Senator LUDWIG: I present the bills and move:

That the following bills be introduced: A Bill for an Act to amend the law relating to long service leave in the black coal mining industry, and for related purposes—Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Legislation Amendment Bill 2011; and a Bill for an Act to amend the social security law, and for related purposes—Social Security Legislation Amendment (Family Participation Measures) Bill 2011.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a first time.

Senator LUDWIG (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General on Queensland Floods Recovery) (09:31): I present the explanatory memoranda and I move:

That these bills be now read a second time.

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

Leave granted.

The speeches read as follows—

COAL MINING INDUSTRY (LONG SERVICE LEAVE) LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 2011

This Bill gives effect to proposals, developed by an Industry Working Party, to reform the portable long service leave arrangements in the black coal mining industry. The Industry Working Party comprised of representatives from the NSW Minerals Council Limited, the Queensland Resources Council, the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union – Mining and Energy Division, the Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers Australia, the NSW Colliery Officials Association and the Mine Managers Association of Australia.

I commend the industry participants on their collaborative approach and their commitment to the future success of the unique black coal mining industry long service leave scheme.

This Bill will amend the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Act 1992, the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Payroll Levy Act 1992, the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Payroll Levy Collection Act 1992 and the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Amendment Act 2009.

Employees in the black coal mining industry have accessed portable long service leave entitlements under the terms of Federal Awards since 1949 which in turn were funded by an excise on coal production. Since 1993 the funding of entitlements has been through an employer levy scheme and administered by the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Corporation. Employers are reimbursed when they have made a payment to an eligible employee in respect of their entitlement.

A priority concern of the Industry Working Party was to ensure that the long service leave entitlement applied universally in the black coal mining industry. Amendments were made in 2009 to address this concern. Schedule 2 of the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Amendment Act 2009 extended the preserved award-based long service leave entitlements to all the eligible employees who did not otherwise have an award-derived long service leave entitlement from 1 January 2010.

While the 2009 amendments addressed the priority concerns of the Industry Working Party this Bill seeks to further the 2009 reforms by providing for the remaining proposals of the Industry Working Party.

The Bill legislates the minimum long service leave entitlement for all eligible employees in the black coal mining industry based on the precursor award entitlement. Provision is made for all eligible employees, whether full-time, part-time or casual, to accrue long service leave in the black coal mining industry. An eligible employee will be entitled to long service leave when they have completed a period, or periods, of qualifying service totalling 8 years or more.

A key imperative of the Industry Working Party proposals was to improve the operation of the scheme so that the amounts that employers are reimbursed from the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave) Fund in respect of long service leave payments more closely correspond to the amounts that they have paid into the Fund by way of levy. The Bill therefore changes the basis on which levy is imposed and facilitates changes to the employer reimbursement arrangements.

The Bill provides for a greater compliance role for the Corporation. The Corporation will have the power to require persons to produce information or documents and standing to pursue alleged contraventions of a civil penalty provision on behalf of the Commonwealth. Additional penalty provisions have been included and existing penalty levels have been increased in line with contemporary standards.

The Bill makes changes to the structure and representation of the Board of Directors of the Corporation to better reflect the current industry representative status of certain employee-representative and employer-representative groups, and to increase the terms of directors from 2 to 4 years.

The Bill also establishes a regime for transition from the award-derived long service leave scheme (preserved under section 113 of the Fair Work Act 2009 in respect of award employees and extended to non-award employees by Schedule 2 of the Coal Mining Industry (Long Service Leave Funding) Amendment Act 2009) to the new statutory long service leave scheme established by this Bill.

The government is happy to facilitate these amendments proposed by the Industry Working Party which will benefit both employers and employees in the black coal mining industry. 

I commend this bill.

SOCIAL SECURITY LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (FAMILY PARTICIPATION MEASURES) BILL 2011

The Bill introduces amendments to the Social Security Act 1991 and the Social Security (Administration) Act 1999 (the Administration Act) for the teenage parent and jobless families trials which were announced in the Building Australia’s Future Workforce package in the 2011-12 Budget. The trials will be implemented in ten disadvantaged locations across Australia. The Bill will be accompanied by a legislative instrument which will outline limited circumstances where a Parenting Payment recipient with a youngest child aged less than six years can be required to attend interviews and develop a participation plan with the Department of Human Services. For teenage parent trial participants, parents can also be required to do the activities set out in the participation plan. Trial participants who do not meet these new requirements can have their income support payment suspended until they comply. Once they comply their payment will be re-instated and they will receive full back-pay. Family Tax Benefit will continue to be paid even where income support is suspended.

Joblessness among families is a significant social and economic problem in Australia and Australia has one of the highest proportion of children living in jobless families in the OECD. There are currently some 257,000 jobless families with dependent children who are on income support and who have no reported income over the last year or more. Being in a jobless family where no adult has a job for a significant period of time is associated with higher rates of poverty, poorer health status and lower education attainment for both parents and their children.

There are around 11,000 teenage parents on Parenting Payment in Australia. Over 90 per cent of these parents do not have Year 12 education and over a quarter only have primary school as their highest level of attained education. There are some teenage parents who do very well for themselves and their children. However there is also clear evidence that becoming a teenage parent carries with it a greater risk of poor life outcomes for both parents and children.

These trials provide new services, opportunities and responsibilities to boost the educational attainment and job readiness of the parents, and to increase the wellbeing and development of young children. Improved family functioning is an expected outcome of the trials.

Currently, a parent on Parenting Payment who has a youngest child reach six years of age, must look for a job of at least 15 hours per week. If parents don’t do this, or if they don’t accept a suitable job that is offered to them, they can lose their income support for a period of time. But for parents on Parenting Payment with children younger than six years old, there are currently no participation requirements. As at the end of June 2011, there were some 323,000 parents on Parenting Payment with no participation requirements.

The Government recognises the important role that this group of parents plays in caring for their young children. But there are often many services in their local community that they could be using while they are parenting – many of which are free of charge - to improve their family’s life outcomes. This includes playgroups, preschool, TAFE courses, going back to school, attending baby health clinics and joining life skills programs such as cooking classes and financial management classes.

It is by making use of these services while their children are young that parents on welfare can improve their chances of being financially independent once their children are at school. Making use of these services also means their children are more likely to be school ready when they turn six years old. Making use of these services helps empower parents because they are exercising their right to use local community resources from which they can sometimes feel excluded.

By introducing requirements for teenage parent trial participants which mean they must access local services and attend activities, the Government is sending a clear message that it is the responsibility of the parent to make the most of opportunities available to them. The trial participants will be teenage parents in the ten locations who do not have Year 12 or equivalent, who have children who are not yet 6 years old, and who are in receipt of Parenting Payment. There will be some 4,000 teen parents in total participating in the trial. Teen parents must seek to attain Year 12 or equivalent via their participation in the trial.

Each of the trial locations will have specially tailored opportunities for teen parents to re-engage with education, including options for studying without having to put children into child care. There will be people who can help teenage parents to navigate the variety of services available, including for example, helping them enrol in a course or go along to an activity for the first time. The Government has invested in extra services (such as Youth Connections and Communities for Children) in the trial locations to make sure parents get the help they need to participate.

To parents in the jobless families trial (all of whom have either been on income support for at least two years or who are under the age of 23 and all of whom are not presently working nor studying while on income support and who have children who are not yet 6 years old), the Government is sending a very clear message that attending Centrelink interviews and workshops and developing a participation plan are important steps towards being work ready once children start school. There will be some 22,000 parents a year participating in the jobless families trial.

The Bill will make necessary changes to the social security law so that parents subject to the new requirements do not lose entitlement to other non-participation payments (such as Family Tax Benefit) due to failure to comply with the new requirements. Parents in the trials will not be subject to the jobseeker compliance framework.

It should be emphasised that parents who are particularly vulnerable will be assessed by Centrelink and offered more intensive support via Case Coordination. This new approach helps Centrelink better identify a parents needs and allows them to provide more appropriate referrals and better services at the time they are needed most. This support may also extend to exempting the parent from certain aspects of the trial for a period of time. The trials will be closely monitored to ensure they are effective and fair.

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

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

Senator SINGH (Tasmania) (12:45): I rise today to draw attention to some of the recent remarks of the Prime Minister, especially the EMILY's List Oration and 15thbirthday that we marked last week. The address that the Prime Minister gave to the Chifley Research Centre was entitled 'Labor in Australia is a movement'. I wish to recognise the importance of the decisions and the depth of the words the Prime Minister has delivered in recent weeks. While I do so as a member of the party led by the Prime Minister, as a supporter and as a colleague, I also do so equally as an Australian citizen who believes very strongly that the office of Prime Minister is one deserving of esteem and respect.

I am, I would presume like all Senators here, an avowed democrat with an interest in the history of the development of democracy in this country. In my short time thus far as a senator in this place, having had the opportunity to explore Canberra, I have been reminded that the role of parliament and government in this country has and continues to be central to the creation of a prosperous nation—a prosperous Australia. Our leaders, and we senators, all have a great responsi­bility, I believe, to lead as well as represent. Our words and deeds, especially those of the Prime Minister, are written into the fabric of our society, just as the words of our past leaders are inscribed on our national monu­ments and their deeds are reflected in the grand institutions of this city.

These marks that are etched into history, which remain relevant to any Australian of any time, necessarily speak to not just policy and the issues of the day but also the approach that those leaders have taken in their role at the most fundamental level. They speak to the most basic values that have guided the decisions of government and, in turn, guided the direction of Australian society. The enduring influence of these values is not always evident and not always discussed in the cut and thrust of the daily 24-hour news cycle or in the debates with which we most often occupy ourselves in this place. While sometimes the discourse of this chamber and the very great volume of our extra-parliamentary debate simply does not reflect that rich tradition and those great moments of change in Australian society, and although it is easy to be drawn into conversations of negativity, criticism or, worst of all, trivia, it is the case that great words and substantial deeds do still play a role in Australia's development. They do still play a role in Australian government. And we do have the fortune of having a leader of this country who carries the dignity of her office, who is committed to dealing with important things and who considers the values that will bear her and our mark on history—Labor values.

Last Tuesday, 13 September, the Prime Minister gave the inaugural EMILY's List Oration. EMILY's List is a movement designed to support progressive Labor women in achieving office. It is an organisa­tion which has enabled me, like so many other women on this side of the chamber, to take the opportunities of election that women were so long denied and where women are still underrepresented. The Prime Minister's speech was a reflection on the history of the women's movement and the extraordinary challenges that have been confronted and defeated by women who were determined, practical and brave.

The drivers of change have been women who held firm to their values but never detached them from the real tasks and actual situations of women in politics and in society. Their result—the signal of the success of the women's movement—has, in the words of the Prime Minister, been in 'taking the remarkable and rendering it unremarkable'. It is important, I think, to dwell on that sentence a short time. What it means is that whatever progress we make—and we have made considerable progress—we must remember that we always had to work hard. Those women and men, those leaders and ordinary people who believed in the right to the vote, to decent work, to fair pay and to a proper share of life's opportu­nities always had to strive to achieve what we can sometimes take for granted today.

The Prime Minister's oration was a reminder that there is still so much work to be done, that we cannot become complacent by assuming either that the task is done or that progress is inevitable. It never has been and it never will be, and we must be active in stamping out inequality wherever it exists in our society. I strongly support the Prime Minister's comments—comments which reflect the principles on which the Labor Party has always been based and by which Labor members like me have stirred and agitated and insisted. That is why the Labor Party are the party of reform and why the Labor Party fight for equality rather than sitting back and hoping that opportunity will simply trickle down against a backdrop of inequity, poverty or patriarchy.

This approach is captured in the title of another of the significant speeches the Prime Minister gave last week, 'Labor in Australia is a movement'. This was an address to the Chifley Research Centre, where again the Prime Minister made reference to Curtin's courage, which kept us free in times of war, and Chifley's convictions, which built a nation. I draw that to the attention of senators in this place, as I did in my first speech, because it is the values of Labor which guide us and which were reflected last week in those two significant addresses by the Prime Minister, both the EMILY's List Oration and the address to the Chifley Research Centre.

They are the values that will guide us into the future—the values of equality, oppor­tunity and respect for difference amongst us—as well as the recognition at all times that it is through the struggles of leaders past and present for those values that we find ourselves here today. They are the values that guide us as Labor senators and members and will guide us into the future. We need to hold dear those Labor values that, at a time when the news media are very much focused on negativity in regard to the issues of the day, do not bear the light they should.

The government are faced each day with the task of judging the public and the national interest; weighing public desires and perceptions, and expert advice; dealing with new challenges and unpredictable circum­stances; and dealing with situations in which the intentions and motivations of our leaders cannot always be fully expressed or achieved. In these situations, in the everyday administration and on the most momentous of occasions, our decisions are filtered through the prism of our values, and it is only fair that, in a democracy, our citizens know what those values are and on what basis we are acting.

Our vision for a better Australia is likely common to all in this place, although our values and approaches to government are often starkly different. I am proud that Australia has a Prime Minister who is willing to clearly articulate her values, whose values I share and whose values will reverberate not just through the halls and places in Canberra where speeches are made but also through the legacy of action with which they are imbued.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (12:55): My comments will dovetail quite neatly with those of Senator Singh, because the issues that I would like to speak of go very strongly to issues of equality as well—not just income or gender equality but asset equality. Of course, I am speaking about housing and housing affordability, because it is one of the things that many of us take for granted in Australia, and this has come from our history: we believe housing is a human right. Having a roof over your head and having sustainable and affordable tenure is something that we in Australia think of as a right. In the minds of many, housing has become just another asset class, just another property to be bought and sold in the great game of Monopoly. A number of trends have pushed it in this direction, and those two agendas are completely at odds. If you are an investor and you are looking for capital appreciation at a rate that is as high as possible, eight or 10 per cent a year, that is quite clearly going to completely contradict the aspirations of many people for affordable housing and for some stability in the housing market.

I welcomed the launch of the Australians for Affordable Housing campaign in this building on Monday. This is a coalition of over 60 national housing, welfare and community sector organisations who are calling on all levels of government to make the changes necessary to ensure that all Australians can find an affordable home. This is a group that is saying, loud and clear, that the problem of housing affordability has gone on for too long. Plenty of people have noticed it. The Australian government has noticed it. The opposition has noticed it. But it seems intractable. It is time to fix our housing system.

What is needed is a clear national plan to deliver affordable housing to all Australians, and the Australians for Affordable Housing alliance offer a six-point plan that goes directly to the heart of what is wrong with our housing system right now. The first thing that they ask for is investment in more low-cost rental housing, because the housing debate in Australia is skewed towards home­ownership. Obviously, homeownership is something that we in the Australian Greens support, and it is great for the people who can get into the market, but what about those who cannot? What about the entire gener­ation of people who have simply been priced out of homeownership? We also tend to forget the fact that so many people rent. Between 1996 and 2007, the number of affordable public housing properties shrank by 32,000, while the population grew by 2.8 million people. This is despite the record one-off $5.6 billion spend on social housing as part of the stimulus package which will deliver around 20,000 new social housing dwellings. We supported that initiative. I think it was one of the better parts of the stimulus package that the government, with the concurrence of the Greens, sought to make investments in public housing. It solved an issue in the building sector and got people back to work, but it also started to fill this enormous gap in unmet need.

The minister for social housing, Mark Arbib, said earlier this year in a speech that there was underinvestment of $3.1 billion by the previous government in social housing. He noted that the current housing shortfall was 90,000 homes, with 60,000 households in greatest need. That gap will rise to 150,000 by 2020, and the cost to meet that shortfall is $24 billion. But the Minister for Social Housing and Homelessness, who presides over 105,000 homeless people, says that the government does not have the money. There is no plan, there is no proposal, to plug that shortfall of $24 billion. He says it is up to the affordable housing sector to build it, it is up to the community housing sector, it is up to investors. He wants to leave it to the market to fix a market failure and chronic underinvestment by successive governments. The problem with this thinking—and the fear of government intervention that it seems to embody—is that the housing market is broken. It is not operating efficiently at the moment—unless you have six investment properties; then you would be doing reasonably well out of the increases in the housing market that have occurred over a decade or so. This is why we need long-term planning, funding and targets for social housing as a proportion of all stock based on housing need. The stimulus spend was absolutely welcome, but even the government and the minister concerned have acknowledged that it does not go nearly far enough because our private rental sector is partly what is out of control. The current gap is around 493,000 affordable and available rental dwellings for low-income earners. In the past five years, rents have risen at twice the rate of inflation. They have almost tripled in capital cities around Australia in the last decade. At the last census, 65 per cent of renters were experiencing housing stress and the next census will no doubt see this figure rise dramatically. We cannot just sit back while this happens.

We know that in our mining regions the boom has amounted to an unbelievable boom in rental prices. We think things are out of control in Canberra, Sydney and central Perth, but the median rent in Karratha and Port Hedland in Western Australia is now $1,500 to $1,700 a week. The rent in Gladstone in Queensland jumped 15 per cent in a year, and the situation is worsening as well in the so-called 'muscle towns' of Mackay and Townsville in Queensland and Whyalla in South Australia. So the people on the front line who are meant to be benefiting from the mining boom are actually doing the worst. Boom times come with a desperate shortage of housing to buy and rent. The only people who can afford to live in some of these communities now are people who are being subsidised by their employers. That is pricing key workers out of the market and it is making homelessness vastly worse. In the boom towns of the north-west—and I presume it is exactly the same in Queens­land—Aboriginal people and long-term residents of those communities can no longer afford to live there. They are flying in and flying out people to clean schools in Karratha and Dampier.

The second ask of the housing coalition that was launched this week is for financial assistance for low-income renters. This is probably the simplest and most obvious case to make. The current rates of Commonwealth rent assistance are simply nowhere near enough. In the last ten years, rent assistance has risen by about nine per cent, or $35, while rents across all major cities have increased by at least five per cent per year. So we are falling behind rapidly. In the last three years in Perth, rent for a two-bedroom unit rose by $100 a week, a lift of 40 per cent, at the same time as CRA is crawling upwards very slowly.

A single student who earns $377 a fortnight on Austudy gets an extra $119 a week in rent assistance. That is an income of $248 a week, yet median rents in capital cities are now $380. That leaves $58 for everything else. National Shelter and ACOSS have called for a 30 per cent increase across the board and for assistance to be pegged to regional rent variations. The Henry tax review calls for maximum rates of rent assistance for income support recipients to be substantially increased and linked to movements in market rents. It is essential that Commonwealth rent assistance pays some regard to what is happening in the rental market. Addressing the inequity and the gravity of the problem with our rent assistance is well overdue.

The third and fourth asks by the housing coalition are for more opportunities for low-income households and first homeowners to access home ownership. Particularly for people trying to get in as first home buyers, generational inequity has emerged in that the housing market has become warped beyond all recognition just in time for people of my age and younger to find themselves comple­tely locked out of the market. The income simply is not there. Hearing all these demands by big business for labour market flexibility makes it very difficult to contem­plate taking out a 20- or 30-year loan.

In the past decade, house prices have risen dramatically and have torn away from modest gains in income. The average house now costs seven times the average worker's wage. This is not how the situation was when people of my parents' generation were getting into the housing market for the first time. Even ten years ago it only cost four times the average worker's wage. In my home state, the median house price in the capital, Perth, was $535,617 in the June quarter. Prices are down two to three per cent recently, but that needs to be seen against the backdrop of a 222 per cent increase in Perth in the last decade. It is completely unrealistic for investors to think that that kind of capital appreciation can continue without warping the market beyond recognition. It is unsus­tainable, it cannot continue and it is strongly disadvantaging younger people.

The 2011 Bankwest Key Worker Housing Affordability survey showed 78 per cent of capital city local council areas were too expensive for key workers to buy a house in 2010. While we are used to having to deal with the idea of people in the lowest income quintiles not being able to afford houses anywhere near the areas where they work, this is affecting key workers and people on what we would consider to be medium incomes. The same report showed that not one of Perth's 291 suburbs is affordable to key workers, including people like teachers and nurses. Something is clearly and devastatingly wrong when key workers cannot afford to live anywhere in the city. Something is also wrong when only the very wealthy or people who are prepared to live further and further over the horizon at the edge of cities can even contemplate buying their own home.

The government response has been a demand stimulus, a handout to inflate the price of housing in the form of the $7,000 first home owners grant that has cost the country $13 billion to date. It is inflationary, regressive and despised by countless econo­mists, except unfortunately those in Treas­ury, who refuse to do any modelling on the impact of just handing over money which then passes straight through to an increase in house prices. What could have been done with $13 billion in genuine housing affordability initiatives or in help for people to get into their first home? For the same amount, we could have seen 43,000 actual houses built or 1.3 million National Rental Affordability Scheme incentives to increase supply rather than inflate prices as people bid up house prices without doing anything to increase supply.

Other incentives like the First Home Savers scheme and shared equity schemes are much more responsible and effective. WA is leading the way in some of these things—in a tentative way, but they are there with a shared equity scheme. Cooperative housing and community land trust models must also be given their time to shine. Maybe the era of fewer and fewer people living in larger and larger houses on the fringes of our great cities is coming to an end.

The housing coalition also have called for a change in the housing investment tax arrangements that drive up house prices. We are seeing investors crowding into the market, bidding up house prices against people trying to purchase their first home, and it is putting enormous distortions into the rental market as well. The Australian tax system provides the largest source of subsidy for housing consumption. Anyone interested in these impacts should read chapter 4 of A good house is hard to find: housing affordability in Australia, the report of the Senate Select Committee on Housing Affordability in Australia, which my colleague Senator Rachel Siewert made a huge contribution towards. Alternatively, they should read the sections on housing in the Henry tax review.

The Senate select committee investigated factors influencing the demand for housing and reported that the combined total of capital gains tax arrangements, land tax exemptions, negative gearing arrangements and so on is of the order of $50 billion per year. That is spread across the Common­wealth and state systems—$50 billion a year in concessions while we are spending something of the order of $2 billion or $3 billion a year on genuine housing afforda­bility initiatives across the country. The Greens have recognised this for many years. It is not a secret—the housing affordability peak bodies have been pointing this out for literally a decade or two.

We are an outlier in terms of how gener­ous our taxation system is towards housing owners, investors and even speculators. There are many more people who would stand to benefit from improving the fairness of our tax system and moving our investment towards affordable rental supply than there are people who would potentially lose out.

My final ask is about a subject that is a real bugbear for me and it is something that I have consistently raised since the last election because I find the government's reasoning absolutely incomprehensible. One of the lesser discussed impacts of the last election was the loss of a dedicated housing minister. We now have a machinery of government, for housing, that is just a scrambled egg—it is just a bowl of spaghetti—if you are trying to work out who is responsible for which parts of the housing portfolio. I do not understand why the environment minister is now responsible for housing affordability. I have asked many times why the portfolio was demolished and nobody is able to give me a sensible answer.

Former Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, was the first dedicated housing minister in Australia—certainly in recent political history. That was a key demand of the Greens in the run-up to the 2007 election. The Australian government responded to that and we got a housing minister who was competent, effective and compassionate. Australians deserve to have one person and one ministry responsible for providing safe, secure and affordable housing. This is not a comment on any of the ministers, like Senator Arbib, who suddenly found that housing was part of their portfolio. He is doing his very best with the resources that he has, but I do not think it is clearly understood, even in government, who is responsible for which bits of the portfolio. This is a key request of ours and I believe it is shared by the coalition. Certainly Senator Marise Payne has done an enormous amount of work on these issues. Just bring it back into a single portfolio so that we know where responsibility lies. Without a dedicated minister, I think there is very little hope for a housing strategy.

The launch of the Australians for Affordable Housing campaign on Monday was, I think, the beginning of a very import­ant conversation that we need to have in Australia to make sure that Common­wealth and state housing spending, and the way our tax system is structured, is not regressive—that it genuinely helps people to get into homes. Whether it is getting renters stable and secure tenure, getting first homeowners into homes or allowing people to move from one home to another without being beaten to death with stamp duty, there are so many issues that we need to take on. Let us get on with it.

Senator KROGER (Victoria—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate) (13:10): Support for the Gillard Labor government is unquestionably at an all-time low, with a dramatic slump in their primary support. We see that every week when we open the papers and see the latest Newspoll. The latest Newspoll released in the Australian shows that their primary support base has slumped to 26 per cent. I have to suggest that this might have something to do with—to put it in the words of the Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown—the 'consensu­al alliance' between the Greens and the Gillard Labor government. At this time of all-time low support for the Gillard Labor government, we now hear that the Treasurer, Mr Wayne Swan, has been awarded—well done, Wayne—the title of treasurer of the year by the London based magazine Euromoney.

Senator Crossin: On a point of order, Mr President: I believe the Treasurer deserves to be referred to in this chamber with his full and proper title.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fawcett ): Senator Kroger, please refer to the Treasurer by his complete title.

Senator KROGER: Thank you for that advice, Mr Acting Deputy President—I did refer to him as the Treasurer, Mr Wayne Swan. This so-called acknowledgement has left many commentators, I would suggest, and certainly many of us up here on Capital Hill, lost for words, I have to say, given that arguably the Treasurer's greatest achieve­ment to date has been to rack up a deficit of no less than $154 billion whilst turning $45 billion in the bank into a $110 billion credit card bill. This he seems to have accomp­lished with little effort. He does not seem to have had to put a lot of effort into this achievement—

Senator Sherry interjecting—

Senator KROGER: In fact, Senator Sherry, it is one of the things that you have done extremely well. We have seen—

Senator Sherry interjecting—

Senator KROGER: You see—you just scratch the surface a little and those sitting on the other side get very agitated about this. We have seen a historic level of government incompetence and mismanagement which has seen billions of dollars of Australians taxpayers' money flushed down the toilet.

With the surplus that was left by the former Howard-Costello government, Treas­urer Wayne Swan went on a spending spree in the pursuit of stimulating the economy. We have acknowledged that the purpose of it was to—in his words—'stimulate the econ­omy'. But he did it seemingly without any consideration for value for money or long-term benefits for Australia. I remind this chamber—with Senator Mason here, because he has prosecuted the case very effectively in this chamber—about the waste and misman­agement and total lack of consideration in formulating the so-called Building the Education Revolution. That program saw a focus on flash new school halls—sparkling amenities—but no real public policy consideration of how that would actually raise the education levels of our kids. It has not raised education standards and we have seen that in the recent results. It has had no impact on the education standards achieved by Australian students.

Let us not forget the Green Loans scheme and the pink batts debacle. We are still paying for that debacle and there are still to this day many households with electrified roofs. Then there is the shambolic way in which they are still dealing with the asylum seeker crisis. We discuss in this chamber every day this appalling state where we have a flotilla of boats coming to this country, and it is costing taxpayers an extra billion dollars a year just to maintain the status quo without actually fixing the problem. We are not going to the root of the problem—we have a continuing crisis in this area and the whole thing is being dealt with in a shambolic way.

Indeed, one can only congratulate the Treasurer for this accolade given the extraordinary financial recklessness of this government. What a great achievement it is. I would encourage those listening to this broadcast today to google the recipients of Euromoney honours. It makes for interesting reading. We find former awardees include corporations such as Lehman Brothers who, as we know, went belly up in 2007, taking the hard-earned cash of many Americans with them. It was the largest bankruptcy in US history. So the Treasurer, in being given this award, is amongst very distinguished company. The global financial services firm Morgan Stanley and the megabank Citigroup have both received honourable mentions, and yet they were bailed out by the US govern­ment in the latter stages to prevent their collapse. Whilst I would not suggest I am any soothsayer, I do not think that the Treasurer is necessarily standing in very good company.

Given the economic climate around the globe, who would have been possible contenders for this award? It is a reasonable question to ask.

Senator Mason: It could have been the Assistant Treasurer.

Senator KROGER: It could have been the Assistant Treasurer. He could have been considered. In addition to the Assistant Treasurer, they could have considered the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner. He is facing the challenge of finding no less than US$3 trillion, at current exchange rates around A$2.9 trillion, in new deficit cuts to make sure that the US credit rating will not be downgraded any further. Then we have Giulio Tremonti, the incum­bent Italian finance minister who has presided over that country's credit rating downgrading. Italy, as we know, currently carries a public debt of €1.9 trillion, or A$2.56 trillion, a portion of which must be refunded each year through the sale of government bonds. Then we have the Greek finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, who is staring down the barrel of the financial gun and relies on the agreement of the Euro­pean Union to ensure that the Greek econo­my does not experience a total collapse.

Even more financially stable countries such as Germany, France and Japan all face the challenge of protecting their own econ­omic stability by bailing out other countries and dealing with the consequences of significant natural disasters which require huge financial reserves to complete their individual rebuilding task. So, compared with the rest of the world, Australia is indeed a fortunate country, with its continuing mining boom, but we must not take the situation for granted or be complacent. Our current circumstances do not mean that this government should think it can have an open chequebook for the things it is trying to ram through this parliament, including the introduction of a carbon tax. Our current circumstances should not be taken for granted, and it is the responsibility of this government to ensure that the necessary measures are taken to increase Australia's productivity, particularly in the manufact­uring and service industries.

I know Senator Mason will be surprised by this, but the Treasurer, Mr Swan, has clearly benefited from the heavy lifting done by the former Howard-Costello government. We know it took the former Treasurer, Peter Costello, 10 years to pay back the $96 billion Labor debt from the Hawke-Keating years.

Honourable senators interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fawcett ): Order! Senators Sherry, McEwen and Mason: under standing order 197, a senator shall not be interrupted except to make a point of order.

Senator KROGER: Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. It is always very impressive when the chair knows and can quote the standing orders. Those on the other side have been getting a bit agitated about the due deference paid to former Treasurers who actually understood how to grow surpluses. It took Peter Costello 10 years to pay back that $96 billion of Labor debt that had been ratcheted up so easily during the Hawke-Keating years. The recipient of this award should be the former Treasurer, Peter Costello, who knew what it meant to apply financial discipline and responsibility to the task. That provided the basis for the current economic situation that the government enjoys. Euromoney magazine has commen­ded Mr Swan for his careful stewardship of Australia's finances and economic perform­ance, both during and since the global financial crisis. But this is not the full story, as the Australian newspaper so rightly pointed out in its editorial today, 21 September 2011. It states:

Mr Swan can claim credit for recognising—

Senator Crossin: What kind of research is that?

Senator KROGER: We know that you have issues with the media—the media properly scrutinising what you do—but, Senator, it might pay you and help your understanding—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fawcett ): Order! Senator Kroger, please address your remarks through the Chair. Senator Crossin, you will appreciate your opportunity to speak in silence in less than four minutes.

Senator KROGER: Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I quote from the Australian:

Mr Swan can claim credit for recognising the threat of the global financial crisis and responding quickly, particularly through cash injections, to stave off recession. However, much of the later rounds of stimulus spending was ill-targeted, poorly administered and unproductive. The resources boom, fuelled by continued Chinese demand, the rapid depreciation of the dollar via our floating currency and the aggressive easing of monetary policy by the Reserve Bank, as well as the stability of our financial sector, insulated us from the worst of the crisis.

I do not read too much in that about the contribution that the Treasurer has given to this whole situation. While we know that this government will take the credit for anything, and if I was them I probably would too, given their appalling track record on the governance of so much since they have been in office, recognition must be directed to the former government's handling of the economy and to former Treasurer Peter Costello for the way in which he set up this country so that it ensured us some protection against any vulnerabilities or unstable global economic challenges. The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, has presented us with fudgy budgets. He has promised to return the budget to surplus while borrowing $135 million a day to service the current debt. That is $135 million a day that every taxpayer will have to pay back before a single cent is saved for the government in the future.

After the categorical ruling out of 'There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead' by Prime Minister Gillard, we know how committed the Labor government is to its election promises. We know what it does with its pledges: it bins them. It has no credit and integrity in this regard whatsoever. The answer to this government's financial irre­sponsibility, and its total spending spree, is to raise more money by introducing more taxes. We see this again now and we will see it with the mining tax, which is the next thing the government wants to bring on the agenda.

Senator Sherry: Bring it on. Bring on the mining tax.

Senator KROGER: Its answer to fixing problems is more taxes. It does not understand what financial management is all about. It is terrific to see Senator Sherry join us because he may learn a thing or two about this. (Time expired)

Senator CROSSIN (Northern Territory) (13:26): It was with immense pride a few weeks ago that I helped to welcome our troops back to Australia and also took part with our community in the opening of a new memorial to our veterans in the heart of Palmerston. On Saturday 3 September we witnessed a magnificent sight when hundreds of service men and women marched through the streets of Darwin, welcomed back by thousands of friends, family and members of our very supportive Top End community. The Australian Army Band Darwin provided the marching music as the seemingly endless line of troops moved from The Esplanade down Mackey Street. Joining the troops on parade was Digger, the riderless horse, with boots in the stirrups that, in accordance with tradition, are pointing to the rear, which represents the fallen soldiers, not marching with their comrades but not forgotten.

Following the marching troops rolled the armoured fighting vehicles that provide a symbolic example of their vital overwatch, direct fire, and protective work on opera­tions. This was an impressive sight but it was also a real buzz for the families and the children lining the streets, waving Territory and Australian flags and dressed in yellow T-shirts, provided by the Northern Territory government, that said 'Welcome Home'.

The ADF was represented at the welcome home parade by the Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison AO—and I take this opportunity to publicly congratulate him on his appointment and say I enjoyed immensely the opportunity that I had on that day to chat with him about his new role—also, the Commander of the 1st Division, Major General Rick Burr DSC, AM, MVO and the Commander of the 1st Brigade—a great friend of Darwin and the Top End's Defence community—Brigadier Fergus McLachlan AM, ADC. These three very distinguished leaders of our armed forces joined local, Territory and federal representatives in welcoming home approximately 1,300 of our troops who have recently finished their overseas operational service.

Their distinguished service included operations in Afghanistan as part of the Mentoring Task Force 2. This task force was made up of engineers, mechanised infantry and cavalry from Darwin based units. MTF 2 made an invaluable contribution to security in Oruzgan by patrolling further and support­ing more Afghan National Army—ANA—elements than any other previous task force. These partnering operations and mentoring will enable the ANA to take increasing responsibility for security in their own country. There was also the Artillery Train­ing Team, Kandahar, who have been training members of the ANA in artillery and the required numeracy and literacy that is needed to perform the task of an artillery operator. Also included was the combined team in Oruzgan, which is part of the team running operations led by the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, based in that province. There were also troops from Special Operations Task Groups 13 and 14, which included members of the Darwin based 1st Armoured Regiment. We also welcomed home the members of Force Communications Unit 4, who were support­ing operations in Afghanistan with vital communications links.

The majority of the troops being welcomed home had been serving in Afghanistan. However, the parade also provided an opportunity to welcome home members of Australian Security Detachment 17, who were guarding the Australian Embassy and embassy staff in Baghdad, Iraq. We also welcomed back members of Timor-Leste Task Group 2, including soldiers from the Darwin based 1st Combat Engineer Regiment and our fantastic Active Australian Army Reserves from reserve units throughout Australia. Again, task groups need communications, and Force Communi­cations Element 4, made up of members of our Darwin based 1st Combat Signals Regiment, was also welcomed home after serving in Timor-Leste, our close neighbour.

The march was very well attended. There was almost a carnival atmosphere as people lined the streets and applauded constantly. They were so proud of the display of the service men and women from our Defence Force. I want to place on record my thanks to the Darwin City Council for the immense work that was undertaken in organising and hosting this parade and the great reception for some of the members of the Defence Forces and their families after the parade.

The following day—the Sunday—we headed out to Palmerston, where hundreds turned out to again welcome home the troops, in particular the 1st Brigade troops, who are based at Robertson Barracks—or Robbo Barracks, as we call them locally. This also involved the dedication of Palmerston Memorial Park, featuring the newly installed memorial walls. The guard was provided by the 1st Armoured Regi­ment, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Scott Winter. The regiment is to be congrat­ulated on its fine drill and professional turnout on that day.

I had the privilege of reading a message from the Prime Minister expressing our nation's thanks for the efforts of the troops and paying special tribute to Corporal Richard Atkinson and Sapper Jamie Larcombe, who made the supreme sacrifice in Afghanistan. Their family members were present on that day, and I know that the community appreciated their presence. I hope they were reminded from that day of the support they get from a community such as Darwin during this horrific time of grief they are going through. These two 1st Brigade soldiers were killed in Afghanistan while serving with Mentoring Task Force 2, and another eight were wounded.

Thanks to the City of Palmerston for hosting this great occasion and to Mayor Robert McLeod for allocating the space for the memorial park and for acknowledging the millions of dollars the federal govern­ment has provided through various grants, which have produced great results for the Palmerston community. In fact, on that day we acknowledged $4,000 from the Depart­ment of Veterans' Affairs for the construct of the memorial walls, more than $2 million for local infrastructure in and around Palmer­ston, $70,000 for playground equipment for the Palmerston community and $62,000 for the upgrade of the memorial park—and I have to say, that wall just tops off the atmosphere generated in that space.

The mayor was persistent in previous months and years in pressuring us and insisting that we gift to the Palmerton City Council a retired Army Leopard tank, which now provides a great focus front and centre in that park. It signifies the close relationship between the city and the military. The memorial park has become a place where all of us in Palmerston can remember our troops—our friends and our fellow commu­nity members—who have served our nation, particularly those who have given their lives in the service of our nation. Their names, of course, were the first to be transcribed onto that memorial wall.

Thanks to the Deputy Mayor and master of ceremonies, Geoff Carter CSM, a great friend. Thanks also to Chaplain Michael Quested; the Australian Army Band and the Palmerston City Concert Band; the City of Palmerston elected members and officers; the Australian Navy Cadets; the police from the Palmerston station; St John Ambulance; and the hundreds of members of the Defence Force, the veteran community and the wider community, who were there with their proud family members and friends. They made these events such a special occasion and a special event for that weekend in Darwin and Palmerston.

At a recent memorial service at Robertson Barracks, 1st Brigade Commander Brigadier Gus McLachlan said:

Today will be a very proud day for our soldiers, but it is also a day in which they will reflect on those who did not come home. Our thoughts go out to the families of those soldiers today, and to all service families who have been touched by war.

One of these families was the family of Private Scott Palmer, and we were honoured by their attendance at the welcome home parades. Scott was one of the Australian commandos killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. His parents laid a wreath at the Palmerston memorial service. Scott grew up in Katherine and is now one of the Territory's greatest home-grown heroes. The fallen are eternally remembered in this place. As the Prime Minister said in her message to the returned troops, 'a grateful nation wishes you a well deserved respite.'

We are extremely proud of our Defence presence in Darwin and Palmerston. We are glad to have the troops back on home soil. The Defence presence is very significant indeed, and recent large-scale exercises and international visits reinforce this fact. The Navy, the Army and the Air Force all have significant establishments in Darwin and Palmerston, including Larrakeyah Barracks, Robertson Barracks, Defence Berrimah and the RAAF Base Darwin. Billions of dollars are spent in the Top End on defence, particu­larly on defence housing. The permanent live-in accommodation for single soldiers, sailors and airmen at Larrakeyah Barracks will soon be replaced with 230 new apart­ments onsite, and 97 new houses are underway in a separate $63.8 million project at Larrakeyah for Defence families. At Robertson Barracks, the 1st Brigade soldiers, many of whom we have just welcomed back, will not be missing out, with 680 apartments being built in the accommodation upgrade. Businesses across the Top End are benefiting significantly from the government's housing plan in Darwin, and these investments in Defence Housing in Darwin will provide more than 900 jobs for Territorians. Over 500 houses in the suburbs of Lyons and Bellamack have been completed, with more underway in the new and emerging suburbs of Johnston and Muirhead.

I reinforce this government's commitment to point out that Defence is such an integrated and appreciated part of our community and we are investing in improved conditions for single members and families to make their stay in the Territory as comfortable, as enjoyable and as long as possible. Defence contributes more than $800 million a year to the gross state product in the Northern Territory and stimulates an additional 4,500 non-Defence jobs in local business. Strategically important and valued in our community, our servicemen and servicewomen are integrated and apprecia­ted, and we continue to seek new ways to support our Defence families and members in the Northern Territory.

With me here in the chamber today is Warrant Officer Gary Wight. I will not embarrass him and wish him happy birthday! Warrant Officer Wight has been in the Navy since 1987 and currently proudly serves on HMAS Darwin. He is with me in my office this week as part of the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program, a program which I wholeheartedly support. I have participated in it a number of times, probably not as successfully as I would have liked. It reinforced to me that I have chosen well in not having a career in the Defence Force. I am clearly the one who would lag behind each and every time—although I was pretty good at peeling three kilos of potatoes when I served on the patrol boat for a couple of days. That part I managed to do quite well.

I want to take this opportunity to reinforce how we value the work and the contribution that these service men and women provide in our community. To our returning troops, I say: welcome home. You are respected and appreciated, and I thank you for your service. As the Prime Minister said in her speech on that day, your courage, your dedication and your selfless service will not be forgotten. A grateful nation wishes you a well-deserved respite.

Senator WILLIAMS (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (13:39): I rise today to talk on a most important issue that faces our nation, and that is the issue of people being ripped off by people laundering money, taking people's life savings and leaving them homeless and in dire financial straits. I refer to a story in the Age by journalist Adele Ferguson, a courageous journalist who, in my opinion, always speaks the facts. In her story, Ms Ferguson says:

In the summer of 2006, when swimming pool cleaner John Nicoll realised he had lost his life's savings in a get-rich investment scheme gone wrong, thoughts of revenge consumed him.

…   …   …

"I trusted him," Nicoll says of business man Ian Lazar. He blames Lazar for stripping him of his life choices. … Nicoll and dozens of investors had placed their trust in Lazar and his seemingly well-credentialled companies.

…   …   …

BACF—

the BA group of companies—

engaged in managed investment schemes but quickly went on to cost self-funded retirees in Australia at least $15 million, with many losing their homes, their retirement savings and their marriages.

…   …   …

The BA companies were put into liquidation in 2005 after complaints from investors and ASIC's investigation found BACF was operating an unregistered managed investment scheme.

…   …   …

The Nauru government eventually paid out more than $8.5 million, but investors saw none of it.

Documents filed with ASIC and to creditors reveal that the liquidator, Andrew Wily of Armstrong Wily, took an estimated $1.6 million in fees between 2005 and September 2008, law firm Nikolaidis & Company was paid $2.1 million at September 29, 2007, a litigation funder that was set up in a tax haven in Vanuatu with no visible directors was paid $3.1 million in commission, and $1 million was paid to a Lazar-related company, HLBC.

Mr Wily was appointed liquidator in 2005. Wily appointed notorious debt collector and former financial adviser to Alan Bond, Jim Byrnes. Some of you may have heard of Jim Byrnes.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells: Yes, I have, Senator Williams.

Senator WILLIAMS: It says in this story, Senator Fierravanti-Wells:

BIG Jim Byrnes (right) has been bankrupt, served time in prison for the deemed supply of heroin, been banned by ASIC from running companies and had a judge accuse him of having a notorious reputation as a standover man and associate of major criminals.

Mr Wily also appointed Sydney lawyer Leon Nikolaidis while Nikolaidis was on bail over allegations of criminal fraud. This article, from the Melbourne Age of Saturday, 11 September, also says:

BANNED lawyer Leon Nikolaidis, who was sentenced to jail in 2007 for falsifying documents, was the solicitor of choice in many of liquidator Andrew Wily's cases.

I quote another of Adele Ferguson's stories:

Luring risk-averse investors, with the promise that their investments would be fully secured by mortgages and with plenty of equity, the BA group—

Ian Lazar's group—

failed to provide such security.

Of the investors who were interviewed by BusinessDay, none received the promised securities.

This is another glaring example of how the Australian Investments and Securities Commission—the regulator—can't be relied upon to protect investors, despite numerous complaints.

I instigated an inquiry into the liquidating industry and insolvency practitioners two years ago, and the report of that inquiry, from all sides of the parliament, was scathing about ASIC for not doing their job properly. They are the corporate watchdog. It is up to them to see that corporations play by the rules, do the right thing and see that financial products out there in the marketplace are not simply cars without brakes, in which people go down hills, crash into trees and destroy themselves. That is the problem I have with ASIC. I will continue:

For many years, victims of crime have been protected by a charter of victims' rights enshrined in legislation—

this is from Adele Ferguson's story—

so that they are to be informed of the progress of their complaints, likely outcomes and reasons for decisions not to prosecute by police. In the case of ASIC, its policy is not to discuss progress of complaints, not to inform victims of decisions, and not to inform victims whether or not their complaints will be, or are being, acted upon. This policy allows them to hide many deficiencies and leaves victims in limbo.

I have a summary here from David Nicholson in a statutory declaration, sworn on a Bible, of course. David and his wife invested $100,000 with Ian Lazar, who was promoting risk-free investments secured by real property. Steven Brown of Etienne Lawyers arranged with his client Ian Lazar to take David's money as payment for fees owed in other matters. Mr Nicholson volunteered to go on the committee of inspection in the subsequent liquidation of Lazar's companies. The liquidator appointed by Lazar, firstly, and then later by ASIC was Andrew Wily of armstrongWily in Sydney. Wily enlisted Jim Byrnes to recover debts owed to the companies. Wily appointed Leon Nikolaidis as a solicitor. At the time Wily appointed him, Nikolaidis was awaiting trial for fraud and was subsequently convicted, jailed and struck off as a solicitor.

Mr Nicholson made several complaints about Wily's conduct to ASIC, with no response. No surprise. Wily appointed a litigation fund that appears not to exist and agreed to pay it $3.3 million for doing nothing, as it turned out. Wily consumed around $9 million in his own fees and moneys paid to others. Ordinary creditors and investors got nothing.

It gets worse. I also have a sworn statutory declaration from Kevin Jacobsen OAM, a well-known Australian through the entertainment industry, brother of Col Joye. Kevin Jacobsen was awarded the Order of Australia medal in 1985. He is 77 years old and has been one of the world's top theatrical producers for nearly 40 years. His name will be well known to many Australians. Mr Jacobsen operated the Sydney Entertainment Centre for 26 years and brought many famous entertainers to Australia. Mr Jacobsen had a successful business but needed some assistance with a company dispute over the lease at the entertainment centre. Ian Lazar, whose birth name was Ian Rogut, was introduced by Achilles 'Al' Constantinidis as a trusted business adviser and litigation funder. Al Constantinidis was a partner in the piggery of a former prime minister, Mr Paul Keating.

Since the time that Kevin Jacobsen first met Lazar, which was less than one year ago, he has lost all his businesses and had all his trading companies placed in liquidation. He has had his car stolen by Ian Lazar. Mr Jacobsen told me how he told Mr Lazar that he would like to sell his Lexus. Lazar said, 'Give it to me. I am a licensed dealer. I will get rid of it.' He has not seen the car since or any money. He said, 'It has just disappeared like flatulence in the wind.' This is what we are facing.

Mr Jacobsen had $84,000 fraudulently charged to his AMEX card by Mr Lazar. He has lost access to all the funds paid to the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority to cover the breaking of the lease. Mr Jacobsen has lost a $6.1 million sale of rights over a musical because Mr Lazar has placed a false charge over Kevin Jacobsen Pty Ltd, the company involved which is now in liquidation.

Constantinidis also introduced Andrew Wily of armstrongWily to Jacobsen. Within one hour of arriving to meet Jacobsen at the entertainment centre, Wily's staff had emptied all the cash out of the ATMs, and the cash appears not to have been seen again. Wily then charged $250,000 in fees for six days work. Mr Jacobsen has no knowledge of any work carried out by Wily. Staff of armstrongWily emptied the safe and all the ATMs at the entertainment centre and have never accounted for the cash. Jacobsen says, 'I believe it to be around $150,000 in cold cash.' Lazar then put in a claim for $1.2 million against the proceeds of the settlement when no moneys are owed to him.

It gets worse. I will take you to the Webb family. Adam Webb and his family ran a successful company which had been operating for 25 years. They engaged a business adviser for restructuring by the name of John Brickwood who took over running of the company in September 2003. Brickwood's first act was to order staff to stop all payments to the ATO—group tax, company tax and superannuation guarantee levies. This information is all from sworn documents that I have here. These are not my words. Brickwood set about destroying the business and selling off the assets which the Webbs had built over their working lives. In December 2003 Brickwood told the Webbs he had a company that would provide 18 per cent interest on investment. Adam Webb's mother, father and sister invested $600,000 of their superannuation funds in this company. All funds were lost.

In March 2005, the company manager provided Adam Webb with a statutory declaration about a conversation on a boat which was jointly owned by Brickwood and—guess who?—liquidator Andrew Wily. Brickwood discussed involving Wiley in liquidating a number of Webb's related companies and Wily agreed his fee would be around $300,000. Brickwood also disclosed he had a relationship with other staff of armstrongWily, such as Tim Gillespie.

In 2004 Brickwood engaged Leon Nikolaidis to act for the Webbs. The same name appears again—the very solicitor who went to jail for fraud. Brickwood did not advise the Webbs that Nikolaidis was awaiting trial for a criminal matter for which he was subsequently convicted, jailed and struck off as a solicitor. Brickwood told Adam and Tony Webb in 2005 that Wily would be a friendly liquidator and would do what Brickwood wanted. After sale of a factory owned by Tony Webb where the purchaser paid $335,000 in GST, Brickwood placed that money in an unrelated company—Legal Response Pty Ltd—which he controlled. It was supposed to be paid to the tax office as BAS payments and GST. It has never been paid.

When armstrongWily was administering or liquidating Vertex Trading Australia Pty Ltd, Adam Webb told Wily that Brickwood had stolen $1.5 million from Vertex Trading Pty Ltd and transferred it to his own company, Alternative Business Solutions Pty Ltd. David Hurst from armstrongWily said they could not take any action to get back the stolen money as they were not in charge of Vertex Trading Pty Ltd. Adam Webb prepared a chart of estimated losses through Brickwood's conduct to the ATO which shows around $3.5 million has been lost to the Australian Taxation Office. The Webbs lodged formal and written complaints to ASIC, the IPA and the Institute of Chartered Accountants about Wily. They received no assistance from any of these bodies, and that is no surprise to me. Time is against me to continue with other rotten deeds—about Mr Burt, who admitted to taking $600,000, losing it and saying he would pay it back. But now he just works for DoCS out at Wagga Wagga. I have a letter to table, where he agreed on taking the money, but ASIC says there will be no further investigations on him.

The word has got out that I was going to make this speech. A couple of days ago I got an email from Cambridge Law about me making this speech in the parliament. It states:

If, despite this notice, you elect to make reference to our client in parliament, then we confirm we have instructions to both make formal complaints to the office of the Prime Minister—

who cares—

ICAC—

doesn't cover us—

as well as to a variety of other entities and outlets so that your conduct can be investigated.

That is from Raed Rahal, Cambridge Law, who have offices in Sydney, Dubai, Damascus and Baghdad. Mr Raed Rahal, my message to you is: I do not give a rodent's backside what you think and I will say what I want in this place when it comes to highlighting white collar crime and the destruction of people's lives.

I could go on with many of these things but I will say this: I look forward to talking to the Federal Police this afternoon to give them this file of documents. It is time this country had a royal commission into white collar crime. I believe it is systematic, it is growing and innocent people are losing their livelihoods from crooks. I seek leave to table these affidavits and those Adele Ferguson documents and to incorporate them in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The documents are avai l able from the Senate Table Office.

Senator WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. You will hear more about this in the future.

Senator MOORE (Queensland) (13:54): Mr Acting Deputy President, in the short time available I wanted to make some com­ments about the recent visit to this place by the Micah team. Micah, as you know, come here regularly to remind parliamentar­ians about the importance of poverty in our world and to keep us on track in looking at the issues of the Millennium Development Goals. The theme of this particular visit—they come with a theme each time—is 'WASHing Away Poverty'. Micah have prod­uced another marvellous document, which I really hope people will take and read, which looks at the important issues of water, sanitation and hygiene and how they affect communities. This is focused on millennium development goal No. 7. I know everyone in this place knows all of the Millennium Development Goals and to what they refer.

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene program, referred to as the WASH program, looks at how water and sanitation operate and how we need to fund these areas in developing countries. The scary statistics show that globally there are about 2.6 billion people living without access to basic sanitation and 884 million people living without access to safe drinking water. The consequences are extremely serious. The World Health Organisation estimates that providing access to WASH could prevent 28 per cent of child deaths or, in other words, save the lives of more than two million children every year. While children may be the most affected by inadequate WASH, the diagrams provided in this document show how the issues of water—something we take for granted in this country—can impact on all the other elements which are counted towards poverty in this world.

We have a clear commitment to this process. One of the things that the United Nations General Assembly said when they were looking at the Millennium Develop­ment Goals was:

Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights.

Strong words. I think in our country we have become almost inured to the idea that water and sanitation are available. But that is not the case overseas. That is one of the things that, through the Millennium Development Goals, we are examining and looking at progress—and there have been good news stories. Certainly we should celebrate those as well as looking at where we can do better.

I was really fortunate earlier this year to go to several countries in Africa through the Joint Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade delegation. Senator Mark Bishop and Senator Russell Trood, who was with us in the last term, were on that trip as well. We were amazed at the amount of work that AusAID was doing on the issues of water and sanitation in a number of countries. We went to visit areas in Zimbabwe, in Harare, in areas that were looking at developing good plumbing and basic amenities in the region. Not only was AusAID working with local people in putting the plumbing together—and perhaps I have too close a view of being in that place—they were involved with local theatre groups, so there were education programs funded by AusAID which gave, in theatre, information to the community about how sanitation operates. I truly believe that theatre and engagement in that way is better than every speech that has ever been made. We could see how the kids in the area were learning about good sanitation and cleanliness programs by being engaged with people who were entertaining. That is part of the AusAID program. That is where the people who came to see us through Micah were saying, 'Yes, we have been doing well, but we need to do more,' and there is a claim that we should look at greater expenditure through AusAID, and that needs to be considered.

I know that Micah met with AusAID and also the minister's office to talk about a number of things, including how money can best be spent. One issue is the need to separate the issues of clean water and the issues of sanitation. Everybody knows about the need for clean water and there have been great successes. But as Bob McMullan put it—I remember Bob making this comment—while people are really keen to be around good news stories about clean water, perhaps they are not as keen to be photographed beside toilets.

That was proven wrong yesterday when a whole range of parliamentarians from both houses were very keen to be photographed in various positions around a very large toilet. I have to admit I was not brave enough to climb up on top, as we saw Mr Oakeshott and others do. But by putting the focus there, the issue of having effective sanitation is an important aspect for all of us, and through our aid program we can move to do better.

The message from Micah is that we cannot forget our responsibilities. When you see the joy that effective clean water services and sanitation can bring to kids at school and to communities, that is a message for all of us. I say to the Micah team: keep coming and putting us on track and showing us where we have done well; but, more importantly, keep showing us what we can do better.

Senator XENOPHON (South Australia) (15:01): Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Only Australian Disability Enter­prises that are funded in part by the federal government use the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool. Given that this means that some intellectually disabled workers are being paid as little as $1 per hour, will the government implement the supported wage system that other employers of disabled people use and which pays more, appropri­ately based on productivity?

Senator CHRIS EVANS (Western Australia—Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (15:04): Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.

Senator BRANDIS (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (15:05): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Senator Carr) to a question without notice asked by Senator Cash today relating to asylum seekers and offshore processing in Nauru.

This morning in the House of Representa­tives the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship introduced amendments to the Migration Act to try to repair the collapse of the government's border protection policy as a result of the decision of the High Court three weeks ago. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Abbott, announced that the opposition would support that bill, which is quite a detailed bill, provided that the government acceded to one short amendment that the opposition will move. The purpose of that amendment is to instate Nauru as an offshore processing country.

Quite unbelievably, the government, rather than reach out to the opposition—whose cooperation the government has sought and whose cooperation has been freely offered—the Prime Minister refuses to accept that amendment. What does that tell you about the government? This is a government that refuses to consider the only option—offshore processing in Nauru—that has ever solved the problem of unlawful asylum seekers coming to Australia. The only option they refuse to consider is the only option that has ever worked. How can anybody take seriously the good faith of the government on this matter, faced with a catastrophic collapse of their policy?

There is a reason, and it is a very ignoble reason, why the only option they refuse to consider is the only option that has ever worked. It is because, if they were to do so, they would be conceding that the opposition had it right all along. And the one thing this Prime Minister's pride will not ever let her do is to concede that the government got it wrong and the opposition got it right.

Mr Deputy President, let me just remind you that, when the Pacific solution, based on offshore processing in Nauru, was introdu­ced in 2001, the number of unlawful arrivals dwindled to a negligible number. In the following six years, there were 18 boats, an average of three per year throughout the period that the Nauru processing centre was in operation. Why was that? Because it did break the people smugglers' business model, because only 43 per cent of the people who were processed in Nauru ended up in Australia. A majority of those people who sought to put themselves and their families into the hands of the people smugglers so that they could get to Australia failed to do so. There were 1,637 people in all processed on Nauru, of whom only 705 were resettled in Australia having been assessed as genuine refugees—43 per cent.

Senator Pratt interjecting—

Senator BRANDIS: If you doubt that figure, Senator Pratt, it comes from a press release by Mr Bowen, your colleague, on 2 February 2010. Given that there is a proven solution to this problem, why then, when the opposition is moving an amendment to enable the government to reinstate that proven solution to the problem, would a government be so blind, so pig-headed, so stubborn, so arrogant, so consumed with overweening pride, as to say to a cooperative opposition: 'No. The one thing we won't do is take your successful idea on board as our policy, because it was your idea and to adopt it would mean admitting our failure'?

Senator FEENEY (Victoria—Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) (15:10): I think in those few moments we got a taste of the arrogance that is driving the position of the coalition in this debate, an arrogance which means—

Opposition senators interjecting—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order on my left!

Senator FEENEY: Thank you, Mr Deputy President. We are accustomed to the fact that the courtesies we offer the oppo­sition in these debates are not reciprocated, but the death stare is above and beyond the call!

What we have here is an act of sabotage from those opposite. They may well argue that Nauru is their solution. They are entitled to do so. But they do not seek to simply do that. After having strutted the political stage last week dressed in the clothing of biparti­sanship, having offered the Prime Minister all of the assistance that they could muster so that we can come to a joint solution, a bipartisan solution, around this terribly vexed question, what have we seen when the rubber hits the road? The simple answer to that is: sabotage.

The greatest fear in the breasts of those opposite is not that the Malaysian solution will fail but that it will succeed. Their greatest fear is that the boats will stop coming when the people-smuggling model is broken by the Malaysian solution. So what have those opposite constructed? They have constructed this fig leaf which is that they will only assist the government in amending the legislation insofar as it realises the policies of the coalition. We do not have this hubris in the debate. We are suggesting to the parliament that the legislation be amended so that offshore processing can be enabled. We do not seek to stipulate where that offshore processing happens.

Senator Brandis interjecting—

Senator FEENEY: The simple truth of it is, Senator Brandis, that, if in the future you and your colleagues form a government, you will come to this parliament with a piece of legislation very similar, if not identical, to that being put into the House of Representa­tives by the Labor Party. At that moment, your cynical sabotage in these days will come to the fore.

It is simply an outrage that those opposite will only amend the legislation insofar as it forces the government's hand in Nauru. Our proposition is a far more sensible one. Over 80 per cent of people start their journey to Australia in Malaysia. That is a matter of fact. We simply propose a Malaysian solution, the detail of which is out. Your clinging to the Nauru solution is a matter for you. You can take that to the people as you please, but what you should not be allowed to do is to escape this debate on the basis that, if the Labor Party government does not do what you want it to do, then it can do nothing. On the basis of that proposition, you will not only lose the public debate; you will also lose your pretence to the moral high ground. There is no moral high ground for you in this debate. You can either make good the pledge of the Leader of the Opposition and assist the government in coming up with a piece of legislation that enables offshore processing or, alternatively, you can cling to sabotage in the face of all logic. If you cling to sabotage in the face of all logic, then you will follow the road just set out by Senator Brandis. If you say that the government can only do offshore processing if it does it where you want, how you want, when you want, if that is the arrogant proposition you insist on putting to this parliament, then it will be you that has slain offshore process­ing. It will be at your feet that offshore processing fails.

We have negotiated with the countries in this region and we have done so in the context of preparing a proper framework. The Bali process has been a part of that. Part of the Malaysian solution is an enhanced commitment to the humanitarian and refugee intake. We are proud of the fact—and those opposite pretend that they are too—that this country takes some 13,500 refugees. Under the proposal put forward by this government, that would increase by a further 1,000 a year. That, we think, is a fine thing. The Malaysian solution not only enhances this government's and this country's response to refugees and increases the refugee intake but also means that we are working with our regional partners on a regional solution that tackles the people-smuggling model. We are taking away the product that those in Jakarta— (Time expired)

Senator HUMPHRIES (Australian Capital Territory) (15:15): I do not know where to start with that claptrap. I really do not. We are told that the opposition is engaged in an act of sabotage. I remind the parliamentary secretary that the government has sabotaged a succession of its own options for offshore processing before today. They wanted to go to East Timor because they wanted offshore processing. They did not talk to the East Timorese and it failed. They wanted to go to Manus Island. They have not thought that through. They wanted to go to Malaysia and they have only barely scraped that deal together. Even now, it is not clear whether that will work.

Senator Brandis: And it's illegal.

Senator HUMPHRIES: And it is illegal, according to the High Court. They claim they have regional partners. Name one. Name a regional partner. Some flimsy deal with Malaysia where they give us 4,000 of their asylum seekers and we give them 800 is not a regional arrangement. That is a bilateral deal between Australia and Malaysia which involves no other country. It is not regional at all.

Labor has cycled through a whole succession of failed policies and now finds itself in the position where its latest option is its only option. The only thing it will accept by way of offshore processing is the one option it needs the parliament to support and, not surprisingly, the parliament, as far as I can see, unanimously but for the Labor Party is saying, 'No, Malaysia is not an acceptable option. Malaysia is the worst possible option of all the options available to the government right now.'

We do not demand that they implement Nauru as the only place on which to have offshore processing. We think Nauru is the best place because we know Nauru works. Nauru worked for six years under the previous government, in combination with temporary protection visas and turning back the boats when safe to do so. But our amendment, the Nauru amendment before the House of Representatives at the moment, does not demand that only Nauru be accepted. It only demands that countries which are signatories to the convention on refugees be considered for offshore process­ing. There are 148 of those options.

The government knows that it is in a bind. The government knows that its preference of recent days for offshore processing now boils down to being prepared to be flexible, and it needs to make a decision. The opposition is not saying, 'No, they cannot have offshore processing.' The opposition is saying that they do have a way out of this dilemma. They can climb aboard the boat to freedom we are offering them, which is a proven method of turning back the people smugglers and deterring the business of people smugglers—and that is to accept that a country such as Nauru provides a valid and viable way of solving their present problem.

As Senator Brandis has pointed out, the only thing that stands between this government sinking into a morass of failure with respect to this matter and returning to a policy of onshore processing, which we know will lead to an explosion again in the number of boats arriving on our shores, and the only thing that stops them from grasping the solution in front of them is pride. It is pride that prevents them from acknowledg­ing that maybe, just maybe, John Howard had it right with the Nauru Pacific solution. Maybe he got it right. They have spent so much time and so much political capital knocking down the solution over a period of six or seven years that they now cannot bring themselves to say, 'Maybe he was actually right.'

The fact is that it is not our job in the opposition to sort out the mess that this government has got itself into with one failed policy after another in this area. But we are offering a way out—a simple way out with a very small amendment to the government legislation, introduced into the other place today. It is the Nauru amendment. All it takes is for them to do the right thing and accept that it is a way out. I particularly appeal to people like Senator Cameron—who has argued within his own party that the Malaysian solution does, indeed, breach Australia's international obligations—to do the right thing and cross the floor to support this legislation with our amendment when the opportunity arises. I have crossed the floor before. It can be done. Senator Cameron has the same privilege and right as a member of parliament. If he believes what he said about not going down this iniquitous path of the Malaysian solution, he can do the same thing. (Time expired)

Senator THISTLETHWAITE (New South Wales) (15:20): Once again what we have seen from those opposite is a complete lack of leadership on a very important public policy debate in this country. We have seen a complete ignorance of the facts and of the advice of experts on a very difficult and emotive area of public policy. Unfortunately, it is becoming a bit of a habit of those opposite to ignore the facts, to ignore the advice of experts and to spread untruths in the Australian community on important public policy issues. We have seen that again today when they tried to rubbish the Treasury modelling on a carbon price. They have said that Labor's plan will not work and they have spread untruths about that. They have ignored the advice of all expert economists and expert scientists when it comes to that public policy issue, and here we see it again on a very important, very emotive and very difficult public policy issue—one on which in many countries there is bipartisan support and leadership from both opposition and government when it comes to dealing with it. They are ignoring the advice of experts.

The Leader of the Opposition was offered a briefing from departmental advisers and from no less than the head of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, Andrew Metcalfe, a person who I will add that former Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Amanda Vanstone has described as a first-class public servant—an overwhelming endorsement from a previous immigration minister. What does Tony Abbott do, upon the advice of Andrew Metcalfe? He comp­letely ignores his advice. He completely ignores the advice in the wake of the High Court decision. The Leader of the Opposition was briefed on the ramifications of the High Court decision. The Leader of the Opposition was briefed on the fact that—

Senator Brandis: Senator Thistlethwaite is saying that the government is ignoring Mr Metcalfe's advice that the Malaysia solution was based on conjecture.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: There is no point of order. Senator Thistlethwaite.

Senator THISTLETHWAITE: No, Senator Brandis, I am saying that the Leader of the Opposition is ignoring the depart­mental advice, the advice of Andrew Metcalfe, who has said on several occasions to the Leader of the Opposition and those opposite that the Nauru alternative will not work. Nauru will not work because it is too costly, Nauru will not work because it is an ineffective model and Nauru will not work because it will not stop the boats. It will not stop asylum seekers risking their lives and it will not stop the insidious trade of people smuggling to our country.

The facts are—these were explained to the Leader of the Opposition—that 95 per cent of refugees that were processed through Nauru ended up in Australia or New Zealand. They ignore the fact that there are no facilities currently available and ready on Nauru to process asylum seekers. In fact, much of the processing centre has been given away to the Nauru people. It has been gifted to the Nauru people. It is providing pergolas over barbeques for the people of Nauru. These are facts that are being ignored by those opposite. They also ignore the fact that many asylum seekers were left to rot on Nauru. For 1,637 asylum seekers that were accommodated in Nauru and on Manus Island the average stay was 501 days—approximately 1⅓ years. One man was left to rot on Nauru for 1,938 days—over five years. More than 120 people, including 19 children, I might add, were left to rot for over three years.

We understand that Nauru will not work. Labor's plan ensures that we meet our international obligations but we provide an effective deterrence to people smuggling. Labor's plan ensures that we also increase our humanitarian intake, that we understand that there are caps that need to be associated with our immigration intake and that we will give priority to those people who are in camps, those waiting in camps as a result of affliction in Burma, those waiting in camps as a result of famine in the Horn of Africa. (Time expired)

Senator CASH (Western Australia) (15:25): I am used to the minister, when responding to questions, stretching the truth; but I have to say, in the short time that Senator Thistlethwaite has been here, I am very disappointed that he seems to have decided to indulge in the same type of misleading of the Senate that the minister does. The statistics that Senator Thistleth­waite quotes in relation to Nauru are just plain wrong. They are not the statistics that Mr Metcalfe, the secretary of the department, gave to Senator Brandis and others when the coalition was briefed by Mr Metcalfe in relation to the government's Malaysia solu­tion. They are also not the statistics that are quoted by the Labor Minister for Immi­gration and Citizenship, Mr Bowen, in a press release dated Tuesday, 2 February 2010. These are the statistics, the correct statistics, as put forward by Mr Bowen, the immigration minister. Under John Howard's Pacific solution 1,637 people were taken to Nauru. How many were resettled in Australia? This is the minister for immigration's statistic: 705. Seven hundred and five people out of 1,637—that is, 43 per cent—according to the minister for immigra­tion's own press release, were resettled in Australia. It is not the 95 per cent that the Labor Party likes to throw around so that they can distort the situation as it was in Nauru. For those on the other side to stand up and say that Nauru did not work, which part of the former Howard government's policies that stopped the boats don't you understand?

What we saw in question time today was yet again a government that, because of misplaced pride, because of sheer stubborn­ness, will not accept that if they want offshore processing they can have it tomor­row. It is the Prime Minister of Australia who consistently tells the people that she wants offshore processing. Well, if the Prime Minister of Australia listens to the coalition, she will know that this can be delivered by us in agreement with the Labor Party tomorrow. Bring it on tomorrow and we will vote for it. All that we ask is this: we ask the Prime Minister to keep her word to the Australian people when she said again to the Australian people, 'I would rule out any­where that is not a signatory to the refugee convention.' So to ensure that we have responsible government in Australia the coalition are putting forward an amendment that will ensure that the current Prime Minister of Australia is actually able to honour her word to the Australian people that she will rule out anywhere that is not a signatory to the refugee convention. That is exactly what our amendment ensures. It ensures that, when Australia transfers an asylum seeker to a third party, that third party has to be a signatory to the United Nations refugee convention.

Our amendment is not limited to Nauru, and the Labor Party know that. Our amendment asks only that, in terms of responsible government, in discharging our moral obligations and in ensuring that the Prime Minister of Australia keeps her word to the Australian people that she will never, ever send a person to a country that has not signed up to the UN convention, the Labor Party accept our small amendment. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Senator WRIGHT (South Australia) (15:30): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Senator Ludwig) to a question without notice asked by Senator Wright today relating to the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and the protection of marine species.

This is an important and urgent issue. Last week five conservation groups, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, the Wilderness Society, the Conservation Council of South Australia, the Humane Society International and the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society called for an immediate ban on the use of gillnets in a shark fishery, operating in Commonwealth waters off South Australia, due to the deaths of many sea lions and dolphins.

At this time in our history we are facing the worst extinction rate in 65 million years, since dinosaurs were wiped out. We must take this issue seriously. In this particular fishery in Commonwealth waters it is estimated that 256 threatened Australian sea lions are killed each year. I also understand that the latest available information shows that 13 dolphins were also killed in this fishery in the first three months of this year alone.

The government has put in place a strategy to attempt to protect the Australian sea lion, but this has been criticised as being grossly inadequate and now it would appear that impacts on dolphins are also increasing. Unfortunately, the exact numbers and the nature of the dolphin deaths are not known. The Australian Fisheries Management Authority, AFMA, seems unwilling to publicise the latest figures.

The public have a right to know how many sea lions and dolphins are being killed and what measures are being taken to remedy this. Gillnets are an acknowledged threat to the survival of sea lions at places such as Seal Bay on Kangaroo Island, which is a major tourist drawcard for the island. It seems that gillnets are also now killing dolphins.

Urgent action is needed to prevent the suffering and death of these animals. They are protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. A ban on the use of gillnets in Comm­onwealth waters off the coast of South Australia, as called for by the five conser­vation groups mentioned, and better infor­mation from AFMA would assist in the practical protection of these iconic and majestic creatures.

Question agreed to.

Senator KROGER: by leave—At the request of Senator Ryan, I move:

That the Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee be authorised to hold a private meeting otherwise than in accordance with standing order 33(1) during the sitting of the Senate on Thursday, 22 September 2011, from 11.30 am.

Question agreed to.

Senator McEWEN (South Australia—Government Whip in the Senate) (15:37): At the request of Senator Moore, I move:

That the Senate—

   (a)   notes:

      (i)   the participation and status of women in the economy is central to development efforts,

      (ii)   the significant contribution the Australian Government is making to improve the lives of women across the globe,

      (iii)   the successful APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation] Women and the Economy Summit, held in San Francisco, California, from 13 September to 16 September 2011, where Australia committed $2.2 million to help women start and expand their own small businesses, and

      (iv)   that this money will help microfinance institutions providing loans to more than 26 million women by the end of 2013, enabling these women to establish their own business, send their children to school, invest in their livelihoods and improve their family's standard of living; and

   (b)   calls on the Government to continue to invest in empowering women through the Australian aid program.

Question agreed to.

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (15:39): I ask that general business notice of motion 444 standing in my name for today relating to the proposed legislation relating to asylum seekers be taken as a formal motion.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Is there any objection? Senator Hanson-Young, are you denying leave?

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia) (15:40): I seek leave to move an amendment to the motion.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Can we wait until we put the motion. There is no objection to the motion being taken as formal. Senator Abetz.

Senator ABETZ: I move:

That the Senate rejects the Government's attempts to provide inadequate protections for asylum seekers in its proposed legislation to resurrect its Malaysian asylum seeker deal.

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia) (15:40): I seek leave to move an amendment to motion 444.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Is leave granted?

Senator Abetz: I invite Senator Hanson-Young to indicate her amendment prior to seeking leave. That might assist the process.

Senator HANSON-YOUNG: I am seeking leave to flag the amendment.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Rather than having leave denied, we could do with it this way. If Senator Hanson-Young seeks leave to indicate to the chamber the nature of the amendment—

Senator HANSON-YOUNG: I seek leave to be able to move the amendment.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave has been sought just to move the amendment. Is leave granted?

Leave not granted.

Senator HANSON-YOUNG: Pursuant to contingent notice and at the request of the Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving an amendment to the motion.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I am advised by the Clerk there is no contingent motion that you can act upon. Senator Hanson-Young, can I deal with Senator Ludwig, who wishes to make a short statement, and then we will come back to the matter.

Senator LUDWIG (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General on Queensland Floods Recovery) (15:41): by leave—I want to assist in the proceedings this afternoon. I know leave usually has to be given before the amendment. That is the usual thing. However, I have from this position often asked what the nature of the amendment is because it then informs me as to whether I will decide to grant leave or not. In that instance you can, in my view seek leave, and I would give it, to explain the amendment before we then end up in a position of suspending standing orders to deal with it. This is a way to expedite the arrangement and allow the opposition, or the government for that matter, to hear what the amendment may be and consider it.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Ludwig. I did give that opportunity to Senator Hanson-Young but I think she was fairly determined on her course of action. Is that correct? Would you like to revisit this and take the opportunity of explaining, by leave, the nature of your amendment?

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia) (15:42): I am happy to explain, by leave, the nature of my amendment and then seek leave.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for you to do that for two minutes.

Senator HANSON-YOUNG: The amendment would replace the words after 'Senate' with 'calls on the government and the opposition to uphold Australia's obligations to the 1951 Refugee Convention'.

Senator Abetz: The amendment negates the whole motion.

Leave not granted.

Senator HANSON-YOUNG: Pursuant to contingent notice and at the request of the Leader of the Australian Greens, I move:

That such standing orders be suspended as would prevent me moving the amendment to the motion.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Hanson-Young, I am advised by the Clerk that there is no specific contingent motion for you to do that. You can move to suspend standing orders but you would need then the concurrence of an absolute majority of the Senate to do that. You can move to suspend standing orders but not pursuant to a contingent motion.

Senator HANSON-YOUNG: I move:

That standing orders be suspended.

I would like to be able to move the amend­ment to this motion because we know that the motion put forward by Senator Abetz is pure hypocrisy. We know that the govern­ment has a bad plan when it comes to dumping vulnerable people in Malaysia. We know it contravenes the 1951 Refugee Con­vention. We also know that the opposition's plan of dumping vulnerable people in Nauru would contravene the 1951 convention.

It is time that both the government and the opposition recognise that the Australian people are fed up with the hypocrisy and with the dirty arguments that not just put the lives of vulnerable people in harm's way but trash Australia's international obligations. We know it is time we had a proper process for dealing with these issues. Why do we drag out the lives of some of the world's most vulnerable people just because there is a political standoff, a squabble, between the government and the opposition? Neither side is standing up for our obligations. Neither side is doing what they should be doing, which is to ensure that our domestic laws concur with our international obligations.

It is absolutely paramount that we do what it is we have signed up to do: assess the claims of asylum seekers here on the Austra­lian mainland. It is what the majority of Australians want; it is the cheapest option; it is the most humane one; and, above all else, it is legal. We should just get on with it. There is absolute rank hypocrisy in this motion, as put forward by Senator Abetz. It does not do anything to add any substance or standard to the level of debate we are seeing not just in this place but in the other place as well. How about the Leader of the Oppo­sition and the Leader of the House actually stand up for what Australia signed up for 60 years: protecting the rights of vulnerable people when they arrive on our doorstep, doing what it is that we should be doing. Stop trashing Australia's international obliga­tions just because of the politics of the day.

We know that onshore processing would be a much simpler option. It would be cheaper, it would be more humane and it is popular. We know that the government does not support Nauru. We know that the opposition does not support Malaysia. We know that offshore processing is bad policy: it is morally wrong; it is illegal; and it is expensive. So just give it up.

There is one thing that is actually right in this debate. It is that both sides are right about the rank hypocrisy of the other. Both sides have sold out. Both sides are partici­pating in a debate based on hypocrisy and backflips. There is absolutely no substance to the issues that go to the heart of the needs of asylum seekers. We should be doing what it is we said we would do under the convention we signed 60 years ago. The question and the amendment that I am putting to the Senate is: will we stand by the convention we signed 60 years ago? Under the government's plan we will not. Under the opposition's plan we will not. Is it that both sides are prepared to shred our international reputation, shred Australia's value of a fair go and throw away 60 years of commitment to the refugee convention? That is exactly what both sides want. That is the effect of both proposals—Malaysia and Nauru.

What a sad point we have got to in this debate when we are being forced to choose between dumping children in Malaysia and dumping children in Nauru. There is a much better solution; it is an Australian option. It means assessing the claims of asylum seekers onshore here on the mainland, as most Australians would like us to do. It is cheaper, more humane and it is legal. That is what this amendment is about: asking both the coalition and the government to do exactly what we have already signed up to do, which is to abide by our obligations under the 1951 refugee convention. If you are not interested in that, why not just say so? Stop playing with the lives of vulnerable people. Stop pretending that you care when clearly you do not. All you care about is the political points you are trying to make on the way through. And thank heavens the Australian people are wise enough to see through the hypocrisy and the sell-outs and ensure a better solution. (Time expired)

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (15:49): It seems that the Australian Greens are as confused about the standing orders of this place as they are in relation to their immi­gration and asylum-seeker policy stance. We heard from the Greens that we are dealing with allegedly the most vulnerable people, those who are paying literally thousands and thousands of dollars to people-smugglers to come to Australia. They freely enter Indone­sia, they travel there freely with no problems at all and then pay a criminal people-smuggler to get them to Australia, having thousands of dollars at their disposal. Some­how, they are the most vulnerable people.

Forget those who have been rotting in refugee camps around the world, not for weeks or months but for over a decade. There are literally millions of them all around the world. We in Australia need to ask ourselves this one question: do we want to be engaged in the humane resettlement of refugees? Overwhelmingly, the answer is yes, as it should be. The next question is: to whom out of the millions of refugees in the world should we be giving priority? We in the coalition make no bones about the fact that we do not believe priority should be given to the rich, who can afford to pay criminals to force their way into Australia and who turn a blind eye to our obligation to those who are sitting in camps in Somalia, in Kenya and in other places in Africa, where they have been for well over a decade.

For somebody like me, who works with my local refugee communities in Hobart, to be told I am a hypocrite on this is quite offensive. When you hear their tales of having been in refugee camps for up to 15 years you get an understanding of why these particular refugees are so offended when priority is being given to the criminal boat-people smuggling operations. That is why the coalition put in place a policy that worked to stop this criminal activity, which also puts lives at risk. We stopped it with the Nauru solution. The Labor Party deliberately dismantled that policy, and guess what: the influx of boats occurred and the influx of illegal arrivals re-entered the Australian scene. This disrupted the orderly resettle­ment of refugees into Australia that we had, in cooperation with the United Nations. We had a policy which worked. Labor dismant­led it. Now, seeing the folly of their ways, Labor are trying to make themselves more hairy-chested than we as a coalition were in this space. We say to them that their Malaysia solution, where people can be caned for disobeying orders in Malaysia, is inhumane. The Labor Party themselves set the benchmark for offshore processing that the country should be a signatory to the UN convention. Well, Nauru is; Malaysia is not. All we have done is suggest to the govern­ment that they should adopt the Nauru solution, the Manus Island solution, and dump the Malaysia solution, where we were going to be giving them one of our illegal entrants for five of theirs, a swap which, in anybody's language, was not good. In relation to today's motion, it is simply calling on the Senate to reject:

... the Government's attempts to provide inadequate protections for asylum seekers in its proposed legislation to resurrect its Malaysian asylum seeker deal.

I would have thought the Australian Greens would support such a motion, but of course it is splitting them away from their Labor alliance partners and they now, undoubtedly in a deal with Labor, are trying to scuttle around to come up with an excuse as to why not to support this motion. As a result, the hapless Senator Hanson-Young has been called in to move an amendment which seeks to negate this. We say the Malaysia solution is not a solution, because it is inhumane and in breach of our international obligations, whereas the Nauru solution is workable, proven and humane. (Time expired)

Senator LUDWIG (Queensland—Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Manager of Government Business in the Senate and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General on Queensland Floods Recovery) (15:54): We are now debating the issue, as it seems people have wanted to do. I remind people that there was a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Procedure which gave the Senate this advice:

The committee has considered the operation of standing order 66 on numerous occasions—

so it is certainly not the first time this has occurred—

Standing order 66(3) provides that a formal motion shall be put and determined without amendment or debate. Current difficulties—

including this one—

are largely attributable to senators seeking leave to depart from these rules and the Senate granting leave, almost as a matter of course. In particular, the number of statements being made by leave in relation to complex motions leads to a de facto debate on those motions, contrary to standing order 66.

So we are not only doing what we are doing now, but we are also being chastised by the Procedure Committee into entering into de facto debates, of which I think this is one:

This is because senators, instead of making statements, assert views in the nature of debate by mounting arguments and responding to positions expressed by others.

While the committee recommends no changes to standing order 66, noting its value as a daily opportunity for motions from all sources and of all types to be put to the vote, it urges senators to pay more heed to the existing restrictions. For example, if a senator wishes to amend—

as we tried to do today—

a notice of motion, then generally, as a courtesy to the Senate, that notice should be postponed till the next day of sitting to enable the senator to use the procedures under standing order 77 to amend the notice in writing and for the notice to appear in its amended form in the next day's Notice Paper.

That is so that the Senate and everyone in the chamber and everyone who is not in the chamber can be given an opportunity to look at what that amendment is and participating, and at least being informed about what is happening in the chamber:

Secondly, the committee encourages parties to use internal means to limit the number of senators seeking leave to make statements on motions to one from each group,

Now, because of the way things have unfolded, we have entered into a motion to suspend. We should actually be arguing why the suspension is needed, not the substantive debate on the motion itself. Anyone listening to the debate would think we were debating the substantive motion. We should be arguing as to why this suspension should proceed. I note you can include parts of your argument within that because there is wide scope and latitude. So I am not particularly taking anyone to task in relation to that. I am sure I will also fall under the rule sometimes in these debates.

   What I want to highlight specifically is that we should not now, if we are unsucc­essful in an amendment or unsuccessful in seeking leave to take a statement, go through the process of then moving to a suspension to have the de facto argument. Otherwise we will take up significant time of the chamber. The government does have its business to get on with. It does want to continue with the program. We have taken note of remaining issues to be dealt with, other parts of the program. It is important to get to legislation, so I remind senators that this is an opportu­nity to put motions without debate, rather than going through this convoluted proce­dure of seeking a suspension so that we can be heard in relation to a debate.

I do not take anyone to task. I just wish to remind all senators that this is the purpose of this time—to put matters without debate so that their particular issues can be made known, rather than soaking up the time of the Senate with the complex motions we are now engaged in. The government will not be supporting the motion to suspend on the basis that the government wants to get on with the business of the Senate and not be bogged down in dealing with these motions. For those reasons, as I have said, we will not be supporting the motion.

Senator BOB BROWN (Tasmania—Leader of the Australian Greens) (15:59): The process here is one of denying amend­ments to motions that are put up for formality and we have had a series of denials of those amendments in the Senate in recent days. Senators may notice that has not stopped the effect of the amendments coming before the chamber as they doing that as whole motions seriatim and that will continue. I think, however, that where amendments are to be moved to the motions there ought to be a better mechanism and the amendments ought to be treated with a vote the same as the substantial motions. We have not got to that point yet and here we are debating whether there should be a suspen­sion of standing orders to effectively debate the motion—and I will listen to debate to work that out. But what I do want to say is that Senator Hanson-Young is absolutely right here: what we have is a move by the coalition, which had no compunction a few years ago to be locking up hundreds of children behind razor wire in deserts in Australia to the point where there was psychological scarring for life, now claiming that sending people to this country—

Senator Abetz: No, that is wrong. That is just false.

Senator BOB BROWN: Senator Abetz, for the record, is denying that happened. Well, I do not know how you deny such an obvious piece of history, but sending people off to Nauru or to Manus Island for that effect and to Malaysia is not only a huge trial upon the wellbeing of people who try to come to this country to escape persecution elsewhere but the wrong thing to do. We are a nation that is mature and that is part of the common global community of nations and we ought to be taking on our responsi­bilities—and the High Court pointed this out when it turned down the government's legislation effectively to bounce people back off to Malaysia. But it was not just the Malaysian solution that the High Court was ruling out; it was the Nauru solution and the Manus Island solution as well, for example, on the basis that these abrogate Australia's obligation under the refugee convention—which Sarah Hanson-Young has so rightly brought into this debate because it is front and centre—to give people fleeing perse­cution and coming to our shores access to Australian laws. Whichever one of these offshore options you are looking at it cuts across that requirement of the refugee convention. I notice Senator Abetz, in his delivery, said words to the effect that we swap one illegal entrant for each five of theirs. Let me pull him up on that again—and we must have done that so many times in this chamber. These are not illegal entrants; these people are asylum seekers.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells: They are.

Senator BOB BROWN: They are not, Senator Fierravanti-Wells—and that is the problem you have.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells: I used to do this for a living. I have deported a lot more people in my career than you have done.

Senator BOB BROWN: This has been happening all day. You are another interjector—

Senator Fierravanti-Wells interjecting—

Senator BOB BROWN: and a recycled interjector at that on the benches over there—

Opposition senators interjecting—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order on my left!

Senator BOB BROWN: But it is one of those things, isn't it? They are not illegal entrants. They have a legal right to seek solace in this country. That is what is in the refugee convention, signed under the government of Sir Robert Menzies, or Robert Menzies as he was then. That is what we signed up to way back in the 1950s under a more noble, humane and globally thinking government of the opposition kind more than half a century ago.

Senator FIFIELD (Victoria—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (16:04): As has been indicated by Senator Abetz, we will not be supporting the suspension for the simple reason that Senator Hanson-Young's foreshadowed amendment completely changes the intent of Senator Abetz's motion. I agree with Senator Ludwig and Senator Abetz that it would indeed be helpful if the Australian Greens did circulate their amendments in advance. This chamber does operate largely on cooperation and there is usually good cooperation on motions and the intent to seek to amend them, so I think that is something that would be of benefit to the chamber. The motion moved by Senator Abetz does, I think, deserve to be given the opportunity for a straight up or down vote—which the move to suspend and to seek to amend Senator Abetz's motion certainly denies. I also think that, because the government's absolute hypocrisy does deserve to be judged by this chamber, it does warrant the consideration of Senator Abetz's motion unamended.

I do hate to give the Australian Greens some credit at this point but it would not be fair not to recognise that when it comes to asylum seeker policy at least the Australian Greens do have a consistent position. They are against offshore processing, and they have been consistent on that. The Greens are wrong. I think they are sincerely in error but at least on this issue they, unlike the government, do have a clear position. The Australian Labor Party have lost any shred of credibility that they had on the subject of border protection and asylum seeker policy. When those of us on this side were in office, the Australian Labor Party announced that if they were elected they would systematically set about dismantling the coalition's border protection and asylum seeker policy. And they were true to their word, as the Australian Labor Party did that. They abolished offshore processing and they abolished temporary protection visas—they weakened their resolve—which again is something that they undertook to do. We were told that pull factors were not a consideration for people-smugglers, that it was all about push factors and that it was all about factors outside the control of the Australian government. We know now, beyond any doubt, that there are both pull and push factors. What frustrates me incred­ibly is when I hear the current government say that they want to break the people-smugglers' business model. The truth is that the product that the people smugglers have to sell was given to them by the Australian Labor Party. We hear the government say that they want to bust the business model, but that business model was the one designed by the current government. Our policies were aimed at—and I think they were effective—putting the people smugglers out of business and ensuring that people who were seeking asylum did not put themselves in harm's way. That was a good thing. That meant that we did not have people at risk on the high seas with their lives in peril.

On this side of the chamber we are not interested in public acts of conspicuous compassion. We care about effective compassion—having policies that do good and take people out of harm's way. Our policies were effective. We heard initially from the current government of the East Timor solution—nothing came of that. We heard of the Malaysian solution—to date, nothing has come of that. The government is running away from any policy that will actually work. We had the farcical situation at the South Pacific Forum where Prime Minister Gillard was basically jumping behind pot plants to hide from the President of Nauru. We thought At Home with Julia was a farce; you ain't seen nothing until you have seen 'Away with Julia'. It is a bit like that Fawlty Towers episode about the war—'I think I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it.' 'I think I mentioned Nauru only once but I think I got away with it.' It was a farcical situation.

The government deserves to be condemn­ed for its asylum seeker policy. It has no policy. The policy, such as it is, has put people in harm's way. It should adopt our Nauru solution with TPVs and a strengthen­ed resolve. Senator Abetz's motion deserves to be put unamended.

Senator CASH (Western Australia) (16:09): I too rise to concur with the comments of the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Eric Abetz, and my colleague Senator Fifield. We are currently debating a motion by Senator Hanson-Young to suspend standing orders to allow an amendment to general business notice of motion No. 444 to be moved. I have searched high and low and I have asked my colleagues if they have a copy of the amendment for me—I understand that Senator Hanson Young was asked to reread the amendment out to the Senate—but, to date, I do not know about you, Mr Acting Deputy President, but I have been unable to find a copy of the amendment.

When the Greens come into this chamber and stand here and talk about process and the failure of some to follow process, maybe they would like to have a look at their own conduct in relation to this particular motion. There is a very good reason that those on this side of the chamber will not be supporting Senator Hanson-Young's suspension motion, and that is that Senator Hanson-Young has failed to give this chamber the courtesy that is due to it. I acknowledge the comments made by Senator Ludwig on debating these types of motions, but when the Greens come into this chamber and stand up and completely misrepresent the position of the coalition in putting forward the motion it is incumbent upon those on this side—as those on the other side would do if they were in the same position as us—to come in here and defend their position. There is a very good reason that Senator Abetz has put forward this motion. If the Greens choose not to support this motion, then quite frankly that is their problem and they can go and justify to their supporters why they are supporting a motion that condemns government policy for its inadequate protections for people that we—Australia—will be transferring to Malaysia.

Let me tell you what the coalition will not support, and these are the reasons we have put forward this motion. We on this side of the chamber will not support legislation that will allow the Australian government to send asylum seekers to a country that has not signed the UNHCR convention. We on this side will not support legislation that allows the Australian government to send asylum seekers to a country where, in the last five years, almost 30,000 refugees were caned—that is 16 floggings a day—and that is man­dated by an act of parliament in Malaysia. We on this side will not support legislation that allows the Australian government—and that is a government that is only in govern­ment because of its coalition with the Greens—to take children to Malaysia where they will not be able to have proper school­ing. We on this side will not support legisla­tion that allows the Australian government, again, to transfer refugees to Malaysia where they will have access to only one UNHCR funded medical clinic, which they will have to share with 94,000 other refugees.

The coalition—and this is the reason for Senator Abetz's motion—in good conscience cannot support such morally objectionable legislation. The reason the Greens want to move the amendment is that they too know that the government is wrong. They know the government is wrong in what it is doing and, if the government is wrong, the Greens should be sitting on this side of the chamber with the coalition condemning their coalition partners. The coalition will make no apology whatsoever for their own tough and uncompromising policies on border protection, because what we did—unlike what the Greens want to do—was stop the boats. Do you know what happens when you stop the boats? You stop people risking their lives to get to this country and dying in the process. If the Greens had their way, they would have onshore processing. Do you know what that means? That means they do not want to stop the boats and they support policies that will cause people to be drowned.

Question put:

That the motion ( Senator Hanson-Young's) be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question put:

That the motion (Senator Abetz's) be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:18]

(The President—Senator JJ Hogg)

Senator Arbib did not vote, to compensate for the vacancy caused by the resignation of Senator Coonan

Question negatived.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (16:22): I move:

That the Senate—

   (a)   notes:

      (i)   that on 7 September 2001, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed Resolution 55/282 declaring that the International Day of Peace should be observed annually on the fixed date of 21 September, as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence,

      (ii)   that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has urged member states to support the observance of global ceasefire, and

      (iii)   that the slogan chosen by the UN for the 2011 marking of the day is 'Peace=Future' drawing particular attention to the impact of armed conflict on children and that the world's concerns will soon be in their hands;

   (b)   supports non-government organisations in Australia who intend to observe the day through vigils, concerts and walks; and

   (c)   calls on the Australian Government to:

      (i)   promote the observance of a global ceasefire for the duration of 21 September, and

      (ii)   support the observation of a ceasefire by not engaging in hostilities for the duration of 21 September, unless provoked to do so in self-defence.

Question put.

The Senate divided. [16:23]

(The President—Senator JJ Hogg)

Question negatived.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (16:28): I seek leave to make a short statement in respect of motion 447.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for two minutes.

Senator FARRELL: In respect of the previous motion, No. 447, the government does not support conducting our complex defence and foreign policy by way of simple Senate resolutions. Australia remains a strong promoter of peace and security, regionally and globally, and has a long and very proud history of supporting United Nations and regional peacekeeping opera­tions. While the government respects the sentiment behind the motion, the notion of a global ceasefire for the duration of the International Day of Peace is impractical.

Today, many conflicts we face, particu­larly terrorism and piracy, are not state based and do not respect international peace. A call to cease fire against these threats would be counterproductive to Australia and our partners' continued efforts for peace and security. The government's strong view is that it is in our national interest to be in Afghanistan, not just with our alliance partner the United States but also with 47 other members of the International Security Assistance Force, acting under a United Nations mandate. Australia's fundamental goal is to prevent Afghanistan, especially the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, from again being used by terrorists to plan and train for attacks on innocent civilians, including Australians, in our own region and beyond. To achieve that goal we must help prepare the Afghan government to take lead responsibility for providing security for the Afghan people. To do so we must stabilise the security situation and mentor and train the Afghan security forces to take the lead in the security of their country by 2014.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (16:30): by leave—I do not normally do this, but I will make a brief statement. I suspect we will hear something reasonably similar from Senator Abetz shortly.

I think this is incredibly sad. This was a fairly innocent motion, and none of the caveats that Senator Farrell just read into the record apply. All we are seeking to do here is give peace a chance, as it were. On 7 September 2001 the UN General Assembly passed resolution 55/282 declaring that the International Day of Peace should be observed annually on the fixed date of 21 September as a day of global ceasefire and nonviolence. Senator Farrell made it sound as though he was concerned to hear the Senate calling for Australian troops to sit on their hands while they were shot at in any number of the war zones we are engaged in at the moment.

Of course, the motion does no such thing. It calls on the government to 'support the observation of a ceasefire by not engaging in hostilities for the duration of 21 September, unless provoked to do so in self-defence'. I would not have thought it was too much to ask for one day to remind this chamber that we have put people in harm's way and that we are a country at war at the moment, and to perhaps take today to not engage in acts of aggression in any of the places where that might be possible. Of course, mostly our thoughts go to Afghanistan.

It was extremely ironic that most senators—in fact, the entire chamber—were entirely content to vote for the motion until the President, of all people, drew to their attention the fact that it might actually mean something. At that point they abashedly shuffled over to the other side of the chamber to crush it. I think that is a sad state of affairs, and I urge the Senate to recon­sider. Next year, on 21 September 2012, we will move a motion similar to this one to remind senators that there are people in conflict zones in our name at the moment who should be brought home.

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (16:32): by leave—I too wish to make a brief statement of no longer than two minutes. I think one thing we can all agree on in this chamber is that we all support and pray for peace in our time. No-one has a mortgage on that aspira­tion. However, the coalition does join with Senator Farrell in relation to his comments as they relate to our situation in Afghanistan, so I do not need to delay by repeating those comments except to say that we agree.

Another theatre of war is currently in Libya. Of course, we know that Colonel Gaddafi's troops are on the retreat. They are being pressed hard. They would want nothing more than a day of peace to regroup to ensure that they cannot be defeated. The wording of the motion includes 'unless provoked to do so in self-defence'. Those liberation fighters who are seeking to press the advantage as we speak would be required to withhold for a whole day, which of course would have given an inappropriate advantage to the evil Gaddafi regime.

That is another example that echoes and builds on that which Senator Farrell so properly put to the chamber. So we as a coalition do support the sentiments and comments of the government in relation to this; that it in no way detracts from Labor's commitment or the coalition's commitment to peace in our time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Marshall): I inform the Senate that, at 8.30 am today, Senator Fifield and Senator Siewert each submitted a letter in accordance with standing order 75 proposing a matter of public importance for discussion. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot, and Senator Fifield was unsuccessful and unlucky. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Siewert:

Dear Mr President

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

The implications of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and Australia's participation at the High Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security to be held on 22 September 2011 at the United Nations Headquarters.

Is the proposal supported?

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

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

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (16:35): I thank the Senate for agreeing that there is in fact an urgent need to discuss the implications of the disaster in Japan and at this important meeting being held at the UN tomorrow. The issue on Japan's Pacific coast is ongoing. It is vastly worse than most people realise and it will be smouldering for decades. This is an appropriate time, just after the six-month anniversary, to be considering it.

As reported by the ABC today, 60 per cent of Japanese people surveyed want the Japanese government to rely less on nuclear energy. It is a stunning turnaround from the popularity of this technology. That is why 50,000 people took to the streets of Tokyo this week to demand the phase-out of nuclear energy in Japan. It is not difficult to understand why, given the extraordinary devastation visited on the people of Hiro­shima and Nagasaki, victims of radiation are calling for an end not just to nuclear weapons but to the civil nuclear industry. They know better than anyone. The Japanese have experienced this tragedy before. The majority of Japanese feel this way because they now know that 76 trillion becquerel of plutonium 239 have been released. This is a hideously dangerous radioactive isotope that the Japanese government thought had been contained. That figure was released on 6 June and is 23,000 times higher than had been previously announced by the Japanese government. The truth about this disaster still has not been told, even though it may have faded from the front pages of Australian newspapers.

The Japanese people also know that the IAEA and the Japanese government have done medical tests on children living in three towns near Fukushima. About 45 per cent of those surveyed—kids up to 15 years old—have had thyroid exposure to radioactive iodine. As we all know, radioactive iodine is something that children and babies are much more susceptible to. They are doing tests on products such as spinach, tea, milk and fish, hundreds of kilometres from the plant, that show them heavily contaminated with iodine and caesium. There are hot spots now all away across the north-east of Japan.

Something that senators probably did not know is that the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, announced a High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security on 11 May, a couple of months after the disaster. He said:

We have to reevaluate nuclear risks and nuclear safety in response to the disaster in Japan.

Indeed we do. He told reporters at the time:

This exercise will also need a serious global debate on broader issues, including assessment of the costs, risks and benefits of nuclear energy and stronger connections between nuclear safety, nuclear security and nuclear non-proliferation.

This is something the industry is very keen to not talk about at all. I understand the UNSG was visited by several governments after making these statements. What is called a 'demarche' took place, a coordinated diplomatic onslaught from countries heavily invested in nuclear power that do not want the disaster on Japan's Pacific coast to impact popular opinion or the fortunes of the industry in their countries. They were not happy that the SG wanted to have a dialogue on the costs and risks of nuclear power. Despite opposition to this meeting and the concerns of the secretary-general, on 16 September 2011 the secretary-general released the UN system-wide study on the implications of the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. I indicated to the whips that I was going to seek leave to table this document, so I do so now.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Marshall ): Is leave granted?

Senator Bernardi: No.

Senator LUDLAM: Before leave is denied, I should say that the whips were notified yesterday that I was proposing to seek leave to this document and another.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I am sorry, Senator Ludlam. Leave is not granted.

Senator Abetz: I will check it.

Senator LUDLAM: I might seek leave again towards the end of my speech, on a nod from the opposition.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: That would be appropriate. Thank you.

Senator LUDLAM: Picking up on the tension between nuclear states and the UN Secretary-General, and fearing that the meeting might become imbalanced or even manipulated by the industry, non-govern­ment organisations and experts came together to provide analysis and country reports, including a report on Australia. The effort was coordinated by Ray Acheson, the Director of Reaching Critical Will, a great project of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. They produced what is sometimes referred to as a 'shadow report', an alternative to the official report, to make sure, essentially, that updated information and evidence on the costs and risks of nuclear power are available. For the benefit of Senator Abetz and the opposition whip, I foreshadow that I will also seek leave to table that report later—so that is one report from the United Nations Secretary-General and one shadow report from the non-govern­ment organisations who pay very close regard to what is going on in those inter­national fora. The title of the shadow report is Costs, risks, and myths of nuclear power.

The UN report includes inputs from 16 UN entities whose work is affected by the disaster at the Fukushima plant. Unfortunate­ly, the IAEA was tasked with being the lead coordinating entity for the study. The IAEA, of course, is responsible for promoting the use of nuclear energy around the world. Having an organisation with such conflicted responsibilities coordinating the study resulted—I do not think any senators will be surprised—in the study being overwhelm­ingly and conclusively pro nuclear power. All the same, it does clearly acknowledge the severity of the disaster at Fukushima and the threat of international nuclear incidents elsewhere. It acknowledges the inadequacy of current threat assessments and mitigation planning, including risks from severe and unpredictable weather events related to climate change, which is very interesting. It acknowledges the lack of an agreed approach to facility decommissioning and high-level radioactive waste manage­ment. It acknow­ledges the weapons prolifer­ation links related to nuclear power. All these are things that I doubt senators, particularly those on the conservative side—but I know they have got their allies in the ALP as well—would acknowledge, topics they do not want to understand: weapons proliferation and the threats posed by climate change to nuclear energy, which is some­thing to ponder.

The study also cautions against the trend towards longer service lives of nuclear plants. The only thing I would want less than to live next to a nuclear plant would be to live next to one that had been running for 60 years, but of course the industry, which can no longer afford to build new ones in places like the United States and Western Europe is relicensing old facilities for an additional 20 years. These things will have been running for longer than the lives of any of the people operating them, in order to squeeze more of a profit out of clapped-out assets. I think it is a shocking risk to play like that with the lives of people in those communities and the surrounding areas and countries. The study says that plant extension:

… brings its own challenges, such as ensuring that safety margins remain adequate. The extension of the lives of existing nuclear plants and the expansion of nuclear power programs are also placing an increasing strain upon the limited human resources available to design, construct, maintain and operate nuclear facilities.

These cautions are being written by the international agency charged with promoting nuclear energy. It is a pretty lukewarm endorsement.

The UN study also insists that the environmental, social and economic conse­quences of major accidents must also be considered and included in decision-making processes to identify and consider such costs—precisely the kinds of risks that have been ignored around the world. This recommendation has been taken up in the shadow report by the NGOs, by Australia's Dave Sweeney and Dimity Hawkins, who between them have many, many years of experience in analysing this sector. The report says that since some states 'remain committed to developing or acquiring nuclear power', disaster risk analysis 'must therefore ensure that nuclear plants are built and operated safely and able to withstand any possible threat that could give rise to a radiation emergency'. Surely by now we know that such an assurance is not possible. Dr MV Ramana points out, in his chapter on nuclear safety: 'Catastrophic accidents are inevitable with nuclear power.' We have seen that now just in the limited period of time that these plants have been operating entire areas have been depopulated and turned into radiation sacrifice zones.

So what position will Australia take to the meeting in New York tomorrow? We have a strong interest in this. Nobody wants nuclear power in this country, apart from Ziggy Switkowski and a handful of others, but Australia has 40 per cent of the world's uranium reserves and is a supplier of around 20 per cent of the global market, including to most of the world's nuclear weapon states. Ministers in both of the old parties obsess about uranium mining, despite it not being in our top 16 exports. The facts here in Australia are that Australian uranium mines have an absolutely miserable record. The BHP Olympic Dam mine that they are proposing to expand will create five cubic kilometres of radioactive tailings—a radio­active carcinogenic mountain range created by the expansion of one single project. The Ranger mine that senators will be aware of and have had a long association with has seen over 200 leaks, spills and licence breaches since it opened in 1981.

The meeting in New York tomorrow should be a thorough examination of the facts rather than assurances and glib assertions that deny the fact that the state of nuclear safety is as poor as its market prospects. That is why investors have deserted the sector. The meeting should not deny that the nuclear industry is rife with accidents, incidents and profound secrecy. It should not deny that nuclear power is a massive subsidy parasite that burns money far more efficiently than it burns uranium. I very much look forward to the contributions of other senators to this debate.

Senator FAULKNER ( New South Wales ) ( 16:45 ): The Tohoku Pacific earthquake struck in the western Pacific Ocean, 72 kilometres north-east of the Tohoku peninsula in Japan, at 2.46 pm on 11 March this year. It registered a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it the most powerful known earthquake to hit Japan since records began. The earthquake triggered very destructive tsunami waves of up to 40 metres high that in some cases travelled 10 kilometres inland. In addition to the extraordinarily tragic loss of over 15,000 lives, with thousands still missing, and the destruction of vital infrastructure, the tsuna­mi breached the six-metre high seawall protecting the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, badly damaging the site.

The inundation of the site resulted in the automatic shutdown of three reactors; three other reactors were already shutdown due to maintenance at the time of the earthquake. Back-up diesel generators started emergency operation when power was lost but soon failed due to the damage that was caused by the tsunami. Back-up battery power with a limited life of eight to 24 hours was expended. That left the plant without vital power to operate the cooling pumps of the reactors. Of course, all senators know what happened next: three reactors had a partial meltdown, resulting in explosions and the release of harmful radiation.

The Fukushima accident, triggered by a natural disaster of such great magnitude, reaffirms the importance of continually reviewing and improving the level of nuclear safety internationally. It also highlights the importance of the work of organisations such as the International Atomic Energy Agen­cy—it has the difficult acronym of IAEA; try saying that quickly!—as well as, here in Australia, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office and the Australian Radiation Protect­ion and Nuclear Safety Agency. As far as Australia goes, there is no choice. We must continue to work closely with other countries to strengthen nuclear safety and security and to promote international best practice. Simp­ly put, the international community must work collaboratively to improve nuclear safety.

Since the Fukushima accident, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Secretary-General have been coordinating improvements in nuclear safety internationally. The Secretary-General's high-level meeting on nuclear safety and security, as we have heard from Senator Ludlam, is scheduled for tomorrow in New York. I think that is during the UN General Assembly leaders week. Also this week, the IAEA is holding its annual general confer­ence in Vienna, where nuclear safety is a central theme.

In May this year, Australia's foreign minister, Mr Rudd, outlined a number of ways to increase international action on nuclear safety. He explained the need for greater international oversight of nuclear safety under IAEA auspices through countries operating nuclear power plants and other facilities concluding bilateral safety agreements with the IAEA and through expansion of the IAEA's inspection role to encompass nuclear safety auditing. Mr Rudd has also proposed: augmented cooperation on emergency response and consequence management, including through the IAEA appointing an independent panel of internat­ional experts who could analyse incidents and provide advice on dealing with them; encouraging industry to share in-house compliance techniques; and cooperation by Australia with potential new nuclear energy entrants in our region. Elaborating on that vision of the foreign minister's, Australia presented a nonpaper to the June IAEA ministerial conference articulating actions the international community could take to address gaps in the current safety arrange­ments. Those actions include IAEA coordin­ated independent fact-finding and review missions into nuclear incidents, and IAEA coordinated nuclear safety missions, as well as better national reporting through the Con­vention on Nuclear Safety national reports.

I am pleased that Australia has contributed $100,000 to the IAEA for a study on marine impacts of radiation from the Fukushima power plant. I note that the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, of which the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Radia­tion Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA, Dr Carl-Magnus Larsson, is Australia's representative and vice-chair, is undertaking a program of work to address the source term, dispersion, deposition, health effects and environmental effects of the Fukushima accident, with a view to having an interim report produced in 2012—next year—and a final report available by 2013. I do think that it is beneficial to Australia that representatives of ARPANSA, ANSTO and ASNO are active members of the IAEA committees covering safety and security standards.

If the story of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant tells us anything, it is to reinforce in the most stark and tragic way how important nuclear safety is for all countries. The international community must continue to improve nuclear safety. It must learn the terrible lessons of the Fukushima accident and its aftermath. The High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety taking place tomorrow in New York is critical and I hope it will play a critical role in this important work. It is expected to endorse the Action Plan on Nuclear Safety that was conceived by the Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety as the basis for important future work in this area.

I do remain confident that the current Australian government will continue to play a leading role in promoting tangible measures to improve nuclear safety around the world.

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (16:56): Tomorrow the United Nations will be hosting a discussion on nuclear safety and security at the initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General. In the UN jargon, this is a high-level meeting. The meeting has its genesis in the unfortunate events in Japan last year. In preparation for the meeting a system-wide study was undertaken on the implications of the Fukushima accident. A solid 43-page document was issued in relation to this on 16 August this year. As a result, participating countries have had over one month to study the document. Can I say as an aside that that is refreshing given that this government only provided a Senate committee with a few minutes in relation to Treasury modelling on carbon tax. I never thought that I would hear myself say, 'Look at the United Nations for due process and proper procedure,' but when it comes to that, with all its flaws, the United Nations clearly is way ahead of this Labor government.

In the document that was circulated, in plenty of time for tomorrow's discussion, I note a number of observations. First of all, amongst other things, the document acknowledges the contribution that safe and scientifically sound nuclear technologies make to the agriculture and food production industries. So the nuclear sector is vital to the world's food task. If we want to deal with action on poverty we need a sensible, balanced approach to nuclear power. Indeed, in paragraph 16 of the United Nations report of the Secretary-General, we are told:

Providing access to energy for the 2.4 billion people currently living in energy poverty is an important precondition for progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Then it goes on to say—and I want to stress this:

All—

I underline 'all'—

energy sources and technologies will be required to meet that enormous challenge. Nuclear power has been and will remain a significant contributor to meeting global energy needs.

Thus achieving the Millennium Development Goals in fighting poverty. Indeed, we could move on to paragraph 88 of the report where, in relation to climate change, it says:

… one of the benefits of nuclear power is its very low greenhouse gas emissions, which help reduce all risks associated with climate change.

So I would invite the Greens to take a more balanced approach, as indeed the United Nations have, in relation to the issues that the world confronts following the unfortunate events in Japan last year.

Interestingly, we have heard Senator Ludlam and others from the Greens condemn the nuclear industry, by saying it is a thing of the past and it is a dying industry. Indeed, Senator Ludlum said, 'Nuclear is a declining industry, it is a dying industry and there is no turning back,' and phrases of that nature. If you actually turn to the United Nations document that I have in front of me, you will see that paragraph 17 is very informative:

As of July 2011, some 440 nuclear power reactors were operating in 29 countries, with 65 new reactors under construction. Interest in nuclear power, although impacted by the accident at the Fukushima … nuclear power plant, remains high. Of the countries without nuclear power that before the accident had strongly indicated their intentions to proceed with nuclear power programmes, only a few have cancelled or revised their plans, but most have not.

That is the reality of the world situation. No matter how the Greens come into this debate and try to spin, that is the reality. Anything that relates to nuclear gets the Greens up in arms, gets them on the front foot and on the attack. So if we were to call the 'nuclear family' the 'natural family' I wonder whether the Greens would be somewhat more supportive of the more traditional family role model. But I digress.

Having taken that slight whack at the Australian Greens, I can indicate that the coalition does not have any opposition to the two documents that Senator Ludlam sought to have tabled. So, if the Greens were to renew their request through their next speaker, the coalition would not oppose that request.

We ask for a sensible debate in this country. We are willing to sell our uranium to other countries in the world but not use it ourselves for power production. Until we get bipartisanship support on that, I doubt it will happen in Australia. But it is the same attitude that the Labor Party takes to coal. We export our coal, without a tax, for other people to burn—that is morally okay—but we are not allowed to burn our own coal in Australia without putting a huge carbon tax on it, putting ourselves at a disadvantage. You really have to wonder about government policy on these matters. (Time expired)

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Marshall ): Senator Ludlam, I now invite you to seek leave to table the documents.

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (17:03): I appreciate that, Mr Acting Deputy President. I thank the Senate and I thank Senator Abetz. I seek leave to table the two documents, as indicated in my speech.

Leave granted.

Senator MILNE (Tasmania—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens) (17:03): I rise today to congratulate Senator Ludlam on bringing this matter of public importance to the Senate, because very few Australians would be aware that there is a very high-level meeting on nuclear safety and security to be held tomorrow, 22 September, at the United Nations headquarters in response to a call by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, following the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. I am delighted that we have this opportunity to discuss the UN report. I congratulate, again, Senator Ludlam for tabling the report that will be discussed at that high-level meeting. I would urge senators to read the report and consider it.

Interestingly, earlier this year, on 18 April, the Secretary-General of the United Nations called for a global rethink of nuclear energy and safety. After the Fukushima disaster, people around the world began to really think about the implications of a major nuclear disaster. I note that, in recent days, the former Japanese Prime Minister came out saying that he sought advice in the early days after the disaster of what it would take if Tokyo, with its 30 million people, had to be evacuated. That is what he was grappling with in the first days after the disaster and has subsequently said that the power company involved was extremely unhelpful in providing the kinds of details that he needed to know in thinking about and making those kinds of plans. But think about it for a moment: imagine a situation in a developed country, such as Japan, where somebody has to think about moving 30 million people and what it would mean. As he said, it would mean that Japan would cease to exist and operate as a nation-state during a period where you are trying to manage that kind of disaster. It is worth actually considering that.

I note that Senator Abetz was very selective in the way that he responded to this matter. He noted, for example, in relation to food, that one of the UN agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organisation, did contribute in the section on agriculture and food security about the contribution of nuclear energy and nuclear technology for food security. But the report also recognised that a nuclear accident involving the release of radioactive material will result in:

… serious radioactive contamination of water, agriculture, aquaculture, fisheries and forestry productions as well as wildlife, thus posing a serious threat to veterinary and public health, food security and trade, with direct implications on the livelihoods of people.

So let us get that absolutely straight: a nuclear accident of this kind will lead to contamination and will have massive health and also food security impacts, as we have seen with the level of contamination of food in the immediate area of Fukushima. In relation to the achievement of the Millen­nium Development Goals, Senator Abetz quotes that the IAEA suggests that the provision of access to energy for the 2.4 billion people currently living in energy poverty is an important precondition for progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. We totally agree. Energy is important in delivering the Millen­nium Development Goals, but nuclear power is not the answer to doing that, because we are talking here about costs and risks, and in fact it is distributed energy produced by renewable energy that has a much greater opportunity and chance to be able to relieve poverty. I put it this way: in the UNDP report they note that sustainable development will require the cost per megawatt hour of electricity to be less than three per cent of per capita income. Since the majority of those in need of energy live in countries where annual per capita incomes are under $1,000, the need is for technological options in the range of $30-$50 per megawatt hour. With nuclear you are not going to get it anywhere under $100, if not more as we go into the greater risk parameters that you are going to have to pay for if you are going to try and develop nuclear energy. So what we should be doing is opposing the idea that you would try and drive nuclear energy, central­ised systems requiring governments to underwrite them in terms of cost, posing difficulties for local communities. Instead, you would support Australian technology in thin film solar, for example, which is a new and exciting area of solar. It is now biodegradable and is entirely consistent with aspirations for providing energy to develop­ing countries. We will see that Australian technology roll out over time and we going to see it make a big difference in the developing world.

On climate change, there is this ridiculous assertion that nuclear energy is required to address climate change. It is actually the opposite. In this report it states that the assumptions that need to be reviewed are regarding the types of accidents that are possible. The report says that an assessment of those accidents was way too modest and that they need to look at the possible effects of climate change in relation to nuclear energy. That is because nuclear cannot take the heat. We have seen right around the world in the last decade several occasions where nuclear reactors have had to be closed down because of extreme heat conditions, which will be increasing as the rate of climate change accelerates.

Let me give you a few examples. In July 2010 in Alabama we saw the shutdown of nuclear facilities to the point where it cost that energy agency or energy department $50 million, all of which had to be paid for by customers in Tennessee, when they had to close down the reactors because they could not cool them, there was no water to be able to do it, and also they could not dispose of the hot water into river systems which were already depleted. At about the same time we had exactly the same situation in Europe. For example, in the summer of 2003 during those record-breaking heatwaves millions of people across France and Italy suffered through extended power shortages after the French network of 19 nuclear power plants had to reduce their operations. Seventy per cent of France's electricity comes from nuclear power. Italy also purchases about a third of its electricity from French nuclear providers. During the heatwave those countries had to basically cut down on use and promote energy conservation. There were blackouts and the result was that many aged people, hospitals and so on experienced those blackouts, and it was appalling. That is why France is now one of the countries in Europe most rapidly embracing renewable energy technology, because they recognise that in extreme weather events nuclear is no good, the reactor has to be shut down.

So let us get this very straight: rather than being a solution to climate change, nuclear is actually significantly undermined by climate change. The coalition does not want to address climate change, but we are going to have more extreme weather events in Australia, more high-temperature days. It is completely unsuitable technology in this country. But I do want on the record that Senator Abetz reiterated that it is coalition policy to build nuclear reactors in Australia. He still has not said where he would build them—

Senator Bernardi: That's not true.

Senator MILNE: Senator Abetz said that. Just a few minutes ago he said that as far as he was concerned the Labor Party is not wanting to support nuclear reactors, clearly the Greens do not, and he was hoping that that would be rethought. It is coalition policy and Senator Abetz has made it clear. In the face of climate change, getting nuclear reactors is so ridiculous, and in face of the disaster that has been Fukushima it is strange that anybody could be talking about promoting nuclear energy. There we had Ziggy Switkowski doing just that. He did not go and stand outside Fukushima, though, did he, when he was busy talking about the low level of risk. He should have gone straight there if it were so low-level risk. But no, it is the Japanese people who are suffering because of this.

I hope that at this meeting in the United Nations tomorrow they will not only consider this but look at the IAEA and say that this organisation needs to split its responsibilities for looking at nuclear proli­feration and for its promotion of nuclear as a technology. They need to split the regulatory authority from the promotion, and that is one of the very positive things that should come out of this meeting tomorrow.

Senator BERNARDI (South Australia) (17:13): In rising to make a contribution to this debate I acknowledge that Senator Ludlam has had a longstanding and serious interest in, and opposition to, nuclear energy. He has not yet succumbed to the hysteria and hyperbole that we just heard from Senator Milne. Senator Milne was on about how nuclear was unreliable, and I can only presume that her endorsement of renewable energy has conveniently overlooked the fact that the recent high winds in the UK forced them to close down the wind farms there because they were at risk of collapse and catching on fire and actually overpowering the electricity grid. I also note that Senator Milne criticised Dr Switkowski for not standing in front of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan to make his announce­ments about the safety of nuclear energy. I also note that Senator Milne has not been standing in front of the geothermal tech­nology company in South Australia, where one exploded recently. Let us call this for what it is. It is another scaremongering tactic by an extreme green movement that is seeking to exploit a tragic circumstance and a very dangerous circumstance—I will acknowledge that—for their own base ends. There is no doubt that what happened in Japan was bad. It was a disaster for the Japanese people but we have to look at the fact that this reactor was built on old technology—40-year-old technology. Clear­ly it was built in the wrong place and without due consideration of the earthquake risk and the tsunami risk that it was placed under. All of these things can be overcome if you can overcome an irrational fear of nuclear energy. But, of course, the Greens specialise in irrational fear to pursue equally irrational policy agendas. Senator Ludlam, as I said, has not quite succumbed to that as yet.

But the Greens clearly want a baseload power system built on the most unreliable of technologies, which is renewable energy technology. We know it is prohibitively expensive. We know that it will not provide for Australia's base power needs. And it is startling to hear Senator Milne defend the provision of electricity to people all over the world when the Greens and Senator Milne herself want to basically shut down our baseload power generation capacity in Australia. Make no mistake: this is part of the Greens policy agenda. They do not want to see any new coalmines. They do not want to see any more coal fired power stations. But this is only part of their extreme policy agenda.

Might I remind this Senate that Senator Bob Brown, the Leader of the Greens, actually wanted and has previously called for a registration system for businesses based on the religious belief of their owners. This was rapidly removed from the Greens website, but I still have the press release. Senator Bob Brown wanted to have a register of businesses based on the religious belief of the owners. This is the same organisation that promotes and supports boycotts of businesses that do business with Israel or that are owned by Jewish business owners. This is an extreme agenda that is very damaging to Australia because it does not confront the reality.

We know that the hypocrisy of the Greens has been demonstrated over and over again. I remember when Senator Bob Brown was quoted as saying: 'People do not make large donations to political parties without having in mind favour in return.' I wonder what you get when you take the largest corporate political donation in the history of this country. There have been some suggest­ions—it is just a coincidence, we know—that when Senator Bob Brown rose and asked a number of questions in this place that were directly relevant to the business interests of that $1.6 million donor to the Greens, accusations of hypocrisy and accusations of conflict of interest could have been levelled. But, of course, the Greens washed their hands of it.

I mention these things because we need to put it in perspective: the Greens are an alarmist movement that will seek to trade and profit from human misery because that will suit their political agenda. Their agenda is, quite frankly, one that wants to reduce human kind to just another species amongst species. We are the same as rabbits and monkeys and anything else. Once again, that is in the Greens manifesto, which was written by Bob Brown and that man, Peter Singer, in 1996. It effectively equates humans with just about every other animal species. Little wonder they want to shut down the embracement of technology that can actually supply Australia's and the world's electricity needs in a manner that is consistent with the global desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. They make no bones about that, notwithstanding what Senator Milne said.

Nuclear energy is one of the few low-emissions technologies that can provide baseload power. We know that. It has worked elsewhere in the world. Senator Milne in her rush to criticise nuclear power all over the world conveniently overlooked the fact that the nuclear industry in somewhere like France supplies a lot of western Europe with their electricity needs. Indeed, you would not have the opportunity to use as much electricity in places like Italy without France's provisions.

We need to be aware of what the real agenda is here. It is not about the national interest. It is not about Australia's interest or about provisioning, protecting, defending or preparing ourselves for the requirements of future generations. This is about pursuing an ideological agenda. The tragedy in Japan is simply part of that. It is no doubt a tragedy. It is something that we will have to learn from, but it is not the reason that we should shut the door to examining the application of nuclear energy and its respective benefits right around the world, and that includes here, in Australia.

Contrary to what the Senate has been told, it is not coalition policy to build nuclear power plants. We acknowledge that nuclear should be examined as a potential solution that is consistent with our desire to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but we cannot pursue this policy agenda without bipartisan agreement. Everyone acknowledges that. We know also that the Labor Party is not party to that agreement yet, because clearly the Greens tail is wagging the dog. Although, I do note that clear thinkers like Martin Ferguson MP have tried to put this on the ALP policy agenda. So I say to Australians: they should not succumb to this green— (Time expired)

Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) (17:20): I can endorse those comments of Senator Bernardi's that Minister Ferguson is a very clear thinker—

Senator Bernardi: He is one of yours.

Senator FARRELL: No, he is not one of mine to be perfectly honest.

Senator Bernardi: He's one of Gavin's.

Senator FARRELL: I do not think he is one of Gavin's either.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells: He's gone out on his own, has he?

Senator FARRELL: He has got his own set of friends, although Deputy President Marshall might be more informed than I am on the Balkanised ways of the Victorian Labor Party. But we are not here today to talk about that issue; that should be for another day. We are here today to talk about Senator Ludlam's MPI. The starting point might be to recall that, 25 years ago, we had the Chernobyl tragedy, which occurred in what was then part of the Soviet Union and is now the state of Ukraine. What we saw in March this year with Japan's Daiichi nuclear power plant in Fukushima reaffirmed the importance of sound nuclear emergency response mechanisms and the highest possible standards of nuclear safety.

I would particularly like to talk today about Australia's initial response to the Japanese disaster. In the immediate wake of the earthquake and tsunami, the Australian government responded extremely quickly to ensure the safety of Australians in Japan as well as to offer assistance to the Japanese government and, more particularly, the people of Japan. The Australian government, on behalf the Australian people, donated $10 million to the Australian Red Cross Japan and Pacific Disaster Appeal and provided very early and extensive support. Part of that support included a 72-person urban search-and-rescue team with two sniffer dogs, which was one of the first overseas teams on the ground in Japan. In addition, a 22-strong Defence team participated in Australia's response. We sent three Royal Australian Air Force C17 aircraft and airlifted a total of over 450 tonnes of cargo over 12 days to support the relief operation in Japan. Two of those RAAF C17 aircraft were also used to transport specialised pumping equipment from Perth to Japan, with Australian technicians who helped to set up the equip­ment and provide the training for using them to the Japanese technicians. The pumping equipment directly contributed to efforts to stabilise the situation at the Daiichi nuclear power plant.

One hundred and fifty Australia based and locally engaged staff provided consular support, and coordinated information and support with Japanese officials, through our embassy in Tokyo. Australia also deployed consular staff to Sendai as soon as it was possible after the tsunami. We were in fact the first team to be deployed in the area and the last to depart. In total, over 230 Australian officials served in Japan to provide consular services to Australians and to assist Japan with its very difficult recovery efforts.

The crisis centre at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade—and I have had some experience with them in recent times—received over 11,000 phone calls over the period of the crisis. The Australian govern­ment was able to confirm the safety of 5,239 Australians in Japan, including 417 in the tsunami and quake affected areas of the country. All the Australians of whom DFAT was aware were accounted for and, thank­fully, there were no Australian casualties. So often, when these sorts of tragedies overseas occur, Australians are involved; but on this occasion, importantly, there were no Austra­lian casualties suffered.

Australia is taking a very active role in the broader international action on nuclear safety. In terms of the broader implications of the Fukushima accident, the Australian government recognises the importance of the international community working collaborat­ively to improve nuclear safety through the promotion of best-practice standards. We just heard Senator Faulkner talk about some of these initiatives. They include, firstly, greater international oversight of nuclear safety, including through the bilateral safety agreements with the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and their nuclear safety auditing; secondly, better international coordination of emergency response and consequent management; thirdly, encourag­ing industry to share in-house safety standard compliance techniques; and, fourthly, coop­eration from Australia with, potentially, new nuclear energy market entrants in our region.

There has been a meeting of the IAEA. They hosted a conference on nuclear safety that was held in Vienna in June. I know Senator Mark Bishop, who is in the chamber, has been to Vienna on at least one occasion. At this conference, we outlined several actions the international community could take to address gaps in current—

Senator Fierravanti-Wells: Did you waltz, Senator Bishop?

Senator FARRELL: I think that was in a different country, Senator!

Senator Fierravanti-Wells: Tell us more, Senator Farrell!

Senator FARRELL: The paper that Australia presented to the conference in Vienna addressed what we considered to be gaps in safety arrangements and outlined actions to address them. These included independent fact-finding and review mis­sions for nuclear incidents—again, to be coordinated by the IAEA; nuclear safety missions, also coordinated by the IAEA; and improved national reporting under the provi­sions of the Convention on Nuclear Safety. That IAEA meeting endorsed a vision for improvements in the form of a practical action plan on nuclear safety. That action plan incorporated a number of ideas advan­ced by Australia and our foreign minister for improving nuclear safety. Those included, firstly, the IAEA conducting fact-finding missions when nuclear accidents occur and publishing those results; secondly, an expan­sion of the IAEA's nuclear safety review role; and, thirdly, greater transparency by states in reporting their nuclear safety activities.

The High-Level Meeting on Nuclear Safety and Security which Senator Siewert mentioned will be convened by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, tomorrow in New York. Australia hopes that the meeting will formally endorse that action plan. Importantly, the action plan recognises that all countries have a stake in nuclear safety, whether or not they have nuclear programs of their own. (Time expired)

Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS (New South Wales) (17:30): My colleagues have previously spoken about safety and the importance of ensuring that nuclear power plants have the appropriate safety mechan­isms. I endorse those comments. I also endorse the comments that Senator Abetz made before me about the need to have a balanced consideration of this matter. Of course, we are all concerned about what happened and the disaster that happened at Fukushima as a consequence of the tsunami. But the other side of the equation is that nuclear power is the source of energy for millions of people around the world.

It does need to be a balanced debate, but balanced is certainly something the Greens are not. Senator Abetz mentioned the United Nations report and cited some statistics from it. It is clear that the Greens do not have a very balanced view as far as nuclear energy is concerned. Their policies are about a nuclear-free Australia. Indeed, they are about a nuclear-free world. One only has to look at their policies to see just how extreme they are. For example, they want to close the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. Forget the probably millions of people in Australia who have had the benefits of nuclear medicine over time and the good things that the existence of that reactor has been able to provide to Australians on a daily basis. Forget all of this.

Let us look at some of these extreme policies of the Greens. We know about the formal alliance with the Gillard government and the influence of the Greens now that they have control and the balance of power in the Senate. Bob Brown is on the record about the agenda of the Greens and I quote—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Back ): Order! Senator Fierravanti-Wells, would you refer to Senator Brown as Senator Brown.

Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS: I withdraw that. Senator Bob Brown is on the record about the agenda of the Greens. On 25 August 2008, he said:

The Greens are about re-creating Australia for the new century street by street, community by community, city by city.

The Greens want to transform Australia root and branch, not for the better but for the worse. Their goal stretches well beyond the introduction of a job-destroying economy-wide carbon tax that will push up prices and add further to the cost-of-living pressures under which Australian families are already struggling. Lindsay Tanner back in 2004 said:

We might have the Greens with the balance of power … and in order to form government Labor might have to do some of the mad things they want.

Let us have a look at some of those loony, loony policies.

In the economic policy from the Greens' radical agenda they talk about introducing road congestion taxes, means testing first homeowners grants, treating family trusts as companies and introducing death duties. In the energy sector they are opposed to the exploration, mining and export of uranium. They are opposed to the diesel fuel rebate. They are opposed to government funded research and development for geosequestra­tion technology. They want to shut down existing coal mines and coal fired power stations. Imagine what the cost of this will be on ordinary Australians, who are already struggling to confront the increase in electricity prices that will be brought by a carbon tax. Imagine no new coal mines, no new coal fired power stations and no expansion of existing coal mines. It was interesting to hear Senator Abetz the other day say that Senator Bob Brown has become a convert. At the time of the Franklin dam he was happy to have a coal fired power station, but he has changed his mind since then.

Look at their other policies in the social and community area: legalising cannabis, supporting needle and syringe exchanges, banning junk food advertising, giving 16-year-olds the right to vote and changing the national flag. In education there is the classic: freezing private school funding. How can we get across Senator Rhiannon and her extreme BDS anti-Israel stance? There is their abolishing of private health insurance. The list goes on and on. (Time expired)

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! The time for this discussion has expired.