The SPEAKER (12:01): Pursuant to the resolution of the Senate on 6 September 1984 and the House of Representatives on 11 October 1984, I present a report on access to committee documents.

Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney) (12:03): Of course Labor supports any effort to help communities that are facing terrible natural disasters. We've seen too many in recent years—floods in particular; the bushfires in Queensland at the moment. We've seen the devastating effect that these natural disasters have on communities around Australia, and of course we offer any support and assistance that's necessary. The thing that troubles us about these bills, the Emergency Response Fund Bill 2019 and the Emergency Response Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019, is not that they see some investment into emergency responses but that they do so at the expense of important investment in education. This is now the government's third attempt to get rid of the Education Investment Fund. They've tried before. They tried again. They're now linking it to funding for natural disasters in a way that unfairly and unnecessarily pits these two worthy aims against each other. Of course we should be helping communities deal with natural disasters, but why this needs to be at the expense of much-needed investment in education infrastructure is not clear.

We want communities to recover from natural disasters and to see mitigation measures that would aid in building resilience in those communities. It's a fundamental responsibility of government to assist communities at these most difficult times, and, of course, when communities are faced with emergencies and natural disasters, there is always a bipartisan effort to support those communities in their recovery. It's part of the basic job of government to protect Australians through these difficult times. We wonder, though, why this needs to be done at the expense of much needed education funding and also why this bill is simply seeking to distribute a maximum of $150 million per year for natural disaster activities when the recommendation was for a larger investment in mitigation activities and when the fund that the government's seeking to wind up is worth $4 billion.

The funds come in addition to existing federal funding for disaster recovery efforts. The types of activities that can be funded by the ERF, as proposed, are broad and include carrying out projects, funding services or adopting technology, as long as the activity is directed towards achieving recovery from a natural disaster or building post-disaster resilience. One of the problems with the funding, as it's been described in this bill, is that it only allows for funding of mitigation infrastructure after a disaster has struck. Rather than funding a flood levy, for example, or a cyclone shelter before a flood or a cyclone, it will only provide funding after such a disaster has struck. That's not really mitigation either; that's recovery. It's important to fund these efforts, but it would be much more productive and worthwhile if, in an effort to avert the worst effects of those disasters, we saw the government working more constructively with communities that are in the line of fire of these natural disasters before disaster strikes. Under the national partnership agreement with states and territories the government has only agreed to provide $26.1 million per annum for disaster resilience. That is very much short of the Productivity Commission's 2015 recommendation that the Commonwealth provide $200 million a year in resilience funding. Of course, the ERF proposal is still short of the $200 million a year that was recommended by the Productivity Commission in 2015.

One of the problems with pitting this disaster resilience funding against education funding is that it has quite often been our universities that have done the most important and worthwhile work in working out the best ways to genuinely mitigate against disasters and to reduce the impact of those potential disasters. In the last federal election campaign, for example, Labor committed $12.3 million to establish the National Institute for Flood Resilience at Southern Cross University. The Northern Rivers is one of the most active flood plains in Australia, so locals know firsthand the devastating impact that natural disasters such as floods can have. It's estimated that floods have cost the Australian economy $18.2 billion a year, so an investment of $12.3 million for the National Institute for Flood Resilience at Southern Cross would have been a fantastic investment to try and prevent floods if we can. The people at Southern Cross University are doing excellent work in this area already. If we can reduce the severity of floods, if we can aid the recovery time from floods, we can save potentially billions of dollars a year, so you can see how short-sighted pitting disaster resilience efforts against investment in education is. The institute we wanted to fund at the last election would have included, for example, a new network of smart sensors in the local area to more accurately predict floods and would have contributed to improving flood-safe education in schools. It's just one example of the nation-leading and nation-building research that is happening right here in Australia that leads to real mitigation of the severity of natural disasters such as floods.

The troubling thing about this bill is that it continues a pattern of cutting education in this country. We've seen the refusal to commit long-term to investment in preschool education. We've seen the billions of dollars of difference between what the states and territories expected to receive in school funding from the federal government, when Tony Abbott promised not to cut a dollar from education, and what ended up happening. We've seen billions of dollars ripped from TAFE and vocational education such that there are fewer apprentices today than there were in 2008.

All of this is phenomenally short-sighted. A great education is the ticket to a lifetime of opportunity for the individuals who get that education and it's the ticket to a wealthier and more productive nation. The OECD and Universities Australia have estimated that the real rate of return to the Australian economy from investing in tertiary education is more than 14 per cent, representing the second-best return on investment in higher education of all the OECD nations. In 2013 the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency found that every extra dollar invested in tertiary education would, on average, grow our economy by $26 within the decade. Many of us in here, including me, are beneficiaries of the significant changes made to tertiary education during the Whitlam and Hawke years—the transformative decision to remove the barriers to tertiary education, to open the doors of our universities to more Australians.

In government we continued this great tradition by opening the doors of our universities to more Australians, making sure that a university education is never out of reach because of your parents' inability to pay. After years of neglect under the Howard government, Labor, when we came to office last time, boosted investment in our universities from $8 billion in 2007 to $14 billion by the time we left government in 2013. We almost doubled university funding during our time in government. By introducing the demand driven system in 2012, we saw an additional 190,000 Australians get a place at university. That means one in every four of the 750,000 undergraduates in Australian universities at the moment is there because of the changes Labor made when we were last in government.

We also wanted to ensure that the opportunity of going to university was made available to all Australians, particularly those from disadvantaged communities, those who are first in their family to go to university. Looking at the results in the Productivity Commission report, this worked. Since 2012 we've seen a boost of Indigenous student numbers by 26 per cent and a boost of regional student numbers by 30 per cent, and we have more than 36,000 extra students from low-income families, many the first in their family to go to university. In contrast, this effort to get rid of the EIF is one more in a line of efforts from those opposite to restrict, reduce or cut funding to universities.

The first iteration of the Education Investment Fund was called the Higher Education Endowment Fund and it was in fact a creation of Peter Costello. It was in the 2007 Costello budget. It was subsequently boosted by Labor and changed to the Education Investment Fund as part of our nation-building program. It became, at that time, an $11 billion fund. The Education Investment Fund was a key plank in our effort to transform our education system here and to invest in the physical upgrading of our universities and improvement of the research capability of our universities to counteract the years of underinvestment by John Howard's government. Since 2008, and until the Abbott-Turnbull government abandoned the program, around $7 billion was provided to co-finance the update and modernisation of Australia's vocational, higher education and research facilities—over 71 projects.

Going back to Peter Costello's purpose in investing in the first iteration, the Higher Education Endowment Fund, he said, in the 2007 budget speech, when he introduced it, that the fund 'will be dedicated to building first-class institutes of learning—first class by world standards—and put our institutes of higher learning on a secure footing for ever'. Well, not really forever. The first effort to get rid of this fund, as I said, was in 2014, the second effort to get rid of it was in 2017, and here we are, sadly, in 2019 with the third effort to get rid of this fund. Its purpose, as Peter Costello said was 'to put our institutes of higher learning on a secure footing for ever'. He further said:

We do not want to limit the future chances of young Australians; we want to build them.

Well, again, this bill does the exact opposite, by demanding that much needed investment in disaster mitigation is paid for by the very valuable fund that has been set aside to invest in our universities. So the Prime Minister is doing exactly what Peter Costello said at the time the government would not do. This government is abolishing a much needed fund and, consequently, limiting the future life chances of young Australians.

This, as I said, comes on top of other cuts, including a $328.5 million cut from research last year. It also comes on top of the recapping of university places, which means, in effect, a $2.2 billion cut to our universities—locking 200,000 people, who would have otherwise got the chance of a university education, out of our universities over the decade. By locking people out of education, we lock them out of a job. We're putting a drag on the Australian economy when we know that the economy is already struggling in many respects.

Australia, and the world, is facing an economic transformation at this time. We know that work is becoming more complex. Driven by the changes that we're seeing in the global economy, we are seeing opportunities—for example, with the increasing middle-class in the Asia-Pacific region. There are great economic opportunities for us, but they depend on us having an educated workforce that can make the most of those opportunities as they arise. Here at home we face an ageing population. We face technological transformation and digital disruption. On top of that, we see weak wages growth; 1.8 million Australians who are unemployed or underemployed and looking for more hours of work; and productivity growth basically flatlining. All of these elements of an economy that is under pressure, as it is at the moment, respond better when we are properly funding our education system.

If we are to rise to these significant global challenges and become a sophisticated knowledge based economy, we simply cannot continually slash money from our higher education sector. We know that by 2020 two out of every three jobs that are created will require a diploma or higher. We should be supporting Australians to get these qualifications regardless of their background and regardless of where they live. We should be supporting them to access and succeed at university so that they can get the skills they need for the jobs of today and the jobs of the future.

The Education Investment Fund enabled investment right around the country, from Charles Sturt University's National Life Sciences Hub to James Cook University's Science Place for northern Queensland and Townsville. In 2014, Deloitte estimated that, by investing in higher education, $140 billion had been added to Australia's GDP through improving productivity. So it is difficult to imagine where we could be more productively investing in infrastructure than in these fantastic teaching and research facilities at our universities in every part of Australia. These universities are anchors in their local communities, both physically and socially, and our nation and our local communities benefit from that investment.

Newcastle is another great example. When we were last in government, the University of Newcastle were able to leverage our government's investment at that time of $30 million through the EIF with their own funds, as well as $25 million from the New South Wales government. They constructed NeW Space at the Newcastle CBD campus.

Ms Swanson: Hear, hear!

Ms PLIBERSEK: Yes, very good. According to the analysis, NeW Space alone will deliver $1.3 billion in economic benefit to the Hunter region from 2013 to 2022, including $200 million in construction and a further $134 million estimated to flow annually from the emergence of the Newcastle CBD as a vibrant student hub. It shows how powerful this initial investment from government can be as it is leveraged with money from the university, sometimes from the private sector and sometimes from state governments too.

It shows also the impact that these projects can have in revitalising town centres and suburbs. CQUniversity finalised in 2014 a project that brought together higher education and TAFE sectors through a merger of CQUniversity and the Central Queensland Institute of TAFE. This helped create the largest regional university in Australia, with more than 2,000 staff and 35,000 students. The projects there provide people in central Queensland with a range of postsecondary education and training options that allow them to skill up to meet the needs of the local labour force. It also developed links with the community and local industry and is best placed to provide highly trained, highly skilled, work-ready graduates. When you look at this merger and the investment that's gone into local communities using this funding—the Rockhampton Health Clinic, a $14 million investment in Rockhampton; the refurbishment of the Mackay City campus, at $10.2 million; and the establishment of the Mackay engineering building, at $16.6 million—you really do have to ask yourself how those opposite, who know how desperately welcome these types of projects are in regional communities, can possibly support the abolition of this fund that has contributed so many worthwhile projects to our regional communities.

That's what we talk about on this side—nation-building investment that is, of course, great for the students and staff of these universities but actually changes suburbs, towns and cities too, with jobs in construction and in maintaining and running these projects. These capital infrastructure projects provide the needed stimulus right now. We could be using this money right now to create jobs for those 1.8 million Australians who are unemployed or underemployed, building on our universities and providing long-term productivity growth as we train the workforce and help to teach graduates who will go on to help build our nation.

Ultimately these reforms—if you could call them reforms; this is a cut of education funding that the government's pursuing—will cost jobs. Universities today support 130,000 jobs across Australia. Cuts to regional universities in particular will see regional communities suffer and will see jobs in those communities suffer. For cities like Adelaide, Newcastle, Wollongong and Armidale, which have seen very important investment in universities in the past, when this money dries up there will be an impact. Universities continue to have to do more with less, and to make up for the funding shortfall we have seen universities turn disproportionately to full-fee-paying overseas students.

Now, I think the international education sector is fantastic for Australia. But there are two things I'd say about it. One of the things about our university sector that is appealing to students from around the world who are thinking about where they might go to study is that, if our infrastructure is state-of-the-art, it makes us a much more attractive destination for those students. We are competing globally for those students. International education is our third-largest export industry. On the last available data, it brought in $33 billion to our economy. Universities, TAFEs and research institutions have been clear that, if this funding is no longer available, then they will cancel or postpone plans for infrastructure investment and upgrade, and that affects our attractiveness to overseas students. According to the last available financial data from the Department of Education, if you took out the level of growth of international student revenue from university operating results, then every single university would be in deficit. That's very important: if you take out the growth that our universities have received from international student revenue, every single university would be in deficit, according to the Department of Education. So we put our competitive advantage at risk.

Modern, well-equipped, fit-for-purpose teaching and research facilities are critical to retaining our position in the global rankings as an attractive destination for international students. Our neighbours are not making the same mistake. China, for example, has an aim of achieving 40 world-class universities by 2050. So, we see that this reduction in investment in our universities not only has the effect of lost jobs—because we're not proceeding with the infrastructure projects that we could be—but also means that we are potentially presiding over a worsening student experience. We are seeing courses dropped. We're seeing jobs cut. Charles Darwin University, for example, has had to cut courses and, in doing so, has cut up to 100 jobs. And of course we'll also see the impact on our research output. Simultaneously, we see a concentration of students coming from just a few countries overseas, which really does trouble a lot of people in the university sector because, internationally, economies change very quickly—economic circumstances change very quickly—and we need to continue to have a diversified range of countries from which we're drawing our international students.

I want to focus for just a second on regional universities in particular. Regional universities are very often the powerhouses of their local economies. Researchers found that seven in 10 regional university graduates take up work outside metropolitan areas when they graduate and that those universities and students reinvest more than $2 billion a year in regional communities as a result of the economic activity of the university campuses. The Productivity Commission's report tells us that rural, regional and remote students are significantly more likely to drop out if they're having to go to city universities in particular. That barrier of relocating, travelling significant distances or going with online study has seen the results for regional students trailing the results of city based students.

It does worry me that this potential divide between regional and city communities is so stark and that, by cutting the sort of investment that would improve the student experience at regional university campuses, we embed that divide between our city and country areas. It troubles me that those opposite are not prepared to stand stronger to protect future investment in our regional universities.

The University of South Australia, for example, secured $18 million to expand its physical footprint and degree selection into the Mount Gambier and Whyalla regions. That means great opportunities for people who live in those regional South Australian economies. It's allowed them to build new learning facilities and on-campus accommodation and install high-speed fibre-optic cables, making it one of the best connected campuses of any regional city in Australia. Because of this investment, the University of South Australia continues to support economic development and job creation in rural areas by working directly with business and industry, producing graduates who will contribute to the economic, social and culture priorities of the region.

The Napthine review had some terrific suggestions for improving the experience of regional students, and, basically, everything this government's done has been the exact opposite of what was recommended. Universities will oppose this, and we will oppose the winding up of the EIF.

In conclusion, as a second reading amendment, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that the effectiveness of the Emergency Response Fund will be compromised because it will provide investment for mitigation infrastructure only after a disaster has hit;

(2) further notes with concern that this bill is the Government's third attempt to abolish the historic, nation-building Education Investment Fund; and

(3) calls on the Government to:

   (a) invest in mitigation infrastructure before natural disasters occur; and

   (b) properly fund both education infrastructure and natural disaster response".

Labor also signals its intention to move a number of more detailed amendments, pending the outcome of the Senate inquiry.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Rob Mitchell ): I thank the member for Sydney. Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Bowen: I second the amendment and reserve my right for speak.

Mr FALINSKI (Mackellar) (12:33): I'd firstly like to commend all types of responders to emergencies that happen nationwide, be they firefighters during a bushfire or volunteer SES workers during a storm. We have always had a community that has stood behind one another in times of need, many risking their own lives to protect others and their properties. With the rising rate of natural disasters and emergencies that occur, we will need to stand together stronger and defend each other better. Even recently we have had incredible examples of selflessness by members of our community in dangerous situations, such as in the recent bushfires across the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and parts of northern New South Wales.

This Emergency Response Fund Bill 2019 has been formed to show the government's appreciation for and acknowledgement of these services that play a vital role in our community, not to mention the fact that a large portion of them are volunteer members of the community. Through the creation of this fund, Australia's government will always have resources available to help those in crisis situations within our global community. Putting aside $4 billion as an initial investment, which will be managed by the Future Fund Board of Guardians, we can expect a large return on this long-term commitment by the government in assisting communities ravaged by disasters as well as investments into the prevention of such issues.

It was reviewed that, at the previous date, the emergency services and subsequent programs were not at a standard that could meet the scale of possible catastrophic events in the future. Thus, a large part of this fund would be put towards the improvement of such resources until they reached the criteria for what the community needs and deserves. The Australian people deserve to have emergency services that can act quickly and save lives without waiting for any bureaucracy to send them forward. They deserve to have fire services that can jump into action at the first sight of an emergency. With this bill we will have more funding to put towards things that our community needs and deserves in times of emergencies.

In my own electorate of Mackellar I have 10 Rural Fire Service brigades, marine rescue stations and many other emergency service volunteer groups who do excellent work keeping the great people of the northern beaches of Sydney safe. I acknowledge the northern beaches firefighters who have deployed to Queensland and northern New South Wales to assist in combating the out-of-control fires in those areas. I am informed by RFS brigades that multiple volunteers from the beaches, but also all over the state and country, are heading north to assist.

Through the use of grants and investments into prevention methods such as new and improved infrastructure that can withstand future natural disasters of all categories and the adoption of innovative technology we will be able to protect and help Australians who have been, or will be, affected by these disasters. Not only that, but the grants can be used in the recovery efforts for producers and small business owners to educate them and give advice on the risk of any future land ventures, the recovery and re-establishment of their livelihoods and the investment into tools for better knowledge and understanding of local climate viability.

At this point, the fund will move to a maximum of $150 million a year to fund natural disaster recovery efforts and all types of emergency responses. This allotment of resources is already above and beyond what was previously set out to cover the original cost of the recovery programs, but now they can use a large portion of the Future Fund to plan for the future. This will be put back into investments and, therefore, yield a large long-term growth. This in turn will help our communities to protect themselves, and each other, against the natural disasters that are becoming ever more frequent.

Due to the ever-changing circumstances of natural disasters and climate, this fund will come under review within 10 years of establishment. This will allow the responsible minister to inform both houses of parliament of a public review of the bill. It is important that we refresh and modernise the bill for the safety and benefit of the Australian community. This measure speaks to the coalition government's commitment to being adaptive to changing landscapes.

One might question whether it is time to invest in larger, high-risk operations, but the Future Fund board will be responsible for the investments of this fund. With the government having worked with the board for over a decade, we have seen them managing six other funds successfully to a benchmark and even outperforming what was expected of them beforehand. This has created trust, a strong relationship and a reputation that makes us feel secure to invest this fund with them.

Of course, these funds will also be used in a robust and transparent framework that clearly details how, why and when the government is deciding to use these funds. This will also follow the use of advice from the Commonwealth's expert on natural disaster management, the Director-General of Emergency Management Australia. Being in that position the Director-General is well suited, and one might even say highly qualified, for this role. They are in charge of coordination of all kinds of support toward the citizens of our community, be it physical or financial. And all financial decisions will comply with what the Commonwealth has set out in its rules and guidelines for all procedures on grants and resource gathering.

The emergency minister will work closely with the Director-General of Emergency Management when devising new methods and ways to combat the destruction of natural disasters. Their collaboration will bring about good use of the new funds available to the emergency services. It is through their highly cohesive coordination that the information will be available to the public, being as transparent as possible. Any use of the emergency fund will be published on the website of the Department of Home Affairs and stated in the annual report of those offices—though, of course, in the case of privacy, individual names and the purpose of the payment will not be published—and published not only on the website of the Department of Home Affairs but also on the GrantConnect website, within 21 days of being claimed.

The recipients of these funds can be anyone affected by natural disasters in an adverse way: individuals; incorporated or unincorporated bodies; not-for-profit organisations; educational institutions, such as universities; state and territory governments and local government bodies. In the case of natural disasters, we are all affected and we all need to look out for each other. Thus, these funds are available to an extensive range of our population.

Before I conclude, it would be remiss of me not to comment on the previous speaker, who spent 29½ minutes talking about education and literally 30 seconds talking about assisting our emergency services in times of a natural disaster. It is disappointing that the Labor Party—or, indeed, that member of the Labor Party—treats our emergency services in this fashion. I hope other speakers from the Labor Party spend more time talking about how we can assist emergency services rather than making erroneous political points about education.

This bill will provide funding to the areas in the emergency services that truly need it. It will provide funding to all emergency services and the responses they provide. I commend this bill to the House.

Mr ALBANESE (Grayndler—Leader of the Opposition) (12:41): I rise to speak in support of the amendment moved by my colleague the member for Sydney. The member for Sydney has pointed out correctly the flaws in the government's approach, which go to the flaws in this government's approach post 18 May. They were successful in being re-elected to office. But it was like the most surprised people in the country were they themselves, because they, on the government benches, continue to act like an opposition in exile. They continue to sit down in their strategy and tactics meetings and, surprisingly, announce to the public that the objective of any particular sitting of parliament isn't to advance the national interest. The objective is not to promote legislation; it's to promote 'wedgislation'—it's about trying to find legislation that the Labor Party will oppose. This is a great example of it. It's a government really in search of an agenda and a plan.

This week, like in too many weeks in this country, we unfortunately are reminded of the crises that occur with regard to natural disasters. Bushfires, floods and cyclones impact far too regularly on Australian citizens and on communities. What that requires is sober and mature leadership from government. What we had from the Prime Minister yesterday on the floor of this parliament was something that I haven't seen before. The Prime Minister rose in response to a Dorothy Dix question from his own side and sought to politicise the response to the natural disasters that occurred when we were in government: the floods in Queensland and the bushfires in Victoria. People died in those disasters. The impact was devastating. Towns like Kinglake virtually disappeared. Floods in Brisbane and in other parts of Queensland had a devastating impact. For the Prime Minister to have tried to seek political advantage, at a time when there are bushfires raging in northern New South Wales and Queensland, was quite extraordinary. It showed that there is no limit to how low this Prime Minister is prepared to go in order to seek political advantage. But it did something more than that. This legislation highlights yet again that, in spite of the fact that we on this side of the House have indicated very clearly that we will be a constructive opposition—for example, I want to be known as the Labor leader, not the opposition leader—and that we will put our hands across the table on issues of national importance in order to secure outcomes in the national interest—I mean, everyone supports a response to natural disasters and increased assistance. It is appropriate. There's no issue there. But, with this legislation, the government has linked emergency responses to an Education Investment Fund that's about higher education infrastructure. There's no link between the two whatsoever.

If the government wanted to have funding, of whatever level—and I say that with some trepidation. Oh, the shadow Treasurer isn't here, which is good, so I can say this! Any level of funding that the government wants to put into an emergency response, we will do. Appropriation—bang, straight through. That's not in question here. That's not in question. But why is it that, in order to fund drought relief, you have to take $3.9 billion away from infrastructure funding now in order to give $100 million back in two years time, and, in this case, take $4 billion from the Education Investment Fund so that $150 million per year, at a maximum, can be provided to fund recovery measures? That's $4 billion out and $150 million back in. I know they have difficulty judging whether emissions are going up or down, but these are pretty simple figures: $4 billion versus $150 million. So the level of the support is one issue.

The ERF also supplements the assistance that's already there for the community—the disaster recovery funding arrangements, including the Australian government disaster recovery payment and the disaster recovery allowance. There has been longstanding and genuine bipartisan support for these programs from the Commonwealth and state, territory and local governments, with the funding relationships dependent on the nature of the disaster. So it's quite extraordinary that the government have linked the two things rather than dealt with the issue on its merits. It's also extraordinary that they've restricted it to up to $150 million, given the amount they're taking out of the Education Investment Fund.

We should remember, of course, that they also tried to link both the Building Australia Fund and the Education Investment Fund to the National Disability Insurance Scheme and a range of other things. But, if you don't support getting rid of funds that are there to build infrastructure—based upon rigorous processes, including Infrastructure Australia's approval for the Building Australia Fund, and the rigorous processes in place for the Education Investment Fund to make sure it goes to projects that make a real difference to people's lives—then that wouldn't be appropriate. So there is that issue. The other thing that's extraordinary about this is that it only allows for funding of mitigation infrastructure after a disaster has occurred. Now, that's not mitigation. By definition, that's not mitigation. So the very design of the fund appears wholly inadequate to ensure that there's sufficient focus on making the investments that are needed to properly prepare communities for disasters.

In 2015 the Productivity Commission reported to this government that the current intergovernmental arrangements that determine the extent to which the Commonwealth, states and territories each contribute to disaster are contributing to poor outcomes when it comes to rebuilding communities. That was a recommendation in the Productivity Commission report. It said:

A major problem is that the arrangements are highly prescriptive, with funding only provided to restore assets to their pre-disaster standard.

This makes it difficult for state and local governments to rebuild assets in a way that improves resilience to future disasters …

By subsidising recovery, the arrangements can also discourage states from undertaking mitigation or taking out insurance.

The government—this third-term government—has had this report for four years but still has not dealt with any of this in this legislation, despite the fact that the PC report is very clear.

I indicate from personal experience the difference that this can make. This is something that came out of the floods when we were in office and I was the infrastructure minister. I pay tribute to the member for Kennedy. Whilst I have some differences with him from time to time, he is a genuine advocate for his local community. At the time the towns of Karumba and Normanton in the gulf were cut off, as they were regularly. Every time there was a natural disaster in that part of the world, those towns would be cut off, food would be flown in and hospital services would be done by air at an enormous cost. Then they would build the same bridge that was washed away in the flood.

We provided, through the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, $31.5 million to permanently fix the issue of the Einasleigh River Bridge. We did that through local government. Not only did the local government do it on budget and on time; they came back to us and said that they had done it with about $14 million left over from the funding that was granted to them. That was because they had local knowledge, local suppliers and local workers fixing a local problem. So we said to them, 'You can build another couple of bridges as well to really fix all of the problems around.'

That was something that didn't fit in with any of the arrangements that were there in terms of natural disaster relief. It was funded through the department of infrastructure and through local government directly. It has made an enormous difference. That one-off investment saved money. That's the key. If you raise a levee in places, as we did in Roma, Charleville and Launceston, through that one-off capital expenditure you actually save money on an ongoing basis.

Ms Swanson: That's mitigation.

Mr ALBANESE: And that is called mitigation. That's how you fix it, as the member for Paterson knows. But what we have here is legislation that abolishes the Education Investment Fund. There is no linkage there whatsoever. It undermines education infrastructure in this country. It's a very sensible program, as the member for Sydney has pointed out. You have $4 billion taken away, but a maximum of just $150 million in any year put back. You have it done after, not before, there's a natural disaster, so it's not mitigation. How do you come up with this? You'd only come up with this if you were thinking: 'They weren't prepared to abolish these funds to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We'll link it to natural disasters.' These issues should not be the subject of partisan politics; they should be the subject of the national interest—that's what should matter—and they should be supported by everyone in this House.

To be clear: the Labor Party, just like with the drought fund, is not going to be against emergency responses and providing extra funds. But we do say that the government has time to think about getting this right. We won't oppose this bill in the House, but there is time in the Senate to examine the natural disaster recovery arrangements that are in place, to improve them and to make a positive difference, if that's their priority. They also have the capacity, if they're not against investing in education infrastructure, to provide an appropriation in a sensible way which treats it on its merits. If they do not do that, are they saying that emergency responses are not worthy of funding in their own right? I say they are. Labor says they are. Labor will treat this on its merits.

I say to the government: stop playing politics with everything, stop doing short-term tactics, stop thinking before every parliamentary week, 'How can we provide tests for Labor?' and start thinking about acting like a government that's in its third term and faces real challenges dealing with the economy, climate change and energy, and the decline in living standards. Real challenges are occurring, as we're hearing before the aged-care royal commission and, starting today, the disability royal commission. Real challenges require a mature response from a government that is in its third term. (Time expired)

Mr SIMMONDS (Ryan) (12:57): It's a pleasure to rise in support of these bills today, the Emergency Response Fund Bill 2019 and the Emergency Response Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019, and to speak on the bills and the associated amendment. But, before I get into the substance of these bills, I have a few words on the speeches we have just heard from the Labor opposition. So far from Labor on these particular bills we had a 30-minute dissertation on education from the member for Sydney, then the member for Grayndler came into this House and, after his first sentence saying he didn't want to play politics with this issue, he spent the next 15 minutes playing politics. That's exactly what the Leader of the Opposition was doing.

I can understand why these bills are so confusing for the Labor members opposite. It's about a solid economic principle that seems to elude the Labor Party—that is, putting aside money for a rainy day, literally, to make sure that, when these disasters happen, when unexpected events occur, you can fund it. The point that the Prime Minister was making in question time yesterday is a valid one—that, if we remember the last time the Labor Party were in government, they never found a dollar that they didn't want to spend immediately, and, as a result, when disasters occurred, they looked into the tin to provide disaster response and the tin was bare, so they had to introduce a levy. They couldn't even manage a budget properly enough to respond to the natural events that occur in our nation without having to put on an extra tax. That's the point that the Prime Minister was making yesterday.

We have a different approach—that's not playing politics; it is a simple statement of fact—when it comes to managing natural disasters and managing a budget, making sure that we manage the budget and the economy appropriately and put aside a little bit of money, because we know that we are indeed a land of drought and flooding rain, sometimes simultaneously, and we will need to respond to these disasters. The last thing we need to do when we respond to these disasters is to introduce a new tax. That's why this legislated fund that we are going to have here at the ready to respond to natural disasters is so important. I'm going to start my speech where the member for Grayndler should have started his—by acknowledging that we have natural disasters occurring at the moment, particularly in my state of Queensland but also in neighbouring New South Wales. We have many communities facing challenges, but we have, thankfully, many community volunteers who are rising to that challenge.

I'd like to start by acknowledging every Australian who is currently giving up their time to help fight these fires—the firefighters, the Rural Fire Service, the SES, volunteer groups like Rotary and Lions and everyday Australians who are selflessly donating goods and in some cases opening up their own homes to those who cannot return to their own homes. I'd also like to pay tribute to my colleagues the member for Maranoa and the member for Wright and other colleagues who are engaged on the ground with these volunteers and with emergency services to help their communities. As the Prime Minister said when he visited those impacted in Canungra in Queensland last Friday, these natural disasters always have the most terrible impacts, but they bring out the best in Australians in every way. Too true! We are a country that pitches in when the going gets tough. We help our neighbours and our community. People who were once strangers become friends and rely on each other within a matter of hours.

It's with this in mind today that I'm very pleased to support the substance of this bill from the government. This bill seeks to deliver a $4 billion future fund that will help people get back on their feet faster. We need to prioritise rebuilding communities as soon as possible, and not only rebuilding them like they were but ensuring that they are stronger and more resilient. Australians will always bounce back, bigger and better, and the Morrison government is committed to supporting them to do so.

This funding needs to be available and sustainable, which is why this fund is so important. Establishing the Emergency Response Fund will enable us to provide an additional source of sustainable funding for emergency response. Creating this fund through legislation means that the fund will always be available when it is needed. This is planning for the future. It's a long-term commitment in the area of disaster recovery. In an instance where a natural disaster occurs and the existing recovery programs and resources need to be buttressed to meet the scale of support and assistance needed, we will be able to access the Emergency Response Fund. The government is already doing a lot of work in this space. There are existing disaster recovery programs, which are well-placed and are currently managing disasters, and they will continue to do that. But this funding will be drawn upon when the extent of the disaster exceeds the serviceability of our current programs so that our communities—Australians on the ground dealing with these issues—are never left wanting.

The Emergency Response Fund will provide grants and other funding arrangements to support affected communities. It's critical in these times of need that communities, towns and families can return to a level of normality as soon as possible. That's been my experience with these disasters, and I'll speak to that in just a moment. That fund will mean that, in the event of a catastrophe, money can be made available to rebuild vital infrastructure, including roads and local amenities.

Of course, the backbone of many of the communities impacted by disaster is small businesses. Many of these will be our primary producers. This fund will be able to support local industry to get back on their feet by helping them access economic aid packages or by utilising technologies that can assist. Importantly, these funds can also be used for us to better prepare for extreme events, improving planning for how we can best deal with the impacts if they occur. Advice on our varying climates, future risks and help in preparing can literally be lifesaving. We are committing to making sure we give people who are living and working in these areas of risk access to every tool possible.

I'm particularly passionate about this bill because I am a Queenslander. Queenslanders know all too well what it is to face a natural disaster. In the last two years alone we've had the Mareeba and Tablelands bushfires, the Gympie bushfires, the Wide Bay and Burnett severe storms, the Central Queensland bushfires, the Redland bushfires, Tropical Cyclone Owen, the south-west Queensland trough, Tropical Cyclone Penny, North and Far North Queensland monsoon troughs, severe Tropical Cyclone Trevor and the southern Queensland upper-level trough—and that's not to mention the fires that we're facing at the moment, which I've already spoken about.

But it really hits home when you have to deal with this in your own patch. Perhaps the House will indulge me while I tell a short story. When I was six months into my job as a local councillor, which I ended up doing for almost nine years, we had the 2011 Brisbane flood. This was a devastating and catastrophic event for my local constituency. It was a surreal event in many ways, because it was under clear blue skies—no rain at all, at that point—but the water rose up and kept rising out of the Brisbane River and swamped houses with mud and grime. I was cut off from my own home. I slept in my office for a number of days to make sure that I could be on hand to help my constituents. With the predicted flood level changing by the hour, and having to respond to those different flood levels and focus on which residents needed to evacuate and which residents needed to prepare, I will never forget, in a suburb of urban Brisbane, getting into an SES boat and boating across the roofs of houses in my electorate so that I could reach homes that were cut off and needed to be evacuated.

In the end, the damage bill was some $2.83 billion. Three-quarters of the council areas within the state of Queensland were declared disaster zones. The flood peaked at 4.46 metres. Just to give you an idea, Suncorp Stadium filled with over two metres of water. And, as I said, in the Ryan electorate, areas such as Moggill and Pullenvale were cut off completely and started to run low on supplies such as water and food. This is in urban Brisbane, just to give you the scale—how quickly it can happen.

But our community is so resilient. As the water levels dropped, the army of volunteers rose up and did what Australians do best—pitch in. The 'mud army' worked as one to help those residents in need, in some cases clearing and stripping houses down to the studs. In one way, the clear-up was actually the easy part—there were a lot of people to help—although it was incredibly heartbreaking. The hard part is rebuilding. This is a 12- to 24-month process in which people have to deal with insurers and public bodies to rebuild the infrastructure that's needed. We were able to work hands-on with residents as they needed help. But, as a local councillor and a member of the civic cabinet, I can say that at the same time we were struggling with how to rebuild vital public infrastructure, how to access the funds we needed from the federal government and how to rebuild in a way that improved flood resilience. Red tape, the burden of restrictions, the time it took—these are all things that matter in the recovery of a disaster event.

I hope that having this fund at the ready, legislated and ready to go, will help to reduce the bureaucracy and get funding to emergency services and into communities more quickly so that the recovery process can be shorter. This is so vital. Speed is vital after one of these events. Residents, councils and communities need to get back to normal. They need that sense of normalcy as soon as possible after an event. That's what impacts how quickly a community can rebound. That's what impacts how quickly an economy recovers and how the mental health and welfare of residents fares—it is speed. I'm passionate about this fund because it will ensure that funding is available quickly for these kinds of disasters when it is needed. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, this fund is the type of thing that you achieve when you are strong managers of an economy, when you know what it is to manage a budget well so that you can save for future disasters and have the funds at the ready. It's a pleasure to commend the bill to the House.

Ms TEMPLEMAN (Macquarie) (13:09): I come into this place at the start of each day fairly calm, focused and willing to be reasonable. But it only takes listening to one or two speakers opposite for my blood to be boiling about the games that get played about things that are so fundamental. There is no doubt that we support the principle of additional natural disaster funding. There can be no doubt about that. What is disappointing is to see that those opposite feel the need to play off the need for additional funding against the need for investment in education infrastructure. We should be at a point in this country where—guess what—we can do both.

I have also spoken multiple times already in the last couple of weeks about the extraordinary efforts that are being made by volunteers and our emergency services personnel. As someone who comes from what's been described as possibly the most fire-prone place on the planet, I absolutely understand how important getting this right is. We not only do fires in the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury; we do flood too. So getting this right is fundamental for the future of my community. I'd remind those opposite that at times they're not quite so supportive of our emergency services personnel. I seem to recall them describing our Victorian firefighters as union thugs. So how about we all think about what this bill is about and try to get this bill right rather than play politics with it?

Ms Ryan: That'd be a change.

Ms TEMPLEMAN: It would be a change. It is a fundamental responsibility of government to protect Australians, to make sure they are supported when they're faced with emergencies and natural disasters and to properly fund relief efforts when those disasters hit. But this Liberal government failed miserably to do that in 2013 when, on the day homes were burning down in the Blue Mountains, it changed the funding arrangements so that people isolated from their homes or experiencing severe power shortages couldn't access emergency payments. It changed the criteria. If your home was destroyed or damaged or you were injured, you could access the immediate payment, but not if you were in any other sort of disadvantage because of the bushfires. It was a heartless decision, and it impacted many people in Winmalee, Yellow Rock, Springwood and Mount Victoria six years ago. It leaves me just a tad sceptical about the legislation that we're considering today. So I think it's incumbent upon us all to try and get it right.

My view isn't helped by the lack of federal infrastructure investment in our community, or any investment for that matter, following the fires. My street and many others still bear the scars of cars that burnt to the bitumen. For six years, the marks from where my car and my neighbours' cars were destroyed are a still-present reminder of the more than a dozen houses that were lost in our street. One of the reasons for that is that funding for the clean-up and the restoration of services after a bushfire is an expensive business. Our councils didn't have spare funds lying around, and state governments—certainly in New South Wales—have been reluctant to provide additional funding beyond the immediate response. This federal government has done very little in support—no boosting of local government funding for this specific purpose. What's more, in the six years since our fires, it's hard to pinpoint anything the federal government has done to help us or the wider Blue Mountains community be more prepared and better equipped to deal with any repeat of the 2013 bushfires.

I think it is entirely appropriate that this bill be sent to a Senate inquiry for closer examination, because there are a number of issues that it raises for me. One is the role of the federal government in natural disaster and emergency response funding. Is it preparedness, mitigation, adaptation or simply relief following a disaster, or is it all of those? My underlying concern with this bill, as it's written, is that it ignores the recommendations of the Productivity Commission that the federal government should be primarily focused on mitigation, and that comes with a pretty hefty price tag. Another concern is the appropriateness of this mechanism, a fund essentially outsourced to the market with a specific amount allowed to be used each year: $150 billion. There are many, many questions that raises. My third concern is that we need to look at the consequences of this approach for the insurance industry and whether we are in some way letting them off the hook. How does this intersect with their responsibilities? So these are some of the issues I want to touch on.

In addition, we have to address the issue that the government's choosing to take from higher education to fund this. I feel very cynical about this chess move. While the rainforests are burning in Queensland and New South Wales and people are feeling the heat from the unseasonally early bushfires, this government's sneaking around with a tricky move, as if it's been waiting for the perfect conditions in which to bring this legislation on. Fancy someone saying to you, 'You can have an investment in university or TAFE, or you can have disaster and emergency relief funding—one or the other. You choose.' In fact, if this were a decent government, a government that wasn't slippery, we wouldn't be making that choice.

Let's talk about this fund. The explanatory memorandum talks about a lot of things that this fund is for: mitigation and emergency relief. The minister says that the design of the disaster response and recovery funding programs will be informed by advice from the director-general of Emergency Management Australia, but there is no mention of the work that the Productivity Commission did. It's basically been ignored. The Turnbull government rejected a call for a $200 million-a-year natural disaster mitigation fund. That was just mitigation, and that's well above the $150 million that this government says it will allow to be drawn out of this fund.

The Productivity Commission argued that investing in mitigation and preparedness was more efficient than spending money on recovery. It just makes common sense, to be able to invest and prepare rather than wait for it to happen. Yet none of the funding from this fund, from what we've been able to see, will be available prior to a disaster. You have to have had a disaster to be able to prepare for one. That is illogical and definitely needs to be looked at.

When the government responded to the Productivity Commission's recommendations, the then minister said that mitigation was the states' problem. I think those questions really need to be cleared up: what is this fund going to be used for, and what does 'post-disaster resilience' really mean? It's defined in a subclause. It's a shoddy piece of legislation without clarity around those really key issues. Are you telling me that in the Blue Mountains we could have used this fund for the suburbs that were hit in the 2013 bushfires—but what about the rest of the towns and suburbs of the Blue Mountains? Does Wentworth Falls miss out and does Warrimoo miss out, because they haven't had a fire in the last six years? When does it have to have happened? Is 2013 too long ago, and is the lower Blue Mountains excluded from this effort as well? They're some of the issues.

My cynicism comes from my lived experience of this government. There was a fantastic program developed by Gateway Family Services in Blaxland to help community services respond to a disaster, to help them prepare to respond to a disaster in their own communities. Community service organisations play a huge role when these things happen, yet they themselves are often not well prepared. The people who developed the Walk With program, developed by Gateway Family Services, said they did it because it would have helped them so much to have all the information, ideas, models and evidence in one place, in one program, to tap into. So they went out and developed this resource. That was thanks to a small amount of funding from the New South Wales government. But that funding's run out and there is nothing from this government that would allow that program to continue. There is nothing that would allow Gateway Family Services to continue training up other community groups around the country and providing a resource that, today, could have been accessed by people in northern New South Wales and Queensland. They're the sorts of things that are an infrastructure of a different kind, and I'm interested to see whether this fund will stretch to those.

When I look at the things that can be funded, I'm interested to see that it talks not only about tailored financial assistance to help people and organisations recover and build economic sustainability and resilience but also about primary producers or small businesses. Does that extend to home-based businesses? In the 2013 fires many of our business people who worked from home were completely excluded from any sort of support. So does this have a different set of rules? And what does it do for horticultural businesses that naturally get wiped out in bushfire situations? It also talks about economic aid packages, and, I can tell you, these are desperately needed. The tourism community of the Blue Mountains desperately needed support—on the one hand, to describe where tourism wasn't affected, and, on the other, to quickly let people know when things were back to normal. In principle, those things sound terrific, but, with the limit of $150 million a year that has been put on it, I just don't see how you can do all the things that need to be done. That $150 million won't be reviewed for 10 years, so we're stuck with this limit—this false limit, unless there's a basis for it. But the legislation doesn't indicate any way in which this figure has been arrived at.

For me, all of these things raise big questions about the actual operation of the fund. I have to say that I'm not filled with confidence that the amount is sufficient, particularly with the likelihood of increased unpredictable weather events as a consequence of climate change. I note that this mentions the issues of adaption, tools to better understand local climate variability and advice on climate risk applied to specific locations for future land use planning. I can see that there is some suggestion in here that this is possibly part of adaption, but what happens when the $150 million runs out? Assuming this runs for the July to June financial year, what happens if it runs out in September, or October, or January or April? What happens for a natural disaster in May? These are the sorts of questions this government needs to talk through—needs to explain if it already has answers—and find answers so that we are designing something that will meet the needs of communities like mine, who have been through this and know that we will go through it again.

The other issue relates to where this money is coming from. To take away money from education is a pretty heartless thing to do. We talk about long-term investment—I'm sure I hear those opposite talk about being sensible, long-term investors—yet I see absolutely no evidence of it. Labor established the Education Investment Fund so that we could invest the capital necessary for Australia's future. This government continues to fail to invest in the infrastructure and human capital needed in education so that we have growth across all our society—not so that those who already have can have more.

The EIF was a key plank in our move to transform Australia's education and research capability and to address the years of underinvestment that happened during the Howard years. By nearly doubling the former Higher Education Endowment Fund, we were able to broaden and make substantial investment in the renewal and refurbishment of universities and vocational institutions, as well as major research institutions. As the member whose electorate houses Western Sydney University, I know that those facilities always need upgrading. Our TAFEs need improvement. We have wonderful opportunities for horticulture, for really clever stuff that would allow us to be exporting to niche markets in Asia, yet our TAFE has a glasshouse that is decades old and doesn't meet the standards that employers would expect for people to be trained in. So, there is a huge need for this sort of investment. During the last election, I was very pleased to be able to commit funding to upgrade Richmond TAFE's greenhouses to make them state-of-the-art. It's very disappointing that this government won't be doing the same.

The decision by this government to take money from one sector to give to a very needy sector is a cynical exercise. It isn't too much to ask that governments provide much-needed financial assistance to communities affected by emergencies and natural disasters to help them to recover and be resilient and, more importantly, to help them to prepare for and mitigate natural disasters. But they should also be able to fund investment in infrastructure. We should be funding both. It is extremely disappointing to see that this government is incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time.

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (13:24): The bushfire danger season usually doesn't begin until October but, as communities in northern New South Wales and Queensland know too well right now, emergencies aren't predictable. They can affect any community and they have no respect for whether or not people are prepared for the damage that they will do.

These bills don't prevent natural disasters. They can't restore the homes in Queensland, rewind the clock or give people back what they've lost. But they can make a very important declaration and provide assistance to people suffering the consequences of natural disasters today and those who will experience them in the future. They say that all of Australia is with you, we're prepared to support you and communities will be supported to recover when natural disasters hit.

This season is anticipated to be one of the worst in recent history. In my home state of New South Wales, 21 areas have been listed as bushfire danger zones. In 74 local government areas across our state, including the two that cover my electorate, the bushfire danger period has been brought forward with the recognition that conditions are extremely dangerous this year. The bushfire season is expected to go on for at least six months. For communities in northern New South Wales, and other parts of the country, where drought has now turned into fire, these emergencies are adding further salt into the wounds for people who are at their wit's end.

We know too well that summer in Australia is not just about beaches and holidays. For communities that live in or on the edges of our beautiful bushland, summer involves apprehension. Children learn to notice the smell of smoke and join in the yearly rituals of cleaning gutters and clearing branches. This is part of life in Australia. Fortunately, another part of life in Australia is community spirit and the volunteerism we see displayed continually by the men and women who serve in the Rural Fire Service and the State Emergency Service.

Before I speak about the detail of the bills, I want to say a few things about emergency management in my part of the country and talk about the way in which the RFS and SES particularly are serving our communities. In the electorate of Berowra there are 23 Rural Fire Service brigades that stretch from Sackville North in the west to Brooklyn in the east, and from Wisemans Ferry in the north down to Westmead and Hornsby in the south. These brigades run on the goodwill of local volunteers who give up substantial time and risk their own lives to support their neighbours. Cherrybrook fire brigade has been led by Gavin Pringle and Stacey Fishwick. There are volunteers that work hard each summer to protect the homes and lives of people either in our community or in communities further afield. The Rural Fire Service held their Get Ready Weekend just a few days ago. And, if the Cherrybrook Rural Fire Brigade is anything to go by, then the community is more alert this year to threat of fire than they have been in the past.

I went to visit the station on Saturday with my family, along with a steady stream of other families who attended, not just to look at the fire trucks but to learn how to prepare our properties and families for the summer season. A key lesson of the weekend was that thinking about having a fire plan is not the same as having a fire plan. Families need to prepare their homes but they also need to prepare for what they will do when a fire comes. Will they stay or will they go? How will they make those decisions and ensure that they act safely when they do? Families need to talk about these options, make decisions and write down their plans so that they can action them when the time comes that they need them.

In a sense, the bills we're discussing are the government's get-ready plan. It's how we're preparing and putting aside resources so that we can respond quickly and effectively when we need to. It is not just fire that we need to be conscious of at this time of the year. As people in my electorate know, fire is not the only type of disaster that can destroy homes and devastate communities. The fire season is also the storm season. The SES are also campaigning alongside the RFS for people to get ready for other natural disasters we'll see, like storms, floods and heavy winds. Again, families and businesses need to know the risk, develop a plan for what to do, prepare property, be aware and look out for each other.

Last year, on 15 December, severe storms hit our district causing power outages, destroying cars, damaging homes and knocking down trees. Five days later another storm hit, this time even more intensively, in the suburbs of Berowra, Cowan and Berowra Heights. Strangely shaped, spiky hail stones bigger than the size of cricket balls smashed through metal and pummelled roof tiles. In a matter of minutes, millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed, some of which still waits for repair.

The Insurance Council of Australia has told me that the clean-up bill for the Berowra hail storms was larger than the clean-up bill for the entire Townsville storms. The emergency services were incredible. It's estimated that over nine days, including Christmas Day, at least 23,000 volunteer hours were given to help people in the immediate aftermath. The SES led the response and in that time they responded to 1,395 jobs in Berowra, Berowra Heights and Cowan. There were 450 SES personnel on the field and they used 2,000 tarps. Berowra tavern fed over 300 lunches to emergency service workers on Christmas Eve. The RFS partnered with the SES to make a substantial contribution to the response. At the peak of the operations, on 22 December the New South Wales RFS deployed six strike teams, consisting of 58 vehicles and 216 personnel. Over nine days, 146 vehicles and 615 personnel were used.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hogan ): The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.

Mr GOODENOUGH (Moore) (16:11): On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the committee's report entitled Human rights scrutiny report: report 5 of 2019.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

Mr GOODENOUGH: by leave—This report contains a credible technical examination of legislation with Australia's obligations under international human rights law, as required under the committee's statutory mandate. It sets out the committee's consideration of 16 bills introduced into the parliament between 9 September and 12 September 2019 and seven legislative instruments registered on the Federal Register of Legislation between 2 and 8 August 2019. The committee is seeking further information in relation to three bills and has also reiterated its previous comments in relation to two bills.

I would like to note that the committee has adopted a new approach to reporting on private members' and senators' bills. The committee has resolved that, where such bills appear to engage—and may even limit—human rights, it will generally list those bills in the advice-only section of the report and not substantively comment on them. But should the bills proceed to further stages of debate, the committee may request further information from the legislation proponent as to the human rights compatibility of the bill. The current report provides an example of this approach. The National Integrity Commission Bill 2018 (No. 2) was introduced by a private senator. However, as this bill passed the Senate on 9 September, it is now, therefore, before the House. The committee is now seeking advice from the legislative proponent.

The committee has also made concluding remarks in relation to five legislative instruments and two bills. Two of these instruments, the Australian Crime Commission Regulations 2018 and the Fisheries Management Regulations 2019, both allow for personal identifying information about persons suspected of crimes to be shared overseas. The committee has raised concerns, in relation to both of these instruments, about a lack of policy or guidelines in place to prevent such information being shared overseas where there's a risk that disclosing such information could expose a person to the death penalty or to torture, to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or to punishment. The committee has recommended that consideration be given to developing guidelines or legislative amendments to help ensure that information is not shared overseas in such circumstances. This is an issue the committee will continue to monitor. With these comments, I commend the committee's report No. 5 of 2019 to the House.

Mr LEESER (Berowra) (16:15): As I was saying, over nine days, 146 vehicles and 615 personnel participated. A number of those personnel were victims of the storms themselves, with 45 RFS personnel having damage to their own homes and cars. Trucks came from across the state to help our community. People rallied together and many spontaneously volunteered to help whoever was most in need.

Senator Reynolds, the former minister for emergency management, visited Berowra with me in the weeks after the storm. She was amazed by the way the community had rallied, with local people putting on vests and joining the ranks of the emergency services for those days, helping to solve whatever problems they could for their neighbours. It was the largest uptake of spontaneous volunteers in the city metro area. Young and old filled sandbags or cleared debris. Minister Reynolds called it the 'Berowra model' of volunteering. Every door in the affected area was knocked; every home was offered help.

I want to pay tribute to some of the key people involved in that initial response in Berowra. They are: Reinould Beijerinck, who runs the SES; Rolf Poole; Tony Hine; Craig Woon; Gordon Morgan; Graham Horne; Chris Mawn; James Logan; Murray Oakley; Andrew McCullough; and Adam Jones. I also want to note Mark Sugden, the fire control officer for the Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai district. I also want to pay tribute to others in my community who are doing similar work every year, sometimes to help my constituents but sometimes doing work with trucks in other parts of the state, helping people in other parts of the country where there's a need. I think of people like John Hojel, the very long-serving fire control officer at the Hills District, and Evelyn Lester, the controller general of the SES in the Hills.

I want to pay tribute to people who've worked, in the time after the storms, to keep supporting a community that's had a really tough year. They are business people like Tim Cummins, the manager of Bakers Delight in Berowra, who organised a day in which local businesses would raise funds for the RFS; Coho Cafe and the other local businesses that got involved in those efforts; and the remarkable Josi Fonti, at the Bendigo Bank, who provided torches and other emergency equipment to people and who continues to keep note of how the vulnerable residents are progressing. While I'm talking about amazing people involved in emergency services, I particularly want to note what a privilege it was this weekend to have been present at the awarding of the National Medal, 2nd clasp, to Tim Maffey at Neringah hospice for his over 30 years of work for the Hornsby/Kur-in-gai Rural Fire Service.

While many have got on with their lives and repairs have been made, still in my electorate there are homes that are waiting for repair and many people are wondering whether they'll be able to return to their homes. In some cases, families haven't been allowed back since the storm hit. Their houses have been left like a museum because of the asbestos. Berowra is a resilient place, with a strong community, but the road to recovery is long. It lasts much longer than the days covered by the media. After the first moment of response strikes, there's a long road of wrestling with insurance and trying to help people return to normal lives. It's important people know that they're not forgotten and that practical support is there when it's needed. That's why bills like this are so important.

A responsible government plans for risk so that when communities need support most it will be in a position to give that support. These bills are focused on the recovery phase of natural disasters, recognising that, when communities are facing some of the biggest challenges they'll ever face, the rest of the country must be positioned to help in tangible ways. The Emergency Response Fund will place $4 billion in a dedicated financial asset fund to be invested by the Future Fund Board of Guardians. That asset will then be used to provide long-term energy response and recovery. Alongside the fund, a special account will be created within Home Affairs—the Home Affairs Emergency Response Fund Special Account—which will receive dollars from the fund, at the request of the emergency management minister, for the purpose of funding responses to natural disasters.

The funds are coming from the Education Investment Fund; $4 billion that is currently uncommitted in that fund will be re-purposed. This has been the subject of some significant debate as this amendment has been discussed. The government hasn't entered into any new spending commitments under that fund since 2013. This doesn't mean that the government hasn't been spending money on higher education or higher education infrastructure. For instance, $150 million has been spent to support the relocation and redevelopment of the University of Tasmania's Launceston and Burnie campuses, and a further $30 million is earmarked for the establishment of a new Central Queensland School of Mining and Manufacturing, alongside the $17.7 billion in the university sector in 2019, which is projected to grow to more than $19 billion by 2022.

This fund will now be growing in perpetuity. It will be used in order to ensure that it becomes a fund that can make a long-term impact. Drawdowns on the funds will be restricted to $150 million each year for the first 10 years. After 10 years, in relation to emergency management, that can be reassessed. But the intention is that the fund will grow and be a stable asset base for future support when natural disasters occur. Investment in the fund will be the responsibility of the Future Fund Board of Guardians, chaired by former Treasurer Peter Costello. They will take carriage of this fund, along with the existing funds that they manage on behalf of the Australian government. The Future Fund will be responsible for the investment decisions but not the spending decisions of the fund. Decisions about the use of the funds will require formal government approval. The emergency management minister will take proposals to government for consideration, informed by the advice of the Director-General of Emergency Management Australia. Information about the fund and its use will be publicly available. The emergency management minister will publish up-to-date information about the use of grants, and the Future Fund will give reports on investments that they make. All of this can give the community confidence that the government is serious about this investment on behalf of future generations.

Beyond immediate disaster response, the fund will do something important for recovering communities. It will allow for postdisaster resilience projects to be funded, which will help our communities to become more responsible and more prepared for disasters after they go through one. People say lightning doesn't strike in the same place twice, but unfortunately fires, floods and storms often do. If a community has been through a major disaster, it may well experience one again. Disaster-prone regions need to be able to not only rebuild, as they always have, but recover in ways that will strengthen their future resilience. These sorts of projects include things like financial management advice for bodies to improve their ability to manage low-income periods that occur because of disasters; building infrastructure that can withstand future disasters; and recovery grants to help primary producers re-establish their enterprises, perhaps in new ways. We know natural disasters won't disappear, but part of disaster preparation includes ensuring that recovery is done in a way that makes communities more resilient the next time a similar event occurs.

The Australian aid program currently supports all sorts of disaster resilience projects internationally—projects like floating gardens that can rise with floodwaters in disaster-prone parts of Bangladesh, and projects to teach people how to identify and prepare for risks in rural communities in the Pacific. We teach farmers to grow drought-resistant crops or to farm in ways that enable them to manage different types of weather events. This same principle of learning from disasters and rebuilding in a way that's more resilient than before will be at play in the Emergency Response Fund. When a significant or catastrophic natural disaster hits in Australia, the fund will enable postdisaster resilience projects which help us become a more resilient community.

Watching the natural disasters affecting farmers and those battling with bushfires today must cause us to wish that an investment like this had been made years ago—decades, even. There is no time like the present to invest in the future. The bills as presented by the government hand future generations important tools to help them manage and respond to the natural disasters that they will inevitably experience. Investing in the future and giving what we can to our children and grandchildren is one of the most important things that we can do.

I want to take this opportunity particularly to commend the minister for emergency management, who does a wonderful job in this space. Seeing his own community affected in Queensland and seeing the very proactive approach that he's taken to the recent fires, I think, is a demonstration of his commitment to the portfolio, as he's been committed to other responsibilities he's had in this place. I commend these bills to the House, commend the minister for the work that he's done and ask all my colleagues to give them their full support.

Mr HILL (Bruce) (16:23): It's always a pleasure to follow the member for Berowra—'other Julian', as I call him, although I notice he's been joined by a younger, shorter model over there and is no longer the only other Julian this term. Let's hope the same fate doesn't befall me!

This bill, the Emergency Response Fund Bill 2019, is an appalling con trick, and it should not go unremarked or unchallenged by this House. The government pretends, as we've heard, that this is a bill about disaster relief. Of course Labor supports the government helping communities affected by the disasters that are being experienced, as we know, right now around Australia. Labor supports postdisaster recovery and resilience building. But, importantly, as the government conveniently ignores, we support resilience and mitigation before disasters happen, which this bill does nothing about.

This legislation is not really about disaster relief. This is the latest attempt in the last six years by the government to abolish the Education Investment Fund. The government have had three goes at abolishing the EIF. In 2014 they were going to abolish it and create the Asset Recycling Fund. That was the first go. They couldn't get that one through the parliament, so they skulked away for a few years. They haven't spent a cent from the fund in the last six years, mind you. There has been $3.9 billion for education just sitting there. The government have done nothing with it. In 2017 the government thought they would give it another crack and pretend everyone has forgotten the first go. They came in and said, 'We're going to abolish this education fund and put it into the NDIS.' They pretended the NDIS wasn't funded. The parliament said: 'No. That's a really dumb idea, Government. Let's not do that.' So they skulked away again. Two years later they're back with a different excuse.

Whichever way you look at it, this government has had an obsession in the last six years with abolishing the Education Investment Fund. That fund was set up in 2007 by then Treasurer Peter Costello. It had another name—the Higher Education Endowment Fund. It was supposed to be a future fund for research and knowledge infrastructure for the next generation. When Labor took office we broadened the fund to allow it to fund research institutes' and also universities' and vocational institutes' critical new facilities and capital investment.

The balance of the fund now is $3.9 billion. The government should be investing from this fund right now. They've been in government for six long, sad years now but have not spent a cent from this fund. Let's understand what kind of investment we're talking about. Pre-2013 there was $4.2 billion. There was $90 million to the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity; $40 million to the Hearing Hub at Macquarie University; $64 million to the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science; $36.8 million to the National Centre for Synchrotron Science, which is in my previous electorate; and $62 million to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation—really important investments for the future knowledge capacity of the nation.

If this legislation passes, that legacy will be trashed and the fund will be no more. I think it's profoundly dumb. Education is critical for the future of our country. If we're going to sustain our place in the coming decades as a high-wage, high-skill knowledge economy, we're going to have to invest more in education. We know that our neighbours, partners and competitors around the Asia-Pacific or the Indo-Pacific—whatever your region of choice is at the moment—are investing more in education. Yet this government is finding in budget after budget new ways to cut funding to education. It's pretty dumb.

Those left-wing radicals at places like the IMF, the World Bank and even the Reserve Bank of Australia are saying that one of the most productive things we can do to increase our future economic growth is invest in human capital and infrastructure. This fund does both. It invests in the infrastructure that is critical to support future increases in human capital. The cuts are just dumb. And they're not alone. This is the largest in this budget that I can see, but it comes on top of other cuts to research funding in this budget. I think in the midyear financial update it was $328 million. Then, in just a few short months, the government saw fit to up the cut to university research funding to $345 million. There has been $2.2 billion cut, in effect, from universities through the caps on demand, through the caps on the number of people who can go there, denying places to around 200,000 Australians.

This is almost my favourite of the stupid cuts—$6.73 million to ARC research funding. Who would bother with such a small cut out of these enormous funds that should be there? When you read the fine print you find that that's because, one year after restoring indexation—indexation just means that the money keeps up with growth in real terms—the government cut the indexation. So the ARC got their indexation back for a year and then the government cut it again in this budget. Well done, Government!

There is $16.5 million out of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme. I want to read into the Hansard what Professor Emma Johnston AO, the President of Science and Technology Australia, said. She summed it up well. She said:

What we did not see in this budget was an ambition to be the clever country in all fields.

She also said:

Research at tertiary institutions is also severely hampered by the reallocation of $3.9 billion from the Education Investment Fund … to a new Emergency Response Fund. While it is important to support those affected by emergencies including floods and fires—

of course, it is—

stripping funds from education to support emergency responses is a false economy. STEM education should be supported in a way that increases our national capacity to predict, prevent and respond to the impacts of national emergencies.

So why does the government claim that this is about emergency response when they've had six years of trying desperately to get rid of the Education Investment Fund? It simply takes $3.9 billion and puts it into an emergency response fund. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's a false choice, a pretend choice and a con trick. When you have a look at the state of the budget and think about the future challenges that the nation has, we in this parliament should not have to choose between funding education properly and funding emergency response. It's ridiculous; it's clear that we can and need to do both.

But, even if you believe that it's necessary, that you had to do this, that we could no longer afford to fund education infrastructure in this country, the government's design is flawed. They've even got the detail of the bills' design wrong. I'll just point out two key ways—and I commend the speech from the member for Macquarie earlier today; it was an absolutely outstanding speech talking in detail about the flaws in these bills as they would affect her electorate and other communities around the country that suffer natural disasters in the way that her community does. Firstly, the fund can be used to build resilience only after a disaster, not before, yet stakeholders in the emergency management sector continually stress the need for much greater investment in disaster mitigation or resilience. This makes economic sense because, if you address the known risks, it lowers the cost and impact of future natural disasters and also puts downward pressure on insurance premiums.

Secondly, you can't provide more than $150 million a year from this fund. It's clear that the government is already going to have to make provision and make contingencies in their budget papers, like every government for time immemorial has done. When something unprecedented or way out of the box strikes, then the government always has to find more money. That's normal. That's what governments do. We saw that in Victoria with the Black Saturday bushfires. The government of the day had to defer infrastructure projects, reprioritise things and raise some taxes. The Gillard government had to do the same with the Brisbane floods. This fund won't be some panacea or fix-all for emergency response.

But what this legislation will do, if passed in this form, is see the death of the Education Investment Fund, which should continue to be there to provide funding for critical research infrastructure for universities, for vocational institutes, for TAFEs and so on. I know that Monash University, on the edge of my electorate, Chisholm TAFE, in the middle of my electorate, and Holmesglen TAFE, in the north of my old electorate, are just some of the local institutes that have benefited significantly from investments from this fund, let alone the regional universities which we've heard a lot about in this debate and I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about in coming contributions and in the Senate.

In summary, this bill is a con trick. It's the latest instalment after six years by the government of trying to get rid of this fund. They should be able to walk and chew gum. We should be able to fund emergency response properly in this country without having to sacrifice critical education investments to do so.

Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (16:33): In 2019, communities across Australia have been devastated by bushfires, by cyclones and by floods. Even as we speak, country towns in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales are continuing to battle blazes that have burnt an estimated 100,000 hectares of land, with houses lost and lives changed forever. My electorate knows all too well the devastation of bushfire, and we stand united with our cousins in Queensland and in New South Wales. It has been a national response—and that is pleasing, and that is as it should be—from our Country Fire Services, with crews from South Australia, including from my electorate, Victoria, Western Australia and even New Zealand giving up their time with their families and from work to help others in need. It will require a national response to mitigate the economic and emotional costs of recovering from natural disasters such as the fires burning in Queensland and New South Wales. This is what the Emergency Response Fund Bill 2019 and the Emergency Response Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2019 seek to provide. The bills will establish the Emergency Response Fund and provide an initial credit of $4 billion to be distributed in annual amounts of up to $150 million.

The distribution of funds will occur by two streams. First, amounts payable by the Commonwealth through a grants scheme will be disbursed by the Home Affairs Emergency Response Fund. Second, funds will be distributed by the COAG Reform Fund for the purpose of making grants to the states and territories. Clause 20 of the bill sets out what measures may be eligible for funding under the Emergency Response Fund. These include grants to carry out a project, provide a service or adopt technology that is directed towards recovering from a natural disaster to improve postdisaster resilience.

These are very broad parameters. While I support the principle of the bill, I am concerned by both the source of the funds used for the initial credit, as many members have spoken about in this place already, and how the funds will be distributed in practice. Dealing first with the source of the funding: the government states that the initial credit of $4 billion will be sourced from the now-dormant Education Investment Fund. I acknowledge the government's assertion that this action will have no impact on the funding provided to the education sector. However, I am concerned that such a large sum of money has been lying dormant and unused for so long. I remember when the government was trying in this place to repurpose that funding for the NDIS. Particularly when so much of the government legislative agenda in recent times has focused on cost-saving measures, it's hard to understand why that funding has been sitting there unused.

Second, I'd like to ensure that an appropriate portion of the annual distributions are allocated to preventive measures to lessen the impact of natural disasters on our communities. While providing financial assistance to individuals in the immediate aftermath of a disaster is a priority, we must also ensure that our communities are adapting to an ever-changing and drying climate and invest in resilience-building measures—whether that be weirs or whether it be a whole range of ways that we can ensure we can reduce our risk of natural disaster. However, I do hope that the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee inquiry process will delve into these issues. With my Centre Alliance colleagues in the other place, I will closely monitor the submissions provided and the evidence given at those hearings.

Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the South Australian firefighters from my electorate of Mayo who have volunteered their time to assist their colleagues in the eastern states. Last Saturday afternoon, 55 of South Australia's Country Fire Service, Metropolitan Fire Service and Ambulance Service flew to South-East Queensland and replaced 55 of their colleagues who had already been battling bushfires. And last Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of attending the CFS awards ceremony at the Mount Compass War Memorial Hall. Those recipients—those receiving the National Medal, including their clasps for 20, 30 or 40 years of service—collectively had 4,600 years of service that was recognised on that day. I give my heartfelt thanks and honour to those men and women who volunteer right across my community of Mayo to keep us safe, right across region 1. I commend this bill to the House.

Ms STEGGALL (Warringah) (16:38): I support the government's initiative in establishing an Emergency Response Fund that will help fund emergency responses and recovery following catastrophic natural disasters. This will be particularly necessary in light of the fires that are currently devastating parts of New South Wales and Queensland, and I hope those communities are able to receive the assistance they need. I wish them well, and our thoughts are very much with them as they recover from the fires.

I am extremely concerned, though, like many in the House, that the government has chosen to take the funds from the Education Investment Fund and about what that means for young people and their education opportunities in the future. There certainly is that question of why those funds have not been used when there have been so many cuts in so many sectors.

While I do support the bills—and I commend the government on the premise of these bills and similar bills, like the Drought Fund Bill, which will help drought-stricken communities adapt to drought conditions—both bills go to the symptoms of a much greater problem. The effect of climate change in these disasters is plain to see for everyone. As the CSIRO has reported, Australia has already warmed by one degree, and the effects are drastic. We're now seeing longer fire seasons, worse droughts, floods, storms and cyclones, and these are projected to compound and get greater in severity.

I will list some of the climate-exacerbated events that we've recently had. In January 2018, we had extreme heatwaves. Penrith, in Sydney, reached a maximum of 47 degrees. Those hot conditions led to high bushfire danger and subsequent fires, leading to emergency warnings for Sherwood, Brimbago, Lowan Vale and McCallum. The fires affected 41 properties and destroyed five homes, 101 hectares of crops and an estimated 2,600 livestock. In March 2018, Tropical Cyclone Marcus hit the Northern Territory coast with winds of up to 260 kilometres per hour—the strongest cyclone to hit Darwin since 1974—leading to insured losses of $61 million. On 20 December 2018, a series of severe storms brought torrential rainfall to the Hunter Valley, the Central Coast, Sydney and Wollongong. The Insurance Council of Australia declared the event a catastrophe, with estimated insured value losses of $871.3 million.

The cost to the Australian economy of these events is massive. Deloitte Access Economics reported that the total economic cost of natural disasters over the years to 2016 averaged $18.2 billion per year—equivalent to 1.2 per cent of average GDP. This is projected to grow 3.4 per cent per year, to reach $39 billion by 2050. They also reported that over the last decade Queensland has borne most of the disaster costs—some 60 per cent—followed by New South Wales, which accounts for 17 per cent of the national cost. Extreme weather events like storms accounted for most of this, followed by flood events. With the projected increased likelihood of these events in certain areas, insurance premiums are growing at an alarming rate. In fact, some areas will no longer be insurable. In light of this, the Insurance Council of Australia, following the coalition's win in May this year, called on the returned government to make climate change mitigation a top priority.

What this government has committed, $150 million per annum to 2030, is just a fraction of the amount that will be needed to respond to these sorts of events, and it is simply unfair to leave the majority of the cost to the state governments. During the election, this government and its media allies repeatedly requested that climate action be costed, as if it were an investment into our future that was a luxury to be weighed up against the cost of business as usual. Let's be very clear: the cost of business as usual is not zero. The cost of business as usual is all of these reactive measures and the costs required to recover from these extreme weather events. According to our peak industry bodies, the most cost-effective response is prevention. This means more than the government providing funding after the event; instead, it must mean addressing the key exacerbating factor of extreme events, which is global warming.

The government claims that it is going to meet its Paris target of 26 to 28 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030. This is contradicted by the figures from a number of organisations—but, regardless, it is not enough. The IPCC has indicated that many more reductions are needed, and this will be called for in 2020. The Paris agreement requires nations to commit to more reductions and for a plan to be put forward. This is called for by next year, 2020. We've heard nothing from this government on further commitments that it is willing to make. On behalf of all sensible Australians who are worried about our future, I call on this government to put a plan to parliament that is more ambitions.

Ms CHESTERS (Bendigo) (16:44): I rise to speak in relation to the Emergency Response Fund Bill 2019. I want to put on the record my disappointment that the government's tactic is that it has to be one or the other. We all agree that we need an Emergency Response Fund and that the government needs to be doing more to support communities affected by emergencies and disasters and to support preparedness and work on mitigation. It's just so disappointing that again they try to wedge us in this place by taking the funding from another vital area, university infrastructure funding. I have a regional university campus in my electorate, the Bendigo campus of La Trobe University, that wants to expand, to build and to access the funds that have been put aside for such projects in the Education Investment Fund, which will now be abolished to create another fund. It's just disappointing that, again, after six years, we see this government steal from one pot of critical funding to fund another.

On the fund itself, this bill creates the Emergency Response Fund to distribute up to $150 million per year for disaster recovery activities. This is in addition to the existing federal fund for disaster recovery efforts. I know that many, particularly in regional areas, have been calling for such a fund to be created for quite some time. As the climate disaster in our country unfolds and things start to become tougher in our regions, we are impacted by more and more extreme weather events and natural disasters, whether they be floods, fires, droughts or cyclones. It's hard to imagine any part of Australia these days that is not affected. In regional Victoria, particularly in central Victoria, in the last decade alone we've been hit by severe flooding, including in some parts of my electorate. We've also been hit by severe bushfires in some parts of my electorate. We have been less affected by drought; we've been fortunate to receive rain, particularly this year. However, to the north and to the west, drought has become a major problem. We are also being hit hard by mini-tornadoes, a term you never used to hear or see in local papers. But these days extreme weather events have become labelled in a way that we never thought possible. Tornadoes will indiscriminately choose a street, a house or a suburb—nowhere else—and just tear down everything in their paths.

These areas require our urgent support, and that is why a fund like this is welcomed, because it will help these areas get back on their feet soon. Types of activities that could be funded are broad and include services and adopting technologies that can be directed towards recovery or building postdisaster resilience. I know that, after the devastation of the bushfires over a decade ago, parts of the postdisaster recovery and resilience programs were incredibly important. My electorate is home to FRRR, an organisation that partnered with the government at the time and has continued, for the last decade or so, to help run those programs, helping people with mental health and helping communities to rebuild and to tell their story. This is critical in the process of recovery. In rebuilding communities' human capital or their infrastructure capital, whether after a small disaster that affects only one part of a community or whether after a large disaster such as we have seen with bushfires or floods in Queensland, there is a role for the federal government to play.

So, whilst this fund is welcome, because it will help with flood levies and cyclone shelters and with ensuring that funding is provided after a disaster has struck and that the federal government is doing its role to be a funding partner, the problem is that it is coming at the expense of critical infrastructure that is needed in our universities. That's what disappoints me about this government. They are stealing from one sector to pay for another. Our universities do want to expand, to build and to upgrade to make sure that they have fit-for-purpose classrooms and the latest technology and that the graduates they are training have the skills and qualifications that are required for the jobs of the future. Yet what the government is proposing to do to fund the Emergency Response Fund is to cut the Education Investment Fund. Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't it be both? Why does this government prioritise education funding over emergency response? Why can't it be both? People in my electorate are asking that question.

We want to see further investment into Bendigo La Trobe. The last time they received federal government funding was when Labor was last in government. That was to build the School of Rural Health—a fantastic investment by the former Labor government, with the university. We now have a dental program based at Bendigo. We have every allied health that you could study. It is helping to bridge the gap we have in the regions in the rural health workforce. It was made possible because of an education investment funding stream of the previous government. Since this government has come to power they have frozen it—not a dollar has been spent. It is not because the universities haven't put forward projects. They have. At La Trobe they could not get the funding support from this government for their engineering building, so they looked to the state government.

At the last election we made a commitment to help fund a research institute that would focus on rural road trauma in order to make sure that we were partnering with health, with state and federal authorities, so that we could crack down, work out and resolve the tension that we have on our roads. This year, 201 people have been killed on Victorian roads, the majority of the fatalities being in regional Australia. We have a real crisis in road trauma on our regional roads. An institute would have been welcomed. We need funding to do that and a federal government that chooses to partner with regional universities to deliver that.

That is why it is so disappointing that, to get the Emergency Relief Fund to ensure that our communities have the support they need post disaster, this government is stealing from another vital area of regional Australia, and that is from a fund that can help to support the growth of our universities. It is like the government forgets that, in a lot of these regional communities that are subject to the natural disasters that this fund would go towards, the universities are also big employers. It is not just in my electorate, where Bendigo La Trobe employs over 500 people. La Trobe has campuses in Shepparton and Wodonga, and we have Charles Sturt University, the University of New England and the Central Queensland University. The universities throughout regional Australia are the big employers in these towns. They want to be able to expand and grow. To do that, the Education Investment Fund could have been an avenue. It was funding that was set aside that this government never spent. Because they chose not to partner with universities, they now seek to abolish it to fund something else that is just as critical.

Because of the abolition of this program, universities, TAFEs and research institutions have said that they will either cancel or postpone future infrastructure investment or upgrades. When we're going through a skills crisis, why would you put that pressure on our universities and TAFEs?

When we've still got skills on the migration skills list that have been there for 10-plus years, why would you put that pressure on our vocational and university sector? We have so many ageing infrastructure challenges within our universities and TAFEs. We are not competing with the rest of the world. This government is not investing enough in those institutions to ensure that we have the buildings and the infrastructure that we need. And now those opposite are saying they're going to abolish this fund. It's terrible 'wedgislation'. It is terrible that the government is pitting our higher education and university sector against the need for emergency response funding. It's quite cynical of the government to behave this way. I believe the money is there in the budget. It's a massive federal budget that we have. The money is there. It comes down to priorities. It's disappointing that the government doesn't prioritise both these areas to ensure that we have adequate funding for both.

The Education Investment Fund was established by Labor in 2009, and it provided important capital to transform our education and research infrastructure to enable our universities to compete internationally. We need to continue to do that. We are falling behind the rest of the world. We should be ensuring that there is adequate funding available for our universities so that they can innovate and build the facilities that we need, particularly when we start to talk about natural disaster recovery and mitigation. Quite often we look to our universities for best practice and for research on how we can model and change going forward. Now we're limiting the capacity for university partners, because we've cut funding that could go towards it.

This government has a terrible record when it comes to supporting emergency response and relief. In my electorate, we used to host the Australian Emergency Management Institute on Mount Macedon. This government shut it down. It used to exist. It looked at best practice. It looked at mitigation. It looked at disaster recovery. It ensured that the people knew what to do on the day. After Black Saturday in Victoria, it did the modelling to ensure we never had a repeat—that we could get the people out early and that we could get the water on the ground as quickly as possible. We see the work that they did saving lives today, in Queensland last year and this year, and in New South Wales this year. And this government shut it down! And here we are, how many years later, being led to believe that those opposite now care and want to do something about it. They did nothing to save the Australian Emergency Management Institute on Mount Macedon. It was actually built on ground which was hit quite hard by fire many decades ago. The Victorian government, however, bought it from the federal government and reopened the facility so that our states do have a place to go. The federal loss is Victoria's gain. At least we still have an institute where we can have these discussions and come up with best practice. And I am sure that the people involved in this fund will be there regularly, meeting with their counterparts from around the country.

In the minute that I have left, I again urge the government to reconsider what it's doing. We need both funds. We need infrastructure investment and funding for our universities and TAFEs. We are falling behind. We need to ensure that we have the facilities, the courses, the materials and the teachers and that we're doing the research required for the future of work and for future industries. Equally, we need the federal government to be a proper partner with our state and local governments and to fund emergency response. We need them to be able to do both, and both should be a priority. Whilst not opposing this bill in the House, Labor has already signalled that we will move detailed amendments because we don't believe it should be a case of one or the other. We believe that both should be a priority of the government, and it's unfair that those opposite are trying to rob universities and TAFEs to fund emergency response relief.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks—Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) (16:59): I'd like to thank all members who have contributed to the debate on the Emergency Response Fund Bill and Emergency Response Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill. These bills will secure an additional source of sustainable funding for emergency response and recovery following a natural disaster that has a significant or catastrophic impact in Australia.

The government is providing a significant upfront investment of $4 billion, which will be invested by the Future Fund Board of Guardians. The board currently manages six other investment funds on behalf of the Commonwealth and has a proven and strong reputation for prudently investing money. In the event that a community experiences a natural disaster with a significant or catastrophic impact, the government will have access to a maximum of $150 million per year to fund emergency response and natural disaster recovery. Through grants or other funding arrangements, the Emergency Response Fund will be able to support the delivery of projects and services or promote the adoption of technology directed towards achieving recovery from natural disasters. The types of assistance provided could include but are not limited to additional recovery grants, economic aid packages and support to affected communities or industry sectors to help build their resilience to future natural disasters.

The Emergency Response Fund demonstrates the government's long-term commitment to assisting communities across Australia that have been significantly affected by a natural disaster. Transferring the balance of the Education Investment Fund to the Emergency Response Fund will not affect the government's funding and investment in the higher education sector. We are committed to a world-class higher education system and are investing a record $17.7 billion in the university sector in 2019. This is projected to grow to more than $19 billion by 2022. We have also made significant education infrastructure investments, recently announcing around $180 million in funding for projects in Tasmania and Central Queensland. This means the uncommitted funds in the Education Investment Fund will now be used to build a sustainable source of additional funding to help communities recover from the impacts of natural disasters. Once again, I thank all members for their contributions and commend the bills to the House.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ): The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Sydney has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks—Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) (17:03): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks—Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) (17:05): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Ms BURNEY (Barton) (17:05): Labor will support the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation Amendment Bill 2019 in this place. This bill will enable the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation to provide guarantees to improve housing outcomes and undertake research into housing affordability—what the government calls the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. The legislation does not address much of the detail and administration of the scheme, and this will be handled through the investment mandate and developed by the corporation.

We know from the bill's explanatory memorandum and the government's other public commitments that the new scheme will allow first home buyers to purchase properties without the need to pay lenders mortgage insurance or meet the standard 20 per cent deposit requirement. Applicants will only have to provide a five per cent deposit, but there are some rules. The scheme is to be capped at 10,000 purchases per annum, and eligible applicants must have earnt less than $125,000 in the previous financial year as a single or $200,000 as a couple. The new scheme will be funded through the Consolidated Revenue Fund. As the explanatory memorandum makes clear, the scheme will require an update to the NHFIC's investment mandate, and we understand that this will go through a process of public consultation.

The Senate last week voted to conduct an inquiry into this bill, which will report before the next sitting fortnight, and that inquiry may find that there are improvements which could be made to this bill. We look forward to the committee's findings and also to hearing from the government how this scheme will be implemented. It is appropriate that this bill be considered by a Senate committee, because we must ensure that this new policy will provide a maximum benefit to first home buyers while appropriately managing the risk to the Commonwealth.

It is also important to remember that, under this government, housing affordability has continued to worsen. That's why I move a second reading amendment standing in my name. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that:

(1) under this Government, housing affordability has gotten worse; and

(2) as a result:

(a) the percentage of Australians who own their own home has dropped to its lowest level since Robert Menzies was Prime Minister back in the 1960s;

(b) the number of Australians behind in their mortgage today is at its greatest level since the global financial crisis;

(c) a report released last week by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed that in 2017-18 over 1 million low-income households were in financial housing stress and that 43.1 per cent of low income households renting in Australia are suffering rental stress; and

(d) there are more homeless Australians than ever before".

Under this government we have seen first home buyers left behind. Today, the percentage of Australians who own their own home has dropped to its lowest level since Robert Menzies was Prime Minister back in the sixties.

Of course, it is young people—people in their 20s and 30s—who are finding it hardest to get their foot onto the property ladder. In Sydney it takes more than 11 years to save for a standard 20 per cent housing deposit. In Melbourne it takes more than 10 years, in Adelaide more than eight and in Brisbane and Perth more than seven. This is cutting generations of Australians out of the housing market. As research released by the University of Sydney last week revealed, whether someone owns property is the greatest indicator of their wealth. There are even specific ways to break up this system based on whether someone is an investor or a homeowner, a mortgage holder or an outright owner. The lowest, according to this research, are renters and the homeless. This needs to be urgently addressed, and Labor looks forward to the Senate inquiry's findings on the proposed new scheme.

It is not just first home buyers, though, who are doing it tough under this government. The number of people in Australia who are behind in their mortgage payments today is at its highest level since the global financial crisis. This is extremely concerning given that we are currently experiencing the lowest interest rates in decades. Yet, when wages are flat and the cost of living continues to increase, is it any wonder that Australians are struggling to meet their repayments? Renters are doing it tough, too, as a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed last week. In 2017-18, 11.5 per cent of households spent 30 per cent to 50 per cent of their gross income on housing costs, with another 5.5 per cent spending 50 per cent or more. One million low-income households were in financial housing stress in 2017-18, and today we have more homeless Australians than ever before. The last census recorded the number of homeless Australians as more than 116,000.

This is not good enough. There is no way to put a positive spin on this figure, as the assistant minister tried to do. There is no way to put a positive spin on any of these figures. Labor is hopeful that this legislation and subsequent policy may help improve housing affordability and increase the number of first home buyers. That is why I repeat: we are supporting the bill in this place. We look forward to the Senate committee's findings with interest and will consider all the findings carefully when the bill is considered by the Senate.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Goodenough ): Is the amendment seconded?

Ms Thwaites: I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Mrs ARCHER (Bass) (17:12): Well, I could wax lyrical all day about the benefits of living and working in northern Tasmania. But, like so many in my community, I know that one of the best advantages of living in my electorate of Bass is the ability to achieve the great Australian dream of buying your first house. Launceston, the largest city in the Bass electorate and the largest regional city in the state, offers incredible proximity to hospitals, schools and the University of Tasmania, as well as beautiful parks, a fantastic aquatic centre and so much more. So it's no surprise that the city has seen a rise in property prices over the past few years. It has been described by some in the industry as Australia's best-performing market for 2018 because of the housing affordability and strong buyer market. Compared with Hobart, where the housing boom has made it increasingly difficult to enter the market, buying property in Launceston or indeed in one of the many other areas in the electorate is still achievable. Whether you're looking for suburban living in Launceston, beachside beauty in Bridport or a tree change in one of our many stunning rural farming communities, northern Tasmania really does offer it all.

And, while the property market might still be viewed as widely affordable, particularly against other areas in Australia, I want to ensure that my constituents are able to reach their goal of purchasing their first home. This is where the Morrison government's First Home Loan Deposit Scheme will provide a benefit to many in my electorate. I enthusiastically support the policy intent of the scheme, which is to assist first home buyers who are having difficulty purchasing their first home to get their start in the housing market.

Research has indicated that the ability to save a deposit is a greater constraint on homeownership for first home buyers than the ability to service a home loan. Although not always the case, I know that many first home owners in my community are often young couples or singles in their 20s who may still be working their way through an apprenticeship or have young children and may only have one full-time income. Even for those on a good salary and in solid jobs, the rising cost of rent in Launceston can be a barrier when trying to save for a deposit. The cost of renting can often be more expensive than mortgage payments.

This scheme provides eligibility for singles earning under $125,000 a year or couples with a combined income of $200,000, which, as many of my regional colleagues will know, makes this scheme even more appealing than in capital cities. For these reasons alone, the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme will truly assist those in my community who are working hard to save the amount needed for a deposit. Where 20 per cent is often the minimum required to gain access into the market, the scheme will allow a first home buyer to enter the market at a much reduced five per cent deposit and avoid the extra cost of borrowing lenders mortgage insurance. I imagine this scheme may also offer relief to some parents, who, after claiming back bedrooms and the quiet calm of their house after their children move out, are seeing their children move back in and taking over the Netflix account as they furiously save for a house deposit.

I'm aware that there are concerns that the scheme may encourage first home buyers to take on more debt than they would otherwise, but the checks and balances are in place in this bill. Home loans covered by the scheme will still be subject to serviceability assessments and responsible lending obligations. Additionally, the property price caps will limit the maximum size of loans that can be taken out under the scheme. The aforementioned price caps will be set on a regional basis, reflecting the affordability of different property markets. The government will determine what the price caps will be, after further consultation with stakeholders. I am confident that this will bring the best outcome for those in my community.

I also note that there are queries surrounding how the scheme will affect the lenders mortgage insurance sector, but I am confident in the scheme's design to complement rather than compete with lenders mortgage insurance. This scheme will be small in size, limited to 10,000 guarantees a year, and is not targeted at those that would otherwise be able to enter the housing market with the help of lenders mortgage insurance.

As previously mentioned, the electorate of Bass, while still considered affordable compared to many other regions in Australia, is becoming increasingly more expensive as the property market heats up in Northern Tasmania. I'm pleased to note that the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation Amendment Bill 2019 also gives effect to the government's election commitment to establish a research capacity within the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. This research capacity, which will examine housing demand and supply and affordability across Australia, will complement existing housing related research and will be critical in addressing housing affordability in years to come.

This scheme benefits not only those individuals and couples looking to enter the housing market for the first time but also our valuable local building and construction industries. Tradies are an important part of Northern Tasmania's culture. The ongoing confidence of the building and construction industry in Northern Tasmania was a recurrent theme during the recent election campaign, and I spent a lot of time speaking with local builders, plumbers and tradespeople like Steve Simeoni of Tas City Building, about how confidence and ongoing buoyancy in the market is driving investment and jobs growth. Steve told of growing his business from just four employees a few years ago to now 40 employees, with further growth potential ahead. It was a similar story with many other tradespeople I spoke to as well.

We are currently seeing strength in the local building industry in Northern Tasmania providing jobs and economic stimulus. But it is important to cast an eye to sustaining that into the future. Master Builders Australia have been calling for measures such as the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme because, as was pointed out in the election campaign, this government's targeted and practical approach will do more to assist first home buyers than doubling capital gains tax and restricting negative gearing could ever achieve. The scheme will be welcomed by home builders and tradespeople, because a strong building economy provides stimulus for the housing market. I wholeheartedly support this bill and I applaud the Morrison government for supporting those around Australia who are seeking to buy their own piece of the great Australian dream.

Ms MURPHY (Dunkley) (17:19): I rise to speak on the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation Amendment Bill 2019 because in my community, like far too many communities around Australia, housing stress is a real issue. But as the second reading amendment, which I wholeheartedly support, also makes clear, homelessness is growing in Australia and it's a real problem.

Homelessness in the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula region is a problem, but, in particular, and very sadly, youth homelessness is a problem. We know young people are over-represented in the Victorian homeless population, with 26 per cent of those experiencing homelessness being under 25 years of age. In my community, in the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula region, it means that approximately 220 young people are experiencing homelessness at any point time—young people, people aged between 15 and 24 years of age.

In 2016-17, 4,060 young people aged between 15 and 24 years of age went to specialist homeless services in the Bayside Peninsula area asking for help. This year already, the services in my electorate—the hardworking people who are there to help those in need—have come to me and said that there is a visible increase in the number of people sleeping rough. Unfortunately, those of us who live in the wonderful Frankston and Mornington Peninsula region can see that for ourselves.

Of the people that the services in my electorate are helping, those 4,060 young people aged between 15 and 24 years, almost twice as many are women—twice as many! These statistics are not just statistics. They are real people with real lives, with almost inevitably devastating stories. There are stories like the one that I am going to present to this chamber, to this parliament, now. The names have been changed to protect people's privacy, but this is a real story in the real words of an 18-year-old girl from my electorate. She said:

My name is Sarah. I am almost 18, in year 12 and work at a restaurant on Saturdays. I want to be a nurse. I had to leave home a couple of months ago because my step-dad was very violent and I was frightened. I went to my Grandma's for a while, but she lives in a retirement village so I wasn't allowed to stay. I moved in with a school friend and slept on her bedroom floor for a few weeks, but her parents said I had to leave. So I went to live with a guy from work, Jack, who said I could stay if I helped with the housework and walked his dog. It was okay for the first week, until he started pressuring me for other things. His neighbours let me stay in their garage for a week.

After that, I couldn't find anywhere else to stay so my school counsellor brought me to the local homelessness service. There were lots of people waiting for help, and it was kinda scary. The worker was really nice but said there were no places for me to go, because all the youth refuges in the state were full. She said they couldn't put me in a motel because of my age, and I don't have enough money to rent a place, even if I could find one. I only have about $80 a week from my job, because my mum won't sign the forms for me to get youth allowance from Centrelink. She says I should go back home, but she doesn't understand how scared I am of Mick, especially when he's drinking. She won't stick up for me because it's Mick's house, and I think she's scared of him too. I feel like I'm always on edge, and I can't eat, study, or sleep when I'm there. The housing worker called child protection but they won't help me because I'm nearly 18. They're going to talk to my little brother at his school though, so maybe someone will help him. The worker said when I'm 18 they can help me apply for public housing, but the waiting list is really long.

So I went back to Jack's. He works at night, so I felt okay then. But when he got home I tried to stay out of his way or I'd sleep in the cubby house in the neighbour's yard. They didn't know. It was cold, but it felt safer than inside Jack's house. I wasn't getting my school work done, and I'm so behind. I was very anxious and depressed, and felt so alone.

Last week, I tried to kill myself and Jack called an ambulance. I stayed in the mental health ward for four days, but this afternoon they discharged me and sent me back to the homelessness service. The hospital also set me up an appointment at headspace next week. The housing worker let me charge my phone, and found a bed for me in the city. I've never been there on my own before. She gave me directions, a food voucher and a Myki card. My school bag is still at Jack's place. I'll have to miss work this weekend because it is too far away. I have to come back on Monday so they can see if there is anywhere else then, because a bed in the refuge is only for the weekend. They said there aren't any youth refuges around here, so I really don't know where I'm going to end up.

This is a very brave young woman. She has told her story to the workers, and they have brought it to me so that I can bring it to our federal parliament. These are real people that we're talking about when we talk about homelessness, when we talk about housing stress and when we talk about trying to live on $40 a day on Newstart. These are real people. They are young people. They are people who have ambitions, hopes and dreams. They are people that we in this place of all places need to be standing up for.

When a young person is homeless, as you've just heard, it disrupts their education and makes it harder for them to find employment. Sarah wants to have a go. She is having a go. But who's helping her? You just don't get a go. As the member for Lilley said in her first speech, life is not that benign, but it is our job to be here for young people like Sarah so that she can make her dreams reality. She doesn't need to live every day with her safety, her physical and mental health, and her general wellbeing at risk, but she does.

This is when we come to intergenerational disadvantage in our communities. We know that young people who are homeless are more at risk of becoming homeless when they become an adult. We need to stop the cycle of disadvantage and the cycle of homelessness. Early intervention is essential for homelessness. It's essential for people to get a good education and a good job and to be able to afford a home. We have to do more and we have to do better. This place has to do better on behalf of the people we are here to represent.

I raise these stories in my electorate today because I am here to support 10 local community and government organisations that have come together on the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula for the Youth2 Campaign for homelessness to call for bipartisan support from government at all levels for youth crisis accommodation and transitional housing in my electorate, in my area. I also stand here for all people across Australia who are in the same situation. I am the voice today of the Youth2 Campaign. Their call for action asks for two, in my opinion, very reasonable things: funding to build and operate two supported crisis accommodation facilities, with 24/7 active staffing, located near Frankston and Rosebud in my area and a youth foyer connected with education providers.

These additional investments would align and complement the Victorian state government's agenda on homelessness. I know that our local state member for Frankston, Paul Edbrooke, is a huge champion for these sorts of services and is working as hard as he can to bring them to our electorate, along with Sonya Kilkenny, the member for Carrum. I applaud the state Labor government for all the work that they're doing in this area. They have a homeless and rough-sleeping action plan. And they are working to implement the recommendations from the family violence royal commission. They know and we know that more needs to be done.

Without investment in responses to prevent homelessness it will cost all of us dearly. According to a report published by the Swinburne Institute for Social Research the cost to the Australian economy of health services associated with young people experiencing homelessness is an average of $8,505 per person per year, or $355 million across all young people aged 15 to 24 accessing special homelessness services. That is an economic argument, but there is a moral and ethical argument and imperative for us to do more. So I'm standing here as the new federal member for Dunkley saying that I am willing to put out my hand and work with anyone—to work with our state Labor members, the state Liberal members in my electorate and those opposite. We have to do something so that young people like Sarah don't have to go through what she has gone through.

Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (17:29): The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation Amendment Bill 2019 is about making that first home purchase more achievable for 10,000 first home buyers a year. It's about giving first home buyers, young families wanting to get ahead and start their lives, the opportunity to do so through purchasing their home with a deposit of just five per cent. I know the importance for families and young people of having the security of a home. The Prime Minister knows the importance. He announced this very initiative right in my electorate of Lindsay, in a growing suburb called Caddens where many young people are aspiring to buy their own home. This is what Lindsay and Western Sydney are about: people who are working hard to get ahead, commuting out of our area for a good job. That is why we on this side are also making record investments in infrastructure, such as the Western Sydney International Airport and the North South Rail, because we want to make life even better for people living in Western Sydney. We can do this and help people into their first home only because of our strong budget.

This bill expands the current functions of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, the NHFIC. The Morrison government will consult with Treasury, the NHFIC and stakeholders to make sure that the allocation process is accessible and efficient for first home buyers across the country and in my seat of Lindsay. The scheme is subject to maximum income and dwelling price thresholds to ensure that only first home buyers purchasing modest properties will be supported. The scheme will also be subject to an independent review within three years of its commencement. In the housing sector it is important that we keep up with future challenges and demands, and this review will ensure that proper procedure is followed. The NHFIC will be responsible for choosing a limited panel of lenders who will offer guaranteed loans, based on criteria such as loan pricing, standards of customer care, diversification of lenders and regional coverage. The Prime Minister noted in his announcement of the scheme that preference will be given to smaller lenders. NHFIC will seek participation from both large banks and smaller lenders, including non-bank lenders. This increases market competitiveness and ensures that Australians are provided with the best options available to enter the housing market. The scheme is designed to complement rather than compete with lenders mortgage insurance. It will be small in size, as I said, limited to 10,000 guarantees per year, and is not targeted at those who would otherwise be able to enter the housing market with the help of lenders mortgage insurance. We are making sure that people who struggle to get into the housing market are given the chance to do so.

This expanded function of the NHFIC means high-quality research into housing affordability, supply and demand. As Western Sydney continues to grow, this is going to be very important. As someone who worked in the community housing sector, I know how important housing affordability is to people living in Western Sydney and in my community of Lindsay. An important aspect of the housing market is to assess how we can keep up with the increasing population and the demand for affordable, reliable housing. NHFIC's new research function would be seen as a centre for excellence for housing demand, supply and affordability in Australia, highlighting current and potential gaps between housing supply and demand. I've worked in a research based organisation at an academic institution. The research that will come out of this centre of excellence is absolutely essential in getting our future plans right and will help inform an evidence based approach to housing demand and affordability, and I very much look forward to seeing its work in practice. NHFIC will establish close relationships with other research organisations and stakeholders to ensure they complement the existing research and add value where it is most needed. This research will ensure that our Morrison government can prepare for the challenges and demands of the future in the housing market and implement necessary reforms like the ones we are introducing today.

This bill, as I said, expands the existing functions of the NHFIC where it has been utilised to help increase the supply of affordable housing. I have seen firsthand the benefits of affordable housing in communities, particularly for key workers: police officers, nurses and other people who need to live close to where they work. I've also seen it at its best when affordable housing has helped women escaping domestic violence and older people who are living on their own. In both these circumstances, lives have been changed because of access to affordable and secure housing.

The NHFIC's $1 billion National Housing Infrastructure Facility provides finance for critical infrastructure to support new housing—in particular, affordable housing—and to bring forward the supply of such housing. The Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator provides cheaper and longer-term finance for registered community housing providers, enabling them to improve housing outcomes for people in important communities like mine. These providers are non-government organisations, generally not for profit, which provide subsidised housing for people on very low or moderate incomes and for people with additional needs.

A capacity-building program for registered community housing providers to assist them to develop their financial and management capabilities in support of a NHFIC loan application is absolutely essential. I think this is a really important part of NHFIC's scope. Community housing providers are often experts in providing housing and homelessness services to people in communities but not necessarily experts on the financing side, so this expertise is absolutely essential in developing our community housing sector in Australia. Under the Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator, NHFIC is saving registered housing providers millions of dollars in financing costs and giving them decade-long certainty, which is absolutely important, over their loan facilities, which are critical to helping accelerate and increase the supply of social and affordable housing. To date, NHFIC financing is supporting the delivery of an additional 560 social and affordable rental dwellings, and this is just the start. I've seen it in practice.

The economic impact of people not being able to access affordable homes or rental homes is significant. Often, at an older stage of life or during stressful times, having your own home can make a world of difference. That's why I'm proud to back this very important reform. In May the Minister for Housing and Assistant Treasurer visited Lindsay, where we were able to see firsthand Evolve's social and affordable housing apartments. It's always great to see these things and hear the personal stories of how community housing has helped people get back on their feet and towards financial and housing independence. Given that the minister and I both share a passion for the issue of affordable housing and ensuring more first home buyers can get into the market, it is wonderful today to be able to commend this bill to the House and to commend the work of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. I look forward to seeing more young Australians entering the housing market, particularly in my community of Lindsay.

Ms SHARKIE (Mayo) (17:37): Young people face a challenging road to homeownership. While acknowledging that housing affordability can be a challenge to capture and measure, the Reserve Bank of Australia have found evidence that housing has never been less affordable for first home buyers in Australia. Their research shows that young buyers have to save for increasingly large deposits, which means spending longer in the increasingly expensive private rental market and devoting more and more of their income to their short-term housing expenses rather than accumulating savings for that elusive housing deposit. Unsurprisingly, this has been borne out in the 2016 ABS census data, which shows that homeownership rates among younger households have decreased consistently over the past two years, with only 66 per cent of households owning their own home. Meanwhile, the most recent ABS data shows that the proportion of Australian households that are renting has increased from 27 per cent in 1998 to 32 per cent in 2018.

This is consistent with the experience of constituents in my electorate of Mayo. I recently attended a housing roundtable aimed at developing a South Australian housing and homelessness strategy. What was clear was that, for the Adelaide Hills and Fleurieu region, the private rental market is increasingly unaffordable for young people. Assuming they can even find a rental property, they are then devoting more than a third of their income just to meet the costs of housing, and this makes it incredibly difficult to save up the 20 per cent deposit required to purchase their first home. While Adelaide may have lower house prices, we also have lower annual incomes than the eastern states.

This bill, the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation Amendment Bill 2019, seeks to lower some of the barriers through two functions—first, undertaking research to better understand housing affordability and, second, establishing a First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. Under the scheme, the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation will provide a guarantee on eligible loans equal to the difference between the deposit—of at least five per cent—and 20 per cent of the property purchase price. This measure is described in the explanatory memorandum to the bill as 'broadly consistent with a parental guarantee'. We now have the legislative equivalent of the intergenerational equity referred to by former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. This suggests that the scheme is not targeted at those who are most in need of financial assistance but rather at individuals who are perhaps already on their way to saving for their house deposit, and that it will accelerate purchase for a small group of people who can potentially already afford a home although it may still be some years in the making.

However, the scale of the scheme could be described as less than ambitious, with only 10,000 guarantees to be made available per annum. I do hope that, if this is a successful scheme, the government will look to expand it. The demand for guarantees will far outstrip the supply. Even the explanatory memorandum states that since the scheme was announced in May there has been 'a high degree of community interest'. While access to the scheme is limited to those individuals who earn an annual income of less than $125,000—$200,000 for a couple—given the relatively high income threshold the scheme is clearly going to be popular with would-be first home buyers. The government states that placing pricing caps on amounts that can be borrowed will enable these guarantees to be funnelled to those who are most in need, so that's good to hear. I understand that pricing caps will be determined by reference to regions, but it is unclear what the regions are and who determines the regional boundaries. Similarly, who determines the pricing cap and by reference to what framework?

Finally, the bill provides for 10,000 guarantees to be distributed among states and territories. I note it does not provide for equal representation here. The places should be distributed according to state and territory populations. I'm concerned that we might see a push towards many places going to the eastern states. We know that Australia is a large place, with many areas—including Tasmania—where housing affordability is a challenge. I'd also like to see it stretch out beyond metropolitan Australia, because we know that many young people in the regions are also hoping to buy their first home.

In my electorate of Mayo, the lack of affordable private rentals and the complete absence of appropriate public housing mean that our young people are spending more of their income on private rentals, making saving for a home incredibly difficult. Combine this with increased transport costs that accompany living in a rural or regional area and the prospect of saving enough money for a 20 per cent housing deposit is simply a pipedream. It's really important in this place that we don't let the dream of home ownership become an elusive dream, because we know that home ownership really is one of the greatest tools that you can have for financial stability and for emotional and relationship stability. Another fact that's come to my attention is that, when families rent privately and have to move around regularly, the children also have to move schools regularly, and that's not good for the children's educational stability.

I believe that we need to do much more in this place to turn around the decline in Australian home ownership. I support the government's measures here to address this, but I do think there is much more that we can do. We need to look at a suite of measures, from social housing to making sure that we have more stock available, because it's always a supply and demand issue. Home ownership has always been part of the Australian psyche. I'd like to finish with a little part of Sir Robert Menzies's 'Forgotten people' speech from 1942:

The material home represents the concrete expression of the habits of frugality and saving … one of the best instincts in us is that which induces us to have one little piece of earth with a house and a garden which is ours …

I commend the bill to the House.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks—Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) (17:44): The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation Amendment Bill 2019 sets out the framework to enable the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation to provide guarantees to improve access to home ownership for first home buyers and undertake research into the housing market in Australia. The 10,000 guarantees provided by the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation each year will enable eligible first home buyers to enter the housing market sooner.

The government wants to take the opportunity to thank the stakeholders that have assisted with the development of the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme. The government has been working with stakeholders throughout the design phase and will continue to do so ahead of the commencement of the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme on 1 January 2020.

The bill will be supported by an investment mandate. Consistent with existing arrangements, the government will provide broad direction to the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation on the operation of the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme through the investment mandate. The government will be releasing the investment mandate for public consultation shortly. I encourage interested parties to participate in the consultation process.

The bill also establishes the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation's new research function into housing affordability in Australia. With this role, the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation will embed itself in Australia's research landscape and assist in identifying and addressing existing research gaps. Both the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme and the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation's new research function complement other housing measures introduced by the government, such as the establishment of the First Home Super Saver Scheme, and reinforces the government's commitment to helping Australians achieve their goals years earlier. The bill is an important part of the Commonwealth's objective of making the dreams of first home buyers a reality. I commend this bill to the House.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks—Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) (17:48): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr COLEMAN (Banks—Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) (17:48): I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

A suitably empowered Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports will provide an additional, independent layer of accountability and assurance over the regulation of Australia's livestock exports. The Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Bill 2019 will provide greater assurance in the regulation of live animal exports and broader animal welfare issues. It will do this by providing the inspector-general with the necessary independence from government and the powers to deliver a robust accountability and assurance function. An inspector-general will promote continual improvements in the regulatory practice, performance and culture of the Department of Agriculture in its role as the regulator of Australia's livestock exports.

The measures in this bill will enable the inspector-general to review the administration of provisions relating to the export of livestock under the current regulatory framework. The regulatory framework is established by the Export Control Act 1982 and the Australian Meat and Live-stock Industry Act 1997.

The measures in this bill will enable the inspector-general to oversee the Department of Agriculture in its role as the regulator of livestock exports.

By its nature, export of livestock presents a high risk to animal health and welfare. There have been failures to comply with animal welfare standards and concerns over the regulatory response. Australians were appalled in 2018 when they saw footage of sheep dying on voyages to the Middle East on the MV Awassi Express in 2017. Many were further angered by their assessment that the mortality incident reports did not match the footage.

The department's focus on trade facilitation means that it is balancing competing factors in its role as the regulator of live animal exports. Establishing an inspector-general is part of a broader strategy to develop and maintain an effective regulatory culture that will deliver animal welfare outcomes consistent with the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock and the best available science.

In April 2018, governance expert Mr Philip Moss AM was asked to conduct a Review of the Regulatory Capability and Culture of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources in the Regulation of Live Animal Exports. The government accepted all recommendations from this review when it was delivered in October 2018. Mr Moss recommended that an independent external entity, known as the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports, oversee the department in its role as the regulator of livestock exports. The independent oversight and evaluation provided by a statutory office is necessary to provide a further layer of assurance over Australia's livestock export management system.

In response to the Moss review the department has formed an Animal Welfare Branch, appointed a principal regulatory officer and is busy implementing the balance of the recommendations. The Animal Welfare Branch is driving a greater focus on animal welfare, including animal welfare indicators that are based on science and focused on the wellbeing of the animals, rather than mortality. The principal regulatory officer is driving a culture of greater professionalism, improved cohesion and a contemporary regulatory approach as a priority.

In March this year the department appointed an interim Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports, to begin the important work we expect the statutory inspector-general to undertake.

This bill will enable the Minister for Agriculture to appoint the inspector-general, make other arrangements in relation to this appointment and to terminate an appointment if necessary. It will also provide the minister with the power to make rules that set out detailed requirements relating to the role of the inspector-general and the conduct of reviews. The bill will empower the inspector-general to review the performance and functions, or exercise of powers, by officials under the Export Control Act and the Australian Meat and Live-stock Industry Act. In addition the bill will compel a person to answer questions, and give information or documents to the inspector-general where the inspector-general has reasonable grounds for making the request. A civil penalty may apply where a person fails to comply. The bill will establish the basis for other matters such as information sharing, reporting and protection from civil liability.

Livestock exports are a legitimate business option for our farmers and were worth over $1.7 billion in 2017-18. The livelihoods of farmers and regional businesses across Australia, thousands of jobs, depend on the livestock trade.

These are real people with real bills to pay. Any decisions regarding livestock exports must not be taken lightly—rather, decisions must be based on science and evidence.

The calls to ban livestock exports disregard the value of this trade to our farmers and others in rural and regional Australia. Banning, or even suspending, livestock exports would simply be a 'knee-jerk' reaction, and would be a poorly considered decision.

It's amazing how quickly we have forgotten the 2011 suspension of the live cattle trade to Indonesia and its impacts on farming families. These impacts were felt through the whole supply chain and included businesses that provide transport, mustering, feed and agistment services.

Following the revelation in April 2018 of conditions on the voyage of the Awassi Express to the Middle East in the 2017 northern summer, the government moved quickly to make changes to improve the welfare of our exported livestock. Independent observers were immediately placed on vessels carrying our livestock to the Middle East and information on what they found is now being published on the department's website. There was an increased focus on heat stress management. This included requiring more space for sheep travelling to the Middle East during the northern summer and independent audits of pen air turnover by qualified personnel. These changes align with the recommendations from the McCarthy review of sheep exports to the Middle East during the northern summer, all of which the government accepted.

The review of the Australian Standards for the Export of Livestock is being undertaken in two parts: the final report on the sea transport component was released in March 2019 and recommendations from that tranche of work are being progressively implemented. A review air transport element is underway by an independent technical advisory committee and it is anticipated that its report will be finalised shortly.

A review of the heat stress risk assessment model was undertaken by a technical reference panel and completed in May 2019. The department will be consulting stakeholders on options for implementing the recommendations from that review.

Each of these measures is critical and we will do what is necessary to support our farmers and others involved in the trade and maintain our reputation as a world leader in good animal welfare practices.

This bill is another part of the government's plan to address animal welfare concerns with livestock exports. We need to ensure that there are appropriate arrangements to oversee the Department of Agriculture in its role as regulator of livestock exports.

The government supports the farmers who rely on livestock exports, and the exporters who do the right thing. The government is also committed to providing the standards of animal welfare Australians expect. We need this trade to be conducted properly and sustainably.

Our farmers, the Australian community more broadly, and our trading partners should have confidence in the livestock export industry. This bill is a step in rebuilding that confidence.

Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (17:56): Speaking to the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Bill brings me a great sense of regret, but it also brings me some sense of joy, because this bill represents a total capitulation on the part of this government over the question of an Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports. I'm pleased to be able to follow the minister—not something we often have the opportunity to do in this place, because bills are usually adjourned for some time after the minister makes his initial contribution on the second reading. He talked a lot about culture, and I'll certainly be saying something about culture during my contribution to this very, very important debate. But I want to start with a little bit of history.

In 2011 Australians watched some terrible footage on their television screens. That footage involved shocking cruelty towards animals in abattoirs in Indonesia. It was most confronting. Even the most hardened of us, I believe, found that footage confronting. It caused a shocking fuss here in Parliament House, as it should have, as the government of the day scrambled to work out how to fix what was obviously a very serious problem and an issue that was weighing heavily on the minds of a very large number of Australians. Not all of them were animal activists. Ordinary Australians going about their hard work and their business were appalled by what they saw on their television screens.

The great challenge for the Labor government of the day was to work out how to fix the problem given that the issue was extraterritorial—it was happening in another country—and was therefore an issue over which we had no control whatsoever. The only option the government had was to at least pause the trade so that leverage could be used against our friends and neighbours to have them clean up the mess that was occurring in that country. That's what a Labor government did, for four or five weeks, while we cleaned up that mess—a mess, you could argue, that we'd inherited from the Howard government, which had been in power for 11½ years and which had presided over a number of animal welfare incidents but which had not done one thing to ensure that they didn't occur again.

We didn't just ask our friends to fix the problem, though; we helped to fund the repair that was required in Indonesia. We contributed significant amounts of money to help them help themselves. History tells us now that a Labor government, acting swiftly, pausing for only a relatively short time, was able to fix the problem. Not only that; it was able to put the live cattle trade on a sustainable footing—a $1.2 billion or $1.3 billion trade that still thrives today because of a Labor government. That pause caused the live cattle sector and, indeed, the cattle sector generally, because of the impact on supply and demand, very considerable pain, which is still felt by cattle producers today. Some of those cattle producers will never fully recover from what happened in 2011; I am more than willing to concede that. Again, I say that what happened in 2011 should never have been necessary, but it was necessary because the Howard government was asleep at the wheel for 11½ years and ignored the incidents it had presided over during that time.

What is the response of those who sit opposite? They use the incident of 2011 on every occasion to remind cattle producers of that time and to blame the Labor Party for what happened, even though it had its beginnings in the period under John Howard and it was left to a Labor government to put the cattle trade on a sustainable footing. How dare they use every country visit, every election campaign, every dinner, every luncheon and every bill in this place, whether it is on GMO or on health, to talk about what happened in 2011, as if those cattle producers didn't suffer enough pain than to have that mob over there constantly reminding them about it and blaming somebody else!

I note that, unless the member for Flynn is speaking on this bill—I suspect he is not; I believe he might be in here doing his duty—I see no member of the National Party on the speakers list tonight. Interestingly, I rarely see members of the National Party on the speakers list for any bills anymore. They've taken their bat and gone home. There's a lot of unhappiness in The Nationals at the moment, and that manifests itself in their absence in this House. Wouldn't you think that, on an issue that has been iconic for them and which they have taken every opportunity to use against their political opponent, they would be in here talking about the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports? They're not because they know that this is a shocking capitulation from their perspective.

But there is something else they know. They know that, if John Howard had acted, we might never have had that incident in 2011. They also now know that, if they hadn't torn up part of what the Labor government did in the period following 2011, we might never have had an Awassi affair. We never would have seen the Awassi Express on our television screens—I can say that with a great deal of confidence—if (1) Labor had won the 2013 election or (2) they at least hadn't torn up much of the work we had done.

For a little bit more history: before we lost office in 2013 I, as agriculture minister, established an interim Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. That was the next phase in our reform program to ensure that we never saw another incident like we saw in Indonesia in 2011. What was the response from our political opponents? The world as we knew it was going to come to an end if we had an Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. We couldn't have that.

Politics is a robust game and people have to be able to give and take, so I am going to take this opportunity to say that it wasn't just the National Party and the Country Liberals over here; the National Farmers Federation, the Cattle Council and the live exporters council also basically said that this would be a terrible thing for the industry—shocking regulation; unneeded. In fact, I still have the letter I received as minister on 16 August, having made my announcement in July 2013. The letter reads: 'I write to formally register the NFF's opposition to the appointment of an inspector-general of animal welfare and live animal exports,' and it goes on to tell us what a terrible thing it would be. I won't bore the House with the rest of the letter.

It's interesting that, since the government capitulated and announced that they were going to embrace an inspector-general, I've heard nothing from the National Farmers Federation, the Cattle Council or anyone else. It's a funny thing. People who represent the agricultural sector, or purport to, should learn that's it's not all about giving, giving, giving; sometimes people have to accept that reform is necessary if we're going to maintain a social licence in some of these industries—and maintain a social licence we must. Some industries might be past it anyway.

We went into the last election to phase out the live sheep trade. The government's own reports following the Awassi Express left us in no doubt, based on the science, that it simply wasn't possible to continue with that trade and, at the same time, meet reasonable animal welfare expectations in the community and amongst our scientists. What did the government do? They said they were standing by our live sheep exporters. But, while they were telling them that they were standing by them, they were regulating them to death—and the effect is being felt in the live sheep trade tonight, as we speak, and it is an ongoing issue. The government are trying to have it both ways and, in doing so, they do the people they purport to represent no favours whatsoever.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions and still a number of reports yet to be responded to, including the heat stress report, which of course lays the foundation to our conclusion that the business model, particularly in the northern summer trade, is fundamentally broken. But, if we'd had an inspector-general of live exports, I don't believe there would have ever been an Awassi Express affair. And, if we hadn't had the member for New England as the minister for a considerable period of time—I don't recall how long it was; it seemed like a hell of a long time—we wouldn't have the culture within the department and the regulator, which sits within the department, that led to so many breaches in the live sheep trade. That's not my conclusion, but the conclusion of Mr Moss, who led one of the three reviews the government was forced to undertake as a result of ongoing issues in the live sheep trade.

I'll give a little more history. In the 2016 election I announced that, if elected, Labor would implement a six-point animal welfare plan—which in part was our attempt to get things back on track. What was contained within that six-point plan? I won't go through all the points but it certainly included an inspector-general of live exports and regular ministerial reporting to the parliament, so that people clearly understood how much we'd exported in a given period—probably on a quarterly basis—whether there were any incidents and, if there were any incidents relating to animal welfare issues, what action the government had taken in response to them.

But, of course, those who sit opposite thought this six-point plan was a terrible idea, saying: 'Oh, we couldn't have a six-point plan. That sounds like a shocking regulatory burden. That'd be the end of the industry as we know it. We couldn't have that.' Yet here we are here tonight, the government now embracing the inspector-general after six long years. After six long years, they have come to the conclusion, based on their own recommendations from their own review, that suddenly an inspector-general is a good thing to have.

The minister's been at the table praising the idea, telling the world what a wonderful thing it will be, the additional oversight and the transparency it will bring to the live-export sector. I'm really pleased to hear him say that. I do regret that the Minister for Agriculture's not able to be in here saying it, instead, because she is now in the other place. The minister for water, who represents her in this place, oversaw—to his credit—three reviews. It's a shame he's not in this place making the second reading speech. It's more than passing strange, isn't it? In the last parliament this was arguably one of the biggest issues in the agricultural sector, yet Minister Littleproud has given up the opportunity, for some reason—I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. We don't know what he's doing. There may be something important happening—

Dr Freelander: He's off having a warm oatmeal!

Mr FITZGIBBON: A warm oatmeal? That is a real possibility. But I would have thought this was an issue where he would have taken the opportunity to be here, to clarify his position, to explain his backflip and to make a contribution. I will say this about Minister Littleproud: he didn't go all the way, during the most difficult period in which we were debating the live sheep trade, but he did do a fair bit. I suspect that might be why he's no longer the minister for agriculture.

I see the member for O'Connor with a smile on his face. I think he knows exactly what I'm talking about. Minister Littleproud didn't stick to the National Party fundamentalism! 'Three reviews? What, you're changing the parameters? You're changing the regulations and you're going to make it harder for the live sheep exporters? We don't do that in the National Party. No, we don't do that. Don't worry about a television program or two. Nothing to be seen here. You don't go out there imposing heavier regulation on the industry. That's not the way we do things in the National Party!' I think that might be why the now minister for water is no longer the Minister for Agriculture. I'm just wondering what the member for O'Connor thinks about that. Yes, I can see he probably agrees with that. I think he knows a little bit more about that than I do.

The big player in this, and I'll return to it now, has been the member for New England. The recklessness right across the portfolio is writ large in everything he did. I said the night he left the portfolio that it's farewell to the member for New England and now it's time to clean up the mess. And it's a very significant mess he left for us to tidy up. But it's the culture he created within the department that is of real concern, as is highlighted in the Moss report. Shocking. I recommend to anyone to read the Moss report and see how the culture that came from the top made people within the regulator fearful of undertaking their responsibilities in a professional and fearless way. It was made clear to those who worked within the regulator that that was not the will or the wish of the government of the day. And when you create that culture, the Awassi Express is exactly the outcome you can expect.

Now he doubles-down, the member for New England. It wasn't that long ago he was in here accusing the whistleblowers of taking bribes to produce the photographs for those who exposed the problems on the Awassi Express. Worse than that, he accused them of actually confecting the situation depicted in those photographs. I don't mind people coming in here and using privilege to make allegations. That can be part of our role as members of parliament. We can be whistleblowers ourselves. It's our job to expose things when the rule of law is not being followed, or government policy is not being adhered to, or government policy is not consistent, or someone out there is doing something terrible that we couldn't possibly talk about outside this place without fear of defamation proceedings. But the member for New England does these things without any substantiation whatsoever—no evidence whatsoever; just that he heard it in the pub. I'm not suggesting he said that, but it is that type of situation. He heard that someone had set this all up and they had taken the photos. They told people to turn the ventilators off and send the photos, and it was all their fault. If I remember correctly, he told us that one of them was now living the high life in Pakistan from the earnings he had secured as a result of this confected incident on the Awassi Express. Even if you believed it was confected and the photographs had been passed on, I don't think you would be living in a 5-star palace in Pakistan as a result of the payment one might receive for a couple of photographs, but that's what the member for New England told us.

He shouldn't come in here and launch allegations like that without being able to substantiate them whatsoever. But I'll give credit to the former minister again. An investigation was held into those allegations, but guess what—we don't get to see the report. We are told one thing about what the investigation found, but we don't get to see the report. This is the modus operandi of this government. Everything is secret unless they don't want it to be a secret. When it suits them to have information out there, the information is out there, but, when they don't want to have information out there, you can forget that. You should not expect that information to be shared with us. We shouldn't be surprised, because that is the very foundation of the coalition: the coalition agreement is a secret too.

One of the other things we promised in the six-point plan prior to the 2016 election was a review of ESCAS, the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System. It is the foundation of what we put in place after the events of 2011. It is now 2019 and we have been urging and urging that you have to be constantly reviewing these things to ensure that, based on experience, they remain as effective as they were when they were introduced. We also had a review of ASEL, which took the government forever. Everything is on the go-slow with this government. Everything gets put on a committee and kicked down the road. If you keep kicking things down the road, you can expect things to go wrong.

The bill does much of what we did or would have done in 2013. For the interim inspector-general I appointed before the election to have remained in place would have required legislation after the election. We ran out of time to do it before the election and, of course, the member for New England just let it lapse. He said it wasn't needed, it was a waste of money and there was too much regulation.

Now, finally, we have a bill that does pretty much the same thing. I remind those with an interest in this that the inspector-general does not impose any additional regulation on live exporters. The inspector-general oversees the regulator. If you like, he or she is the auditor of the regulator. He or she makes sure that, if something goes wrong, things are properly looked at and the regulator takes appropriate action. That is a simplification, but it is an important part of the role. That doesn't impose any burden whatsoever on live exporters. Theoretically, he or she can do that without even talking to a live exporter. But it certainly doesn't impose a regulatory burden.

I welcome the fact that, like our own inspector-general back in 2013, the inspector-general will have a work program. I have it in front of me. It's a significant work program, talking about three-year reviews, monitoring and reporting during livestock export voyages, livestock export licensing and permits, reviewing ESCAS, reviewing ASEL and just generally making sure over time that things are properly running within the regulator. That's a very sensible proposition, and we welcome the fact that the government will now do this.

Members will note that in 2013 a Labor government announced the appointment of an interim Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. This bill creates an Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports. There's something missing. It's animal welfare. The government just can't bring themselves to talk about animal welfare, because it's not consistent with the National Party's fundamentalism. You don't talk about animal welfare, even though out there in the marketplace people are increasingly concerned about animal welfare. The best way to ensure that the industry maintains a social licence is to talk about animal welfare and to transparently demonstrate that we have a plan together, working with industry, to ensure the highest standards of animal welfare. While the government's accepted a few amendments to strengthen the bill, and I appreciate that, it's still a little bit lighter on the animal welfare side than was our inspector-general bill back in 2013.

But we won't haggle over details. The key thing is that we now will have—and do have, in fact—an Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports. That's good news for the industry itself, because it allows the industry to say, 'We are overseen now by a regulator but, in addition to that, the regulator is overseen by an inspector-general who is constantly working on plans to ensure the regulator has the right model, a model which ensures that animal welfare is respected and animal welfare standards are consistent with what ordinary Australians would expect of both the model and the regulator.'

It shouldn't have come to this. We shouldn't have had to wait six years. At the risk of repeating myself, there were a number of incidents over the last six years we probably wouldn't have had and didn't need to have. If we had not had them, the export industry would be in much better shape. You know you are going to get—I'm happy to use the word; it's one I'm going to apply certainly not to all exporters, or even the majority, but only to a few exporters—cowboys in any industry when you have a minister who has sent a very clear message both to his department and to the broader community, and to the exporters themselves, that they can be pretty certain that, when something pops up, the response will be, 'Nothing to see here.' The then members for Warringah and Wentworth followed the member for New England blindly when he thought that he was helping the live exporters. Can you imagine him pre election? 'Don't worry. When we get elected, you won't have to worry about all that stuff the Labor Party goes on about—regulation. We don't need that. It's all rubbish. We know you blokes do a good job. You're important to the Australian economy. You'll be all right under us.' Well, they weren't all right under him, and they still aren't all right.

A lot of damage needs to be repaired now, and it will take a long time, but this bill this evening will be an important part of that repair. Let's hope that the live cattle trade can get on with its life. But the government needs to be honest about the live sheep trade. The live sheep trade has a broken business model, and I think the government has to have a long think about that. Obviously, Minister Littleproud needs to have a long think about it.

While we made a commitment that we would phase the trade out over five years, we also made a commitment that we would support our farmers and sheepmeat producers and others along the supply chain to ensure that they had a path to a transition to something better—most obviously, more value-adding here in Australia, developing and growing more jobs here in Australia. By contrast, when this government regulated the industry to death while at the same time claiming it supported it, it did not lift one finger to help sheepmeat producers who have been impacted by their decisions. It has not lifted one finger and has not spent one cent to support any sheepmeat producer who has been hurt economically by the suspension of the trade. Remember that we got into trouble for suspending the trade for four or five weeks. This time trade has been suspended for months, and the government has done nothing.

I speak to sheepmeat producers. They have not had the government reach out to them at any time and say: 'We know that these additional regulations and restrictions must be hurting you, what can we do to help you? Is it financial support or is it a model that helps you make the transition?' There has been nothing. I say to the farm leadership groups: the next time everything this mob do is right and everything we do is wrong, you might want to reflect on some of the things that have occurred not just over the last six years but since 2011.

I've followed the supply chain in the live cattle trade all the way from Australia to the wet market in Indonesia. I have actually visited the main abattoir that was featured on the Four Corners report back in 2011. I'm very happy to say that a Labor government modernised that abattoir and it looks nothing like it did in 2011.

We remain strong supporters of the live cattle trade. It's important to our economy, it's important to our producers and it's important for jobs. It was a Labor government that put it on a sustainable footing. It's thriving today because of a Labor government. I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) criticises the Coalition Government, which in 2013 abolished the position of Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports, established by the former Labor Government; and

(2) notes that this decision removed an additional layer of accountability, contributing to the loss of public confidence in the live-stock export system regulator".

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Andrews ): Is the amendment seconded?

Mr Butler: I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Mr RICK WILSON (O'Connor) (18:27): I rise to support the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Bill 2019. I've had extensive discussions with the minister. The intent of this bill is to provide the industry with an independent umpire, someone who can be the go-between for the regulator, the department, the commercial side of the industry and the animal welfare groups that follow the industry very closely. I think the intent is very worthy. I thoroughly support the minister's intent there.

By coincidence, in today's West Australian there is a story by Jenne Brammer. The headline is 'Live exports vital to WA economy and farms'. The report talks about an average of 1.5 million sheep being exported out of Western Australia annually over the last five years, with a total value of around $200 million. About 45 per cent of that value, or around $100 million, is retained on farms. I have to say that the majority of those farms fall in my electorate of O'Connor. This issue has been very important to me and the people who live in my electorate. This legislation, which brings in an inspector-general to be, as I said, an independent umpire, is critical for the people in my electorate.

The member for Hunter—it's a shame; it looks like he's leaving—had a bit more of a spring in his step last time he tried to shut the industry down, back in I think late November or early December last year. We all remember those heady days, don't we, Member for Hunter? We were all getting thousands of emails telling us that this was a vote-changing issue. They were automatically generated by Animals Australia. They bombarded our inboxes and said: 'How can you sleep at night? This is a vote-changing issue.'

Well, in the election on 18 May, votes did change. Let's have a quick look at the member for Hunter's results in the election on 18 May. I see that his primary vote fell 14.22 per cent and the two-party-preferred vote fell 9.8. I see the member for Brand, whose electorate encompasses many of the people who work in the live export trade. Her two-party-preferred vote fell 4.8 per cent and her primary vote fell 7.1. So it definitely moved votes. There's no question about that at all, I think. But, unfortunately for the member for Hunter and others, the votes and the quiet Australians actually supported what many Western Australians see as a critical industry for our state.

Now, it's a shame the member for Hunter is leaving, because I've got plenty more to say, particularly about the allegations that he raised and mentioned that the member for New England had discussed. I've discussed those allegations outside of this place. I'm not relying on privilege. Anybody who wants to see me is more than welcome to do so. I'm more than happy to have the information that I have here tested in court.

The first lot of information, which I received around December last year, goes to the turmoil that the industry has been thrown into since the 60 Minutes report was aired in April last year. The Awassi Express voyage, as we all know, took place in August 2017. An extraordinary heat event combined with some geopolitical issues meant that we saw a very, very distressing outcome in terms of mortalities on that voyage. The department, the regulator, investigated that voyage and released mortality report No. 69, which was released in March 2018, which, while it had some concerns, effectively said that the issue had been unavoidable, and that was the end of the matter. But, of course, 60 Minutes aired some very distressing video footage in early April 2018, and the industry has been in serious turmoil ever since. The cost of that turmoil on the farmers within my electorate has been estimated at around $100 million. That's a significant amount of money that this series of events has cost the farmers in my electorate.

I'll go to the comments that the member for Hunter made about the allegations that this video footage was perhaps contrived, or perhaps framed, to certainly look as bad as it possibly could for the industry. Last December I received some bank statements that relate to the bank accounts of a Mr Fazal Ullah. Mr Ullah was the whistleblower who supplied the video footage to Animals Australia, who then subsequently shopped it around and had 60 Minutes pick it up. This series of bank statements shows that around A$178,000 was deposited into Mr Ullah's account. The interesting thing about these bank statements is that the money wasn't paid necessarily after the August Awassi Express event. The first payment, on 26 June 2017 of $5,850, was well before the Awassi Express event—well before that event. Several more payments took place before the Awassi Express voyage. That's the first thing to note. Since then some very diligent journalists who have been working on this case have provided me with some emails from a deckhand who worked on the boat, Mr Mahmood Raza Mazher. Mr Mazher signed a statutory declaration. It was witnessed at the High Commission in Singapore, so I give enormous credibility to the statement.

But the emails that I have here in my possession are from a Ms Lyn White, who is a well-known, high-profile operator at Animals Australia. This particular email is part of a chain of emails. Ms White says, 'I believe I can send another $1,000 donation at this stage to thank you for establishing the next opportunity, and I will await your advice as to who to send this money to.' There is no question that Animals Australia were forwarding money to potential whistleblowers. Ms White goes on to say:

The key to achieving the next steps towards ending the trade, will be showing that suffering still is occurring. Injured and sick sheep not being found/treated—pens still overcrowded—animals suffering heat stress (panting). Piles of dead etc.

What you need to understand here is that the deckhands that this email is addressed to are responsible for looking after those very sick and injured sheep. If there are sick and injured sheep in the pens that they are filming and that aren't being treated, that's because they haven't taken them out. At the end of the decks on the boats—there are about eight decks—is a hospital pen and an Australian accredited vet on every voyage, whose job is to treat and look after the sheep. His job is not to go through each individual pen and find the sick and injured sheep; that is the job of the deckhand. If the deckhand is being paid, enticed and encouraged, as per this email, not to take those sheep out of the pen, not to put them in the hospital pen for the Australian accredited vet to treat, then that is a prima facie case of animal cruelty, encouraged by Animals Australia—thank you very much!

Now, going on through this statutory declaration, Mr Mazher says in section 31: 'Part of Fazal's responsibility would have also been to identify animals which were diseased, distressed, and to remove them from the pen. In my experience there are always smaller or weaker sheep that need attention and additional care.' That's from the second deckhand, talking about Mr Ullah. He also goes on to say: 'The video of the sheep panting was extremely shocking to me. I have never observed sheep panting in that way before. The sheep look exhausted and choking due to lack of air supply.' Importantly, he goes on to say: 'Every deck cadet is trained to operate the vessel's ventilation system. The ventilation system cannot be shut down without the officers on the bridge or other parts of the vessel becoming aware. The ventilation system can be reduced to zero from the sundeck switchbox room without anybody noticing, however.' So it is entirely possible, according to Mr Mazher, a deckhand on the ship as well, that Mr Ullah could have manipulated, without anybody knowing, the ventilation system to get the sort of footage that Ms White and Animals Australia were offering enormous amounts of money for. These deckhands get paid around US$6,000 per annum. $178,000 is roughly equivalent to 25 years salary, which they were being offered to come up with the footage that Ms White has described here.

Let's have a look at where the industry's at now. We've had ships that were suspended or stopped due to licence issues between May 2018 and November. But, thankfully, on 12 November last year we saw the first boats start up again. We saw 11 voyages that took place over the summer period, just under a million sheep for, I think, something like 1,800 mortalities. The last voyage, which left Fremantle on 28 May and arrived in the Middle East on 12 June, had 68 mortalities across, I think, around 56,000 sheep. That's a mortality rate of 0.16. Any farmer running sheep in a paddock situation would be very happy with those sorts of results. We're never happy to see sheep die—though they do, for all sorts of reasons—but most farmers would be pretty happy with that level of mortality.

Going forward, I think the industry does have a strong foundation. We have proven that we can conduct these voyages humanely and with very good results. The member for Hunter mentioned the heat stress review. The original recommendation was a 28 degree wet bulb limit. That was based on some laboratory experiments with eight sheep in an experimental situation. What we have seen from the data on the voyage—from the independent observers and the Australian accredited vets—is that even at wet bulb temperatures of up to 32 degrees the sheep are not showing any undue distress.

As a government, I'm very proud of the fact that we have worked with the industry, stuck by the industry and made the necessary regulatory changes to make sure that the industry can continue sustainably. We need the exporters to be able to continue to buy our sheep out of Western Australia. It's a particular type of sheep, mainly lightweight merino wethers, which the processors are not really interested in. We need the exporters to be able to continue to pay a sustainable price for those sheep. We need to honour those Middle Eastern markets that value our product and have invested a lot of money in the supply chain and the infrastructure to ship our sheep. We need to balance that, of course, with welfare outcomes. But good welfare outcomes don't necessarily happen when we have animal welfare organisations inducing very low-paid deckhands to provide footage of animals suffering so that they can further their agenda to close the trade down.

I come back to the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports. I see the role of the inspector-general as being not only to oversee the regulation of the industry and make sure that it's done appropriately and properly, and not only to liaise with the industry and make sure that they are doing the right thing, but also to ensure that these radical animal activist groups are held to account for the sorts of activities that they've been getting up to over many years and continue to get up to to this day. I commend the bill to the House.

Mr BRIAN MITCHELL (Lyons) (18:42): I stand to talk on the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Bill 2019 and also on the second reading amendment moved by the member for Hunter. Today I feel a bit like Marty McFly standing here, because this really is a back-to-the-future moment. This government is resurrecting the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports as an independent statutory office holder, reporting to the Minister for Agriculture. Labor did this back in 2013. Let's fire up the DeLorean, strap in and have a look at the history of the inspector-general legislation.

On 30 July 2013 the then agriculture minister, the member for Hunter, announced that Labor would establish an Inspector-General of Animal Welfare and Live Animal Exports. The position was to build on Australia's best regulatory framework for the export of livestock for slaughter. Labor understood that, while the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System significantly improved conditions by which animals were exported and how they were slaughtered, there needed to be a level of independent oversight for the regulator to maintain public confidence in the trade. The inspector-general would have added another layer of assurance that our regulatory system was delivering the animal welfare outcomes, through auditing and reviewing the investigative and compliance processes. There would have been no additional burden of red tape on exporters or trading partners through the development of this role. In the interim phase this system was working well, and the industry, despite concerns that were put to the then minister, was doing what it does best: supplying well farmed sheep to the world. The inspector-general gave Australians confidence that appropriate animal welfare outcomes were being met—or at least there was an effort to meet them. Labor has never been about shutting down the meat industry in Australia.

We don't like live export of sheep. We went to the election saying that we would end the northern summer trade—absolutely. The evidence is overwhelming. The northern summer trade of live export of sheep just can't be met. You can't put in place the animal welfare standards that are required and still have a profitable trade while meeting all the consumer expectations. We don't think it can be done. But the cost of making sure that the industry kept its credibility with an inspector-general was $4 million.

But fast-forward four months to a new government, after 2013, and the wisdom of the new minister, the member for New England: he closed the program down. He claimed that the current regulation of livestock exports is designed to minimise risk, and that's why he was confident that the establishment of an inspector-general of animal welfare was not necessary. He said that the inspector-general was:

… a classic example of layer upon layer of bureaucracy without any practical outcome.

He also said that the livestock export regulator was:

… already, and remains, subject to appropriate oversight and review mechanisms.

He also said that this was 'one bit of red tape we can do without'. These are all the words of the member for New England, who was then the minister.

So, how did this sage-like wisdom end up? What happened after that? Well, 60 Minutes exposed animal welfare failings in the live sheep export trade relating to voyages to the Middle East during the northern summer. I know that the member for O'Connor has just been on his feet, making all sorts of allegations—which I would be very interested to hear him make outside the protection of this chamber. They were allegations of a criminal nature about the people involved.

Mr Pasin: He's got the evidence.

Mr BRIAN MITCHELL: Well, if he's got the evidence, Member for Barker, then maybe he can repeat it outside this chamber and have that evidence tested in a court of law.

Mr Pasin: He will.

Mr BRIAN MITCHELL: He will—I'll take that interjection. He will, the member for Barker says. There were unacceptable rates of mortality on the Awassi Expressin August 2017, exposed on the 60 Minutes program, with the Australian community quite rightly voicing its concerns about the welfare of sheep. The phones in electorate offices around the country went bananas, and there was email after email. I know that the allegation on that side of the House is that somehow this was an electronically orchestrated campaign and that these people's concerns should not be taken seriously. Well, attached to these emails were names of real people in the electorate. I, like many other MPs, contacted these people, and they expressed their concerns. They said, 'Yes, I'm concerned about this issue.' We expect better treatment of Australian animals, raised in Australia under Australian conditions. We expect better treatment at the end of life, and we expect better treatment on that journey. Customers want the assurance. We're not talking here about everybody going vegan. I like my lamb roast and lamb shoulders as much as anybody does. But we expect there to be a good chain of quality assurance.

So, following that program and following the concerns raised, the government went through all its changes. The member for New England was no longer the Minister for Agriculture, no longer the Deputy Prime Minister. The new fellow came in, the member for Maranoa, as the new minister, and he commissioned the McCarthy review and the Moss review. Mr Philip Moss AM conducted an independent review of the regulatory capability—and culture, importantly—of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources in the regulation of live animal exports. The Moss review recommended, among other things, that an independent external entity, known as an inspector-general, be established to introduce an additional layer of accountability for the regulator. So, we're back to square one; we're back to where we were in 2013—all that wasted time, all that wasted effort, getting rid of an inspector-general for animal welfare, and it never needed to happen. If we'd kept an inspector-general all this time, throughout the six dead years of this government, there would be many thousands of beasts destined for export with better quality assurance.

The decision by the member for New England, endorsed by the coalition government, to abolish the inspector-general of live exports in 2013 led to a collapse in public confidence in the live export sector, which hurts producers; it hurts the people in the electorate of the member for O'Connor. It was a monumental failure, a ridiculous, reckless, idiotic decision to abolish the inspector-general of animal welfare. I am pleased the member for Maranoa, the then minister, saw sense and saw fit to bring this position back in. As the member for Hunter said, he is no longer the Minister for Agriculture—and we can all speculate as to why, as to whether he's gone off script in what he's trying to achieve. The fact is, it did take that 60 Minutes program, revealing animal welfare failings, for the government to act. That's what it took for the government to act, to ensure that the live export regulator considers animal welfare when issuing export permits.

Labor welcomes the rebirth of the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports. It will add another layer of independent oversight. The true test will be for the new agriculture minister, Senator McKenzie, to ensure that the failings identified in the Moss review are addressed. The member for New England certainly did not understand the importance of animal welfare, not just to consumers but to producers. The more confidence consumers have in animal welfare the better off producers are and the better off the agriculture sector is. Treating animals better in the processing chain is good business practice. It's just good for business. So we thank Mr Philip Moss AM for his Review of the regulatory capability and culture of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources in the regulation of live animal exports.

I echo the sentiments of the member for Hunter. There is a culture issue in the department, perhaps led by the nose by the member for New England. A culture has seeped through that department that anything goes, where too many blind eyes are being turned to animal welfare. Hopefully this new position will help correct that. We need a culture change in the department that takes animal welfare more seriously in the supply chain. Mr Moss identified shortcomings in the way the department organises itself as a regulator and undertakes its regulatory functions. It's not just an industry booster. It shouldn't be there just to say anything goes. It is a regulator. The department has a role in making sure things are done properly and lawfully. These are the same shortcomings that Labor identified back in 2013—in the DeLorean!—and we introduced the role of the inspector-general as a way to combat it, only to see the new government axe it four months later. It's just a circle repeating itself.

There is still more work to be done and the recommendations need to be implemented. There are 31 recommendations in these reviews, and not just 10 or 20 but all 31 recommendations need to be implemented. I do hope this will get our sheepmeat industry back on track and give the public the confidence it should always have in the way we do business in Australia and in the agricultural sector when dealing with our livestock. Sheepmeat is an important industry. I'll make no bones about it. Labor went to the election saying that we would phase out live sheep export over a five-year period, if my memory serves me correctly, and we would cease the northern summer trade immediately if we won the election. We didn't win the election. We do accept that. But the fact is that consumers demand better quality assurance and standards of humane treatment of animals throughout the process. They want to ensure that the meat they are eating has a quality chain all the way to slaughter.

I'll touch very briefly on the member for O'Connor. I think he was having a bit of a crack at the member for Hunter and the election result. I'll put on the Hansardthat the member for O'Connor's 2PP at the election went down 0.56 per cent. Maybe he doesn't think much of that, 64 per cent of the 2PP, but it did go down. His primary vote went down 0.63 per cent. And he's there giving lectures to us. He can't take any comfort out of that. People need to remember that we did lose the election. We know that, and we're going through a review process, which is well known. But there was shocking hubris and arrogance on that side of the chamber.

Mr Pasin interjecting—

Mr BRIAN MITCHELL: You've won by one more seat. You've got one more seat; that's what you've got. So just take a rest from the hubris and arrogance, Member for Barker. Give it a rest—there's one seat in this.

I return to the issue of the member for New England and the absolute failures under him as the agriculture minister, not only in relation to the inspector-general but also in terms of the white paper that's just gone nowhere and the decentralisation agenda, with the APVMA move to Armidale. From the last report I read, eight people out of 198 from the department decided to move there. It is an absolute scandalous waste of public money.

Mr Pasin interjecting—

Mr BRIAN MITCHELL: Did the National Party, the great party of decentralisation, have their meeting on the weekend in Armidale? Did they have their meeting on the weekend in Tamworth? No; they had it in Canberra. That's where they had it. Because of the member for New England—the Miley Cyrus wrecking ball of the National Party—the National Party will take years to recover and get their credibility back as the purported party of the agricultural sector in the regions.

We do support this bill because it basically reinstates what Labor had in place in 2013. We've gone back six years. The government made a dreadful mistake six years ago in abolishing the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports. They have come to their senses, we hope, in reinstituting it. Labor support the bill, but we're sorry that we had to be here at all to debate this, because the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports should have already been in place for the last six years.

Mr PASIN (Barker) (18:56): In rising to speak on the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Bill 2019, I want to say what a great privilege it is to speak after the member for Lyons as he lectures us about hubris and those sorts of things. I do wonder whether he was an invited guest at the ALP celebration of their '2019 election victory' that preceded the actual count on election day.

But I must say that I was impressed by his reference to the DeLorean and Back to the Future. I noticed that he dialled up the DeLorean to 2013. I wonder if he could dial it a bit deeper into time—specifically to 7 June 2011. The member for Hindmarsh, who was then the member for Port Adelaide, would remember this date because his then colleague, former Minister Ludwig, signed an order that evening banning the live cattle trade to Indonesia. So, when the member for Lyons comes into this place and says, 'We're not against live exports,' and then quickly corrects himself and says, 'But, at the last election, we effectively took the position that we're against the live export of sheep,' he should remember that. So, instead of talking about the DeLorean, I have a different analogy for him. It's a Men in Black analogy—because it seems that, when you arrive in the Labor caucus, you're asked to stare into the light and forget it all.

He also talked about how they have accepted the loss. Hallelujah—it's been four months! But, while he says that they have accepted the loss, I'm not convinced that they have accepted that the people of Australia got it right. I'm not sure they have accepted that. Until they have accepted that, they will continue in this maelstrom that they find themselves in, kind of working out what they stand for and whether it is consistent with contemporary Australian values.

I want to talk about the live export trade. This trade amounts to about $250 million for the Australian economy. Obviously all of this is generated out of regional Australia, with the overwhelming portion coming from the member for O'Connor's electorate. I must say that I haven't found a stronger advocate for their people on a difficult issue like this than the member for O'Connor. He has been there for his producers. Can I be absolutely plain about this and get right back to fundamentals. Nobody, and I mean nobody, condones cruelty to animals—not me, not the member for O'Connor and not the thousands of sheepmeat producers in my electorate, who, by the way, spend a small fortune, much more than I imagine anyone in this place, on animal husbandry. Why do they do that? Because to this extent the member for Lyons is right: a healthy animal is a profitable animal. Then again, an animal that you cannot export to particular markets is nowhere near as profitable. It is critical that we understand that this debate is not about whether one side of politics accepts cruelty to animals and the other doesn't. No-one does. This is about getting the balance right.

Another fundamental is that if Australian exporters are not in these markets, these markets won't transition to vegan based products. They will get their sheepmeat or equivalent from other jurisdictions. Those jurisdictions don't have contemporary Australian standards when it comes to animal husbandry. In standards around animal export, we lead the world. If you are passionate about animal welfare, as I am, it is critical that Australia stays in these markets.

But I am equally passionate about the welfare of farmers. You don't have to turn your mind back too much, Member for Lyons. You get in the DeLorean and wind it all the way back to the after-effects of June 2011, when people—in particular, northern cattlemen—took their lives as a consequence of the decision that was taken in this place as a kneejerk reaction to footage, which I acknowledge was clearly inappropriate.

But there is a lot more to this story. There is a lot more to be told, and there will be opportunities to tell it. Like the member for O'Connor, I have been privileged to see certain information that will see the light of day. What concerns me is that, for those around this debate who, like me, are motivated by the need to ensure that animals are not harmed, this information will shock the Australian consciousness. I have lost confidence in the footage. I am not ignorant. I understand what I saw in that footage. But, owing to what I have seen, I have now lost confidence in how that footage came to be.

There are lobbyists in this space who want to see this trade closed down. I am not suggesting those opposite are in this category. While they have a stated position that they want to see the end of this trade, I am being clear not to suggest that what I am about to say relates to them. It relates to activists in this space, who, I respectfully suggest, will go to any means to damage the confidence the Australian people have in live animal exports. It is to be determined whether the footage that has been broadcast far and wide was a product of genuine whistleblowing or was orchestrated so as to provide a sense that these animals were in harm's way. I am not naive enough to suggest that this is not a significant assertion, but there is a reasonable basis for making it. If any of this is made out, those actors who have put in jeopardy the livelihoods of thousands of Australian farmers—hardworking men and women—will need to account for their behaviour.

I support this bill because it's effectively an integrity measure. Like others in this place, I'm proud of Australia's record in animal husbandry and I'm proud of our record in the live export of animals, be they sheep, beef, goat or others. We lead the world. In recent times we have seen an incredible decline in mortality rates, and, by any measure, that represents success. These matters will no doubt be litigated in coming months, if not years. I congratulate members of the fourth estate—Sharri Markson and others—who have spoken directly to deckhands and others on the Awassi and other voyages so as to effectively blow the whistle on the whistleblowers. I'm very disturbed to hear in this place the member for Lyons, in his speech, being critical of the department and effectively suggesting that the department had an attitude of turning a blind eye. I'm going to unpack that, Member for Lyons, because you cannot make that strong assertion—

Mr Brian Mitchell: Read the Moss review.

Mr PASIN: I understand the Moss review, but that's not what you said in this place. You effectively said that there is a culture of turning a blind eye on this issue. Member for Lyons, I think we can accept that this is about animal cruelty. You should take the opportunity to read the transcript. You effectively alleged in this place, the people's house, that people working inside the department have a laissez-faire attitude and have effectively turned a blind eye to animal cruelty. That's strongly offensive. To say that in this place and to besmirch any and all members of the Public Service who work—

Mr Brian Mitchell: Read the Moss review.

Mr PASIN: They're your words, Member for Lyons, not mine. You besmirched the hardworking and professional members of the Public Service who work in that department. Shame on you, quite frankly.

The member for Lyons attempted to find criticism in the member for O'Connor's electoral achievements. I'll tell him something that he might not historically know. At the 2016 election the member for O'Connor led all comers when it came to the increase in his two PP. If that's a measure of success, he was atop the dais with a gold medal. On the other hand, the member for Lyons comes here and acknowledges that the Labor Party lost the election. Do you know what else they lost? Two seats in Tasmania. It should've been three. The member for Lyons knows that it should have been three. The member for Lyons knows it and the people of Tasmania know it.

If I were a sheep producer in Tasmania, at the next election I'd be lining up the member for Lyons. We had three seats to target in Tasmania in 2019. We've got only one in 2022, Member for Lyons. We're going to remind the sheepmeat producers in your electorate that you stood up in this place, you acknowledged that you lost the election, you weren't prepared to acknowledge that the people of Australia got it right and you worked hard every day in this place to undermine the live sheep trade. Between now and 2022 we're going to remind them day in and day out. I hope you've got your CV in order.

Mr JOSH WILSON (Fremantle) (19:09): I support the second reading amendment moved by the member for Hunter. In the great filing cabinet of Commonwealth law, the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Bill 2019 goes into the drawer marked 'stupid mistakes with terrible consequences'. This bill recreates an Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports. Why? To provide oversight of the live export industry. When did the government figure out that that was such a brilliant idea? How many animal welfare atrocities did it take and how much evidence did they need of awful conduct and hopeless regulation of this industry, especially in the export of live sheep?

As everyone in the debate so far has acknowledged, six years ago, in 2013, the then Labor government created an interim inspector-general of animal welfare and an Australian Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, and the newly elected coalition government decided to get rid of both of those things. It was an extraordinarily stupid thing to do. It is hard to understand how they made that decision. The only way you can partly understand it, I think, is to note that the responsible minister at the time was the member for New England. The responsible minister at the time, the member for New England, in explaining why the interim inspector-general of animal welfare had to go, said it had been introduced only so that:

… people would feel a sense of solace in the urban areas, cause they'll say "oh well that sounds great". But when you peel back the onion you say well, you're really just putting a policeman on a policeman. The first policeman will do the job very well. Let the first policeman do the job. You don't need to have policemen on policemen, otherwise it becomes a ludicrous extension. Why don't we get an auditor for the auditor just in case the auditor's not doing his job? And then we'll get an auditor for that auditor so the auditor's auditor not doing its job and we can have - and it goes on like Kafka forever.

How ridiculous. What was the basis for saying that? The interim inspector-general for animal welfare was put in place with a very clear purpose.

The purpose was to oversight the regulation of the live export industry. The mistake the government made was about as obvious as they come, and that has been clear every day for the past six years, and it was made crystal clear by the review undertaken by Mr Philip Moss after we'd seen atrocity on atrocity in relation to the live sheep export trade. The review by Mr Philip Moss, titled Regulatory capability and culture of the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources in the regulation of live animal exports—which the member for Barker should take some time to read at some point—identified a series of ways in which getting rid of the inspector-general of animal welfare was a profoundly stupid thing to do. We've known for a long time that live export is inherently dangerous for animals, that it's likely to produce animal suffering and that when you transport sheep in decrepit old ships for weeks on end to the hottest part of the world at the hottest time of the year then animal suffering is guaranteed.

A Senate report back in 1985 said:

The trade is, in many respects, inimical to good animal welfare.

The Moss review, 32 years later, found:

By its nature, live animal exports present a high risk to animal health and welfare.

We know from the heat stress review, which has not been made public, that our previous approach—which was to measure suffering only through the death rate of animals—was wrong. Sheep are hardy animals. I've had sheep farmers from around Australia get in contact with me on this issue, and that's a point that they often make: lots of sheep have made it to the Middle East having been put through pain and suffering that vets and the Australian public rightly find absolutely unacceptable.

We also know that there's an inherent conflict in the department that is responsible for promoting agriculture and related trade and also responsible for animal welfare. Those two things do not always pull in the same direction. There are aspects of primary production and trade that work against the humane treatment of animals. That much is obvious. That's where the member for New England and so many of his colleagues have gone badly wrong. It's not a case of having an auditor for an auditor; it's a case of having an independent person who's charged with a pure focus on animal welfare being responsible for overseeing a bureaucracy that has conflicting imperatives.

We know that the regulatory approach itself was structurally flawed. Vets accredited by the government to be responsible for animal welfare were employed by the live exporters. It doesn't take a genius to realise that people in that circumstance are going to be compromised. The Moss review noted:

Although on-board AAVs are accredited by and report to the department they are employed by the exporter. This role appears to be inherently conflicted …

And so it was.

We know there were cultural problems in the department. That seems to offend the member for Barker. We know there were cultural problems in the department and there'd been a loss of animal welfare expertise. That was led by this government. That culture problem and that irresponsibility started with this government. It started with the then minister, the member for New England, and it was enabled by everybody else around him. The Moss review said:

Currently there is a lack of focus on and expertise in animal welfare.

It said:

The department does not have a single regulatory mindset.

Finally, we know that the approach of the department, and of the industry in general, to the contribution of animal welfare organisations was massively unhelpful. This is the quote from the Moss review that the members for O'Connor and Barker should pay some close attention to:

Animal welfare organisations play a significant role in the regulatory framework because, through the resourcing they dedicate to monitoring, they are a significant source of information about animal health and welfare in the context of live animal exports. Consistent with good regulatory practice, the department needs to improve its connection with this sector. The re-establishment of an animal welfare branch in the department would help to address this issue.

We've had the member for Barker come in. At some points in his speech I felt like I'd fallen asleep and woken up in a lecture about the assassination of JFK or the moon landing, as if these things are all part of a pattern of fakery and the footage that we saw of the Awassi Express had somehow been made up, it never really happened and the live export of sheep is actually perfectly okay. Don't forget that there have been more than 100 voyages in which more than 1,000 sheep have died. There has been incident after incident after incident. The Awassi Express is only the most recent. But we still have members of the government not prepared to address the cultural problem in the government and blaming animal welfare organisations. 'There's nothing wrong with the trade. It's the animal welfare organisations that have somehow concocted video footage of animals literally dying by drowning in their own waste.' That is ridiculous.

So this is an obvious mistake, a stupid mistake, with terrible consequences. What consequences? We know that the ships being operated were unfit for transport. The department has belatedly admitted to that. We know there were falsified vet reports, an outcome directly affected by the fact that authorised vets were employed by the exporters. We know there was chronic departmental inaction in the face of clear breaches of regulation and clear instances of animal welfare abuse. We know there was enormous and relentless suffering inflicted on animals. In 2014, 4,000 sheep died on a trip from Fremantle to Qatar. In 2016, 3,000 sheep died on another Emanuel Exports voyage. Then, in 2017, there was the Awassi Express, with 2,500 sheep dying. Since the live sheep export trade began, terrible, decrepit converted car carriers have been taking tens of thousands of sheep at the hottest time of the year to the hottest part of the world in awful, unregulated conditions. Two hundred million sheep have gone from Australia to the Middle East. Three million have died, and let's not make the mistake of assuming that only the three million that died suffered, because there would be millions and millions of sheep that got off at the other end barely alive, having gone through an experience that the Australian public rightly finds utterly unacceptable. There is no sliding scale on which the suffering of animals becomes acceptable at some price.

It is true that, apart from the animal suffering that has occurred through this industry, enabled by this government, people have been harmed as well. Farmers have been harmed. Farming communities have been harmed, as have other people involved in the production chain. That is an important part of the story. They are people in my home state of Western Australia, and I have sympathy for those on the land who had every right to expect a regulatory system that would keep the export industry to high and rigorous standards. That didn't happen. Exporters pulled the wool over their eyes and over the eyes of the regulators, but the regulators weren't looking hard enough. That's something that people involved in the industry—the farmers, feed producers and truck drivers—and the communities in which they live need to be clear eyed about. I speak to representatives of primary producers. I speak to the peak bodies. I speak to truck drivers and their representatives. I speak to individual farmers. When I do that, I tell them straight, 'You've been let down by your representative groups and by some of your representatives in this place, because they ignored the clear signs of a rotten industry.' They ignored them and they lied to the people that they were supposed to be representing, their constituents—whether they're representatives in this place or whether they're peak bodies. They cheered on this government when it took away those regulatory protections. They didn't say, 'Hang on a second, those regulatory protections are important to us. They're part of our social licence. We care about our animals. We want our industry to be'—what is it they say these days?

Mr Brian Mitchell interjecting—

Mr JOSH WILSON: A stable and certain industry? They didn't say, 'We'd like to have a stable and certain industry, so don't go and ransack the important regulatory protections in the name of your "red tape reduction jihad", or whatever it is you're on this week, because that will put us at risk.' Not enough people said that, not enough farmers said that, not enough truck drivers said that and none of the peak bodies said that. None of the representative groups said, 'You are going to do harm to us,' but that's what's happened.

Some of those groups have been guilty of exactly the same structural and cultural problems that affected the Department of Agriculture and they should be big enough to look themselves in the mirror and admit that. Some of them have been too quick to say, exactly as the member for O'Connor and the member for Barker said, 'There's nothing wrong with this industry. There's nothing wrong with millions of sheep suffering and millions of sheep dying. It's all the animal welfare activists concocting some weird videos.' How ridiculous!

There's nothing hard and there's nothing courageous about playing to the crowd. There's nothing hard and there's nothing courageous about standing up and telling people what they want to hear. There are some people who've been involved in this trade for a long time who should have a bit more courage and should be prepared to say to people involved in this trade, 'We've let you down. It's been a rotten trade and we've enabled it,' because that is the truth.

The people in the broader community have been very clear. They've spoken up and they've said, 'This is wrong and has got to stop.' They're not just people in cities. They're not just beard wearing, cold-coffee-brew drinking, inner city hipsters; they are all over this country. I've been contacted by people outside Western Australia, which is principally the only place where the live sheep trade happens, who have said, 'This has to stop.' I've been contacted by plenty of farmers, and certainly plenty of sheep farmers, who have said, 'I would never subject my animals to that kind of treatment. This has to stop. They are bringing us all down. They are bringing down responsible agricultural producers.'

People in that space—some of the people who are involved and benefit from it—enabled the harm. The harm is not created by animal activists. It wasn't created by the Labor Party or any members in this place who spoke up in the absolutely rightful cause of proper regulation. It was created by the industry, by the exporters in particular, and by people on that side—by the government—who stupidly and wantonly took away protection that should always have been maintained.

So, where are we now? Belatedly, half-heartedly and six years on, the government have been dragged to put back something that was there six years ago. We know that the cessation of the trade does not bring ruin to the farming sector in Western Australia. It has had impacts and that's difficult. I feel for the people who've been on the receiving end, but we had two summers when the trade dropped away. The suggestion by some that it would lead to some kind of widespread ruin in Western Australia has not proved to be true.

The live sheep trade continues to decline. It is terminal. The export of boxed meat and chilled carcasses to the Middle East continues to grow. That's our future. That's the future of the trade. It's a future with higher value-added exports, more jobs in Australia and, most of all, better animal welfare outcomes. We have the prospect of moving out of the live sheep trade altogether. We know it's possible. We know it's necessary. It's going to take leadership and courage. We've shown that. It's about time some people on that side stood up and did that as well.

Mr RAMSEY (Grey—Government Whip) (19:24): I speak to the Inspector-General of Live Animal Exports Bill 2019, denying the amendment. The bill builds on success in, if you like, cleaning up the live sheep trade in particular and the live export trade generally. The government has, since 2013, in the wake of the 2011 suspension of the live cattle trade to Indonesia, sought to rebuild the trust of the Australian public in this trade.

I was interested in the comments of the member for Fremantle—as he leaves the chamber—where he said that sometimes we make stupid mistakes with terrible consequences. I thought he was referring to the shutdown of the live cattle export industry in 2011, because that was terrible. That was terrible. There were terrible consequences, terrible human consequences. We had cattlemen in the Northern Territory beside themselves. I don't want to draw the link that I could, but let me say that people were under terrible mental stress. We saw them down here in Canberra. They came down to speak to us. Their industry was decimated overnight, in the true sense of the term—one-tenth of it was washed away. I will say some more about that event a little later, but it was a stupid mistake with terrible consequences.

In 2013 we set about rebuilding trust in the industry and we established ESCAS, the Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System, which is aimed at making sure that the places that receive our live animals treat them in the same manner that they would be treated if they entered the slaughter lines in Australia. This demand by Australia—that if you want to get Australian livestock you have to meet these standards—has had a knock-on effect for all animals that are slaughtered pretty much all over the world, certainly in the markets that import Australian livestock, because, as facilities are upgraded, local stock are treated in the same manner. Those of us in the industry know that if you treat animals correctly, if you keep stress levels down, you'll actually end up with a better product at the end of the chain. So, if countries and recipients of Australian animals don't do the right thing, they don't get the livestock. They have to shut down until they can comply with the ESCAS. So that's been a really good development, and it has made a lot of changes. We've seen a lot of investment in our markets where better slaughter facilities have been put in place.

Some very disturbing footage of the Awassi Express 2017 voyage was aired in 2018. I note the comments of the member for Barker, who has thrown some doubt on these images. I guess that's a game that has to be played out. He says he has information—and perhaps the member for O'Connor also has information—that he believes is a smoking gun. Whether or not those accusations, if you like, will be proved, we will know in time. But I just note that he, at least, has made those comments.

We're moving to bring in new requirements for shipping, by, firstly, increasing the space that live sheep will enjoy when they are on the transport vessels, and we have eliminated shipping in the northern summer. This has led, at least anecdotally from the advice I'm getting, to better results than we were achieving even before that time. On the mortality rate, I note that, for the year to date, it is 0.61 per cent, which is the lowest in a decade and which would indicate we are making further ground. I know there are some figures that will imminently be tabled by the minister—perhaps in the other place, given that's where the minister sits—and I'm pretty confident, or I'm hopeful, that those figures will be lower again. I was with a pastoralist today, who was here in Canberra on other issues. He's a friend of mine. He has 130,000 sheep, and when he heard the figure of 0.61 per cent he said, 'That's pretty much like they are in the paddock.' We teased that out a little bit more and he said, 'No, perhaps it's a bit higher if they're in the paddock.' But it probably aligns pretty accurately with an intense livestock handling period such as you might get at shearing time. So, if we can get those kinds of results on a vessel, as opposed to other times, I think we are making real ground in this space. As I said, I believe we will continue to improve on those particular outcomes.

My state of South Australia supplies about 15 per cent of the trade, and there have been statements in this place saying that the trade is in decline. Well, it has declined a bit over 10 years, but it is far from being in a spiral of extinction.

Debate interrupted.