If there is no objection, the meeting is authorised.

The committee is considering amendment (1) on sheet 3457, moved by Senator McKim, to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025. The question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Australia's superannuation system was designed to be universal, but the vast majority of our young workers under the age of 18 are not entitled to superannuation on their hard-earned income. That's because they don't work 30 hours or more a week. Under the current law, workers under 18 years old are only entitled to super if they work more than 30 hours a week for the same employer. This means that 92 per cent—almost all of our young workers—miss out on super, mostly due to school and study commitments. It's incredibly unfair. They're leading busy lives and putting together school and lots of work opportunities, often very variable and unpredictable, and we don't give them the super they deserve. Young people shouldn't be penalised for their studying and school hours. For too long workers under 18 have been missing out on super, setting them back financially and costing them thousands of dollars very early in their careers. We know how important those dollars are later in life. It should not be controversial to say that young workers should receive the same financial rights as everyone else. Super should be paid to every worker on every dollar earned. This exclusion has a real impact. According to the Super Members Council, about 500,000 under-18 workers will be excluded from paid super in 2024-25—half a million of them. This is a combined total of $368 million in super contributions. There's no excuse for excluding young workers from accessing the super system and having the same rights and access as all other workers.

The change we propose is small, it is sensible and it will make a really big difference for thousands of young Australians starting out their working lives. I've heard directly from young South Australians about how important getting super would be for them. Kisa, a 16-year-old, said this: 'I can't always work 30 hours a week as I have school. I don't think this should mean I don't get to start preparing for my future with my superannuation fund.' Alyssa, also 16, said, 'I work just as hard as everyone else and I'm not getting the same benefits to put towards my retirement.' Jackson, an 18-year-old, said, 'I'm going to struggle a lot more in the future as I've had three years of part-time work that hasn't contributed to my super.' And Charlie, who's 15, said: 'Being young and starting to earn money towards my super will be a good start and will put me better off in my future. I also don't understand why it's different for kids under 18 as we are doing the same job.'

Thank you, Kisa, Alyssa, Jackson and Charlie for your stories. You are spot on and you're young people with a lot of foresight. I certainly wasn't thinking about my retirement at 16, 17 and 18. But you're spot on. You're missing out on a lot and you're working in the same way as others, alongside them, and you deserve the same rights. These are real workers who are feeling the impacts of our current unfair super system. That's why we have moved our amendment to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Bill 2025 to make sure that young part-time workers aren't left behind. Labor has a chance to back young workers so that all of them are paid super contributions from their employers regardless of their hours. This amendment ensures that any regulations made under the act cannot exclude workers who are under 18 and are doing fewer than 30 hours from getting superannuation.

In conclusion, I call on Labor to support our amendment to give those young people access to super while they're young and under 18. Labor, what would hold you back from doing such an obvious change that's so fair? You've got the numbers to do this, and this has been a long-running campaign of the SDA and the Super Members Council, who are two strong stakeholders advocating this change. Your own 2023 national platform supports this. Allow me to quote from it:

Labor will support young people through … the accumulation of superannuation on every dollar earned.

Your own platform also says:

Labor will … examine gaps in the superannuation system and where possible close these gaps for … young workers …

Finally, your platform also says:

Labor will ensure that all workers, regardless of how they are engaged, can accumulate superannuation on every dollar earned.

Here's your opportunity. Labor, it is time for you to walk the talk as a party that speaks for the workers. It's time for you to take action for these young people who are waiting, watching and wondering what you're going to do.

Minister, I've got a few questions. As I understand it, this bill includes changes that will repeal section 28, which is the outdated and unfair part of the law that says part-time workers under 18 are not required to be paid super.

Thank you to the advisers in the box; I understand that's correct, and it will be replaced with regulations.

Has the government advised businesses that they're obliged to now pay super to under-18s, regardless of the hours they work, until such a regulation is in place?

The regulation will be in place. That is not the intent of this bill, so there has been no requirement to advise employers of that.

When do you expect that regulation to come into place?

It'll be in place well in advance of 1 July, when this bill will commence, if it's passed.

If this bill is passed, Minister, will there not be a gap of at least six months until that regulation comes into operation?

No, if the bill is passed the act will commence on 1 July.

So the act will commence on 1 July; thank you. Let me clarify. You intend to pass this bill, which makes everyone eligible for superannuation, regardless of their age and their hours of work. I just want to make sure I understand what's being proposed here. Do you intend to remove any prohibition on paying super or to enable people who are under 18 and working any number of hours to become eligible for superannuation pending a regulation?

I've just been helpfully shown paragraph 1.25 in the explanatory memorandum, which deals with this exact matter:

The exclusions for certain payments from the SG framework were previously set out in both the SGA Act and the regulations. No change is being made to the exclusions, but they will all be consolidated in the regulations to improve readability of the legislation. It is appropriate that the exclusions are set out in regulations as they are technical and specific exclusions to the general law.

Can I, then, check that you see no difference in the timing or the application of the treatment of superannuation for people under 18, whether it's within the law or within the regulation, and no gap in time between the operation of those two parts?

There's certainly no gap. The current arrangements would continue until the new act commences on 1 July.

What's your view about the fairness of excluding people who are less than 18 years old and working less than 30 hours a week from access to super on every dollar they earn, as is clear in your own policy platform?

This deals with the broader question of your amendment which I'm happy to speak to now. I was going to put these comments on the record. We are the party that established superannuation, and we are the party that continues to strengthen it. As you've seen since we came to government, we have done a number of things, including paying super on PPL and making sure the SG, the superannuation guarantee, increases to 12 per cent, as that makes a big difference to people's retirement earnings, including young people if they are paid superannuation. Indeed, in the last month or so, there was the announcement about our commitment to the low income superannuation tax offset, also known as the LISTO.

We work through these things in a methodical way. That's the way we approach these arrangements. It wasn't part of our commitment to payday super to make a change like the one that your amendment seeks. But we continue to engage with the superannuation industry, with the superannuation council, as you identified, and others, as we did on LISTO to put in place appropriate strengthening of the superannuation system, and we'll continue to do that. We don't change the superannuation system based on an amendment from the Greens in the Senate.

It is a fair question though for you to change the superannuation system in line with your own published policy platform—is it not?

I'm not responsible for the party platform, but decisions the government makes about the timing are a matter for the government. As I've said, since coming to government, we've done a number of things. Lifting the superannuation guarantee to 12 per cent will have the biggest impact on people's retirement earnings, as are increases to the minimum wage which covers a lot of young people and increases in the wage earnings of early educators and people in the care economy, whether it be in disability or the aged-care sector. They are big commitments worth billions and billions of dollars that we have done to make sure that workers not only get good wages now but also accumulate superannuation earnings for a dignified retirement.

We have a very proud record of strengthening superannuation and improving it for all working people, including young people. Our commitment recently around LISTO is in the order of hundreds of millions of dollars to make that change. We're doing it because it's the right thing to do and so that people—including women and young people, who have the opportunity to accumulate superannuation entitlements through their working career—do retire with enough money in their superannuation. We will continue to do that. That's the approach the Treasurer has taken. It's the approach the Assistant Treasurer has taken.

Paying super on PPL—a lot of people have talked about that for a long time, but it took this government actually coming in here to get that change done. We've got a proud record of strengthening superannuation. We'll continue to work through commitments that have formed part of Labor policy for a long time, in a careful and methodical way, and we will bring the industry and all stakeholders—as there are many in this industry—together as we do that.

Minister, I applaud the superannuation that's now payable on paid parental leave. I was one amongst many, many Australians who saw that as a gross inequity at the moment of a family change, where extra dollars make such a difference, especially for women in their longer term earnings. I have no argument about that. But on what basis would you withhold superannuation from a 17-year-old—working alongside an 18-year-old—who is not paid super on every dollar they earn? What is the basis for that age discrimination?

That currently forms part of the superannuation system—the arrangements around people under the age of 18. I'll just see if there's something more. The point I would like to make here—and the one which the advice to government is based on—is the one I've made earlier, which is that we don't make changes to the superannuation system based on an amendment from the Greens. The superannuation system is complicated. There are a lot of stakeholders involved, and the government, as we pursue changes that continue to strengthen super, do it in a careful and thoughtful and methodical way. That is, we want to understand, if a proposed change was made, how that might impact in a practical sense and in any responsibilities we have. It's been a feature of the system, I think, since the commencement of the superannuation system.

This payday super bill, which I should have included in the list of things that we are doing to strengthen superannuation, is making sure that workers do get their entitlements as they are due and in a timely way, as is not the case right now. We know a lot of workers miss out on super because it's not paid at the point of their pay cycle. That is another practical strengthening of the superannuation system. If you add that to PPL, if you add that to the increase in the SG, if you add LISTO to that and if you add the wage increases that we have funded and supported, I think that tells a story of a government that wants to make sure that working people in Australia get appropriate superannuation and are able to accumulate savings for a dignified retirement.

This bill does not propose to change the current arrangements, and, if there were any future changes—not necessarily of the point you raise, Senator Pocock, but indeed any other changes—we would do so in the way that we have approached all the other ones, which is to work over a period of time with the industry to understand the impact of changes before the government considers and agrees to any.

Your arguments essentially go to the statements of: 'It's an existing arrangement. It's a convention. It's complicated,' because the Greens suggested it. I don't think the young people in South Australia who I cited in my speech, those 16- and 17-year olds and the 18-year-old who's missed out on three years super, really care whose idea this is. I don't think they care that you've already done things. I think they don't care about convention. If we cared about convention, we wouldn't even have a super system. We do things because they're the right thing to do. Clearly, your party has considered this over years—that it's important to remove age discrimination in our super system. I just want you to consider that these are not sound arguments, and they will not be convincing to the young people you are today refusing to give justice to in their pay in order to have a decent retirement down the track.

I disagree with that, Senator Pocock. You can make that argument, but I think young people today are earning more through the minimum wage, and, if they work in particular industries where we have advocated for higher wages, that is not their experience. Young people, when I speak to them—I'm not discounting this as an issue. As I said in my earlier comments, the government will consider this.

The point of this bill is to deal with the issue about people getting their super paid on time in accordance with their wages, rather than missing out or having it paid down the track. That is the purpose of this bill, just as the one that we bring forward on the low-income super tax offset will be about LISTO, just as the one we did on super on PPL was about super on PPL. It's less about who's moving it; it's that we do not do superannuation policy based on an amendment in this place that hasn't gone through all of the consideration and policy development that all of our other changes have gone through.

For example, young people at that entry level where they're starting, between 15 and 18, often move around jobs. Does that mean multiple accounts? Does it mean multiple low-balance accounts that have fees that eat up a lot of that super? These are the types of things that a proper policy process would work through and understand. That is the point I make. We don't do policy on the fly on an amendment in the Senate. On this and on any other area, before a government takes a decision on it, we have to understand how it would be implemented and who has responsibility to implement it. With all the employers that are currently making changes to accommodate payday super with their IT systems, I don't think any sane government would then just dump this on because an amendment was moved in the Senate. There is practical engagement and consultation that needs to happen.

In terms of what we have done for young people—supporting minimum wage increases, supporting better wages in a whole range of sectors, things like fee-free TAFE, HECS debt relief and looking at our housing policy—all of those policies have young people at heart as we consider some of the challenges they are facing. We will continue to take that approach, whether it be in super or any other area.

The pattern of employment for lots of young people who are 17 and 16 is not significantly different from the patterns of employment that characterise so many Australian workers. A third of our workforce are now precarious. Many of them have multiple jobs. Their lives are complex and their employment arrangements are complex. Their pay packets are complex, and yet we navigate superannuation for them. Why would we not do exactly the same for those young people? It is simply their age that holds them back from something that is no more complex for them than it is for millions of other workers.

Again, Senator Pocock, I acknowledge your career and your work as an academic in understanding patterns of work and things like that, but I'll make the same points in this answer that I made in the last. The broader point I am making is that we don't do superannuation reform on the fly in the Senate. We don't. If you look at the approach we have taken since we came to government, we have brought forward reforms to superannuation in a staged and careful way, and that is the way we will continue. This bill is about making sure everyone gets the superannuation they are entitled to and it is paid into their accounts in a timely way. All of the other changes that I've already outlined are also targeted at making sure the superannuation system continues to work in the interests of working people.

Thank you for that answer. As I understand what you propose to do, you are going to bring back, through regulation, the exclusion of young people under 18 receiving super on any income they earn if they work less than 30 hours a week. You intend to reregulate, essentially, the prevention of those young people from having access to superannuation. Have I understood that correctly?

The explanatory memorandum makes this clear, and I've already answered—three times now—that the regulations will be brought to align with the commencement of this act, and it will reflect current practice.

Will that be a disallowable regulation?

Yes.

In event that it wasn't passed as a regulation, you would therefore have opened the gateway to those young people to proceed to have access to superannuation regardless of their age or their hours of work; is that correct?

I can't foresee what the Senate will do with that. It's a disallowable instrument. It's then over to the Senate to determine that.

Firstly, on the line of questioning that Senator Pocock was advancing then—Minister, this bill will take effect from 1 July next year; is that right?

I have said that three times too.

Minister, you say you don't want to make law on the run, but you could accept the Greens amendment today. You would have eight months to set up the systems that are needed in order to make sure that young folks—people under the age of 18—receive the superannuation money that they are due, no matter how many hours a week they work, wouldn't you?

I've made it clear in my answers to Senator Pocock that the government does not make superannuation policy or superannuation law like that. We take a measured approach. We consult with industry stakeholders, and, before we take a decision, we actually like to understand all of the implications of taking that decision.

Are you currently studying the implications of taking a decision to require superannuation to be paid to people who are under 18, no matter how many hours they work?

The focus for the Treasurer and the Assistant Treasurer has been on this legislation, and, in looking forward, it will be also on the low-income superannuation tax offset. They are the priorities, as is the balance cap work that will also come in a bill to the Senate at an appropriate time. That's been the focus of our economic team.

Minister, as you'd be aware, the SDA, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, is campaigning strongly for superannuation to be paid to people who are under 18, no matter how many hours they work in a week. I want to make some observations about that. Firstly, the Labor Party has—tragically for the country and tragically for many, many millions of Australians—listened very closely to the shoppies for many decades now. Because the Labor Party has listened so closely to the shoppies for so long, this country has been held back.

We could have had marriage equality many, many years before we eventually got it, and we didn't get it because of the stranglehold that the shoppies have got on the Labor Party. We could have had real, true, needs based funding through the Gonski reforms, if it hadn't been for the stranglehold that the shoppies have over the Australian Labor Party. We could have had an effects test in our competition law many, many years before we finally got it, if it weren't for the stranglehold that the shoppies have over the Australian Labor Party. Every time the Labor Party has looked in the last 30 years to do progressive, social and economic reform, there have been the shoppies, holding the Labor Party back and holding this country back. It's been a disgrace, and it's led to this country being a less progressive, less fair place than it should have been. My question to you, Minister, is: having been under a stranglehold from the shoppies for so long, to the detriment of this country and to the detriment of millions of Australians, why aren't you listening to the shoppies now that they're actually advocating for something that is positive for this country?

Thank you, Senator McKim. I was wondering how you were going to bring those two narratives together towards the end—on the one hand trying to support the SDA but, on the other hand, having difficulty in doing that. I congratulate the SDA. We worked closely with them on paying super on PPL. Their union did a lot of work on that and provided advice to government about the benefits that would come for their largely female membership, should we make that change. I commend the SDA for the work that they've done in strengthening superannuation. We continue to work with all stakeholders, including unions, who are actually responsible for the formation of superannuation in the first place and have been active participants in all debates about it since. We will continue to engage with the SDA. They have been very supportive, as have all unions, on payday super, so I look forward to actually passing the legislation and what it's actually about, which is making sure people get their super when it's due and that they benefit from that over the longer term.

Minister, 92 per cent of people under 18 are missing out on super here—$368 million a year. We heard their voices. Half a million workers under 18 are missing out. It's a straightforward discriminatory matter, and it's a big loophole in our super system. In the interests of fairness, will you commit to fixing this discriminatory loophole in the super system?

The Labor Party is the party of superannuation, and we will continue to work with all stakeholders about ways to continue to strengthen it in the interests of working people.

The question is that the amendment on sheet 3457 be agreed to.

I move:

That these bills be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a third time.

The government has backed this reform with serious investment—$251.7 million over four years to established the CDC and $73.3 million in ongoing annual funding from 2028-29. That is a long-term commitment to building national capability. At the national level this reform would transform the way Australia manages public health threats. The CDC would become the central hub for public health expertise, supporting both the Australian government and state and territory agencies to respond consistently and effectively when emergencies arise. It would strengthen pandemic preparedness by ensuring our national medical stockpile, testing capacity and response plans are regularly reviewed and updated. It would coordinate surveillance for infectious diseases, track emerging risks and build rapid response capacity. It would provide an authoritative public voice during health emergencies, cutting through misinformation with clear evidence based information.

The COVID-19 inquiry found that confusion and mistrust flourished when communication was inconsistent. The CDC would help fix that. This bill also reinforces Australia's global standing. The CDC would work closely with international bodies like the World Health Organization to share expertise and support global health security. As we saw during COVID, disease threats do not stop at national borders. A strong Australian CDC would help protect not only our country but our region.

If I turn to Tasmania, this bill is particularly important for my home state. Tasmania's geography brings both strengths and vulnerabilities. Our isolation can help slow the spread of disease, but it also makes it harder to access supplies, staff and support when emergencies strike. During COVID-19 Tasmania faced major challenges. It took a toll on our health workforce and our communities. A national CDC would ensure that Tasmania is never left behind in national planning and response. It would give our public health experts direct access to national data, resources and expertise. It would also help coordinate responses to future risks from respiratory illnesses in aged care to zoonotic diseases that could affect our farming and agriculture industries.

Tasmania's local health authorities already do outstanding work. The new CDC would not replace them. It would strengthen them. The CDC's data-sharing systems would make it easier for Tasmanian public health teams to identify outbreaks early and target support where it is needed. Because the CDC would embed a one-health approach, it would also support research into how climate and environmental factors affect health, something that matters deeply to Tasmania. As the climate changes, we are seeing shifts in disease patterns. Mosquito borne illnesses, like Japanese encephalitis, are moving further south. The CDC will help track and prepare for these changes, so communities like ours can stay safe.

This reform will also have real benefits for Tasmania's economy and community resilience. Health emergencies are not just health issues; they affect business, schools, tourism and local government services. By improving national coordination, the CDC will help keep communities open and economies stable when future crises occur. That's good for work, it's good for families, and it's good for small businesses that depend on certainty. This legislation is a clear expression of Labor values. It's about fairness, safety and collective responsibility. It recognises that public health is a public good—something we all depend on and must build together.

It also reflects Labor's belief in strong public institutions. Under the former government, the Australian National Preventive Health Agency was abolished in 2014. That decision weakened our national capacity to respond to public health challenges. This bill puts prevention back at the heart of our health system. It aligns with other major Albanese government initiatives, from strengthening Medicare and mental health to improving pandemic preparedness and protecting aged care residents. It complements the work of the National Health and Climate Strategy, which recognises that climate change is not only an environmental challenge but a health one. It supports the goals of the Measuring What Matters framework, which commits us to tracking wellbeing and resilience, not just economic growth. And it contributes to our broader national resilience agenda, ensuring Australia is better equipped to withstand shocks, from natural disasters to biosecurity threats. Labor's approach to government is about learning from the past and building stronger systems for the future.

The establishment of the CDC also has positive gender and equity impacts. A gender impact assessment found that the CDC will help address the disproportionate health effects of communicable diseases on women, First Nations people, people with disability, culturally diverse communities and those facing economic disadvantage. This is not just about managing pandemics; it's about making sure that, when health risks arise, our response protects everyone, especially those most at risk. Labor believes that every Australian deserves equal access to safety, information and care.

The COVID-19 inquiry also highlighted the importance of trust. During a crisis, people need to know that the information they are receiving is accurate and transparent. This bill enshrines transparency as a guiding principle of the CDC's work. The Director-General must publish advice that includes recommendations and make that advice accessible to the public. This is how we rebuild and maintain trust in public health: by letting the evidence speak for itself. It's also why the bill establishes strong oversight for an advisory council, which must include at least one Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander expert in health. The council will ensure that diverse voices, including community and cultural expertise, inform the CDC's priorities and actions.

The Albanese government has carefully designed this reform to be both effective and sustainable. Funding of $251.7 million over four years has been allocated, and ongoing funding from 2028-29 will ensure stability and capability into the future. The CDC will be governed under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act, ensuring clear lines of accountability and prudent use of public resources. It will also be subject to regular reviews—the first after two years of operation and then every five years—to ensure it remains contemporary and effective. That means that this agency will evolve as our understanding of health threats evolves.

The Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025 is one of the most significant health reforms in a generation. It fulfils Labor's commitment to create an independent, transparent, national body to protect the health of all Australians. I commend the bill to the Senate.

I am so pleased to speak to the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025. At the outset, I would like to thank my incredible team for their support and guidance as we've considered this bill in detail.

The Greens have long called on successive governments to establish a centre for disease control, one that is independent, well-funded and appropriately resourced to meet the needs of our Australian community. Like so many nations around the world, we have come to confront a moment in time where a structure such as this is deeply needed. In establishing a centre for disease control, we will join countries including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. The Australian public health community have been advocating for one here at home for many, many years. Many in that community will be proud and perhaps a little relieved that we are finally here today with a bill before the Senate to establish Australia's own Centre for Disease Control from 1 January 2026.

The Australian CDC, led by a director-general and an advisory council, will fill a longstanding gap in our public health infrastructure. It will provide advice to government and to the public on a wide range of health matters and serve as a national coordinator for public health data—a critical role that has been missing for far too long. It is my hope that, in the establishment of a CDC, we will see the delivery of greater visibility, understanding and research across key areas of public health—all the better to support the health and wellbeing of our communities.

Over the past five years, our health systems have been pushed to their limits. Reviews, reports and lived experience have all made it crystal clear: Australia must strengthen its public health infrastructure. That includes improving pandemic preparedness, enhancing data sharing between the Commonwealth and the states and the territories, and building a nationally coordinated response to growing health impacts, particularly those of climate change.

Let me touch on the completed Senate inquiry. I am pleased that this bill passed through the investigation that it was subjected to at the inquiry. It allowed us to hear from a broader community and to road-test with experts what they actually made of the legislation as it had been crafted. Reviewing the submissions, it became clear that many in the public health community are enthusiastic about the establishment of the CDC. The majority of submissions to the inquiry were supportive of the bill, and many offered constructive recommendations as to how it might be strengthened in terms of its design and its implementation. One of the key areas that many in the community have identified as missing from this legislation is the glaring absence of any focus on non-communicable and chronic disease. We know that chronic disease is one of the biggest public health challenges facing Australia today. Chronic disease contributes to nine out of every 10 deaths which occur. Every single year, these conditions account for 6.4 million hospitalisations. One in every two Australians lives with at least one chronic disease. And, if someone has one, it is highly likely that they will have another. Living with chronic disease often means spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars every single year on health care and medication. It can mean cancelling plans because you are too unwell to get out of bed. It can mean being unable to work because your symptoms are unpredictable and your condition simply does not fit into a nine-to-five world.

Right now, people living with chronic illness are falling through the cracks of a fragmented system. Allied health appointments are unaffordable, preventative care is underfunded and access to treatment is inconsistent. All of this stems from a lack of clear policy direction on chronic disease. That's why it is so concerning that the bill fails to include chronic disease within its remit. The message from the community was crystal clear. Submissions to the inquiry into this bill overwhelmingly called for chronic disease to be a key focus of the CDC from the very beginning. The Grattan Institute put it plainly in their submission:

… putting off the decision about whether the CDC will ultimately play a leading role in combatting chronic disease is a mistake. It contradicts evidence and international norms, and will cause uncertainty and delay while the burden of chronic disease continues to rise.

The Australian Greens acknowledge that the minister has indicated a future review could consider expanding the CDC's scope to include chronic disease. We welcome that intention, but people living with chronic disease and illness cannot afford to wait for another review, another report or another delay. We urge the government to listen to the evidence, the experts and, most importantly, the people living with chronic conditions every single day. Bring chronic disease into the CDC's mandate as soon as possible, not later, because people with chronic disease have waited long enough. I move the amendment on sheet 3475 in my name calling on the government to include non-communicable and chronic disease within the purview of the Australian Centre for Disease Control:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that:

(i) non-communicable and chronic disease is among Australia's biggest public health challenges, contributing to nine in ten deaths and 6.4 million hospitalisations each year, and

(ii) public health experts have repeatedly called for the inclusion of non-communicable and chronic disease within the scope of the Australian Centre for Disease Control; and

(b) affirms that expanding the Australian Centre for Disease Control's remit to include non-communicable and chronic disease will improve national action on disease prevention and management; and

(c) calls on the Government to include non-communicable and chronic disease within the scope of the Australian Centre for Disease Control as soon as practicable".

I am pleased to say that the bill before us today has a strong focus on First Nations health. It is encouraging to see the requirement that at least one member of the advisory council must be an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person, ensuring that lived experience informs the advice provided to the director-general. It is vital that the Centre for Disease Control and the advice it provides reflects the diversity and lived experience of the Australian community. However, upon reviewing this legislation, I was concerned to see that disability was not mentioned at all. The National Centre for Excellence in Intellectual Disability Health highlighted this gap in their submission. They drew attention to the findings of the Commonwealth government's COVID-19 response inquiry, which documented the experience of disabled people during the pandemic, saying it 'stressed the importance of mechanisms to ensure government health responses are informed by people with lived experience and expertise in disability.'

For many in our community, the last pandemic was, and in many ways still is, a time of great fear. We lost too many friends and loved ones. Many people continue to live with the consequences of COVID-19—those with long COVID and those who still isolate in their homes for safety. Looking back, the many lives of disabled people were left at the mercy of government decision-making. We hoped they wouldn't forget us or, worse, leave us to die. At that time there was no guarantee that a disabled person would have a seat at the table where decisions about our very lives were being made. As advice was issued, we had no certainty that our perspective had been heard, and that is a fear that we still hold today.

That is why I am proud to be putting forward an amendment to this bill to enshrine in law that a disabled person must hold a seat on the advisory council. Our Greens amendment makes clear that the advisory council should include at least one member who is a disabled person with expertise in the health needs of disabled people. It may be just one seat at the table, but it is a seat at the table. It is my hope that, if this amendment is supported, future health emergencies will not again leave disabled people out of sight or out of mind.

If I move now to the climate crisis, the Australian Greens know—even if some in this chamber refuse to see it—that climate change is one of the biggest threats to public health in this country. We are already seeing the health impacts of a warming planet. More frequent and intense natural disasters are hitting our shores. Heatwaves are sweeping across our country, becoming longer, hotter and deadlier. A recent Monash University report showed that between 2016 and 2019 heatwaves caused more than 1,000 deaths in Australia.

We are on track—with the Labor government still approving huge-emitting projects like Woodside's North West Shelf Project—to continue to make these crises worse. These are real-time health impacts, driven by the climate crisis, exacerbated by the decision of this government to approve and approve new coal and gas projects. The government's own climate risk assessment warned of incredibly dire outcomes if swift action to address climate change is not taken. In some parts of Australia we could see an increase of more than 400 per cent in heatwave related deaths. This is not a future problem; it is happening now. It's asthma attacks triggered by bushfire smoke. It's heat stress on outdoor workers. It's the mental health toll on communities hit again and again by floods, by fire and by drought. This is the reality lived by so many in our community right at this very moment. This is why it is so important that the health impacts of climate change are front and centre in the work of the Centre for Disease Control. To ensure that this happens, the Greens are calling for the health impacts of climate change to be explicitly included in the CDC's annual reporting.

On the matter of the role of the director-general, there has been much discussion through the course of this debate, both in the House and in the Senate, on the role of the director-general and the responsibilities of the role of the chair of the advisory council. I'd like to acknowledge the range of organisations who have called for there to be a chair of the advisory council who is not the director-general. These organisations include Deakin University's Faculty of Health, the Public Health Association of Australia, the Cancer Council of Australia, the Kirby Institute, the Burnet Institute and Indigenous Allied Health Australia, among others.

It has been disappointing that these calls have not been heard by this government. Essentially, in the spirit of establishing a CDC, we are willing to give the structure outlined in the legislation a go. But we are very clear that the structure of the advisory council, including the role of the chair, should be in the scope of further reviews. The government has also stated that the CDC should be, 'transparent, trusted and independent'. For the CDC to earn the trust of the public, it must take every measure to ensure that data privacy and security is at the top of the agenda. It must ensure the safety and protection of the information that is trusted to it.

The Australian Greens will be supporting this bill. It is a change whose time has come. I commend it and our amendments to the Senate.

I rise today to speak in opposition to this globalist takeover of Australian health, represented by the Australian Centre for Disease Control Bill 2025 and the Australian Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025. These are bills which are going to further entrench the errors of the COVID-19 era into permanent federal bureaucracy in this country. The COVID period was a time of arbitrary bureaucratic edicts and contradictory health advice, something that more and more people have come to admit as the social pressure applied to them during that period has lessened. State government public health messaging, which inspired at the time by the US's own CDC and the World Health Organization, manipulated the Australian population, and the tactics used had very much the opposite of science and medicine in mind. They were about fear and propaganda. The COVID period was an absurd period in the nation's history in which bullying temporarily prevailed over rational discussion and inquiry, though, thankfully, many Australians saw through it. Arbitrary edicts such as mask-wearing and 1.5-metre social distancing were weaponised to close playgrounds, tape off park benches, separate families at funerals and prevent people from visiting dying loved ones in hospitals. Much of the suffering during that period was the result of government overreach and intervention that was enacted 'for your safety'.

Over in the US, the American CDC became a symbol of politicised science, suppressed dissent and connections to pharmaceutical giants that were apparently above government scrutiny. The CDC's general advice was relied on by left-wing politicians and socialists and generally wielded as a cudgel even though dissidents were simply asking basic questions that the health authorities had no reasonable answers to. Those questions included things like: 'Why do I have to wear a mask on the way to the restaurant but not when I'm sitting at the table? Why do I have to get a vaccine with no long-term safety data if it doesn't prevent infection or the spread of the disease? Why is the Nobel Prize-winning, for-humans drug ivermectin being suppressed when it is safe?'

Furthermore, the American CDC has often served as yet another enforcement arm of the ideological state, another bureaucratic element of clown world, as it could be called. It publishes articles about combating racism through public health policies and seems preoccupied with promoting a DEI version of public health in which the patriarchy and colonialism are portrayed as public health threats. One can read articles published by the CDC to find out the Impact of racist microaggressions and LGBTQ-related minority stressors: effects on psychological distress among LGBTQ+ young people of color, which, of course, is clearly designed to promote a cultural and political narrative and has nothing to do with health. This is not actual health research.

During COVID, the US's CDC advice simply reiterated health slogans and mantras, which made it clear that to ask questions meant you should essentially be considered a threat to others. We don't have to go over all the details there; we've lived them so often. But I think it would be fair to say that, following the COVID period, we should be reconsidering our relationship with and our reliance on such institutions. The notion that the lesson we've learnt from the pandemic period is that we need greater centralised authority with regard to public health measures is a laughable concept, yet that's apparently what we learnt. That notion here arrives in light of the COVID-19 response inquiry report, which was published late last year.

That review was always going to present a one-sided perspective of the events, although it paid carefully crafted lip service to the criticism of state governments in that period, such as acknowledging the strict border closures and lockdowns that might have been a touch overdone. The report was still designed to reinforce and justify the bureaucratic narrative, ultimately chalking up public outrage and the obvious errors of health departments to misinformation and a lack of data-sharing capabilities. 'If only the federal government had greater control,' they said, and hence the predictable recommendation was to create an Australian CDC. The inquiry report ignored the excess deaths phenomenon that's undoubtedly connected to the COVID-19 vaccines. It dismissed the scepticism of a vaccine that was hurriedly developed as being a result of mis- and disinformation and excused the draconian, heavy-handed mask mandates, lockdowns, border closures and so on as the result of being in an unprecedented situation. It just goes on and on. Aside from its purpose of justifying the narrative for the CDC, it's not worth reading.

At the risk of repeating what I've said many times before, there was nothing unprecedented or unpredictable about what happened during this period. There are no excuses for the manipulative fear-inducing tactics that people, whether they were part of the government or not, used to intimidate others into compliance. It was obvious from the outset that COVID was not what we were being led to believe it was. Those who were intelligent enough to perceive that and brave enough to call it out were of course vilified by all of those in power. When the virus first arrived, there were people who knew that it actually wasn't very dangerous, and the case fatality rates were the same as the regular seasonal flu. If you weren't paying attention to the news, there really wasn't much reason to be concerned. It was only the media hysteria and stern attitudes of government officials that made everyone think differently. Few people under the age of 70 really had anything to worry about when it came to COVID. I have discussed elsewhere those staggering statistics which make the hysteria look completely absurd in hindsight.

All of this is reason enough for opposing this bill. The lesson of COVID is not that we need tighter government control and more opportunity to combat misinformation. The lesson is more like we need to understand that, during the COVID period, health officials wielded too much power and were able to appeal to their own authority rather than real evidence. A good example of this arose when I asked SA health via a freedom-of-information request to provide the actual research undertaken to justify their public health measures, and all I got back was a series of meeting notes about that big—essentially nothing to see.

We've got to understand that practitioners like doctors and nurses who raised questions about the safety of vaccines during that period or said anything which might be interpreted as undermining the government's official stance on the products, whether acting in their professional capacity or speaking privately, were told they would be suspended from their work. 'Trust the science,' amounted to nothing more than, 'Obey.' Yet the academic class congratulated themselves for their perception of their own heroism. I personally met many health professionals who have been excluded from the system they once worked for, for doing what they understood to be their job, which is treating individual patients with approaches which suited them as individuals. That, apparently, posed a threat to public health.

We've got to understand that many regular citizens who questioned the mandates, the lockdowns, the strict border closures and so on were routinely dehumanised and labelled as dangerous and crazy by the media establishment. Many of them even lost their jobs for refusing to receive the treatment—a treatment that had zero long-term safety data and a range of reported adverse effects. Others were pressured into receiving it when they didn't want or need it because of financial concerns. As long as there is any reason to think the Australian CDC is going to promote or endorse such measures, I will not support this bill. There is no reason to think it won't. Simply put, the lesson of COVID is that just because the government says something does not make it true.

To briefly address the bill itself, I will begin by noting that there is no real or concrete rationale for it. It's all pretty broad, generic rhetoric suggesting the need for greater data-sharing capabilities, the need for pandemic preparedness and the need for a public health authority to give clear messaging to Australians. It's not really clear to anyone why the new organisation needs to be developed for things that already seem to fall within the purview of the department of health, or why these things can't happen in the current system.

There is no real cost-benefit analysis provided; however, as usual, the creation of this new organisation is creating a new role—in this case, the CDC director-general, which sounds very important, but this is another person who will be an unelected anointed bureaucrat wielding a good deal of sweeping powers. The director-general will hold powers to direct information to be provided to them, issue emergency data declarations and plan with foreign governments and international organisations. The director-general may request or direct individuals, companies or state entities to provide specific information, with civil penalties for refusal; trigger broad information-sharing across governments and private entities during a severe and immediate or unforeseen threat; and form arrangements with foreign governments and international arrangements on health matters. Suffice to say this is fairly broad and somewhat ambiguous suite of powers for the new role at a time when trust in this sector is at an all-time low.

It's also worth noting that the new Australian CDC is somehow connected to the health effects of climate change, which is predictably defined in the bill as a public health matter. As a technical point, it's worth noting that environmental health is already separately accounted for in the bill, so it seems reductive to talk separately about climate change. It appears to be more of a political gesture than anything else, and it signals that the ideological slant of the CDC will likely have, in the eyes of many Australians, already undermined its credibility.

Very alarmingly, the CDC has embedded One Health as a core guiding principle—that's right—promoting a practical collaboration between doctors, ecologists and wildlife biologists, to name but a few. For anyone listening, have a look at it. Of course, it's supported by the World Health Organization, the UN and many other nations across the world. Don't just take it from me. The new CDC's own website states:

One Health takes an integrated, unifying approach to tackling health challenges that aims to sustainably balance and optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems.

Wow! One has to wonder whether the powers of the Director-General will be used in some politicised. nonsensical effort to control Australians through climate change measures. Even if one grants the necessity of creating this CDC, which seems dubious to begin with, one can't support the bill if concerned about the abuse of the climate change narrative. Will climate change be treated as a severe and immediate threat? Well, guess what? Prepare for your first climate lockdown.

It's most notable that the explanatory memorandum to the Australian Centre for Disease Control (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025, which has been co-introduced, states:

Schedule 3 under the Freedom of Information Act … will also be amended to ensure information protected by the secrecy provision in the CDC Bill (personal and commercial in confidence information) would be exempt from disclosure under subsection 38(1) of the FOI Act. This would exempt protected information from publication under the Director-General's duty to publish public health advice. It also ensures protected information is exempt from release under freedom of information requests under the FOI Act.

Simply put, the bill's quietly amending the Freedom of Information Act to protect the CDC from scrutiny. Any information the Director-General deems protected—which might include commercial information or might relate to anything—could be legally exempt from FOI release, which removes the possibility of information disclosure that would hold the CDC to account in future events. Of course, they would just be able to say, 'Trust the science,' to not worry about any FOI inconveniences—it's obvious that this would be inconvenient for the CDC—and to save the effort of having to empirically justify their own decisions.

In conclusion, the establishment of an Australian CDC represents the bricking in of all the mistakes and methodology of the so-called experts throughout the COVID period. The case for its necessity hasn't been adequately made, and the wrongs of the 'expertocracy' during COVID haven't been adequately accounted for; we haven't had a royal commission. We should be culling the bureaucracy at this point, not creating more. For that reason, and for many others, I will be opposing this bill.

I rise in support of the establishment of an Australian CDC. I've got to say, Senator Antic, it was pretty hard for me to listen to what you just said. That tirade was next level, particularly for someone who was on the front line during the COVID-19 pandemic. I was a healthcare professional on that front line with my colleagues, wrapped in PPE. I put it to you that you get to stand here, and I get to stand here, thanks to the decisions that were made by healthcare professionals, public health specialists and government. And I also say to all those Victorians: yes, it was really hard; I completely agree it was hard. But the decisions that were made by the then Victorian government meant that our hospitals in Victoria did not collapse. We remained functional and we were able to still see patients, some of whom died.

The fact that next week I will be celebrating my father's 85th birthday means that we did something right as a country. Yes, there were a lot of things that went wrong and that we want to learn from. And this is why we are, as a Labor government, fulfilling a promise that we took to two elections: to establish a national centre for disease control. We will now be aligned with other OECD countries in the world who actually have a centre like this so that we do not have to go through some of that confusing, contradictory advice that we had during the pandemic.

I won't stand here, as a Victorian, and watch people like Senator Antic—and others, no doubt, during the course of today—tear down the decisions that were made. It was tough; it was really tough. I saw enough people die on the front line, often people who did not get vaccinated. They either ended up gasping for air—and we were unable to save them—or they ended up with chronic health conditions thereafter.

So we are establishing this long-awaited CDC. It is a capability born in the aftermath of a one-in-100-years event, which was the COVID-19 pandemic. It will stand as an enduring legacy of this Labor government, up there with Medicare, up there with the National Reconstruction Fund and up there with the National Anti-Corruption Commission. We're doing it because it was evident from those years that Australia was woefully underprepared for what came to our doorstep—woefully underprepared.

Under the former government, there had not been a national pandemic drill for 12 years. It's not as if there hadn't been pandemics. We have had pandemics. It started off with Spanish flu, and in this century we've had SARS-1; we've had swine flu; we've had MERS, Middle Eastern respiratory disease; and we've now, of course, had the COVID-19 pandemic. But, for whatever reason, the previous government never decided we needed to have a pandemic drill.

We had no playbook. I know for a fact that other countries, particularly those that were hit hard by the first wave of SARS, SARS-1, like Singapore, China and Hong Kong, did have playbooks. It was literally a book on a shelf that they pulled off the shelf and opened to page 1. That's how they responded when they were hit with COVID-19. This is what our Commonwealth Centre for Disease Control will deliver for Australians—a playbook that we can literally take off the shelf and open to page 1 when we are hit, inevitably, with the next pandemic.

We also note that it was tough during that pandemic. I know this well, probably most acutely as a Victorian. We went through around six lockdowns, amounting to 260 days. My children were stuck at home with school online for nearly two years, on and off. My daughter went through her VCE soon after. I wasn't in lockdown. I went to work every day. I was wrapped in PPE with my co-workers on that front line, and it was really hard. We sweltered under that plastic to the point where one day I nearly had to catch my registrar. That's what it was like. But I'm also aware that it was a real struggle for people in the community to go through that period. Confidence was shaken, no doubt. Trust was eroded. Businesses struggled. This was no more evident than on the front line in aged care, when we actually had to send the Army in to rescue aged care, such was the state of the aged-care system. It was utterly broken.

So we do believe, given what we have gone through, that we need to establish an Australian centre for disease control. This CDC will have the capability to lead consistent advice, to be a source of authority and of ground truth, to be responsive and to ensure that we are prepared—that we have resilience back into our system. It is essential that we do that. Its focus initially will be on communicable diseases, which are, of course, infectious diseases—my wheelhouse. And I can tell you all now: the bugs are smarter than us. They always are. They will always be one step ahead of us because they mutate. They mutate fast. Every single one of those pandemics that I listed emerged from the animal kingdom. So, when we talk about one health being enshrined in an Australian CDC, we're referring to the fact that most of these pandemics that have affected humans have emerged from animals, so there's no point corralling human health from animal health. The two are intertwined, and that is what this legislation recognises.

I do support us rolling this out in a staged fashion, initially addressing infectious diseases, because I think that, yes, while there is an intention to later on address chronic diseases—non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and obesity—we want to ensure that we set up this institution for success. Trying to do too much too soon will only overload the system and undermine its confidence to actually carry out this kind of work. We want to set it up for success, and I think that a staged approach is important. I thank the Greens political party and the contributions from Senator Steele-John in recognising that we need to have a disability voice in the advisory committee. I think that is incredibly important, because the disability community were the hardest hit during the pandemic. They are a highly vulnerable group of people, and they died or suffered the most acute effects of lockdown, being completely segregated from the wider community.

In terms of recognising the need for the CDC to look at the impacts of climate change—

An honourable senator interjecting—

I absolutely agree with you; it should do that. Climate change is the threat multiplier. It puts pressure on every single system and sector of society. It's not just about heatwaves; it's not just about heat stress. There's so much more going on when it comes to climate change. It will certainly dovetail and support the work that our government has done in creating a national health and climate strategy. It will be complementary to that.

I want to issue a note of caution here, though. During the pandemic I became an activist. I was a science based activist. I spoke up for the health and welfare of healthcare workers, because we were not being looked after during that pandemic. It was really difficult. It was existential for us. It was existential for patients and people in the community, but it was absolutely existential for the front line.

I came away from that with learnings that I think the CDC needs to take into account. Firstly, we need to protect the workforce. The healthcare workforce is mission critical to the functioning of this nation. Protect the workforce; ring fence the workforce. It is the asset. It's not the experts, necessarily; it's the workforce. The workforce is everything. Protect the asset.

We should not be in a situation where PPE is being rationed in hospitals, aged-care facilities or clinics. We should not be in a situation where surgeons are jury-rigging their masks and literally sticking micropore tape on the edges of their mask because they have not been given the right PPE. We should not be in a situation where paramedics are having their masks and goggles fog up while they are resuscitating patients during a pandemic. That is exactly what happened. We should not be in a situation where healthcare workers are purchasing their own PPE, at considerable cost, because it's simply not provided by their place of work. We should not be in a situation where any healthcare worker is gaslit or censured in a system that privileges optics over work health and safety. Healthcare workers don't ask for much, but they want to be kept safe at work, especially when they are faced with a life-threatening, infectious disease.

I would say to an incoming CDC leadership: actually take some time to think about enacting the precautionary principle. If you're not sure, go to the highest level and then work backwards as the science evolves. Failure to do so puts lives at risk. If you are going to put frontline healthcare workers' lives at risk, what you are wishing for is collapse of the health system, burnout amongst staff and departures of staff from the health system, which just puts additional stress on other staff. You end up enacting a downward spiral, which is exactly what we saw and which was a mess that we cleaned up when we came to government.

Secondly, we need to ensure that we have a diversity of voices around the table, such as the voices of disability. We should make sure we have adequate representation around that advisory committee. We must have voices from the front line—from the nurses, the doctors, the paramedics and the allied health professionals. We must ensure that these voices are heard. If not, we end up with groupthink. We end up with leaders who are making decisions on behalf of people who are actually in the hot zone, and they may not always get it right. So listen to that wisdom from the edge. It is really, really important. It is a protective factor against making bad decisions.

Thirdly, we need to be open facing. A future CDC needs to be open facing to the public and listen to the workforce and to the science. It's important that a CDC responds to evolving science. In particular, I cite clean air. We spent far too long, right round this country, wiping down surfaces, which would have been fine if we had had a pandemic of gastro, but we didn't. We had a pandemic of a respiratory virus that was travelling through the air, and it was too late before that was adequately (1) recognised and (2) addressed.

Thank you, Senator; you will be in continuation. It being 1.30, we will now move to two-minute statements.

There is a cult of secrecy building a culture of secrecy in Parliament House. When Labor came to office, Prime Minister Albanese promised Australians a new era of accountability and transparency. But what we have instead is the least transparent government perhaps since Federation. This is an arrogant government and an arrogant prime minister, who believe they are accountable to no-one, least of all the Australian people represented in this chamber.

From the very start, this government has treated scrutiny as an inconvenience rather than an obligation. Labor created cheat sheets for public servants, directing them on how not to answer questions at Senate estimates. Labor have continually failed to answer basic questions at Senate estimates. Labor have shut down debate and guillotined legislation at a record rate, including forcing through 45 bills in the final sitting week of 2024. There's Labor's ongoing refusal to comply with simple requests for orders for the production of documents, and there are their delays when it comes to answering questions on notice. There's Labor's truth tax—its plans to introduce new charges for freedom-of-information requests—and stricter rules relating to cabinet confidentiality. There's the Prime Minister's mean, vindictive and personally nasty decision to sack opposition and crossbench staff. But things will only get worse.

Labor promised transparency but have delivered this culture of secrecy. The Prime Minister's record on integrity isn't just disappointing; it's a genuine affront to democracy. (Time expired)

What we have seen unfold in this chamber over the past days is the selective tearing up of the very conventions that govern this place. It has been a longstanding convention that the government provides the order of the call for question time and that questions are fairly allocated across the chamber. The Senate has chosen to tear up this convention, choosing to curtail the opportunity of non-executive government members, like me, to ask questions on behalf of my state to ministers, therefore denying almost one-third of the Senate—19 non-executive members of the government—a core function of fair democratic representation.

Senator David Pocock has previously stated that 'the opportunity for all Australians to be heard and fairly represented' is 'an issue which goes to the heart of our democracy'. And I couldn't agree with you more, Senator Pocock. But surely this does not just apply to representation from crossbenchers, the Greens political party, the Liberal Party and the National Party—non-government senators like them. Government senators should be allowed the opportunity to serve their representative function in question time too.

I have a motion on the Notice Paper for today, and it asks one very simple thing of senators—that, if you wish to rewrite the conventions that surround question time, you should at least show up for question time. Of course, this motion would not change any of our other agreed principles around absences for breastfeeding, caring, family reasons, illness or medical reasons. Senate question time is a crucial way for senators to seek information and to hold the executive to account. It's an important part of our program, and I do not think it is unreasonable that senators prioritise it over other recreational activities, which has become practice for some in this place. So I look forward to the Senate's support for this motion.

This year marks the largest number of deaths recorded for horseracing; 174 horses were killed on track or from injuries sustained on the track. It is disgusting that today's cup of cruelty was being celebrated in the Speaker's courtyard today while more and more horses suffer horrific deaths to feed the gambling industry's profits. We should all be saying, 'Nup to the cup,' not toasting an anachronistic tradition that only brings misery and suffering. The Melbourne Cup represents the perfect concoction of racing and gambling companies, sponsors and major political parties to get drunk on gambling profits and dirty donations. Horseracing kills, no ifs, no buts. But the industry goes to great lengths to hide its revolting underbelly.

Anthony Van Dyck broke down during the race in 2020, his fetlock fractured and his life ended. But watch the replay, and you'll be none the wiser. His life-ending injury was completely cut out of the frame. They simply edit out the footage and sweep it under the carpet, taking a page right out of greyhound racing's playbook. This cruel and callous industry doesn't give a damn about the horses, who are used, abused and killed for profit. Taxpayer money is being used to prop up one of the worst days of the year for our nation's domestic violence, alcohol related ambulance attendances and gambling—everyone loses. But, if there was a cup for cruelty, greed and cowardice, the gambling and racing industry would win it every year for sure. Horseracing is not a sport; it is legalised cruelty and killing for profit. This bloodbath must end.

Labor's hand-picked climate and energy tsar has now floated the idea of getting rid of the diesel fuel rebate to provide even more subsidies to the intermittent energy sector. This is a direct attack on Western Australia. It is a direct attack on the productive part of our economy. Let me be clear. I am asking: why? The diesel fuel rebate is not a subsidy. Excise taxes are meant to tax final consumption, not inputs to production. If you tax inputs to production, you double tax. You tax things twice. I will give a lesson to the Greens on this because they've been banging this drum for many years, and now it seems that the Labor Party is following the banging of those drums. Diesel fuel rebates are not a subsidy. They are not a subsidy.

Excise tax is also meant to fund road user charges, to fund the construction and upkeep of our roads. The rebate is paid for diesel that is used on farm or on mine sites. Notice to the Greens and the Labor Party: those are not gazetted roads. This is an input to the productive sector of our economy. It is vital to keep prices down on key commodities, right across our economy, including our food sector. Surely everyone in this place sees it is vitally important to keep the prices down. The diesel fuel rebate is a key part of the agricultural and mining economies and needs to stay.

Last night, I was so delighted to attend my first Prime Minister's Prizes as Minister for Science. The prizes promote some of our most brilliant scientists, but what they also do is elevate science when science and scientists are under attack in some quarters.

I want to congratulate Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska on her vital work in mitigating risks of air pollution and the spread of COVID-19. I also congratulate Dr Vikram Sharma on his work to enhance the security of digital technologies across the world. It was a privilege to witness the awarding of the first Prime Minister's Prize for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Knowledge Systems to Malgana man Professor Michael Wear for his extraordinary work on the sea cucumber fishery and waterway restoration in Shark Bay in Western Australia.

We also celebrated great teachers, Paula Taylor from the ACT and Matthew Dodds. They're two great science teachers who are improving science pedagogy today and fostering the great scientists of the future. I was so delighted that Matthew Dodds is inspiring girls and boys in the same chemistry and physics labs where I learnt high school science—perhaps not as well as I should have—in Glen Innes, just a few years ago. Professor Yao Zheng's work on the extraction of hydrogen from seawater is the kind of science that can and should enhance Australia's natural advantages as we tackle these big industrial challenges. And I suspect we will all have reason to be grateful for Dr David Khoury's statistical modelling of infectious diseases and Dr Nikhilesh Bappoo's development of a stud finder for human veins. We in the Albanese government know just how important science is, and last night's event was a precious event to celebrate it.

Many Australians will have a flutteron the Melbourne Cup. Despite what critics like to claim, there's almost no-one saying that they shouldn't. The Murphy review doesn't call for an end to gambling. It calls for an end to gambling advertising. Why? Because of the immense social harm it causes. We already know that Australians are the biggest losers in the world per capita, with $31-odd billion every single year in losses.

New research released last week from Roy Morgan showed just how badly this parliament has let people down through the government's failure to implement the 31 recommendations of the Murphy review. There are now over 620,000 problem gamblers in Australia, and the majority, we learnt, are aged under 35. This is a 22 per cent increase in just one year—in 12 months, the number of problem gamblers increased 22 per cent. In total, 3.49 million Australians are either problem gamblers or at-risk gamblers. We have to stop this harm.

We have to protect young Australians. Young people are gambling; five per cent of 16- to 17-year-olds report having placed a bet, and 75 per cent of eight- to 16-year-olds think that sports betting is now just a normal part of watching sport. Gamblers Anonymous groups have been reporting more under-18s accessing their services, and this is facilitated by rampant advertising—$280 million from sports betting companies. It has to stop. The Murphy review was clear that gambling ads have to stop.

Australians deserve honesty about energy policy. The reality is that Labor's net zero cannot be achieved without devastating consequences for Australian families, farmers, businesses and manufacturers and, of course, our natural environment. It's driving up electricity prices, hollowing out our industrial base and undermining our energy security, yet the government continues to treat this fantasy as sacred doctrine.

Under Minister Bowen, billions have been funnelled into renewable subsidies and carbon schemes that deliver more political theatre than power. The result is a fragile grid, soaring household bills and a generation of young Australians who are told their country's future depends on shutting down the industries that sustain it: coal, gas and uranium. The resources that built modern Australia are demonised while we import solar panels, wind turbines and batteries from nations like China with poor labour conditions and far weaker environmental standards.

This is not environmental stewardship. It's economic self-harm disguised as virtue. Our responsibility is to the national interest—to provide affordable, reliable energy that sustains jobs, strengthens sovereignty and underwrites prosperity. Targets set to appease international forums do not heat homes, power factories or defend our nation. Energy policy must serve Australian families, not the applause of global elites. It's time to remove subsidies paid by hardworking Australian families to green energy grifters and wealthy international investors. We need an unapologetic return to energy realism; investment in dependable power, including next-generation nuclear; maintenance of our coal and gas capacity; and policies that reward Australian production rather than penalise it.

A strong domestic energy sector is essential to reindustrialising our regions, rebuilding manufacturing and making Australia once again a country that makes things, grows things and exports strength to the world.

There has been a lot of talk in recent days about transparency and accountability in this chamber. But, when it comes to transparency and accountability, that standard must apply to all of us, not just some of us. It must apply on every sitting day, not just some days, and it should apply at question time, not just when it suits you.

In recent times, we have seen that the appearances in this chamber of the very people who champion transparency and accountability in this place have been fewer and far between, especially during question time, which is one of the key instruments used by the entire Australian parliament to ask questions of the executives. Some of those senators who talk about transparency and accountability can, in fact, be known to go MIA from this place. There are people who talk about wanting more transparency and accountability in the Senate, which is something we all want, but those same people have said in the media they often find themselves enjoying the parliament's health and recreational facilities in question time rather than being here. This week it was reported that others have been at a swanky Halloween party instead of being present in this chamber. I must admit, I actually thought it was a fake Betoota Advocate article, but, no, it was a real headline.

We don't get paid to go to the gym or to parties, do we? No. We get paid to show up in this chamber, to listen, to contribute and to vote. Even if senators don't have a question in question time, even if a question is not allowed, our job is to serve our communities in this place, not just when it suits us. While senators in the chamber voted for longer questions in question time, it seems they didn't vote for the accountability that goes with it, which is disappointing.

Israeli weapons companies, like Elbit Systems and Rafael, are in Sydney right now, showing off their instruments of death at the Indo-Pacific defence expo and maximising their profits, which are funded by enabling a genocide. Outside that expo, hundreds of people have gathered to protest. They marched from Tumbalong Park to Town Hall, calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, and good on them for doing it. When they got to the expo, they were met with pepper spray. They were met with arrests, and they were met with police lines defending the weapons dealers.

That's what happens when the state and federal Labor governments throw their lot in with the arms industry. The New South Wales Labor government is literally a sponsor of that expo, and, federally, Labor continues to approve weapons sales to Israel. Now they're unleashing police violence against people standing for peace. That's the modern Labor Party for you.

Protesting against genocide is not a crime. Demanding justice for Palestinians is not a crime. But, under Labor, dissent is being criminalised to protect the profits of war. Every shove, every spray of capsicum, every arrest is in defence of those who profit from death and genocide. That's not keeping the peace. That's protecting the war. We will not be quiet and we will not be intimidated. Silence in the face of genocide is complicity. Exporting weapons to Israel to be used in a genocide is complicity in that genocide.

In August, it was reported that, despite $3 billion set aside for Western Australia under Rewiring the Nation, a program designed to upgrade, expand and modernise Australia's electricity grid to support the transition into renewable energy, not a single dollar has been directed to a project in WA. At the same time, $3.54 billion—more than WA's entire allocation—had already been allocated to projects across Victoria and New South Wales. That figure has since doubled to $7.34 billion. Guess how much of that went to WA? It's a number between one and minus one. This information comes from order for the production of documents No. 148, which the government delivered more than a month late, only after I threatened to summon the minister to the Senate.

I know that WA runs three hours behind, but it is unbelievable that we are being left so far behind in actual project funding. The government are quick to sing WA's praises, and so they should be, but, when it comes to action, the vibes are decidedly off. When the federal and WA governments signed the Rewiring the Nation deal, four projects were listed for potential funding, yet one of them, the Chichester corridor project, doesn't expect a funding decision until late 2027—that's late 2027! Premier Roger Cook is in Canberra this week. Despite his claim of a close working relationship with federal Labor, WA remains stuck at zero while the east coast powers ahead. This is how the government treats WA—all talk, no action. 'Over-easters' might enjoy the fruits of our economic contributions, but, sooner or later, Western Australians will decide that we've had enough of being taken for granted.

Anthony Albanese promised Australians, 'All you need is your Medicare card, not your credit card,' and, 'You can see a GP for free under Labor.' He's made these promises more than 71 times, but already we have proof that this promise is just another Labor lie. The data shows that, under Anthony Albanese, not only do Australians need their credit card as well as their Medicare card when they go to the reception desk when they see their family doctor but their credit cards are being charged the highest amount of out-of-pocket costs—a record amount—at an average of $50 every time they see their family doctor. Officials from the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing have told us that out-of-pocket costs will continue to rise. They have even admitted that Australians will not feel any benefit from Labor's bulk-billing measures for four years, after the next election—quite convenient, really.

From media reports, we now know that only 13 per cent of metropolitan GP clinics have signed up for Labor's new program. That means millions of Australians will still have to get their credit cards out every time they go to see their family doctor. But it's no surprise that very few GP practices are taking up Labor's policy, because GP practices are largely small, family run businesses struggling with skyrocketing energy prices, rising rents, increasing mortgage and insurance costs and the growing cost of doing business under Labor, like most small businesses across the country are.

What's Labor's solution to this problem? It is to say, 'We'll intervene in the market if clinics cannot afford to sign up to our new program.' They've even left on the table the possibility that they will include the compulsory acquisition of your family practice. So, instead of supporting small family practices to deliver affordable, quality health care, they're threatening them with potential closure. This is what happens when the government uses Medicare as a plaything. It proves you just can't trust Labor on Medicare.

This is not my first speech. It is time we had a proper conversation about how many people are in this country unlawfully and the pressure this is putting on housing, services and hardworking Australians. Figures suggest there could be at least 200,000 people who are in Australia right now without a legal right to stay. That includes visa overstayers, failed asylum seekers, people working illegally, people abusing bridging visas and many others exploiting the system. The Albanese Labor government admits to around 75,000 illegals, and we know there are a hundred thousand individuals who have failed their asylum claims—a number that is skyrocketing. The system is being abused. And yet how many illegals were deported last month? Just five. How is that acceptable?

This is happening because the Albanese Labor government has completely given up on enforcing our immigration laws. They're not just turning a blind eye; they're allowing this crisis to grow. While Australians struggle to find a home or a hospital bed, Labor is protecting people who have no right to be here. This didn't happen by accident. It is the result of Labor failing to enforce immigration laws, failing to track visa overstayers and failing to remove those who should not be here. They've looked the other way while unlawful migration has quietly grown in the background, pushing up demand for homes, hospital beds and jobs, and it is everyday Australians who are paying the price.

Almost two-thirds of Australians now say they want fewer immigrants coming into the country, and that includes nearly 40 per cent who want a lot fewer. That's across every age group and every income level. The message is clear; people have had enough, and support for One Nation is rising because we are the ones who are listening. So, if your visa has expired or your asylum claim has been rejected, you should leave—voluntarily, if possible. If not, you should face deportation. It is time to restore integrity to our immigration system and it is time to put Australians first.

Over the past six months, we have seen a violent shift in the United States, a shift that should worry every single one of us—armed troops occupying cities like Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Chicago; and citizens detained without trial and deported to foreign prisons. The President of the United States is weaponising the justice system and punishing his political opponents simply for dissenting. We continue to see reckless warmongering with countries like Canada, Mexico and, now, Nigeria. President Trump has even called for the US to start immediately testing nuclear weapons delivery systems. If any other country did this, there would be outrage from this place. These are clear violations of human rights and of international law, but, because it is the US, our government stays silent. They are more interested in protecting a political pact to send hundreds of billions of Australian funds to the United States through AUKUS, rather than investing in our hospitals, our schools or literally anything else. Our government clings to the hope that billions of our dollars will get us a handful of nuclear submarines. President Trump is not known for keeping his promises, just ask the investors in his failed businesses or the workers he has underpaid. It is time for this government to wake up, stop pretending this is normal, cancel AUKUS while we still can and— (Time expired)

Right now in Tasmania, our hospitals are filled with workers who show up every day for their communities, but they alone can't keep the system running when the funding simply doesn't add up. The federal government is offering an extra $20 billion in funding over five years. On the surface, that sounds impressive, but it falls billions short of the promise they made to our states to lift their contribution to 42.5 per cent of public hospital costs by 2030. This new offer won't even get us close. It's more like 35 per cent. For Tasmania, that shortfall isn't just a number on a spreadsheet; it's a crisis waiting to happen. We have an ageing population in rural and regional communities that rely on already stretched services. To cope, hospitals are putting in vacancy controls and tightening every belt they can find, and that means quality of care is slipping. That's not because our workers don't care, but because we're asking too much of them. Let's be clear: the point of federal funding should be to make sure money is never pitted against health. Yet here we are again—promises made, promises broken.

It's not just Tassie; every state is feeling the strain. Under this new deal, Tassie is more than $670 million worse off. That's 1.2 million emergency visits potentially unfunded or 128,000 elective surgeries that just won't happen. Behind each of those numbers is a Tasmanian, a person waiting, a family wondering, a nurse working a double shift because there's no-one else. We need the federal government to step up and honour its word. Tasmanians do deserve better, and Australians do deserve better. Our health system can't afford another broken promise.

Australians know that climate change is real and the need for action is urgent, even many in the Liberal Party now say as much. But missing in action are the Nationals, who, with a shrug and a smirk, walked away from net zero over the weekend. In abandoning net zero, they have abandoned the Australian people, current and future generations. The party of farmers are turning their backs on farmers who wish to droughtproof their businesses. They are turning their backs on jobs in regional communities. They are turning their backs on regional communities who wish to diversify their economies, knowing that it's these same communities who are the ones who are most acutely feeling the impacts of climate change. This is the very definition of 'climate delayism'. It is the next chapter in the climate denialism playbook, and it is just as harmful. We have seen this movie before—

Thank you, Senator Ananda-Rajah. The time for statements has finished.

I inform the Senate that Senator Farrell, the Minister for Trade and Tourism and Special Minister of State, will be absent from question time for the remainder of the week on account of ministerial business. In Senator Farrell's absence, ministers will represent portfolios at question time in accordance with the letter circulated to the President, party leaders and Independent senators.

I draw to the attention of honourable senators the presence in the public gallery of parliamentarians from the Indian parliament. On behalf of all senators, I wish you a warm welcome to Australia and, in particular, to the Senate.

Honourable senators: Hear, hear!

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Watt. Net overseas migration for the year up to 31 March 2025 was 315,900. That is 46 per cent higher than the 10-year average before the COVID-19 pandemic and 34 per cent higher than the long-term assumption used by the Centre for Population within the Treasury department. In an interview on the ABC Insiders program on 19 October 2025, the minister was asked whether the current level of immigration was too high. The minister was also asked what an appropriate level of immigration was. The minister did not provide a target number nor a range. Minister, does the government have a target number or even a target range for permanent migration and for net overseas migration for the short, medium and long term?

Thank you, Senator Scarr. I know that Senator Scarr represents one view of immigration policy that exists within the coalition. We've got Senator Nampijinpa Price up the back there, who's got a different view. Mr Hastie is in the other place with a different view. Senator Sharma probably has a different view, and Senator Antic's got a different view.

Senator Scarr, on a point of order?

Yes, it's on direct relevance.

I'll draw the minister to your question. Minister Watt, please continue.

What I can say is that the Albanese government has one view, which is that we have worked hard to reduce net overseas migration, including through changes to international student numbers that were opposed by the coalition. Yet again, we've seen the coalition argue for one thing and do another. We're not going to take lectures on this or any other policy from a divided rabble of a coalition.

Senator Scarr, first supplementary?

I note we didn't get a target number or a range. In its own migration strategy, the government committed to developing a principles based multi-year planning model for permanent migration to improve collaboration with states and territories. In the same interview on ABC's Insiders, the minister advised that he abandoned the multi-year planning approach. Minister, how can all three levels of government undertake appropriate planning for housing supply, services and infrastructure without direction from the federal government on target immigration levels?

Senator Scarr, the facts tell the true story, which is that the most recent data shows that net overseas migration is around 17,000 below Treasury's forecast for the first three-quarters of 2024-25. Net overseas migration has now fallen for six quarters in a row in annual terms, and it's over 40 per cent down on its peak. The government recognised that steps did need to be taken to fix the broken, discredited, corrupted immigration system that we inherited from the coalition. Those figures show that we're doing that.

Senator Scarr, second supplementary?

():  Again, I note that no target or range was provided. When the minister announced the permanent migration program for the current year, he made an announcement of three sentences—less than a hundred words. Minister, do you agree it is in the national interest, especially now with heightened concerns, for the government to provide a detailed statement of reasons for its immigration policy settings, including how it is balancing pressures on housing supply, services and infrastructure with addressing skills shortages?

Again, seriously, are we expected to take lectures from people who like to, in their home cities, spend a lot of time with multicultural communities but, when they come down to Canberra, vote with people who want to limit Indian migration?

Senator Scarr, a point of order?

Direct relevance.

Senator Scarr, the minister has only just begun his response. I will listen carefully to his answer and, if necessary, I will draw him to your question. Minister Watt, please continue.

We will be ready to take lectures from the opposition on matters involving immigration when they can work out just one policy rather than Senator Nampijinpa Price's policy, Senator Scarr's policy and Mr Hastie's policy, which is all about taking over the leadership from Sussan Ley.

Senator Ruston, I assume you're rising on a point of order. I will draw the minister to Senator Scarr's question. The minister has completed his answer.

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Wong. A focus of the Albanese Labor government's first term was strengthening Medicare after a decade of neglect. How is the government delivering access to quality, affordable health care for even more Australians?

Thank you, Senator Ananda-Rajah. We know you, in particular, are someone who understands the health system firsthand. You understand how important it is for the government to build an even stronger Medicare for Australians. While those opposite continue to focus on themselves and engage in multiple media interviews about themselves, we on this side are focused on delivering affordable, quality health care for Australians, making medicines cheaper for all Australians, record investments in bulk billing and, as we all know—and this is hard for them to hear—1 November, last Saturday, was the beginning of our Medicare bulk-billing practice incentive program, an $8.5 billion investment, the single-largest investment in Medicare since a Labor government established it 51 years ago.

What does the tripling of the bulk-billing incentive mean for all Australians? It means the introduction of an additional incentive payment for practices that bulk bill every patient. It means that nine in 10 GP visits will be bulk billed by the end of the decade and it means three times more practices across Australia will be fully bulk-billing practices, like the One Healthcare clinic in Woodside, which has declared already that, with the help of the incentive payment, it will move to a fully bulk-billed practice.

Already, around a thousand clinics have indicated they are moving to full bulk billing in the coming weeks, after having previously charged gap fees. That is a Labor government in action. The number is growing each day, in addition to the 1,600 clinics that already bulk bill 100 per cent of their patients. Six months ago, Australians voted for a government that would strengthen Medicare, and we are delivering on that commitment.

Senator Ananda-Rajah, a first supplementary?

The Albanese Labor government opened 87 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics in its first term. These clinics have made a big difference in communities right across Australia, giving Australians access to care quicker and for free. How is the government continuing to deliver on its commitment to strengthen Medicare by establishing even more Medicare Urgent Care Clinics?

(—) (): Thank you Senator Ananda-Rajah for the supplementary. In October we passed a very important milestone. We saw Australians clock up two million visits to our Medicare Urgent Care Clinics across the country. As you said, we opened 87 in our first term, and we are on track in this term to open another 50. What it means for Australians is that those in need of urgent care that is not life-threatening can get help much more conveniently, much more quickly and for free. In my home state of South Australia, this is already making a difference. We are delivering on the new Labor member for Sturt's campaign commitment to open a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Adelaide's eastern suburbs. We are opening two more in Victor Harbor and in Whyalla. I am sure Senator Ruston will be very pleased about this, because that helps take pressure off local hospitals, and almost half of them— (Time expired)

Senator Ananda-Rajah, a second supplementary?

Clearly, strengthening Medicare by improving access to quality, affordable health care is a key focus of the Albanese Labor government. How will the government continue to strengthen Medicare and guard against efforts to undermine it?

Thank you for the question. We all know Medicare was hard-fought. We had to build it twice because the coalition in government destroyed the first effort to establish it. We all remember John Howard called bulk-billing a rort, Peter Dutton tried to end bulk-billing with a GP tax and Peter Dutton's successor as the health minister, now Leader of the Opposition, chose not only not to repair the damage but actually to make it worse, extending the Medicare rebate freeze—the only health minister in Medicare's history never to lift that rebate, not even once. And the result was predictable: bulk-billing in freefall and pressure on families kept rising.

For us on this side, universal health care is not negotiable. Medicare is for all Australians, and Labor will always fight for it. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Senator Ayres. AEMO estimates that increases of up to 55 per cent for overhead transmission line projects are likely, compared to its 2024 integrated system plan. AEMO has stated:

… increases in costs for electricity transmission network development would impact bills for electricity consumers.

Minister, given that electricity prices and bills have increased by more than $1,000 under Labor, how much more will families pay to deliver your government's 82 per cent renewable energy target?

Senator Canavan was the member of the then government who pointed out that electricity prices for industrial energy users went up by 91 per cent under the last government. We certainly won't be taking lectures on energy policy from the supporters of the former government, who had a decade of dysfunction and disinvestment which has had profound impacts for Australian industry.

What industry and households can be certain of is that a certain plan that's focused on investment certainty will deliver a much better outcome.

Senator Canavan, first supplementary?

I note that the minister did not talk once about the government's future plans. Australians need to understand the government does not have a plan for their futures. On 24 September 2022, the minister advised that Australia would need to install 22,000 solar panels every day and 40 wind turbines every month to reach the government's targets. Can the minister advise now how many solar panels and wind turbines have been installed since that time?

Australians are the biggest adopters of solar technology on their rooftops because it's in the interests of their electricity bills. It's saving them thousands of dollars every year. And it turns out that—you know the other thing we're big adopters of? Batteries? Tens of thousands of batteries are being installed every month.

Senator Canavan, second supplementary?

They can't even last more than 20 seconds to talk about their energy policies. They have absolutely nothing here. I ask the minister again: has the minister undertaken modelling of how many hectares of agricultural land will be taken up and impacted by the 95 renewable energy projects so far approved by this government?

The modelling I was most interested in was the one that you did last term when you covered your face in coal dust, pretending to be a coalminer!

Senator Faruqi?

Order! Senator McKenzie, you are being disrespectful. I have called Senator Faruqi. She is to be heard in silence.

My question is to Minister Ayres, representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Minister, the Senate committee report on climate risk and insurance premiums, tabled a year ago, found that climate driven disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity, with insurance skyrocketing and becoming unaffordable and unavailable. The national climate risk assessment, which Labor tried to hide, has painted a very dire picture of the future, and just this week new reports are warning of increasing extreme weather and impacts on insurance. Communities are bearing the brunt of the cascading and compounding effects of cost of living, insurance and the climate crisis. Minister, when will your government respond to the recommendations in this report and actually do something for communities on the front lines of the climate crisis?

Well, Senator Faruqi, we hid the national climate risk assessment report by releasing it! We released it on the timetable determined by us because it was at the heart of this government determining a credible, deliverable achievable target for 2035.

Senator Faruqi, first supplementary?

Minister, the polluter-pays principle demands that the cost of the climate crisis be shifted to those responsible for it. Fossil fuel corporations make a motza as they wreck the climate, while the community pays. When will your government force coal and gas companies to pick up the tab for the climate damage that they are causing and contribute to disaster mitigation, resilience and the cost of rising insurance?

There was a model that incorporated this principle, where firms that had a responsibility for pollution would make a contribution. It was there for this Senate to vote on in 2009, and I remember the Greens political party and this rabble over here voting it down and delaying energy action and investment for another two decades.

Senator Faruqi, second supplementary?

Minister, you can try and evade these questions, but you know full well that coal and gas are killing the planet. Why are you fast-tracking coal and gas with your so-called environment reforms?

As I say, if you've got politics focused on bumper stickers and slogans, it has consequences.

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water, Senator Watt. Figures released over the weekend show that renewable energy in Australia edged right up to 50 per cent of the national energy market for the month of October. This follows the figures in September, which was the first month in which renewables provided more electricity than coal. The Albanese Labor government's policies are obviously encouraging uptake in the cheapest and cleanest form of power generation. How many renewable projects have been approved since the government was elected in May 2022?

Thank you very much, Senator Dolega—who I know is a rational voice in this debate, which is fast becoming more irrational by the day. The facts show that the government's policies are encouraging a greater uptake in the cheapest and cleanest form of energy generation, that being renewables. In fact, for two months in a row—I hope you're sitting down now—renewable power has provided more electricity in Australia than coal. Are you okay? Are you okay after a few facts?

We're doing this through policies like the Capacity Investment Scheme and supporting the take-up of home batteries and community batteries at a massive scale, with the rebate program for home batteries experiencing incredible popularity. All of this means more clean and cheap energy generation across the country. The Australian Energy Market Operator quarterly figures showed a 27 per cent reduction in wholesale prices because of this record renewables penetration. That's right! Power prices would be higher under the Nationals policy of extending coal, let alone under nuclear power. Obviously, we've got more work to do to ensure that those reductions are flowing through to consumers, but it's good to see the impact that renewables are having on that wholesale price. Despite the best efforts of the coalition and, somewhat surprisingly, the Greens party, who also want to block renewables, our government is also supporting the rollout of renewables by ensuring they are approved in a timely fashion.

Since coming to office in May 2022, our government has approved 111 renewable energy projects across the country. That's enough to power every home in Australia and more. What a contrast that is to the energy policy trainwreck we see unfolding endlessly in the coalition, who, having produced I think it was 23 energy policies in government, are now approaching 30 in opposition. Now they're so divided they had to agree to not even talk about net zero in their party room today. (Time expired)

Senator Dolega, first supplementary?

Whether it's the Capacity Investment Scheme, environmental law reform and the more than 110 renewable projects that have been approved since we came to government, it's certainly obvious to my community that the Albanese Labor government is committed to cheaper and cleaner energy. How is the government's consistent position on building more renewables and reducing emissions ensuring certainty in our energy market?

Thanks again, Senator Dolega. As they say, consistency is key. It's the key to providing the investment certainty needed to deliver cheaper and cleaner power, which is why the Albanese government has been consistent in supporting the net zero emissions by 2050 target. We want Australians to seize the economic opportunities from the renewable energy transition and, importantly, we want Australians to grab the jobs that this transition provides.

There are some opposite who get it—like Senator Bragg, who said today: 'Virtually every country has committed to net zero emissions. We would be a pariah state if we moved away from it.' Senator Bragg noted the countries opposed to net zero: Iran, Libya—and to this list we can now add the National Party. Senator Hume gets it—from up there on the backbench for the moment—and she had some sharp words directed at the person who dumped her from shadow cabinet. She said:

The most important thing now though is that the leader takes a position on energy policy—and does so with a matter of urgency.

A few more wise words from Senator Hume up the back. (Time expired)

Senator Dolega, second supplementary?

How are businesses in rural and regional Australia being supported from the approval of more clean and reliable energy generation, and what are the threats to this massive investment opportunity for rural and regional Australia?

You haven't mentioned Tomago.

Thanks, Senator Dolega. I'm happy to mention Tomago. Why did the owners of Tomago say that they were now consulting about potentially shutting down? Because they couldn't get enough renewable power. They couldn't get enough renewable power because coal fired power was too expensive. You people have your heads so far under the ground that you can't hear anything. You can't even hear it when the owners of these companies say that it's your policies that are endangering the jobs in heavy industry right across the country.

If you'd only open your eyes, you would know that renewables are not only keeping the lights on as coal plants reach the end of their technical lives but they're also creating jobs and alternative income streams and benefits right across the Australian communities. If you actually speak to farmers rather than organising protests amongst them you will know that farmers are earning a significant income stream from hosting renewable energy projects alongside their existing farming activities. There are sheep farmers right now who are building solar farms alongside their sheep farms, and you should start listening to them. (Time expired)

My question is for the Minister for Indigenous Australians. Recently your Labor colleagues in the NT parliament—all of whom are Aboriginal people—voted in favour of a motion for an independent body at the Commonwealth level with powers to investigate and enforce change in relation to all First People's deaths in custody. The motion was defeated by the racist CLP government. Do you agree with your Aboriginal NT Labor colleagues that this body is needed?

Minister Wong, on a point of order?

With respect, I'd ask you to request that the senator rephrase the question. That is very clearly both a request about an opinion but also about an opinion in relation to the territory legislature, both of which are not within the bounds of the standing orders.

They're racist!

Senator, I'm actually trying to be helpful. There are ways you can ask a similar question without crossing both of those boundaries in the standing orders.

You're a government that doesn't like black people!

Senator Thorpe, the intention of your question is clear and that is is it the intention of the government to establish a body? But I would ask you to take on board the comment Senator Wong has made. Further I ask you to withdraw the comments you made about the NT government.

Violence of the colony—

Senator Thorpe—

I withdraw.

Thank you, Senator Thorpe, for the question. This is an issue that does affect, deeply, the people of the Northern Territory—particularly those who represent First Nations families across the Northern Territory. Those would be the bush members, largely, that Senator Thorpe is referring to, and I know this is really difficult. My job, though, is to make sure that, in terms of justice, the issues that are raised around incarceration and deaths in custody are a focus right across every state and territory jurisdiction. My role is to work with both the Northern Territory and all of the other states and territories on the concerns we have at the Commonwealth level about those high rates of incarceration.

Thank you, Minister. Have you completed your answer? You have. Senator Thorpe, first supplementary?

I had a point of order.

The minister has completed her answer.

Before she sat down, I stood up, President, as I had a point of order.

Senator Thorpe, the minister has resumed her seat. I'm going to invite you to put your first supplementary.

Your Prime Minister was recently asked about taking Commonwealth action on deaths in custody. He used the excuse that he needs to be convinced that people in Canberra know better than people in the NT. Now NT Aboriginal members of your Labor government are calling for Commonwealth action. Will federal Labor act or what?

Thank you, Senator Thorpe. I do believe I answered the substantial part of your question in your previous one. Yes, we are acting. In terms of the relationships through the Coalition of Peaks and through my work with Pat Turner as co-chair, we are trying to deal with the high rates of incarceration and the concerns we have around deaths in custody. The Prime Minister is supportive of this, my colleagues are supportive of this, and I am working, and continue to do so—as I do also with Senator Thorpe—to try and make a difference in terms of the justice issues in the states and territories.

Senator Thorpe, second supplementary?

Last week we heard the heartbreaking and angering news that yet another First Nations person has died in custody, and they keep dying in custody. A young 21-year-old woman with her whole life ahead of her was killed in custody. How many more deaths are you and your Prime Minister willing to accept before you use the powers you have?

I certainly put on the record that this isn't about wanting to see any early deaths of anyone at all—whether it's in prisons or out of prisons for that matter. I have spoken with the crossbenchers in particular, Senator Thorpe, on the direction that I'm taking in working with the states and territories to ensure that the concerns that we've raised around the high incarceration rates and the deaths in custody are being listened to.

Minister McCarthy, please resume your seat. Senator Thorpe.

I just want to know when you're going to use the powers—

Senator Thorpe, why are you on your feet?

Yes, President. Obviously I'm on my feet.

But are you on a point of order?

A point of order on relevance. The question is whether the minister is going to use her federal powers to stop the deaths that continue to rise of Aboriginal people in custody.

Thank you, Senator Thorpe. The minister is being directly relevant to your question. Minister McCarthy.

In the preparation that I am doing in regard to joint council meeting with the Coalition of Peaks, of course the federal funding—that's the relationships that we have with states and territories—is an area that I am looking at and trying to work on with my colleagues to see if we can absolutely hold states and territories to account.

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors, Senator McAllister. Minister, I've been approached by a family in Canberra who are desperately seeking a place in residential care for their father. He's in his 80s and is living with dementia. His wife, also in her 80s, is struggling to care for him. She herself is living with MS and is no longer strong enough to help him dress or shower. They have now approached every single aged-care facility here in the ACT and they've all turned this man down—every single one. He was briefly given a place, but after one night was asked to move out. His dementia is apparently too troublesome for aged-care facilities. Minister, what can be done for this family or any family in this situation?

I thank Senator Pocock for the question. Senator, I think from the way that you phrased your question you understand that I wouldn't seek to provide a direct response to the circumstances you describe for this individual family for a number of reasons. I don't have all of the information about all that's transpired and I also wouldn't discuss a person's circumstances in a public forum.

But I can tell you that the government understands very clearly the need to reform the aged-care system because of the increasing demands on that system. It's why we have stepped through the reform process that we have in a bipartisan way with those opposite. As you know, the new act came into force on 1 November. It includes a range of provisions. Most important amongst those are the measures that are designed to make sure that the aged-care system can operate sustainably. That's because of the demand we expect from people who wish to age in place, at home, but also to make sure that the funding arrangements for residential aged care are such that we can see continued investment and allow that sector to expand in the way that we know it needs to expand.

Senator Pocock, first supplementary?

Minister, under the new rights based act, will residential aged-care facilities have to take someone like this who can't find anywhere to go?

As I indicated in my answer to Senator Pocock's primary question, I'm really not in a position to provide specific advice about a specific person in this forum. But I would invite the senator to reach out to Minister Rae. I think he's been very clear on many occasions that he is very happy to hear from parliamentarians who have examples of people who are finding it difficult in the community. He would be pleased to hear from the senator in relation to this matter also.

Senator Pocock, second supplementary?

I think there are many like that gentleman in the community and I was asking more broadly. I understand you won't comment on a specific case, but it was meant to be a bit more general. It's also been reported today that the inspector-general believes more First Nations people will be pushed into residential homes because they can't afford services like a shower through the Support at Home system. Minister, does the government share the concerns that including compensation for stolen generations in means testing will make it more difficult for First Nations people to remain at home and age with dignity?

I thank Senator Pocock for that question. The government is very focused on ensuring that First Nations elders get the safe and culturally appropriate care that they deserve. For Support at Home, the means testing is reliant on the broader social security means testing that uses the definitions under social security law. I'm aware of the article that you're citing, I think. Minister Rae has indicated that he takes those concerns seriously and that he will be considering the effects of all co-contributions on First Nations Australians in aged care. More broadly, the point the government would make is that every First Nations elder deserves access to aged care that's culturally sensitive and that suits their needs, and we are determined to make sure that our historic investment in aged care delivers that.

My question goes to the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs, Senator Watt. Minister, the number of people living in Australia unlawfully could be as high as 200,000. This includes bridging visa holders who have let their visas lapse, failed protection applicants still here after refusal, people working illegally, breaching their visa terms, and others. At a time when everyday Australians, including families across Western Sydney and regional New South Wales, are living in tents and cars due to a housing crisis and essential services are stretched to breaking point, what does this government say to Australians who want to know why more action hasn't been taken to remove illegal immigrants from Australia? What is this government's explanation for allowing so many illegals to remain? And when will serious removals begin?

Thanks, Senator. I'd probably like to check those figures before I'd accept that they were accurate. But I've already outlined some of the steps that the government has taken to reduce net overseas migration. You and many other senators on that side of the chamber often like to draw a link between migration and housing without ever acknowledging that you have consistently voted against every effort this government has taken to provide more housing. So maybe get on board with that.

Senator Bell, first supplementary?

Minister, according to Newspoll, almost two-thirds of Australians want to end mass immigration. Australians are crying out for your government to listen. In New South Wales, housing demand is out of control, schools are overwhelmed and hospitals are at breaking point. So why is Labor more focused on appeasing foreign nationals and visa overstayers than protecting Australian citizens, especially when you have elderly people stuck in emergency departments and families sleeping rough in cars?

Again, the most recent data show that net overseas migration in Australia is around 17,000 below Treasury's forecast for the first three-quarters of 2024-25, and net overseas migration has now fallen for six quarters in a row in annual terms and it's over 40 per cent down on its peak. It really would be easier to take One Nation seriously, when they try to draw a linkage between housing and migration, if they'd once voted for anything to do with investment in housing.

Senator Bell, second supplementary?

Minister, I'll just draw you back. This was a question about illegals in Australia. The number that the government will admit to is that there are 75,000 people living in Australia illegally, and yet fewer than five were forcibly deported in September. Again, how can Labor justify this soft approach, with everyday Australians struggling with soaring house prices, rising rents and hospitals under pressure? Is this government working for Australians or for migration agents and university lobbyists?

Senator Bell, I've twice now pointed out that your party has consistently voted against everything we've ever done to invest in housing, and yet you continue to draw a link between the lack of housing and migration. We do need more homes in this country. We need them for people who have lived in Australia all their lives, and we need them for new migrants to Australia. You'd have a lot more credibility on this issue if your party hadn't opposed everything we'd ever done to invest in housing.

My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher. After a decade of inaction by the coalition, the Albanese Labor government has delivered the most ambitious housing reform in generations. We've committed $43 billion to make it easier to buy and better to rent and to build more homes, helping over 185,000 first home buyers, boosting rent assistance by nearly 50 per cent for a million households and driving a national target of 1.2 million new homes. How is this plan assisting Australians to get into homeownership?

I thank Senator O'Neill for the question on the important area of the Commonwealth's investment in housing—and my colleagues who sit here today in the chamber for all the advocacy that goes into our policy development. We know that the pressures in the housing sector have been growing for some time. They preceded the Albanese government being elected in 2022, and we acknowledged in that campaign that homeownership felt too far away and being a renter felt too insecure, which is why Labor have put together a $43 billion plan to build more homes, back first home buyers into homeownership and support renters.

Key initiatives include, for first home buyers, the $10 billion to build 100,000 homes for first home buyers, $6.3 billion under Help to Buy and $5.4 million for the five per cent deposit scheme expansion. To boost supply we've also provided billions of dollars to states and territories to address infrastructure backlogs and deliver new housing. To increase productivity we have invested to accelerate the uptake of modern methods of construction and, again, invested in our commitment to incentivise states and territories to remove red tape preventing the uptake of modern methods of construction.

For social and affordable housing, we've invested to make sure that the Housing Australia Future Fund and the social housing accelerator payment—

How many has it built?

are working to deliver more social housing. I hear Senator Bragg. It's taken a while to get him going, but he's there like a horse at the Melbourne Cup, ready to go. I'll be very pleased to go into the difference between the social houses that were constructed under your government when you were last in power and what we are delivering right now.

Senator O'Neill, first supplementary?

Thank you so much for that answer, Minister. Under the Albanese Labor government over 500,000 new homes have been built, including more than 5,000 social and affordable homes, and we're training more tradies and cutting red tape to make building easier. It's clear that the solution is boosting supply. How are the government's policies responding to the supply challenge?

How's your demand-side policy going?

Order! Senator Bragg, which part of 'order' did you not understand? Minister Gallagher.

More than 520,000 homes have been built nationwide since Labor was elected, and we're working with the states and territories to build infrastructure to support new housing.

I heard Senator Bragg before. He's concerned about demand-side policies. Well, I was concerned to read the transcript yesterday of your interview with Patricia Karvelas, when you just dumped super for housing and everything that you've stood for. And all your colleagues say, 'We're not going to do that anymore. We'll just let that go.' That was at 3.35 yesterday, on a day when more than 30 members of the opposition were racing to get an interview spot in the press gallery. You couldn't get a spot in the press gallery yesterday. It was like a stampede. But Senator Bragg just managed to nick that little 15-minute interview, where he was able to dump super for housing. We have built over 5,000 social and affordable houses— (Time expired)

Senator O'Neill, second supplementary?

Thank you very much, Minister. I know how much hope those answers give Australians who want to get into housing. How does the Albanese Labor government's approach help Australians get into housing now whilst also ensuring Australians have adequate retirement savings?

Minister Gallagher.

Thank you, Senator O'Neill, for that question. When we look at social and affordable housing, over 5,000 have already been completed since the Albanese government was elected. Compare that to 373 in the entire time that those opposite were in government. They worked very hard to deliver those 373. They were exhausted! There have been 5,000 since we came to government, and 25,000 are under construction. We are well on the way to 55,000 social and affordable rental properties.

In terms of the question Senator O'Neill asked about retirement savings, yesterday we saw the big crab walk away from super for housing. For every criticism that we have had about that program, Senator Bragg supported our position. Finally, yesterday, he said, 'We won't have that policy again, Patricia.' There it went, on the floor, on the scrap heap. (Time expired)

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Ageing, Senator McAllister. The Prime Minister promised on more than 71 occasions that Australians would only need their Medicare card and it would be free to see a GP under Labor. But Australians have been telling us their real experience on the ground. Bec, from Kojonup in my home state of Western Australia, has told us: 'It costs me over $100 per visit to see the doctor, and I only get back $43 from Medicare.' It's certainly not free. She said, 'It costs me more than I get back.' Minister, when is Bec's out-of-pocket cost going to come down to zero dollars?

Thank you very much, and I am again very pleased to inform the Senate about the progress that we are making in restoring the enormous damage that was done to bulk-billing and to Medicare under the long period of government under the Liberals, when they froze the Medicare rebate, ripped billions and billions out of the Medicare system—

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator McAllister, I'm sorry; please resume your seat. Order on my left! I can't hear the answer. Minister McAllister.

There is significant damage to repair. But, as senators will know, on 1 November our investment to lift bulk-billing rates started rolling out, and I can inform the senator that, in his own home state of Western Australia, 134 GP practices have indicated, through the AOA process, that they will become Medicare bulk-billing practices. That is an increase of 67 on where we were previously, a doubling of the number of practices that are fully bulk-billing in Western Australia.

Senator O'Sullivan, first supplementary?

Thank you, President, although I got very much a nonanswer on my question as to when it was going to come down to zero dollars. Cheryl from The Entrance North in New South Wales has told us: 'My GP charges $120 for a 15-minute consultation. I receive a $43.90 Medicare rebate and out-of-pocket costs of $76.10. I'm on the aged pension. I can't afford this, so my health is failing.' (Time expired)

The government is concerned about access to health care. In fact so concerned were we that we went to the last election promising to make the single largest investment in Medicare ever to deal with these circumstances. In the state of New South Wales, which your question refers to, the number of practices that have indicated through the EOI process that they will become Medicare bulk-billing practices—that is, practices that offer services for free for all their patients—is 904. That is an increase of 322 practices of those clinics that will be changing from mixed billing to fully bulk-billing in New South Wales.

Senator O'Sullivan, second supplementary?

Alicia from Mount Gambier in South Australia paid $103 for a five-minute appointment on her blood test results. She said: 'I got back $46 on Medicare, but that's beside the point.' We all agree with Alicia. When are Alicia's out-of-pocket costs projected to come down?

I can inform the Senate that in South Australia, as in the other states that I have mentioned in my answers, the number of practices that intend to move from mixed billing to fully bulk-billing has significantly increased. An additional 89 practices in South Australia have indicated that they will move to fully bulk-bill. What that means is that for people attending those practices, their services that are bulk-billed will be free.

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Defence. The Nightly reported yesterday that the Albanese government sent an email to defence companies telling them to stop directly exporting military goods to Israel. Why, with the past two years of genocide, after tens of thousands of deaths and after the destruction of Gaza, did it take the Albanese government two years to send this email?

I would first say, as I have repeatedly said, Australia hasn't supplied weapons to Israel since the conflict began and for at least the past five years. In relation to any conditions, I believe that Defence officials at the last estimates outlined the government's approach to defence exports at length. I would refer the senator to that testimony, which he would be familiar with because I think he was present for that hearing.

Senator Shoebridge, first supplementary?

Noting my question was about the email that has only recently been sent, since estimates, will the government send a similar email to companies involved in the F-35 supply chain, who are sending weapons parts to Israel from Australia, or will the US stop Australia from adopting this as part of a genuinely independent foreign policy, or is there a rule against asking this question?

I think the senator would know that nobody has told him there's a rule against him asking questions, because he regularly asks them. In relation to the F-35, as the defence minister has said, we are one of 20 like-minded countries who operate the aircraft. We are a longstanding participant in the program, and the arrangements in relation to this program were gone through in detail on many occasions, both in here and in estimates.

Senator Shoebridge, second supplementary?

Will the Albanese Labor government continue to allow companies to wash their weapons and weapons parts from Australia through the US to Israel under AUKUS Pillar II, or do you accept that your government has a role under international law in monitoring the end user of weapons and weapons parts even if they're being washed through the US as the middle person?

I don't accept the premise of the question, and I'd refer you to my previous answers and many statements we have made in support of international law.

My question is to the Minister of the Environment and Water, Senator Watt. Senator, there were a barrage of complaints from the public regarding the rollout of the Bureau of Meteorology website, including one from your colleague climate change minister Mr Bowen where he said:

The bureau clearly has work to do in that it has lost community confidence in the new website.

Were you, your office or your department included in a pre-rollout of the $4 million website, and, if so, when?

Thanks, Senator Cadell. I know you have a genuine interest in these matters. You will have seen that, last week, I made public comment on this matter, and I recognised the very large number of complaints that had been received about the changes the Bureau of Meteorology had made to their website. As a result of that, I had a meeting with the Acting CEO of the BoM. I explained to him my view that, clearly, the new website did not meet users' expectations, and I asked him to consider urgent changes to the website. I'm pleased that they took that feedback on board and have begun making changes. I was not personally briefed or involved about the new website, certainly not verbally. I don't recall ever seeing a written brief about that as well. I'm not aware of my office having been involved. I'm not sure what my department's involvement was, but I'm happy to come back with any further information I may have. But I was not personally involved.

Senator Cadell, first supplementary?

Similar to that, were you aware of any external contacts or any external testing of the website from outside the bureau anywhere, including the department, before it went live to the Australian public?

I'm certainly aware that the BoM undertook testing of its new website prior to it going live. They've put it on the public record themselves that there was—I'm not the most technologically advanced person here, but I think it was what's known as a beta website, which is, effectively, a draft website enabling people to provide feedback on that. There are probably many people here who know these things better than me! I am aware that the BoM did undertake that kind of testing, but, beyond that, I'm not aware of any other testing that occurred. If there's anything I can add to my answer, I will.

Senator Cadell, second supplementary?

You mentioned that you called the BoM in for answers about what had gone on in reviewing that policy. Why did it take a public outcry and the failures around the Brisbane storms before you did that?

The BoM itself has said that, in the testing of its website that it undertook prior to it going live, the feedback they had received had been extremely positive. Clearly, that was not the experience of Australians, including in South East Queensland when some very severe storms came through. That feedback was heard loud and clear by the BoM, and it certainly was heard loud and clear by me. I'm pleased that, as I say, they've made changes to that website, and they intend to make more.

My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Housing. House prices across the country are out of control. Prices are rising at their fastest pace in more than two years. It's scary out there. National home values rose by one per cent in the single month of October and 6.1 per cent over the year. More renters and first home buyers are being pushed into housing stress and into overcrowded share houses and longer commutes. The government's own policies are turbocharging the housing crisis. Labor's failure to reform the 181 billion tax breaks going to wealthy property investors and your five per cent deposit scheme are pitching first home buyers against a rising tide of speculative investors at auctions. First home buyers don't stand a chance. Minister, why are you choosing to back wealthy property investors' and banks' profits over first home buyers'?

This government is backing Australians who don't have a home being able to buy a home with a five per cent first home buyers deposit, with a massive, unprecedented program of Commonwealth engagement in supporting the states and private sector to build homes. The opposition over there would have more credibility if they didn't want prices to go up and down all at the same time, and the Greens would have more credibility if they weren't protesting against every housing development that ever happened.

Senator Pocock, first supplementary?

Minister, we are facing a speculative housing price bubble that is accelerating at an alarming race. The RBA's data shows that investor borrowing is outpacing owner-occupier borrowing. It's worrying regulators. First home buyers are being outbid at auctions by wealthy property investors. The obvious solution to this housing crisis is to wind back the enormous tax advantage for wealthy property investors, so why won't you?

Because we're focused on supply, and we're focused on making sure that young people, who the Greens political party used to care about, have an opportunity to get a five per cent housing deposit for their very first home.

Senator Pocock, second supplementary?

Labor's five per cent deposit scheme is driving up house prices, especially for entry-level, lower- and medium-priced houses. They are on steroids. They are going through the roof, making the dream of owning a home a fantasy for many while the banks and wealthy property investors are cashing in. Banks are on track to rake in more than $30 billion in profits in this current financial year. Minister, can you see why so many Australians think Labor is failing us?

You know what young people tell me? Young people tell me that the five per cent deposit for first home buyers is the first time in decades that they have seen a chance for them and their families to buy a home. That's what they say. That's what happens in the real world. That's what happens to people in the housing market who want to get their foot on the ladder so that they are paying off their own mortgage, not somebody else's.

My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Wong. Last week, Prime Minister Albanese called communist China a friend. A recent study shows that, in every 12 days, China produces Australia's yearly carbon dioxide output. Each year, China increases its carbon dioxide output. China has 66 coal-fired power stations for every one of Australia's and is building more. Australians have been asked to sacrifice our living standards, power bills and manufacturing jobs on the altar of net zero. Minister, what have you threatened to levy on China if they don't do the same thing your government is asking Australians to do—to stop using our coal? Or are the climate dictates turning your government into hypocrites on the world stage?

Thank you, Senator. I would make a few points. The first point I'd make about our commitments to reduce emissions is that we are making commitments as a country because we recognise the economic imperative of transforming our economy in the context where so much of the global economy is doing the same thing. I appreciate, Senator, that you and I just simply will not agree on this. We see the imperative to transform our economy and take advantage of the opportunity renewable energy brings. We see what is happening across the world, and we want to ensure that Australia has the opportunity to continue to be a prosperous and strong nation in that context.

We simply have a different view on why, as a country, we should not turn our back on climate change. We should not turn our back on renewable energy, and, frankly, we should not turn our back on facts. The facts are that the world is moving. The facts are that coal-fired power is declining in this country. Was it 24 out of 28—24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations announced they were closing under the coalition. That gives us a very clear view about what the transition is.

Senator Roberts, first supplementary?

If the Prime Minister's friends in communist China can use Australia's coal and you won't tell them off, why can't Australia use our coal here? Are you too scared of communist China to hold them accountable?

Senator, 24 out of 28 coal-fired power stations announced they were closing within the decade under the coalition. At that time, eight had already closed, including Hazelwood, because they were too old and at the end of life. The absence of a stable policy framework meant that investors voted with their feet—or, in this case, the money—and didn't invest.

Minister, please resume your seat. Senator Roberts?

I rise on a point of order: relevance. We're talking about China, not the coalition.

Thank you, Senator Roberts. The minister is being relevant to your question.

I am making the point that, whatever you may think—and I disagree with a great deal of what you say—about why you support coal, the market is not supporting coal. I mean—

Order! Minister Wong, did you want to continue?

No.

Order! Come to order. Senator Roberts, a second supplementary?

Your friends in communist China began and resumed construction of 98 gigawatts of coal power last year alone. Many of these will use Australian coal. That is one-and-a-half times Australia's entire national electricity market capacity in one year. Why is your government destroying our cheap coal generation in our country to satisfy foreign dictates from the United Nations, the World Economic Forum and Paris Agreement while communist China does the opposite—China, not Malcolm Roberts?

Again, I disagree with almost everything you have just put to me in that question. What I would respond to specifically is the point about the why. You see, we are not doing this because other people are telling us to do this; we are doing this because we believe it is the right thing for the country, the right thing for future generations but it is also the right thing for our economy. Amidst all of the interviews that were done recently by the coalition in the last 72 hours, Senator Bragg made a very important point when he was talking about net zero and the policy debates of the coalition. He said, 'The debate is over. What I am saying is, in terms of the economic debate around the world, it is over. Capital markets have made their minds up. There is a wall of money going to renewable energy.'

My question is to the Minister representing the Treasurer, Senator Gallagher. Moments ago, the Reserve Bank confirmed its decision to keep the cash rate unchanged at 3.6 per cent, meaning there will be no rate relief for Australian homeowners. What does the government say to millions of Australians who continue to pay higher interest rates because of inflation fuelled by this government's out of control spending, as Professor Richard Holden warned last week?

The decision was half an hour ago, so it is good to see a nimble opposition getting the question. Well, I disagree with the economist you cited. I think I would say to households that inflation is much lower than what we inherited. It had a six in front of it and was rising. It is now half of that. I would say we have created 1.1 million jobs. We have got inflation down. We have got debt down. We have got real wages going for the first time, which makes a difference, of course, to living standards, which Australians did not receive when you were in government. Unemployment is low, and interest rates have been cut three times. But I certainly understand that—

They've done it 12 times.

Order! Senator Hume and Senator Ruston.

That is not the point I am making, Senator Ruston. You can interject that, but that is not the point I am making. I would also suggest that it might benefit those opposite to read the statement for the monetary policy decision by the Monetary Policy Board which has been released alongside that today. In that statement, it goes to a number of different pressures, including uncertainty around international developments, and that that the bank is taking a cautious approach. That is my reading of their statement. We will continue to work to get inflation down. We will make sure that we will keep unemployment low, that the economy continues to grow and that we are seeing good growth across the private sector, having resumed its rightful place as a key driver of growth across the economy.

Senator Paterson, first supplementary?

In the accompanying monetary policy statement, the RBA board noted:

Underlying inflation is expected to be higher over the forecast period relative to the August Statement.

Year-ended trimmed mean inflation is expected to be above the top of the 2-3 per cent range until mid-2026

And headline inflation is forecast to rise to 3.7 per cent year ending 2026. Does the government admit that its record spending has put the Australian economy at risk of continued higher inflation and higher interest rates?

No, the government doesn't accept that, nor does the statement of the Monetary Policy Board say that. I would say again that this is the opposition putting down a marker because they want to cut pensions, they want to cut energy bill relief, they want to cut cheaper child care and they want to cut cheaper medicines. All the work we've done to repair aged care and to repair Medicare bulk-billing is what they call wasteful spending. That's what they are saying is wasteful spending. We think that supporting aged pensions, making sure energy bill relief is provided and other cost-of-living measures are funded properly have been an important part of supporting households when inflation has been higher than we would like.

Senator Paterson, second supplementary?

The government has already achieved the trifecta of higher spending, higher inflation and higher unemployment, putting Australia at risk of stagflation, if these trends continue. Should Australians now be worried the government will soon be adding higher interest rates to this list of economic failures?

The opposition have never not liked an approach to talk down our economy. At any opportunity they get, nothing gives them greater pleasure than to stand up and try to start a scare campaign. That's what they love. That's what they live for. When they're not killing themselves running to give an interview up in the press gallery to do over the person that sits next to them in question time, when they're not doing that, they're starting a scare campaign. What I would say is to Senator Paterson is inflation is down, debt is down, wages are growing, unemployment is low and interest rates have been cut three times. There is more work to do, and this government is doing it.

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

President, you might recall that I took some questions from Senator Roberts on notice yesterday. I have written to him today, responding and providing some detail on those questions, and I table a copy of my reply.

In addition, I've obtained some further information from my office regarding Senator Cadell's questions on the Bureau of Meteorology website. I'm informed that my office was briefed about the new website coming online prior to it coming online, but, again, I was not personally briefed on that.

Today, the Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness and Minister for Cities has provided the Senate documents in scope of the order of production No. 27. I'm not sure why, but I have been asked to table those as well. I think they have been provided, but I am happy to table them.

I note for the Senate's awareness that these documents were received by the minister only a few days ago following a careful review by the Treasury of its systems for documents that may be in scope. A number of documents identified as being in the scope of the order with respect to both programs were developed as part of the deliberative processes and decisions of cabinet. The minister has made a public interest immunity claim over the release of these additional documents, as they would have the effect of publicly disclosing the deliberations of cabinet. These documents are informing the work of the government, and, until certain decisions are taken, the documents must remain confidential. Additionally, the nature of the 100,000 home programs in particular and the work required with states and territories mean releasing other documents captured in the order would have the potential to cause prejudice for future consultation and harm relationships with states and territories.

It may assist the Senate and Senator Bragg to know that orders for the production of documents regarding housing are best directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Housing, Minister for Homelessness and Minister for Cities, rather than the Minister representing the Treasurer.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's explanation.

In taking note of this explanation, I make the point that the Senate ordered these documents back in July. The order was quite clear. The Senate was seeking advice provided by the Treasury to the Treasurer and the Minister for Housing in relation to the government's expansion of the five per cent deposit scheme. Subsequent to that, we've seen the Prime Minister canvas publicly that fact that there is Treasury advice which did anticipate that there would be an increase in house prices as a result of the government's five per cent deposit scheme expansion.

The Senate ordered the production of these documents in July. Here we are on Melbourne Cup Day in November, and we do not have those documents. The government cries a river about the Senate seeking access to documents properly ordered by this chamber on behalf of the Australian people, but this is yet another example of the government refusing to apply the normal applications that we would expect that they would comply with.

The point I make here is that the five per cent deposit scheme, which has been deployed into a supply constrained market without any income test, means testing or place caps, has shot prices up. Independent economist Nicholas Gruen of Lateral Economics predicted a 10 per cent increase in house prices as a result of this change. That was his prediction—a 10 per cent increase. We now have the first month of data from 1 October to 1 November, and that bears true. Nicholas Gruen's prediction is coming to life. We've seen a 1.2 per cent increase in October, the biggest increase in years for entry level first homes. When you look the complete set of data, what you see is no change to the houses of the wealthiest Australians. But you see a big surge in prices for entry level housing. The policy that was apparently designed to make it easier for prospective first home owners is making it harder. The prices are shooting up.

I make the point that house prices are too high at the entry level point. They are too high and they need to come down because this government has deliberately or recklessly increased the prices in that range when they knew that they had failed on supply. They inherited a housing system which had given the country 200,000 houses a year on average, and they've crashed that down to 170,000 houses a year on average. They have crashed the supply side of the market. We have the biggest population we've ever had, and here they come along with this demand side gimmick which shoots up house prices.

That's why we've sought this document. We sought this document because we know that briefings and modellings were doing by the Treasury. The Prime Minister's confirmed it, but, apparently, we're not allowed to have it. The Senate's not allowed to have the documents it asked for. You have to wonder what sort of country we're living in. All we want to see are the modellings and the briefings that were done. I am sure that Treasury would have flagged the huge risks the Australian people would have to bear if the government was going to uncap and open this scheme up to the children of billionaires. I am sure.

Anyway, we'll play this game a bit longer. The government can keep on covering up and obfuscating, not giving us the documents which have been legally ordered by this chamber, but in the end we'll get the documents. In the end, the government will have enough of extended question times and have enough of the other things that we'll do with the crossbench to ensure that we get transparency. The government can threaten to cut the pay and conditions, like a union bully would, of the people in the House of Reps, and I don't think anyone gives a rat's arse, frankly—

Senator Bragg, that language is unparliamentary. I'd ask you to withdraw it.

I withdraw of course. But I don't think anyone gives a rat, frankly, that the government is threatening members of the House, because we're trying to get documents which belong to the Australian people.

On the attendance, if I could, this is a continuation of a disturbing culture of secrecy we continue to see from the Albanese Labor government. Don't just take my word for it. The Centre for Public Integrity released a report card on the Albanese Labor government's failure to be appropriately transparent. The first point they raised in this abysmal report card of the Albanese Labor government is directly related to the document which Senator Bragg is seeking—not for himself but for the Australian people—and that is the government's failure to commit to transparency.

The Centre for Public Integrity said the government is 'leaning into a culture of secrecy'. They aren't my words. They are the words of one of the most esteemed non-government organisations in this country with respect to the performance of the Albanese Labor government in terms of responding to orders for the production of documents, responding to requests for freedom-of-information documents and being open and transparent with the Australian people. When we seek these documents and when senators from all around the chamber seek these documents, we're not seeking the documents for us. We're seeking the documents for the Australian people.

Senator Bragg has given the example of the document he sought, with respect to the government's five per cent deposit scheme, to find what advice was given to the government with respect to the impact of this scheme on house prices—an absolutely key issue in terms of implementation of this scheme. Senator Bragg asked for this document in July. We're now in November. That's extraordinary! And we have seen that all the senators in this place except for the government senators—so all of the senators on the crossbench and covering more than 50 per cent of the senators in this place—have had to take the extraordinary step of taking action to try and get the government to respond to orders for the production of documents. It shouldn't be like this.

If the Senate requires a document for its deliberations, it should be provided unless there's a really, really good reason. I listened very carefully to Senator Gallagher, Manager of Government Business in the Senate, with respect to her explanation and I did not hear a coherent, sensible reason as to why the documents could not be produced. The scheme is already in operation. As Senator Bragg said, we're already seeing the inflationary impact on prices, so what we wanted to see was the basis and the modelling that was undertaken to actually support the implementation of this policy, and the government refuses to provide it to us. In doing so they're refusing to provide it to the Australian people and, once again, they're underlying the report card that was issued by the Centre for Public Integrity that this is a government that is leaning into a culture of secrecy.

I also rise to speak on the attendance motion. There are two concerns in relation to this. One concern relates to transparency and one concern relates to the housing crisis in our country, and both are significant. My colleagues have spoken about secrecy. This Labor government is the most secretive government since the Keating administration. That is not something that you want to aspire to be. We need to call out the fact that this government continues to operate under a banner of secrecy. This would not be necessary if this government provided the information requested.

My colleagues, Senator Bragg and Senator Scarr, both referenced 25 July as the date when Senator Bragg requested this document. That was 103 days ago. This government has had 103 days to provide the document that Senator Bragg sought. Instead of handing that document over to the Senate on behalf of the Australian people—as Senator Scarr eloquently stated—this government has decided to hang onto this document and not provide it. They've decided not to provide this information. We have to ask why. Is it because the modelling they've received in relation to their five per cent deposit scheme will confirm what we all already know—that it would drive up house prices? Is it that they don't want us to know that they knew it would drive up house prices but did it anyway? Is that why? It doesn't take an economist and it doesn't take somebody from Treasury to tell you that, if you put more buyers into the market and don't increase supply-side measures, you're going to get increased demand, and increased demand increases prices. It's as simple as that. Or is it because the modelling revealed that their housing policies would do nothing to fix the very housing crisis that they created? Is that why they don't want to provide the document that was rightfully requested by this Senate?

The Senate has the right to request documents, and, when it does, the government should hand them over. We have to ask why this veil of secrecy continues. It is not just limited to OPDs; it is broader than that. I have tried a number of times in this chamber to seek a Senate inquiry into the administration of the CFMEU. This government refuses to allow it. They have blocked that. Why? If it is operating as it should, what is the problem with scrutinising that? Then there would be nothing to see, but clearly there is. No-one really knows the reasons. We can only assume what the reasons are, because this government won't tell us.

This is a failure to release a document for 103 days—over three months after the Senate agreed to its release. Let me be clear about that: the senators in this chamber agreed to that document being released, yet the government refuses to hand it over. That isn't democracy. That's not how things are meant to work. If the senators in this place have collectively agreed, by a majority, that the government should hand documents over to another senator, then that is exactly what should happen. In my view, the failure to do so is a contempt of this Senate and is a complete disregard of the people that we represent. Each senator in this place represents people in a state or territory of this country.

The other day we had some theatrics around senators on the government side not being able to ask questions for people in their state. Well, these are very serious questions that not just the people in New South Wales but people in every single state in our country want answers to, and the Albanese Labor government continues to refuse to hand those documents over. They should be ashamed.

I rise to take note of the explanation by the Minister representing the Treasurer. We've just had a question time where we've seen repetitive questions about the housing crisis. We saw repetitive questions throughout last week as well. Australians are worried about a housing crisis that is on fire. It is driving up prices, and we need information to have a proper, informed debate in this parliament. Senator Bragg requested that these documents be produced on 28 July 2025, but he's been fobbed off.

The minister has asked for additional time. Three months have passed without an update until today, and we need a full release of these documents. We are in a housing crisis where demand is out of control, and we need the analysis so that we can look at what Treasury is saying about the impact of the government's policies on prices. We are denied that and we need that information to have a sensible debate and to really understand what is going on that's driving a crisis out there affecting so many Australians.

Why is the government taking so long to release this information? This is a government obsessed with ducking accountability and transparency, particularly in relation to housing. The OPD compliance rate in this parliament is dismal, and I'm still waiting on an answer for my OPD from August about direct spending on public and community housing. Why is this government allergic to telling us what the data and analysis are on housing?

Australians deserve to see Treasury's modelling of the five per cent deposit scheme. Treasury advice says that scheme would raise prices by 'only' 0.5 per cent nationally over six years. Let's assume that prices will rise by 'only' 0.5 per cent as a result of these changes. The ABS data out of the Parliamentary Library tells us that this will add $55 billion to property prices over the next six years. Tell a first home buyer that that's what's happening as a consequence of these policies. At the most optimistic analysis, this amounts to $9 billion a year. This scheme is turbocharging housing prices. It is causing despair and a really deep concern out there in the community, locking out first home buyers, plunging them deeper into debt. We need to see a change in policy and analysis that underpins what we are facing in policy from this government.

Many experts and stakeholders warn that Treasury's 0.5 per cent is actually incredibly conservative. Lateral Economics's Nick Gruen found that the expanded scheme 'could drive national property prices by up by 3.5 to 6.6 per cent in 2026 and for several years afterwards. A home valued today at $800,000 must cost a first home buyer an additional $28,000 to $52,000. Lots of first home buyers find this incredibly hard to hear. They hate opening the paper every day, because the bad news is bad news day after day. The Reserve Bank also said that the five per cent deposit changes may mean 'a little more upward pressure on house prices in the short term'. In the midst of a national housing crisis, this scheme will add billions to property prices. Taking out a 95 per cent mortgage when property prices are eight times the average household income doesn't create stability; it sets first home buyers up for financial hardship while banks make superprofits—and this is widening intergenerational inequality at a rapid rate.

This motion also goes to Labor's policy to invest $10 billion to deliver 100,000 homes for first home buyers. This isn't a horrible policy; it's an admission from the government that they can directly fund housing construction for first home buyers, not just for US defence personnel in relation to AUKUS in Perth but also for Australian citizens. We can build directly. We can fund directly. We can do solutions that are effective, efficient, cost-effective and timely. Everybody's Home said that, while building 100,000 homes is a good step, they aren't guaranteed to be affordable. There's a missing piece of that spend. Don't build 'anything'; build something that people can actually afford.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about this policy and its implementation, and Australians deserve the detail. It's contemptuous not to provide to this parliament the detail that we expect to have to understand and to ask questions out of, and it is our job as a Senate to pay attention to what this analysis says. We are denied that capability by this reluctance to share information, and it is a critical question for so many Australians.

There used to be a social contract in this country. That social contract was that, if you worked hard and you contributed, you could get ahead. Getting ahead included owning your home. That social contract has been obliterated by a housing system that is now designed to serve the interests of the already very wealthy people in this country.

Labor came to office 3½ years ago promising change, and they've spent that time deliberately, knowingly, making the housing crisis worse. The housing market has become a machine for transferring wealth upwards, and Labor keeps that machine running because, in Labor's view, the line must go up. House prices must continue to rise, according to the Labor Party. Rents must continue to rise, according to the Labor Party. Profits must continue to rise for property speculators, according to the Labor Party. That is Labor's economic plan—endless growth for the wealthy, built on the misery of millions who can't afford their own home and who can't afford to make ends meet.

Labor defends the obscene tax breaks given to property speculators—negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount—that funnel public money into private fortunes. They pour billions into these subsidies, and they pour billions more into schemes that inflate demand instead of building homes. They refuse to freeze rents, and they refuse to build enough public housing because they don't want to upset the property class and property investors. Every policy Labor touches is designed to benefit the property class. Every dollar of so-called housing investment is carefully directed to keep prices high.

It is not a market. It is an absolute racket. It is a racket of the highest order, and ordinary everyday Australians are paying the price. The great class divide in this country today is now between those who are wealthy enough to own real estate and those who are too poor to own real estate. That is the great class divide in this country, where the path to security is owning property. If you can't afford to buy, you're trapped paying off someone else's mortgage forever. The social contract is falling apart.

The truth is that Labor needs the housing crisis. They need house prices to keep climbing so they can keep claiming the economy is strong. One of the great triumphs of neoliberalism has been to convince people that a better life is not possible. A better life is possible because it is all about political choices. I say to young people who believe—because the forces of neoliberalism want them to believe—that poverty and insecurity are somehow their fault: that poverty and that insecurity that you are feeling is not your fault. It is the result of political choices made by the political duopoly in this place, the Labor Party and the LNP. The housing crisis was created by governments, it is built on greed, and it will only end when we stop treating people's homes as an investment class or an asset class and start treating them as a human right.

The Minister representing the Minister for Housing has been asked to attend the Senate to explain why the government is hiding from scrutiny of its housing policy. The answer is simple: the Albanese government's housing policy is a shambles of ill-considered measures, written for social media moments. When implemented together, the measures have driven up housing prices and rents and have ensured young Australians will never afford their own home unless they come from a wealthy family. Over and over, this government pursues policies that assist the rich, assist foreign multinational merchant banks and assist superannuation companies—not Australian superannuation companies, though. The government has just decided to send $2.13 trillion of Australian money to the United States to make America great again. The mask is off. The Albanese-Chalmers Labor government is not a government of the Australian working class. Instead, it is beholden to multinational, mostly American controlled, crony corporations.

Imagine what could have been built with that money here in Australia. Imagine the breadwinner jobs that $2.13 trillion could have created. Imagine the opportunities for traineeships, apprenticeships and entry-level jobs for young Australians starting out in life. Imagine the employment for tradies and small businesses with that level of investment. Imagine the life being given back to struggling rural and regional communities. What a betrayal of young Australians from the Albanese Labor government—yet another betrayal. President Trump must be laughing at us right now.

Senator Bragg has rightly pursued the government over their disastrous housing policies. The Australian National Audit Office, ANAO, has joined in, announcing an audit of the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. The fund was supposed to deliver 40,000 homes for new buyers and for the disadvantaged. One Nation pointed out at the time that this wasn't enough and that there weren't the materials to build those houses. We were right as usual. The average cost of the government's social and affordable homes was more than $750,000, with some reaching more than $1 million—three to four times their budget. Auditor-General Caralee McLiesh recently revealed the Housing Australia Future Fund disbursed—wait for it—just $13.6 million in 2024-25 out of the $10 billion fund. That's 0.136 per cent, barely one-tenth of one per cent. The Housing Australia Future Fund is now exactly two years old. Minister, where are the houses? Where are the construction contracts, the earthworks the materials purchases—anything at all? The Housing Australia Future Fund was only ever a social media program, an election illusion.

I look forward to the Australian National Audit Office finding out where taxpayers' money has gone. I understand it's gone to union superannuation funds to fund net zero. Let's see. I understand part of the government's problem. Australia is already building new homes at the fastest per capita rate of any country in the world and has been for years—not the government but tradies in private enterprise. Construction is down from 219,000 new homes in 2015-16 to just 179,000 in 2024-25 because the things that are needed to build houses are in short supply: materials, land availability and qualified construction workers. With closures in aluminium and steel smelting, these shortages and our reliance on China will get worse. Do I hear 'net zero'? Employment for everyday Australians will get worse thanks to net zero.

One Nation's housing policy will make a major difference to the lives of young Australians. It will turn the useless Housing Australia Future Fund into a low-deposit mortgage fund for young Australians offering low-interest, fixed rate mortgages for up to 30 years. We'll allow HECS holders to roll their HECS loan into their home loan, reducing their combined payments and increasing their borrowing ability so they can get in early. We'll overcome the deposit gap by allowing Australians to use their super account to take a share in their home—not their super fund but their own super account, which will continue to grow as the value of the home grows. It's a great investment. We'll limit negative gearing to two homes.

As a result of the Albanese government's low-deposit scheme, home prices have gone up six per cent. It's made the housing shortage worse—a stupid mistake. Offering incentives to help young people own their own home increases demand, forces up prices and leaves younger people worse off than before the government helped. We will remigrate—deport—200,000 people who deliberately broke their visa conditions, who completed their study and simply stayed here, or who lodged spurious asylum claims. We'll send them home—deport, remigrate—and reduce demand. (Time expired)

The time for this debate has expired.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today by me and by Senator Paterson.

I asked a number of very simple questions for which it's reasonable to expect the government has an answer. I asked the government what its short-, medium- and long-term targets are for permanent migration and net overseas migration. I asked these questions in the context of great concern in the Australian community around levels of migration. There was a poll released in the Australian earlier today, and there was also a poll released by the Scanlon Foundation in its social cohesion mapping report, which it puts out every year. In that report the Scanlon Foundation found that 51 per cent of Australians believe that current immigration rates are too high. It was in that context that I asked the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to simply advise us what the government's short-term, medium-term or long-term targets or ranges are with respect to permanent migration and net overseas migration. And what did we hear? No answer. They refuse to give an answer. They refuse to give a figure. They refuse to give a range.

I asked this question because the relevant minister, Minister Tony Burke, was on ABC's Insiders, and he was asked the same question by David Speers. David Speers asked him, 'Are immigration rates too high?' The minister said, 'Well, they're coming down to appropriate levels,' and then David Speers asked, 'What is an appropriate level?' and Minister Tony Burke refused to give an answer, refused to give a figure, refused to even give a target range, and that is the issue. There is a complete lack of communication with the Australian people with respect to immigration, including immigration levels, in the context of great community concern regarding immigration levels, and it's just not good enough.

I then asked a supplementary question as to multiyear planning with respect to permanent migration. You would think that the government would have a multiyear plan with respect to immigration levels. In fact, in the government's own immigration strategy that was released in December 2023, they say:

New commitment:

Plan migration over a longer-term horizon to better manage the migration intake, with greater state and territory collaboration …

The Government will develop a principles-based, multi-year planning model for permanent migration, to improve collaboration with states and territories on migration settings.

…   …   …

The multi-year planning model will extend the planning horizon of the permanent Migration Program beyond its current 12 months and enable a better planning effort to meet the strategic, structural and long-term challenges that we face as nation and in our cities and regions.

It makes sense. This is the government's own migration strategy, released in December 2023.

What we've found is that the government has abandoned that multiyear planning approach, where it actually provides figures going out not just for the current year but for years 2, 3 and 4. It abandoned that approach. It did not communicate that to anyone. It just abandoned it. It was only after the opposition raised it in estimates that the minister, on the same ABC Insiders program, was forced to explain. And what was his answer for abandoning a multiyear planning approach? Flexibility. He wants flexibility. I ask everyone listening to this debate—with respect to something as important as immigration, in terms of all three levels of government having to plan and coordinate, and with respect to housing supply, infrastructure, service delivery, you've got to have a plan. You've got to have a medium-term plan and a long-term plan, but the government doesn't have any. It has abandoned any attempt to have a medium-term or long-term plan.

Lastly, on transparency, now more than ever Australians need their government to be transparent with respect to immigration policy—now more than ever. And when Tony Burke, the minister, released the permanent migration program for the current year, he put out a media release that had three sentences—less than 100 words. That was the explanation he gave to the Australian people —no explanation with respect to how housing supply, infrastructure or service delivery were being considered. It is not good enough.

I rise to take note of questions asked by coalition senators Scarr and Paterson. On this side of the chamber, we actually value migrants, we value migration, and we welcome the contribution that they make to our society. I strongly believe that we are better off as a country because of the contribution that migrants bring to our society.

Unfortunately, there are some on the opposite side—and I won't make a general comment because I do genuinely believe that not all of those on the other side of politics try to use migration and immigration as a way to divide us and to pin people against each other. It's really disappointing to see people celebrating in the name of being patriots or whatever dog whistling that they're up to. They drape an Australian flag around each other and talk about migration, and they try to say that we shouldn't be letting people come into the country. Well, I seriously challenge that, and I seriously take issue with using our national flag in a way that is to divide rather than to celebrate each other and to welcome people to our community. When migrants come to this country, they often come to regional areas, like Tasmania and Hobart, where I have had the great pleasure of living for several years. You see people and talk to people, and you think, 'They only want to come here, and they want to make a contribution to our way of life and to make our country better.'

When it comes to the migration numbers, migration numbers peaked in the 2022-23 year, at around 538,000 after the peak of COVID and once the borders reopened. As you would imagine, people started to come back. People wanted to come back and study; people wanted to come back to this great place. Why wouldn't you want to come here? It's the best place in the world. Ever since then and since the steps that this government has been taking, we have seen the migration numbers start to decline. In the 12 months to March 2025, it was down to 315,000, which is 40 per cent less compared to that peak.

When it comes to migrants, they have a lot of important roles. They come here and do a lot of the important work. These are some of the most cherished people in our country. They are doctors, nurses and tradies. They bring valuable skills to our country, and we're in the middle of a skills shortage. We're in the middle of a housing supply crisis. These crises didn't happen by accident. They happened by—well, let's just say—neglect from those opposite. They didn't have a housing minister for a lot of their decade in office. We've since taken steps to create paths for people to get skills in this country such as our fee-free TAFE, to allow people to get the skills, but migrants complement these policies. Migrants come in, and they bring specialised skills to assist with some of the shortages. I know we need to build more houses. The Housing Australia Future Fund is designed for that. It's just a shame that those opposite and the Greens again teamed up together, like they have in Tasmania, and blocked housing. That's a real shame. That's an absolute shame because—without being delayed by several years—we would have had a lot more housing built under the Housing Future Fund.

I might touch on the questions from Senator Paterson in relation to the interest rates. When we came to government, inflation was over six per cent. That, again, was after a decade of neglect and a decade of coalition policy— (Time expired)

I want to start by saying I really regret the contribution made by Senator Dolega and the offensive imputations that were made in relation to coalition senators and members. It now seems, according to Labor, that it is an offence to drape the Australian flag and be proud of our flag.

I didn't say that at all.

I'll take that interjection, Senator Dolega. That is exactly what you said. You criticised some of us on this side of politics for having the temerity to drape the Australian flag around us, to be proud of our country.

Dog-whistling contribution.

How dare you suggest that is dog whistling!

Senator Henderson, direct your remarks through the chair.

Through you, Chair, how dare Senator Dolega suggest it is dog whistling to be proud of our country and be proud of our flag. So many people want to come and live in our country because we are a great country and we have one the most successful migration histories of any country in the world. We are a proud migrant nation. We are a proud multicultural country with those who have been here for thousands of years, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders; those who came to our country decades ago; and recent arrivals. We are a hugely successful multicultural country.

Senator Dolega, you're only a new senator; you're reading from Labor's talking points, but I would ask you to reflect on the way in which you have characterised not just members and senators on this side of the chamber and this side of the political aisle but every Australian who is proud to fly the Australian flag in their backyard or front yard; every local school, RSL or community organisation who is proud to fly the Australian flag; and of course those who want to drape the Australian flag around them—all power to every single Australian who flies our flag and wears our flag with pride.

But the bottom line is—and I do rise to take note of the answer to the question asked by Senator Scarr—that every country has a responsibility to run its migration program in its national interest, and that is not happening under this government. We have seen migration be grossly mismanaged. Senator Scarr spelt out some of the facts in relation to that mismanagement. We know that migration is running out of control. Net overseas migration for the year ending 31 March 2025 was still 315,900. This is approximately 100,000, or 46 per cent, above the 10-year average prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is 91,000 higher than Treasury's NOM forecast in the last budget for the three years commencing 1 July 2026. It is 80,000 higher than the long-term average assumption of 235,000 used by the Centre for Population. This government has a very bad record of mismanaging migration in the national interest.

And what does that mean? Without having the short-, medium- and long-term migration planning in place—we heard crickets from the responsible minister in this place today; Labor will not fess up what those long-, medium- and short-term targets are—how can we as a nation plan for services, for infrastructure, for what our nation needs, for schools and for hospitals?

When I was in my former role as shadow minister for education, we took a very strong policy to the election: capping numbers of international students at 25 per cent at public universities. That still would have made us one of the most generous countries in the world in terms of welcoming international students. Instead we now see the number of international students running at record levels and getting worse, with the government completely dropping the ball on managing international students, who, as we know, contribute about half of net overseas migration. That is not good enough. (Time expired)

To follow up on the immigration discussion, Senator Henderson did quote that figure, which is accurate, that net overseas migration for the 12 months to March 2025 was 315,000, but what she didn't mention is that that is down 40 per cent, and it's trending down. It has actually fallen for six consecutive quarters in a row.

What's the target?

We'll get to that. We've fallen 17,000 below what Treasury predicted as well. Nobody can dispute that NOM is down and continues to trend down. Of course, we've maintained permanent migration at exactly the same settings, at 185,000. I know Senator Scarr focused a lot on Tony Burke's Insiders interview and what was and wasn't answered, but I thought, let's just see what he actually said in response to 'What's the appropriate level of migration?' I went back to look at the transcript, and he said, 'It's tailored to the needs of the nation—is what that's about. Retaining flexibility in the system is really important.' That's why he said, for example, 'Now, I never want a situation where we have a demand for more healthcare workers and we say, "No, we're not going to do them; we're just going to close shifts in our hospital." I don't want that situation.' So having short-term targets is folly. We actually want to have flexibility.

We need to have flexibility in our system. I don't know what central planning school you've come from where you think you can do these micro, quarterly plans for migration—

How do you plan?

where you're going to shift construction patterns across. We live in a global economy. Migration is flexible. We need a flexible economy. I know you want some command-and-control system, but we actually live in a flexible migration system that allows our market to respond. We have a measured, humane, pragmatic system. We're seeing the migration numbers come down. That's what the market is saying. We have a consistent, steady—you know these things—permanent migration program as well. I think we can just take the heat and emotion out of it and have a fact based discussion here about what we're actually doing. We're seeing a lot of growth in visas for construction, for example, because we do need more people in those construction trades to meet the needs of Australians, such as for more housing.

The coalition come to this debate as though there's no history to it and we're just starting today. But we've heard the multiple policies—unlimited student visas was one of them. It wasn't a policy; they actually voted for it. They pledged to bring back a visa class that Labor had stopped accepting—so-called cash for visas. So they don't come to this with a clean record.

But I will move on and reflect on the Reserve Bank's decision today to hold rates at 3.6 per cent. Of course people would have liked to have seen a rate cut, a Melbourne Cup Day rate cut, but that wasn't expected. The decision was pretty much anticipated. But that comes on the back of three rate cuts. One of the most important factors in the housing debate is obviously the cost of debt, and the cost of debt is significantly cheaper than it has been for a very long time. And we've seen headline inflation continue to trend down. Yes, the most recent quarterly figures did show an increase, but it still remains in the target, and you don't want to read too much into a single quarterly set of data. It was 6.1 per cent and rising, and now it's around half of that. So it's significant progress. The trimmed mean remains within the target band for three consecutive quarters.

Now, of course, the coalition claim to be worried about inflation and government spending, but we know that, at the last election, their own costings showed that they were going to be spending more and delivering bigger deficits than the Labor proposal. Similarly, they even opposed tax cuts. Again, we have this lack of historical context as they come in to criticise things today, as though they made a clean contribution to this debate.

What we want to do is continue to bring down inflation, see real wages grow and maintain unemployment at record low levels, where it is now, in the face of global uncertainty. And that's why you've seen so much focus also from the Prime Minister about assuring Australia's spot internationally. That will help give security with our trading partners, and we can also deliver cost-of-living security at home. (Time expired)

I also rise to take note of answers to questions from my colleagues Senator Scarr and Senator Paterson. I say 'answers', although there does seem to be a pattern to them—perhaps it's a lack of answers. There seems to be a recurring theme here of the avoidance of scrutiny by this Labor government. Prior to the election, Labor committed to bringing down migration numbers, and they committed to 'a principles based, multiyear planning model for permanent migration' and to collaborate with states and territories. This was an election promise. However, just last weekend, on the ABC, that commitment—that promise to you—was abandoned. It was abandoned by the minister, who is now refusing to provide a target number. He's even refusing to provide a range on permanent migration and on net overseas migration. In fact, all the minister has provided is three sentences, less than 100 words—a description of the program for the current year. How on earth is a country supposed to plan its growth, its infrastructure, its housing and its health care with nothing but a 100-word statement from a government that is shifty—from a government that is avoiding scrutiny at every single turn?

Let me be very clear here. Australia is a highly successful, peaceful, multicultural, proud migrant nation. Over one-third of all Australians were born overseas. Over half of all Australians have a parent that was born overseas. I reject—and, in fact, I'm very deeply hurt and offended by—Senator Dolega's insinuation that, somehow, if you want a well managed migration policy, that must mean that you're antimigrant and that must mean that somehow you're some deep seated racist. Nothing could be further from the truth. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody in this chamber without a first- or second-generation migrant within their family.

A well managed migration program has been the keystone, the foundation stone, of our successful social and economic story in this country. But there's no doubt at all that, when your population grows rapidly—as it has under Labor, who brought in 1.5 million migrants in their first term of government—and your migration program is out of control, there is pressure. There is pressure on your infrastructure. There is pressure on your healthcare system. There is pressure on housing, made so much worse by the decision of the Reserve Bank of Australia today to keep interest rates on hold even though we know that there are so many Australians out there that were hanging on every word from Michele Bullock today. Of course that is going to get worse if your migration program is out of control.

The fact that there have been 315,000 migrants in the last 12 months—this is something that Labor is, somehow, crowing about. Yet it's around 46 per cent higher than the 10-year average. It's around 34 per cent higher than the long-term average assumption that is being used in the budget data forecast by Treasury. So they have massively outstripped their own targets and, somehow, are crowing about the success of their migration program. That is absolute nonsense. A successful migration program requires planning. It requires management. It requires sustainability. It needs to have a social licence. It needs to have the permission of the people that voted for you, and you have not got that. In fact, you have completely ignored the policy that you took to the last election. Most importantly, it requires transparency, which is exactly what this government promised. Unfortunately, they have reneged on that promise.

A well managed immigration policy brings in the skills that we need for the life that we want. That's pretty simple. That's been the foundation stone of our migration policy for as long as I can remember, but, if Labor cannot or will not manage our migration program, the economy suffers and our services suffer. It's Australians that end up paying the price. Not only have Labor broken an election commitment; they've also demonstrated a profound failure in political leadership. Public support for immigration has been undermined by this government. When a government says one thing and does another and when it avoids scrutiny and refuses to account for its own outcomes, the public notice, and the public are putting you on notice.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Shoebridge today relating to the Middle East.

Defence officials have quietly told Australian defence manufacturers that they can no longer export directly to Israel. The Greens have been calling out Labor's complicity in Israel's genocide for two long years. While Israel has rained devastation upon Gaza and has murdered Palestinians in their thousands, this government has proudly proclaimed its friendship with Israel and continued on with the two-way arms trade. This directive to the defence industry is one step forward, but this shows the power of the people, the power of the people's movement. The pressure of hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets has finally propelled this government into some small action. We know that this is the action of a government desperate to escape accountability before an inevitable finding of genocide from the world's top court.

We also know that this is not enough. This will not affect the flow of the F-35 jets, whose supply chain Australia remains happily embedded in. It will not hold Israel to account for the ongoing genocide against Palestinians. It will not open up the aid channels that remain blocked. It will not secure any genuine peace, self-determination or justice. It will not do any of those things, because it leaves the real mechanisms of violence and oppression untouched.

On the one hand, the Labor government quietly directs defence companies to stop their direct exports to Israel while at the same time they intimidate people who are calling out the war machine and the corporations profiting from death and destruction. In Sydney this morning, the voices of conscience in this nation turned up to stand against a state government sponsored arms expo which hosted Israel's largest weapons companies. Right on cue, though, protesters were pepper sprayed, arrested and intimidated. What was their crime? Standing up for peace, standing against war, standing for the Palestinian people. Targeting peaceful protesters while rolling out the red carpet for war profiteers is an inversion of justice.

What message does this government send to the world, to Palestinians and to Australians with its meaningless words, toothless actions and endless demonisation of pro-Palestine protesters? It says that you can tinker around the edges of the arms trade, but you must leave the real pathways of death and destruction and their profits untouched. It says you protect the weapons conference but abandon the Palestinians targeted by the war machine. It says you talk about justice while deep in contracts with weapons companies who profit off death. Today's violence against protesters at the arms expo in Sydney is not incidental; it is emblematic. It is a warning that the state will protect the weapons corporations, not the oppressed. It will silence the protesters, not the perpetrators.

It is not too late for action. Sanction Israel now. Send the war criminals to The Hague, and free Palestine.

Question agreed to.

by leave—I move:

That the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Defence and Trade be authorised to hold a public meeting during the Senate today from 5.30 pm to take evidence for the committee's inquiry into the Department of Defence's annual report 2023-24.

Question agreed to.

Thank you. If there are no objections, the business is postponed.

I move:

That the terms of reference for the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee's inquiry into the state of Australia's aviation sector and its ability to deliver reliable and affordable services to rural, regional and remote communities, be amended to insert a new paragraph (aa), as follows:

(aa) the decision made by Qantas (Qantas Airways Limited) on 1 October 2025 to close its regional staff bases in Canberra, Hobart and Mildura;

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Community Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by the last sitting Tuesday in November 2026:

The Support at Home Program, with reference to:

(a) the ability for older Australians to access services to live safely and with dignity at home;

(b) the impact of the co-payment contributions for independent services and everyday living services on the financial security and wellbeing of older Australians;

(c) trends and impact of pricing mechanisms on consumers;

(d) the adequacy of the financial hardship assistance for older Australians facing financial difficulty;

(e) the impact on the residential aged care system, and hospitals;

(f) the impact on older Australians transitioning from the Home Care Packages Program;

(g) thin markets including those affected by geographic remoteness and population size;

(h) the impact on First Nations communities, and culturally and linguistically diverse communities; and

(i) any other related matters.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Community Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by 15 April 2026:

The transition of the Community Home Support Program to the Support at Home Program, with particular reference to:

(a) the timeline for the transition of the Community Home Support Program to the Support at Home Program after 1 July 2027;

(b) the expected impact of this transition, including on:

(i) waiting periods for assessment and receipt of care,

(ii) the lifetime cap of $15,000 on home modifications,

(iii) the End-of-Life Pathway time limits, and

(iv) thin markets with a small number of aged care service providers;

(c) aged care provider readiness for the transition, including their workforce; and

(d) any other related matters.

Question agreed to.

On behalf of Senator Bragg, I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for Industry and Innovation, by no later than 9 am on Wednesday, 5 November 2025, Document 2—300105, titled 'Industry facilities at risk—key dates and proposed high level (internal to Govt) handling', contained within 25/070/300105M per the Department of Industry, Science and Resources' information disclosure log.

Question agreed to.

On behalf of Senator Bragg, I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Housing, by no later than midday on Wednesday, 5 November 2025, any briefing notes or documents provided by the Treasury to the Minister for Housing relating to any Housing Australia Board meetings attended by the minister between 1 July 2024 and 1 July 2025.

Question agreed to.

On behalf of Senator Bragg, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that orders for the production of documents nos 101 to 104, agreed to by the Senate on 27 August 2025, requesting numerous documents from the Minister representing the Treasurer and the Minister representing the Minister for Housing were not complied with;

(b) considers that the preparation of the requested documents for the sole purpose of submission to Cabinet has not been proven to a reasonable extent;

(c) does not regard the release of the requested documents as being injurious to the public interest; and

(d) requires the Minister representing the Treasurer and the Minister representing the Minister for Housing to comply with the orders by no later than midday on Wednesday, 5 November 2025.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that the Minister representing the Minister for Communications has failed to comply with orders for the production of documents nos 116 and 117, agreed to on 27 August 2025, relating to communications between the eSafety Commissioner and various online safety organisations; and

(b) requires the Minister representing the Minister for Communications to comply with the orders by no later than 5 pm on Friday, 7 November 2025.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for Science, by no later than 5 pm on Monday, 10 November 2025, copies of all ministerial submissions, records of conversation, letters, briefing notes, meeting agendas, file notes, meeting invitations, meeting notes, meeting minutes, emails and instant/electronic messages between the minister and/or his office, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) and the Department of Industry, Science and Resources in relation to ANSTO's proposed cuts to the funding of instruments at the Australian Synchrotron and the open-pool Australian lightwater reactor.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) the Minister representing the Minister for Communications has failed to comply with order for the production of documents no. 37, agreed to on 28 July 2025, relating to the development of legislative instruments for the social media ban,

(ii) in a letter relating to a subsequent order requiring the tabling of an explanation of the basis for the Minister's public interest immunity claim, the Minister for Communications advised that no further information is available regarding the claim, and

(iii) no further information has been provided since the Minister representing the Minister for Communications' attendance of the Senate on 29 October 2025; and

(b) requires the Minister representing the Minister for Communications to attend the Senate on 5 November 2025, at the conclusion of question time, to provide an explanation of no more than 5 minutes of the failure to comply with the order, and that:

(i) any senator may move to take note of the explanation, and

(ii) any such motion may be debated for no longer than 20 minutes and shall have precedence over all business until determined, and senators may speak to the motion for not more than 5 minutes each.

Question agreed to.

At the request of Senator Hume, I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for Industry and Innovation, by no later than midday on Thursday, 6 November 2025, a document showing the parliamentary document record number, subject, status and responsible area of all ministerial submissions sent by the Department of Industry, Science and Resources during the following periods respectively:

(a) 1 August to 31 August 2025;

(b) 1 September to 30 September 2025; and

(c) 1 October to 31 October 2025.

Question agreed to.

At the request of Senator Duniam, I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs by no later than 2 pm on Monday, 24 November 2025:

(a) all written advice provided between the Minister for Home Affairs and the Department of Home Affairs and its portfolio agencies since Monday, 29 September 2025 regarding the ongoing operation or expansion of migration pathways or special visa arrangements into Australia for persons from Gaza;

(b) all written advice provided between the Minister for Home Affairs and the Department of Home Affairs and its portfolio agencies since Monday, 29 September 2025 relating to the processing, prioritisation or suspension of migration pathways or special visa arrangements into Australia for persons from Gaza; and

(c) all question time briefs prepared for the Minister for Home Affairs since Monday, 29 September 2025 relating to the intake of persons from Gaza into Australia.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 227 be agreed to.

I ask if motion No. 224 could be recommitted. I was slightly not paying attention and didn't call a division on that. I believe it was called for the ayes when I don't think that actually reflects the will of the chamber.

Leave not granted.

I am going to explain to the Senate that when we recommit matters, or when matters are put up for recommitting and leave is sought, the general practice is that, if an explanation has been given—which it has been—the matter is recommitted, because it needs to be a vote which reflects the Senate. So I am going to put that question again. Is leave granted?

Leave granted.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 224, standing in the name of Senator Payman, be agreed to.

I move:

(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on AUKUS be established to inquire into the AUKUS agreement and its implications for Australia's environment, safety and independence, with particular reference to:

(a) the advice and analysis provided to the government before and following the AUKUS agreement;

(b) the implications of AUKUS and the acquisition of nuclear submarines for militarisation and stability in the region;

(c) the implications of the AUKUS agreement for Australia's foreign policy and defence policy including the projected role of AUKUS submarines in defending Australia;

(d) the capacity of the US and UK nuclear submarine industries to provide Australia with either existing Virginia class submarines or future SSN­ AUKUS submarines;

(e) the impact on the balance of Australia's defence capacity given the scale of resources required for AUKUS nuclear submarine acquisitions and procurement;

(f) the impact of the AUKUS agreement on Australia's international obligations and adherence to international law;

(g) the impact on Australia's defence in the event the UK and/or the US cannot provide the submarines envisaged by the AUKUS project and considerations given to an alternative plan;

(h) the management and storage of nuclear waste and its impact on First Nations land and communities; and

(i) any other related matters.

(2) That the committee present its final report by 18 March 2026.

(3) That the committee consist of 6 senators, as follows:

(a) two nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate;

(b) two nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate;

(c) one nominated by the Leader of the Australian Greens; and

(d) one nominated by minority party or independent senators.

(4) That:

(a) participating members may be appointed to the committee on the nomination of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate or any minority party or independent senator;

(b) participating members may participate in hearings of evidence and deliberations of the committee, and have all the rights of members of the committee, but may not vote on any questions before the committee; and

(c) a participating member shall be taken to be a member of a committee for the purpose of forming a quorum of the committee if a majority of members of the committee is not present.

(5) That the committee may proceed to the dispatch of business notwithstanding that all members have not been duly nominated and appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy.

(6) That the committee elect as chair a member nominated by the Leader of the Australian Greens and, as deputy chair, a member nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate.

(7) That the deputy chair shall act as chair when the chair is absent from a meeting of the committee or the position of chair is temporarily vacant.

(8) That the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, may appoint another member of the committee to act as chair during the temporary absence of both the chair and deputy chair at a meeting of the committee.

(9) That, in the event of an equally divided vote, the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, have a casting vote.

(10) That the committee has the power to appoint subcommittees consisting of three or more of its members, and that two members of the committee constitute a quorum of the sub-committee, provided that one member is the chair of the committee, and to refer to any such subcommittee any of the matters which the committee is empowered to consider.

(11) That the committee and any subcommittee have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings and the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit.

(12) That the committee be provided with all necessary staff, facilities and resources and be empowered to appoint persons with specialist knowledge for the purposes of the committee with the approval of the President.

(13) That the committee be empowered to print from day to day such papers and evidence as may be ordered by it, and a daily Hansard be published of such proceedings as take place in public.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 34, standing in the name of Senator Shoebridge, be agreed to.

I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 163.

Leave granted.

I move the motion as amended:

(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on the Operation of the Capital Gains Tax Discount, be established to inquire into and report on:

(a) the contribution of the capital gains tax (CGT) discount to inequality in Australia, particularly in relation to housing;

(b) the role of the CGT discount in suppressing Australia's productivity potential by funnelling investment into existing housing assets;

(c) how the CGT discount influences the types of assets purchased and whether these classes of investments are productive or speculative;

(d) the distributional effects of the CGT discount;

(e) the use of the CGT discount by trusts;

(f) whether this tax discount is fulfilling its original intended purpose;

(g) whether the CGT discount has a role in Australia's future tax mix; and

(h) any other related matters.

(2) That the committee present its final report by 17 March 2026.

(3) That the committee consist of 5 senators, as follows:

(a) two nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate;

(b) two nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate; and

(c) one nominated by the Leader of the Australian Greens.

(4) That:

(a) participating members may be appointed to the committee on the nomination of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate or any minority party or independent senator; and

(b) participating members may participate in hearings of evidence and deliberations of the committee, and have all the rights of members of the committee, but may not vote on any questions before the committee; and

(c) a participating member shall be taken to be a member of a committee for the purpose of forming a quorum of the committee if a majority of members of the committee is not present.

(5) That the committee may proceed to the dispatch of business notwithstanding that all members have not been duly nominated and appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy.

(6) That the committee elect as chair a member nominated by the Leader of the Australian Greens and, as deputy chair, a member nominated by Leader of the Government in the Senate.

(7) That the deputy chair shall act as chair when the chair is absent from a meeting of the committee or the position of chair is temporarily vacant.

(8) That the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, may appoint another member of the committee to act as chair during the temporary absence of both the chair and deputy chair at a meeting of the committee.

(9) That, in the event of an equally divided vote, the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, have a casting vote.

(10) That the committee have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings and the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit.

(11) That the committee be provided with all necessary staff, facilities and resources and be empowered to appoint persons with specialist knowledge for the purposes of the committee with the approval of the President.

(12) That the committee be empowered to print from day to day such papers and evidence as may be ordered by it, and a daily Hansard be published of such proceedings as take place in public.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 163 standing in the name of Senator McKim be agreed to.

I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 164.

Leave granted.

I move the motion as amended:

(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity, be established, on 17 March 2026, to inquire into and report on:

(a) the extent and nature of intergenerational housing inequity in Australia across housing tenure types;

(b) consideration of the laws, policies, practices and services that have been most effective in reducing intergenerational housing inequity in Australia and overseas;

(c) the experience of intergenerational housing inequity on different population cohorts, including but not limited to socio-economic, gender, geographical location, disability, ethnicity and racial status;

(d) the causes of intergenerational housing inequity, including nature and rates of construction, rental policies and practices, tax settings, homelessness policies, lending rules, and public and social housing practices and investment;

(e) the factors that promote or impede action on significant housing reform;

(f) policy, legislative and other options for tackling intergenerational housing inequity and evening the playing field for current and future generations; and

(g) any related matters.

(2) That the committee present its final report by 30 September 2026.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 164, standing in the name of Senator Barbara Pocock, be agreed to.

I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 166.

Leave granted.

At the request of Senator Bragg, I move the motion as amended:

(1) That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on Productivity in Australia, be established to inquire into and report on:

(a) the history of productivity growth in Australia in both multifactor and labour terms;

(b) objectives for a multi-decade national settlement strategy to achieve a more balanced distribution of population between cities and regional Australia, with a view to enhancing economic resilience, productivity and social cohesion;

(c) the current position and opportunities to gain productivity growth;

(d) conflicts of interest and structural barriers to sustainable growth;

(e) the efficacy of federal competition law;

(f) opportunities for the states and territories to drive growth;

(g) the impact of regulatory tax burdens on productivity growth;

(h) the impact and opportunity of technology;

(i) priority opportunities in the market and non-market sectors for productivity growth;

(j) Australia's competitiveness and benchmarking against similar nations; and

(k) any other related matters.

(2) That the committee present its final report by 30 September 2026.

(3) That the committee consist of 6 senators, as follows:

(a) two nominated by the Leader of the Government in the Senate;

(b) two nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate; and

(c) two nominated by minority party or independent senators.

(4) That:

(a) participating members may be appointed to the committee on the nomination of the Leader of the Government in the Senate, the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate or any minority party or independent senator;

(b) participating members may participate in hearings of evidence and deliberations of the committee, and have all the rights of members of the committee, but may not vote on any questions before the committee; and

(c) a participating member shall be taken to be a member of a committee for the purpose of forming a quorum of the committee if a majority of members of the committee is not present.

(5) That the committee may proceed to the dispatch of business notwithstanding that all members have not been duly nominated and appointed and notwithstanding any vacancy.

(6) That the committee elect as chair a member nominated by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and, as deputy chair, a member nominated by Leader of the Government in the Senate.

(7) That the deputy chair shall act as chair when the chair is absent from a meeting of the committee, or the position of chair is temporarily vacant.

(8) That the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, may appoint another member of the committee to act as chair during the temporary absence of both the chair and deputy chair at a meeting of the committee.

(9) That, in the event of an equally divided vote, the chair, or the deputy chair when acting as chair, have a casting vote.

(10) That the committee, notwithstanding any prorogation of the Parliament or dissolution of the House of Representatives, have power to send for and examine persons and documents, to move from place to place, to sit in public or in private and have leave to report from time to time its proceedings and the evidence taken and such interim recommendations as it may deem fit.

(11) That the committee be provided with all necessary staff, facilities and resources and be empowered to appoint persons with specialist knowledge for the purposes of the committee with the approval of the President.

(12) That the committee be empowered to print from day to day such papers and evidence as may be ordered by it, and a daily Hansard be published of such proceedings as take place in public.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 166, standing in the name of Senator Bragg, be agreed to.

I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, by no later than 5 pm on Wednesday, 5 November 2025, all and any translations, whether official or not, of the interview of Nauruan President David Adeang regarding arrangements between Nauru and Australia posted on the Nauruan Government's Facebook page on 17 February 2025.

by leave—I move:

Omit all words after "laid on the table", substitute "by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs, by no later than 5 pm on Wednesday, 5 November 2025:

(a) all and any translations, whether official or not, of the interview of Nauruan President David Adeang regarding arrangements between Nauru and Australia posted on the Nauruan Government's Facebook page on 17 February 2025; and

(b) all correspondence in relation to the interview between any of the following:

(i) the Minister for Foreign Affairs or her office;

(ii) the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade;

(iii) the Minister for Home Affairs or his office; and

(iv) the Department of Home Affairs".

Question agreed to.

The question is that motion No. 225 moved by Senator Shoebridge and amended be agreed to.

At the request of Senator Duniam, I move general business notices of motion Nos 228, 229, 230, 231:

GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 228

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs by no later than 2 pm on Monday, 24 November 2025, all written correspondence between the Minister for Home Affairs and state and territory ministers since Monday, 12 May 2025 relating to proposed reforms to regulation and taxation, and the application of enforcement measures, in respect of illicit tobacco in Australia.

GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 229

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs by no later than 2 pm on Monday, 24 November 2025, all documents provided by the Department of Home Affairs and any other relevant government agency to the Minister for Home Affairs since Monday, 12 May 2025 relating to proposed reforms to regulation and taxation, and the application of enforcement measures, in respect of illicit tobacco in Australia.

GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 230

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs, by no later than 2 pm on Monday, 24 November 2025:

(a) the most recent document(s) prepared for the Minister for Home Affairs in relation to the following points respectively:

(i) the amount of revenue that has been lost in Australia due to the trade of illicit tobacco,

(ii) the total of all excise and customs duties paid in respect of tobacco products for each of the last 5 years for which official figures are available, and

(iii) the effectiveness of coordination between Commonwealth, state and territory law enforcement agencies in relation to illicit tobacco;

(b) the most recent cost benefit analysis concerning Commonwealth expenditure on illicit tobacco enforcement measures; and

(c) the most recent policy evaluation concerning Commonwealth expenditure on illicit tobacco enforcement measures.

GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 231

That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs by no later than 2 pm on Monday, 24 November 2025, all file notes, briefing notes, reports and other correspondence prepared for the Minister for Home Affairs by or for the Australian Border Force and the Department of Home Affairs since Monday, 12 May 2025 relating to:

(a) the detection, seizure or investigation of illicit tobacco;

(b) enforcement operations targeting illicit tobacco supply chains;

(c) coordination with state and territory law enforcement agencies in relation to illicit tobacco; and

(d) the volumes, origins and smuggling methods of illicit tobacco entering Australia.

A division having been called and the bells being rung—

Senator Chisholm is seeking leave to cancel the division.

Leave granted.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the following apply as a temporary order until the arrangements for question time adopted by the Senate on 29 October 2025 cease to apply:

(1) All senators be required to attend the Senate whilst questions without notice are asked and answered.

(2) Senators may be excused from the requirements of paragraph (1) if they have been granted leave of absence by the Senate, or with the agreement of all whips and independent senators.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

Leave is granted for one minute.

This motion is nothing but a juvenile stunt, and I'm surprised that Senator Wong, as someone with the experience she has had in this chamber, would allow this motion to see the light of day. Senators are constitutionally required to attend sittings, but they should not be ordered to attend in the same way as members of the executive or witnesses. Further, the Senate's disciplinary powers over its own members are exercised through various methods, such as suspensions, censure motions or privileges proceedings, not by ordering attendance.

Senator Marielle Smith seems to have also overlooked circumstances where senators may need to be absent from the chamber for urgent personal or medical reasons, which do not require a leave of absence, without getting the permission of all Independent senators and whips. The motion is embarrassing. The attendance of non-executive senators is governed by the Constitution, not by coercive orders of the Senate. The coalition strongly opposes it.

The question is that general business notice of motion No. 232, moved by Senator Marielle Smith, be agreed to.

I move:

That there be laid on the table by the Minister for the Environment and Water, by no later than midday on Wednesday, 5 November 2025, all written or digital correspondence, briefing notes, file notes, meeting notes, meeting agendas or minutes, or other records of interaction between the minister or his office and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water relating to stakeholder meetings and engagement on the Environment Protection Reform Bill package since 9 October 2025.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That—

(a) the Senate notes that:

(i) the Senate has passed 4 resolutions in relation to the production of the incoming government briefs for the Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water portfolio, but the unredacted briefs have not yet been provided to the Senate,

(ii) on 31 October 2025, in a response to order for the production of documents no. 100, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy advised that 'Appendix D remains redacted as it relates to the work of Minister Watt's portfolio',

(iii) this response does not address why it would not be in the public interest to release Appendix D,

(iv) the Minister for Climate Change and Energy may consult the Minister for the Environment and Water on the release of Appendix D, and

(v) the Senate has previously rejected public interest immunity claims on the basis that release of the incoming government briefs would compromise the public service's role in managing the transition from one government to another or would disclose Cabinet deliberations; and

(b) there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, by no later than midday on Wednesday, 5 November 2025, an unredacted version of 'Appendix D: Other department policy areas' of Volume 1 of the incoming government brief to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy.

Question agreed to.

At the request of Senator Bragg, I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

(i) order for the production of documents no. 197, agreed to by the Senate on 28 October 2025, requesting that the Minister representing the Treasurer, by no later than 9 am on Thursday, 30 October 2025, table the independent review commissioned by the Treasury and delivered by Intersection into the governance and operational concerns at Housing Australia in early 2024 was not complied with,

(ii) a failure to release the requested documents in a timely manner is in contempt of the Senate and its functions, and

(iii) an investigation into the governance of a government agency equipped with taxpayer funds falls within the public interest; and

(b) requires the Minister representing the Treasurer to attend the Senate on Wednesday, 5 November 2025 at the conclusion of question time to provide an explanation of no more than 5 minutes of the failure to comply with the order, and that:

(i) any senator may move to take note of the explanation, and

(ii) any such motion may be debated for no longer than 30 minutes and shall have precedence over all business until determined, and senators may speak to the motion for not more than 5 minutes each.

Question agreed to.

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that order for the production of documents (OPD) no. 47, agreed to on 29 July 2025, required the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment and Water to table the incoming government briefs prepared by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water for the incoming minister after the May 2025 federal election by no later than midday on 31 July 2025;

(b) notes that, in responding to the order on 30 July 2025, the minister did not provide Volume 1 of the brief and Volume 2 was presented with redactions;

(c) notes that the minister did not address why Volume 1 was not provided or why Volume 2 was presented with redactions, other than noting that briefs have been released publicly in response to a freedom of information (FOI) request 'with exemptions applied in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act';

(d) notes that:

(i) when the Senate orders ministers to produce documents, they are obliged to do so, subject to the determination by the Senate of any claim that it would not be in the public interest to comply, and

(ii) public interest immunity claims must be accompanied by a statement of the ground for that conclusion, specifying the harm to the public interest that could result from the production of the document in the Senate;

(e) rejects the direct application of the exemption categories in the FOI Act to orders for the production of documents because they do not provide an adequate basis for withholding information or documents from the Senate; and

(f) requires the minister, by no later than midday on Wednesday, 5 November 2025, to either:

(i) table both volumes of the incoming government brief to the Minister for the Environment and Water without redaction, or

(ii) provide the Senate with a proper explanation of the harm that would result from release of the briefs that would enable the Senate to determine the claims raised.

Question agreed to.

I seek leave to move a motion for a supplementary budget estimates spillover hearing of the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, to be held from 4.30 pm to 7.30 pm on Thursday 6 November 2025.

Leave not granted.

Senator Bragg has submitted a proposal, under standing order 75, today. It is shown at item 13 of today's Order of Business:

The Albanese Government's $60 billion housing plan is making Australia's housing crisis worse, through the failing Housing Australia Future Fund, irresponsible Home Guarantee Scheme, and enormous governance issues at their key housing bureaucracy, Housing Australia.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

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

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

The main point in this matter of public importance is that the taxpayer is underwriting a $60 billion housing scheme across the board, across the Commonwealth, in which the government is building fewer houses than were built under the previous government. Who could believe that you could conjure up a way to waste $60 billion of taxpayer funds to get fewer houses than we had before? Now, we have the largest population that we've ever had, and we have, per capita, the largest drop in completions. What we also have is a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of government programs and a lot of dodgy accounting. In fact, one of the most extraordinary elements of all of this is the way that the government has set up these housing schemes. A lot of them are off budget. So, even though we've already seen 10 years of red ink, that doesn't take into account the fact that some of the kooky schemes, like Help to Buy, are all off budget.

What you've seen under this government is the breaking down of the integrity of Australia's public finances. If you look for the overall picture in the final budget outcome, it doesn't tell you the overall picture. All it tells you is what they've got on budget. It is extraordinary to me that this quantity of funds has been allocated to housing to produce fewer houses.

I think it is important to note that, no matter how well intentioned the programs are, the central agency of the Housing Australia fame has been a bureaucratic quagmire. The Housing Australia Future Fund, for example, which has been in business for two years, has $10 billion and has so far built no houses, but what it is doing is overpaying for proposed new dwellings. Now, the average cost to build a new house in Australia is about $500,000. But how much is the future fund paying? It's paying $1.2 million and $1.3 million in some cases. That is not good value for money. That is why we welcome the Auditor-General's independent investigation into the spending of this agency.

I think there are significant probity issues. Because of this government's addiction to secrecy, we haven't been able to get to the bottom of the meetings that were conducted by the Treasurer and the Minister for Housing with the major investors, who have become the biggest beneficiaries of this scheme—the major super funds, the Labor Party's best friends. They've received 2.8 billion bucks from the Housing Australia Future Fund. The same people that I suspect helped the Treasurer design the payment scheme got the cream at the end. This is a matter that the Auditor-General will have to investigate—because why should the taxpayer be paying $1.2 million to $1.3 million per house? It would be easier to pay that half a million dollars and set them up as public housing. Why do we have to pay these investors this premium?

That is why we will seriously consider making a referral to the Anti-Corruption Commission—because this is a matter of great integrity. We want public finances to be well managed. We want conflicts of interests to be disclosed and properly managed. Because the government redacts all of the FOIs and does not provide the documents that were ordered by this Senate, we can't get to the bottom of things. So maybe it is the case that the government has totally emasculated the Senate. Maybe it is the case that we'll never see the Briggs review. Maybe it is the case that we'll never see the documents ordered in relation to the Home Guarantee Scheme. Maybe that is the case. Maybe we have seen the emasculation of this chamber. Maybe there's no point coming here anymore.

The Australian people would say, 'Surely we send you people to Canberra to get good value for us.' Surely, if the majority of this chamber has ordered the production of a document, the Australian people should be able to view that document. It's a pretty basic standard. The government have failed it. They've wasted $60 billion on housing, to build fewer houses. It's been a disaster, and I regret that very much.

Here we are again—another day, another housing motion from Senator Bragg. To Senator Bragg and to those opposite: only Labor has a plan to build more homes, only Labor has a plan to get renters a better deal and only Labor has a plan to get more Australians into homeownership. Time and time again, day after day, we come into this place and we hear Senator Bragg and those opposite talk about housing. What they don't say—but what we know to be true—is that they don't want more Australians getting into their first home. They don't want us to build more houses. They have stood in the way. They have blocked every single effort that this government has made to get more Australians into their own home. They have blocked and stood in the way of every attempt that we have made to build more homes. They have blocked and stood in the way of every attempt that we have made to get more young people into their very first home. So, while the coalition are here to play politics and continue their long record of doing absolutely nothing on housing, Labor is getting on with the job.

We know that housing is a life-defining challenge for so many Australians, and, when we came to government, what was clear was that people were working hard, doing everything right, but were still not able to get into their own home. Too many people across this country couldn't afford a place of their own. We hear it out and about. I certainly hear it in my home state of Western Australia—families who can't get into a house big enough for their kids; young people who fear they will never be able to buy their own home. We know it is tough.

It's because, when we came to government, there had been a decade of neglect when those opposite were at the table. I was astonished to learn that they didn't even have a housing minister for most of their time in government. Well, no wonder we are in the position we are in. Labor have an ambitious $43 billion housing agenda, and we will not be distracted by Senator Bragg. We will not be distracted by those opposite who try to turn this into politics and try to turn it into a headline grab. We are getting on with the job of delivering the boldest and most ambitious housing agenda that this country has seen in the postwar period. We will not apologise for it, because we are tackling the housing challenge from every angle. Our Housing Australia Future Fund is a $10 billion investment to build 55,000 social and affordable homes in the next five years. It is the largest national investment in housing in a generation, and Senator Bragg and his colleagues on the other side of this chamber continue to tear it down and to try and stand in our way.

We have a long-term commitment to rebuild Australia's social housing system. We are proud of that work. We are proud of that record. While we are focused on building more social and affordable homes for Australians, while we are focused on helping more young people get into their first home with our the five per cent deposit scheme, the coalition are actively trying to make it more difficult for you to buy your own home. They are actively making it more difficult for us to build the homes that we need to increase housing supply. Without a housing policy of their own, all they know how to do is stand in the way and block and bulldoze. For almost a decade they were tapped out on this issue. They were tapped out on our national housing challenge—no leadership, no plan and certainly no investment. For most of their nine years in government, we saw essentially nothing.

So, Senator Bragg, I say to you: when your side were in government, you got us into this mess, but what I know is that Labor will get us out of this. We will make the biggest investment in housing in a generation, and we will not let you stand in our way.

I rise to speak on this matter of public importance on Australia's housing crisis. A total of 89 per cent of Australians agree that we're in a housing crisis, and it's clear why. The deliberate political choices of successive Labor and coalition governments have brought us here. Labor's policies are turbocharging house prices, with national housing prices increasing by more than one per cent in a single month in October—up by six per cent in the last year. Labor need to take accountability for house prices exploding on their watch. The solutions are clear.

I've just come from the launch of an incredibly important book by Hal Pawson, Dr Viv Milligan and Judith Yates, Housing Policy in Australia, where the minister said, 'The housing system in Australia is broken.' She went on to say, 'It's incredibly complex, finding solutions.' Yes, it takes courage. Yes, it takes political capital. Yes, it takes vision, but we will not fix the housing crisis by making it more complex through things like the HAFF, which make it more costly, more slow and sluggish and much more expensive to fix. So we need real action by the minister, which includes a National Housing and Homelessness Plan, and we need to double federal funding to states and territories for housing support for the homeless and for public and community housing. The two major parties also don't have a single policy to assist renters—not one to deal with rising rents and uncapped rent increases throughout our country towns and our cities. We need to stop unlimited rent increases and establish a national renters protection authority to enforce renters' rights.

These are all things the government could do. They are not that complex, but they require resolve. But they want you to think everything is too hard or too complex and that better is not possible. Well, it is possible. We've done it before. We did it in the postwar period. We built a lot of houses and we looked after renters. We need accountability from our government and its departments for their role in this mess. What we are seeing out of Housing Australia and the HAFF is of deep concern. Last estimates this government put Treasury in the midnight slot, and we had only 48 minutes to ask crucial questions that go to the heart of our country's housing crisis. For one of the most critical issues of our time, that shapes life chances for our kids and our families, we had less than an hour with the relevant department. Luckily we get another go this Thursday night at a spillover with Treasury and Housing Australia. I am looking forward to hopefully getting some real answers to deal with a very real crisis.

Let me break it down for those opposite who, having mentioned my colleague Senator Bragg's name several times, clearly appear to be threatened by the fact that he continues to hold his government to account and to call them out on their failed policies. Labor promised to fix Australia's housing crisis. They promised 1.2 million new homes. They promised help for first home buyers. They promised transparency, accountability and results.

But what have Australians got instead? Well, Labor's National Housing Accord is dead, buried and cremated. Their $60 billion housing plan is nothing more than a bureaucratic mirage, a tangle of failed programs, false promises and fiscal waste. The Housing Australia Future Fund, the so-called HAFF, has become pink batts 2.0, a putrid waste of public funds and maladministration. It's a monster that eats money and doesn't build houses. The numbers tell the story, of course. Under the former coalition government, Australia was building around 190,000 new homes a year. Under Labor, that number has slumped to barely 177,000, and it's falling. That's tens of thousands of families missing out on the Australian dream. Builders are short more than 83,000 tradies, according to the HIA. Costs are rising, confidence is collapsing and still Labor can't explain whether money is going. The Auditor-General found that only $13 million was spent by the HAFF in 2024-25, yet somehow $137 million vanished—puff!—in just one quarter this year.

Where is the accountability? Where are the results? Labor's housing boondoggles are costing taxpayers billions, yet they are delivering fewer homes than ever before. They're building bureaucracy, not communities, and the human cost is real. Young Australians are locked out of the property market. Couples are delaying having children or giving up on the dream of a family home altogether. The family unit itself is being weakened. The coalition is and always has been the party of homeownership. We believe every Australian, especially younger Australians, deserve the chance to realise the great dream of owning a home, not to be shut out by bad policy and rising costs.

In the Northern Territory, my constituency, it is even worse. Labor's so-called help for first home buyers is locking Territorians out, not lifting them up. Labor's distortion of the home guarantee scheme won't make housing more affordable; it will do the opposite. Their reckless design will dump a $60 billion liability onto taxpayers and push house prices up by as much as 10 per cent, pricing even more Australians out of the market. Under Labor's First Home Guarantee scheme, Darwin is lumped in with regional Tasmania and Norfolk Island, with a $600,000 price cap. Yet the median house price in Darwin is now over $660,000, with the highest growth rate of any capital city. The NT treasurer, the Property Council and the building industry have all called for that cap to be lifted to at least $850,000, but Prime Minister Albanese isn't listening.

This is what happens when a one-size-fits-all policy comes from a government that doesn't understand the Territory. Territorians who've worked hard, saved up and done the right thing are being told they don't qualify for the help they were promised. That's not fairness; that's failure. It is failure on a national scale. We need homes Australians can actually afford. We need policies that empower families, not bureaucracies. We need to build townhouses, not tower blocks. We need Australians to own a little piece of this country and not rent forever. Labor promised solutions; they've delivered a shambles. It's time to end the housing chaos. It's time this government lived up to its own standards. It's time to put Australians first and the Australian dream of home ownership first.

Senator Bragg has come in here today, supported by the Liberal opposition, and has brought this MPI about housing. It's about time we put some facts into this MPI, and, in my contribution and in the contribution by Senator Whiteaker, we've had some facts. From the other side, we've had nothing but spin and, unfortunately, not much support for those people out in the community that are looking to buy homes.

When the coalition were in government—when they had a chance to act—they had no plan, no ambition and no housing minister. Don't worry about this MPI; their plan was MIA—missing in action. After almost a decade in government, the coalition left behind a housing system in crisis. Home ownership fell. Rents skyrocketed. Social housing virtually stopped being built. When they left office, Australia was building fewer homes than at almost any time in the previous decade. They went years without even having a housing minister, and their one big housing idea at the 2022 election was letting young people raid their superannuation to buy a home—a policy that would have pushed prices up and left people worse off at retirement. That is not a plan; that is desperation dressed up as policy.

By contrast, the Albanese Labor government has a long-term plan to make it easier to buy and better to rent and to build more homes. Our Homes for Australia plan is the most ambitious housing agenda in generations, and it is working. ABS data shows building approvals rising—a sign that Labor's reforms are taking effect. We have a shared national target to build 1.2 million new homes over five years, the most ever built in any five-year period in our history. We have established the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, delivering tens of thousands of new social and affordable homes. Those opposite fought it every step of the way. They teamed up with the Greens to delay it for 14 months, denying real help to people who need it most. What are they doing now? They're still voting against housing supply, still opposing build-to-rent projects that will deliver 80,000 new rentals and still blocking tax incentives that would get shovels in the ground. The same people who did nothing in government are now standing in the way of progress in opposition.

This government has increased Commonwealth rent assistance by almost 50 per cent for more than a million households. We have increased rent assistance, cut red tape, supported builders to get on site sooner and helped first home buyers with the Home Guarantee Scheme. That is practical, real support, the kind of support that changes lives.

Those opposite like to say—and we've heard it here in this debate this afternoon—that it will not work. They said that about the Housing Australia Future Fund, about our target, about rent assistance and about every single thing we have done, but the data tells a different story. Around half a million homes have been completed nationwide since Labor came to government. For the first time in decades, the Commonwealth is back at the centre of housing policy, building homes, not excuses. That is what happens when you have a government that treats housing as a national priority, not as an afterthought.

I want to remind the chamber that the Liberals voted against every single one of these measures—against one million homes, against the Housing Australia Future Fund, against build-to-rent and against help for first home buyers. Every time they've had a chance to help solve the housing crisis, they have chosen politics over people, and they continue to do so.

I thank Senator Bragg for bringing this motion before the Senate, which deals with a policy area in urgent need of reform. The Minister for Housing has said:

We're not trying to bring down house prices.

And she's doing a great job in that regard.

In the last 50 years, the price of housing relative to the average income has nearly quadrupled. Both sides of politics have failed to address the systemic issues driving our housing crisis. Instead of addressing the rorts that have turned housing from a place to live into an investment—for example, capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing—the government is adding fuel to the fire. As this motion mentions, the Home Guarantee Scheme encourages Australians to take out as large a mortgage as possible. This demand-side measure only pushes prices higher by increasing competition for a limited number of homes without boosting supply. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

Yesterday the Senate agreed to my motion ordering the government to table modelling on how this scheme will impact house prices. That data will show just how much this policy inflates house prices. While people are fighting over the few houses that are up for sale, supply continues to falter. This morning it was reported that, in my home state of Western Australia, housing approvals dropped 2.5 per cent in the three months to September. Senator Carol Brown just said that approvals have increased; nationally they've risen by 7.9 per cent, but the drop in WA shows that the government's policies are just not working for Western Australians.

The only path to housing affordability is bold structural reform, and if the government are serious they'll do that.

I'm going to repeat something that Senator Whiteaker said, 'Young Australians fear they will never be able to own their own home.' I didn't just memorise those words now; they're my words. I've been saying them over and over again in this chamber for two years, and I'm very happy to see the government have now adopted my lines, but we would like them to actually do something about this housing crisis.

Where are the houses? I'm going to say it again: where are the houses? Thank you very much for the five per cent deposit guarantee. Where are the houses that these young Australians are going to buy? Not only do they have to battle out there in this cost-of-living crisis with skyrocketing rents, skyrocketing groceries, skyrocketing electricity prices and everything else going through the roof. They now have to compete with the federal government, who are also buying those houses, because it's been very, very clear that they're not building them. No-one actually really knows.

At the recent Senate estimates, Housing Australia confirmed the HAFF had completed just 567 homes. This flagship $10 billion fund of taxpayers' money—not government money—has so far completed 567 homes. We don't know if that's renovated or whether that's modified. We're not quite sure because last year in Senate estimates, finance minister Katy Gallagher revealed that the HAFF had built no homes—zero homes, zip, zero, none whatsoever—and that they had acquired 340. That's 340 homes that Australian first home buyers couldn't buy because the Australian government bought them instead. This is shameful. I sat on a Senate inquiry on the rental and housing crisis. It is abundantly clear from that, and from everything that we have seen since, that supply is a problem, and that this government has been an impediment to that supply.

All we ever hear from the government is why the opposition, the Greens or the crossbench are a problem for them. I have a news flash: you are the government. It's not your first day. You're in your fourth year and you are still blaming those opposite for your inability to do your job. It is unbelievable. And you say that we are the ones that are constantly undermining what you are trying to do. I tell you that it's not just us. Things are so bad with the HAFF that the Auditor-General has confirmed that a performance audit into its design and delivery has commenced. Is that our fault too? Did we have something to do with that? Are we responsible for that as well, or will the Albanese Labor government put their hand up and actually take ownership of that problem?

I can't not mention the other issue here in our construction industry that is hampering the supply of housing in our country, which is the endemic problem of the corrupt and criminal conduct of the CFMEU. I want to be clear. I'm not talking about rank-and-file members who work hard and expect their leadership to deliver on the dues that they pay them. I'm talking about the people at the top of this organisation who are protected by the Albanese Labor government. We are seeking a Senate inquiry into the CFMEU and the impacts of the administration on stopping that corruption and criminal conduct, which has an impact on housing supply in this country, and yet they refuse. They're pretending that there's nothing to see here. If there is nothing to see here, then why won't you allow the Senate inquiry? It's because there is plenty to see here.

We know that there is a 30 per cent CFMEU tax on the construction of apartments in our country. That's 30 per cent more that young Australians will have to pay to purchase that new apartment, on top of the additional cost of the demand driven by this five per cent guarantee scheme, because this government is protecting the CFMEU. That is absolutely egregious. And they're blaming Senator Bragg for that. Well, he will keep bringing this up, and we will keep standing up to support him until we hold this government to proper account for the fact that they've been unable to build the houses that we— (Time expired)

The time for the discussion has expired.

The Senate will now consider the proposal from Senator David Pocock, which is also shown at item 13 on today's Order of Business:

The need for the government to legislate to redirect uncontracted export gas into the domestic market and bring down the price of gas and electricity for Australian industry and households, to recognise that Australian gas is for Australian households and businesses.

Is consideration of the proposal supported?

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

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the government to legislate to redirect uncontracted export gas into the domestic market and bring down the price of gas and electricity for Australian industry and households, to recognise that Australian gas is for Australian households and businesses.

Fellow colleagues, representatives of states and territories in this great country, this urgency motion today is truly urgent when we look at electricity prices, when we look at Australian manufacturers and businesses doing it tough and when we look at smelters announcing that they are no longer viable. We hear many talk about a gas supply problem here in this country, but there is no such thing. We do not have a gas supply problem. We have a gas export problem in Australia. We are one of the biggest gas exporters in the world. We just happen to have a system that doesn't recognise that Australian gas actually belongs to Australians in the first instance and is happy to give away half of our gas for free—royalty free. And we have a situation where, as one of the biggest gas exporters in the world, we have a trillion dollars of national debt. Look at Norway, which has taken a different approach where they believe that natural resources belong to Norwegians and future Norwegians, and they are sitting on a $3 trillion sovereign wealth fund—two very different approaches. But that is not the focus of the urgency today. The urgency today is about pulling a lever that we have as a parliament when it comes to ensuring that Australian gas benefits Australian people, that Australian gas benefits Australian manufacturers, businesses and households.

Eighty-three per cent of gas extracted in Australia is used for LNG export. We export more than four times as much gas as is used domestically. Despite this, wholesale gas prices in Australia are more than three times higher than in the USA and seven times higher than in Qatar and Canada. Again, we don't have a gas supply problem; we have a gas export problem. According to the June 2025 interim report of the ACCC gas inquiry, there was 122 petajoules of uncontracted gas in 2024 and 79 per cent of that was exported. That is more than double the projected shortfall of 49 petajoules next year. We should be saying uncontracted gas has to go to Australian manufacturers, businesses and households. This is a solution that is on the table now. There is no sovereign risk. This is uncontracted gas that belongs to all Australians and I urge the government to actually do this. This is something you could do tomorrow, and I believe you would have the support of the vast majority of Australians. You would certainly have the support of the smelters and many other manufacturers who are really feeling the pain when it comes to gas prices.

We will potentially hear from the coalition saying that the answer is actually just more supply. 'We need more supply. We need more projects. We need Narrabri. We need all sorts of things.' Everyone knows that those things take a very long time to develop. And, again, we do not have a supply problem. We have more than enough supply. We just choose politically not to say Australian gas needs to benefit Australians. While that may be their line, they are missing the fact that uncontracted gas can solve issues for smelters and manufacturers. It would bring down the price of electricity because 17 odd per cent of electricity is firmed with gas, and that sets the price. Here is an opportunity.

The government will likely say: 'Well, we've got all sorts of reviews on foot. We've done a lot. We've got a $12 per gigajoule cap'—which I'm hearing is more of a floor at the moment. 'No need to hurry us. We've got time.' At the same time, we're spending billions of dollars of Australian taxpayer money bailing out smelters and heavy industry when we could just ensure that they had Australian gas to run on. This is nuts. Here is a solution that has broad backing from industry and from Australians, and I urge the government to get on with it.

If only solving our gas market problems was as simple as Senator Pocock has proposed. I truly wish it was. We can see that, in the last three years, Labor's interventions have not only failed; they have made the gas market shortfall even worse. We warned that the legislation that came into this place with the ink barely dry, poorly consulted, would result in worse outcomes, and what happened? The minister had to provide exemptions to the entire market. They have made our gas market more complex, more confusing and less secure. And guess what that means. It means there is less supply, prices have gone up and investors are worried.

Senator Pocock would have you believe that Australian gas being owned by Australians can be simply and easily extracted. Of course, that's not the case. These are multibillion dollar industries. For that reason, investment, certainty and confidence determine whether we bring more gas to market. In Australia, over generations, we have seen ebbs and flows of investor confidence, and what has undermined it the most? Unfortunately, it has been activist organisations like the Environmental Defenders Office currently, the Australia Institute and others who have talked down confidence in the Australian market. Some have funded appeals that have locked up more gas coming into the Australian market.

I'm delighted that in Queensland more gas reserves are being released. We're seeing great companies producing more gas for Australians. But guess where it's not happening. It's not happening in Victoria, where activists have shut down future gas investment in that state—the place that uses the most gas. It has a long history of gas production in the Bass Strait and a great reliance on manufacturing and domestic use. Guess where those jobs are going. They are leaving Australia because they cannot compete with the gas prices because it's not being produced locally. Moving gas around in pipelines costs dollars per gigajoule. It is expensive, so it's important that gas is produced where it's needed. But activist actions have meant that Victoria is off limits. The Narrabri project in New South Wales has been slowed for a decade. This is outrageous because those activists are undermining Australia's domestic energy security.

The gas market interventions that Labor has come in with more recently have clearly failed. They have had to introduce additional regulations, the gas code, to try and fix their mistakes. The ACCC has publicly blasted the government's intervention, stating that they have failed to reduce prices. They have worsened supply and have incentivised gas companies to produce less uncontracted gas for the domestic market and the increased shortfall risks.

We know that repeated interventions will not drive down prices or secure supply. They will only worsen it. The best example I can think of is Argentina in the 1980s. They followed exactly the advice that Senator Pocock and his advisers are providing, and what did that do? It meant that Argentina had to pay people to come back later to invest and produce their own gas. This is not simple. The US, Qatar and Canada are places that have been identified as having lower prices than Australia. That is because they are producing it. They are producing it by the well load. They have a glut of gas in the US, thanks to shale gas coming up with liquid fuels. That is what has driven down prices.

The idea that we are going to start interfering in the gas market further—I can guarantee what will happen. We will see additional Australian companies invest offshore. Gas will get increasingly expensive here. We would be much better off getting the Labor government out of the way. Stop funding the EDO. Stop encouraging activists to slow down investment and let the gas run, because that is in the best interest of Australians.

It's my pleasure to rise this afternoon to speak on this energy motion raised by Senator Pocock about Australian gas. As a proud senator representing the greatest state, Western Australia, in the best nation on this earth, I know how critical gas is to Western Australia's domestic economy. Gas powers 60 per cent of WA's electricity, providing energy for many businesses and homes. While the Greens continue to criticise gas, I'd like to read a couple of figures into the Hansard for their benefit. Australia's oil and gas industry contributes approximately $105 billion a year to the national economy and supports 215,000 jobs around Australia, including many in regional and remote communities and many in my state and Senator Ghosh's state.

Last week, in fact, I had the pleasure of meeting some of these workers, here with a delegation of gas industry leaders and local community representatives, who met with parliamentarians to share their positive experiences working in and with Australia's natural gas industry. To those workers I met: thank you for your time; I wish you well in your careers.

Unlike those opposite, the Albanese government is committed to fixing the gas market mess left by none other than the former government, that mob. In the previous term, the Albanese government took strong action on gas supply and price, ensuring more gas was available for domestic use. Thanks to the Albanese Labor government, Australia has a stronger heads of agreement with LNG producers so gas is offered to the Australian market before it can be exported; a reformed Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism, which can reserve gas as a last resort if there's a shortfall; stronger powers for the market operator so it can issue directions to gas industry participants to resolve an imminent supply shortfall; and the gas code, which has secured more than 644 petajoules of gas for Australian homes and businesses. We have also legislated emissions targets, reformed the safeguard mechanism and invested in electrifying homes. We are building renewables at record rates. We also published the Future Gas Strategy, which maps out the role of gas in Australia and for our key trading partners as we decarbonise.

The Albanese Labor government has done a lot to make sure there is sufficient gas supply. To be very clear, no gas supply shortfall has eventuated. The Albanese government is focus on practical solutions that deliver affordable and reliable gas to households and businesses. Successive governments have put in place a range of policies and regulations to manage a crisis of supply or price or both.

Now for the best bit—way back in 2006, former Western Australian Labor premier Alan Carpenter, a very decent man, introduced a policy where between 10 and 20 per cent of domestic gas from the reserves around Western Australia would be made available to the Western Australian economy. How's that for leadership? It wasn't done by the Howard government; it was done by the Western Australian Carpenter government. When speaking about the WA domestic gas reservation policy in the Western Australia Legislative Assembly on 27 September 2006, Mr Carpenter said:

That policy is good for not only the Western Australian economy because it will establish our energy security for the next 30 to 40 to 50 years and in the absence of that policy, there will be no energy security, but also the national economy because what is good for the Western Australian economy is good for the national economy …

How true is that, Senator Ghosh?

I couldn't agree more, Senator Sterle.

Ain't that the truth! We Western Australians are very well aware of the contribution our economy makes to the success of the national economy. We are the engine room of this nation. Much like Alan Carpenter, whose visionary policy safeguarded Western Australia's energy security, the Australian government is committed to ensuring that our gas markets have a robust regulatory framework that safeguards Australia's energy security, delivers gas at a reasonable price and smooths the transition to net zero while continuing to meet our obligations to the trade partners.

A clear example of how we are doing this is the review into gas market regulations, which we opened in June of this year. The intent of this review is to carefully examine how our gas policies work for our economy as part of our energy transition. The review is examining the effectiveness and coherence of existing regulatory mechanisms and is identifying possible improvements with the aim of creating long-term stable regulatory environments. The review is considering the Australian Domestic Gas Security Mechanism, the Gas Market Code and the heads of agreement with east coast LNG exporters. That's not bad for four years in the job, is it?

I note that Senator Sterle neglected to mention the massive costs outlined in the National climate risk assessment as a consequence of burning coal, oil and gas. We have to face the facts. Australia's gas market is broken, and it was broken by former Labor resources minister Martin Ferguson, who went straight from parliament to gas lobbyists APPEA. Gas corporations have plundered our environment, caused 1,200 job losses in manufacturing and prioritised their greed for exports while everyday Australians pay the price.

Since large-scale LNG exports began on the east coast, domestic gas prices have tripled. Families, farmers, small businesses and manufacturers are bearing the cost while gas giants record billions of dollars in profits. The Australian Taxation Office has described some of these companies as systemic nonpayers of tax. The Australia Institute put it plainly:

It beggars belief that a company like Santos can sell nearly $50 billion of gas over a decade and not pay a cent of tax …

Australians are footing the bill for a public resource that they no longer control. Australian students pay four times more in HECS repayments than the gas industry pays in PRRT currently. Australian nurses pay more taxes than the gas industry. What a great shame that is.

And, as domestic supply tightens, we continue exporting vast quantities of gas overseas under the spin that Australian gas keeps the lights on in Tokyo. In reality, Japan onsell 30 per cent more gas than they consume. They make more money off gas than Australians do. Meanwhile, households back home face skyrocketing bills, regional manufacturers struggle to stay afloat and the east coast faces a real shortage of supply from 2028. Yet the Labor government remains addicted to coal and gas. Its policies protect fossil fuel interests, not the Australian public. Approvals for projects like the recent North West Shelf expansion and the barrelling ahead of Narrabri in New South Wales and Barossa off the Northern Territory make it clear whose side this government is on.

The paradox couldn't be sharper. Australia is rich in gas, exporting far more than we need, yet domestic prices soar and shortages loom. From what we heard about the gas market review, the government plans to incentivise new gas fields rather than use existing supply to secure domestic needs. That means rewarding the very corporations that created this mess. And, while this is happening, the Minister for Resources is courting industry, with even a taxpayer funded trip to Japan, rubbing shoulders with the very companies ripping off Australia, like Woodside and INPEX.

While Labor considers options to financially support these dirty, tax-evading corporations, we're focused on options and solutions that would support Australian families and businesses. Taxing gas companies is a simple, fair and principled reform option. It would restore balance to the market; compensate households and businesses, who have been paying the price; and ensure Australians share in the wealth of the resources we own, whilst redirecting gas back into the domestic market. It would direct value back to the public, not reward the lobby that has rigged the system for decades. Proposed options that essentially incentivise new gas fields aren't about energy security; they're about protecting corporate profits and prolonging our toxic dependence on gas. The lobby writes the playbook in this place; the government reads it out.

This is not some distant problem. From 2028, the east coast faces a growing gas shortfall because Santos are sucking the gas away from Australians to meet their export contracts. Existing supply must first serve domestic needs. It sounds pretty basic. New gas fields must not be incentivised. We are awash with gas; we just aren't allocating it to where it needs to be allocated.

We must rapidly wean ourselves off fossil fuels and accelerate investment in renewable energy and innovation for hard-to-abate industries. Energy must be affordable, secure and accountable, and properly managing our current resources is the first step towards a fast and fair transition. Prioritise domestic supply and invest in a fair, renewable future. Phase out fossil fuels. Protect households and industry. Secure our energy future without locking in decades more dependence on toxic gas. (Time expired)

I welcome this motion because, finally, the Greens and Senator David Pocock, who has moved this, recognise that we need fossil fuels. We actually do. We need gas. At least, this motion is all about seeking to increase the supply and demand for gas in Australia.

I've sat through many lectures from that end of the chamber saying they wanted to shut down the gas industry and that we need to move away from fossil fuels, but now we have a motion saying, 'No, no, no, we actually want to increase supply of gas in this country.' So I recognise the belated arrival of the Greens and Senator Pocock to the land of common sense—that we actually do need energy and a supply of energy to maintain industry in this country, to keep our jobs, to keep down prices. So at least they're in—maybe I shouldn't have said 'the land of common sense'. They're in the universe of common sense now—on the outer orbits of that universe, perhaps, but at least somewhat in the vicinity of getting close to the right idea. But they are still a fair way, I think, from providing a real solution to the energy crisis in this country.

We just heard then another lecture saying that somehow it was these terrible evil companies that have caused this crisis. Well, if it weren't for those companies that invested in the LNG in my state and built the LNG trains in Gladstone, we would be in real strife right now because we wouldn't have this gas. May I remind the Senate—through you, Madame Acting Deputy President—that the Greens opposed all these projects. They opposed the building of the LNG facilities that now employ thousands of people in Central Queensland. They opposed the development of the gas fields of western Queensland that are now effectively meeting the gas needs of eastern Australia. They've opposed all of it. Now, having opposed their origin, they want to keep the proceeds for themselves. It's so hypocritical. If only we could just capture that hypocrisy and turn it into electricity, we'd never have a shortage again. We'd never have a blackout again. We would have a surplus of electricity if we could charge ourselves from the hypocrisy that comes from the Greens political movement.

Now they say that they blame these companies for causing it. They want it all to stay here. They blame this export industry now for causing this energy crisis. Nowhere have I heard how they tackle the inconvenient truth that, actually, the largest exporter now of liquefied natural gas in the world is the United States. The United States is the largest. They have overtaken us in the last couple of years. We were the largest exporter; the US is now the largest. The United States has the cheapest gas prices in the world, certainly in the developed world. It is supercharging their industry. This is not a Donald Trump thing, for those who might be angry with him. In 2024 the US produced more oil than any country in any year ever under President Joe Biden. They've had a massive renaissance in oil and gas development, alongside the development of a very strong—indeed the world's strongest—export industry of liquefied gas. So it's not LNG alone that's causing the problem, because, if it were, why isn't the same impact being felt in the United States?

The problem is not the geography of our exports of gas; it's the geology of the oil and gas under our feet. If the Greens and Senator Pocock, with all respect, had any knowledge of the gas industry, they'd actually come to this place with some facts and figures about how much it costs to develop oil and gas in this country and, therefore, what sort of price we'd able to achieve. A fundamental problem we have is that our coal-seam-gas fields in Western Queensland, as great as they have been in keeping us somewhat full of gas, unfortunately do not produce oil. They only produce methane. And the average costs of their production are higher than those in, particularly, the United States but also other in countries.

So whatever we do—and I'm not against some form of reservation policy; I was the minister when we first established the Australian Domestic Security Gas Mechanism that I know this government has built upon—the reality is that we will not force the price of gas below the cost of production. If we tried to, the production would stop. What we need to do is develop new gas fields, particularly in states like Senator Hodgins-May's. That state bans fracking, and now they're complaining and want to take all of Queensland's gas. Again, how much hypocrisy can you get? If you want gas in Victoria—which Senator Hodgins-May apparently wants—you need to develop the gas resources of Victoria. It's pretty simple. It's pretty simple economics. I do want to see lower gas prices in this country, but it won't happen until we get serious about developing our own resources.

I rise to oppose the urgency motion of Senator Pocock. I want to do so by contrasting the simplistic and blunt nature of the motion with the measured, responsible and substantive approach that the government is adopting and to reflect on the importance of getting the nuance and detail of gas policy right. Gas already plays and will continue to play an important role in Australia's energy transition. That is made clear by the Future gas strategy, which examined the role of gas in Australia and among our chief trading partners. That strategy states that gas will be crucial to creating a smooth transition to renewable energy and to net zero. That includes placing downward pressure on prices and providing security to our grid as our reliance on coal winds down and our uptake of renewable energy sources increases. That's an uptake of renewable energy sources that has been driven and presided over by the Albanese government.

Unlike coal or nuclear, gas is a flexible form of power, and that's what makes it so essential in this transition. It can be turned on and turned off quickly and suits the needs of a modern energy grid like the one being built by this government. Gas doesn't just play an important role in our homes; it's crucial to supporting the industries that are important to our economy. The Australian Energy Market Operator says that 42 per cent of the energy used by Australian manufacturers is gas. AEMO has also highlighted the need for new investment in gas as we push towards net zero and rely on gas as a firming power source to a greater degree. It doesn't just assure that Australians are able to keep the lights on, which is vital, but gas exports also ensure that other nations around the world can also access the same reliable power source as they seek to transition as well.

Let me come to the terms of this motion itself. I think it goes to the difficulty of our problem now. We really do need to ensure that there is a balance between how gas is used for export and how gas is used at home. We need this to be available to Australian consumers, and I think I can agree with the final clause in this motion, which is that we need to bring down the price of gas and electricity for Australian industry and households. That is perhaps one point of agreement, but that's where our agreement ends with the motion. There are a number of reasons for that, but it's reflected in the terms of the motion itself. Australian gas benefits Australian households and businesses, but it benefits them in two ways. It benefits them through use, and it benefits them through exports, and investment in this industry that's necessary to ensure supply relies on both elements. Supply for the future relies on both elements.

This motion says the government should legislate to redirect uncontracted export gas into the domestic market, and that's a fairly blunt tool, but it's also a tool that's absent of any detail at this point in time. 'The government should legislate this.' The difficulty is: what volume is being directed? Is it all of it? Is it some of it? It's all of it, says Senator Pocock. All of it is redirected into the Australian market. The second difficulty is setting the price. Where's the price set at? Is it set by the market in Australia? Are we playing a global supplier price, or are we setting a price ceiling or floor? Are we doing that through limiting access to global markets overall?

Don't overcomplicate it.

No, the details are important, Senator Pocock. I appreciate that making the political point you're trying to make with this motion might not be complicated, but details in setting gas policy are complicated, and that's where grandstanding in this place differs from actually setting policy in the real world. We all agree we need to bring down the price of gas and electricity for Australian industry and households, but it's about how we do it. That's why the Albanese government is involved in reforming this part of Australia's energy market and Australia's energy industry. The government has created a stronger heads of agreement with LNG producers to help direct gas to the Australian market. We've also reformed the Australian domestic gas security mechanism, which allows gas to be reserved if there is a shortfall. It's dependent on whether there's a shortfall or not and responds to market conditions. It doesn't just set a blanket reservation in effect of all uncontracted-for-export gas. That might vary from time to time as well.

At the same time, market operators have been given stronger powers to help resolve supply shortfalls. There hasn't been a shortfall yet, but it is essential that we ensure that there isn't one, and that requires investment in the industry. It requires certainty for long-term investment in order for gas to be delivered at a lower price in the long term. So while this motion might be superficially appealing, the government opposes it because it does not reflect what's actually required to bring prices down, ensure stability in gas supply markets and ensure investment in those markets.

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

I'm very pleased to present the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee's report Issues relating to advocacy services for veterans accessing compensation and income support together with accompanying documents. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I am very pleased to table this report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, which I very proudly chair, Issues relating to advocacy services for veterans accessing compensation and income support. This inquiry has examined the system which is essential to the wellbeing of those who have served our nation, a system which helps veterans and their families access the treatment, rehabilitation and compensation to which they are entitled.

The evidence before the committee made it very clear that while there has been real progress, particularly through the work to simplify veterans legislation, the advocacy system remains under significant strain and requires urgent and coordinated action to protect veterans from harm. The committee acknowledges the government for its commitment to the harmonisation of veterans legislation, consolidating three complex acts into a single modern framework from 1 July 2026. This reform represents an important step towards simplifying the claims process and improving access to entitlements.

However, the committee also heard repeatedly about the ongoing need for professional and accessible advocacy. Many veterans leaving service face very significant physical, psychological, bureaucratic barriers. They need support not just to make a claim but to understand it and their rights, to navigate the system and to trust the system, including the Department of Veterans' Affairs. That is where advocacy remains vital.

Our inquiry heard troubling evidence about the rapid expansion of commercial for-profit advocacy services. These businesses charge veterans fees or commissions—sometimes, we heard, as high as 29 per cent of a veteran's compensation—just to assist with DVA claims. While the committee recognises that paid advocacy can have a legitimate role where it is transparent, ethical and conducted in the veteran's best interest, we heard far too often that many veterans were encumbered with the system without proper safeguards. There is no regulation, no accreditation and no clear code of conduct. This absence of oversight has allowed unacceptable and in some cases distressing behaviour to emerge.

The committee heard evidence of misleading advertising, hidden fees and contracts that veterans could not escape. We heard some providers have combined advocacy within in-house medical services, creating clear conflicts of interest and perverse incentives to inflate claims for profit. Our committee heard cases where this conduct—I have to say, in some cases, quite reprehensible conduct—left veterans worse off financially and emotionally, and, in some cases, traumatised by the very process which was meant to help them. This is not acceptable. It undermines trust in the entire system and damages the integrity of the Department of Veterans' Affairs's work.

The committee does not recommend the prohibition of paid advocacy outright. Veterans should have the choice to seek assistance from volunteer not-for-profit or professional advocates as they see fit, but that choice must come with protections, transparent fees, capped costs and mandatory accreditation to ensure that all advocates, paid or unpaid, are held to the same ethical and professional standards. Advocacy must always be the veteran centric, never profit driven.

At the same time, the free-to-veterans advocacy network, often delivered through ex-service organisations, is under enormous strain. It relies heavily on volunteers and limited government grants through the Building Excellence in Support and Training Grants program, the BEST program. It is a system that has not kept pace with demand or the complexity of veterans' needs. Both this inquiry and the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide found that this model is unsustainable. The evidence is clear. We need a professional, stable and adequately funded free advocacy system to ensure no veteran is left vulnerable to predatory business models.

The committee also examined the Institute of Veterans' Advocacy, an initiative with potential to bring coherence, training and professional standards to the sector. However, the committee heard that the institute cannot succeed under its current funding model. It cannot depend on membership fees or donations to deliver a national regulatory and accreditation role. If the government is to ensure quality and integrity across the advocacy system, the institute must be securely and sustainably funded and empowered as an independent statutory authority to register, accredit and oversee advocates nationwide.

Some of the evidence this committee heard about the way our veterans are being treated was nothing short of distressing. It caused a lot of anger amongst committee members, I have to say. These men and women have already served our nation with courage and loyalty. They should not have to fight again for the support which is rightfully theirs.

Our report and our recommendations call for urgent, coordinated government action to regulate commercial advocacy services, to ensure transparency, capped pricing and veteran centred conduct; to fully fund and empower the Institute of Veterans Advocacy as an independent national regulator; and to act on the royal commission recommendation and invest in a professional, sustainable, free-to-the-veteran advocacy system to ensure every veteran, regardless of means, has access to fair and competent support.

It would be remiss of me not to note that, to their credit, the Department of Veterans' Affairs has been implementing safeguards, within the current legislative framework, to protect veterans from unethical processes and practices. However, without government action, this issue will continue to spiral out of control. The government must now act swiftly and decisively with sustained investment to ensure that every veteran receives advocacy that is fair and professional and reflects the enormous commitment that veterans have made to our nation.

I finish by saluting our veterans. The Australian Senate and our committee that I proudly chair hear you. We stand with you, and we will continue our fight to ensure that you receive the respect, the support and the entitlements you so deserve. I commend our report to the Senate.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

I rise to also speak to the report handed down by the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, relating to advocacy services for veterans accessing compensation and income support. Like my colleague Senator Henderson, I was really pleased to see this report handed down and the fantastic work that was put into this report. At the heart of this inquiry is an effort to show our veterans respect and to ensure that they receive what they are owed for the sacrifices that they have made for our nation. In representing the coalition, I'm proud to have done my small part to try and show that respect for their service.

At a recent inquiry into this issue, my colleagues and I heard troubling evidence from witnesses that veterans desperately seeking to find resolution to cases regarding compensation payments are being overcharged by commercially minded advocates who are taking commission based fees for representing veterans, some of whom are understandably vulnerable to exploitation. These fees can be as high as tens of thousands of dollars from the veterans' compensation payouts, sometimes for as little as forwarding a simple email.

I want to make it clear that there are some very good, very ethical providers that are providing advocacy for veterans, and they are doing the right thing by our veterans. But, in this unregulated space, some veteran advocates stand to cumulatively make tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars off veterans' compensation payments when using the commission-for-service model. As we just heard, some commissions go as high as 29 per cent of the compensation payment. These commission-for-service advocacy companies also push veterans into accepting lump-sum payments, rather than opting for pension-style payments over time, so that the commissions can be paid as soon as the compensation is paid out. That critical choice between lump-sum and trickle payments is taken from veterans under this model, and I don't think that's fair. These veterans paying high prices are people who have served to defend our freedom, have earned their compensation and are suffering from the effects of service. Every effort should be expended by the Senate to protect those who have protected us. Now they need our protection from unscrupulous advocacy providers chasing the money.

Free and fairly price-structured advocacy services already exist. Let's be clear. There are decent advocates that are being fair about their price structure, where veterans don't get ripped off but pay for what they get, which is good advice and adequate support, commensurate with the fees that they pay. And they are taking the pressure off the free services already provided to veterans too, which is a good thing. But, because this is an unregulated space, in the end vulnerable veterans bombarded by constant advertising on social media platforms see no other choice than to sign away their compensation advocacy to commission based services.

Having looked up a veterans advocacy website, I am now personally bombarded, via my social media algorithm, by company after company presenting as the promised land for veterans seeking compensation payments. It is ruthless. In this inquiry, submitters raised concerns with the fee-for-service model. They raised concerns about ethics and about troubling behaviours and business practices taking over the sector. Others from the for-profit advocacy businesses argued strongly that there were valid needs and legitimate roles for fee-for-service providers. Why? Because the system of compensation is not working for veterans. It's very complex. Sometimes it's openly cumbersome and sometimes it's too much of a headache for veterans who need help with navigating the bureaucratic process.

The proliferation of these commercial entities, as the result of the limitations of the Department of Veterans' Affairs, can impact on veterans and can impact on their wellbeing. Make no mistake; this proliferating cowboy industry is also the result of this Labor government paying out money into an unregulated system without consideration of the unintended consequences and without urgently needed regulation. Rogue advocates, those there for not the compensation but the money, are following the money. More evidence in this inquiry showed that professional oversight of work standards and conduct is severely limited. This lack of oversight and recourse options reduces the quality of advocacy services, leading to unacceptable advocate behaviours and poor outcomes for veterans.

Let me be clear again. The fact that this industry exists at all is an indictment of our current system. The veteran compensation system is opaque, and an entire industry has grown around navigating it. The fact that fringe cowboy commercial ventures are the controversial part of it shows you how much the Overton window has shifted. The integrity of the DVA entitlement system is at risk, and it's not the fault of DVA but the lack of oversight on this problem.

As senators in this place we must never forget those who committed themselves and their families to defend this nation. They deserve access to equitable, ethical and effective advocacy. They have rights to compensation and support entitlements. If we turn our backs to the rogue commercial advocacy entities that are in it for the profit, we are turning our backs on our veterans.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

I present Human rights scrutiny report: report 6 of 2025 of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights.

I present the report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security of its review into the Strengthening Oversight of the National Intelligence Community Bill 2025, also known as the SONIC Bill. I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Our nation is faced with a complex and challenging security environment. The threats that we face are increasingly varied, dynamic and unpredictable. They are diverse in origin, ranging from individuals to state sponsored actors. In response, the Australian parliament has a responsibility to equip our intelligence and security agencies with the powers needed to keep Australians safe. Those agencies are fully empowered to detect, disrupt and respond to threats to our national security. By necessity, these powers may be covert and go beyond those normally entrusted to government. In exercising those powers, our intelligence agencies must always operate in a way that is transparent, proportionate and accountable.

Strengthening oversight of these powers is essential to preserving the trust and confidence of the Australian people while ensuring our agencies can continue to protect Australians from those who seek to do us harm. Effective and holistic oversight of these agencies is therefore critical to maintaining public trust and confidence in the national intelligence community, commonly referred to as the NIC. This oversight is achieved through the important work of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and the PJCIS committee.

The SONIC Bill represents the most significant reform to oversight of Australia's intelligence community since the 1980s. The bill realises important and long-awaited reforms recommended by multiple independent reviews over many, many years. This ensures that Australia's intelligence oversight framework evolves with the increasingly complex intelligence and security environment. The SONIC Bill expands the oversight functions of the committee, the PJCIS, and inspector-general to include all 10 agencies of the National Intelligence Community. This includes the whole of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission as well as the intelligence functions of the Australian Federal Police, AUSTRAC and the Department of Home Affairs. These amendments will, for the first time, bring the entire national intelligence community under a uniform and specialised oversight framework. This ensures that the intelligence capabilities of agencies such as the ACIC, the AFP, AUSTRAC and Home Affairs, each playing an increasingly important role in our contemporary threat environment, are subject to consistent and expert scrutiny.

The bill also broadens the own-motion powers of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor and includes measures to strengthen the relationship between all three oversight bodies. In relation to the PJCIS, the bill gives statutory recognition to the committee's increasing role reviewing counterterrorism and national security legislation. The bill enables committee review of proposed reforms to such legislation, as well as sunsetting legislation on its own motion or on referral by the minister or parliament.

The bill also empowers the committee to request the inspector-general to inquire into agencies' operational activities, and for the inspector-general to respond to the committee on the inquiry's completion. The committee notes that this bill also gives effect to several longstanding recommendations from independent reviews of Australia's intelligence and security framework, ensuring that our oversight arrangements remain modern, accountable and fit for purpose in an increasingly complex environment.

As well as broadening the remit of the committee and the two independent oversight bodies, the bill contains important administrative amendments to the Intelligence Services Act 2001, affecting how the PJCIS operates. The committee has carefully examined these amendments before, giving them its support. As a result, the committee's report also includes a number of recommendations to refine and build upon those amendments, ensuring these provisions will be as effective as possible. These include a recommendation to give the committee a standing function to review its own operating provisions as required.

The committee also recommends changes to allow the chair and deputy chair of the committee to nominate a member of their personal staff to be provided with an appropriate security clearance to assist them in performing their duties on the committee. This addresses the increasing workload and responsibilities placed on both the chair and deputy chair, as the committee's remit continues to grow, and the strict disclosure offences in the Intelligence Services Act which limit the support that personal staff can actually provide both the chair and deputy chair. The committee also welcomes measures to strengthen collaboration between the three principal oversight bodies: the PJCIS, the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security and the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, including provisions for information sharing and, where appropriate, briefings to the committee. These steps will ensure our oversight mechanisms remain coordinated, informed and responsive. Overall, the committee strongly supports the bill's objective to strengthen the operational, parliamentary and legislative oversight of the national intelligence community.

Following consideration of the committee's other recommendations, the committee recommends that the bill be passed by the parliament. In doing so, the bill reinforces the democratic safeguards that underpin public trust in our intelligence community. It strikes the right balance between empowering our agencies to keep Australians safe and ensuring their actions remain lawful, proportionate and accountable to the parliament and, more importantly, to the Australian people. On that note, I commend the report to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

On behalf of the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the 228th report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties.

I table the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission's 2025 report to parliament.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

Forty-six women were killed by violence in 2024. That's up from 34 in the previous year. Over the weekend, the numbers for 2025 so far rose to 39, with the murder of Rhukaya Lake by her partner. More than 40,000 sexual assaults were reported to police last year, the highest on record for 30 years. Given that many women still fear coming forward, we know that these numbers underestimate the scale of the problem. Women living with disability are still three times more likely to experience domestic, family and sexual violence. First Nations women are 33 times more likely to be hospitalised by assault. These numbers are absolutely shocking, or they should be shocking. But they've become so normalised that I fear that we're not shocked enough. The Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission's yearly report once again catalogues the ongoing scourge of gender based violence. I thank the commissioner, Micaela Cronin; her team; and the Lived Experience Advisory Council for their work in this traumatic space.

Since the first National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children began 15 years ago, there have been countless inquiries, reports, reviews and taskforces. There have been over 1,000 recommendations made, mostly saying the same things: we need early intervention; we need culturally appropriate responses; we need to prevent economic abuse, systems abuse and technology facilitated abuse; we need to target sexual violence; we need to support children impacted by family violence; and we need effective programs for men and boys about healthy masculinity.

There's no shortage of solutions, but there remains a shortage of action and a shortage of funding to let the services do the work that's needed. If the government really wants to turn these statistics around, it needs to stump up the money needed on the ground right now. The sector has repeatedly called for $1 billion per year to meet demand so that women aren't turned away from shelters or legal support services. I welcome the top-ups that this government has made, but it still falls short of what is needed so that everyone who seeks help can get it. Nationally, women's legal services are turning away 52,000 people a year because they don't have the funding they need to keep up with demand. And we must have more data on unmet need to guide funding decisions. I have been asking for more than eight years now how unmet need is measured. The pace has been absolutely glacial, and I acknowledge that the current pilot data collection framework exists and that the commission's planned work on a national funding map exists, but it is unbelievable that, after 15 years of national plans, we don't already have a clear picture of the funding gaps and then for how those gaps are to be fixed.

The commissioner's report is scathing about the fragmentation in funding and service delivery. Solutions are not delivered at scale or with the urgency needed to tackle the problem. We also need an investment in workforce development across specialist services. The national plan cannot succeed unless we support the sector for those folk on the front line of the work. We need to make sure that they can attract, support and fairly pay expert staff; provide culturally appropriate environments; and engage safely with perpetrators. We need to involve young people, people with lived experience of violence, people with disabilities and LGBTQIA+ people to ensure that services meet their varying needs. We need a standalone First Nations national plan. This is overdue. It needs to be implemented urgently with secure funding to Aboriginal organisations to deliver outcomes. We need to engage with men and boys in all communities about violence prevention strategies, healthy masculinity, consent and respect, and to build skills for better communication and healthy relationships.

But I cannot stress enough that involving more voices only helps if you actually listen. The government cannot keep asking the same questions while not acting on the answers. Some progress is being made, and we are fortunate to have a sector that is deeply committed to working across prevention, response and recovery to end gender based violence—and I really, deeply thank everyone who does this vital work, but thanks isn't enough. They need funding. To avoid next year's report being yet another catalogue of unmet need, the government must take the commission's recommendations seriously, listen to the sector and the survivors that they support, and take action.

Given it's Melbourne Cup today, I highlight the strong recommendations made by the government's rapid review task force last year to restrict alcohol sales and home deliveries, to ban gambling ads and to tackle online gambling, all of which are contributors to domestic, family and sexual violence. The government just keeps on stalling on these reforms, and women are suffering as a result. How many more inquiries and reports are we going to need before we listen to those people supporting women and their children fleeing violence that say they don't have enough money to help people that need their help? When you can waste billions of dollars on nuclear submarines but you cannot fund a women's shelter, something is going seriously wrong. You need to fix it.

I rise to take note of the minister's statement on the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission's 2024-25 yearly report, tabled in the House of Representatives on 30 October. I begin by acknowledging the victims and survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence and the families and communities who continue to live with the consequences. Their experiences remind us that it is not a private tragedy but a national failure that requires our collective responsibility. I also thank the frontline workers who confront the reality of domestic violence every single day. Their work saves lives and provides the humanity and compassion that too many government systems have failed to deliver.

The evidence in the commission's report is deeply troubling. The Australian Institute of Criminology recorded a 35 per cent increase in women killed by intimate partners in 2023-24 after a 31 per cent increase the year before. In the same year, police charged more than 90,000 Australians with family violence offences. One in six women have experienced physical or sexual violence from a partner since the age of 15. These are not marginal statistics; they describe a national emergency that persists despite decades of inquiry, countless announcements and record investment. The problem is no longer a lack of inquiry, report or recommendation; it is clearly in the delivery.

This government has invested billions in efforts to end domestic violence and sexual violence, but unfortunately the outcomes have not improved. This is not a question of compassion or intent; it is about systems that seem to fail to guarantee action. Funding is announced but often delayed. Programs are launched but not always evaluated. Agencies work in silos, each responsible for part of the system, while no-one really bears responsibility for all of the outcomes. The lack of accountability has real human consequences. Community legal centres turn away around 1,000 people a day. Crisis payments for women fleeing violence take three times longer to process than those for prisoners leaving jail. These failures reflect a system failing to meet its purpose and failing to protect our women and children. Coordinated, accountable and agile delivery must be the baseline for a nation that claims to take this issue seriously.

Nowhere is the failure of delivery clearer than in housing. When women and children flee violence, the first question is not about programs or policies; it is about where they will sleep that night. Without safe and secure housing, survivors are forced to choose between homelessness and returning to danger. A national plan to end family and domestic violence must therefore include a credible plan to build homes. Safety cannot exist without shelter, and progress cannot occur while the government's housing ambitions are unrealised.

Another lesson is clear: we cannot fix what we cannot see. Data on domestic and family sexual violence remains fragmented and incomplete. Information is drawn from disconnected sources that can't be compared or linked across jurisdictions. Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander women, people with disabilities, LGBTIQA+ Australians and those in regional and remote areas remain underrepresented in the data picture. That must change. If governments can't see the whole system, then they can't manage it. A coherent national data framework is not a technical exercise; it is an act of accountability. Real-time visibility of outcomes is essential to understanding what is working, what is failing and where change is most urgently needed.

The failure of data, delivery and housing converge most tragically in their impact on children. The report highlights that prevention must begin in childhood. Children spend significant time in early education, health and sporting and faith based settings—places where adults hold positions of authority and trust. These environments must have strong child-safe standards, informed workforces and clear referral pathways to identify and prevent grooming and abuse. That finding is echoed in the concerns that have emerged in recent months about safety within early childhood and education care. The revelations of child sexual abuse in childcare settings have shown what can happen when oversight is weakened and systems fail to share critical information. As chair of the Senate inquiry into quality and safety of early childhood education, I've called an urgent hearing with law enforcement and child protection authorities to examine these issues. This is not simply an education matter; it is a question of child safety.

The coalition believes that ending family, domestic and sexual violence must be grounded in essential principles that guide consistent and coordinated action. Our approach is clear: national consistency in data and law enforcement across states and territories; modern laws that address technology facilitated abuse, coercive control and emerging harms; prevention and early intervention through education, schools and community engagement; safety and recovery supported by more crisis housing and targeted financial assistance; and accountability through stronger bail, sentencing and monitoring regimes, underpinned by transparent measurement of outcomes.

Prevention must be central to any government strategy to end this crisis. This means policies that engage men and boys as part of the solution to challenge attitudes before they become embedded behaviours. As the Leader of the Opposition has said, men's health policy is women's safety policy. Strong prevention starts with how men look after themselves and those around them; how they manage anger, stress and relationships; and how they model respect in their homes, workplaces and communities. Fathers in particular play a powerful role in shaping how their children learn to treat others and understand respect, equality and care throughout their lives. When men demonstrate that strength and respect go hand in hand, they can build a culture where violence has no place and where responsibility is shared. That is the work of prevention—sustained, deliberate and led by example, supported by policies that make this everybody's business, not just women's business.

Across parliament there is a bipartisan commitment to addressing family, domestic and sexual violence. Ending it requires ambition equal to the scale of this problem. It demands systems that work; data that tells us the truth, housing that provides refuge; and leadership that is accountable for outcomes, not announcements. The coalition will continue to hold the government to that standard and advocate practical reform built on evidence, coordination and urgency. We have that knowledge and we have the evidence. What is needed now is the courage to move beyond talk, beyond review and beyond complacency and into immediate action.

Question agreed to.

I seek leave to make a statement relating to international environmental leadership.

Leave granted.

Thank you for the opportunity to present my first statement to parliament, as the Minister for the Environment and Water, on Australia's international environmental leadership.

Delivering this annual ministerial statement was a 2022 election commitment by the Australian Labor Party.

After 10 years of coalition government—who, by the way, still can't decide if climate change is real and want to take a sledgehammer to Australia's climate action—Labor promised a fresh approach to leadership and the environment. We said that we would do things differently. And we have, transforming Australia from a global pariah on environmental matters, to a respected international partner.

We lead by example, practising what we preach.

Being a continent of incredible diversity, Australia has many natural and cultural assets that strengthen relationships beyond our borders, and must be protected.

Our remarkable sites, from the ancient rock art of Kakadu and Murujuga, to the world renowned Great Barrier Reef, tell the story of who we are, showcasing the things that make Australia unique and special.

As the home to species not seen anywhere else in the world, we have a crucial responsibility to protect and restore them.

And domestically, it doesn't matter if you live in the city or the bush, if you're eight or 80, rich or poor. The environment matters.

It matters for every living creature—the air that you breathe, the food that you eat, the water that you drink.

We're also talking about an issue at the heart of economic policy, health policy, housing policy, even national security.

That's why for more than three years, the Albanese government has made protecting and repairing nature a national priority, safeguarding nature where it still thrives and restoring what's been damaged.

And we're working with countries around the world who are doing the same.

This is the third report card on the Albanese government's ambitious agenda to protect nature and fix what is broken in our environmental system at the international level.

It's also the first of these statements that's been delivered in the Senate.

I'm proud to say this report demonstrates our continuing commitment to lead by example when it comes to protecting the environment.

We are committed to working collaboratively with state and territory governments, who hold many of the environmental levers in Australia.

And equally, we are committed to being a loud and active voice on the international stage, pushing for positive global environmental outcomes.

UNOC and oceans

My first opportunity to represent Australia's environmental interests internationally was at the United Nations Oceans Conference in June.

Right now, pressures on oceans around the world are intense and growing—climate change; illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing; plastic pollution; and more.

I'm very pleased to say that Australia is recognised among the world's leading nations in oceans protection.

More than half of our ocean is now protected in marine parks.

That includes about a quarter of our ocean—1.3 million square kilometres—in highly protected areas.

At UNOC, Australia went further, committing to work towards lifting that to 30 percent by the year 2030.

We were among the first countries to sign the high seas biodiversity treaty, which we'll ratify in coming months, after the passage of legislation.

And at the same time, we are preparing for the first generation of high seas marine protected areas under the treaty, including by supporting a research symposium on the South Tasman Sea and Lord Howe Rise in May this year.

This year we also announced that Australia will lead—with Chile—the 100 percent Alliance for Sustainable Ocean Management. This will encourage and support other countries to sustainably manage 100 percent of their ocean, including through the development of sustainable ocean plans.

Back at home we're leading by example, investing in the health of our ocean and the biodiversity that it supports—from reefs to threatened fish species.

And we're using our ocean leadership to be a leading advocate for the global protection of whales. That's why Australia is hosting and chairing the next meeting of the International Whaling Commission, in Hobart next September.

Much work has been done, but in the face of growing climate-related changes and other emerging pressures, there's still more to do.

Recycling

We continue to play an active leadership role in supporting negotiations towards both an international agreement on the high seas and on marine litter and microplastics.

As a member of the High Ambition Coalition, Australia remains committed to pursuing a meaningful and effective global approach towards a world free of plastic pollution.

No child should grow up on a beach littered with plastic waste.

It impacts our ecosystems, fisheries, coastal tourism, and harms human health.

Together with over 180 countries, Australia is a leading voice in the negotiations for an international treaty. Australia seeks for the treaty to tackle global plastic pollution across the entire life cycle of plastics, from design and production, to end-of-life and promotes a safe circular economy.

Although an agreement was not finalised in Geneva in August as we had hoped, the Albanese government will continue to push for global action alongside other nations.

We continue to take action here at home too, and support our Pacific family to do the same, such as through practical actions to address single-use plastics under the Pacific Ocean Litter Project.

In Australia, one of the ways we're taking action on plastic pollution is through packaging regulatory reform, and by increasing our plastic recycling capacity.

So far, we've increased recycling capacity by more than 1.4 million tonnes a year, stopping tyres, glass, paper, and hard-to-recycle plastics going to landfill.

And our government has committed to double Australia's circularity by 2035 under our Circular Economy Framework.

We're also taking action on harmful ghost nets, both here in Australia, particularly through our Indigenous rangers, as well as in international waters.

This includes through our $1.4 million commitment to support regional action, as well as another $300,000 this year to support transboundary coordination efforts with Indonesia, PNG and Timor Leste.

The Pacific

Australia takes its responsibility to be a good neighbour, and a good environmental partner, seriously.

As a Pacific nation, we share an ocean and a future with our Pacific family.

And we continue to listen closely to our region neighbours, working alongside them for peace and prosperity.

As a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, Australia endorsed the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent as a long-term, strategic framework, including on climate change and disasters, on the ocean and the environment.

And we're investing in Pacific leadership to address environmental and climate challenges.

The government has committed $100 million to the Pacific Resilience Facility, a Pacific led initiative that delivers climate finance directly to communities.

Australia is supporting the region's transition to renewable energy by sharing climate adaptation technologies, and by building resilient infrastructure such as solar farms and hydropower stations, increasing energy independence.

We're strengthening Pacific climate and ocean resilience by equipping national meteorological and hydrological services with the data, tools, and skills needed to deliver accurate forecasts and early warnings.

And we're also backing the Unlocking Blue Pacific Prosperity initiative, a Pacific led plan launched at COP28 to protect the ocean, build resilience and mobilise finance.

Antarctica

To the south, we continue to demonstrate our international leadership through scientific efforts.

The findings of Australian scientists in Antarctica are groundbreaking, and they are being shared with the world.

In May, the Australian Antarctic Program completed its first dedicated marine science voyage. Scientists were able to study the waters around the Denman Glacier, one of the largest and rapidly melting glaciers in East Antarctica.

This is important because that glacier could increase global sea levels by 1.5 metres if it melts completely.

And the RSV Nuyina is currently undertaking Australia's biggest campaign to the subantarctic—Heard Island and McDonald Islands—in two decades.

These islands form a marine reserve the size of Italy.

This reserve is a big win for ocean conservation and a big step towards improving the protection of glaciers, wetlands and the habitats of diverse and significant populations of penguins, seals and albatrosses.

Other achievements

There are many more projects underway that are making a difference, both in Australia, and overseas.

This speech is, of course, nowhere near long enough to address all of them.

But I will quickly put a few more on the record:

We're working hard to ensure First Nations voices are heard and respected in decisions which impact their rights and interests. This is happening through the expansion of the UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Peoples which supports First Nations peoples to travel to World Heritage Committee meetings. And we continue to work with UNESCO to embed meaningful participation in decision-making. I was very proud to be a part of securing the inscription of the Murujuga Cultural Landscape this year, which was a First Nations led nomination.

Internationally, we are working in partnership with other countries to deliver the framework and put nature on a path to recovery. Through a range of initiatives we have championed international collaboration and implementation of the global targets to achieve meaningful environmental outcomes at home and abroad.

And while doing this vital work, we remain alert to cross-border threats, including the H5 strain of avian flu. Australia is the only continent free of the highly infectious and deadly H5 strain that has killed millions of wild birds and tens of thousands of wild mammals, as well as significantly impacting poultry industries elsewhere across the world.

We have been fortunate to be able to learn from others' experiences in managing H5 bird flu outbreaks, and we are working closely with New Zealand, who are also H5 bird flu free, to share preparedness learnings for native species.

EPBC reform

Just finally, it would be remiss of me to talk about being a good global environmental actor without talking about the Environment Protection Reform Bill which the government introduced to the parliament last Thursday.

These are significant reforms, designed to fix Australia's broken environmental laws, and deliver real benefits for the future.

And this matters internationally because Australia is home to unique species, and significant natural sites protected under the EPBC Act.

Our reforms will deliver the modern laws that will better protect the environment, while increasing transparency and streamlining the approvals and assessments system.

Strong new national environmental standards will be part of this legislation.

And I'd encourage those in this place to work with the government to get them passed.

Conclusion

I'll conclude by saying this: protecting the environment is not easy, despite the good progress we've made.

The challenges are immense, but the alternative is surrendering Australia's future, and that's not an option.

We're getting on with this work because it is the right thing to do.

We owe it to every Australian and to the world.

The Albanese government will maintain the momentum, protecting and restoring the places that matter, the amazing plants and animals that call Australia home, the land, the ocean and the rivers that support life and livelihood, working collaboratively at home and alongside our international partners to build a future where a thriving economy and thriving ecosystems co-exist.

And we invite all Australians to be part of this effort.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

What this country does internationally is important, but what they do here domestically is more important when it comes to our environment. I think there is a range of issues the minister might have glossed over in his annual report card. I always find it amusing when the government tables its own report card, marking its own work over the last three years, since 2022, telling us that everything is peachy and all is good. In fact, it is far from that. There is a range of issues I think we need to go through here to properly dissect that. I'll come to the EPBC Act reforms that the minister has alluded to a little later on.

There are a few things I do agree with in the minister's statement. The environment and, of course, the laws related to regulating, managing, protecting and preserving our environment do go to the heart of our economy. We live, exist and work in the environment. It is not a separate organism; it is not something that is ethereal and totally disconnected from how we operate here in this country. It is important that we have laws and arrangements in this country to ensure that when we make decisions related to the functioning of our economy, they don't have an adverse impact that outweighs the benefits of any economic activity in the environment.

It is connected to the health of the nation. It's also connected, as the minister said, to housing. Having said that, though, for the last three years—under this government, prior to the last election—EPBC laws have held up decisions relating to tens of thousands of housing units, dwellings, across this country. To suggest that things are on track and that this government has got matters under control and things are heading in the right direction when we're in a housing crisis—no HAFF or program run by this government would have addressed these issues in the same way as they are attempting to do now through reforms of the EPBC Act which are specifically targeted to removing the handbrake on delivering housing supply in this country, which is critical to addressing the issues that all Australians think this government should get on with. But their handling of this portfolio and their handling of the laws have not, in any way, lead to dealing with this crisis in a way that should be in accordance with the approval of the Australian people.

To try and pretend, as the minister has in his statement, that this government has had its hand on the tiller of law reform in this country and that what it is doing as a good environmental actor—as the minister said this country is regarded as—I think is something worth scrutinising a little more than these debates ordinarily allow us to. It has been 3½ years since this government was elected to power and five years since the Samuel review was handed down recommending changes to the EPBC Act. For the first year, the Morrison government attempted to get reform through this parliament but was blocked in doing so by those now in government when they were in opposition. That takes us down to four years. So there was a year of activity, but reform was blocked by the opposition, the Labor Party. Then there was a change of government.

For three years, the entirety of the last term, nothing happened in this place because the government decided, behind closed doors, to hide away from the world their plans for reforming laws that govern that public good, the environment. Stakeholders of all sorts had to sign nondisclosure agreements. They were sequestered away in various rooms either here in Parliament House or down in the offices of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, trying to nut out a plan that they could bring into this parliament and foist through as quickly as possible. But for three years under the former minister, Ms Plibersek, nothing happened. We didn't get laws for a new EPA. We didn't get reforms to how we'd manage major projects and how they might impact on the environment. We didn't get faster approval times. We didn't get added environmental protections. We didn't get any of that. It was three years completely squandered. I'm heartened by the progress that has been made by the new minister, Minister Watt, and I commend the government for bringing these reforms to the parliament. I don't commend the government for saying, 'Now's the time to pass it. It's now or never,' having tabled 750 pages of legislation just a few days ago and roughly the same amount in explanatory memoranda. It takes a bit of time to get through, and of course this government has had the benefit of the last three years of work to try and pull it together.

To get this right—to ensure we get it right—is going to require proper scrutiny, and I am pleased that this Senate ordered that the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee will interrogate this legislation properly until the end of next March. That is important. All of those facts are important to put on the record. There are many redeeming features of the proposal that has been put forward by the government, and I'm hopeful that we see some further changes that make this bill entirely acceptable and something that will gain passage.

One other area of course that I think is missing from the minister's report card on the government's activities is something that's important to a number of people—reforms to laws as they govern Indigenous cultural heritage in this country. Last term we were promised we would have laws in the parliament that would reform the ATSIHP Act, the very outdated legislation governing Indigenous cultural heritage. I think it dates back to 1984. That is legislation that is truly out of date, and again it was a promise in the last term that we would have reformed laws in here in the wake of Juukan Gorge, the terrible disaster there, that would protect Indigenous cultural heritage and would give certainty to Indigenous communities and also those who work in and around Indigenous cultural heritage about what to expect. But three years passed—three years that have been covered by the Labor government's report card on its own work. It glossed over this and other statements, and we still have not a skerrick of legislation that would reform an act that is now 41 years old—almost as old as me. I think that is a terrible indictment. It was urgent to deal with at the time, and I agree with the government. It was urgent in the last term to deal with. So why are we here, in another term—and we asked about it at Senate estimates—yet to see any evidence that this government is taking that issue seriously and is progressing what is an important piece of legislation to many, not just here in this place but out there in the wider community, which needs to be dealt with as a matter of priority?

The minister says in his statement—and I accept there are some good things that have happened, particularly on the international stage, but what happens here domestically is equally as important as what happens out there around the rest of the world and how we interact with other nation-states. To say that this is a national priority when over the last three years or more nothing has been done on key priorities—promises that were made by the government in the lead-up to the 2022 election—and when there have been big fails when it comes to law reform, reforms that would protect the environment, reforms that would enhance our economic activity and put us as a world leader when it comes to environmental regulation in the world is a crying shame. It's important to have a bit of honest reflection about some of these things. I always enjoy reading people's own marks on their own homework, but I think there are a few red marks against some of the government's activities over the last 12 months.

I rise to take note, but, as I haven't seen the tabled document, I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

I table documents relating to orders for the production of documents concerning eSafety Commissioner meetings, estimates briefings prepared by the Attorney-General's portfolio and industrial facilities.

I table an addendum to the explanatory memorandum relating to the Criminal Code Amendment (State Sponsors of Terrorism) Bill 2025. The addendum responds to matters raised by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee.

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee for inquiry and report by 1 June 2026:

The AUKUS agreement and its implications for Australia's environment, safety and independence, with particular reference to:

(a) the advice and analysis provided to the Government before and following the AUKUS agreement;

(b) the implications of AUKUS and the acquisition of nuclear submarines for militarisation and stability in the region;

(c) the implications of the AUKUS agreement for Australia's foreign policy and defence policy including the projected role of AUKUS submarines in defending Australia;

(d) the capacity of the United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) nuclear submarine industries to provide Australia with either existing Virginia class submarines or future SSN-AUKUS submarines;

(e) the impact on the balance of Australia's defence capacity given the scale of resources required for AUKUS nuclear submarine acquisitions and procurement;

(f) the impact of the AUKUS agreement on Australia's international obligations and adherence to international law;

(g) the impact on Australia's defence in the event the UK and/or the USA cannot provide the submarines envisaged by the AUKUS project and considerations given to an alternative plan;

(h) the management and storage of nuclear waste and its impact on First Nations land and communities; and

(i) any other related matters.

I understand that the government is going to viciously oppose this; seek to gag it, perhaps; and end it before even having a debate on a referral. That, I think, highlights how scared the government is, how scared Labor is, about giving the public the chance to have its voice heard on AUKUS, giving independent experts in defence and security the chance to provide their opinions and their considerations of just how dangerous and reckless AUKUS is, and also about permitting the rational assessment of what is in Australia's national interest. Of course they're scared of a merits based debate on this. Of course they're scared about giving the public a right to be heard, because Labor know there is so little support for their pro-Donald-Trump ties to the United States war plans, which they picked up, having taken them out of the microwave, when handed to them by Scott Morrison.

You only have to look at the most recent polling of the Australian public when it comes to support for tying us to the United States and Donald Trump. We've had Defence Minister Marles repeatedly talk about how much he loves the United States—at times, you wonder who he got elected by—and how his shared values that he has with the United States and Australia's shared values with the United States are one of his reasons for tying himself, Australia and our Defence Force to Donald Trump. But, of course, polling released today from the Australia Institute shows only eight per cent of people strongly agree with the proposition that the defence minister has when he talks of shared values with the United States.

The Australian people want this parliament to ask tough questions about defence. They want us to ask: 'Will we ever get nuclear submarines? Surely there would be something be to do with $375 billion than invest in nuclear submarines we'll never get from either the UK or the US.' But instead of listening to the public and hearing those calls for transparency, we have a Labor government that is going down the warpath. Indeed, we've got a Labor government that seems to be so taken up with its love of weapons, with its love of war plans, that we have statements, including from the defence minister, that surely must trouble even some Labor backbenchers.

As we're having this debate here, there is a weapons expo happening in Sydney, the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition. It's an international weapons fair paid for by Chris Minns's Labor government of New South Wales and also by the defence department as funded by Prime Minister Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles. Labor, state and federal, is funding an international weapons expo happening right now in Sydney. Of course, they've invited Israeli weapons manufacturers, manufacturers who have tested weapons on Palestinians, to the ultimate shame of Labor.

What did Labor Defence Minister Marles say at the opening of that weapons fair? It shows their attitude and why Labor is so keen to take us down a path of more weapons and more war, tying us in to US military plans. He kicked it off by saying:

I know that Admiral Hammond has literally been salivating—

These are Defence Minister Marles's words—

about the prospect of the Sea Power conference this year, to have so many chiefs of Navy congregated in one spot is a kind of version of Navy Disneyland.

Instead of seeing a collection of international arms dealers with weapons designed to kill as many people as efficiently as possible as a threat to human safety or as a moment in which you could reflect upon the anxiety of a global weapons fair, Defence Minister Richard Marles sees it as a Navy Disneyland.

He goes on. He then starts waxing lyrical about how much loves weapons and how much he loves machines designed to kill as many people as possible. You couldn't make this up, so I'll just read onto the record what Richard Marles said—

Senator Shoebridge, just a reminder to refer to those from the other place with their correct title.

A very good reminder. I will read onto the record what Labor's defence minister Richard Marles said this morning at an international arms fair:

And here on the Expo side of it, we will be seeing an incredible display of what our industry can produce; awesome power, ingenious autonomous systems and craft of all shapes and sizes which spread, which span the breadth of the beautiful, the menacing and the extremely cool.

That's the defence minister talking about robotic weapons. That's the defence minister talking about missiles. That's the defence minister talking about artillery pieces. That's the defence minister talking about machines whose only purpose is to kill people, and he defines them as 'beautiful' and 'extremely cool'. What is wrong with Minister Marles? What is going on in his head for him to describe weapons of death in a weapons fair as 'extremely cool' and 'beautiful'? Does this reflect some Labor values that have been hidden and are now coming to the surface, where Labor salivates at a 'Disneyland' of 'beautiful' and 'cool' weapons? That's what Labor's been doing today.

Is it any wonder that thousands of young people and others gathered outside that and opposed Labor's festival of death and festival of cool killing? Is it any wonder? I want to put on the record my gratitude to everybody who came out and peacefully opposed that weapons fair. They came out and said, 'Our governments should not be investing in death and war.' I want to thank my Greens colleagues in the New South Wales parliament for challenging Chris Minns when he steps up and says, as he did today, that he wants the defence industries to be a massive part of the future plan of New South Wales.

The Greens have a different view, which is not investing in weapons, killing and death; not sending weapons into a genocide; and not promoting lethal autonomous weapons as, to quote Defence Minister Marles, 'extremely cool'. We think that the global weapons industry is a threat to our collective survival. We can see far better things to do with $375 billion than give those kinds of fantasy moments to Defence Minister Marles in his dystopian, disturbing and indeed incredibly skewed world view.

Of course, AUKUS isn't just designed to give Defence Minister Marles his Disneyland death moments. AUKUS is also designed to take Australia into the next US war with China. We should be clear about that. Apart from climate change, Labor's plans to take us into a US war with China is probably the most serious security issue facing Australia, and, saying that plainly—that the Albanese Labor government is actively making plans to take Australia into a future US war with China—shows what a risk this is. That's what Labor is doing now. War with China would be disastrous for Australia, disastrous for China, disastrous for our region and disastrous for the world. Rather than lean into it, as Labor is doing, and seek to join the US in that war, tied to the hip with the US under AUKUS, the Greens reject that analysis. We reject Labor's theory that war is inevitable. While war is far from inevitable, the Albanese government's boots-and-all commitment to AUKUS and its surrender to Trump's war-making plans does risk fuelling a foolish and dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy to drag Australia into war.

Under the guise of AUKUS, Labor has been inviting a major US military build-up on our shores. Far from keeping us safe, that escalates regional tensions. It leads in turn to more US military build-up, and that non-virtuous military spiral is where Australia's security is indeed the biggest loser. Multiple war games have shown that the war Labor's making plans for will most likely produce one of two outcomes: either the US loses, or everyone loses due to catastrophic civilian, military and economic losses. That's the war that Labor wants to take us to. That is the war that the Albanese government wants to divert hundreds of billions of public dollars to join, to fight—I say alongside but probably from behind and as directed by the US military. What makes it worse is when you realise that it'll be Australia, not the US, that will be on the new front lines of this future war. Australia is not currently part of the front lines of any war, but we'll not be put on the front lines of this war by accident. It will be by design, and, to its eternal shame, it's a design that's being approved by and largely paid for by our own government.

For the past decade, the US has begun to accept that many of its existing forward military bases in the region, from Japan south, are incredibly vulnerable to military attack if the US initiated a war in the Pacific. That has led the US to look for a sucker somewhere south—to seek more and larger bases in Australia that, whilst still in the Asia-Pacific, are less vulnerable to being destroyed in the first 24 to 48 hours of a conflict. And what does that expansion look like? It looks like AUKUS. It looks like an $8 billion US nuclear submarine attack base being built by Australian taxpayers at HMAS Stirling in Garden Island, off Perth, right next to an expanded $25 billion Defence precinct.

Debate interrupted.

What an exciting day it has been here in Canberra. But, more importantly, in my home state of Victoria, it has been an equally if not more exciting day, being Melbourne Cup day, with the race that stops the nation. It's hard not to ignore another race that seems to have stopped, and that is the coalition's race to net zero, which has slowed to a canter. At Flemington Racecourse at least the horses gallop in the same direction, but, over in the coalition's paddock, the Nationals have bolted, the Liberals are horsing around and the poor opposition leader is left jockeying for position, trying to convince everyone that this chaos is all part of her cunning plan.

The Nationals dumped their net zero target over the weekend, as you may have seen in the media. Apparently climate policy has now proven to be so hard for them that they've ditched their saddle and trotted home. Really, the only zero that they're committed to now is zero unity and zero credibility. Meanwhile, the Liberals have pulled up in the mounting yard, trying to ride two horses at once—one called climate action and the other called party division—while holding their form guide upside down, unsure whether to stick with the Nationals or back another horse altogether.

The Greens, God bless them, would replace the horses with solar powered scooters, ban the betting and then argue over which lane is the most sustainable. But at least they know which way they are headed.

Then there are those who are connected to the Nup to the Cup crew, the only people in Australia who can look the public in the eye and be against a public holiday that is filled with community spirit and actually say, 'No, thank you. We don't want that.' They'd cancel the race, close the gates and put thousands of people out of work. For them it's less about animal welfare and more about being out of touch and having the belief that only they get to decide what is acceptable. Somehow, Australians simply enjoying a bit of sport and sunshine—and, let's be honest, a bet or two—has become the greatest offence.

While the others have lost their reins and keep arguing over there in the stables about who's wearing the silks, federal Labor's actually getting on with the race. We're backing clean energy, secure jobs and a fair go for every single person right across the country. So, today, as the barriers fly open and the others are still flogging a dead horse to find their pace, let's back the only team that is on track, and that is federal Labor. Happy Melbourne Cup day, everyone. Giddy-up!

Last December the Northern Territory Liquor Commission granted a liquor licence to the Wadeye Community Club, the first in that community for more than 30 years. With a population of over 2,000 people, Wadeye is one of Australia's largest remote Aboriginal communities, with a long history, sadly, of episodic alcohol fuelled violence and disorder. The decision has been made despite significant warning signs. The community club is on track to open soon. What I want to know is what, if anything, the Albanese Labor government has done to ensure that Wadeye does not descend into chaos when the club starts opening.

There has been significant investment of taxpayer money in Wadeye. There are important questions I invite the Albanese government to answer. Did the government make a submission to the inquiry or just stand by and let it slide, like you did with the lifting of alcohol restrictions in 2022? Has the Albanese government provided a single cent of Commonwealth money, including in-kind support, towards the community club, given the investment in Wadeye? What has the Albanese government done to protect Commonwealth investment in programs in Wadeye to ensure Closing the Gap outcomes don't lurch even further backwards in the Northern Territory, or has it once again looked the other way?

In the spirit of self-determination, the NT liquor commissioner recommended new and additional program supports related to alcohol addiction, family violence and school attendance. The Albanese government, which includes three NT parliamentarians, has had nearly three years to act on this advice, to plan, to coordinate and to protect specifically for that risk factor. But when real leadership is required, Labor tends to retreat to slogans and symbolism. A read of the decision would have anyone concerned, alarmed even, about risk mitigation for vulnerable people and public infrastructure. This is not alarmist; it is evidence. It is widely accepted that the Northern Territory is the key driver of the Closing the Gap targets for suicide, adult incarceration, children in out-of-home care and children commencing school developmentally on track getting worse.

We've seen this story before. In 2023, the Albanese Labor government allowed alcohol restrictions across parts of the Northern Territory to lapse, cheered on by members of Territory Labor, who were actually in government at the time. The consequences were obvious and tragic. When you make decisions based on ideology, not evidence, that is what happens. The impact was immediate and devastating. Crime, violence and disorder surged everywhere, especially in Central Australia, with domestic violence assaults increasing 77 per cent month on month,. It was a public outcry that forced the government into a humiliating reversal and reinstatement of those restrictions, but the damage was already done. That experience should have taught the government that access to alcohol in vulnerable communities demands caution, preparation and accountability, but the story here will no doubt be one of complacency first and crisis later.

Picking up the pieces in response, recovery and healing is not what anyone would wish to happen in Wadeye, but wishing and hoping does not make it so. The Liquor Commission recognised the likelihood that many townsfolk were too afraid to speak out publicly for fear of retribution. Only one brave local did. Labor talks big on community drive approaches and listening to voices, yet has it done consultation to ensure those voices are heard? I'd like to hear that. Did the government itself seek to be heard? I don't know.

Nationally, Indigenous women are 33 times more likely to be hospitalised for family and domestic violence injuries than non-Indigenous women. We learned, with the end of the cashless debit card in those communities that wanted it, that it was women and children who were impacted the most. They are the ones who see violence in their homes, miss school, fail to thrive, come to the attention of police and grow up believing that chaos and fear are normal parts of life. You can't just simply shrug and say that this is a Territory matter, because taxpayers make significant investments in Wadeye. Imagine what the $450 million spent on the Voice referendum could have done. There was $350 million spent in Central Australia on repairing the destruction rather than on prevention and early intervention.

Make no mistake, Labor makes a mess because it is distracted by ideology and announcements over action. In Wadeye, despite legitimate concerns, I hope the community club is successful, because the safety and wellbeing of the community and its people depend on it. Self-determination does not mean leaving communities to fend for themselves. Safety of the most vulnerable is crucial, not mopping up afterwards, but no amount of wishing and hoping will do that.

I want to talk about the government's bulk-billing changes that came into effect over the weekend. Back in February, the health minister told Australians the new incentive would mean that some 4,800 clinics would be fully bulk-billing and that more people would not pay out-of-pocket costs. Are we expecting huge changes to the availability of bulk-billing now that the new incentive has been launched? It looks like probably not.

Under the new scheme, GPs and their practices can choose to be fully bulk-billing in order to get an incentive payment, but many GP practices have stated they won't be able to sign up. Pre 1 November, out of roughly 6,500 GP clinics nationwide, about 1,600 were fully bulk-billing clinics. According to the government's own data, released on Monday, just 622 of Australia's 4,720 metropolitan practices planned to change from mixed billing to bulk-billing once the changes are in place. This means that only 13 per cent of metro GP clinics will offer fully bulk-billed services to their patients as a result of this change. So for anyone in a metro area heading in to see their GP for an appointment any time soon, odds are you will still pay out of pocket. The government has said that this plan will fix the system. But, in reality, in its current form, it is barely making a dent. For most people, especially in our suburbs and in our cities, this means still paying some $80 or more to see a GP.

People are putting off care, waiting until they are sicker or ending up in hospital because they can't afford basic check-ups. The expanded incentives scale down for metro areas, meaning that the majority of Australians—those living in cities and large towns—may not see much of a difference at all for quite some time.

Let's be clear. The overwhelming majority of doctors want to bulk-bill. They want to care for people without worrying about costs, but they can't keep their doors open on rebates that don't even cover basic costs. The RACGP has been sounding the alarm for months. GPs are spending longer with patients, dealing with more complex conditions and health issues, but Medicare rebates haven't kept up. The expanded incentives don't go far enough to change that. The incentive offered for longer consults is simply not enough to make them viable. The Greens have been calling for higher rebates on longer appointments so that people managing complex and ongoing health issues can access bulk-billed care.

I want to live in a country where no-one ever hesitates to go to the doctor because they're worried about money and where doctors are able to bulk-bill everyone. But the reality is that a lot of GPs and medical admin staff have probably been having some really tough conversations with their patients since 1 November, trying to explain complex billing systems and the intricacies of Medicare bulk-billing in the hope that their patients will understand that their inability to make the switch is not so much a choice but, genuinely, the only way that some clinics can stay afloat.

We need a funding model that actually reflects the costs and complexities of care in 2025, and we need to make sure GP clinics around the country can afford to bulk-bill every patient. The Greens have been saying this for years: health care is a human right, not a privilege. I am glad the government agrees in principle that all should be able to see a GP without cost, but this plan doesn't deliver it. It is time for Labor to get on with real reform.

With Halloween now done and the Melbourne Cup race run, it's time to look forward to Christmas. It is seven weeks until Christmas. Many people will start winding down in December, but this is exactly the time when retail and distribution staff start ramping up, and it is our retail, distribution and transport workers who keep our supermarket shelves stocked and our country moving.

Last month I visited the Woolworths distribution centre at Larapinta alongside SDA state secretary Justin Power, and I can tell you that the scale of the operation there is truly extraordinary. With a workforce of more than 2,150 people across 115,000 square metres of warehouse space, it is one of Australia's largest distribution centres with good union jobs thanks to unions who have fought hard to deliver impressive EBA results at that site. And what a site it is.

The minute-by-minute logistical precision required to get every truck order right is incredible. When I was there, a fully stocked truck was leaving the dock every four minutes to one of the 284 Woolworths stores in the network that stretches from Coffs Harbour in the south to Roma in the west and all the way up to Weipa, more than 3,000 kilometres north. Remarkably, the team's packing accuracy this year sits at around 99.4 per cent, with 98 per cent of deliveries on time. Every week, around four million cartons of groceries, fresh produce and perishables move through that facility. On the tour, I even spotted a few mince pies, Christmas bonbons and candy canes ready to be shipped out to stores for Christmas.

I want to thank all of the warehouse pickers, forklift drivers, logistical staff, truck drivers and, of course, frontline retail staff who will make Christmas possible this year. They will be working 24/7 this December. That's why this Christmas I want to ask everyone to be patient and respectful of our retail and distribution workers. Whether it's the person stacking the shelves, scanning your groceries or driving the truck that brought them there, they all play a part in making sure we have a special time with our families at Christmas. This festive season, let's remember to respect the workers to make Christmas happen and remember that nobody deserves a serve.

Last night I was also proud to host the inaugural Parliamentary Friends of Tourism event for the 48th Parliament, with tourism minister Don Farrell and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as our special guests. It was a time to toast the industry's resilience, creativity and sheer determination. The post-COVID years have been tough times for tourism, with market fluctuations, geopolitical shifts, reduced airline capacity and other complications keeping the industry on its toes. This is why the Albanese government has been backing Tourism Australia's global campaign to bring international tourists back to Australia. It also activates new markets where we will see growth potential this year.

The 'Come and Say G'day' campaign builds on the success of a similar strategy launched in 2022. The current second chapter is a new $130 million effort that will run for two years. It features Ruby the Roo, who made a guest appearance last night. Ruby has a warm, welcoming and playful personality that embodies the spirit of Australia. Best yet, the character is voiced by our very own Rose Byrne. Ruby appears alongside a host of other international celebrities, including Robert Irwin, Nigella Lawson and Sara Tendulkar, who each share their own personalised g'day experience, be it food, luxury or adventure. The campaign is going well, with positive indicators including increased global interest in Australian holidays and a 10 per cent rise in flight searches compared to 2019. In this way, the 'Come and Say G'day' campaign is an investment in our broader economy.

Tourism isn't just about where Australians live; it's about how 'brand Australia' lives in the hearts and minds of people around the world. As Australians we are all ambassadors for 'brand Australia'. We all have a duty to ensure visitors have the time of their lives here. I also believe we have a duty as ambassadors to explore more of this country to properly appreciate how lucky we are to call this place home. Make it your Christmas gift to give yourself and your family somewhere to discover this year in Australia.

Recently I had the privilege of visiting the Subiaco Community Men's Shed in Western Australia. I want to take a few minutes to talk today about what I saw, what I heard and, more importantly, what I felt. The Men's Shed is not just a place where men get together and build things out of wood; it's a place men come together to rebuild themselves. The Subiaco Men's Shed is part of a wider network of sheds across the country. These spaces make look like workshops with sawdust on the floor and the hum of power tools in the background, but in truth they are something much deeper. They are safe, supportive, life-changing community hubs.

The men I met come from all walks of life. The sheds have members aged from 18-year-old apprentices to veterans to retirees who have hung up their work boots but not their desire to contribute. What unites them is their shared need for connection, meaning and mental wellbeing. We talk a lot in this place about mental health, and rightly so. We pass legislation, we fund services, we launch initiatives. But sometimes the most effective solutions are the simplest ones: a place to go, something to do, someone to talk to. That is exactly what the Subiaco Community Men's Shed offers. There's no appointment needed and no judgement, just community.

At a time when so many men, particularly older men, are at risk of isolation and depression and are feeling a loss of purpose, that kind of space can be a lifesaving place. I spoke with one gentleman who told me quite openly that after retiring he didn't know what to do with himself. His sense of identity, his routine and his social circle were all gone in a flash. It was the shed that gave him structure, gave him mateship again, gave him purpose again and that, after he went through some pretty dark days, saved his life. This is not an isolated story. It's a story repeated in communities across the country.

Let me be clear. This is not a hobby club. This is a grassroots, evidence backed mental health initiative—one that happens to involve woodwork, yes, but it's grounded in wellbeing, connection and service. In fact, many men's sheds actively contribute to their local communities—restoring park benches, making toys for children's hospitals, fixing bikes and mentoring youth. They give back while they heal. That is the beauty of it. But, like so many grassroots programs, the Subiaco men's shed and others like it rely on ongoing support. They need funding for tools, rent and insurance. They need recognition for what they do. It's not a 'nice to have' but a vital part of the health and social fabric of the community.

Today I urge this parliament. Let us not underestimate the power of connection. Let us continue to support initiatives that reach people where they are, not in sterile offices or waiting rooms but in places that feel like home. Let us recognise that wellbeing is not only clinical but also social, emotional and deeply human. The Subiaco men's shed reminded me that sometimes the best therapy is not found in talking about problems but in working shoulder to shoulder, creating something, laughing, being seen and having a purpose. Let's keep backing that. Let's keep backing them.

I rise to speak about the state of the Liberal and National parties, once serious political movements in this country that are now hopelessly dysfunctional. The coalition are in crisis. There's chaos, there's dysfunction, there's internal warfare, and now there's the 'no-alition'.

Australians deserve a credible opposition—one that's capable of serious policy debate and willing to put the nation's interests ahead of their own internal feuds. What we have instead are two parties locked in an endless cycle of dysfunction, division and denial. It goes on and on. This week we had 30 of them trying to get up to the media because they all wanted to put their own story and spin on what's happening internally.

The modern Liberal Party, once the party of Menzies, has become unrecognisable, lurching from the centre right to the far right and back again depending on who has the knife that particular week. And the Nationals, once a very proud party and who claim to stand for rural and regional Australia, have become little more than a grouping for culture wars and conspiracy theories. Together they can't agree on climate change. They can't agree on a climate policy. They can't agree on an energy policy. They couldn't agree on a housing policy when they were in government for almost 10 years. They did absolutely nothing. They don't have the political will to actually develop and do the work that's necessary to develop good policy.

What do they do? They go from one crisis to another. Scott Morrison was the saviour of the Liberal universe when he was in parliament as the Prime Minister, but now they don't know whether to condemn him or to support him. Then you've got the Nationals circus of Mr Joyce and then Mr McCormack and then Mr Joyce again. Now we've got Mr Littleproud. He will do whatever he has to do to make himself relevant. The question is: Are we going to see another split? Will there be a split? Will there be a divorce? No-one really knows. Then we've got Mr Joyce. Is he staying with the Nationals? Is he staying with the coalition? Is he going after Pauline Hanson's role? Who knows.

This demonstrates to the Australian people how dysfunctional those people on the other side and in the other place really are. When they were in government for almost ten years, they denied climate change. All they ever did was drive down wages. They didn't build any houses and didn't have a housing policy, yet they come in and lecture us. Let's not forget that during all those years they had 22 energy policies.

How many of those did they deliver? None—not one. Then they had the great saviour: the 23rd policy. 'We will do something that will cost the Australian taxpayer billions of billions of dollars to go nuclear.' And what did they do? They couldn't even tell anyone how much it was going to cost. They couldn't tell the Australian people where they were locate these. This was just another fantasy. It was just a thought bubble without any costings—except they couldn't cost it. They couldn't tell people where they were going to put them and there was no timeline at all. They didn't have a plan. That was a distraction from the fact they had no credibility, they had nothing to say on energy policy for over a decade and their record on the economy—they like to pretend they actually own the right to be the strongest government to manage the economy when they're in power.

Well, let's not forget that, under the coalition, debt skyrocketed, wages flatlined and productivity slumped. The Liberals and Nationals spent a decade promising budget repair and instead delivered the biggest structural deficit since the global financial crisis. That's their legacy. They cut TAFE and training. They neglected manufacturing, closed down the car industry and let so many other manufacturing jobs drive overseas. They were a terrible government who didn't do anything for Australian workers. We know that, when it comes to Medicare and health, they're the wreckers, not the builders.

And still we have opened all these urgent care clinics, which are a resounding success. On Sunday I was at a fantastic medical centre that already bulk-bills. That's going to be expanded from the eight or nine doctors who work seven days a week delivering for northern Tasmania. These people have done nothing to restore the Australian people's confidence in them, because they have no policy, they have no unity and they have no future in government.

Today Senator Pocock moved a matter of public importance acknowledging that the Australian government should 'legislate to redirect uncontracted export gas into the domestic market and bring down the price of gas and electricity for Australian industry and households, to recognise that Australian gas is for Australian households and businesses.' I wholeheartedly agree with Senator Pocock that Australians need access to more gas. The purpose of every senator in this place is to improve the lives of the Australian people first, and Australians are doing it tough right now.

Because of the policies of this government, Australians have paid 40 per cent more for their electricity since 2022. That is 40 per cent more in three years under Labor. This significant price rise is not felt only on quarterly energy bills. Sadly, the flow-on of higher energy prices is felt economy-wide. Food prices are up 15 per cent thanks in no small way to the increased electricity costs of refrigeration and processing. Housing is up 19 per cent partly because the local manufacturing of building materials in NSW like steel, aluminium and wood products can't get reliable and cheap power for machining and refining. Transport costs are through the roof. Farming is becoming untenable, and mining is under threat. And it all comes back to this government abandoning the field on energy prices.

But no longer are Australians allowed to know what the modelling shows will happen to electricity prices. Energy price modelling that's paid for using tax dollars is being withheld from the Australian public, and we all know why that is: prices are only going up, and those on the other side don't want to admit it. However, increasing gas supply drives down prices. Australian gas is already going to be burned for power, and yet the government would rather it be burned in Japan than here at home to support Australians. Japan has cheaper power than Australia, but, to appease unachievable and uneconomic emissions targets, the Labor government would rather it be burnt overseas so it counts against Japan's emissions, not our own. I find it hard to agree with the Greens political party sometimes, but on this we can agree: It is one of the earth. Emissions in Japan are the same as emissions in Australia, but power prices are not.

Releasing this unallocated gas to the Australian market can help restore Australia's natural advantage in manufacturing, quality of life and stability in our energy grid. It will help relieve the stress for small-business owners, households and families. Releasing this gas lets the world know that Australia can do business, that we can make things competitively and make them with the best workers, who understand that investment needs certainty in supply.

The only thing certain under this Labor government is higher energy bills, and Australians are paying the price. How these ministers opposite can face the people of Tomago, the farmers of regional New South Wales and the manufacturers of Western Sydney I could never guess. Release the gas, reduce energy prices and put Australians first.

Australians are good stewards of this land. We care deeply about our environment, our farms, our coastlines and our communities. Australians want to do the right thing, yet this government wants to carve up our beautiful country to make way for renewables. Ninety-five per cent of Australia's emissions reductions have not come from technology or innovation but from land use restrictions. This is not stewardship. It is saying one thing and doing another. The Australian people deserve better.

We're constantly being told that the wind and the sun cost nothing, but—for the grown-ups in the room—nothing is ever for free. The real cost is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars, somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000 for every single Australian.

We were promised cheaper, cleaner, more reliable energy. Instead, costs are soaring, reliability is failing and Labor's green subsidies are lining the pockets of foreign companies, green energy grifters and international investors while putting everyday Australians out of work. Even leading economists now admit that no large-scale renewable projects are proceeding without government support. When will the minister and this government admit that billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to prop up projects that cannot stand on their own merit. Take the Capacity Investment Scheme, an open-ended subsidy that guarantees profits for renewable developers. It puts taxpayers on the hook whenever market prices fall. The government pays the difference. With no spending cap, all the financial risk shifts from private investors to Australian households, who are already paying—and struggling with—higher power bills.

Then there's the new vehicle efficiency standard; I call that 'Labor's war on utes'. We are told it is about cleaner cars and cheaper fuel. In truth, it comes with a hundred-million-dollar set-up bill and annual ongoing costs—money that could have gone to roads, schools and essential services. Instead, everyday Australians are paying more for vehicles, losing choice in the market and watching billions flow into red tape and green tape.

This is not climate action; it is cost shifting and economic self-harm. It's also government control and overreach, telling us what cars we can and can't drive and unfairly impacting those who use a ute or a larger four-wheel drive for their work or family. Last time I checked, a Tesla isn't really great for farm work or to chuck your tools in if you're a tradie. Meanwhile, the safeguard mechanism operates as a carbon tax by another name, taxing our largest employers only to hand them subsidies so that they can survive. It is economics turned upside down, driving up costs, driving out manufacturing and driving away investment.

Many major employers across mining, manufacturing and energy are being forced to buy overseas carbon credits or face penalties. Independent analysis shows this could cost industry up to $1.7 billion a year and nearly $12 billion by 2030. That is money that could have gone into cleaner technologies, new projects and regional jobs. Instead, it's being drained to meet arbitrary targets set in Canberra.

What does this mean for ordinary Australians? These costs don't stop with businesses. They flow directly to families and workers in the form of higher prices and fewer opportunities. Electricity, construction materials, fuel and everyday goods are becoming more expensive as compliance costs rise. While our international competitors continue to produce without these burdens, this government is making it harder to build, mine and manufacture at home. The safeguard mechanism isn't safeguarding our economy; it's undermining it—one compliance bill at a time. Under this government, 8,000 manufacturing jobs have vanished. Jobs are being exported, and Australians are left to pay the price of bad policy.

Australians are good stewards of the land. We believe in sustainability. What we don't believe in is self-sabotage—nor in hollow slogans about 'free energy' that costs trillions. When will Labor finally do the maths on their net zero targets? This no longer stacks up.

Welcome to the latest episode of your favourite TV show: One Nation Were Right All Along. First up, we have the Nationals finally seeing the light of the net zero scam—well, kind of. Their support has gone from unqualified support to 'how much net zero can we do before we start losing seats?' In their announcement, Nationals leader David Littleproud said: 'The Nationals accept the science of climate change and remain committed to emissions reduction. The current aggressive pursuit of net zero is unfairly damaging to regional Australia and economically unsustainable for the country'—he's waking up—'We need a slower pace aligned with the OECD average'.

That's a clever sleight of hand. The OECD reduction has stalled for five years. Their accumulative reduction is currently 14 per cent, and Australia's is 24 per cent. The latest data will show ours at 28 per cent, double the OECD's. Tying Australia to the OECD will buy the Nationals an election or two before having to restart reductions. Remember, though, that they still believe in net zero and in the need to cut carbon dioxide production. I welcome the Nationals realisation of the damage net zero is doing and wish they had more courage to walk away from the scam entirely.

In contrast, One Nation strongly oppose net zero, and we would abolish all federal government net zero mandates, programs and boondoggles. We would shut down all the schemes and departments promoting this scam, saving taxpayers $30 billion every year. This is not the only cost of course. Parasitic billionaires and corporations sucking on taxpayer subsidies and electricity consumer subsidies, and others in private industry, are taking advantage of this scam to build industrial solar and wind, transmission lines, big batteries and other paraphernalia of net zero. This cost will be as high as $1.9 trillion through to 2050. Remember that industrial solar and wind lasts only 15 years, which means everything that has been built so far will not be in use in 2050 and will have to be built again and again. The government's Bollywood version of the cost of net zero does not take into account this massive expense—nor do they consider the environmental cost of the destruction of native forests for wind turbines, access roads and transmission lines; the cost of dumping these monstrosities into landfill every 15 years; or the run-off from toxic metals from damaged solar panels. This would be hilarious if it weren't so sad.

Electricity is an input cost right across the economy. The price of everything you buy, from physical goods in stores to services and financial products, goes up as the electricity bills of the companies providing those services go up. Everyday Australians are poorer because of net zero, and so is Australia's beautiful natural environment. The government used to say, 'Renewables are cheaper, so prices will come down eventually.' However, after 20 years of the transition—the last three at breakneck pace—electricity bills are not coming down; they're rising rapidly.

Some of those who are wealthy enough and have an actual house in which to install solar panels and an expensive wall battery are reporting slightly reduced electricity bills. The very few Australians with the money to spend $25,000 on a solar array and wall battery for a home they own are thumbing their noses at the millions that do not have a house and $25,000 to add solar and a battery. Net zero is becoming a case of the haves and have-nots. Those who can't afford their own electricity generation are left to buy electricity at prices that have increased at twice the rate of inflation since the net zero benchmark year of 2005. It's a trend that continues, with a nine per cent increase in electricity prices in 2025.

One Nation are right in our opposition to mass migration. Today we learnt that the majority of Australians agree with us—right again. A poll in the Australian yesterday showed that almost two-thirds of Australians want a reduction in the migration rate; 94 per cent of One Nation supporters support reduced migration, which has now been a feature of One Nation policy for 30 years, ever since the Liberal-National coalition under John Howard doubled migration and started mass migration. Significantly, 78 per cent of coalition voters want a reduction in immigration, and so do 71 per cent of supporters of smaller parties and independents, which does include the teals—so that's very interesting.

What caught my eye with the poll is that two parties who have been pushing infinite immigration are doing so against the wishes of their supporters. Only 10 per cent of Labor's supporters want more migrants, while 49 per cent want fewer. While 27 per cent of Greens voters want more immigration, 32 per cent want less. Immigration is now one of the biggest election issues in New South Wales, which is not surprising, given the rental crisis in the greater Sydney area, thanks to the Albanese immigration invasion. It is interesting to see there is no gender divide on immigration. Opposition to high immigration is spread evenly between men and women.

It's a betrayal of the very concept of democracy for this government to continue its globalist agenda to flood Australia with these very high levels of mass immigration against the wishes of the Australian people. Liberal and Labor governments are importing too many new arrivals from cultures that do not readily assimilate and bring with them a religion, Islam, that seeks to carve out a slice of this country to introduce their own system of law—divisive.

At the same time, the government is inhumanely ignoring the tragedy of the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, in Sudan and in South Africa. I asked the Minister representing the Minister for Home Affairs yesterday in question time how many Christian refugees we brought in from these trouble spots. The answer was telling: zero! I asked who's benefiting from Australia's humanitarian intake. His answer was that the top five countries for refugee visas, 15,000 in all, are all Islamic countries. This is nothing more than selective discrimination against Christians. In the past, Australians would have considered this sedition. One Nation still does.

Third, One Nation is correct about the standard of living. For years, I've been warning the Australian people that the net zero agenda, combined with mass immigration, is destroying business investment in our productive capacity, reducing living standards. Sky News is reporting today just how bad things have become. One in seven Australians now live below the poverty line, and one in six children are below the poverty line. That's 3.7 million people struggling to pay for food, power and rent in a nation bursting with resources, all a result of Liberal-Labor uniparty policies—mass migration, net zero, housing, overregulation.

In what was once the richest country, per capita, in the world, we now have the worst poverty in my lifetime, yet we still have the natural resources; the abundant hydrocarbon fuels—coal, oil and natural gas; amazing farmland; and a strong tourism industry. For years, successive Liberal and Labor governments have shut down industries that provided breadwinner jobs in steelworks and heavy manufacturing, and value-adding jobs like textiles. They weighed our farmers down with so much green tape and blue United Nations tape that they are struggling to stay afloat. Australian wealth is being sabotaged in a process called 'managed decline'. It's deliberate. Yet our GDP is still growing. What's going on? Australia's wealth is being transferred from Australians to foreign beneficiaries. The world's predatory billionaires have used their investment funds, like BlackRock, First State, Vanguard and State Street, to buy not only shares in Australian companies but entire industries. Except for two of our insurance companies, all our insurance companies are foreign owned.

Major retailers Coles, Woolies and Bunnings are foreign controlled. The Australian big four banks are foreign controlled, and so are our telcos and oil and gas companies. Satan's bankers then put up prices, knowing they control the markets, so consumers become price takers. There's no market anymore; it's controlled. Australians working at the top of these companies take extremely high salaries—in many cases, multimillion dollar salaries—in return for compliance, and everyday Australians go backwards into poverty.

The government is making things worse, allowing so many new arrivals that housing prices and rents are forced upwards, while quality of life and standards of living go backwards. In Sydney, median unit rents have surged 40 per cent since 2021, and Melbourne and Brisbane aren't far behind, climbing more than 30 per cent. For low-income renters, over half now spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing—30 per cent on housing! Our prime minister went to the last election promising to leave no-one behind, knowing his policies were doing exactly the opposite. The government is now increasing spending on housing, on paid parental leave, on child care and on hiring more and more and more public servants on high wages to paper over what is a crashing economy. The government can't use debt and money printing forever to save its backside. Debt and printing money cause their own severe economic problems and then more poverty.

One Nation has opposed the net zero war on business investment. We have opposed the migration invasion, and we warned that these policies, combined with the red bureaucratic tape, green tape and blue United Nations tape would destroy the standard of living in our beautiful country. And it has. We bloody told you so! We have put forward solutions and practical, effective policies to solve all these challenges—proven solutions. All these issues are due to decades of dishonest Liberal-Labor uniparty policies and laws. As President John F Kennedy said:

Our problems are man made. Therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.

One Nation is right.

We've heard a lot today about other parties in this place suddenly claiming to have adopted One Nation's position on net zero, so let me give Australians a clear warning. Beware the opposition; beware the National Party. The leaders of these parties are the same politicians who have backed net zero from day one. They helped force it on this country in 2021, and now they're claiming, suddenly, they don't. I believe that this is because they see that Australians are turning to One Nation. This isn't leadership; it's panic. Unless the Liberals and Nationals are willing to stand up and actually stop destructive net zero projects in places like Loomberah in New South Wales, their words mean nothing. They're not changing course; they're simply chasing votes.

Over the weekend, the Leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud, said, 'Regional Australia is being torn apart by net zero. Let's do this in a fairer way.' Well, he's half right; regional Australia is being torn apart. Where I disagree is that there is a fair way to tear it apart. That's the danger when we let weak leaders get away with lip-service policies while the agenda rolls on underneath—while they say they're scrapping net zero, the damage continues uninterrupted. Make no mistake; net zero is still happening. The projects are still being approved, and our communities are still being bulldozed.

For years, One Nation has been the only party telling the truth. Now, the Nationals want to pretend that they've seen the light. They haven't. They're not leading; they're following because One Nation is rising and because Australians are sick of being lied to. Net zero is a disaster. It's wrecking our energy grid, killing our jobs, shutting down industries, driving up power bills and tearing our regional communities apart. Again, it was the Liberals and Nationals who helped sign us up to this mess, hand in hand with Labor, back in 2021. Now, they want you to believe they've changed course. They haven't.

One of the big new ideas they talk about is that they want to tie our emissions to the OECD average. It sounds clever, but it's a con. Most OECD countries already have net zero locked in for 2050, and many are pushing to get there even sooner. So matching the average just means we're still doing net zero and we're still headed in that same direction. Listening to the Nationals, you'd think they actually agree with Labor's plan to drive us off the cliff but that they just want to get there a few kays per hour slower. Either they don't understand what they're saying or they think you won't understand what they're saying. One Nation will not play that game.

We stand for cheap, reliable, base-load energy from coal and gas. We stand for Australian jobs, Australian industry and Australian families. We will not sacrifice the bush to please the UN or climate billionaires or teals in the city. So the next time you hear a politician say they're standing up for regional Australia, ask them if they are actually standing up for the people of towns like Loomberah. Ask them if they are standing up for towns like that across the country. Or are they standing with foreign investors and Labor and the Greens and their relentless, heartless net zero agenda? Unless they're prepared to stop what is happening to our towns and our farmlands, they're not actually standing up to or for anything. They are just trying to sound like One Nation, without having the courage to be like One Nation, and Australians can see right through it. Our Nation is leading this fight. We are putting Australians first, as we always have and we will always continue to do.

It is no secret that Australians are doing it tough. So far, every day, my office has heard from hardworking people and they are doing everything right. They're working long hours. They're paying their taxes. They're trying to raise their families. Yet they are falling further and further behind. Sadly, they are losing hope. They feel like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. The cost of living is out of control. The Labor government has no idea what ordinary Australians are going through. They have no perspective. They simply do not care or understand.

I'd like to share with you something that was shared with me by a lady named Melinda who wrote to my office. She said:

The cost of living is out of control. I already work two jobs. I have even worked three jobs while studying. And yet I still don't know how I am supposed to get ahead. It doesn't seem to matter how much the average middle-class Aussie works, the government seems to prevent us from getting ahead.

Melinda's story is not unique. There will be many Australians out there who feel the same way because it's the reality for them. They are good, honest people who are being punished while Labor chases policies—mass immigration policies and net zero policies. The crisis we are facing in Australia is not one of bad luck; it is government made. Labor's net zero obsession is driving up energy prices, shutting down manufacturing and making it even harder for families to afford the basics. Labor's open-door immigration policies are pushing up housing demand and rents, forcing more Australians into homelessness and putting massive pressure and strain on our hospitals, our schools and our education system.

The latest Newspoll stated that 64 per cent of voters want less immigration and 39 per cent want much less immigration. Why is the government not listening to Australians, and why is the Labor Party not representing them? Do they simply not care? That is why One Nation says, 'Enough is enough'. That's why we're prepared to say we will scrap the Paris Agreement. We'll restore cheap and reliable Australian energy, backed by coal and gas, and we'll end Labor's destructive era of mass immigration. We will fight to make this a country where hard work pays off and where Melinda and every Australian worker can build a future, own a home and live with dignity. The Labor government is failing the Australian people, but One Nation is here to fight with the battlers, the families and the forgotten Australians because this is our country. It's time we take it back.

I'll finish with this: Australians are hurting. Every day, families, pensioners and small-business owners tells us the same story: they cannot afford to keep the lights on, put food on the table or pay the rent. They ask, 'What is the Labor government doing?' They are making things worse. They are causing this pain and this pressure by doubling down on their net zero folly, and it is driving your power bills through the roof.

I'll share with you another story from Julie from New South Wales, who told our office this:

I'm a pensioner, and I'm very concerned about electricity prices and the cost of living in general. The Paris Accord net-zero targets are unachievable and misguided. Solar energy is an expensive white elephant. We need more coal and gas-fired power plants, and we must drop the Paris Accord to bring back affordable energy and manufacturing—

smart lady. Julie is right. This is common sense, and the Labor Party should be listening. Labor's obsession with net zero and renewables has gutted our manufacturing, killed off cheap energy and left ordinary Australians footing the bill. Labor talk about saving the planet, but what about saving Australians like Julie? One Nation is here to stand up for people like Julie where the government is failing them. We will scrap net zero. We would happily rip up the Paris Agreement, and we would instead invest in reliable, cheap and affordable coal and gas. We'd even hold discussions to explore nuclear energy because we believe it is our responsibility to put Australian jobs and families first.

The truth is simple: net zero is destroying this nation; it must be stopped. Under the leadership of Senator Hanson, One Nation has led this fight to scrap net zero. That is what One Nation has always done—led the way and saved the day. The tide is turning. We are winning this battle, and, with your help, we can take this nation back.

Senate adjourned at 20:24