royal commission's interim report entitled Neglect. Minister, how is this neglect continuing on your watch?

I thank Senator Sterle for his question. We are all very disturbed by any circumstance of poor treatment, poor care, of any resident in an aged-care facility in this country.

Why does it keep happening?

It should not keep happening, to your point, Senator Watt. It should not keep happening. I will be very cautious with respect to the allegations that are currently being aired with respect to Regis, because I know that there are a number of investigations that are being undertaken with respect to the allegations that apply to this particular facility. I've had quite a number of briefings with respect to this from the quality commission and my department, and I've also had a number of conversations elsewhere with respect to this matter. I am very concerned that these allegations have come to light. There is a coroner's review that's underway. There has been a police investigation that has found no circumstance of criminality with respect to the allegations that are currently being aired in relation to Regis. And of course the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has issued both a sanction and a notice to agree against Regis Nedlands with respect to the allegations that are being raised. All of these allegations are very, very concerning. The government members, on this side, are just as concerned as anyone in any other part of the chamber. We all remain concerned. We are concerned for the families and the circumstances that they find themselves in and we would like to get to the bottom of this matter as much as anybody.

Order, Senator Colbeck. Senator Sterle, a supplementary question?

The day after Brian's hospitalisation, the hospital reported Regis to the Morrison government's regulator, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. Nobody visited Regis Nedlands until 11 January, three weeks later. When did the minister first become aware of Brian's tragic death and what action has he taken to ensure this neglect never, ever happens again?

In relation to the specific date that I became aware of the resident's death, I can't give you that specifically but I'm happy to provide that information to the chamber. But, as I've said, the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission has issued both a sanction and a notice to agree on Regis Nedlands. That is an appropriate process.

An opposition senator interjecting—

Senator, I will take your interjection. You are right. It should not have occurred in the first place.

An opposition senator: You had a royal commission report.

That's why we called the royal commission. That's why one of the first acts of Prime Minister Morrison was to call a royal commission to undertake a forensic review of the aged-care sector so that we could put in place the reforms that will stop these sorts of events and lift the entire sector so that we do have a better, world-class aged-care system in this country.

Order, Senator Colbeck. Senator Sterle, a final supplementary question?

Regis Nedlands had been sanctioned in November 2019, 14 months before Brian died, for putting the safety and health of residents at risk. How many more older Australians will tragically die because of the ongoing neglect in the Morrison government's aged-care system?

Unfortunately, what Senator Sterle has done is neglect to advise the chamber of other assessments of this organisation, who—you're correct—did receive a sanction at that point in time but were subsequently assessed to be compliant with the standards. So they had had a problem, they'd put in place corrective action to fix it, and they were subsequently assessed. A sanction is not a life sentence. It is a process to improve the capacity of the service. That's what I expect. That's what all of us expect should occur. And that's what I expect from Regis in the context of the circumstances that are occurring right now.

Regis are currently under both a sanction and a notice to agree, and both of those tools are designed to improve the quality of service at the facility, and that is what I expect.

My question is also to the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Senator Colbeck. Can the minister update the Senate on the national COVID-19 vaccine rollout and how this is underpinning our health and economic recovery?

Thank you, Senator Fawcett, for your question. It has been an important week for all Australians. We are now into day 4 of the mass vaccine rollout across the country. We are prioritising the most vulnerable in society, as we should, to receive the vaccine first. Aged-care residents, border, quarantine and frontline health workers have the opportunity to have their first dose of the vaccine this week. Both the Pfizer-BioNTech and the AstraZeneca vaccines require two separate doses for a person to be fully immunised: Pfizer-BioNTech, 21 days apart, and AstraZeneca, 12 weeks apart. Phase 1a remains on track for the first round of doses to be delivered within a six-week period. Under the Australian government's plan, quarantine and border workers and aged-care residents are on track to be vaccinated by April.

You can be assured the vaccine rollout is well underway in your home state of South Australia, Senator Fawcett. I'm advised that 933 people have had their first dose in South Australia, and we expect those figures to ramp up significantly as weeks progress. We thank all Australians, particularly the frontline health workers for their commitment and hard work in rolling out this vaccine across the country. Our vaccination program will underpin our health and economic recovery.

Senator Fawcett, a supplementary question?

Can the minister provide an update on how many Australians nationwide have been vaccinated in this first week of the rollout?

The aged-care rollout is part of phase 1a. It will progressively ramp up as the week progresses. One of the things that we have asked the providers to do is to start cautiously to make sure that things are moving progressively. There have been more than 17,500 vaccines reported to the Commonwealth as having been administered across the country. So far this week our vaccination teams have visited 71 residential aged-care facilities, and almost 4,700 residents have received the vaccine. We expect healthcare teams to visit an additional 20 facilities today and to vaccinate a further 1,600 residents. In coming weeks, the program will reach more than 2,600 residential aged-care facilities and more than 183,000 residents and 339,000 staff.

Senator Fawcett, a final supplementary question?

Minister, can you outline what results are being seen around the world as a result of vaccination programs?

Thank you, Senator Fawcett. Data is coming in from around the world on other countries' vaccine rollout. For example, there are very encouraging results coming out of Scotland. Among Scotland's 5.4 million people, they've administered over one million doses of vaccines. They're using the Pfizer vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine, as is Australia.

The study has looked at the numbers admitted to hospital with COVID and those that have had the vaccine and those who have not. Research led by Public Health Scotland found that at four weeks, after the first dose, hospital admissions were reduced by 85 per cent for the Pfizer vaccine and 94 per cent for AstraZeneca jabs. So these are very encouraging early results—two leading vaccines that work against the severe end of the spectrum. There's further evidence it's working in a real-world setting, so very encouraging news.

My question today is to the Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services, Senator Colbeck. Lisa's father, 94-year-old Dick Lee, was allegedly abused at Regis Nedlands. A report details that they:

… found Mr Lee (who is always in a wheelchair) on the floor near the entrance of his room completely unclothed and sitting in his faeces with [a carer] standing over him. I asked [the carer], did he fall? and [the carer] replied with 'no'.

The carer was later witnessed dragging Mr Lee into the bathroom. More than 12 months after the royal commission's interim report, entitled Neglect, how is this neglect still continuing on this minister's watch?

Thanks, Senator Pratt, for the question. I will continue to be cautious in the answer to this question with respect to what I say about the specifics of the allegations that have been made in this case, as I was in the question from Senator Sterle. These cases are subject to coroners' inquests. They're subject to independent review processes that have been commissioned and of course they have also been subject to a police investigation.

What I will say is that nobody in this place wants to see mistreatment of any senior Australian resident in aged care in this country. That is why we called the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, so that we could conduct a comprehensive review of the sector and we could put in place the appropriate regulatory regimes that support high-quality care for all senior Australians in the country.

An opposition senator interjecting—

Senator Pratt interjecting—

I'll take the interjection from the other side. At the last budget, when we put billions of dollars into aged care, what did the opposition put in respect of aged care in their budget in reply? Not a single dollar. A lot of crocodile tears on the other side, but they have done nothing for decades.

Opposition senators interjecting—

I didn't hear anything unparliamentary. Senator Wong, on a point of order.

And to get into withdrawals, we also have crocodile tears, which impugns what we are asking when we're asking about neglect. However, I don't propose to go down that path. I'm raising an issue of direct relevance. The minister is asked—I'm sorry?

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order! Senator Wong has the call. Interjections are always disorderly and particularly unhelpful.

If the senator wants to say that on his feet.

I missed something completely. Senator Wong, on the point of order.

She wants to be the centre of attention!

I don't, actually; I just want to make my point. Mr President, we're asking questions about some very serious allegations. There's one question that the minister has been asked, which is: how is the neglect continuing on his watch more than 12 months after he's received the royal commission report? I'd ask you to remind him of the question.

Senator Wong, I believe the minister was being directly relevant and then responded to interjections, which was not being directly relevant. I will remind the minister of the question. I'll also remind people not to interject and therefore the distraction and the opportunity won't occur.

Thank you, Mr President. With respect to the interim report and the COVID-19 report of the royal commission, the government has responded to both of those reports. We have continued to reform the sector—passing new legislation, which places additional responsibilities on the sector. The Serious Incident Response Scheme was passed through this place only last week, so we have continued to reform the sector while the royal commission has continued and we will continue to do so.

Senator Birmingham, on a point of order?

I make a point of order in relation to conduct in the chamber and interjections. Senator Wong, in making her point of order before, demanded complete silence in the chamber before she spoke. Yet, since Senator Colbeck got back on his feet, Senator Wong has shown nothing but a lack of courtesy in listening to the answer and is showing a double standard in the behaviour she expected while she was on her feet.

All interjections are disorderly.

Honourable senators interjecting—

Order! I'm going to ask that people stop the interjections while I talk. It's the end of a fortnight. I'm going to ask people to restrain themselves. I was attempting to call the chamber to order. I will start raising my voice if I need to. Interjections are not helpful and they are disorderly. Senator Pratt, a supplementary question?

A few days after the alleged neglect, Mr Lee became ill, and his daughter's concerns that something was seriously wrong were dismissed. Mr Lee was eventually rushed to hospital, where he was in a coma. He had liver failure and died the next day. When did the minister first become aware of Mr Lee's tragic death, and what action has he taken to ensure this neglect never happens again?

Can I say this whole matter and the allegations that surround it are extremely distressing for us all. But the matter is not helped by questions from the opposition that leave out vital facts that are a part of this case.

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator Colbeck, please resume your seat. I can't hear the minister's answer. I need to be able to hear it. Senator Colbeck to continue.

Thank you, Mr President. It is really disappointing that the opposition leaves out vital elements of what was even in the media this morning as part of their question to cast an impression that actually isn't true. The gentleman concerned was attended by a GP. This was not an act of the aged-care facility. So for the Labor Party to come in here and try and create the impression that it was is, quite frankly, completely dishonest. I've been very, very careful with respect to the circumstances of and the details that I put on the table with respect to these things and— (Time expired)

Senator Pratt, a final supplementary question?

How many older Australians in residential aged care have died this year as a result of neglect?

Every person in this chamber would abhor any circumstance where a senior Australian has had that circumstance occur. Every single one of us would have that view. That is why this government called the royal commission, because we want to reform this sector in a way that provides high-quality care to senior Australians. That is our objection.

Senator Gallagher, on a point of order?

My point of order is on relevance: the question was very direct. There was no preamble. It was: how many Australians in residential aged care have died this year as a result of neglect? I ask the minister to come to the answer to the question.

You're quite right. I have previously ruled where there's a specific question that relates to the search for a fact, direct relevance will be applied very tightly. I call the minister to turn to the question.

There have been, over the course of the last 12 months, a number of allegations of neglect in aged care and we're dealing with some of those as a part of the questions that we're being asked today.

Senator Polley interjecting—

Mr President, Senator Polley interjects and says they're more than allegations but that's exactly what they are; they are allegations at this point in time.

Order! Senator Wong, on a point of order?

I repeat Senator Gallagher's point of order.

This was a specific factual question for which an answer can be provided or a discussion of the topic in question. I have previously ruled that, where there is no preamble or commentary or politically contestable terms, questions need to be taken strictly at their face value. Minister, I remind you of the question.

I have allegations of people who may have died of neglect but I have no direct evidence of anyone who has died of neglect. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister. In an extreme act of violence, an Aboriginal woman and her baby were attacked by a Nazi with a flamethrower this week. Why hasn't the Prime Minister had anything to say about this?

I thank Senator Thorpe for her question. I am aware of an investigation by the WA Police Force into a reported assault. I have heard media commentary along the lines of that which you have described, Senator Thorpe. Let me make very clear: if those facts are true, then, of course, they are to be completely and utterly condemned. They are shameful. All forms of hatred and division are unacceptable and should be condemned, and I have no doubt—

Senator Thorpe, on a point of order?

On relevance. My question is why hasn't the Prime Minister—the so-called leader of this country—said anything?

The minister has been speaking for 39 seconds. He was directly discussing the first part of the question, which I think is directly relevant. I have allowed you to restate the second part of the question, but I believe he is being directly relevant by addressing the facts you outlined for context to your question.

As I was mid-sentence saying, I have no doubt the Prime Minister would share my the condemnation, I am sure, of all fair-thinking Australians of the events.

Senator Thorpe, a supplementary question?

This government's silence is violence. Why does this government condone these attacks by saying nothing, which just means you contribute to the problem?

I reject the question entirely. The government in no way condones such horrific events and unreservedly condemns them.

Senator Thorpe, a final supplementary question?

What are you doing about these white nationalist terrorists? If these terrorists were anything other than white, you would have moved heaven and earth to find them.

The government rejects extremism in all of its forms, including right-wing extremism or any other. Our increase in funding and support for agencies, such as ASIO, to be able to respond to extremism enables the security agencies, as they have done, to identify the rise in different types of extremism, including the rise in right-wing extremism. The government has funded the agencies to do that work, because we know that it needs effective law enforcement and intelligence activities to respond to it. That's why we have taken that action. That's why we support the work of our agencies. We'll continue to do so, regardless of whatever type of extremism it relates to.

My question is to the Minister for Women, Senator Payne. The Respect@Work report was delivered almost a year ago. In his speech at the International Women's Day breakfast this morning, Mr Morrison said:

My hope is that we will live in a society where we can truly say that women are respected … because from the disrespect of women … all the other challenges flow … It all starts with the failure of respect for women.

Can the minister explain why the Attorney-General, Mr Porter, has sat on the Respect@Work report for almost a year without implementing a single substantive legislative recommendation?

Just to clarify, Senator McAllister, I believe you asked me as Minister for Women, but I do also represent the Attorney-General in this place. As the senator has indicated, this government commissioned the Respect@Work report into sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, which, as the senator has indicated, was tabled by the government last year.

Sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, which, of course, has been, in its most appalling representation, the subject of significant discussion in this place in the last weeks, is an issue that can affect any workplace. So the report by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner and her team is a very important report, which needs, we believe, a unified national response from all Australian governments as well as from employers and industry. As part of the last budget, 2020-21, including in the 2020 Women's economic security statement, the government announced $2.1 million over three years to provide practical support to employers and employees to prevent and address sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. That funding will contribute towards the implementation of key recommendations from the AHRC's landmark report, and that includes the council itself, which will be led by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins. It will bring together existing leaders from bodies with a role in preventing and responding to workplace sexual harassment. The council will work to promote safer workplaces and provide high-level advice to the government.

Order, Senator Payne. Senator McAllister, on a point of order?

I have been listening to the answer, but my point of order goes to relevance. I asked specifically about the failure to implement any of the substantive legislative recommendations. I'd like the minister to address that part of the question, which was a narrow question.

I've allowed you to remind the minister of the question. I think it is in order and being directly relevant for the minister to be discussing other measures the government has taken, and that is an opportunity that can be debated after question time as to the Senate's consideration of those answers.

I was referring to the recommendation in relation to the council, which will be led by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner. That funding through the budget will also support the implementation of nine other key recommendations from the report, including the development of the online information platform— (Time expired)

Senator McAllister, a supplementary question?

The Australian Human Rights Commission has recommended the amendment of the Sex Discrimination Act to:

… introduce a positive duty on all employers to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sex discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation …

Will the Morrison government amend the Sex Discrimination Act to reflect this recommendation?

The government is, as I was saying, considering the recommendations of the report. It was a very wide-ranging report, and deliberately so. It considered matters that are relevant to business, to industry, to independent agencies, to education providers, to state and territory governments, and to the Commonwealth. I referred to the online information platform, which is recommendation 48. Recommendations 9, 34, 36, 37, 40, and 52 concerning the package of training and education resources—

Senator McAllister, on a point of order?

Yes, my point of order is relevance. The question went to a specific recommendation made by the Australian Human Rights Commission. I asked the minister, 'Will the government be implementing that recommendation?' I did not ask about the other recommendations in the report.

You've reminded the minister of the question. Again, I remind ministers that, where there is a very specific question, and I do consider this question relatively specific in nature, referring to a recommendation—I believe that was the language I caught—their comments should be addressed to matters that are directly relevant to that particular issue.

I believe I still have half of my time available to me to respond to the senator's question. I was referring to those other recommendations and recommendation 2 in relation to a 2022 survey—a specific recommendation to evaluate the effectiveness of these new measures to track levels of sexual harassment. The government is considering the other recommendations, including the one that Senator McAllister has referred to, and will respond in due course.

Senator McAllister, a final supplementary question?

When launching the Respect@work report, the minister said:

… I take these recommendations very seriously and I'm committed to ensuring that sexual harassment is eradicated from workplaces in this country.

A year on, with not a single substantive legislative recommendation implemented, what is the minister doing to deliver on this commitment?

I have already alluded to the recommendations in the report that were taken up in the Women's Economic Security Statement in October last year. Those specific recommendations, which I actually don't think Senator McAllister wanted to hear about, are being pursued through that process. I work with the Attorney-General on these matters and I now welcome very much the opportunity to work with my colleague, Senator Stoker, who, as the assistant minister, has specific portfolio responsibility in this area with the Attorney-General. Indeed, we met in this parliamentary sitting to discuss these issues. It's a matter the government takes very seriously. There were, I think, as I said, 55 recommendations in total: 20 for the Commonwealth government, another four that did propose a respect at work council, 12 that are shared between the Commonwealth and state and territory governments, 13 for government agencies and regulators, three for education providers, and three for business and industry. It's a whole-of-government, whole-of-community, whole-of-Australia responsibility, and we are— (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Energy, Senator Seselja. Minister, the Western Australian Liberal-National opposition has committed to shutting down Western Australian coal power by 2025. In the place of reliable base-load coal power there will be $16 billion worth of wind and solar power. The role of maintaining back-up power to the entire Western Australian grid when wind and solar fail, as they inevitably do, will fall to a battery. Minister, can you explain to the house how Western Australia's 2,500 megawatts of average daily power use can be met by a battery, and how many calm, rainy days in a row will put the entire state into a blackout?

I thank Senator Roberts for the question. I can't speak to the absolute detail of the Western Australian Liberal opposition's policy—I could take some of that on notice—but, when it comes to energy security and the need to take action, our government, of course, has laid its priorities on the table. Those priorities include a strong focus on reliable and affordable energy, whether that's in our plans when it comes to gas, whether that's in record investment in renewables, whether that's in extending the life of other base-load power, whether that's in Snowy 2.0 or whether that's in the work we are doing with the Battery of the Nation. We have a proud record of ensuring that we have reliable and affordable power whilst we invest in renewable energy, meet our emissions reductions targets on an international scale, create jobs and support manufacturing. In terms of the detail of some of those policies you went to, I'm happy to take that on notice.

Senator Roberts, a supplementary question?

Minister, the Liberal-National's plan is to build 4,500 megawatts of wind and solar to replace the 1,050 megawatts of base-load power that coal provides. What is the reliability factor of wind and solar, because this policy puts wind and solar deliverability at just 23 per cent of rated capacity?

Again, going to the detail of that policy, I'm happy to take some of that on notice. There is no doubt that, when it comes to delivering on these policies, we have made it very, very clear over a period of time that wind, solar and renewables—of course, we have record investment in renewables in Australia at the moment—are very important. But you do need to ensure that you have baseload capacity to ensure that we don't see the kind of situation that we saw under the former Labor government in South Australia, where the lights were going out and electricity was not being delivered.

Senator Wong interjecting—

Thank you for the interjection, Senator Wong. It is true that the only statewide blackout that I'm aware of in recent times did happen in South Australia, under the watch of the South Australian Labor government. But, when it comes to actual investment in energy, it is absolutely important—and I'll just state it again. I've run out of time. I might do it on the next supp.

Senator Roberts, a final supplementary question?

Minister, how many workers will lose their jobs from the coal industry in Western Australia as a result of this Liberal-National government policy?

I thank Senator Roberts for the question. Again, going to the detail of that policy, without having read that particular policy document, it would be impossible for me to comment one way or another. But what I can tell you is that our Liberal-National government has been focused on ensuring that we are growing jobs in the economy, bringing jobs back as we recover from COVID and investing in our energy resources so that we can support a strong manufacturing sector. Whether that is in our technology focus, whether that is in our focus on gas, whether that is in our investment in renewables, whether that is in extending the life of power stations or whether that is in areas like Snowy Hydro 2.0, we have a comprehensive policy that supports energy, reliable and affordable energy. We are bringing prices down. That supports a viable manufacturing industry, amongst other industries. That's our record. That's what we're going to continue to fight for to bring back jobs and support reliable and affordable energy.

My question is to the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, Senator Cash. With the vaccine rollout underway and continuing signs of economic recovery across the country, can the minister please update the Senate on how the Morrison government's economic supports through COVID-19 have helped small businesses to ride out the crisis and Australians to stay in jobs?

I thank Senator Small for the question and again acknowledge to the chamber Senator Small's background, in particular, as being a small-business owner back in our home state of Western Australia, and the fact that he really understands what it's like to build a business from scratch, to employ people, to pay wages and to certainly have sleepless nights.

As we now know, in Australia, the COVID-19 vaccine rollout is underway, and so is Australia's economic recovery. According to the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force statistics for January, we've seen a net increase of 29,000 jobs. That, of course, came off the back of the creation of 59,000 full-time jobs. We've also seen, as Senator Payne knows, women's workforce participation return to the near-record level it was prior to the pandemic. Underemployment is now falling, and, as we know, over 93 per cent of the jobs lost during COVID-19 have now returned to the economy.

All of this has been possible because of the support that the Morrison government has provided, in particular, to small and family businesses across Australia. We've put in place policies that have kept Australians in work, because we've put in place policies that have kept businesses in business. These, of course, included JobKeeper; apprentice and trainee wage subsidies; the cash flow boost, which, of course, gave people back their own hard-earned money; the SME guarantee scheme; and the early withdrawal of superannuation. We put in place a suite of policies, and this suite of policies has played a vital role. In fact, when you look at the RBA research, it estimates that JobKeeper saved over 700,000 jobs in the first half of 2020. Our Supporting Apprentices and Trainees wage subsidy has now supported over 59,000 small businesses to keep 119,000 apprentices on the job, where we need them to be.

Order, Senator Cash. Senator Small, a supplementary question?

Minister, can you outline how the labour market has responded to the tapering of JobKeeper and other COVID-19 economic supports implemented by the Morrison government?

As I've said, we've seen around 93 per cent of the jobs that were lost as a result of COVID-19 return to the economy. What we are seeing is that the transition to the second phase of JobSeeker has been successful. It is ensuring that support is targeted to those who need it most. In fact, between September and December of 2020 we saw the level of economic support fall by $30 billion. At the same time the support was tapered, the economy added 320,000 jobs. New analysis of tax microdata by Treasury shows the number of phase 2 JobKeeper workers who are working zero or very low hours has been decreasing over time. What we've also seen is record numbers of previously unemployed people finding new jobs. In fact, to November 2020 we saw a record of 170,000 unemployed people into the workforce.

Senator Small, a final supplementary question?

As the original COVID-19 supports begin to conclude, how will the Morrison government continue to support small business through the jobs recovery over the course of 2021?

The Prime Minister has always said our No. 1 priority as a government is keeping businesses in business and getting Australians back into work. We have our $74 billion JobMaker plan. That is, as you know, supporting employers to hire and bring on additional people into their workplaces. We're supporting Australians to train, to upskill and to reskill, and of course we're supporting hardworking small-business owners to grow their own business. Our economic support measures have boosted family and business balance sheets. We've seen over $200 billion extra in savings over the last year. We're also unlocking confidence to spend that money, which is a good thing, particularly in our small businesses. As we know, small businesses are the backbone of the Australian economy and we need to do everything that we can to support them. We know there's a long road ahead but we are committed to boosting the confidence of Australians and of course ensuring that Australians remain in work.

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister Payne. Minister, the US government sought extradition of Australian citizen Julian Assange from the UK for espionage. Espionage is a political offence for which extradition is expressly barred from the US-UK extradition treaty. Minister, given the political nature of the extradition, have you personally made representations to the incoming Biden administration to drop the US appeal against the UK court decision to not extradite Mr Assange? If not, will you?

I thank Senator Rice for her question. Senator Rice, as I believe I have advised the chamber previously, I have raised the situation of Mr Assange with my previous United States counterpart, the former Secretary of State, Mr Pompeo. I have not yet met with the new Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, but I'm sure that in the course of such a meeting this matter would be raised.

Senator Rice, a supplementary question?

Will you commit to picking up the phone to ask the US administration to drop the charges against Mr Assange? There were reports that the Trump administration in the latter days of the Trump term was close to pardoning Assange and may have done so if they had received representations from the Australian government. Will you pick up the phone to the incoming Biden administration?

As I again have previously advised the chamber, Mr Assange is subject to a legal process in another country. Australia does not interfere in the legal processes of other countries and has long held that position across multiple governments, as we would not expect other governments to interfere in legal processes in our country. Mr Assange is currently the subject of a US appeal against the decision of the British courts that he is ineligible for extradition due to the court forming a view in relation to a risk of self-harm in the US prison. That appeal was lodged on 12 February. I don't intend to provide a running commentary on the details of the case, as it is before the courts. We continue to monitor Mr Assange's case closely, as we do for Australians in detention overseas.

Senator Rice, a final supplementary question?

Minister, when is enough enough? Julian Assange has suffered so much, and the judge in the UK case has basically said that extradition to the US is effectively a death sentence. The UN's special rapporteur on torture has said that the failure of the judgement to denounce and redress the persecution and torture of Mr Assange 'leaves fully intact the intended intimidating effect on journalists and whistleblowers'. So is it the Australian government's position that extraditing Julian Assange to the US is acceptable? (Time expired)

Members of my office and of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade met with Mr Assange's legal team in this sitting period to discuss a range of matters, including the matter of Mr Assange. This government has sought, through our consular officials and through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the high commission in Britain, to support Mr Assange in an appropriate consular fashion in any way we could. We have done that by seeking his consent to discuss any prison condition issues with prison officials, to offer him consular assistance; we have done that on 21 separate occasions. On 21 separate occasions, no response has been received to that correspondence from Mr Assange or from his representatives.

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

Order, Senator Whish-Wilson!

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

Senator Whish-Wilson!

The government has endeavoured to provide him with that appropriate support.

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

Senator Whish-Wilson!

We will continue to do that. He withdrew consent for us to consult in relation to any of his circumstances, his health or his welfare, in 2019. We have continued to raise with UK government officials our expectations— (Time expired)

Senator Whish-Wilson interjecting—

Order, Senator Payne. The time for the answer has expired. Senator Whish-Wilson, I called you to order and you kept interjecting while I was doing so. Please cease.

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs, Senator Cash. This morning the home affairs minister claimed he is not allowed to disclose information provided to him by the Australian Federal Police. But he also admitted to breaking that rule and providing information to the Prime Minister's office about Brittany Higgins's case on 12 February. Who in the Prime Minister's office received that official information, and at what time was it received?

I thank the senator for the question. I understand that the Minister for Home Affairs has been asked this question in the House, but the information that, again, I have before me that I can provide you with is basically what I stated yesterday. AFP Commissioner Kershaw first advised Minister Dutton of Ms Higgins's allegations on Thursday 11 February 2021. This was the first time the minister had been advised of Ms Higgins's allegations. As I advised yesterday, he received further updates from Commissioner Kershaw during last week and this week. He was advised that his office was not aware of Ms Higgins's allegations prior to his briefing from Commissioner Kershaw on 11 February 2021, and, again, I think as I stated yesterday, as senators would know, the handling of allegations and investigation of criminal conduct, including briefing to ministers, is a matter for the AFP.

Further information that I can provide: the minister, as the minister responsible for the AFP, has stated that he regularly receives confidential briefings from the commissioner. He has a responsibility to protect the integrity of investigations and the information discussed in these briefings. He has stated that it was his judgement that he should not disclose the information provided to him, as this was an ongoing operational matter. I understand he has also advised that his chief of staff contacted the Prime Minister's office the next day, on 12 February, following the receipt of media inquiries. And that's the information that I have before me.

Senator Walsh, a supplementary question?

At any time, was this minister aware of any estimates briefing being prepared in relation to the events of the night of 22-23 March 2019?

I've referred to Mr Dutton's evidence that he has advised that his office was not aware of Ms Higgins's allegations prior to his briefing from Commissioner Kershaw on 11 February 2021 and also his evidence that the AFP, Commissioner Kershaw, first advised him of Ms Higgins's allegations on Thursday 11 February 2021, and, as such, that was the first time he was advised of Ms Higgins's allegations.

Senator Walsh, a final supplementary question?

In October 2019 the minister left a message for Ms Higgins in which she said: 'Daniel has got everything under control, I promise you.' At that time, Senator Cash was the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs in the Senate. What did Daniel have under control?

I actually responded to that question when Senator Watt asked it of me, and I would refer you back to that answer.

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Payne. Will the minister outline what the government is doing to deliver on Australia's commitment to provide COVID-19 vaccines to our neighbours in South-East Asia and the Pacific?

I thank Senator Abetz for his question. Australia's security, safety and prosperity are intertwined with those in our region. We are working in close partnership with our neighbours to implement our over $500 million vaccine access initiative and our $80 million contribution to the COVAX Facility fund for developing countries. That fund began its first delivery of vaccines yesterday to protect some of the world's most vulnerable people. We're consulting with 18 partner countries across the Pacific and South-East Asia to align their national vaccine deployment plans and directly address their priorities.

Our support is deliberately end to end. So we're providing technical advice to support the rollout of vaccines under the COVAX facility. We have already assisted Vanuatu, Kiribati, Samoa and Tonga in this way. In particular, we're supporting Tonga to develop and implement a new national vaccination register. We're deploying Australian specialists to work with these partner governments. Our National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance is deploying a specialist to Timor-Leste to support preparations for their national rollout. Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration is providing advice to our partners, which is critical in building that trust in the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Our support includes identifying target populations for early vaccinations; developing public health materials; strengthening cold chain and medical supply management; and establishing monitoring and evaluation arrangements. For example, we will shortly be training Solomon Islands epidemiologists in data collection and analysis. My Indonesian counterpart, Retno Marsudi, and I have agreed on a strong package of support for Indonesia to procure vaccines and to provide technical assistance. I also discussed our support with Teddy Locsin, the Foreign Secretary of the Philippines, this week as well. This is a program which is meeting the pledges that Australia has made to support our shared regional recovery from the pandemic.

Senator Abetz, a supplementary question?

Senator Abetz. I thank the member for that very interesting answer. Will the minister advise what the government is doing to coordinate with our partners on this vaccination program?

Cooperation with our partners is absolutely critical. By coordinating our efforts with New Zealand, the US and France, we will cover the vaccination needs of the Pacific. This is a matter which the Minister for International Development in the Pacific, Senator Seselja, and I have been engaging on with counterparts across the region. We're talking with other potential suppliers, including India and Japan. We're working with the World Health Organization, with UNICEF, with multilateral development banks, with the Pacific Islands Forum, with the Pacific Community and with ASEAN to ensure support that meets international standards. We'll purchase vaccines through organisations such as UNICEF and we'll share vaccines from our own supply pipeline with both the Pacific and Timor-Leste. We're also vice-chair of the Gavi board and, through that, we've negotiated to ensure all eligible Pacific island countries are covered by the COVAX Facility, which will deliver over one million doses to the Pacific and Timor-Leste by the middle of this year.

Senator Abetz, a final supplementary question?

Will the minister explain how this important initiative will deliver improved regional health security and economic recovery?

This is a very important question from Senator Abetz. Vaccination is a critical public health measure to take control of COVID-19, to end the pandemic and to ensure recovery. So timely access to safe and effective vaccines will improve our regional health security and also reduce burdens on regional health systems. It will pave the way, importantly, for reopening borders, re-establishing transport routes and restarting economies. It will boost critical sectors, including seasonal work, so important to our region; international tourism, vital to our region; and a range of agricultural industries that depend on the availability of regular international transport services. It's important that our region works together to vaccinate populations to bring about that shared economic recovery. We will ensure that we support our neighbours in this process and that we deliver on our COVID-19 development program pivot on Partnerships for Recovery.

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Senator Colbeck. Yesterday, following COVID vaccine overdoses by a doctor in Queensland, the Minister for Health and Aged Care claimed:

… the specific training of this Australian-trained doctor were all carried out in accordance with procedures. Every one of those steps has been checked and rechecked, and none of those steps had been breached.

He and this minister were then forced to correct the record, advising the doctor had not completed the required training. Why has the minister let this rollout commence in aged-care homes without ensuring that everyone administering the vaccinations had the required training?

Both the Minister for Health and Aged Care and I believed that it was important that we put on the public record as quickly as possible the information that we had available to us with respect to the circumstances that occurred at the aged-care facility in Queensland. We were assured, via the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, by Healthcare Australia that the doctor involved had, in fact, undertaken the required training. We were subsequently advised, on further investigation and inquiry, that that had not been the case. So what we have done is we have taken specific action to ensure, via our own circumstances, that every worker working on the vaccine rollout in aged care across the country is independently audited by us.

An opposition senator interjecting—

Labor should be very cautious about the language that they're using with respect to this matter. They should be very, very cautious. The Labor Party are contributing, with their language, to an undermining of the confidence in the vaccination process across the country. Their language is directly contributing to the undermining of the confidence in the vaccination process across this country, which we all agree is absolutely vital. It's absolutely vital that we maintain confidence in the vaccination process around the country. I'm very pleased to note that the acceptance rate, the confirmation rate, of residents in aged-care facilities around the country remains high. It remains high, which is exactly what we want. We want senior Australians protected via the application of the vaccine. (Time expired)

Senator Watt, a supplementary question?

Did the general practitioner who was responsible for the overdoses have conditions on his registration? If so, why were these conditions permitted under the contract entered into by the Morrison government?

I'll have to take the specifics of any details in relation to the doctor concerned on notice. My advice is that he's not a general practitioner; he's a doctor. The doctor was an Australian trained doctor. But I will take any specifics of any conditions that he may have had. There is currently an investigation being undertaken by the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Michael Kidd, into the circumstances of this case. Once that information is available to me, I'll be very happy to provide it to the chamber.

Senator Watt, a final supplementary question?

What clinical governance has the government put in place to ensure everyone administering COVID vaccines is properly and fully trained?

As I indicated in my first answer, the Australian government is taking an independent audit of all of those people who are working on the vaccine rollout in aged care in the country, independent of the processes that exist within the organisations that are undertaking the rollout. We have also asked that the former Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer be embedded in Healthcare Australia. So we are undertaking our own independent oversight to ensure that all of those who are participating in the rollout are appropriately qualified and trained.

Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.

I wish to add a little information to the answer I gave in relation to a question from Senator Thorpe. I am advised that earlier this week, the Minister for Home Affairs, Mr Dutton, re-posted a statement from Western Australian police, adding his own comments. The Minister for Home Affairs stated, 'Very disturbing reports out of WA.' He said:

The actions of this individual as reported are disgraceful and have no place in our society. Anyone with information should contact the police.

I thank the Senate.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Sport and Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services (Senator Colbeck) to questions without notice asked by Senators Sterle and Pratt today relating to aged care.

This morning as I was leaving home and listening to the news, as many of us do, I was shocked to yet again hear new allegations of extreme neglect in aged-care facilities in our country. New allegations have come to light concerning severe neglect of elderly Australians in the Regis Nedlands aged-care facility in Perth.

Despite how many times we have heard these things occurring on this government's watch, it was still appalling and shocking to hear. Two days before Christmas last year on a 40-degree day, Lea received a call from her 86-year-old father's aged-care home, Regis Nedlands in Perth, telling her he was in an ambulance going to the hospital. Her father Brian was:

… slumped over in the bed, and his back was exposed. I could see his back was really terribly burnt, his whole back was burned. And he was not speaking to us. He was semi in and out of consciousness.

Brian, a double amputee, had been left out on the rooftop terrace for two hours. Nobody knew where he was for two hours. Tragically, he died on 20 January this year.

There were further allegations concerning the Regis Nedlands facility. In the days before Brian Hunter's death, six nursing students were sent to Regis Nedlands for their first clinical placement where they witnessed abuse, widespread neglect, rough handling and sexually inappropriate behaviour.

One of the abused residents was 94-year-old Mr Lee. The report details that one of the students:

… found Mr Lee (who is always in a wheelchair) on the floor near the entrance of his room completely unclothed and sitting in his faeces with [a carer] standing over him. I asked [the carer], did he fall? and [the carer] replied with 'no'.

The student later witnessed the carer dragging Mr Lee to the bathroom.

It is terribly sad and shocking that we continue to hear stories like those emanating from aged-care facilities around the country. They are only two of the stories that have emerged this week alone. For years now we have been bringing to the attention of the Senate exactly these sorts of stories and we have been getting exactly the same kinds of answers to our questions that we saw from Senator Colbeck today. We get the fake concern. We get the: 'This shouldn't be happening to anyone.' We get the: 'I'm as appalled as anyone.' There's just one fact that Senator Colbeck and his predecessors continue to omit from their explanations—that is, they have every power required to actually do something about this and fix this system so that we don't keep seeing and hearing these types of stories.

You would think, listening to Senator Colbeck—whether it be today, the last time we asked him questions or last year when we repeatedly brought these kinds of stories to the chamber's attention—that he is just some innocent bystander as appalled as the rest of us by what is going on.

Senator Polley interjecting—

You're right, Senator Polley. He is probably the one person in this chamber, the one person in this government, who can actually do something about it. The clue is in Senator Colbeck's title: Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services. Senator Colbeck has had every opportunity to do something about this and he has repeatedly been warned about the huge systemic problems in our aged-care services due partly to this government's lack of funding and even more so to the funding cuts this government has imposed, particularly those imposed while the now Prime Minister was the Treasurer of this country. I'm getting pretty sick and tired of hearing Senator Colbeck and other members of this government empathise and express concern and say, 'None of us want to see this,' when actually they could be doing something to fix it.

We do have a royal commission underway, and tomorrow, I understand, the government will be receiving the final report of that royal commission. But several months ago the government received from the royal commission an interim report, titled Neglectin case there was any doubt about what is going on in our aged-care system—and still, despite that royal commission report, we continue to hear these stories. The fact is that the government just don't care about what's going on in our aged-care facilities. They just don't care that elderly Australians are being neglected and treated like this when they deserve all of our support in their twilight years. The government have had every chance to fix it and they just keep ignoring it. (Time expired)

I thank Senator Watt for bringing this issue to our notice. The allegations are absolutely abhorrent, and Senator Watt is quite correct that we shouldn't hear allegations of neglect in our aged-care system. Indeed, our government is working to improve the system. It is difficult. We have a large and extensive aged-care industry in Australia. We do have systems in place to ensure that we review and monitor the quality of care in our residential aged-care facilities across Australia.

The specific issue that Senator Watt is talking about is still under investigation. It is ongoing, so I will let that investigation proceed without further comment on the specifics. But I do want to remind the chamber that our government is committed to looking after our aged citizens. Every year under our government our home-care packages have increased, our residential aged-care places are up and we are providing more funding for our aged-care system. We are delivering record investment across the aged-care system over the forward estimates. We've increased it from what it was under Labor. It is estimated that funding for aged care will grow to more than $27 billion by 2023-24—that is, on average, $1.5 billion of extra support for older Australians each year over the forward estimates.

We as a government are committed to making improvements to the aged care of all senior Australians, and it continues to be one of our priority areas. That is why the Prime Minister called the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety and it is why we are acting on it. As Commissioner Briggs stated as part of the final hearings of the commission:

I have, however, detected over the last year, counsel, a growing determination among officials and in the Government to fix the problems of the aged care system and to pursue a genuine reform agenda.

We are committed to pursuing that genuine reform agenda. We will continue to focus on the gaps in aged care and we will continue to have our Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission undertake spot audits. We will continue to have the commission review the performance of our aged-care residential facilities; where appropriate, to issue notices to impose sanctions; and, where appropriate, to actually revoke licences or the service's accreditation. We have those processes in place, and they must be allowed to be undertaken without interference to ensure integrity in the system, to ensure we don't have our system compromised by perception.

Our government will continue to provide senior Australians with the support they need, but the best support of all is the support that they can get in their own homes, and that is why we are committed to funding more home-care packages. Our home-care packages have increased by 224 per cent from just 56,000 under Labor. More Australians are getting more care in their homes now than they did under Labor, and we continue to be committed to home-care packages so that people can grow old with dignity, surrounded by their own family, in their own home, with the necessary care and support they need to make their final years as comfortable as possible. We will not turn our back on the challenges of the future and we will continue to review the royal commission's findings and implement reform where needed and where appropriate.

Tomorrow, the federal government will be handed the final report by the royal commission into aged care in this country. It will be the 22nd report presented to this government in the last eight years, and this government will accept, quite frankly, no responsibility for the inept administration of the aged-care sector in this country. Over the last eight years, yes, there has been additional funding, but when Mr Morrison was Treasurer he used this sector as an ATM and gutted it by almost $2 billion. We know that the interim report into aged care was handed to this government over 12 months ago. What have we seen since then? Further neglect. You would have thought that the title of the interim report—Neglectmight have given the government a hint that they might have to do something sooner rather than later, but what they've just done is they've used the royal commission as an excuse not to take the courses of action that have been well documented and raised by, as I said, 21 inquiries and reports into the aged-care sector.

They have known that ACFI, the Aged Care Funding Instrument, has been broken for a considerable period of time and that it needs to be fixed. They also know that there are in excess of 100,000 older Australians still on the home-care waiting list waiting for the level of care that they have been assessed as needing. We know that almost 30,000 older Australians have died while waiting for the level of care that they should have been receiving in their own home. We know that almost half of residential aged-care Australians in this country are malnourished. Only today we had aged-care workers visiting Parliament House and talking to parliamentarians, including myself. We heard—not that I hadn't heard this time and time again—of the difficulties that these workers are faced with every day. They don't have enough time to provide the care that older Australians deserve. We heard about an older gentleman who fell and broke his ribs. He was left without adequate medical care for days. Broken ribs! He was having difficulty breathing. This was happening because there wasn't enough time and there weren't enough workers to give this gentleman the care that he needed. He died. That could have been prevented.

This minister comes into this chamber day after day when we're asking questions and he accepts no responsibility for the failings. The reason the royal commission was called in the first place is that this government and the previous Liberal governments over the last eight years have failed older Australians. Day in, day out they've failed older Australians and their families and they've failed workers in the aged-care sector. We know that there needs to be more money put into aged care, but it's got to be done properly. There has to be transparency. You can't be spending these billions and billions of dollars year in, year out without knowing if older Australians are getting the care, the dignity and the respect that they deserve in this country. We hear time and time again what a rich nation we are and that we respect our senior Australians. That's what the minister says, yet we're hearing case after case of neglect in this country.

Another story shared with me this morning concerns a woman who weighed 200 kilograms. Her residential aged-care home didn't have a lift to help the staff, so, when she collapsed and died in the hallway of that home, where all the other residents could see her, they had no equipment to take her the 20 metres to her own bed so they could prepare her, to ensure that this woman was shown dignity and respect. That is a disgrace! It's a national disgrace! It's unfair that Australian workers in the aged-care sector are put in this situation day after day. (Time expired)

Let me say from the outset that the Morrison government is committed to ensuring a high quality of aged care for all senior Australians. I reject the argument, particularly from Senator Watt, that Minister Colbeck is the only person who can fix the problems with the aged-care sector. The aged-care sector has thousands of employees. It is up to all of us to make sure that we carry out our fiduciary duties. To lay the blame solely at Minister Colbeck's feet is just typical Labor smearing. They haven't released a policy on what their so-called solutions are. They'd rather sit there and throw dirt day in, day out and attack the individual rather than addressing the crux of the matter.

It should be noted that the Morrison government has made improvements to aged care for all senior Australians. The reason the Prime Minister called a royal commission into aged care was so that we could actually find the right solutions. We were totally open and transparent about it. The Labor Party didn't call a royal commission into the aged-care sector. They're not interested in actually finding solutions. They're only interested in looking at the problems and then laying blame at Minister Colbeck's feet, rather than delivering real, substantial outcomes. It's worth noting that the coalition government is delivering record investment across the aged-care system. We invested over $21.3 billion in the year ending 2020, up from $13.3 billion in the last year Labor was in government, 2012-13. That's an increase of about 50 per cent in the seven years of the coalition government. It works out at about $1.5 billion every year in extra support for senior Australians.

We've also invested in additional home-care packages. We've announced a record $5.5 billion for an additional 83,000 home-care packages since the 2018-19 budget. So, in the last two years, we've added an additional 83,000 home-care packages. Overall, there are now almost 200,000 packages that have been fully funded, and that compares to just 60,000 when Labor were last in government. It's worth thinking about that. We have increased by 300 per cent the number of home-care packages available to senior Australians on top of the extra 50 per cent, or $7 billion, invested into aged-care homes. Importantly, around 99 per cent of senior Australians waiting for a package at their assessed level have also been offered support from the government, including an interim package of the Commonwealth Home Support Program. Of course, it should also be noted that they continue to have access to our world-class healthcare system, which has done a fantastic job in the last 12 months of supporting our seniors throughout the COVID crisis.

The Morrison coalition government believes in a strong aged-care sector with a high-quality and skilled workforce that will provide senior Australians with the care they rightly deserve and give all Australians confidence that our elderly are cared for with kindness, respect and dignity. The government, so far, has acted on its interim and COVID-19 reports and will carefully consider final recommendations when they are handed down later this month. Obviously, we will also take very seriously and seek to act upon the advice from the royal commission.

Making improvements to aged care is actually one of the Morrison government's key priorities. Commissioner Briggs of the royal commission stated as a final part of the hearings of the commission that she had detected a number of problems in the aged-care system and was determined to pursue a genuine reform agenda. I'll finalise this again. We, the Morrison government, are committed to providing senior Australians with the most high-quality aged-care services. (Time expired)

My mum spent the last five months of her life in aged care in north-west Tasmania. She loved it. Once she moved in, she repeatedly said that she wished she had made the decision to move into care earlier. She loved the company; the activities; the clean, modern room; and the staff. As the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety looks deeply at issues in aged care and as more and more families and aged-care staff find their voices, describing the horror of witnessing their most vulnerable loved ones mistreated, neglected and abused, I realised my mum won the lottery, a lottery of increasingly lengthening odds.

During this royal commission, we've found a system unable to respond, terrified residents, traumatised families, overburdened staff and an appalling lack of resources needed to take care of our vulnerable older Australians—an aged-care system so riddled with flaws and a lack of appropriate support that it simply could not move fast enough to protect life. The aged-care system is the responsibility of this federal government, a responsibility of the Morrison government. A minister who sits in this chamber runs, hides—ducking and weaving—causing trauma and costing lives. We've heard so many voices and so many horrific stories of neglect. In the news today, a woman described the appalling neglect of her father, saying, 'They were treating my dad like an animal to be slaughtered—burnt, stepped on and left in bed to rot.' The degrading treatment, the lack of respect, the disregard for the most basic of human rights horrifies us all; it's a disgrace. Yet we have a government and a Minister for Senior Australians and Aged Care Services who show no shame and no humility.

This government has abrogated its responsibility to older Australians and their families time and time again. Today the country is bracing itself for the final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety due tomorrow. We've already seen its interim report titled: Neglect. That says it all. The report found aged-care residents literally starving, with maggots in their wounds, and workers and good providers in aged care 'succeeding despite the aged-care system'.

Aged care should not be some kind of lottery. It is outrageous that it's become so, and yet that is exactly what this government has turned it into. Making such a fundamental decision as moving into aged care should not be wrapped in terror that you will be subjected to neglect and abuse. Many older Australians are genuinely afraid and so are those who love them. Aged-care workers are exhausted and stretched to their absolute limit.

Older Australians built this country. They and the families who love them deserve so much better than the chaotic, unsafe system that has evolved under the Morrison government and this minister in this chamber. Here we have this minister constantly expressing concern with a furrowed brow and taking no responsibility for the wreckage that his government has wrought. Let us never ever forget that this crisis is the government's doing, a direct result of seven years of neglect—seven years of neglect. It is a government that has made savage cuts in aged care—and I heard Senator Polley talking about this earlier—like the $1.7 billion in funding that was cut in 2016-17 and 2017-18, on top of scrapping the pay rise that staff had secured back in 2014. The truth is this government only called the royal commission because it was shamed into it by the Four Corners media scandal. That's the only reason we've got a royal commission. If that Four Corners story had not been run we would not have had the royal commission that shone a light on all this neglect that we are seeing.

The Morrison government have had seven years to address this properly and to look after our older Australians. They've failed. There were 21 major reports into aged care during those seven years. They've received those reports during their seven years and they've failed to act on them. We continue to see the sheer gall of this government that won't face up to its responsibility. It shows no respect for our elderly Australians.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) and the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Payne) to questions without notice asked by Senators Thorpe and Rice today relating to a racist attack and to Mr Julian Assange.

The minister's answer to my very, very clear question—why hasn't the PM had anything to say on an Aboriginal woman and her baby being attacked by a Nazi with a flame-thrower this week?—was silence. The silence from the so-called leader of this country is violence. By saying nothing at all he's saying that these racially motivated terrorist attacks are okay. ASIO, this country's very own spy agency, has said that far-right extremism is growing in this country and that it is a threat. And what does the PM do? Nothing. When Labor senators in this place tried to get a motion through this chamber about a significant rise in far-right extremism, those opposite deleted all references to it. Why? Because those opposite are responsible for this, either because of what they say or because of what they don't say.

Today the Prime Minister was the guest of honour celebrating International Women's Day in this place. That in itself is a joke. He was standing in the Great Hall saying that women should be protected. He is right, we do need to be protected—protected from the Liberal Party. The leader of this government must be some kind of magical being. He has this ability to just vanish or simply know nothing. He has nothing to say when the country needs him most. Maybe someone should tell him that the reason the limousine picks him up every day is that he's meant to be the Prime Minister. Do your job! Grow a spine! Condemn racism every single time; otherwise you are condoning it.

Minister Payne's response to my question about justice for Julian Assange—to take action to free Julian Assange, to take action to reach out to her US counterpart in the incoming Biden administration—was distressing. It was the same old, same old. Basically, it was complete abrogation of the responsibility, you would think, of this government to actually protect the rights of a US citizen.

Julian Assange is imprisoned in the UK at the moment as a political prisoner. He is there because of a political decision by the Trump administration to charge him with espionage. It was a political action that was taken then, and a political action needs to be taken by our government to protect his rights. Yet, when I asked the minister if she would pick up the phone so that Julian Assange could be freed from the awful conditions that he is still experiencing in Belmarsh prison in the UK, her answer was, 'I haven't yet met with my counterpart Antony Blinken, but I'm sure that, in the course of a meeting, this matter would be raised.' This is appalling. There is no urgency there; there is no commitment. There is a willingness to just let Julian Assange continue to suffer in jail. She's basically shrugging her shoulders at the potential of the US appealing the court judgement that said Assange shouldn't be extradited and shrugging her shoulders at the potential of the appeal winning—at the potential of Julian facing up to 175 years in jail in the US.

There is no recognition by this government of the political nature of the charges against Assange. There's no willingness by the minister to use the power that she has, as foreign minister, to engage on a political level. The decision by the Trump administration to charge Julian Assange was because he was a whistleblower, because he published evidence of war crimes. He revealed the murder of innocent men, women and children—crimes which the US defense force had covered up. Yet our Australian government has abandoned him. The US is meant to be our mate. You would think that, if you had an Australian citizen being held as a political prisoner, the least the government could do would be to use their power to reach out and attempt to free Julian Assange.

Question agreed to.

I present additional information received by committees relating to estimates:

Budget estimates 2019-20 (Supplementary)—Education and Employment Legislation Committee—Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Additional estimates 2019-20—Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee—Additional information received between 19 June 2020 and 23 February 2021—Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio.

Budget estimates 2020-21—Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee—Additional information received between 18 November 2020 and 23 February 2021—

Defence portfolio.

Foreign Affairs and Trade portfolio.

On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the Human rights scrutiny report No. 2 of 2021.

by leave—I table a document, in the form of a non-conforming petition signed by 36,923 people, calling on the government to immediately release people seeking asylum and refugees from immigration detention facilities and commit to their resettlement in a safe, permanent home by World Refugee Day, which is 20 June 2021.

(Quorum formed)

I inform the chamber that Senators Siewert, Sheldon and Urquhart will also sponsor the motion. I, and also on behalf of Senators Siewert, Sheldon and Urquhart, move:

That the Senate—

a. notes that the tobacco industry has a vested interest in promoting e-cigarettes;

b. further notes reports in the Weekend Australian Financial Review that the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) under former CEO Russell Zimmerman received funding from big tobacco to lobby to legalise e-cigarettes and formed the Australian Retail Vaping Industry Association (ARVIA) in September 2019;

c. welcomes the decision under the ARA's new CEO Paul Zahra to close down ARVIA and walk away from its contract to lobby for e-cigarettes because the money was channelled from Philip Morris International;

d. notes that the recent Senate 'Tobacco Harm Reduction' inquiry asked witnesses to state whether they had ever received tobacco industry funding, and some groups – such as the Brisbane-based National Retail Association – provided submissions advocating the benefits of e-cigarettes but declined invitations to give evidence; and

e. supports the findings of the Senate inquiry's majority report that Australia has taken a sensible approach to vaping and 'the absence of conclusive clinical evidence as to both the health effects of e-cigarettes and the efficacy of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool supports the conclusion that there is no case to weaken Australia's precautionary approach to the regulation of liquid nicotine'.

It was absolutely great to read in the AFR Weekend that Australia's premier retail association parted ways with big tobacco. That association, the Australian Retailers Association, ended its contract to promote vaping once it learned that money was being funnelled from a major tobacco company. It is, of course, disappointing that the ARA even accepted that contract in the first place. With association groups sometimes the lure of new funds overrides good practice, but better late than never. The current CEO and board must be congratulated for very much taking the right stand.

The AFR Weekend story was a reminder of the tactics employed by big tobacco. Big tobacco are not the ones standing front and centre in the vaping debate. Instead, they work in the background, puppetmasters pulling their puppet strings. They want us to believe that vaping cuts at the very core of their business model. Even some in this place want us to think that anyone who opposes vaping is doing the devil's work. Because e-cigarettes are a threat to big tobacco. Well, this strawman argument conveniently ignores that Australia has been steadily driving down smoking rates for over 30 years, all without widespread vaping.

In reality, e-cigarettes are a robust replacement arm of big tobacco's business model. Big tobacco doesn't care how many people start on a path to nicotine addiction as long as they become addicted to nicotine. As we saw with the AFR Weekend story, industry players, such as Philip Morris International, are actively working behind the scenes to try and weaken Australia's regulatory approach to e-cigarettes. The industry has sought to buy legitimacy for its arguments by getting employer and other industry groups to be its mouth piece and to do its dirty work. It wants e-cigarettes to be treated as consumer products, as easy as buying a can of beer or a can of coke. This odious industry wants to renormalise smoking after Australia worked so hard to drive down smoking rates over the past three decades. It absolutely hates that vaping is so heavily regulated. It really hates that nicotine e-cigarettes are prescription only. We all have to be on guard against these tactics. Indeed, it is actually Australia's obligation under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control 'to be alert to any efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine or subvert tobacco control efforts'.

As members of this place will be aware, the Senate last year held and inquiry into e-cigarettes under the euphemistic title of tobacco harm reduction. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to call it the inquiry on promoting nicotine addiction. I know Senators Hughes and Canavan were patting themselves on their backs for getting the Senate inquiry up. I know the industry would also have been patting itself on the back because another inquiry, so hot on the heels of the 2018 inquiry in the other place, is another opportunity to put forward its self-serving arguments and try to advance its agenda.

I think it's pretty clear that the purpose of putting up the Senate inquiry was not to objectively assess the evidence and regulatory frameworks, as the terms of reference stated. The purpose was to argue for the liberalisation of e-cigarettes in Australia. I wasn't going to let that go unchallenged, so I participated in the inquiry. I have to say, I recall the newly appointed chair of that inquiry coming up to me soon after and stating, 'Congratulations on getting yourself on an inquiry you don't believe in.' That comment portrayed to me the true motivation of the inquiry and the lack of objectivity. This was demonstrated in the content of what became the dissenting minority report. During the course of the inquiry, my office received correspondence from the National Retail Association, the organisation which the AFR suggests has now taken up where the ARA left off. The NRA's letter was accompanied by a survey purporting to be about the health of South Australian retail workers, even though it hadn't actually surveyed retail workers. It has surveyed a small number of SA residents, some of whom had worked in retail at some time. It was a pretty obvious attempt to push the vaping barrow. In amongst the meandering statistics about fruit and veg intake, crime in retail and awareness of smoking rates, it was all for a call to look at legalising vaping products. It was a very poorly disguised attempt to push the vaping barrow.

I have held concerns for some time about the charity status of the pro vaping Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, otherwise known as ATHRA. It has a tax deductibility status and—rather incredibly, I think—is registered as a health promotion charity. However, it almost exclusively only pedals advice and information about vaping and e-cigarettes, rather than TGA-approved cessation methods. However, of most concern is that ATHRA reportedly received start-up funds from vape manufacturers in 2018 and also accepted donations from overseas groups, which themselves had received funds from big tobacco. ATHRA is one of the groups that clings to a flaky statistic that you often hear in these debates—that is, the claim that vaping is 95 per cent less harmful than smoking. The thing to understand about that statistic is that it is pretty much made up. If I'm being generous, you could call it a best guess. The figure comes from a 2014 study by a group of researchers across a very wide range of disciplines, which estimated the harm of tobacco cigarettes across a range of indicators, including economic cost, crime, injury and environmental damage. This is the figure they came up with. It was repeated even in government publications in the UK, often without reference to the original source. Vaping proponents cling to it like a life raft but it is misleading to use that stat to describe a health benefit because that is not how it was calculated. Even that study said of e-cigarettes:

There is concern that these devices should not be introduced in an unregulated way until potential associated harms are adequately evaluated.

What is important to understand is that vaping may be less deadly than tobacco but that does not make it safe; that does not make it healthy. Whilst some in this place would have us believe that e-cigarettes serve the greater good because they're not as evil as tobacco, the inquiry was presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. The inquiry heard the safety of e-cigarettes, particularly the long-term safety, has not been established. Neither has their effectiveness as a cessation tool.

The Cancer Council and the National Heart Foundation warned that e-cigarettes pose significant health harms and risks to the Australian population. Vapers breathe in ultrafine particles, volatile organic compounds, heavy metals and other toxic substances that should not be inhaled, including formaldehyde. This risk extends to the nicotine-flavoured liquids marketed at young people because the ingredients used are designed to be ingested, not heated to vapour and inhaled. Because e-cigarettes are a relatively new product, there is little research about the health effects beyond two years. There's concern that vaping can be a gateway to tobacco use in never smokers. ANU research showed e-cigarette users who never smoked were on average three times more likely to try smoking conventional cigarettes and to transition to regular tobacco smoking.

As a nation we would be plain stupid to open the gates to nicotine vaping and make it freely available. Two wrongs don't make a right, and giving e-cigarettes free rein to counter the ill effects of tobacco is the health equivalent of introducing cane toads to deal with cane beetles, and we know how that ended up. It will be short-sighted and may have undesirable long-term consequences. As Professor Simon Chapman told the inquiry:

We had no idea for 40 or 50 years after cigarette smoking became widespread that lung cancer would move from being a rare disease to becoming the No. 1 cause of cancer death.

We can't be complacent or take lightly the long-term risks posed by vaping.

I am pleased that the inquiry majority report supported Australia's cautionary approach on vaping regulation. While other countries with more liberal laws lament the escalating rates of youth vaping—indeed, in the US the Surgeon General has called it an epidemic—Australia is able to take a measured and evidence based approach. Australia has its eyes wide open. In the face of uncertain evidence, it has struck the right balance. Vaping is restricted and nicotine liquid is available on prescription if smokers feel it will help them quit. In doing this, they will have some medical supervision, which may actually assist their attempts to quit. As the Australian Medical Association told the committee:

It is not a success to turn a smoker into an e-cigarette user; the success is turning the smoker into a nonsmoker, and a lifelong nonsmoker.

Vaping may have helped Senator Hughes and others to quit smoking, but without doubt they're in the minority. The stone-cold fact is that the vast majority of smokers who quit successfully go cold turkey. Australia's approach will help to reduce the risk that we get people hooked on vaping and that the next generation of smokers start as a generation of vapers.

I had Senator Sheldon next.

Senator Canavan interjecting—

Senator Canavan, allow me to speak. Senator Canavan, this is what the whips gave me, and I understand this has been cleared by the government whip.

Senator Canavan interjecting—

With respect, Senator Canavan, that is Senator Griff.

Senator Canavan interjecting—

Senator Canavan, please resume your seat. The custom in here is that we go by the list. I accept that a senator who stands to seek the call must be given the call. I am trying to abide, by custom and practice, with what the government, Senator Griff and the opposition have put forward, but if you are pressing the point then I will call you, Senator Canavan.

I am pressing the point. I was clearly on my feet first.

Senator Canavan, I have given you the call.

Thank you, Madam Deputy President. Clearly, Senator Griff has not only brought in a motion that's full of conspiracy theories, full of slurs and misinformation; he has then tried to concoct a speakers list that doesn't give any scrutiny to these claims. He knows very well that none of the speakers—

Senator Canavan, please resume your seat. Senator Siewert, on a point of order?

Senator Canavan is misleading the chamber. Senator Henderson was next on the list, so he should stop accusing Senator Griff of concocting the debate.

Senator Siewert, I appreciate the sentiment, but that's not a breach of the standing orders.

Exactly, because—

Senator Canavan, please resume your seat. Senator Urquhart was also seeking the call. Senator Urquhart, on a point of order?

I was going to point out that the list is a convention and that we have had an agreement with the government on this convention for a very, very long time. I understand it is not a standing order, but it is a convention that we have agreed to and we have honoured. We have had people from various parties come in here to try to dispute that over a period of time out of rudeness for the convention that we have a good agreement with this government on. I would ask that that convention continue.

Thank you, Senator Urquhart. I have made that point to Senator Canavan, but I am respecting the standing orders in that he sought the call. Senator Smith, on a point of order?

I will just reinforce the comments that have been made by other senators in the last few moments. The chamber does run on courtesies and on arrangements that are set in place by the whips, which ensure that the chair can guide and steward the chamber in a very constructive way that allows everyone to make a contribution. I think it's fair to say that, because this particular part of the day started earlier than people anticipated, we will get more of a debate in this general business time than we've had on previous Thursday afternoons. We are now at the general business part of the day because other opportunities were not taken with documents, ministerial statements et cetera, so I'm very confident that all the speakers that are listed on the informal speaking list will get an opportunity to make a contribution.

Thank you, Senator Smith. I have allowed some leeway in giving the whips an opportunity to speak, but I now want Senator Canavan to continue his remarks and not be interrupted.

The Chief Government Whip makes a very good point there. Normally in this debate the last speaker might not get on. Senator Griff knows—I believe he put the list forward—that the only speaker on the list opposed to his point of view is in fact me. So, before knowing that this debate would start earlier, he potentially tried to impose and not have anybody speak against his motion in this debate. That does show the sensitivity of those pushing this issue.

Senator Urquhart interjecting—

I take Senator Urquhart's point that this is a convention. It's never been a convention that I have ever disregarded, but conventions have to be in the spirit of the standing orders, and the standing orders clearly say that the call should go round the chamber, with the intention of encouraging debate. This list has been concocted by Senator Griff. It was clearly an attempt to override the intention and spirit of the standing orders and remove debate. I'm not afraid of debate, Senator Griff. I'm not afraid of debating these issues with you. You may want to make slur and innuendo about me and other colleagues—you ran the inquiry like that—but I'm happy to look you in the eye and take you on. You didn't want me to speak tonight, but I'm happy—

Senator Canavan, please resume your seat. May I ask you to direct your comments to the chair, and may I say I am looking forward to you covering the subject matter of today's motion. Senator Siewert, are you seeking a point of order?

Yes, I am. I seek to table the list that was circulated in the chamber, which clearly shows there was a speaking list and that Senator Henderson was next. Senator Canavan continues to mislead the chamber when he knows very well that what he's saying is not true.

Are you seeking leave?

I seek leave to table the list.

Is leave granted?

Senator Canavan interjecting—

Just a moment, Senator Canavan. I'm going to call it again. Senator Siewert is seeking leave. Is leave granted? I have had a 'yes'. I will seek some further advice. In the meantime, please continue, Senator Canavan.

Thank you, Madam Deputy President. As I was saying, this motion is full of conspiracy theories about money and funding and connections. I think Senator Griff got out the ball of wool and the corkboard and started tying tacks between different people to make connections. There are more conspiracy theories in this motion than a Q thread on Twitter. In fact, I think that by moving this motion Senator Griff is actually the Q Shaman of the Australian Senate. He just needs a Viking cap, some body paint and he'll be away. This debate is absolutely descending into conspiracy theories—not the facts, not the relevant information.

I listened closely to Senator Griff's contribution earlier and there was absolutely no attempt to deal with the real evidence that exists around the world—the decisions and law changes that have been made in other countries—that the use of e-cigarettes can cut smoking rates and save lives. There was no attempt at all from Senator Griff to engage with that. I'm happy to say that I recognise that our regulatory authorities—our TGA, our Department of Health—have a different view to those other people, but they are very much outliers. Almost every other country in the world, certainly developed countries like ours, has taken steps to legalise vaping or at least allow and promote its use as a useful quit-smoking aid. There is no attempt in Senator Griff's motion to deal with those issues and confront that evidence. It's just, 'Oh, these people here are getting money,' and, 'Someone is friends with that person over there,' and, 'There was an article in the paper that says bad things and therefore they all must be evil and terrible.' Let's actually take it back to the evidence and the data, because this debate, these issues, involves real people's lives and opportunities. The real people in this debate are often ignored and derided, as we've seen through the sham of a Senate committee process and in the debate over the past few months. Real people are derided. Real people are told they don't know what they're talking about. Real people are told that they should just go cold turkey and not worry about using things that have helped them get off a terrible, terrible habit.

I want to say upfront that all of us share the view that we'd like to see smoking rates fall. All of us share the view that smoking is a terrible habit that we hope people don't get addicted to. All of us agree that smoking kills far too many people in this country. It is still the largest killer of Australians, as to the use of alcohol or drugs.

I and other advocates for the legalisation of e-cigarettes don't want to see people take up e-cigarettes either, because we understand that there are risks around the use of nicotine. But it is clearly the case that e-cigarettes are much less harmful than smoking. Senator Griff can argue the toss over whether it's 95 per cent lower or 50 per cent, but he can't walk away from the fact that the federal Department of Health have ruled that vaping or e-cigarettes are much less harmful than cigarettes—they said that in the Senate inquiry. They are much less harmful. What's the percentage figure? I don't know.

But I'd love to see people use less harmful things rather than more harmful things. It's a pretty simple rule. I'd love to see that happen. But it's hard to have that happen in this country because we continue to lag behind the world in the use of the latest evidence and the legalisation of these products so more people can quit and improve their lives.

There are accusations that all these views that I and others take are all because big bad companies want us to, and all this rubbish. Well, I want to say: it's actually real people that I've had connection with that have influenced my views on this issue. I don't smoke. I hadn't vaped until the inquiry. I vaped for the first time, somewhere—at a Christmas party, I think—over Christmas. I don't like it. I'm not going to take it up. It was never something personal for me. But it was real people who I knew whom these products had helped to quit—real people who contacted me, after the government announced a ban on the importation of liquid nicotine to take effect within a week, who were very worried about what was going to happen to their lives and to their mental health in the middle of a pandemic. That's what caused and triggered me to get involved in this.

A few months ago, I was touring around coalmines—as I like to do, from time to time!—and I went to a crib room and spoke to a couple of truck drivers, and one of them there said, 'Oh, yeah, I know you. I get your emails.' And I thought, 'This bloke probably knows that I kind of like coal. Despite the Labor Party's attempts to shut it down, I want to support their jobs and support their livelihoods.' And I thought he might be on that email distribution list. But, no, straightaway he said: 'You're the vaping guy. You want to let me keep vaping. I like you.' Guess what? At the mines—and a lot of the Labor Party senators wouldn't know this because they don't go to mines or those sorts of places anymore—quite often, smoking is banned. It's banned because it's not a useful thing to have, particularly at a coal mine; you don't want flames around. So it's banned. So those people who are, unfortunately, addicted to nicotine don't have a lot of other choices. You people can say that there are gums and all this other stuff, but you're not connecting it back to the real world. These guys work in a hard job. They work 12 hours a day. They're away from their families for weeks at a time. And then people over here want to deny them the right to have just a little bit of relief in their lives. They want to deny them that right because they think they know better—they know better than what that coalminer thinks in Moranbah. That's what sums up this whole debate. Senator Griff, Senator Sheldon and other senators in this place think they know better than the average worker in a coalmine about what's good for them.

Well, I back average, everyday Australians to make decisions about their health. It's unfortunate that too many Australians have found themselves addicted to nicotine and reliant on smokes to get it. But I do back adult Australians to make decisions about how they want to try to kick the habit and have a better life—particularly when e-cigarettes are clearly less harmful than smoking. All the evidence says that.

As I said before, Senator Griff refused to engage with the overseas evidence that clearly says this. He refused to even indicate that other countries have clearly adopted and legalised e-cigarette products and have done so because of the clear evidence that they help. The motion Senator Griff has put up is very timely, though, because just yesterday Public Health England released a comprehensive report, which they do annually, on the effects of e-cigarettes. It's a very comprehensive report. It's about 426 pages. I would recommend it to all senators interested in this debate. The attitude and conclusions of Public Health England are very different from those of our own health authorities. As I said, I recognise our health authorities have a different view, but they are not the Pope; they are not infallible. We should look at all the evidence around the world, especially in countries which have taken a different path to us. Public Health England demonstrate clear evidence of the impact of the legalisation of vaping and the benefits that has had for real people, who should be the centre of that debate.

This report by Public Health England, which was published yesterday, said:

That is 50,000 real people in the United Kingdom who no longer have a terrible habit, thanks to the use of vaping. The report went on to say:

This goes to the point. Senator Griff wanted to deride the evidence that vaping is less harmful. Senator Griff's statements are harmful of themselves, because he perpetuates the myth, which is very prevalent among smokers, that vaping is just as bad as smoking. According to Public Health England, more than half of smokers believe that vaping is harmful or more harmful than smoking. That will obviously prevent people from choosing a less harmful product, because they are fed myths and lies by the advocates or those that are standing against vaping. The report went on to say:

They estimate that, over the past two years, between 60 per cent and 74 per cent of those who used a vaping product were successful in quitting. That's real evidence, not speculation, not complicated econometric tests. It's real evidence that more than half of people in the United Kingdom who try vaping products actually end up successfully quitting. That's pretty good. The report continued:

Vaping has plateaued in adults and young people since the last PHE report in March 2020.

This report comes out every year, and there is no evidence that vaping has increased among young people, which is often a criticism made of attempts at legalisation. It has actually plateaued. There hasn't been any increase among young people. Importantly, on this point, the report states that around 4.8 per cent of young people—in this report they're defined as aged between 11 and 18—reported vaping at least once a month, which is the same as for last year. Obviously that's unfortunate. We don't want to see any young people take up this habit, but there's no evidence of an increase. And the report says that most of these people were either current or former smokers. So, even in the category of young people aged 11 to 18 who were vaping, most of them had been former smokers or were current smokers. As we know, smoking is even worse. The report says that only 0.8 per cent—less than one per cent—of young people who had never smoked currently vape.

I know there is a scare campaign saying that vaping will lead to young people taking up smoking or worse products, but there's not a lot of evidence around the world that that actually happens. Again, I stress that, if there were a legalisation attempt, we'd all support restrictions to make sure that under-age Australians would not have access to these products. We would restrict it, just as we do with smoking. Is it perfect? No. But is anyone here going to stand up and say, 'No young people smoke in this country'? It's illegal to sell smokes to someone below the age of 18. It's illegal for an under-age person to use a tobacco-smoke product, but, unfortunately, it happens.

We would be better off trying to impose real enforcement efforts rather than put a blindfold on and think none of this actually occurs. That's why we should look at things like the New Zealand parliament and what they have done. It is another example of a country like ours taking steps to legalise vaping because they've seen the clear evidence that it can help cut smoking rates. They have adopted a model with very strict advertising, selling and retail arrangements to prevent this product getting into the hands of young people. They have allowed the product to be used as a quit aid. The fact that we close our eyes to the evidence indicates to me that the entrenched positions some have taken in the Department of Health and other organisations are the real barrier to progress and to making people's lives better.

The other side here, and Senator Griff said the same, like to say that the US is the example. The US is a free-for-all, and no-one is advocating that model. We don't want that. We don't want THC in our products. We don't want vitamin E acetate. They are causing real issues. But let's have proper regulation to make sure that we can help those in this country who find themselves addicted to nicotine and actually return this debate to them.

This debate is not about the health bureaucrats. It's not about the health academics. It's not about what our position has been or how successful we've been as a country in the last few decades in cutting smoking. It is about the 12 per cent of Australians who continue to smoke on a daily basis and need some help to get off a terrible habit so they can have better lives, so they can be better mothers, better fathers, and they don't continue this habit throughout generations in this country.

Senator Sheldon, before I give you the call, I have to clarify that leave was denied to Senator Siewert's request to table the speakers' list, just so the chamber is clear on that.

Labor accepts the advice and evidence of Australian and international experts when it comes to the matter of health. This is why Labor supports maintaining the precautionary approach adopted by the TGA and the health department in the regulation of e-cigarettes.

The TGA is best placed to assess and advise the Australian government on claims of the relative harm of e-cigarettes, and their risks and efficacy as a method of smoking cessation. Informed by this evidence, the TGA is promoting a prescription model that would strike an appropriate balance, preventing broad, unregulated access amongst young people and, by placing access within a medical context, improving the likelihood of a cessation effect.

The majority report of the Senate inquiry into tobacco harm reduction as outlined in the motion makes this important point:

… the absence of conclusive clinical evidence as to both the health effects of e-cigarettes and the efficacy of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool supports the conclusion that there is no case to weaken Australia's precautionary approach to the regulation of liquid nicotine.

There is also another matter the Senate must consider when it comes to the regulation of e-cigarettes: the influence of the tobacco industry. We saw it portrayed just then. When I signed on to be the deputy chair of the Senate Select Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction's inquiry, people warned me of the insidious nature of the tobacco industry lobby; that these are companies that have profited from the death and disease of its customers over the better part of the last century; and that they sat on research that demonstrated a link between their product and cancer for years before it became clear to the rest of the world. Well, Labor doesn't take money from them.

There is no doubt in my mind that the interests of the tobacco companies can never be reconciled with the public interest. So perverse are their business models and their intentions that politicians must always be alert to their efforts to ease restrictions on tobacco and nicotine. This is why Australia is a signatory to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Article 5.3 requires us, as politicians, to protect our politics regarding health care and tobacco control from 'commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry'. It was for this reason I asked a significant number of the witnesses who appeared before the inquiry to declare any relationship or support they had received from companies engaged in the tobacco industry.

I, along with many of the committee, had our suspicions that this inquiry was a political vehicle for the vested interests of the tobacco industry to push their agenda, not a health agenda. Reporting in the AustralianFinancial Review over the weekend revealed that these suspicions may have been well founded. Over the weekend it was revealed that Philip Morris had been funnelling hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts via the PR firm Burson, Cohn & Wolfe, BCW, to the Australian Retailers Association to lobby the government to legalise e-cigarettes. The product of this contract was to set up the Australian Retail Vaping Industry Association, alongside the group Legalise Vaping Australia—a shady front to push the argument that the legislation and commercialisation of e-cigarettes will cause smoking rates to fall. This motion is not a debate on the science of these cigarettes. The tobacco harm reduction inquiry has made, published and tabled its report on that issue. I, like many senators, believe that the health professionals, not politicians, should set policy in this respect. In this case, the Therapeutic Goods Administration remains the most appropriate regulator of our policy on e-cigarettes.

As I have repeatedly said, I deeply value and appreciate the personal testimony to our committee received from smokers, ex-smokers, e-cigarette users and other individuals. It was clear to me that a large number of e-cigarette users were people seeking to make positive improvements in their lives and health by quitting smoking. We applaud them for taking the action to quit. But those who advocate, on genuine grounds, the merits of e-cigarettes as a means of smoking cessation have been done a disservice by the covert efforts of the tobacco companies, industry bodies and their associated politicians, who push a message funded by companies whose interests are never in the public interest. Most importantly it completely contradicts the line that legalising e-cigarettes will destroy the business model of tobacco companies. That the tobacco companies want to see the broad commercialisation of e-cigarettes should be evident from the submissions they put into the inquiry alone. The submissions reveal that British American Tobacco has invested over $4 billion into the development, manufacture and commercialisation of e-cigarette products since 2013. There is nothing small about $4 billion in investment. Of course, British American Tobacco would be pushing for an easing of restrictions on e-cigarettes. They have more than $4 billion invested to get back.

Having seen the success of the global tobacco control measures reduce the rates of smoking to historic levels, the tobacco companies are facing an existential crisis. In the rise of e-cigarettes they see a solution to their crisis. E-cigarettes are not a threat to their business. They consider them the future of their business. They have co-opted the smoking cessation and harm reduction narratives as arguments for another generation of nicotine dependence and the profits that go along with it. This is clear from the smoke-free world language that is prominent in the submission to the inquiry from Philip Morris. Disturbingly, similar rhetoric is parroted in a minority report by Senator Hughes and Senator Canavan.

Rightly, the ARA cancelled their contract with BCW in August last year and shut down ARVIA, leaving the tobacco industry in need of new surrogates to campaign on their behalf. As Neil Chenoweth points out in The Australian Financial Review, just a matter of days after the Retailers Association cancelled this contract, the smaller National Retail Association began aggressively campaigning against our existing laws on e-cigarettes. This begs questions that should be answered: Has the National Retail Association been in receipt of a contract from Burson, Cohn & Wolfe relating to their work at Philip Morris? Are they there now carrying out the work that the ARA has decided to stop? Would Dominique Lamb, the CEO of the National Retail Association, confirm or deny that they have ever been in receipt of a contract from BCW relating to the aims of Philip Morris?

As I said at the outset, I was determined to ensure that this inquiry met with standards expected by article 5.3 of the WHO convention, which we are seeking to resolve. I made this known to senators on the committee. Could this be why the National Retail Association declined to appear before the inquiry, or why another group, Legalise Vaping Australia—a group that organised hundreds of form letter submissions to be sent to the inquiry—also declined to appear?

Do senators perhaps think that these groups, these fronts, would have felt uncomfortable describing what links to or assistance from the tobacco industry they've had?

Legalise Vaping Australia is an arm of the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance, a fringe radical group of half-a-dozen libertarians that has previously used social media support funded by British American Tobacco. The head of the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance is a Mr Tim Andrews, who works and lobbies in America against efforts to outlaw or restrict flavoured vaping products. I think you start to get the picture, don't you? Legalise Vaping Australia is run by Mr Brian Marlow. His organisation's website outlines that it jointly runs a fighting fund of just shy of $100,000 with the now defunct Australian Retail Vaping Industry Association. Who now controls this money and for what it is being used is anyone's guess. Tanya Buchanan, the CEO of Cancer Council Australia, was quoted in the AFR piece as saying:

The tobacco industry has a long history of funding third-party front groups to do their dirty work and help drive ongoing revenue streams, which is what is happening now in Australia …

Thankfully, a majority of senators in the inquiry were aware of these efforts. They were mindful of the evidence and supported a commonsense approach to regulating e-cigarettes. We supported that report because it was the right thing to do, and we should support this motion as well.

In the evidence that we received, which is already on the record, the incidence of take-up by younger people in a series of studies on increased nicotine usage is particularly disturbing. Let me be very clear: this is not about reducing nicotine usage. But let me also be very clear that one of the Californian legislators was very clear about vaping and the threats of vaping. The by-products that are put into vaping have not been tested by the TGA and, in the case of California, have not been appropriately tested for the harmful effects that they can produce in and cause to e-cigarette users. It is quite clear that there are competing views and evidence about what should be happening with e-cigarettes, but once the genie is out of the box—once these products are out there—there's no way we'll be able to put it back in.

It's my great pleasure to rise and support the motion put forward by Senator Griff. I also want to commend the very strong contribution made by Senator Sheldon. Senator Canavan mentioned and called for proper regulation of e-cigarettes, and that is exactly what this government is doing. The motion is so important that I want to read it out to the Senate so that those who are listening to this debate can appreciate the importance of this motion and why it's so critical to support it. Not only does Senator Griff, in his motion, note 'the tobacco industry has a vested interest in promoting e-cigarettes'; we heard from Senator Sheldon, who articulated the money trail between a number of pro-vaping organisations and big tobacco. The motion further notes:

… reports in the Weekend Australian Financial Review that the Australian Retailers Association (ARA) under former CEO Russell Zimmerman received funding from big tobacco to lobby to legalise e-cigarettes and formed the Australian Retail Vaping Industry Association (ARVIA) in September 2019;

The motion:

… welcomes the decision under the ARA's new CEO Paul Zahra to close down ARVIA and walk away from its contract to lobby for e-cigarettes because the money was channelled from Philip Morris International;

As both Senator Griff and Senator Sheldon have pointed out in this debate, this was not disclosed to our Senate Select Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction. The motion notes the recent Senate committee inquiry asked each witness to state whether they had ever received tobacco industry funding. Some groups, such as the Brisbane based National Retail Association, provided submissions advocating the benefit of e-cigarettes but declined invitations to give evidence. That's very important. The reason this is important is that they would have then been forced to answer the question as to whether they had received very significant funding from the tobacco industry. They gave a misleading submission to our inquiry, because they fundamentally declined, and I would say covered-up, the fact that they had received very substantial funding from big tobacco.

The last part of the motion supports the findings of our inquiry's majority report that 'Australia has taken a sensible approach to vaping'. The absence of conclusive clinical evidence as to both the health effects of e-cigarettes and the efficacy of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool supports the conclusion that there is no case to weaken Australia's precautionary approach to the regulation of liquid nicotine. That is fundamental. That is what our government is so concerned about. That is why we are implementing, as a government, sensible regulation, just as Senator Canavan called for. We obviously have a difference of view as to what that might be, but I am very proud to have been a part of this majority report, which adopts the government's position that we must take a precautionary approach.

I was speaking to someone the other day about what's going on in the United States. Vaping is everywhere. Young kids on university campuses everywhere across the States are vaping. It is insidious. There is deep and warranted concern that this is a gateway not just to tobacco but to other more serious drugs.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration, the independent regulator, made the decision on 21 December 2020 that from 1 October 2021, consumers importing nicotine will require a doctor's prescription to legally access nicotine e-cigarettes and liquid nicotine. Child resistance closures for liquid nicotine will also be mandatory. This is not a ban on nicotine. The TGA's decision follows extensive public consultation and is consistent with the existing ban in all states and territories on the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes without a doctor's prescription.

The TGA's decision bridges a regulatory gap between state and territory law regulating nicotine e-cigarettes and the Commonwealth law regulating their import. The TGA decision-maker's reasons for the decision included:

… to mitigate the potential uptake of smoking in young adults who would otherwise be at low risk of initiating nicotine addiction.

The introduction of a novel nicotine delivery system may have a negative impact on tobacco control and may renormalise smoking. The TGA was also concerned:

… that exposure to nicotine in adolescents may have long-term consequences for brain development, potentially leading to learning and anxiety disorders.

The TGA was also concerned about the unknown toxicity of long-term exposure to heated and inhaled chemicals, and the risk of accidental exposure to children, particularly in relation to liquid nicotine.

The Morrison government, in consultation with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Medical Association and other medical experts will be developing a telehealth smoking cessation item that will be available six months prior to the implementation date, 1 October 2021. As part of this work, the government will provide $1 million for an education campaign, focused on smoking cessation. Major healthcare professional and consumer education programs are also scheduled for later in the year, to inform people about the changes. The previously proposed Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations prohibiting the importation of e-cigarettes containing vaporiser nicotine—that is, nicotine in solution or in salt or base form—and nicotine-containing refills without a prescription from a GP will not be proceeding due to the significant overlap with the TGA decision. What our government has put forward, supported by the TGA, the highly credentialled independent regulator, is sensible, responsible regulation.

I want to also reference an article by The Australian Financial Review's Neil Chenoweth on 20 February. There is some very good journalism in this article, where he reveals the money trail and the connection with big tobacco, particularly Philip Morris. I quote:

The revelations that Philip Morris was secretly funding the push to legalise e-cigarettes undercuts claims by vaping advocates that legalisation would destroy the business model of tobacco companies.

We know—even from the evidence received in our inquiry—that that's not true. This is the great panacea, the great way forward, for the tobacco companies. They see vaping as their next great big commercial opportunity. This is why they are funding these vaping advocacy groups. They are driving their next revenue stream, as they have done in other parts of the world. That is going to lead to more harm and to a greater addiction for those who take up smoking and perhaps other drugs. I mentioned before the deep concern about the gateway effect of e-cigarettes. The article goes on:

"The tobacco industry has a long history of funding third-party front groups to do their dirty work and help drive ongoing revenue streams, which is what is happening now in Australia," says Tanya Buchanan, CEO of Cancer Council Australia.

That is the basis on which the Retailers Association board cancelled the contract with Burson Cohn & Wolfe, recognising that this was not in the best interests of the organisation or the retailers it represents. Paul Zahra said:

The ARA has taken a strong position on this issue under my leadership. We don't believe the advocacy of vaping products are in the best interests of the wider retail industry. Nor is it an appropriate use of ARA resources.

So these pro-vaping advocacy groups have been caught out. They didn't have the guts to front our inquiry because they knew they would have to give evidence and tell the truth as to how they were funded. As I say, I am very proud of the work that we've done and I would recommend that all Australians read our majority report, including the additional remarks which I made, where I canvassed a number of additional recommendations. I want to briefly reference those. I started by saying that, as the majority of the members of the Senate Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction found:

… a prescription based model provides the best pathway to strike an appropriate balance between providing treatment options for long term smokers under medical supervision while protecting against the legitimate risk of uptake of e-cigarette use from non-smokers, particularly young Australians …

It is also appropriate that decisions around regulation and access to medicines and poisons are made by an independent health regulator, on public health grounds, such as the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).

The reason the TGA has taken this precautionary approach—and this is a point I want to reference in relation to Senator Canavan's contribution—is that the evidence is limited. That is absolutely crucial. I continued:

The current limited evidence regarding efficacy of e-cigarettes, the unknown long term risk of e-cigarettes and legitimate concerns around the uptake of e-cigarettes amongst non-smokers warrant a precautionary approach to this issue.

This is entirely consistent with other nicotine replacement therapies which make health claims. It also adopts a conservative approach, initially, to the availability of new products making therapeutic claims, which is a proper and sensible approach.

I now want to briefly reference a number of recommendations that I made in my additional remarks in the majority report. The Commonwealth should ensure that telehealth under Medicare is universally accessible for smoking cessation to assist smokers to quit. I am very pleased that the government has implemented that measure. The Commonwealth government should immediately review the affordability of nicotine replacement products and move to list more of these products on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, in line with medical evidence, because if people want to stop smoking we want to give them every support we possibly can. Upon application, and subject to the usual public health assessment processes, the TGA should consider reviewing the classification of liquid nicotine to enable it to be sold in pharmacies without a prescription. That's a recommendation I put forward subject to the TGA's assessment. Obviously, in adopting the medical model, if the TGA believes that this is appropriate, it is also open to the TGA to recommend the slightly broader accessibility of e-cigarettes and liquid nicotine through pharmacies. My final recommendation was that we should introduce legislation consistent with other countries which requires tobacco companies to mandatorily disclose details of expenditure, including on tobacco and nicotine marketing.

I commend to the Senate the motion brought forward by Senator Griff today. I'm very proud of the majority report and I recommend that all Australians read it.

I rise to make a contribution on general business motion 1038, which is in Senator Griff's name and also now in the names of Senator Sheldon, Senator Urquhart and me. Last year I participated in the Select Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction. I wish to articulate some of the points we learned and the concerns the Greens have about big tobacco's continual push of e-cigarettes as a gateway to smoking. It is very clear that big tobacco have an agenda here; otherwise they would not be involved. Anybody who thinks they have the health of the community at heart has rocks in their head. They continue to push their 'death sticks' in countries that don't have the good regulation of tobacco that we have in this country.

I am very proud of the strong record Australia has in dealing with smoking. I never want to see smoking take hold to the level it previously did in this country. Let's face it, that is the game and the focus of big tobacco. The evidence presented to the committee reinforced to me that we cannot afford to undo the many years of outstanding public health campaigns that have substantially reduced the level of tobacco smoking in Australia. Currently over 95 per cent of people aged between 14 and 17 in Australia have never smoked, a statistic Australia should be proud of. However, evidence from Professor Banks, from the ANU, noted that there is a 300 per cent increase in the risk of nonsmokers becoming regular smokers of tobacco after using e-cigarettes—and she continues to do further work and research in this space, which I think will contribute further to the evidence around e-cigarettes. We also heard evidence that the proportion of young people aged between 18 and 24 who have used e-cigarettes in their life increased from 19 per cent to 26 per cent between 2016 and 2019. The association with e-cigarette users who have never smoked cigarettes before but then go on to become regular tobacco users is known, as I just said a moment ago, as the gateway effect. The Greens are strongly concerned that e-cigarettes and the gateway effect have the ability to undermine decades of work undertaken in Australia to achieve such low levels of smoking. There is real concern that the increased use of e-cigarettes by young people will result in the normalisation and increased uptake of regular tobacco smoking.

It's also important to consider the use of flavourings in e-cigarettes in this context, and I want to focus on this. It's an issue that I think is not getting enough attention. Flavourings in e-cigarettes was the subject of an event that the Lung Foundation of Australia held via Zoom with parliamentarians yesterday. In a groundbreaking study funded by the Lung Foundation and the Minderoo Foundation, Curtin University tested 52 flavoured e-liquids for sale over the counter in Australia and found 100 per cent of the e-liquids were inaccurately labelled, 100 per cent contained chemicals with unknown effects on respiratory health, 21 per cent contained nicotine and 62 per cent contained chemicals likely to be toxic if vaped repeatedly.

The Lung Foundation also set out their expert position statement on flavoured e-cigarettes and young Australians. This position statement recognises that young Australians aged between 13 and 24 are vulnerable to short- and long-term health implications of an unknown product. It recommends that action taken must be precautionary, protective, transparent, collaborative, evidence based and free from industry influence. The Lung Foundation is also calling on governments across Australia to protect the respiratory health of young Australians by immediately increasing the cost of flavoured e-liquids and associated devices through taxation, immediately introducing plain packaging for all flavoured e-cigarettes, immediately mandating that flavoured e-cigarettes be subject to the same rules and advertising and promotion regulation as combustible cigarettes, and banning the sale of flavoured e-liquids in Australia. That's how serious the Lung Foundation of Australia consider the implications of flavoured liquids in e-cigarettes.

We can't afford to let big tobacco companies undo decades of hard work in this country. The Greens continue to hold significant concerns about the active involvement of the big tobacco industry in the debate around regulatory reform of e-cigarettes in Australia. The motivations of the industry were clearly articulated in a Philip Morris International sponsored article on the website of The Australian. This advertisement—and it was an advertisement, even though you're not supposed to be advertising cigarettes anymore; this article clearly skirted around that rule and was aimed as an advertisement—claimed government regulation was prohibiting Australian smokers from accessing e-cigarettes which, in their view, are a viable and safer alternative for combustible cigarette smokers. We have to ask why big tobacco is so strongly against the prescription-only model for tobacco and advocate that e-cigarettes should be available as a broader consumer product if not to promote the use of tobacco and heated tobacco and to promote the sale of their products. It is clear that big tobacco hold the view that vaping and e-cigarettes offer new profit-making opportunities as traditional combustible smoking rates continue to reach record low levels in Australia. They have not given up on trying to sell cigarettes. They sell them to our neighbours that have poorer regulatory provisions on smoking. If they were really committed to looking after the health of the world's population, they would, in fact, not be selling cigarettes. They clearly still want to sell products such as heated tobacco that will still harm people's health. There is a very clear conflict of interest here with big tobacco.

This is a public health issue and regulation should be considered and enacted without the influence of big tobacco or other commercial interests. At the various hearings during the Select Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction, we heard from a variety of commercial enterprises, including those running petrol stations and convenience stores in petrol stations. At the inquiry we heard people saying that doctors don't really understand and don't provide advice on e-cigarettes, and neither do pharmacists—that pharmacists won't be able to provide advice on vaping implements or the various flavours which specialist vaping shops can provide. Then the rent-seekers came in and said: 'We run convenience stores at petrol stations and we want to be able to sell vaping implements. Our staff will be specially trained to provide advice about how you could use your vaping implements and liquids to reduce smoking.' What a pack of nonsense! I don't know about you, but when I go to the petrol station I go there to buy petrol, by and large; occasionally, I pick up some milk. The people are all very nice, but I wouldn't want them to provide me with health advice. Yet that's what these people were saying: that people in these convenience stores will be able to provide someone with health advice on how they can use e-cigarettes and vaping to reduce their smoking. Apparently doctors can't do it, but people running convenience stores can! As I said, they're very nice people, but I bet they don't have a medical or a pharmacy degree. This is the sort of rent-seeking that's going on in this debate. It is not about tobacco harm reduction. The long-term evidence isn't there.

We have world-leading regulation here. This country should be proud of the record that we have had in terms of reducing smoking. We had world-leading legislation around plain paper packaging—world-leading! Why would we want to undermine that by winding back the regulatory process?

I'll grant you, we had evidence at the committee that some people had found using e-cigarettes beneficial in reducing harm. We also had evidence that some people had gone back to smoking or were using a combination. Clearly, it has helped some people. The TGA process and the prescription approach would mean that someone could do that with the support of their medical practitioner as part of their smoking cessation plan. But the evidence is not there that it's appropriate to let vaping vendors provide that advice. The evidence, as I understand it, from Professor Banks, is in fact the reverse. We can't afford to take the risk. I got a little bit sick of hearing 'Take the advice of other countries.' Other countries are taking the advice and following the lead of Australia when it comes to issues like plain paper packaging. This is a public health debate and it should be treated as a public health debate. It's not about enabling big tobacco and other rent-seekers to come in and push measures that will harm people's health.

The work of the Lung Foundation on flavours—which was very timely, being just before this debate—is cause for further alarm. I recommend that anybody who has an interest in this debate go and look at what they were saying about the impact of flavourings in e-cigarettes as well. So, yes, this is about nicotine, but, as far as I'm concerned, it's also about some of the flavourings that are going in and the impact that is having on people's lungs and, ultimately, their health.

I support this motion and recommend that Australia continues its world-leading approach to reducing tobacco harm and not follow those other countries and their unproven methods on tobacco harm reduction. To those who do want to try e-cigarettes as part of their tobacco-smoking cessation program, please go to your doctors. My message to the doctors is: if someone comes to you and asks about a smoking cessation plan and e-cigarettes, look at the latest research and help people. You are there as trusted health practitioners; enable people to have a proper program for smoking reduction. There was some evidence from people that their GP didn't understand some of the issues around e-cigarettes. Medical practitioners need to get up to speed and help people kick the habit—not replace one habit with another, but kick the habit of smoking.

I acknowledge some of the very good points that my fellow senator from Western Australia Senator Siewert made. The Australian government is taking a very precautionary approach to e-cigarettes, ably led by Minister Hunt. Our approach is supported by the majority of Australia's leading health and medical organisations and, of course, the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Whilst the government is aware that there are a variety of approaches to this issue across the globe, the government will continue to monitor the direct harms that e-cigarettes pose to human health. Importantly, it will monitor the impact on both smoking initiation and cessation; monitor the uptake amongst our youth; and further inquire as to the dual use with conventional tobacco products, as these are all relevant considerations when it comes to the matter of e-cigarettes.

There is no doubt that there are direct harms associated with e-cigarette use. There is very real potential for e-cigarette use to lead to nicotine addiction and hence tobacco use, particularly among young Australians. Currently, we have insufficient evidence to actively promote the use of e-cigarettes for the purpose of smoking cessation. That's a very key realisation. Further, I think it's important to recognise that the regulation of e-cigarettes is currently a shared responsibility, with the Commonwealth and the states and territories each sharing in this. E-cigarettes regulation draws upon existing legislation and the regulations that apply to tobacco products, therapeutic goods, poisons and consumer goods. It is clear that this is not a simple matter; it is an evolving matter and one that the Australian government, rightly, is therefore taking an incremental approach to.

It's currently illegal to sell nicotine-containing e-cigarettes in every state and territory. Possession in all jurisdictions, except South Australia, is also illegal without a valid medical prescription. The current situation is that legally imported materials are then illegally possessed under state and territory law. This is reflective of the complexity that surrounds the regulation with e-cigarettes and nicotine-containing products.

Senator Siewert rightly mentioned that any doctor may currently prescribe nicotine-containing e-cigarettes that can be used for consumers for personal importation. This is not widely understood. I think it's an important matter of public information that there are more than 30,000 GPs in this country that may currently, and certainly can continue into the future, to prescribe nicotine based e-cigarettes for the purposes of smoking cessation.

Any of those general practitioners can also register with the TGA to become what is known as an authorised prescriber. A GP who is an authorised prescriber can issue prescriptions for e-cigarettes for dispensing at a local pharmacy as an alternative option to personal importation. This affords Australians who wish to stop smoking to have greater flexibility and exercise a greater degree of personal choice as to how they go about that important decision. Therefore the TGA's decision in this respect will both reduce the risk of an on-ramp for teenagers to adopt nicotine use and, as has been highlighted, also rectify the issue of legal importation but illegal possession.

Medicines and poisons are classified into various schedules in the poison standard, according to the level of regulatory control over the access that the substance has with respect to protecting public health and safety. Therefore those regulatory approaches to e-cigarettes vary considerably with other nations ranging from prohibition to no regulation whatsoever; therefore Australia cannot be considered to be an outlier in that respect. The TGA, as a totally independent regulator charged with many important decisions, made the decision on 21 December 2020 that, from October of this year, consumers importing nicotine will require a doctor's prescription to legally access nicotine e-cigarettes and liquid nicotine. An important part of this was child-resistant closures for that liquid nicotine will also be mandatory but, importantly, the TGA's decision was not a ban on nicotine.

The TGA's decision is consistent with the existing ban in all states and territories on the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes without a doctor's prescription. I think it's worth reflecting on the presence of 30,000 GPs in Australia who can prescribe these devices to an individual who seeks to stop smoking. The TGA's decision also bridges that regulatory gap between the variety of state and territory regulation of nicotine e-cigarettes and the Commonwealth law as it relates to their importation. The Therapeutic Goods Administration also took actions to further educate Australians, set minimum safety and quality requirements, and encourage further research in cooperation with the Department of Health.

The government will continue to develop a smoking cessation plan that will be available six months prior to the 1 October 2021 implementation date. As part of this work, the government will provide a million dollars for the education campaign focused on smoking cessation. Promoting major healthcare professionals and consumer education programs is a complementary way of addressing this issue. The previously proposed customs prohibited imports regulations prohibiting the importation of e-cigarettes containing vaporised nicotine and nicotine-containing refills without a prescription from a GP will not be proceeding due to the significant overlap with the TGA decision. The government will also monitor the impacts of these changes to the poisons standard.

Senator Siewert rightly referred this matter to the Senate Select Committee on Tobacco Harm Reduction inquiry, and the government is in the process of considering the report of that inquiry with regard to the TGA's scheduling decision to include nicotine as a prescription-only medicine. It won't come as a surprise to honourable senators to know that the Department of Health, and indeed the Minister for Health, have had a little bit on their plate in the last 12 months as we seek to protect lives and livelihoods through the COVID-19 pandemic. But Australia is committed to protecting public health policies in relation to tobacco control from commercial and other vested interests in the tobacco and indeed any industry. We are alive to the very real conflicts that exist in this space.

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of listening to the Lung Foundation and Minderoo Foundation jointly present the results of some research that they have conducted in this space. The research was undertaken by Curtin University and involved testing 52 samples of flavoured e-liquids. According to the research, 21 per cent of the samples that were tested contained nicotine—so that's one in five phials of e-liquid contained nicotine—62 per cent contained chemicals likely to be toxic if vaped repeatedly and, incredibly, 100 per cent, or every single one of the 52 samples, were inaccurately labelled. The research also found that 100 per cent—that is, all 52—of the samples that were tested contained chemicals with unknown effects on respiratory health.

The Morrison government believes that it is essential that Australian consumers know what they are consuming. On 30 September 2020 the National Centre for Epidemiology & Population Health of the Australian National University published a summary report on the use of e-cigarettes and its relation to tobacco smoking uptake and cessation relevant to the Australian context. The report is broadly consistent with the latest advice from medical industry experts and reaffirms the precautionary approach that the Morrison government is taking to e-cigarettes. The ANU report reaffirmed the importance of limiting access to the specific circumstance of e-cigarettes containing nicotine. But I do note the important research that was undertaken by Curtin University, where 21 per cent of samples actually did contain nicotine and 100 per cent of those samples were incorrectly labelled. So the very real issue that Australian consumers need clarity on is a clear, reliable understanding of what they are consuming.

Through the National Health and Medical Research Council, since 2011 the government has supported 13 grants and committed over $12.6 million to research into e-cigarettes. This is not a new problem. It's an evolving problem and one that the government takes very seriously. I was quite intrigued by one aspect of the Curtin University research that found that chocolate flavoured vapes are amongst the most likely to be harmful to human health by virtue of containing benzene rings and other compounds, whereas peppermint flavoured vapes are reportedly much less likely to cause a harmful reaction in human cells.

Senator Siewert interjecting—

Yes, I was very taken aback, Senator Siewert, to learn that chocolate could be bad for you in the context of e-vaping, and I share your pain. But let me affirm to all senators present that the government is committed to an incremental and carefully considered approach to e-cigarettes. With that said, I guess there's much more to come.

We've just heard Senator Small's contribution to the discussion on this motion on e-cigarettes. Whilst he is obviously a supporter of taking more action on e-cigarettes, what we heard is that the government plans to do stuff at some point in the future. The problem with the Morrison government is that they've turned into a bit of a 'gonna' government—they're always 'gonna' do something at some later date. We've heard a lot about reports that were tabled ages ago and nothing's happened. It seems this e-cigarette debate, because of some wobbliness from their backbench, is also going to take its time. It caused me to reflect on how difficult it seems to be for conservative governments in this country to move on social reform and other health reforms.

I remember when Labor put forward the plain-packaging legislation. Oh, my goodness me, to hear from those opposite, who at that time were in opposition, it was as if the sky was going to fall. I appreciate that the tobacco lobby is very, very powerful. It's very good at the games it plays because it's been playing them for a very, very long time. I know Senator Siewert in her contribution talked about the tobacco lobby. But seriously, this is about the potential take-up rate of smoking. We have led the world with smoking reform in this country and now, for all of us, it's really unusual to have someone amongst us who smokes. And, yes, of course, it's their right to smoke—I am not suggesting that it's not—but we've made it almost impossible to smoke anywhere these days and that's a solid move because there's clearly public health research that tells us it's bad. But that doesn't mean that the tobacco lobby is sitting there with its feet up; it's still snapping at our heels. The most recent debate we've had in this country was plain packaging. Those opposite, who were in opposition at the time, behaved shamelessly because, obviously, the tobacco lobby was in their ears.

Marriage equality, saying sorry to First Nations people—all of these things are so difficult for this government. We should really be seizing the day on e-cigarettes and moving quickly, because the evidence is there already that they are harmful to young children. We already know that there are toxins in some of the e-cigarettes that are available. Last year or—I can't remember now—the year before, I travelled to the UK, whenever it was we were last allowed out. And I commend the government on closing international borders; I'm not wanting them open. The e-cigarettes in the UK and Europe are shocking; they are everywhere. As an Australian, when you're not used to any kind of smoke, they come as a bit of a shock. So we could lead the world here. I urge the government to get on with the job, to stand up to its backbench. If they're being influenced by the tobacco lobby then let's realise that. Let's be a first and not be dragging our heels on this matter. E-cigarettes, we should stomp on them right away, let's get rid of them and make sure that we continue to provide the utmost health opportunities for young people to not create addictions.

One Nation opposes this motion. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I'll explain why. Vapes and e-cigarettes are as safe as the vaping solution's contents. E-cigs should be available in Australia using the established Therapeutic Goods Administration procedure for schedule 3 pharmacy-only medications. This would allow local producers to submit their products to the TGA for testing and approval. Those approved devices and solutions would then be made using good manufacturing process right here in Australia. This would offer complete assurance to Australian consumers that the product they're using is safe. The approval process is quick and cheap, as compared to potential sales revenue. Distribution should be limited to pharmacists.

Our policy follows a review of both academic research and empirical data from around the world. Thousands of pages of science and data support the effectiveness of e-cigarettes as an aid to quit smoking. Public Health England has found the available evidence suggests that e-cigs are likely to be considerably less harmful than cigarettes. A peer reviewed article published in the latest edition of the International Journal of Drug Policy found there was no support for the argument that vaping is a gateway to smoking, no support. The article produced empirical evidence that clearly shows e-cigarettes have accompanied a reduction in smoking rates in countries where quit rates had previously stagnated.

What is wrong with paying attention to the science and the reality? It's debates like this debate around e-cigarettes and vaping that leads One Nation to call for an office of scientific integrity. These matters are far too important to be decided by a selective quoting of reports so as to support any pre-conceived position. Good government requires the truth—not duelling reports, not fear, not ideology, not vested interests, not uninformed opinion, not emotions—facts and data. An office of scientific integrity and quality assurance would allow independent scientists and advocates to test these important issues and from that process the truth would have the best chance of emerging.

Question agreed to.

On 10 February 2021, I was extraordinarily fortunate to visit with a wonderful group of Queenslanders at the Liworaji Aboriginal Corporation, based in Ipswich near my home office in Springfield. On that day, I met with Aunty Lilly Davidson, Aunty Maria Davidson, Miss Samantha Carr and Miss Kianna Fisher. They are wonderful, wonderful people. I'd also like to acknowledge the role of Aunty Faye Carr, a Yuggera elder, in the formation and operation of the Liworaji Aboriginal Corporation. Aunty Faye Carr was named the 2017 NAIDOC Female Elder of the Year. She is an extraordinarily wonderful Queenslander.

The Liworaji Aboriginal Corporation provides a number of essential services, not just to our First Nations people, our Aboriginal and Indigenous people, but also to everyone in the greater Ipswich region. These include services in relation to a breakfast program, which is called five bridges; domestic and family violence awareness; agricultural training courses; readiness for work courses; cemetery maintenance at Deebing Creek, which used to be the home of an Aboriginal mission; the youth didgeridoo program venue provision; cross-cultural awareness programs; and even a partnership with Hutchinson Builders, a great Queensland company that seeks to involve First Nations people in its construction activities.

Sitting down and meeting Aunty Lilly, Aunty Maria, Samantha and Kianna, I got that feeling, which I'm sure you've had, Mr Acting Deputy President Fawcett, when visiting various constituents and organisations, of just knowing you are in the presence of wonderful people in a welcoming environment who are doing great things for our community. Some of the stories they told me about the work they do really touched me profoundly. They told me of an extremely agitated young First Nations man with schizophrenia who came into the office on one occasion. One of the aunties sat him down with a notepad and a pen and just asked him to write down his feelings. Through that process they helped calm him down so they could then get him the assistance that he needed. They told me the story of a local family that was having all sorts of issues with child safety authorities, who were taking their children from them. The family was going through all sorts of ruptures. Through the assistance of the two aunties, the Liworaji Aboriginal Corporation provided that family with assistance so it could be reunited and could function again as a family unit. That is just an outstanding story.

As they were speaking and telling me these stories, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that an Australian of African descent had come into the store. They actually have a bit of an op shop associated with the headquarters of the corporation and they have all sorts of clothes and things available. This lady had come in and she was choosing a few garments. She smiled and there were a lot of welcoming exchanges. She left, and after she had left they told us how they'd provided assistance to this lady. She wasn't a First Nations person, she wasn't of Aboriginal descent, but they provide assistance to everyone in the community. They'd assisted this lady to obtain some part-time cleaning work and they were always there to provide her with the support she needed to get on with her life and to provide for her family. But, more than that, they provide a welcoming place where she can come in, meet with them, have a cup of tea, sit down and obtain that community connection.

They also talked about a phenomenon whereby a lot of Aboriginal workers, during their lunch breaks, congregate in the corporation's lunch room because they find it an extraordinarily safe place to come and tell their stories and exchange notes. Sometimes they have trouble convincing them that they need to leave so they can get on with their work. To me, it just underlined the welcoming nature of this organisation and the outstanding contribution that all of these ladies provide to their community. I'd like to say to the Liworaji Aboriginal Corporation: I was honoured to spend time in your presence and it's an absolute honour to inform the Senate of Australia of the wonderful work you do for our community.

On 2 December last year Australian bushfires were discussed as a matter of public importance in this chamber, with sovereign aerial firefighting as a focal point. Last week a response from Minister Littleproud was tabled here in the Senate. The letter included the statement:

… before any decision or long-term commitment is made regarding particular aircraft in the fleet, ownership and strategic operation, it is imperative we have a full and evidence-based understanding of the capability actually required.

The government sees this recommendation as being pivotal to informing decisions on the future of aerial firefighting to deliver an operationally effective fleet that is scalable, adaptive and provides value for money.

I almost had to sit down after reading that statement. I mean, seriously. Australia first conducted aerial firefighting in Benambra, Victoria, in February 1967. That was before I was born. That's 54 years ago. Since that time, we've had multiple Australian organisations, including CSIRO, AFAC, the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment and the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Land Management, all reporting on aerial firefighting. We've had multiple inquiries, up to and including a royal commission. The bottom line is: there is data available and there has been analysis.

The reference to value for money makes my blood boil. Commonwealth and state procurement rules require officials to obtain value for money with public moneys, and there have clearly been many years—54 of them—for government procurement authorities to determine if they've obtained value for money for the money they've spent. So they should know. Adding to the confusion is that the Department of Home Affairs put this into the Senate inquiry into lessons to be learned in relation to the Australian bushfire season 2019-20: 'Leasing of aircraft between the northern and southern hemispheres has proven to be cost-effective.' 'Cost-effective' sounds a little bit like 'value for money' to me. So there has clearly been some analysis.

When I rose to speak about this during the MPI, I suggested that all we need is a bit of a tweak to occur, and largely the problems will be solved. One of the problems we have right now is that we give Australian contractors contracts for short terms, maybe two or three years, and they can't go to their bank and say, 'Let me buy an aircraft,' because the contract terms are too short. They're not asking for any more money, but, if we extended out the contract terms, they would have the surety to be able to go to the bank and actually get some finance to have aircraft that we could have operating here in Australia—sovereign—and that we could be selling overseas in our off-season, making money, bringing foreign dollars into this country.

So I was a bit dumbfounded by some of the analysis that has taken place so far, particularly where the government says, 'We need more time,' without even so much as an explanation as to what they're actually doing or the tasks that they're completing. For example, they could have indicated that they were looking at things like properly integrating remotely piloted vehicles, also known as drones, into the aerial fleet. They could have talked about engaging CASA to make sure that the regulations are not getting in the way. They could have said that modelling was being done.

The bottom line is: we know all about aerial firefighting. There are no more questions to be answered. If someone thinks that that is the case, then, for 54 years, people have not been doing their jobs. It's unforgivable. While the bureaucrats want to do more analysis, the people who do hold a hose are proposing solutions that will help them deal with the very real and increasing dangers of bushfires. But, sadly, all I can hear is the hollow, clanking sound of a can being kicked down the road yet again.

Senate adjourned at 17:20