Senator HUME (Victoria) (09:31): I rise today to continue my speech on the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill 2017. I previously spoke on Thursday 11 May. On that occasion, I reminded the chamber that Labor has constantly opposed good-quality, sensible and pragmatic policies that those on this side of the chamber have put forward to look after small business and that their hypocrisy on this issue knows no bounds at all. Those 3.2 million businesses that currently employ more than six million Australians are, in fact, the engine room of the economy. They're the small businesses that we go to every day: the small manufacturers, the fish and chip shop down the road, the bakery, and the small grocer on the corner. They're the people who keep our economy going and keep our economy alive. Only a coalition government genuinely looks after small business. Labor, as we know, looks after big business. Big business is what feeds the hungry and insatiable beast of the trade union movement. It looks after big business and big union mates, but it never comes to the rescue of small business—not with any genuine credibility—and this bill is absolutely no different.

The Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill 2017, proposed by Labor, if enacted would see private litigants given a power to request a no adverse cost order at any stage of a competition case that is a Part IV action under the Competition and Consumer Act—that is, any stage of a competition case that they have brought before a court under the proposed subsections 82(3) to 82(4). If a court grants such an order, the legal fees of the defendant would be prevented from being transferred to the litigant in order to make a no adverse cost order. A judge must then be satisfied that the action has a reasonable prospect of success, raises an issue that may be significant for persons or groups other than the applicant, and that the disparity between the respective financial positions of the applicant and the respondent is such that the respondent could use the possibility of a cost order against the applicant as a means to deter the applicant from pursuing the action. That is proposed in subsection 82(5). It is also proposed in this bill that the small business and family ombudsman would provide assistance with advising private litigants on the arguments that might be made and the evidence that is needed to satisfy a court to grant that particular no adverse cost order.

It will come as no surprise, of course, that those on this side of the chamber, the government, do not support this bill. The main reason for that is that the bill fails. It overpromises, and will fail to deliver its objectives. There is no point in Labor promising to access justice for small businesses when the current law, section 46, is broken. Indeed, if Labor are genuine about supporting small businesses they should, instead, support the government's changes to section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. That recommendation was part of the Harper review, which released its final report on 31 March 2015.

The report made 56 separate recommendations on Australia's competition framework, which covered most sections of the economy. The Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Assistant Treasurer all emphasised, on the release of the report, the government's commitment to strengthening Australia's competition policy. They commented:

…the amendment of section 46 to deal with unilateral anticompetitive conduct is an important step to ensure Australia has the best possible competition framework to support innovation and boost economic growth and jobs.

Indeed, as I have mentioned previously, the Minister for Revenue and Financial Services, the Hon. Kelly O'Dwyer, explained how those proposed amendments would support and promote pro-competitive conduct in business for the ultimate benefit of Australian consumers. The minister said:

These amendments will make markets work better for the benefit of all Australians and help to lift our long-term productivity growth. They will ensure that all businesses can compete on a level playing field—

a term that is a very familiar refrain in this debate—

rewarding innovative and dynamic businesses that provide the best services at the lowest cost. This will benefit households by giving them more choice and better value products and services.

It is section 46 that is broken. This bill is entirely unnecessary, and the changes to section 46 that the government has proposed would genuinely level that playing field for small businesses to ensure that they can compete on merit against those businesses that have substantial market power. The changes to section 46 balance small business to big business market relationships and will do far more to assist small businesses than the proposed bill that is once again under discussion today. These changes are necessary, and they are championed by the small business sector.

The piece of legislation we have before us today is expensive and time-consuming. Labor's policy actually encourages small businesses to engage in litigation. It actively encourages litigious behaviour and potentially vexatious litigation. It does not, however, assist in the resolution of disputes at the earliest available opportunity or at the least cost to parties and to the courts. Labor's policy will in fact do the very opposite of that. It will encourage businesses to commence litigation. The applicant and proceedings will still have very high legal costs and a high evidentiary burden in challenging legal thresholds to establish a breach of the current section 46. The seeking of the order itself carries with it a legal cost in satisfying the court that the order satisfies the hurdle tests—a cost which would be borne by the small business applicant. And, if the court grants a no adverse cost order, the applicant must still fund its own case. The case is likely to be complicated by the legal argument about the facts and addressing the expert advice brought by the respondents. The cost to the applicant for its own legal representatives is still likely to be very, very high.

The bill fundamentally also changes the role of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman from advocacy and assistance. In particular, the addition of this function would severely limit the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman's ability to advocate on issues, which is such a key function for this agency.

Additionally, Treasury does not consider that the Labor Party's estimate of costs of $1 million accurately reflects the full cost of this policy. It doesn't appear to account for the increased workload of the Federal Court, and it doesn't appear to account for the significant change to the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman's functions and the increased resourcing of that agency. The most important issue here is for small businesses to beware of false friends. They are like ivy. They decay and ruin the wall they embrace. To the 3.2 million businesses that currently employ more than six million Australians, Labor is, indeed, a false friend.

Senator KITCHING (Victoria) (09:39): I am pleased to speak in support of competition and the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill introduced by the Labor Party—the real friend of small business, contrary to what Senator Hume said. The ALP has long had a good relationship and a good understanding of what the needs of small business and small business owners are. In comparison we see a government that has spent its time in this term giving tax cuts to those who don't need them and hiking up taxes on those who can least afford them. The ALP understands that small business owners and operators want a level playing field when they are competing in the marketplace.

Behaviour that is anticompetitive damages the economy, jobs and future growth. We need small businesses to provide new ideas to provide goods and services. We need young, small businesses to drive new jobs in the labour market. The Council of Small Business Australia estimated in May that there are over 2.5 million small businesses, whether they be sole traders, partnerships or small employers. Whether it is a new IT start-up or a small business that has thought of a new way to make a widget, these businesses have helped underpin 25 years of economic growth. The Council of Small Business states that small businesses employ over five million people and contribute more than $343 billion to the economy every year—$343 billion. This adds insult to injury when we see the Prime Minister and the Treasurer focus on and advantage big business in our economy by giving them tax cuts rather than ensuring that legislation provides a level playing field and one that also helps small business owners. Because what does small business ask in return? They ask for a level playing field, and that includes support for competition policy.

This bill addresses small business's concerns regarding two main elements of competition policy. First, it removes the disincentive of bringing an action that ought properly be brought—that is, the small business is being adversely affected by the conduct of a big business whose conduct is undermining competition. The Harper review recommended a misuse of market power provision to empower small businesses to combat big businesses unfairly undermining them. I want to refer to the 1989 High Court decision in the case of Queensland Wire Industries Pty Ltd v Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited. Chief Justice Mason and Justice Wilson stated:

… the object of s.46 is to protect the interests of consumers, the operation of the section being predicated on the assumption that competition is a means to that end. Competition by its very nature is deliberate and ruthless. Competitors jockey for sales, the more effective competitors injuring the less effective by taking sales away. Competitors almost always try to "injure" each other in this way. This competition has never been a tort … and these injuries are the inevitable consequence of the competition s.46 is designed to foster. In fact, the purpose provisions in s.46(1) are cast in such a way as to prohibit conduct designed to threaten that competition—for example, s.46(1)(c) prohibits a firm with a substantial degree of market power from using that power to deter or prevent a rival from competing in a market. The question is simply whether a firm with a substantial degree of market power has used that power for a purpose proscribed in the section, thereby undermining competition, and the addition of a hostile intent inquiry would be superfluous and confusing.

Queensland Wire succeeded in its claim that BHP had engaged in a misuse of market power by refusing to supply it with Y-bar—the type of wire necessary to make star picket fencing. That sounds like a happy ending. Sadly, that was not the case. As is typical in these cases, the defendants tend to have deep pockets, as BHP did, and they tend to be powerful. Compare them with the applicants who, given the nature of their grievance, tend to be less powerful. The upshot in the Queensland Wire case was that while Queensland Wire's private litigation was successful, it was incredibly costly, and by the time the remedies were assessed Queensland Wire had gone out of business. That's pretty unfair.

This bill will ensure a more even playing field for private litigants, so that small businesses have avenues open to them to prove an abuse of competition. Allowing a judge to waive liability for adverse costs will empower private litigants like Queensland Wire to bring litigation without the crushing burden of enormous legal fees. Any sensible person knows to stay away from lawyers. I say that as a former lawyer. It is expensive. As a practitioner I would repeat the warning that a legal practitioner is required to issue that if a client were to lose they could be liable for the other side's costs. It's difficult to watch people grapple with the risk that if they were to lose they could seriously affect not only their own financial security but really, really affect their families as well. They may have a strong prospect of success with their action or they may they prove every element they need to prove but one perhaps not as well as the others, and they may still win in that circumstance; but the down side is just too much. The risk is just too great. So they don't undertake the action. They walk out the door, but not before most of them say, 'This is not fair.'

This bill seeks to bring balance by allowing a small business to request a no-adverse-costs order early in a court case, thereby preventing large legal fees of a defendant being transferred to the applicant. It does not remove a decision around the merits, as Senator Hume was suggesting, but rather it just allows that decision to be made very early in the proceeding, before costs have been accrued. It gives the applicant the knowledge early on to know whether they are proceeding at their own risk. That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

The second part of this bill is to assist in the process of assessing whether a private litigant is likely to be granted a no-adverse-costs order. This bill introduces an Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman with a new category to provide professional assistance in order to determine the likelihood of such an order being granted. The ombudsman will assist small businesses better understand their prospects of successful action. The small business ombudsman is there to assist and stick up for small business interests. This role will help to facilitate public good through private litigation. This is a practical change for small businesses and it is in the public interest. It better allows access to competition laws to small business. Shouldn't everyone have good access to justice? By allowing private litigants to better bring action under the Competition and Consumer Act, anticompetitive behaviour by powerful interests will be better mitigated, helping to support Australia's competition policy framework. This is a modest, sensible proposal to provide some support for small businesses without damaging competition in the process.

The combination of allowing for no-adverse-costs orders and supporting the small business ombudsman to help businesses reduces part of the financial impact and the uncertainty of private litigation under the Competition and Consumer Act. This can be seen in what is known as the 'effects test' and is perhaps the most controversial part of the act. The ALP does not support an effects test. We are not alone in this. Former treasurer Peter Costello said to an Australian National Retail Association function in Sydney last year:

When you are looking at competition policy, there is one basic question you have to ask before you can settle anything else … who is competition policy for? If you take the view that competition is there for the consumer, which is what I believe is the fact, everything else will fit into place. That's why I'm against the so-called effects test. The so-called effects test is designed to protect competitors, particularly less efficient ones, from a competitive challenge.

We know that those opposite value Peter Costello. After all, he was the last Liberal Treasurer, or indeed the last shadow Liberal Treasurer, not to be burnt up and consumed by the heat that the Treasury portfolio generates. He is just one Liberal who opposed—might still oppose—an effects test. Of course, in former Prime Minister Abbott's cabinet when discussion turned to competition laws many ministers opposed it. Broad speculation at the time was that those opposed included Senator Brandis, former minister Robb, the foreign minister, Senator Cormann and indeed the now Prime Minister himself. Then the Prime Minister had to do a deal in order to become Prime Minister. One of the deals he made was acceding to the demands by the Nationals for an effects test—or, as it was reported in the Financial Review at the time, 'The federal government has succumbed to pressure from the Nationals'. How did the Retail Council react to this? Well, they said that the backflip by the government was simply 'bad policy' and that 'the consumer is the loser'.

I want to go to where the effects test, in legal policy terms, comes from, because there is no standard test in other jurisdictions across the world. There is a view that in the United States public interest in private litigation is good. That is, we all benefit from the litigation individuals bring and, based on that, measures should be taken to ensure that it can happen, which is really what this bill, brought by Senator Gallagher, actually seeks to do. We've all heard of famous antitrust cases in the United States, and some are deservedly famous. For example, the Standard Oil antitrust case is very widely read across all legal jurisdictions, where JD Rockefeller was accused of predatory pricing, including with railroads, in order to eliminate his competition.

In Australia there have been a number of reviews and inquiries into our competition laws. Over the last 30 or so years there have been about a dozen, and the Harper review is the most recent. Australia's competition laws have considered a proposed effects test. In these former reviews and inquiries an effects test was considered but then rejected. So, apart from Professor Harper's review, only one other inquiry has ever recommended it. There is a reason that 10 out of 12 inquiries have recommended against an effects test. The reason is that it is bad law. It's going to have a detrimental impact on the consumer. In the submissions to the Harper review, the effects test has been described as 'legally unworkable', something that will 'chill competition' and something that will 'create uncertainty for business'. These changes will deter job-creating investment in Australia by adding to the new layers of red tape and barriers to investment which already have been imposed by the coalition government. It is little wonder that the government's own former Minister for Trade and Investment, Mr Robb, was opposed to this latest anti-investment measure.

The worst of this is that the government's proposed effects test is a move to satisfy internal politicking; it's not about policy. A level-headed analysis of the effects test shows that the Prime Minister is using competition policy as a political plaything. The Prime Minister has backflipped on the effects test, because he has previously said that he would be deeply concerned about the introduction of such a test. We've heard other people, such as Mr Samuel, the former ACCC chairman, saying:

Under the Harper amendment, businesses would curb their competitive behaviour because of the legal risk. This would have drowned the commercial activity of big business in a sea of uncertainty. Lawyers and economists would need to sit at the right hand of business CEOs to guide them on the legality of every significant transaction.

Richard Goyder, the former CEO and managing director of Wesfarmers has said of the effects test, 'I think it will have a negative impact, because it will cost consumers more.' The managing director of Coles, Mr Durkan, has warned that the effects test could push up prices, particularly in the chain's regional stores.

I just want to talk about regional stores for a moment because, let's compare what he has just said—so, someone who operates many, many stores in urban and regional and rural Australia—with someone who purports to care about rural Australia, and that is the Deputy Prime Minister. It is quite clear that the member for New England, who is sometimes a disturbingly influential economic voice in the government, if not on occasion the government's chief economics spokesperson, has actually supported a test which is detrimental to Australian consumers and the broader economy. If Barnaby Joyce were just another coalition renegade, it might not have mattered so much, but his views are driving competition policy in Australia. This contrasts starkly with alternative options. Some in the small business community have said that the change would mean that business would have to consider the effect of their day-to-day business decisions. That is an incredible burden to place on people. A marketing manager should not be wondering if their latest sales campaign will affect competition, but rather how that campaign will help the business grow and expand. A CEO needs to focus on strategic growth and look into the long term, not fighting off litigation because a new multimillion dollar investment in regional Australia threatens established businesses. This is dangerous economic policy that will lead to uncertainty across the economy, potentially adding substantial costs to every single transaction, of which millions occur each day.

Coming back to an international standard: there is none. There is no international standard effects test to assess dominant-firm unilateral conduct. The perceived trend, which is what the government is relying on—a perception of a trend where the effects test is not universal, nor what is really happening in the US and the EU—appears to substantially respond to discredited structuralist approaches to assessing lessening of competition in which, for example, increased supply concentration is equated with harm to competition, regardless of actual competitive dynamics. This is, however, not a problem encountered in Australia under the current act. We should not underestimate the consequences of amending section 46 to introduce a test that is not consistently developed in the US or the EU in their legislation and that will rely on Australian courts to develop a distinctly Australian effects test over time.

The American Bar Association submitted to the competition review that there is no US standard for determining effects and that, if such a test were adopted in Australia, it should be left to the courts to develop. However, as it is not proposed to adopt the US jurisprudence—you will be pleased to know that I am not going into the last 100 years of judicial thinking on competition policy in the US—this may be a recipe for repeating the past 40-year cycle of judicial interpretation of the current section 46 and repeated legislative intervention. The EU proposal, article 102 of the treaty for the functioning of the EU, is likewise a very simple provision, with no express effects test and a considerably smaller body of judicial interpretation. Its purpose is to enhance the operation of the internal market. The implied effects test arises from the European Commission's 2009 guidance on enforcement priorities, which focuses attention on practices that harm the process of competition and, thus, adversely affect consumer welfare—for example, in the form of higher prices, limiting quality or reducing consumer choice. Note that consumer welfare in this usage has quite a different meaning from the long-term interests of consumers, as interpreted by Frontier Economicsand apparently used by that review. The EC guidance also refers to conduct of dominant firms that excludes competitors by means other than competition on the merits. The guidance indicates that the focus of enforcement should be on cases where exclusionary conduct adversely affects equally efficient competitors—that is, impact on less efficient competitors is of no concern.

As discussed, the contribution that small business makes to our economy is crucial. This bill is about making sure our competition laws are better enforced by giving small business access to justice. Isn't this not only fair but also vital to ensure that the major cog of the Australian economy, small business, is looked after? Thank you.

Senator RUSTON (South Australia—Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) (10:00): I rise to speak on the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill 2017. In doing so, I stand here as a small business owner and operator. This private senator's bill seeks to amend two particular acts—that is, the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Act 2015. It allows judges in the Federal Court to waive liability for adverse costs to small business private litigants in cases related to the misuse of market power. It also allows the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to provide assistance to small businesses in preparing these cases.

In listening to the contributions made by some of those opposite, they have consistently said this is about access to justice. I suggest it is not necessarily about access to justice; it is about whose model for access to justice gets selected. It appears to me that, instead of accepting that there are a number of different options and models through which small businesses, particularly small businesses without access to much resource, are able to get a fair and equitable opportunity to settle disputes in the Australian legal system, we are now seeing this as an opportunity to try to once again wedge government. As everybody in this place would know, following a very extensive review by Professor Harper, the government made an election commitment that we would review the provisions within the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 to make sure we put additional protections in place for small businesses.

What we have got here today is a bill that, if enacted, would see private litigants given the power to request a no adverse cost order at any stage of a competition case. If the court grants such an order, the legal fees of the defendant would be prevented from being transferred to the litigant. In order for this particular no adverse cost order to occur, a judge would have to be satisfied that the action has a reasonable prospect of success. It raises an issue that may be significant for persons or groups other than the applicant, and when the disparity between the respective financial positions of the applicant and the respondent is such that the respondent could use the possibility of a costs order against the applicant as a means to deter the applicant from pursuing action. It is much the same way as model litigation occurs, where any government instrumentality cannot use its power and resources in order to deter a smaller organisation from seeking its legal rights.

Probably one of the more important aspects of the bill before us is that it is proposing that the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman may provide assistance in advising a private litigant on the arguments that might be made and the evidence that is needed to satisfy a court to grant a no adverse costs order. In doing so, they would be charged with the capacity to prepare those arguments, which is outlined in proposed sections 15(c) and 74B of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Act 2015.

Whilst I think everybody in this place would like to see that there is a level playing field and there is access to adequate opportunity for any small business to be able to seek legal recourse in a situation where they believe that they have been wronged, what we've got here is a bill that is largely seeking to overpromise but largely likely to underdeliver. The fact is that there's no point in promising a litigant access to justice for a small business when the current law is actually broken. The reality is that, if you break the law, the consequences will follow. If Labor is really genuine about supporting small business, why aren't they actually working with us to effect changes to section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act? The changes to that section have been universally supported within business as providing a balance to the small business market and small-to-big business market relationship and will do far more to assist small business than any other proposals that are currently on the table.

By levelling the playing field for small business, we want to ensure that they compete on their merits against businesses with substantial market power and prosper. But we equally have to make sure that the tools that we give them to do so are fit for purpose and the best possible tools that we can give. So we absolutely fundamentally believe that changes to section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act are absolutely essential to delivering the level playing field that everybody in this place universally agrees needs to happen. The bill that we have put before this place seeks to repeal the existing section 46, which prohibits a corporation with substantial market power from taking advantage of that power for one of three prohibited purposes that are largely directed towards harming or deterring particular competitors. We seek to replace that particular section 46 with a new section 46 which prohibits a corporation that has a substantial degree of power from engaging in contact that has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in a relevant market.

What we think that we have achieved by the amendments that we are proposing to the Competition and Consumer Act, through the repeal and replacement of section 46, is exactly what those opposite are proposing and purporting to be trying to achieve by this private members' bill which is before us today. What we've got to remember is that the bill that was put forward as a government bill that sought to change section 46 has gone through a very rigorous process. It came off the back of a very substantial review, as I mentioned earlier, by Harper. It's also gone through all the usual rigorous processes of Senate committees. In fact, the majority view of the Senate committee, when it undertook its investigation inquiry into this particular bill, was that the bill provided adequate protection for non-dominant firms from the destructive actions of firms with substantial market power. It also not only considered that the new provisions would provide a more equitable market but also made clear that the amendments do not represent an argument for small versus big—rather, they represent support for open and fair markets that allow all businesses to participate and compete on their merits.

What we've got here—the situation at the moment—are, essentially, two bills in this place that are seeking to effect the same sorts of protections and provisions for small business. We seem to be having a debate about whose bill is better—the one that's gone through a very rigorous process or the one that's just been popped in by the Labor Party. And, by their very own admission, in listening to a contribution of a couple of the Labor members before standing to give my contribution, there seems to be a level of 'gotcha politics' in all this. We can go out and find these people who say, 'We think we've got a better idea,' when talking about the provisions that will be enacted if the effects test changes that are proposed by the government come into place. In a democracy, as you well know, not everybody always agrees with everybody else. What I think we need to do is agree that we have an outcome that we're seeking to achieve. Then, we need to go through a proper and thorough process.

I believe, and the coalition believes, that a proper and thorough process has been gone through in relation to making changes to section 46. The statements made before with some level of pettiness—'This is your idea, so, therefore, we're not going to accept it; we want to achieve exactly the same thing, so we're going to bring in something that's our idea so we have every opportunity to say why your idea's wrong'—are not constructive debate in this place. This is not what the people of Australia asked us and elected us to come to this place to do. The people of Australia elected us so we could come here, work together, put different ideas on the table, and hopefully come up with satisfactory legislative and regulatory outcomes that deliver what they actually seek from those that they elected to this place. They do not want 'I don't like it just because it's your idea' type politics. That, unfortunately, seems to be what we're descending into in so many instances in this particular parliament.

We need to be very careful about creating a very clear balance between making sure that we put protections in place for everybody so there is a level playing field in the legal environment to get legal recourse against any damage or wrongs and making sure that when we do these things we don't overly burden the legal system and don't overly burden the litigant by creating a system that is unnecessarily expensive or particularly time-consuming. It often becomes expensive when it is time-consuming. We need to make sure any legislation that we pass in order to put these protections in place is not seen in any way, shape or form as an encouragement for small business to engage in litigation as an example. It absolutely never assists in the resolution of a dispute, particularly at the earliest opportunity or at the least cost, if we end up with our parties going to court. In the first instance, we should always try every single possible opportunity to come up with a dispute resolution mechanism that does not encourage access and entry into court.

Unfortunately, the bill that is before us today moves immediately to the inference that litigation is the first point at which we need to start engaging, and that is a very bad signal to be sending to the marketplace. In essence, it is encouraging small business to commence litigation. The reality is that as soon as you commence litigation you will immediately start to incur extraordinary costs. It then becomes an ever-increasing problem, because the higher the costs, the more need for the litigant to try and establish that they will not have to pay any costs against them. We have seen so many small businesses go to the wall because they have been encouraged to litigate when there are many other remedies available to them to try and deal with their disputes. The seeking of a court order in itself carries with it the legal cost in satisfying the court that the order satisfies the hurdle test, which would be borne, once again, by the small business applicant. Even if the court grants the no adverse costs order, the applicant must still fund their own case—and the case is likely to be complicated by the legal argument about the facts—and address the expert evidence brought by the respondent. The cost to the applicant for their own legal representation is in itself likely to be high under the conditions that have been put forward by the bill before us today.

Of particular concern is the role that has been purported to be required of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman by this particular bill. The functions that would be given to the ombudsman would require them to provide legal advice on the prospects of obtaining an order, which I don't believe, and the government doesn't believe, is an appropriate role for a public statutory office of this nature. It also doesn't seem to be clear how a party who took up litigation on the basis of an assessment and subsequently did not obtain an order in their favour could then withdraw from the litigation without penalty costs. It is also unclear what liability the ombudsman would have should the party not be successful in obtaining an order in their favour. A party in receipt of a no adverse costs order is incentivised to take up belligerent litigation tactics, which are absolutely unhelpful for any judge and for the other party if they are acting in good faith.

Additionally, the ability to request a no-adverse-costs order at any stage of the proceedings raises two key issues. Firstly, it's not clear how a judge would be expected to consider a no-adverse-costs order at the outset of a matter, where the evidence has not been tested by the parties. This in itself could be the subject of an appeal and further add to the risk and potential cost of any proceedings that may subsequently commence. Secondly, allowing such an order to be requested at a later stage would appear to undermine the rationale of the policy. If parties are not taking private action because of the risk of significant adverse costs orders, only at the outset of the matter would a no-adverse-costs order be able to address this. It's unclear why a party who considers a no-adverse-costs order is available to them would then wait until later in the proceedings to request such an order. In a sense, it's somewhat contradictory. As it stands, the bill would allow a party to request a no-adverse-costs order when it becomes aware that it does not have a reasonable prospect of success, rather than withdrawing from the case, as it possibly should.

This also significantly and fundamentally changes the role of the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman from advocacy to assistance. In particular, the addition of this function would severely limit the ombudsman's ability to advocate on issues. In addition, we have received advice that Labor's estimated cost of $1 million over the forward estimates does not reflect the true cost of this policy. It does not appear to account for the increased workload of the Federal Court that would result if judges were called upon to make cost waiver assessments, and the forecast costs do not appear to account for the significant increase and change in the role and functions of the ombudsman and the increased resourcing of that agency that would be required.

As I said earlier, the government believes that before this place at the moment, through our amendments to section 46 of the Competition and Consumer Act, we have a fit-for-purpose instrument that the Labor Party could support to facilitate the changes and the outcomes that they are seeking for small business. Why are we sitting here debating this when we could be getting on with the job by just proceeding, even with amendment, with the changes to section 46 and the bill before the place, instead of sitting here having a debate over whether a no-adverse-costs order legislative instrument is a better instrument than the section 46 effects test amendments being proposed by the government?

What I would say to those opposite and those who have put this bill into this place is, let's get back to doing what the people of Australia expect us to do: have respectful, positive, proactive and outcome-driven debate about how we are going to deliver for the Australian public a better landscape in which they can do business. I can assure you that it is pretty hard out there, whether you are a big, small or medium business. Do not be fooled—it is a really tough environment out there. In my home state of South Australia we have the added indignity of power costs. We are in a situation where in any energy-exposed business it is the only bill that anybody cares about getting at the end of the month or quarter because it is so large. Added to that insult is the fact that not only is your bill enormous, but sometimes when you go to turn on your power it's not there at all.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs that we should be sitting in here and arguing the semantics of whether your bill is better than my bill, when we are both trying to seek the very same outcome. I think it's a pretty sad reflection on where we have got to in this place. Unless I missed something completely in this whole exercise, I believe that the intent of both of our bills is exactly the same. I believe that everybody in this place genuinely wants to help and support small business. We want to try and create the most opportunity for a level playing field for access to everything. We don't like to see the big guy beating up on the little guy, but equally we don't like to see vexatious little guys biting at the heels of the big guys unnecessarily. We need to create an environment in Australia where all business can prosper. We need to lower taxes as much as we possibly can so businesses are in a position to employ people, because at the end of the day the best outcome for Australia is to make sure that everybody has a job, and wouldn't it be great to think that we had an economy that was prospering so well that people could not only have a job but also have a job that they loved, just like I know that you and I, Mr Acting Deputy President, love the jobs that we've got.

Obviously the intent of this bill is supported by the government but, with the completely unnecessary cost and burden that is going to be put on the public by it, I would much rather see our bill passed. (Time expired)

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (10:20): The Greens will be supporting the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill today. This bill is a private senator's bill. It amend two acts, the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 and the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Act 2015. It allows judges in the Federal Court to waive liability for adverse costs to small business private litigants in cases related to the misuse of market power. It also allows the Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to provide assistance to small businesses in preparing these cases. The explanatory memorandum that has been provided by the Labor Party says:

This Bill addresses a prominent problem with the operation of section 46 without changing the intention. The problem relates to private parties litigating breaches of the competition law, namely the risk of significant adverse cost orders should an applicant lose and the time taken to finalise action in the Courts.

That may be the case, that this is not changing the intention of section 46—the Greens are supporting this because we will support anything that helps the competitive process and especially helps small business and farmers take action against what they see as uncompetitive behaviour—but let me make it very clear: the intent of section 46 does need to change. My party, the Greens, have campaigned for years on changing section 46. It is unworkable in its current form and, while it is good to be giving assistance wherever you can to struggling hardworking small businesses and farmers who feel that they have been negatively impacted by or had adverse consequences from especially misuse of market power by big powerful companies, it is no good doing that if it is nearly impossible for them to prosecute a case because of the way section 46 stands now. The way it stands now, a small business of any kind, no matter how much financial assistance they are given, needs to prove the intent that it was intended to be anticompetitive when a big supermarket was to buy, for example, all the land in their area and block competitive access. As we know from personal experience, and I look forward to giving some case studies on this when we debate the effects test bill, that is next to impossible and a small business or a farmer or a medium-size enterprise has always failed when it has tried to prove intent.

I have been through this situation myself with the ACCC. What we need to do is look at the effects themselves as the basis for section 46, and that is what the effects test will do. While we are happy to support this bill today, we do believe that it is actually the intention of section 46 that we need to change because it is unworkable. If we did both, if we had this bill today, which we commend Labor for bringing forward, and we also changed section 46 to make it workable, then we would get the best of both worlds, the best possible outcome for struggling small businesses and farmers in Australia.

As a Tasmanian senator, this issue is particularly acute for me and I have campaigned strong and hard on it since I have come into the Senate. Prior to my taking over the competition and small business portfolio, my previous colleague, Senator Milne, campaigned on this issue with Tasmanian farmers for a number of years. We need to do everything we can to improve competition policy in this country. Don't just take it from me as a Greens senator. The head of the ACCC, Mr Rod Sims, has been scathing of the way section 46 has played out in competition policy in this country. He has been out there publicly stating he wants to see section 46 changed; he wants to see the implementation of an effects test. The ACCC's submission to the Senate inquiry and to the Harper review was very clear. Mr Simms has been in the media taking on the heads of the big supermarkets, who don't want to see change, and you need to ask yourself: why? He has been out there dispelling the myths that have been pedalled by big powerful businesses in this country that want to keep section 46 left intact the way it is now. He is the guy that we trust to actually crackdown on misuse of market power and anticompetitive behaviour. We may all have different views in here as to how effective the ACCC has been, but Mr Simms is making this very clear: don't expect me to get good outcomes for you unless you change section 46.

So let's do both. Let's support Labor's bill today, which I think is a good one. I know Senator Xenophon himself has campaigned for years to get a funding system put in place to help small businesses litigate against big businesses. But let's also make it a lot easier for them to win, to get justice in the case of misuse of market power. Let's take the Harper recommendations, which the Greens have campaigned on for years, and let's change section 46 as well. In this building we have politics and we have policy. Sometimes the two co-join and sometimes they don't. The policy the ALP are putting up today is not a bad policy, but I hope that the ALP aren't going to use this as an excuse to get out of supporting a change to section 46 on the effects test.

This is something that no doubt we'll be debating shortly. We are expecting the competition and consumer amendment on the effects test to come to the Senate this week. No doubt it will be here next week. We need to ask ourselves the question: why, if the ALP are putting this up as a ruse to not support section 46, would that be the case? Why would Mr Bill Shorten and Senator Sam Dastyari and all the Labor MPs in this place not support a change to section 46? This is a change that small business groups around this country want, the farming community wants, and the head of the ACCC, Rod Simms, wants. Why would we not support a change to section 46? It is a question that I don't have the answer to at this stage. No doubt we will hear from the ALP when this legislation comes to the Senate.

But I note there have been articles about this in the media, including in the Ageand the Australian. The one I want to quote from was written by Mr Ken Phillips in the Business Spectator. It talks about the close relationship between the SDA—the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association, or what we commonly call 'the shoppies'—the ALP and the two big supermarkets, Coles and Woolworths. He says in his article of 30 March 2016:

With some 230,000 members, the SDA are one of the largest unions funding the ALP. And arguably the largest source of money for the SDA is Australia’s largest retailer, Wesfarmers. Coles always 'encouraged' employees to be members of the SDA and that tradition of union membership 'encouragement' continues today under Wesfarmers.

He goes on to say:

In effect, Wesfarmers is a massive funding source for the ALP and others through the SDA.

This fact turns on its head the probably naive assumption of Australians that the Coalition—

that is, of course, the coalition in this chamber—

is by default, pro-big business and the ALP pro-worker. Rather, the political game has had powerful undercurrents that of late are little commented upon.

I hope to be commenting more on this when the debate on the effects test comes to this chamber. I think it's really important to highlight why the ALP would effectively jump into bed with big business, and that's what they'll be doing if they vote against an effects test in here next week. Just to wrap up, in the little time I have left: we will be supporting this policy. It is good policy. We congratulate the ALP for bringing it forward. But let's not put the politics of this issue aside. If the ALP are going to use this as an excuse not to support long-needed and much campaigned for changes to section 46 then it will be very disappointing indeed.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (10:29): I thank all senators who have contributed to the debate previously, and again this morning, on the Competition and Consumer Legislation Amendment (Small Business Access to Justice) Bill 2017. This bill is about making sure our competition laws are better enforced by levelling the playing field and giving small business better access to justice. Small businesses are the engine room of our economy. They come up with valuable new products and services, they innovate and they push forward new ways of doing things. They drive competition, and this is to the benefit of consumers, employees and the Australian economy more broadly. These businesses should not be disadvantaged by unlawful anticompetitive conduct by the big end of town. Australians more broadly should not have to suffer the effects of anticompetitive conduct either, and that's why we have introduced this bill.

Part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act is an important protection against anticompetitive conduct. It's an important limit on big firms using their market power in an anticompetitive way, but smaller firms can find it hard to make sure that this law is enforced. Since its inception, the Trade Practices Act 1974—now the Competition and Consumer Act 2010—has had section 46. This is the key component of Australia's competition laws. It's designed to prevent firms with substantial market power from deliberately using that power to eliminate or substantially damage a competitor, to prevent the entry of a competitor or to deter or prevent competition. We want to empower small business private litigants to bring litigation under part IV of the Competition and Consumer Act, but without the burden of prohibitive legal fees. Labor's proposal will bring greater balance in respect of our competition laws by allowing a smaller business to request a no adverse costs order early in a court case. This will help to level the playing field and encourage more small businesses to take on anticompetitive behaviour, to the benefit of consumers and businesses alike.

This bill will address difficulties small businesses face in getting justice under Australia's competition laws. It does two things. First, it allows judges in the Federal Court to waive the small business's liability for the big business's cost when the small business is bringing an anticompetitive conduct case. It will be up to the judge as to whether the no adverse costs order is warranted. This empowers the small business owner with the knowledge that they will be able to argue their case without fear of a huge legal bill at the conclusion. If the application is not approved then they can make a decision knowing that they are proceeding at their own risk. Either way they will have greater up-front knowledge and certainty about the impact of proceeding with the competition case. We know that all too often small businesses don't take on the big end of town despite the fact they may actually have a strong case. This is because they can't afford to risk the costs of going to court, especially when their own cash flow is already tight. We on this side of the chamber want to make sure that small and medium businesses are on that level playing field in our justice system, and this bill will help to do that.

The second element of this bill is that small business will be able to go to the ombudsman to get early assistance to find out whether they should consider applying for these new no adverse costs orders. The legislation will allow Australia's Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman to provide professional assistance as to whether the no adverse costs order is likely to be granted. This is to assist in the process of a private litigant requesting a no adverse costs order. While this will not be legally binding, the ombudsman would assist small businesses to better understand their prospects of successful action under the Competition and Consumer Act. A key function of the ombudsman is to assist small business in resolving disputes. This is known as the ombudsman's assistance function. This legislation complements this assistance function well by giving the ombudsman the power to provide assistance to small businesses that are considering applying for these no adverse costs orders.

The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Ms Kate Carnell, has commented favourably on the bill, saying:

Regarding anti-competitive behaviour, the ASBFEO office remains committed to ensuring small businesses have every opportunity to compete on a level playing field. Labor's proposal regarding a 'no adverse costs order' has merit, and deserves serious consideration by all sides of politics.

We have introduced this bill because, under existing arrangements, small businesses are discouraged from taking on anticompetitive behaviour by large businesses. Large businesses have deeper pockets and access to considerable legal firepower. Small businesses that take on larger firms risk being outresourced and face the possibility of having to pay the big business's legal fees if they are unsuccessful. Currently, that imbalance is too great. On the one side is the big end of town, well resourced with all of the legal muscle you can imagine, perfectly positioned to defend themselves in court. On the other side is a small- or medium-sized business just wanting a fair go, wanting to ensure our competition laws are enforced but currently having to risk prohibited costs and drawn-out legal proceedings to do so. This is a huge obstacle, and one that hampers competition.

The Productivity Commission and the government's own competition review have highlighted that small businesses face numerous disadvantages in the court process. Businesses have the right to take action under section 46. The regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, is also able to take action under section 46. The ACCC has taken action in this space, although it has been suggested that this is insufficient relative to the number of allegations. There is the need to ensure that private businesses are able to exercise their legal rights in this area. Businesses have the legal right to take action under section 46 if a competitor is engaging in anti-competitive conduct. However, at the moment, this is very hard for small and medium businesses to do, even when there is a clear breach of our competition laws.

Indeed, on this point, the government's Harper review into competition found that private enforcement of the competition law is an important right. However, there are many regulatory and practical impediments to the exercise of such a right. It is important to find ways to reduce those impediments. The Harper review also stated that from submissions and consultations with small business, the panel is convinced that there are significant barriers to small business taking private action to enforce the competition laws. Reducing those impediments for small and medium businesses is something that this bill seeks to do. There are certainly disincentives to bringing private litigation under the Competition and Consumer Act. The primary consideration is the potential liability of opposing costs in situations where an applicant loses a case. When the misuse of market power is considered, the opposing costs are likely to be large, given the reliance on solicitors and barristers, as well as competition experts. Unlike some other international jurisdictions, competition litigation in Australia is primarily by public in nature. In the United States, about 10 private cases are bought for each public case. In Australia, the ratio is about one private case for every three public cases.

We think this bill is an important step to improving competition and strengthening enforcement of our competition laws, and to giving small business greater access to justice. We think this is an area where enabling small and medium businesses to take action here would lead to a more competitive economy and more opportunities for small business and better outcomes for consumers.

I want to talk briefly about this bill's interaction with the effects test, which I note a number of other senators have commented on. We know there are a variety of views in this chamber on the effects test. As is known, Labor is opposed to the effects test. However, we acknowledge that other parties in this chamber support it. As I have noted before, this bill is separate to the effects test. It ensures that when small businesses take action under Australia's competition laws, the playing field is more even between small and large businesses. Those in favour of the effects test and those against the effects test can both support this bill. This bill simply allows better access to competition laws for small and medium businesses.

Labor supports strong competition policy. However, we are opposed to an effects test because we have serious concerns about its impact on competition. An effects test is a test that looks at whether conduct engaged in by a firm with a substantial degree of market power has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition. We believe that consumers are the losers under the effects test because the effects test risks making businesses afraid to compete. In our view, the effects test creates a legal risk for a business every time it seeks to lower prices for its customers.

Submissions to the Harper Review raise serious concerns about the effects test, including that it would cause uncertainty, that it would be legally unworkable and that it would chill competition. At least 10 inquiries into Australia's competition laws have considered the proposal of an effects test and have rejected it. Apart from Professor Harper's review, only one other inquiry has recommended it. We believe that this bill is a better approach to competition law by making sure that small and medium businesses have greater access to justice and are not discouraged from taking action under our competition laws when they have a good case. However, as I have said, the access to justice policy in this bill is distinct from the effects test. It can be supported by those in favour of the effects test and by those opposed to the effects test. It complements the competition laws in Australia by enabling greater access for small business.

It is so important that this parliament supports small business. They make up 97 per cent of businesses in Australia. They are the engine room of the economy. They employ more than 4.7 million people and contribute in excess of $380 billion to the economy every year. When small businesses receive the support they need, they are better able to grow, which in turn creates more jobs and contributes more to the national economy. Unfortunately, the government has not addressed the most significant issues for small business. It hasn't addressed issues such as rising energy costs, delays in payment times and problems in the rollout of the NBN. These are all issues that are consistently raised by small business with me. Labor certainly welcomes the decision to extend the small business instant asset write-off; however, we are concerned and disappointed that the government has not acted to stimulate jobs growth or address the all-important issue of cashflow for small businesses. Waiting for payments for supplies or services delivered is debilitating for small businesses right across Australia, and this government has made no effort to address the payment terms problem exposed in the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman's recent report on the practice.

In order to compete in a global economy, small businesses need access to high-speed internet to grow their business and sell their products, and they are being consistently let down by Prime Minister Turnbull's substandard National Broadband Network. The inaction of the government makes it inevitable that Australian small businesses will continue to struggle with one of the slowest and most expensive internet services in the developed world. The budget also leaves small business to fend for themselves on increasing energy prices. We've seen a complete absence of leadership from the Prime Minister on energy policy. This has a real impact on small business. It means higher energy prices and uncertainty for small business operators, which is prevent or restrict their ability to grow and employ. Wholesale power prices have doubled under this government and will continue to rise unless the Turnbull government is able to develop a real national energy policy.

Labor recognises that Australia's small businesses make a huge contribution to our national prosperity. Over two million small businesses have helped underpin the more than 25 years of continuous economic growth that Australians have enjoyed. Their contribution includes employing millions of people. In doing so, they provide both a livelihood and the dignity of employment to nearly half of all working Australians. Labor is proud to have been leading the debate in this policy area in recent years. We've done so by offering practical policies to support Australia's industrious small business sector, including in 2012, when the former Labor government established the first iteration of an expanded instant asset write-off to assist small businesses in the challenging conditions they faced post-GFC. More recently, we took a comprehensive suite of small business policies to the federal election in 2016, including a fiscally responsible and targeted plan to reduce company tax for genuine small businesses; a plan to level the playing field for small businesses by ensuring that multinationals pay their fair share of tax; and a plan to help small business incorporate without additional red tape, along with a range of other innovative policies to assist small business to better access finance and to aid entrepreneurs seeking to start their own business.

Labor has continued and will continue to fight for small business in the 45th Parliament. We have continued to develop and advocate for policy that will benefit Australian small businesses by helping them grow and prosper. We have announced a package of reforms to tackle illegal company phoenixing. In 2012, PricewaterhouseCoopers' report, prepared for the Fair Work Ombudsman, estimated that the cost to Australian business from illegal phoenix activity was somewhere between $1.87 billion to $3.1 billion per annum. A large share of that cost is borne by small businesses, who in most cases are never able to recover what they are owed. I have spoken to a number of small business owners who have been affected by phoenixing activity and whose businesses and lives have been ruined by it. Our proposal contained a number of considered reforms, including a director identification number that would reduce the illegal phoenix activity and its cost on small businesses.

Importantly, Labor's policy agenda does not neglect the less acknowledged elements of public policy that support small businesses. This includes Labor's substantial commitments to increasing investment in our social capital from skills, training and education funding to health and infrastructure—all are critical in creating the conditions conducive for sustaining and growing our small business sector. Small business owners right across the country in discussion with Labor have consistently pointed to rising energy costs, inadequate broadband infrastructure and late or delayed payments as key priorities for them that they want addressed by government. They also have raised the issue of wanting to compete on a level playing field with big business and being able to engage and respond to anti-competitive conduct when they have seen it. That has led to the formulation of this policy and this bill that is before us today.

The only people who need to be nervous about the access to justice policy in this private senator's bill are those who are systemically misusing their market power, safe in the knowledge that their disadvantaged competitors don't have the resources to bring the law to bear on them. We all know that larger players have the money, the lawyers and the capacity to fight these cases. In some instances, the larger players have an incentive to drag these cases out so the smaller business folds. Even when the smaller business has a strong case, they worry that if they lose or if they have to fold they could face huge legal bills. This means that smaller players are discouraged from taking action to enforce Australia's competition laws, and that means they are currently discouraged from accessing justice and that is exactly what this bill will address.

The bill represents a practical change for small business and it is in the public interest. By allowing private litigants to better bring action under the Competition and Consumer Act, anti-competitive behaviour by powerful interests will be better mitigated, helping to support Australia's competition policy framework. This is a sensible proposal to provide some small support for small business without damaging competition in the process. I encourage those who consider themselves friends to small business to support this bill and help us deliver greater access to justice for Australia's millions of small businesses. This bill will lead to a more competitive economy, better outcomes for consumers and a fairer playing field for small business. I thank other senators for their contributions.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the bill be now read a second time.

Bill read a second time.

The PRESIDENT ( 10:54 ): As no amendments have been circulated, unless any senator wishes for a committee stage, I call Senator Gallagher to move the third reading.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (10:54): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator PRATT (Western Australia) (10:55): I rise to support the Productivity Commission Amendment (Addressing Inequality) Bill 2017. It's an important piece of legislation before us because this growing trend of inequality in our nation must be addressed. That is why I am standing in support of this legislation today. Excessive inequality is a problem for any society and it is certainly a problem for ours. When our society is unequal, as Australia's certainly is, it means that people have an unequal ability to take part in social and economic opportunities, and it undermines the cohesiveness of our society as well as people's wellbeing. We also know that excessive inequality harms our economy.

As resources become concentrated in fewer hands, it results in reduced economic participation for the majority of people and it impacts on their wellbeing. Practically, this results in fewer new businesses started, fewer homes purchased and less purchasing of goods and services. It also leads to an increased dependency on government intervention to sort out our nation's problems. It is not difficult to see those issues within Australian society today. There are too many in our community with simply far too few resources. It impinges dramatically on their social and economic participation and, in turn, it limits people's capacity to contribute to their community and to our economy. We can see in this regard how things like stagnated wages growth is currently impacting on the Australian economy today. We can also see that this is a problem at a global level, too. What we have across the world is a widening gap between the highest and the lowest income earners in the most wealthy countries and this gap has been widening dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years. Those in the top 10 per cent of income earners are pulling away from the bottom at an increasing rate. I would really challenge those on the other side to decry that problem because they must recognise the reality of what a terrible thing this is for our globe.

My colleague on the other side of this chamber Senator Paterson, when I was paying attention to his second reading speech back in June, asked a question:

How much inequality is too much inequality and how much inequality is an acceptable level of inequality?

Well, I am happy to help answer that question for Senator Paterson. Students from underprivileged backgrounds, those who are especially talented and those who may require some extra educational support, are less able to access the educational opportunities necessary for them to achieve the educational outcomes that they need to succeed.

This is an unacceptable level of inequality in our nation. Indeed, such poor educational outcomes lead to poorer, long-term life outcomes in terms of employment, future job opportunities and lower long-term income for themselves, their families and their households. This is also an unacceptable level of inequality. Older Australians in our nation not being able to access the appropriate level of aged care later in life due to inequality of wealth is also an unacceptable level of inequality. Taking away the promise that a young Australian will have a better quality of life than their parents and grandparents is also an unacceptable level of inequality.

As a member of the Australian Labor Party, I am proud of our egalitarian values and Australia's egalitarian traditions. However, this is something that is at grave risk in our nation. The reality of income inequality in Australia comes as a shock to a great many people. Despite this idea that this is a value and that it should be a national priority, it is clear that Australia lacks the institutional oversight of these issues. Our history of addressing inequality is largely embedded in our unions, in the labour movement and in our industrial relations system. While we have a Human Rights Commission that can address discrimination, there is no oversight of economic inequality in our nation.

That is why we need a strong institutional basis to examine economic inequality in Australia's cities and our regions and to provide advice on those issues to government, as provided for in this bill—issues such as the effects of economic inequality on intergenerational mobility; access to social, economic, educational and other opportunities for members of the Australian community; the performance of our Australian economy; and the extent to which government policies affect economic inequality in our nation.

It is incumbent on the Australian parliament to ensure that Australians are lifted out of inequality, most importantly, because it is the right thing to do but also because it makes absolute economic sense to do so. In lifting people out of inequality, a government must have sufficient oversight and understanding of which areas of our society need help. Frankly, at the moment in our nation, we do not have the institutional oversight of these issues. An inequality report would provide that visibility to government and, in turn, would become an additional tool available to tackling inequality in our country.

The thing is, if anything, we have actually gone backwards on these issues. Equality of opportunity really should be an important part of who we are as a nation, or at least who we think we are as a nation. The concept that every Australian has equal opportunities to grow and prosper is at the core of our Australian values. The problem is that labour's share—that is, the working people's share—of national income generated by workers has been steadily declining since the 1980s. The share driven by labour of the whole national income has been declining for the past four decades.

This bill aims to start to address those issues. We have a widened gap between the rich and poor in our country, and it is at a 75-year high, I'm ashamed to say. I can't believe that those opposite would not agree that we need to address the reasons why Australia is falling behind. There are some key steps in this bill that will allow us, as a nation, to take the next step. The time line of the inequality report to be produced is linked to the standard five-year release time line of the Intergenerational report produced by the Parliamentary Budget Office. Every five years, governments will be able to comprehensively assess the efficacy of the programs and initiatives that we have implemented that are designed to pull people out of poverty and to reduce inequality in our country. Governments will be able to quantifiably assess whether government measures are driving people into inequality should that be the case. To those opposite who think that a trickle-down effect works: you've got to take a look at the evidence, but you've got to have the tools to look at that evidence. The problem is: your policies make our current settings worse. What we've been doing for the last 40 years isn't working. What we need as a parliament is the tools to see what's actually happening.

This bill seeks to ensure that the Productivity Commission has regard to the need to mitigate the negative effects of inequality on our economy and in Australian communities. As Middle Australia is missing out on a growing share of income growth, it poses grave risks to the future of productivity improvements and overall growth in our nation. By ensuring that the Productivity Commission produces an inequality report, we'll be able to examine these issues, including the following three things. The first is established measures of economic inequality. Currently we simply don't have the data about economic inequality in our society, yet we expect our government to respond to these issues. In establishing these measures, we need to ensure that there are a diverse range of dimensions, such as geography, gender and age, when we are looking at issues of inequality, to fill in those gaps. We can also look at issues of people from CALD and Indigenous backgrounds and actually have real measures of where inequality sits in our nation. Average wages today are growing more slowly than productivity, contributing to this growth in inequality in our country. This in the short term threatens future productivity and growth in our country. Establishing more comprehensive measures of inequality would allow for a more effective policy process to respond to these issues.

Secondly, we need to assess the effects of economic inequality in our country. As I've outlined, economic inequality has a negative impact on our people. Economic inequality affects people's life chances and their ability to grow, to prosper, to meet their full potential and to use their abilities for their own good, for the good of their families and their households but also for the nation's good. So equality of opportunity is in our nation's best interests. Improving opportunity is not a zero-sum game. We are all better off if our society is more mobile. It's in our national interest to do this work. It's simply good economics. Ensuring that our growth potential is maximised in turn maximises the capacity for each individual to contribute. The OECD agrees, having pointed to the link between improved social mobility and economic growth. I also passionately believe in equality of opportunity as a matter of social justice, as a matter of fairness in our nation.

Thirdly, what we need to do as a country is assess the effect of existing government programs on economic inequality. Why is this important? I think it's a critical component of the policy development cycle. This is a broader concept, ensuring that all individuals can grow to their full potential and make the most of society's advances. It's about the right of people from disadvantaged suburbs to enjoy access to things like affordable health care just like other Australians who come from more privileged suburbs. But, as Senator Scullion would know, this is simply not the case around our country. The enjoyment of affordable access to health care is not a privilege that a great many people in our more impoverished communities enjoy. The opportunity for people from all walks of life to live in areas which have been well planned, cared for and invested in when it comes to amenity and public space is also a key measure of inequality.

Another key measure is that people are not unfairly disadvantaged when it comes to them trying to crack into the housing market. Here, we don't just mean crack into the housing market and start out as first home owners—and, increasingly, more and more people are marginalised from being able to do that. We also know that, increasingly, more and more people will retire with a significant mortgage. This is not just something that is instantly solved as you finally get it together to enter the housing market. This problem of high housing prices is following people right through to retirement.

Having said that, let me make a few remarks about a couple of policy areas which are crucially linked to addressing some of these issues and lifetime chances. These are important to me, because they're in my portfolio areas—namely, early childhood education and education funding, more broadly. It's been shown in our country that inequality of access for children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds to high-quality play-based early learning at preschool can have longer-term, negative educational outcomes. What we need is for our children to be on a level playing field from an early age, no matter what their background. I'm ashamed to say that the measures put in place by this government recently in changing access to child care certainly put us backward in that regard, where the most vulnerable families in our community were reduced from 20 hours of child care a week to just 12.

Visibility on inequality in our communities and inequality of access to education will enable governments to establish that level playing field. Visibility of inequality would be reported on by the Productivity Commission to allow communities and family centres right across the country to better understand the level of inequality that affects their families, their communities and the children that they seek to serve. They are the kinds of measures they need. Early childhood and family centres will have, through this kind of reporting, access to the information they need in making application for future funding from governments. People will be able to say: 'We need this early childhood intervention here in this community', because they've got the data and demographics to back it up. I know, from talking to current bureaucrats and communities, that they have to scratch around at the moment to try to find the evidence base to demonstrate access to these programs when they can see the poverty right in front of them. They can see the need, but government says: 'Show us your data. Show us your information.' And we are scratching around for that effective information.

Every one of our children should have the same access to educational opportunities, regardless of their postcode and irrespective of their parents' wealth. It should be, I believe, the right of every Australian child to access high-quality and affordable educational opportunities.

The case for equality of opportunity in our country is a strong one. The case for government intervention to improve equality of opportunity is also strong. That is why I'm supporting this bill today. We on this side of the chamber pride ourselves on being part of that national narrative that says we are the land of the fair go. But a very sober analysis tells us that we have a long way to go and that we are going backwards. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia) (11:15): I, too, rise to speak on Senator McAllister's private senators' bill, the Productivity Commission Amendment (Addressing Inequality) Bill 2017. What I have just heard from those opposite in this debate is what I would characterise as nothing short of left-wing ideological hubris. For Australia, not just is it great hubris and arrogance for anybody in this place to say they have a mortgage on moral compassion; but this bill is about much more than that. It's not about reducing the cost-of-living pressures on Australian families, it's not about reducing the cost of energy prices, and it's certainly not about economic growth and jobs. It is simply about another big bureaucracy. Somehow you can wave a magic wand and, by doing more studies and more surveys by the bureaucracy, that will change inequality.

But it is not only about that. More importantly—and, perhaps, more sadly—for Australians, this issue of inequality is all about Labor's re-election in two years time. At the last election we had 'Mediscare'—remember that? In 2014 we had the mother of all scare campaigns, and now we have 'inequality'. It is very clear from what the Labor Party are doing already that the next election will employ the same tactics of fear, division and envy—just as they did on their outrageously incorrect campaign that lied—instead of actually inspiring, motivating and talking about positive policy, directions and the things we actually need to do in this country to grow our economy, reduce inequality and raise wealth, which is about economic growth and about jobs. Those opposite have a long, sad history of the politics of envy. Far from developing and locking in social cohesion, they are actually the enemies of social cohesion, because what those opposite have just said again is all about pitting Australian against Australian. There is nothing cohesive, there is nothing positive and there is nothing redeeming about the strategies of those opposite.

Sadly, for Australia and for all Australians—and for Australian democracy, I believe—the ALP is clearly taking the low road once again. Their tactics are not only those of 'Mediscare' from the last election; we can clearly see we are going to be hearing one word, 'inequality', over and over again between now and the election. This is straight out of the playbooks of Corbin and Sanders. It's: 'Let's find an issue and a word that can be as divisive as possible.' But it's not just about division and the politics of envy and that base level of scaring people anymore; it's actually also a huge lurch to the left, which is, as I said, straight out of the playbooks of Corbin and Sanders. A big new department and bureaucracy to tell us what is wrong without providing any way of implementing change for growth is a complete and utter waste of time. What've they done? They've picked a single word, and I guarantee, Australians, you will be hearing that word for the next two years. As Medicare was at the last election, it will become their new mantra, over and over again. They will continue to demonise those on this side of the chamber—we're the nasty opposition; you're the only ones who care about Australians. Of course, everybody who is in this chamber is here because they want to leave Australia in a better place. The difference is we disagree fundamentally on how we actually get there.

To channel the great Maggie Thatcher—and it is clearly inherent in this bill yet again—'The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.' That is something that those opposite time after time clearly do not understand. Again Maggie Thatcher said, 'There is no such thing as public money, only taxpayers' money.' The last speaker was again talking about expending all of this money, as if somehow that will fix all social and economic problems in this country. Of course it won't. The question is: where is the money going to come from?

Let's have a look at this issue of inequality in a bit more detail. It's not the first time that the ALP has run this flag up the flagpole. In fact, in 2014 we had a community affairs Senate inquiry on this exact issue. In 2014 we had a community affairs majority report by the Labor Party. It was absolutely full of the same invective and inflammatory rhetoric, which was designed to do nothing more than leverage political advantage for the Labor Party at election time. The problem with their analysis of inequality back then in 2014 was it absolutely ignored the facts. I point out to those in this chamber that just because you assert certain things over and over again does not make them true. Let's actually have a look at some of the facts on this issue and at some of the things that we identified in the 2014 report and where they have progressed from 2014 to this year.

When looking at inequality firstly you actually have to look at the facts. We found that the opposition consistently in that 2014 report conflated the concept of income inequality with wealth redistribution. They are two completely different concepts, which I think were deliberately conflated to press a point. Wealth redistribution is a political philosophical concept of how you redistribute wealth. Obviously both sides of the chamber have very different opinions on that political philosophy, and that actually drives a lot of our policy positions. But that is very different from a measure of income inequality.

First of all, when anyone listening and anyone in this chamber start to hear those opposite talk about the issue of income inequality and inequality they should start to look at the facts. Are they talking about income inequality, which is already quite effectively measured, or are they talking about a left-wing concept of wealth redistribution from the nasty wealthy to the poor? That is the first thing to actually understand. They conflate it and they correlate it, but correlation is not causation—a bit of an inconvenient factual truth for the Labor Party. Those opposite did it in 2014 and we are hearing them doing it yet again.

What should we expect as we go forward with this debate and discussions on inequality? What should we expect? Let's have a look at what they did in 2014 in this report. The report made numerous sweeping statements about inequality in Australia, without providing evidence of such. As I said, the Labor Party report regularly conflated income inequality with wealth redistribution. It was replete with emotive and unsubstantiated arguments, as with facts and figures, and frequently discarded the significant evidence of Australia's overall egalitarian economic context.

As I said, there was also a tendency throughout their report to conflate income inequality and wealth redistribution. As one distinguished professor noted to the committee at the time, 'Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive and the most poisonous is when you focus on questions of distribution.' He said:

… of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparent limitless potential of increasing production.

One thing that was studiously missing in the majority Labor report was the evidence from almost the majority of submitters, who stated that the best way to decrease income inequality was—guess what; surprise, surprise—through employment, jobs and empowerment. But, of course, that was a bit of an inconvenient truth that was omitted largely from the report from those opposite. The majority report also failed to note that substantial tax and transfer systems were already in place in Australia which seek to alleviate poverty—something here we believe strongly in and work very hard to achieve but, again, a little inconvenient truth for those opposite.

In terms of the facts and measurements of income inequality itself—putting wealth redistribution aside—there are already a number of different statistics and measurements which can be used to measure inequality The report consistently disregarded the fact that income is not the only measure of equality. It is one very important measure of equality but not the only one. For example, Treasury officials actually said that income inequality measures typically do not take into account the effects of in-kind transfers, public health, subsidised medication and education, which are, of course, very important factors in working out income inequality—particularly globally.

According to an ABS statement in 2014, the Survey of Income and Housing showed that, if in-kind transfers are taken into account, the average real disposable incomes in Australia for those at the bottom two deciles have grown by as much as the top two deciles between 2003 and 2010-12—slightly different from the rhetoric in the majority report from those opposite. But, also, submitters to the inquiry made this point: that, overall, average incomes, including even in the lowest socioeconomic bracket, have risen over the last two decades, even as the gap between the richest and poorest may have widened.

Mr Acting Deputy President Whish-Wilson, we have a statistic—a bit of information in there—that will be of particular interest, I think, to you as a Tasmanian. The report noted in 2011-12, while Tasmania recorded the lowest mean net worth at $600,000 or 17 per cent below the national average, Tasmania at the time, despite that, actually had the lowest Gini coefficient, which actually meant that Tasmania was more equal than any other state. Again, two very different statistics and information—and clearly the Tasmanian situation showed that there is no direct correlation. You can have one but also have the other, which is completely at odds with the rhetoric from those opposite.

There is one other significant issue which the Labor Party at the time in the majority report completely failed to do—as they are doing yet again here in the chamber today. What they didn't note is the budget context and the relationship between income inequality. Treasury, themselves, stated:

In light of the current budget situation and Australia's ongoing current account deficit, prudent fiscal policy is required to ensure that we grow the economy to support employment growth and address inequality.

The report from those opposite, again, conveniently failed to take account of the debt and deficit context and assumed that policy changes, such as increasing welfare payments, can be implemented without any cost—clearly ludicrous, which is why I am sure you did not put it in the report because it completely undermines the arguments then and, again, your arguments today. Coalition members at the time, including me, rejected the majority report, because we noted that burdening future generations with debt is also a very damaging form of inequality.

Let's have a look at where the statistics are today. We've heard a lot of assertions about income inequality and related issues, but we have been very short on the facts. Let's have a look at what the situation is today in terms of income inequality. Roger Wilkins, deputy director of the Melbourne Institute who prepares the HILDA survey—the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, which is widely regarded and used—firmly rejects the notion of growing inequality. He said, 'If anything, inequality has actually been declining.' This is particularly the case when we take into account Australia's progressive tax and transfer payments system and our experience post GFC. Let's look.

Universally, the internationally recognised Gini coefficient is used to measure household disposable income. Based on the HILDA data, guess what? It decreased. Between 2011 and 2014, right before this report, evidence showed that that had actually decreased.

Senator McAllister: Under a Labor government.

Senator REYNOLDS: What has happened in 2016, Senator McAllister? I know this is going to be terrible news for you, with your nice 'Corbynista' style policy here. The fact is the 2016 census data showed—this Gini coefficient based on gross household income—guess what? Income inequality has declined from 0.382 to 0.366 since 2011. On the facts, it is actually declining. Not surprising we don't hear that from those opposite because it actually contradicts their narrative. So, let's have a look at some more facts from the ABS and other credible sources.

Between 2006 and 2014, the largest fall in household wealth occurred in the richer households, with the measure for the top one per cent of income earners falling nearly 10 per cent, while the lowest 10 per cent in society had an actual increase of 25 per cent. So, again, that directly contradicts your mantra that income inequality is actually getting worse. Between 2001 and 2014, the HILDA survey did show a small decline in that coefficient, but now it is declining even further. So where income has been constrained in families, the government's safety net does provide great value. According to the ABS, the poorest 20 per cent of households, on average, receive cash transfers and social service benefits more than eight times what they pay in tax. I will say that again: the poorest 20 per cent of households, on average, receive benefits and cash transfers more than eight times what they pay in taxes.

According to the OECD, in an analysis released in 2015, while income inequality has risen in most OECD countries over the past three decades, in Australia it has increased by substantially less than most OECD countries—that is over the last 30 years. Also, in 2015, the Productivity Commission itself found that 40 per cent of families paid no net tax after taking into account their transfer payments like family tax benefits. So already 40 per cent of families pay no net tax. By contrast, the top 10 per cent of income earners pay almost 50 per cent. So the top 10 per cent of income earners pay 50 per cent of personal income tax. The top one per cent pay 17 per cent of all tax received. I think this is paying a pretty fair share. To then say their tax rate should be increased even further is nothing more than a lazy, cynical tax based on envy and division.

Coming back to the bill and to the regulation, it will achieve absolutely nothing. Those opposite are choosing to waste time with token ideas rather than actually getting on with the job of addressing real inequality, which is what this side are actually doing. This bill is nothing about reducing the burden of the cost of living. I challenge Senator McAllister to say how this bill, by creating more paperwork, will actually make a single difference to one Australian. It will not lift any of the burdens of cost-of-living pressures. It doesn't deal with energy prices or with the creation of jobs, whereas this side of the chamber are doing everything we can to reduce the cost of electricity and provide more gas to the nation. We are securing more gas supply, which will ease the cost-of-living pressures on this nation. We're also creating more jobs than ever, as you've seen over the last few months. We are now creating more jobs every single month, and that is what we on this side of the chamber believe will reduce inequality. It is through jobs. It is through educating children for the jobs of the future. It is not about left-wing ideological measures such as those proposed by those opposite. So, for all of those reasons, I do not support this bill and I urge the Senate to reject it.

Senator MARSHALL (Victoria) (11:35): Well, that was a rather extraordinary contribution from Senator Reynolds, that the wish of the Senate to discuss inequality in all its forms and to get the Productivity Commission to review that on a regular basis is somehow left-wing ideological hubris or left-wing arrogance. I think people should look in the mirror when they make those allegations about simply wanting to discuss it. But, if the government simply wants to deny that there is income inequality or inequality in our community, I think they really do so at their peril.

I think that to run up some statistics to prove that there is no inequality in our system defies any sense of reality. You only have to talk to anyone in this country to know that they see inequality every day of their lives. They experience inequality every day of their lives. I do think it is very problematic for people in an incredibly privileged position like we are—who are probably in the top half of the top one per cent of all wage earners in this country—to simply, in here, pronounce judgements across the community that there is no inequality and this is all a political stunt by the Labor Party. Again, I think you do so at your peril. This is from the government who wanted to cut billions of dollars from the pensions.

Now, we know that people living on pensions struggle. There is certainly inequality in people relying on either pensions or other forms of welfare. There is inequality there. If the government had their way, they would have cut $2.4 billion from old-age pensions in one of their latest budget iterations. We know that people who don't own their own houses are being pushed further and further out into the outer suburbs of the big cities just so they can afford some of the cheaper rents. But, of course, with the cheaper rent comes higher transport costs and less access to a whole range of services which people need. That drives inequality in our community. Senator Reynolds made the startling observation that people on welfare receive more from the taxpayer than they pay in tax. Yeah, that's true: they're on welfare; it is actually self-evident. I don't know how that argument suggests that there is no inequality.

A decade ago, 600,000 working families relied on support from the government to bring their household income up to the poverty line—not above it; up to it. That was a decade ago. It's worse now. The taxpayers in these situations are actually subsidising crummy employers who provide crummy jobs. That is one of the things that we ought to be addressing. People who work in this country ought to be working for wages that can sustain them and allow them to live in reasonable means. If that's what Senator Reynolds describes as left-wing ideology, well, I'm guilty of that; I'm proud of that. We know that in this economy, right now, the wages share of GDP is going down. The profit share of GDP is going up. Not only is the wages share going down; wages themselves are either stagnant or in decline. It is so much so that the Governor of the Reserve Bank has said this is a major structural problem for our economy now. Yet, the government seems to think that everything's fine—that there is no income inequality.

This week, we have seen CBA executives not grant themselves some bonuses. Because they have been engaging in some criminal activity, they are not going to pay themselves some bonuses. From memory, a year's bonus was worth $2.3 million. There are some families in this country that will never earn that much in their lifetime—never. Yet, the government says, 'There's no income inequality in this country. Again, it's the politics of envy.' I think just those bonuses are obscene, but those bonuses are on top of wages of some $10 million a year. Wages at the top end have been increasing at a far higher rate than wages at the bottom end.

Post-war in this country, in the '50s and '60s, we actually had a narrowing of inequality in this country. We had good jobs. We had a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. We had good regulations. We had employers that respected the right to provide to their employees good-quality jobs, long-term jobs. But since the 70's, it has been going backwards, under not just conservative governments but also Labor governments, too. When we were in government, I wished we had done some more things that would have structurally addressed some of these problems.

Labour compensation, as a share of GDP just in the last two quarters, has reduced. In the year ending March, the total quarterly nominal GDP grew by over $31 billion. But just $3.1 billion of that, only 9.9 per cent, was reflected in higher wages compensation. In other words, of each dollar in new GDP produced in Australia over the past year, less than 10 cents found its way into increased labour compensation. That proportion was the smallest of any non-recession 12-month period in Australia's post-war history. The link between GDP expansion and workers' incomes has never been weaker. That's from research done from The Australia Institute and the Centre for Future Work. None of that academic work has been challenged.

On average, each hour of work in Australia's economy produces about $90 of value added. When adjusted for inflation, labour productivity has grown by almost 20 per cent over the last decade—a 20 per cent increase in productivity. Real wages, however, have grown only six per cent over the same period—less than one-third as fast as real labour productivity. With real labour productivity growing faster than real labour compensation, this implies that the share of produced output paid to labour must be declining—as night follows day. The labour share has declined by a cumulative 11 percentage points of GDP since the mid 1970s. The erosion of the labour share since the peak represents the redirection of about $200 billion of annual output from workers to other economic stakeholders. By far the major beneficiary of that redistribution has been the private corporate sector, which has increased its share of GDP by about 10 percentage points over the same period, reaching 24 per cent of GDP in the March quarter.

While we have those figures demonstrating my earlier comments that the profit share of GDP is increasing, the wages share of GDP is going backwards and we see employers taking advantage of the current industrial relations settings to drive wages down. I have seen and heard from workers, unions and employers how this is taking place. One of the most insidious ways it is taking place is simply the labour-hire, contracting-out scenario. A good example is a dispute that happened at Carlton & United Breweries in Victoria not so long ago. The company contracted out its maintenance workforce. It simply organised another company to contract for that work, at 65 per cent less wages, and awarded them the contract. Overnight, those workers, one of whom had worked at that company for 40 years, were simply left without a job. The company had a replacement workforce ready to go. That was done to drive down wages. I wish it were a lone example, but it is not.

We look at ExxonMobil, one of the biggest multinationals in the world. They had their offshore cleaning contractors and catering contractors, who go and clean the quarters on the oil rigs and the drilling platforms, simply contracted out. Exactly the same work still had to be done, but they simply changed the contractor to people who paid less. All those people were simply left without a job, and the people who were brought in to replace them were paid less. It was simply a way for that company to drive down wages and to put those savings in their corporate pocket—no regard for the devastation that that caused the individuals, no regard for having quality jobs.

Here we are in a situation where employers will come up to you proudly, as if it is a badge of honour, and say, 'We pay the award.' Well, just in case you didn't know, paying the award is the lowest legal minimum wage you are allowed to pay in this country. And that's a badge of honour? 'We pay the lowest legal wage we have to pay in this country,' and they see that as a badge of honour! Why many of them see it as a badge of honour is that a lot of their competitors aren't even paying the award. They pay below the award—illegally, but they do that. So the ones paying the award say, 'Well, we're paying the award; you should give us a medal for that.'

When we have award reliance increasing, and bargaining going backwards, which is the situation we're in now, when we have contracting-out and labour-hire arrangements being put in place simply so wages and conditions can be driven down every time a contract changes, we have a situation where work becomes precarious, insecure, the quality of the jobs is poorer and the wages and the remuneration that people get are less. That is what is happening in our economy at the moment. These are not just isolated instances. This is happening all over the place. It is broad. The framework that allows that to happen is the Fair Work Act. It is no longer fit for purpose and needs to be addressed.

We have a situation where noncompliance with legal obligations is rife. We've all heard of the 7-Eleven situation, of the Domino's situation and of many other companies that have exploited their workers—in ways that are sometimes actually legal but in many cases are not legal—and exploiting the existing environment to ensure that they can pay the least amount possible and workers are exploited. That needs to be addressed.

We have a noncompliance situation where the Workplace Ombudsman, who is the statutory body to deal with noncompliance, now has, I think, near 800 staff—I think it is a terrible indictment that there are 800 people—but they can't keep up with the workload. There seems to be an insatiable need for people to investigate noncompliance of the Fair Work Act and other industrial instruments. Unions used to play that role and they should again, but the Fair Work Act has made it nearly impossible for unions to be involved as they used to be when it comes to investigating noncompliance. As a result—and I make the direct correlation—of union membership being down and the lack of ability for unions to do time, wages and book inspections there has been an increase in noncompliance across the board.

I know government members celebrate the decline of union membership, but that is doing untold damage to the wages, conditions, the living standards and the benefits enjoyed by working people throughout this country. It needs to change, and denying and ignoring the fact that there is income inequality in this country is not a way to address that. That should be acknowledged, and the government ought to be working with us to look at ways to address that problem for the good of all Australians.

Debate adjourned.

Senator BUSHBY (Tasmania—Chief Government Whip in the Senate) (11:53): I present the eighth report of 2017 of the Selection of Bills Committee and I seek leave to have the report incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The report read as follows—

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

REPORT NO. 8 OF 2017

1. The committee met in private session on Wednesday, 9 August 2017 at 7.30 pm.

2. The committee recommends that—

(a) the provisions of the Australian Border Force Amendment (Protected Information) Bill 2017 be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 12 September 2017 (see appendix 1 for a statement of reasons for referral);

(b) the provisions of the Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Bill 2017 and the Migration Agents Registration Application Charge Amendment (Rates of Charge) Bill 2017 be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 16 October 2017 (see appendices 2 and 3 for a statement of reasons for referral); and

(c) the provisions of the Migration Amendment (Validation of Decisions) Bill 2017 be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 4 September 2017 (see appendices 4 and 5 for a statement of reasons for referral).

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

Competition and Consumer Amendment (Truth in Labelling—Palm Oil) Bill 2017

Education and Training Legislation Repeal Bill 2017

Statute Update (Smaller Government) Bill 2017.

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

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Amendment (Regional Australia) Bill 2017

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2017

Clean Energy Finance Corporation Amendment (Carbon Capture and Storage) Bill 2017

Competition and Consumer Amendment (Abolition of Limited Merits Review) Bill 2017

Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2017

Education Services for Overseas Students (TPS Levies) Amendment Bill 2017

Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill 2017

End Cruel Cosmetics Bill 2014

Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Amendment Bill 2017

Imported Food Control Amendment Bill 2017

International Monetary Agreements Amendment (New Arrangements to Borrow) Bill 2017

Live Animal Export (Slaughter) Prohibition Bill 2017

Product Emissions Standards Bill 2017

Product Emissions Standards (Excise) Charges Bill 2017 Product Emissions Standards (Customs) Charges Bill 2017

Product Emissions Standards (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2017

Public Governance and Resources Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2017

Social Security Amendment (Caring for People on Newstart) Bill 2017

Treasury Laws Amendment (2017 Measures No. 4) Bill 2017.

Appendix 1

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Australian Border Force Amendment (Protected Information) Bill 2017

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

The complex nature of the Australian Border Force Act and the impact the amendments may have protected information warrants further consultation and investigation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Department of Immigration and Border Protection

law Council of Australia

Migration Institute of Australia

Other industry bodies

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee Possible hearing date(s):

To be determined by the committee

Possible reporting date:

27 November 2017

Senator Anne Urquhart

Appendix 2

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Bill 2017

Migration Agents Registration Application Charge Amendment (Rates of Charge) Bill 2017

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

The complex nature of the Migration Act and the impact any change may have on people seeking a visa, industry bodies, Australian business and residents warrants further consultation and investigation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Department of Immigration and Border Protection

Law Council of Australia

Migration Institute of Australia

Other industry bodies

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee Possible hearing date(s):

To be determined by the committee Possible reporting date:

16 October 2017

Senator Anne Urquhart

Appendix 3

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill: Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Bill 2017

Migration Agents Registration Application Charge Amendment (Rates of Charge) Bill 2017

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

The Bill proposes to amend the Migration Act 1958 and is targeted at deregulating the migration advice industry. This will see lawyers who hold practising certificates removed from regulation by the Migration Agents Registration Authority, so that they are regulated entirely by their relevant state or territory legal professional body.

There are concerns that if lawyers were removed from the current system of registration through OMARA, consumers and other stakeholders could not rely upon receiving a consistent quality of service from those lawyers who have not been required to either demonstrate that they have sound knowledge of migration practice and procedure or undertake specialist studies in migration law.

Under the proposed amendments it would be possible for someone with a legal practising certificate to be registered as a migration agent without demonstrating any knowledge of Australia's complex migration law and policy.

The level of concern that has been raised about the proposed amendments suggests that further examination of the bill is necessary.

Possible submissions or evidence from: Migration Institute of Australia, Law Council of Australia, State and Territory Law Societies.

Committee to which bill is to be referred: Legal & Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s): September 2017

Possible reporting date: 16th October 2017

Senator Rachel Siewert

Appendix 4

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill:

Migration Amendment (Validation of Decisions) Bill 2017

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

The complex nature of the Migration Act and the impact any change may have on people seeking a visa, industry bodies, Australian business and residents warrants further consultation and investigation.

Possible submissions or evidence from:

Department of Immigration and Border Protection

Law Council of Australia

Other industry bodies (on the papers only)

Committee to which bill is to be referred:

Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee Possible hearing date(s):

To be determined by committee Possible reporting date:

Monday, 4 September 2017

Senator Anne Urquhart

Appendix 5

SELECTION OF BILLS COMMITTEE

Proposal to refer a bill to a committee

Name of bill: Migration Amendment (Validation of Decisions) Bill 2017

Reasons for referral/principal issues for consideration:

This Bill is in response to a current High Court challenge to section 503A of the Migration Act 1958. It will protect visa cancellation decisions that have relied upon information under section 503A of the Act. Information provided under section 503A is currently protected from disclosure to Courts and Tribunals.

Concerns from stakeholders about these proposed amendments suggests further examination of the bill is required

Possible submissions or evidence from: Law Council of Australia, Australian Human Rights Commission, Civil Liberties Australia, Australian Lawyers Alliance, Refugee Legal

Committee to which bill is to be referred: Legal & Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee

Possible hearing date(s): September 2017

Possible reporting date: 26 September 2017

Senator Rachel Siewert

Senator BUSHBY: I move:

That the report be adopted.

Question agreed to.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (12:41): The President has received letters requesting changes in the membership of committees.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (12:41): by leave—I move:

That senators be discharged from and appointed to committees as follows:

Finance and Public Administration References Committee—

Appointed—

Substitute member: Senator Di Natale to replace Senator Rhiannon for the committee's inquiry personal Medicare information

Participating members: Senator Rhiannon

Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade—Joint Standing Committee—

Discharged—Senator Chisholm

Appointed—Senator McCarthy

Question agreed to.

Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (12:42): Labor supports the Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2017. Labor recognises that there is a genuine risk that our higher education system could be targeted by unscrupulous providers and that ensuring Australia's world-class higher education system and our students are properly protected is absolutely critical to their ongoing success. Labor fully supports a robust and rigorous higher education regulatory system. We welcome an additional focus and greater scrutiny placed on the background of organisations that wish to operate in our higher education system. The reforms proposed in this bill rightly acknowledge there has been a surge in applications from vocational education providers to become higher education providers.

Labor also supports greater protections for students, particularly those who are accessing the FEE-HELP scheme. Students who take on debts for their study need to do so with confidence, and we welcome the changes the government proposes to the arrangements for accessing FEE-HELP. It is troubling that there is evidence that students haven fallen victim to unscrupulous marketing activities, and it is even more troubling that there is evidence to suggest that many providers have had tax file numbers passed on from the ATO. It is pleasing that this bill will ensure that this does not happen. It is important that we protect Australia's higher education system from some of the poor practices we have seen in the vocational education sector. The government needs to ensure that it continues to properly consult with the sector. It also needs to ensure that it properly provides the higher education regulator, TEQSA, with adequate resources to do its job. Labor supports this bill to ensure greater integrity and confidence in Australia's higher education system.

Senator LEYONHJELM (New South Wales) (12:44): I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2017. I ask: what is the difference between a public university and a leech? It's not a joke; I'd actually like to know the answer.

The government continually serves up cash and customers to public universities, and the public universities keep on asking for more. For starters, the government gives public universities $7 billion a year through the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. No private university or vocational education and training provider gets a drop of funding from the Commonwealth Grant Scheme. This enables public universities to impose charges on prospective students that are well below cost. This draws customers away from private universities and vocational education and training providers. Some could call this predatory pricing. The government further lures customers into public universities by hitting students at private universities and vocational education and training providers with a fee on their government provided student loans. No such fee is applied to the already heavily subsidised courses at public universities.

With the bill before the Senate today, the government plans to extend red tape that is already strangling vocational education and training providers to the rest of the higher education sector, with an exception for public universities. There is no justification for piling red tape on everyone other than public universities. Public universities lure students into courses through slick marketing. They offer shonky courses that not only will never lead to a job but actually leave the students dumber at the end of the course than when they started. Public universities have terrible completion rates. They pay their vice-chancellors and senior staff extravagant salaries that they could never attract in the private sector. More to the point, the massive subsidies for public universities and their students mean that, more than any other students, public university students don't bear the financial costs of their decisions, so they are less wary about committing to a course than someone who has money in the game.

These are all reasons to cut the subsidies to public universities, and, if they are not cut, public universities should face the heaviest regulation. For these reasons, I oppose the Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2017, which singles out public universities for special treatment. But I will be the only senator to do so. Only the Liberal Democrats stand up for students in private universities and in vocational education and training; the other parties are all captured by the leeches.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (12:47): I thank senators for their contributions, and commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sterle ) (12:48): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (12:48): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (12:48): Labor supports this bill, which makes five changes to the Customs Tariff Act 1995. These changes are comparatively minor. They go to fixing a mistake the government made in the subheading in the act concerning mosaic tiles; aligning with international practices a subheading referring to herbicides containing an emetic; incorporating industry feedback on the classification of machining goods; an extension of concessional arrangements for importing automotive prototypes and components, as announced in the budget; and the removal of a $12,000 special customs duty on certain used motor vehicles. I intend to address most of my remarks to the sections of the bill relating to the automotive industry, but first I will deal with the other matters.

Australian businesses importing mosaic tiles in the size specified in the act will not have to pay a customs duty. That was the original intent, but the amendment to the act last year mistakenly applied a five per cent tariff. The bill fixes the drafting mistake and ends confusion in the industry.

The second matter relates to a particular widely used weedkiller, which will be now classified as duty free and accords with international practice.

The government has accepted industry advice on the classification of machine centres able to perform two or more operations with an automatic tool change. The industry feedback on that matter was also accepted by the government. This bill repeals the domestic subheadings and reclassifies machine centres under a new, simplified arrangement.

Other changes involve various oversights and mistakes. Of course, you would hope that, in this day and age, we could get these matters right the first time around. However, I don't remain particularly optimistic that'll be the case.

With regard to the automotive industry, there is a more substantive question. We have to, once again, point out that the government has made a dreadful error here in comparison to what we've seen in the other questions. This is not a minor question. The government's gross failure of responsibility and gross negligence—from the Acting Prime Minister at the time and the Treasurer, Mr Hockey—in goading the automotive industry to leave amounted to an act of economic vandalism. It was at a time when there was a committee inquiry under way which the government had asked the major manufacturers to participate in. They had, in fact, said that they were going to rely upon their deliberations. The government acted in such a way at a time when the investment committee of General Motors was actually reviewing their operations and looking very closely at the position of the new government in Australia. They clearly got a straight answer from this government, which sought to actually force General Motors out of Australia. The government goaded the vehicle industry manufacturers to leave the country.

The modelling by the University of Adelaide estimated that the shutdown in vehicle production will cost the Australian economy some $29 billion annually—a $29 billion effect upon our GDP. It's put at risk some 200,000 jobs. When we think about the cost it will have on our social fabric and on social security benefits, the effects it will have on our health budget and the social distress that the destruction of an industry of this importance will have, whatever support came through the various budget measures to sustain the industry in this country would pale in insignificance.

Of course, that's not to mention the fact that industry support in this country, in comparison to international standards, was very, very modest. By international standards, the cost of support to the automotive industry in this country was less than the price of a footy ticket per capita—less than the price of a footy ticket! The cost to this country now will be so much more, in terms of social security and social distress.

The government has never acknowledged the enormity of what it has done. Whether it's out of ignorance or shame, it's not clear. This is not just a minor administrative error. It is a matter of profound social consequence and ideological obsession that the neoliberals within the conservative forces in this country crusaded for a very long time to actually undermine the automotive industry in this country. Little did they understand just how significant that industry has been to the rest of manufacturing, in terms of the capacity to actually translate production processes throughout other elements of manufacturing. For instance, I was recently in the Arnott's biscuit factory in Western Sydney. It is a very advanced plant. What's the first thing they say to you? The production arrangements, the production techniques, the production processes in that biscuit factory come from the automotive industry. The techniques that have been developed in the automotive industry have contributed to many aspects of other industries in this country. That linkage will now be lost.

I am very concerned about the consequences of these decisions. I know that we in this country will come to realise the damage that has been done, as governments in England came to realise after the destruction under Thatcher. I predict that even the conservatives here, as they did in England, will come to realise that there will be a need to rethink the position that they've taken, and there will be a more bipartisan approach to preserving the capabilities of the automotive industry, especially in engineering and design, so that we can attract new investment and keep jobs in Australia. The recommendations of the Senate committee into the future of the automotive industry are a way of actually achieving those outcomes.

This bill's extension of the concessional arrangements for importing an automotive prototype and components can be seen as a step along that way. It's necessary because the original wording of the act refers to 'motor vehicle producers' under the Automotive Transformation Scheme. 'Motor vehicle producers' will of course become 'automotive service providers', so their classifications will now change. The bill provides that, under the classifications, they will be able to benefit from the extension of a concession that was first announced in the budget.

The bill's other provision that affects the automotive industry is the one that removes a $12,000 customs duty on used or second-hand vehicles imported from other countries. In fact, I believe I was actually responsible for the imposition of this duty when I was minister. This duty was there as a reserve power, so that the market couldn't be flooded with grey imports. In practice the duty was rarely used because other opportunities were taken to protect the Australian public from the importation of second-hand vehicles—which I believe is a very poor policy approach. A vehicle import approval issued by the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development is one way that can be done. It is an offence to import a road vehicle into Australia without such a permit, and, because the duty is so rarely applied, Labor doesn't object to its removal.

But it is appropriate to sound a note of caution. The existing restrictions on the number of used vehicles that can be imported into this country are an important protection for consumers, a very, very important protection in terms of ensuring that we modernise the car fleet in this country, and, of course, a very, very important protection for the network of automotive dealerships in this country. Dealers are major providers of training and skills, particularly in rural communities. They are crucial to the future of the industry, which is in very substantial transition. I trust the government will continue to resist calls to make further changes to the importation of grey imports. I would urge the government not to inflict further damage on the industry above and beyond what they have already done.

Senator LEYONHJELM (New South Wales) (12:59): I rise in support of the Customs Tariff Amendment (Incorporation of Proposal and Other Measures) Bill 2017. The bill makes some substantive changes, like extending some tariff concessions for providers of automotive services and removing a $12,000 duty on imports of second-hand cars. Removing this $12,000 duty is welcome, but unfortunately it is of little effect in practice because the government still severely restricts the quantity of second-hand cars that are allowed to be imported. Denying Australians second-hand cars to protect retailers of new cars would be laughable if it were not so contemptuous of ordinary Australians who would like to choose something different and so suggestive of cronyism.

This bill also makes some housekeeping changes to Australia's complex schedule of tariffs. The schedule categorises hundreds of different products, from almonds to Xylol. The schedule sets out for each product whether it is hit with a five per cent tariff, a four per cent tariff, a three per cent tariff et cetera. Because this schedule is so complicated, there is a need for regular housekeeping. The bill removes some subheadings that, according to complaints from industry, are particularly cumbersome. It also sets the tariff rate for mosaic tiles at zero per cent, because the bureaucrats mistakenly set the tariff at five per cent the last time there was a housekeeping bill. This is all quite absurd.

Rather than fiddle on a regular basis with the complicated tariff schedule, we should abolish these nuisance tariffs. The Liberal Democrats have a fully-costed policy to do just that. If implemented, it would make stuff cheaper for Australians. It would also mean that Australian businesses would concentrate on making those products where we are the best in the world, rather than devote the resources to making products that are made cheaper and better overseas. This would be the best recipe for higher profits and higher wages and would avoid the need to prop up unviable businesses through protectionist tariffs.

Some economists do not support completely abolishing tariffs, because they theorise that the first million dollars of tax revenue collected from tariffs does less harm than an extra million dollars extracted from taxpayers as income tax. This theory would suggest that you should keep tariffs rather than put more weight on the income tax system. But what this theory does not consider is that, when a tax a completely abolished, all the compliance and administrative costs associated with that tax disappear. If we abolished our remaining nuisance tariffs, we would not need to have hundreds of Customs officials hovering over a shipment of mosaic tiles with their clipboards and tablets, and we would not have businesses pulling out their hair as they work out whether the tiles they are importing are classified as mosaic tiles or not.

I support the Customs Tariff Amendment (Incorporation of Proposal and Other Measures) Bill, because its tinkering is in the right direction. But, under the Liberal Democrats, we would have no tariffs, we would have free trade, we would have a low cost of living and we would have productive businesses and high wages, and there would be no need for bills such as this.

Senator HANSON (Queensland) (13:03): The government says in the common explanatory memorandum to these two bills that it seeks to harmonise the rates of tax on different tobacco products.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ) (13:03): Senator Hanson, we are on the Customs Tariff Amendment (Incorporation of Proposal and Other Measures) Bill.

Senator HANSON: No comments; thank you.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:03): I thank senators for their contributions and commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ) (13:03): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:04): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator POLLEY (Tasmania) (13:04): Labor is pleased to support the Australian Immunisation Register and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2017, which makes two minor changes to the No Jab, No Pay arrangements. Firstly, it adds four medical specialists to the list of providers who can grant medical exemptions to vaccination requirements: paediatricians, public health physicians, infectious disease physicians and clinical immunologists. Secondly, it clarifies that only recognised vaccination providers, GPs and those four specialists can tell the government whether children and families have met vaccination requirements.

Labor supports this bill and the practical benefits which will arise from its passage. Speaking on this bill today gives me a good opportunity to talk about the importance of immunisation. Ensuring vaccination rates are as high as possible is one of the most important health responsibilities of a government. While this bill is minor, the issue at hand is not. In early March, Senator Pauline Hanson went on Insiders and questioned the safety of vaccinations, sparking renewed debate on this issue. Senator Hanson later backed down from her suggestion that parents should use a non-existent test for vaccine allergies, but she has not apologised for her earlier comments linking vaccines to cancer and autism. Medical experts said Senator Hanson's comments were ignorant and dangerous, and I have to agree.

I have to put on record that it is completely unacceptable for any politician to use their public platform to put a shadow of doubt in someone's mind about something as critical as vaccinations. Australia's strong immunisation program is critical to eradicating life-threatening diseases. Failure to vaccinate is a threat to public health. Our leaders need to be doing everything possible to ensure parents know about the deadly risks of failing to vaccinate their children, not spreading misinformation. When we're elected to this chamber and to the other chamber and to all parliaments around this country, we have to accept the responsibility that is bestowed upon us. Vaccination is not just about protecting personal health; it's a social responsibility.

One of the most naive things I hear from people talking about vaccination is that, because there haven't been current outbreaks of diseases that were commonplace 100 years ago, their kids will be safe. Let me make it very clear: comments like this are not only misinformed; they're dangerous as well. Comments like this encourage complacency about vaccines, and the result is that, according to official statistics, there were 340 measles cases in 2014, almost double the 158 measles cases in 2013. This complacency, mixed with all the misinformation and myths floating around, highlights how critically important it is that the public continue to be educated about the importance of vaccines.

Nobody understands more just how important vaccination is than the countless number of parents who have experienced what no parent should have to go through: losing their child to a vaccine-preventable disease. The issue of immunisation has been highlighted through media coverage in Tasmania recently, including the story of a two-year-old Tasmanian toddler, Arthur Long, who contracted a deadly strain of meningococcal earlier this year. On 26 February this year, little Arthur Long woke with cold- and flu-like symptoms. His parents called a doctor to the house and were told that he was getting a virus. Little Arthur continued to deteriorate, so his parents took him to the Launceston General Hospital. It was not until after Arthur got to the hospital that the telltale meningococcal rash appeared. The deadly bacterial infection was spreading throughout his body and causing his vital organs to shut down. He was transferred to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, where he was operated on immediately. The situation was so deadly and so serious that Arthur was put on life support for 10 days and then into intensive care for a further two weeks. Little Arthur survived but he will live with the permanent disabilities for the rest of his life. His feet have been amputated and his hands are damaged.

This is the heartbreaking reality of vaccine-preventable diseases. Arthur's parents were shocked to learn that he could have been immunised against this disease. This is why it is so critically important that parents in our community know the facts and have accurate information, and why it is so critical, in any debate, for those facts to be laid out on the table—and, as elected politicians, we have that responsibility. We need to ensure that parents can make informed decisions, and that they do not have to endure the stress associated with trying to come to terms with what is accurate and what is just myth—and the misinformation of Senator Hanson has only been detrimental to us ensuring that the message is out in our community. We cannot stress enough in this place the importance of having our children vaccinated. As somebody whose sister still lives with polio, I know only too well, as does my family, about the importance of vaccination.

Senator LEYONHJELM (New South Wales) (13:11): In 1796, when Edward Jenner successfully used an inoculation of harmless cowpox vaccination to immunise a child against smallpox, he little realised the technique he pioneered would later be used to save millions of lives. Today most of take for granted the gift of artificial acquired immunity and do not think twice about vaccinating our children against the diseases which were once a major reason for a limited life expectancy. There are, however, some who, for religious, philosophical, or other reasons—some of which are decidedly bizarre—do not accept that the benefits of vaccination greatly outweigh the risks. But whether or not vaccination is a good idea is not what this bill is about.

The Australian Immunisation Register and Other Legislation Bill 2017 seeks to establish an Australian immunisation register to facilitate the creation of statistics on immunisation coverage, identify areas at risk of outbreaks and help individuals keep track of what they have been immunised against. The bill implements measures to improve immunisation rates across Australia and complements other Australian government initiatives, including No Jab, No Pay, and new catch-up incentive to GPs and other immunisation providers. Currently, only general practitioners are able to enter a medical exemption from vaccination on the Australian Immunisation Register. The bill will extend that power to paediatricians, public health physicians, infectious diseases physicians and clinical immunologists. It will ensure that getting a bona fide medical exemption through these avenues means that a person continues to receive welfare under the government's No Jab, No Pay policy.

Opponents of vaccination have sought to claim that the No Jab, No Pay policy makes vaccination compulsory—but this is false. As a vet myself, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the benefits of vaccination. However, as a libertarian, I also support the right of individuals to choose not to be vaccinated. I do, however, want to clearly state that I have no problem supporting a bill which reaffirms that vaccination is made a condition of welfare. Individuals remain free to reject vaccination; they just need not take the money. If they want to receive the welfare dime, individuals need to realise that the government is entitled to place conditions on their payment, just as an employer is entitled to specify the conditions under which they are prepared to employ and pay you. These conditions may comprise restricting what the welfare can be spent on or requiring that the children of welfare recipients are vaccinated to protect them and others in the community. Receiving welfare from the government is not a right. It is welfare. It is other people's monies. Quite reasonably, it can therefore be subject to whatever conditions the government may choose to impose. So, if you want to reject the benefits of vaccination, feel free, but just don't expect taxpayers will underwrite your choice.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:14): I thank senators for their contributions and commend the bill to the Senate.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ): The question is that the bill be now read a second time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ) (13:15): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:15): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:16): I move:

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

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:16): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

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

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

Safe Work Australia was established in 2008 to develop national policy relating to work health and safety and workers' compensation.

The bill was informed by the Review of the Role and Functions of Safe Work Australia. Under this Act, a review of the Safe Work Australia Act was required after six years of operation.

The Review was tabled in Parliament on 8th of November 2016.

The Review confirmed that Safe Work Australia plays an important role in facilitating a national focus on work health and safety and workers' compensation.

It provides a strong tripartite framework - that is, representatives from government, employers and employees - for engagement on safety matters.

The Review also identified scope for improvement and recommended the Safe Work Australia Act be amended to:

clarify Safe Work Australia's role and the relationships between its role and functions, and

update, consolidate and simplify Safe Work Australia's functions to ensure they are clear, achievable, remain contemporary and support Safe Work Australia's role into the future.

The bill gives effect to these recommendations.

The bill amends the Safe Work Australia Act to insert an object provision which clearly states that Safe Work Australia's role and purpose is to – among other things – improve national work health and safety and workers' compensation arrangements.

The new object provision also emphasises the importance of collaboration on national work health and safety and workers' compensation matters.

To complement this, the bill provides Safe Work Australia with a specific function to collaborate with the Commonwealth, the states and territories and international bodies to drive further improvements in work health and safety outcomes and workers' compensation arrangements.

There was extensive consultation with stakeholders through both the Review process and the development of this bill.

This bill strengthens Safe Work Australia's ability to respond effectively to the challenges that impact health and safety now and in the future.

A better alignment of its functions, that will remain contemporary into the future and not become outdated, will mean it is better placed to respond effectively to emerging work health and safety issues.

The level of consensus that was achieved throughout the consultation process on the role of Safe Work Australia and its functions was very positive and commendable.

It highlights the value all parties involved place on governments and employee and employer representatives taking concerted action on a national scale to reduce the significant social, human and economic cost of work-related death, injury and disease.

This bill demonstrates the Australian Government's strong commitment to working collaboratively, with states and territories, employee and employer representatives, to improve the safety of Australia's workplaces and its workers' compensation arrangements.

Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (13:16): Labor supports the bill. The bill implements the recommendations of the review of Safe Work Australia's role and functions. The review was required to start six years after the commencement of the Safe Work Act 2008 and was tabled in parliament on 8 November 2016. Consistent with the review's recommendation, the bill amends the Safe Work Australia Act to include an overarching statement that it provides a context in which the Safe Work Australia Act is to continue to perform its functions and lead the development of national policies and strategies to improve the WHS outcomes and workers' compensation arrangements, and the bill updates and consolidates Safe Work Australia's functions. The bill also replaces outdated terms such as 'occupational health and safety' and 'ministerial council' and clarifies that WHS ministers will continue to approve the model WHS legislation, statements and other key documents.

The former Labor government established Safe Work Australia in 2008 to lead the development of a national policy to improve workers' health and safety, and workers' compensation across Australia, with specific focus on the harmonisation of workers' health and safety laws. The efforts of Safe Work Australia have supported improvements in workers' health and safety outcomes and arrangements in Australia. The six-year review of Safe Work Australia concluded:

There is significant evidence to indicate Safe Work Australia has delivered against its stated role and functions, although there are opportunities for improvement—particularly in relation to the delivery of the workers' compensation, data collection and analysis and awareness raising functions.

…   …   …

WHS has been a focus for successive tripartite bodies for more than 30 years.

…   …   …

Progress on workers' compensation arrangements has been less pronounced, however this can generally be attributed to external factors beyond the control of Safe Work Australia. These factors include the focus on harmonisation of WHS laws, underlying commercial issues and disparate jurisdictional perspectives and differences across the various workers' compensation schemes. Nevertheless, there have been some achievements in the administration of workers' compensation schemes including the alignment of definitions on deemed diseases, permanent impairment and the benefits cut-off age.

…   …   …

T he need for Safe Work Australia' s role and functions to be updated

A key theme arising from stakeholder discussions is that the principles embodied in Safe Work Australia's current role and functions largely remain valid. However, the role needs to be further clarified and the functions revised to suit changed circumstances.

Safe Work Australia's functions are clearly identified in the establishing legislation, but its role is not. A clear role helps to define the purpose of the body and sets the expectations and the overall context for how its functions should be performed. The lack of a clear legislative role for Safe Work Australia has resulted in some ambiguity around its purpose and how to perform its functions. This should be addressed, and there is also a need to update the functions to ensure they remain contemporary—for example, removal of specific references to titles and dates. This bill addresses these issues and I commend it to the Senate.

Senator LEYONHJELM (New South Wales) (13:20): The Safe Work Australia Amendment (Role and Functions) Bill 2017 tweaks the functions of a body responsible for regulating workplace health and safety, called Safe Work Australia. I have no objection to the bill. What I do object to is Safe Work Australia itself. Safe Work Australia is a body that is answerable to everyone, so in reality it is answerable to no-one. It reports to ministers not just from the Commonwealth but from every state and territory in Australia, and it enforces regulations that need to be agreed between every government in Australia. This is a recipe for the bureaucrats doing what they want, regardless of how stupid this is.

A recent example relates to the labelling of chemicals used in agriculture. Such labelling is regulated by the Commonwealth's Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority. Their labelling requirements are reasonable, internationally consistent, supported by industry and keep everyone safe. Then Safe Work Australia came along and imposed requirements for additional labels to be plastered onto the packs of chemicals used in agriculture—supposedly based on work health and safety criteria, and ignoring the fact that the APVMA already takes this into account. The new labelling requirements are confusing, costly and duplicative, and make those handling the chemicals less, rather than more, safe. Industry objected to the Commonwealth minister, but the Commonwealth minister couldn't stop the madness. The madness would only stop if every state and territory minister from Labor and Liberal governments agreed to rein in the rampant Safe Work Australia. It was all too difficult and the ridiculous double labelling continues.

The Liberal Democrats believe in the Federation, but this is no way to run a federation. If workplace health and safety is to be the responsibility of the Commonwealth government, powers should be referred to the Commonwealth, and then a Commonwealth body would be solely answerable to a Commonwealth minister. If the bureaucrats behave stupidly, the Commonwealth minister could stop them. I support this bill, but I oppose Safe Work Australia. We should abolish this body and start again.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:23): I thank senators for their contributions to this debate. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ) (13:23): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:23): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (13:24): Labor supports the Fisheries Legislation Amendment (Representation) Bill 2017. The purpose of the bill is to strengthen the engagement of recreational Indigenous fishers in the management of the Commonwealth fisheries and to ensure that the interests of the stakeholder groups are appropriately taken into account in the Australian government decision-making processes. Labor supports our recreational Indigenous fishers to have a voice at the decision-making table. The previous parliament and, indeed, the most recent election supported recreational Indigenous fishers having a greater say in the decision-making processes. The bill provides for explicit recognition of recreational Indigenous fishers in the Commonwealth legislation. It will require the Australian Fisheries Management Authority to ensure that the interests of all fishers are taken into account in Commonwealth fisheries management decisions. Other minor amendments will allow the bill to increase opportunities for membership of the authority's advisory bodies and to extend the eligible criteria for serving on the authority's commission to include expertise in matters relating to recreational Indigenous fishing. The bill also inserts an additional objective that will require the authority, their ministers and joint authorities to have regard to ensure that the interests of commercial and recreational Indigenous fishers are taken into account in the context of managing Commonwealth commercial fisheries.

The bill also includes the recommendation of the report of the Senate inquiry into factory freezer trawlers in the Commonwealth small pelagic fishery. As previously stated, recreational Indigenous fishers have advocated for better engagement with the government and for a genuine say when key decisions are being made about the access to and the management of key recreational fisheries. Recreational Indigenous fishers have criticised the process undertaken to allow supertrawlers to fish in Australian fisheries, due to the fact that there was no formal process by which they have had a say. On 26 November 2016, the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee tabled its report, Factory freezer trawlers in the Commonwealth small pelagic fishery, and recommended that the government expedite its 2016 election commitment to amend the Fisheries Management Act to specify that the Australian Fisheries Management Authority is required to consider the interests of all users of fisheries, including recreational Indigenous commercial fishers. This bill will require the authority to take all reasonable steps to ensure it has received adequate advice on relevant recreational Indigenous interests, in addition to commercial fishing, environmental interests and scientific expertise, prior to making management decisions on Commonwealth commercial fisheries.

For too long, recreational Indigenous fishers have not been recognised for the vital role they play in our fisheries. Their unique knowledge of our Australian fisheries is important and should not be ignored or underestimated.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:27): I thank senators for their contribution to the debate on the Fisheries Legislation Amendment (Representation) Bill 2017 and commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ) (13:27): As no amendments to the bill have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bill be considered in Committee of the Whole.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:27): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Senator KIM CARR (Victoria) (13:28): These bills, the Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco Duty Harmonisation) Bill 2017 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco Duty Harmonisation) Bill 2017, will ensure that tobacco products in cigarette form and other tobacco products receive a comparable duty treatment. In effect, this means that roll-your-own tobacco will no longer receive a more favourable tax treatment than tailored cigarettes. Four annual adjustments to the duty rate from 1 September 2017 will result in roll-your-own tobacco attracting the same rate of duty per kilogram as tailored cigarettes. The change is a logical next step from Labor's previous tobacco excise measures and therefore we support it. Labor has always taken the initiative in measures to reduce smoking.

This measure will result in a gain to the excise and excise-equivalent receipts over the forward estimates period of some $360 million. GST receipts from this measure are estimated to increase by $75 million over the same period, and these increases are in addition to the increase in the excise of all products in the 2016-17 budget. The increase from revenue will be available to help reduce the budget deficit, which, as we all know, continues to blow out under the government.

Labor welcomes the revenue increases but not the unfair budget measures imposed by the Abbott-Turnbull government in pursuit of their warped economic priorities. The government has a long way to go when it comes to fair budget repair. The government has given priority to tax cuts for millionaires, multinationals and companies, which increases taxes for ordinary Australians. These bills are essentially a public health measure, not a revenue measure. But these bills are necessary.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare National Drug Strategy Household Survey for 2016, released on I June this year, found that the use of roll-your-own cigarettes rose from some 26 per cent of smokers in 2007 to 36 per cent in 2016, and that, from 2013 to 2016, the use of roll-your-own cigarettes amongst smokers in their 30s rose from 29 per cent to 37 per cent. The lower cost of roll-your-own tobacco because of the more favourable tax treatment is believed to have contributed to these increases. Aligning the tax treatment of tailor-made cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco removes the price incentive to buy roll-your-own tobacco. It is a sensible measure that should halt the increase in the use of this particular tobacco. Ideally, it ought to reverse it.

Despite numerous challenges, the World Trade Organization has upheld Australia's right to impose various measures that were introduced by the previous Labour government to reduce the level of smoking in this country. Last month the tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris was ordered to pay a reported $50 million in legal fees to Australia after losing its international court bid to scrap plain packaging. Many other countries have since followed Australia's lead. France, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Slovenia and the United Kingdom now have plain-packaging laws. Similar laws are planned in Canada, Turkey, Singapore and South Africa.

Under Labor, Australia introduced many other measures aimed at cutting cigarette smoking. The excise on tobacco products was increased by 25 per cent in the 2010-11 budget. Restrictions were imposed on internet advertising. There was $102 million allocated to nicotine replacement therapies and other quit-smoking supports through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. There was $100 million invested in the COAG National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap in Indigenous Health Outcomes, to tackle smoking rates in Indigenous communities. There was $14.5 million invested in the Indigenous Tobacco Control Initiative over three years from 2008. There was $5 million allocated in one-off funding for Quitlines in 2009-10. In November 2015 Labor announced that, if re-elected, we would deliver a further four excise-rate increases of 12.4 per cent, beginning on 1 July 2017. So I am not surprised that Labor's initiatives have been followed by the government. The 2016-17 budget announced annual increases in tobacco excise and excise-equivalent duties of 12.5 per cent from 2017 through to 2020.

The National Drug Strategy Household Survey, which I have already cited, shows that Labor's leadership in cutting smoking rates has achieved results. The survey found the proportion of Australians who have never smoked rose from 60 per cent in 2013 to 62 per cent in 2016. Most encouragingly, 98 per cent of Australian teenagers have never smoked. That is up from 95 per cent in 2013. Amongst younger people who do smoke, the age at which they smoked their first cigarette is rising. In 1995 it was 14.2 years. By 2013 it was 15.9 years. Then it jumped significantly, to 16.3 years, in 2016. However, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey also contains some rather alarming statistics. Smoking kills 15,000 Australians a year. One in eight adults still smokes daily. Smoking rates are highest amongst Indigenous Australians and amongst people with mental illness. These figures show the urgency of the bills that we are now considering.

Improving the health outcomes for Australians requires a little bit more than just harmonising tobacco taxes. You would hope that the government would do more than just follow in Labor's lead on raising tobacco excise. We urge the government to do the same by committing to the new national media campaign on smoking, as we, of course, suggested in the last election. The government mothballed the Australian National Tobacco Campaign in 2013. The campaign, familiar to people as the 'every cigarette is doing you damage' ads, had existed since 1997. It was hailed and copied by other countries because of its effectiveness. The National Drug Strategy Household Survey has also revealed the effects of the government's lack of commitment to a media campaign against smoking. Total levels dropped from 12.8 per cent in 2013 to 12.2 per cent in 2016. For the first time in two decades a statistically significant fall was not recorded.

Labor will continue to lead the way on measures to reduce smoking rates. Our record demonstrates our commitment. We will continue to hold the government to account in improving health outcomes for all Australians and in, at the same time, delivering a fairer budget for all Australians.

Senator LEYONHJELM (New South Wales) (13:36): The government is bleeding smokers dry. Once the government is finished, do you think it will stop? I don't. I think it will then tax the next most vulnerable group of Australians. To those listening, let me say this: it could be you. If you want to stop the ravenous tax man before he bleeds you and your family dry, you have to vote for the Liberal Democrats. The bill before us today will be waived through the parliament by the Liberals, Nationals, Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers, like those in the Xenophon team. It is a mean, sneaky and stupid bill. It increases the tax rate on cigars and loose leaf tobacco from its staggeringly high level of $772 per kilogram to the astronomical level currently applying to cigarettes of $882 per kilogram. That tax is the reason Australia has the most expensive smokes in the world.

The bill is mean because cigarette smokers are disproportionately poor and include thousands of Aborigines, unemployed, disabled and other welfare recipients. The tobacco taxes that smokers pay are already at least 17 times the healthcare costs that smokers impose on other taxpayers. The bill is sneaky because the government could just as easily reduce the higher tax rate to the level of the lower rate. There is even a case for maintaining a lower tax rate on cigars, as their use is typically less addictive and harmful than cigarette use.

The bill is also stupid because increasing tobacco tax rates further will prompt faster growth of the untaxed and unregulated black market, so tobacco tax revenue may actually fall. Only today we have seen Customs officials charged regarding an alleged tobacco-smuggling ring. The media and government won't admit the obvious, which is that this is a direct result of extortionate tobacco tax rates. From every aspect this is appalling legislation. I condemn it totally.

Senator HANSON (Queensland) (13:38): I rise to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco Duty Harmonisation) Bill 2017 and Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco Duty Harmonisation) Bill 2017. The government says in the common explanatory memorandum to these two bills that it seeks to harmonise the rates of tax on different tobacco products. The excise bill deals with tobacco products produced in Australia, and the Customs bill deals with products imported into Australia. In effect, these bills deal with 85 per cent of the market—that is, the regulated and legal market. These bills do not deal with the remaining 15 per cent of the market, which KPMG describes as an industry dominated by serious and well-organised crime, which sees the illegal tobacco market as a low-risk, high-profit business.

The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service estimates the duty on tobacco that would have been evaded, but for seizures, to be just over $1 billion in 2015-16. No-one knows how much tobacco, mostly in the form of cigarettes, evaded detection and found its way to the black market. Although it has been illegal to grow tobacco in Australia since 2006, tobacco continues to be grown illegally and sold as chop-chop, and much of this is bought by smokers who roll their own cigarettes. It is a statement of the obvious, but the government receives nothing from the sale of tobacco products in the black market. The central problem is that, as the government increases taxes on legal tobacco, it forces smokers into the black market and this in turn increases the size of the black market.

It is estimated that around 13 per cent of Australians over the age of 18 smoke, but the figures vary throughout Australia. In the ACT 10 per cent of people smoke but it is double in Queensland and Tasmania. As I referred to the black market, I find it quite appalling that the government knows that this is going on. The black market is bringing in quite a lot of cigarettes that are sold on the black market. The fact is that we are not doing enough at Customs and point of entry into this country to inspect the containers to ensure that we don't have illegal cigarettes coming in to this country.

Smokers in Australia need relief from excessive taxation and they need choices like electronic cigarettes. Electronic cigarettes are handheld devices that are said to recreate the feeling of tobacco smoking. It is currently unlawful to sell or to use electronic cigarettes with a nicotine cartridge. This is because nicotine is classified as a schedule 7 dangerous poison under the Commonwealth Poisons Standard. So, while you can buy cigarettes, you cannot buy nicotine electronic cigarettes. It is a question Australians who smoke ask every day, and there is no sensible answer because the government is spending its time raising another $150 million when it already gouges $11.6 billion a year from smokers. Let me repeat that: $11.6 billion a year from those taxpayers who smoke. And these people are taxpayers because they pay taxes on the cigarettes and tobacco.

Why would the government want to ban cigarettes when they are making so much money? I find they are a bunch of hypocrites, Liberal, Labor and the National Party, because the whole thing is that this about a money grab. It's about $11.6 billion a year that they are taking from these people who are addicted to cigarette smoking, who are forced to pay this extra money. I'd like to know whether this money goes into consolidated revenue. Are we really trying to do something to help these people that are addicted to smoking? Is the money going into reducing the cost of nicotine patches, or are we putting the money into checking out the black market? The government are forcing people back to the black market to buy cigarettes there—and who knows where that money goes. So I do not see this government helping whatsoever.

I spoke about electronic cigarettes. We are talking about nicotine. What are cigarettes? Cigarettes are nicotine. So why are we opposing electronic cigarettes when it is known that they can assist people to cut down on their smoking and hopefully get off cigarettes? That's what we are here for. We’re here to make the right decisions for the people out there struggling. Most of these people who are addicted to cigarettes and smoking are the ones who can least afford it. They are so addicted, so they spend their money on a packet of cigarettes, which gives them relief, usually from depression. They may not have work or are trying to live on a minimum wage or a very low hand-out in social security and the last thing they can afford are cigarettes but they are addicted to it. We have to start looking at doing something to help these people get off the nicotine.

There is another thing that I will raise. Why don't we look at the chemicals that the cigarette companies put into the tobacco for the cigarettes? Why don't we look at that? If nicotine or all these other poisons that they put into tobacco so that the cigarette burns longer or faster—or for whatever reason—are factors, why aren't we looking at controlling what the companies put into the cigarettes so that we can help these smokers get off it?

I am not for smoking, but I believe in a fair society and in trying to help these people, instead of gouging them again with higher taxes, which they can least afford. Start showing me policies and legislation that are going to help these people. I see this as a money-making racket from the government—just another way of collecting more taxes. It is unfortunate that the government is not putting forward a bill today that simplifies the regulation of nicotine and electronic cigarettes in Australia and does what is necessary to make safe the capsules that contain the substance in electronic cigarettes.

I will speak further about non-nicotine electronic cigarettes. In South Australia and Western Australia, it is unlawful to sell products that resemble tobacco. In Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT, laws ban the sale of electronic cigarettes to people under the age of 18. The legality of advertising and promoting non-nicotine electronic cigarettes varies throughout Australia. The same situation arises for the use of non-nicotine electronic cigarettes in smoke-free areas. Instead of working out ways to tax smokers more and limit their choices, I want the government to show leadership by harmonising the laws on electronic cigarettes and doing more to reduce the illicit tobacco industry in Australia.

For those people out there who are non-smokers, I have to be honest—I was a smoker, a very passive smoker, but I gave it up in 1995. I don't smoke now, and previously I was just a social smoker. So I see both sides of the coin. I don't encourage my children to smoke at all, but they are adults and they do their own thing. I am not just looking at the health aspect of this but I'm also looking at it from the perspective of what is right. To help people in Australia who are truly addicted to cigarettes, we must do more than tax them to the hilt, thinking that that is the way to get them off cigarettes. It is more of an educational process. It means doing more to help these people. That's what I'll be looking at, and I hope the government will look at it, rather than just raising the taxes again, more and more every year. I can't see people being helped by that at all.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:47): I would like to thank those senators who have contributed to this debate. These bills adjust the method for calculating the per-kilogram rate of excise and excise-equivalent customs duty to ensure roll-your-own tobacco and stick cigarettes receive comparable taxation treatment. The adjustments will increase the duty imposed on roll-your-own tobacco over four years, with the first adjustment occurring on 1 September 2017.

The adjustments will ensure that taxation of tobacco products, whether stick cigarettes or roll-your-own tobacco, receive equivalent tax treatment. In relation to Senator Hanson's point, the government announced additional funding to expand the Tobacco Strike Team and enhance penalties for tobacco offences in the 2016-17 budget. The expansion of the Tobacco Strike Team has taken place, and legislation to implement the enhanced penalties continues to be progressed. I commend the bills to the Senate.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Gallacher ): The question is that the bills be now read a second time.

Senator GALLACHER (South Australia) (13:56): As no amendments to the bills have been circulated, I shall call the minister to move the third reading unless any senator requires that the bills be considered in Committee of the Whole.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (13:56): I move:

That these bills be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a third time.

Senator CAMERON (New South Wales) (13:56): After listening to Senator Cash for the last few days coming after the CFMEU with many spurious arguments, we now have the Fair Work Amendment (Protecting Vulnerable Workers) Bill 2017 here, which has been delayed and delayed in being brought to this house. Do you know why it was delayed? Because a former minister of the coalition is now a lobbyist for the Franchise Council of Australia and that former Liberal minister was getting paid a salary by the Franchise Council of Australia while he was still a member of the government, while he was still in parliament. So let's hear what Senator Cash has to say about the impropriety of that little lot. Let's hear Senator Cash tell us why this bill was delayed. Former small business minister Mr Billson has been travelling around this parliament, knocking on every door he possibly can, trying to delay this bill going through.

It's an absolute outrage, and I will not cop any of the nonsense from this rabble of a government with the weakest Prime Minister this country has ever seen. Billy McMahon looks like a Liberal giant against Malcolm Turnbull. Malcolm Turnbull is such a weak-kneed Prime Minister that he allows former ministers to actually lobby on behalf of business to stop workers being protected in this country. It's an absolute disgrace. If there's ever thuggery going on, it's the political thuggery of the coalition and former ministers of this government running around trying to stop legislation that may help a little bit workers and foreign workers in this country stop being ripped off by farmers, by the mafia and by the ones they have lunch with every other day down in Melbourne.

Government senators interjecting—

Senator CAMERON: You know that you are in a position over there. You can come after the CFMEU and you can come after the unions, but when you are behaving badly, you say nothing. They say nothing. They are an absolute rabble of a government. It's no wonder that Malcolm Turnbull has to tell everybody how strong he is—'I'm a strong leader.' Here we have former ministers taking money from business while they are still a member of the government.

Debate interrupted.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:21): On behalf of the Chair of the Economics References Committee, I present the report on the home, strata and car insurance industries, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:21): I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS (New South Wales—Minister for International Development and the Pacific) (16:22): I table a document relating to the order for the production of documents concerning advice on the conduct or constitutionality of a postal plebiscite or postal ballot.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (16:23): It's with pleasure that I commence the debate on this very important issue. The Social Security Amendment (Caring for People on Newstart) Bill 2017 that we are debating is about increasing the single rate of the Newstart payment and the single independent rate of youth allowance. We've been hearing a lot about inequality lately in this chamber. In fact, we Greens have been raising this issue for a long time. Inequality is one of the greatest challenges that we face not only in Australia but globally. Income inequality is growing in Australia, and many people battle daily with poverty and with the impacts of inequality to meet their basic living expenses. Inequality creates significant negative effects on people's physical and mental wellbeing, societal cohesion and stability, and our economic growth and productivity, to the point where we are seeing industry and businesses talking about the impact of inequality. The research and literature is clear about the impacts of inequality on people and on our society and community.

In mid-2014, I initiated a Senate Community Affairs Committee inquiry on the back of that horror 2014 budget. That inquiry into the extent of income inequality in Australia found that, on a number of metrics, the evidence indicates that inequality has increased in Australia against the backdrop of rising incomes and across all income deciles. Currently there are nearly three million people, 13.3 per cent of our population, living below the poverty line in Australia, after taking account of their housing costs. Seven hundred and thirty-one thousand and three hundred of these are children.

Poverty and inequality have devastating impacts on life outcomes. Poverty undermines access to education and training, and educational outcomes are directly related to socio-economic status. Poverty limits access to safe and secure housing, transport, employment outcomes, child care and many other aspects of full participation in society. Poverty is a daily challenge for many Australians, undermining their ability to have dignified, meaningful and productive lives. What is incredibly saddening is that the number of people falling into poverty is increasing and that those most likely to find themselves living below the poverty line are already facing the most disadvantage. We are in fact a wealthy nation and have resources available to us to significantly reduce the existing rate of poverty, if only there were the political will to do so. No-one in a country as well off as Australia should be living in poverty and dealing with the increasing levels of inequality we are facing in this country.

Of those on income support in Australia, 36.1 per cent are living below the poverty line, including 55 per cent of people receiving Newstart allowance, and others continue to struggle on extremely low incomes. We need visionary policies to overcome the underlying drivers of poverty. We need such things as affordable housing and access to education and employment, and we need to ensure we have a strong social security system that properly supports people and is fit to meet the challenges we face in the 21st century. A strong social safety net is the foundation of a more inclusive and productive society. The Australian Greens want to see a stronger safety net and adequate income support payments. A strong social safety net is a key part of addressing inequality. A social safety net ensures that, when people fall on hard times, there are supports in place to help them when they need it most.

The changing nature of work—increasing part-time and casual employment, underemployment, short-term contracts and uncertainty of weekly incomes—highlights the need for a 21st century social safety net that is more flexible and responsive. Such a system is better suited to supporting people to maintain their financial resilience as they move in and out of work and to cope better with variable and uncertain income. This is why many modern and progressive societies are adopting more flexible and responsive social security systems as a way of ensuring their economies remain competitive, their communities stable and their workers better able to respond productively to rapidly changing workplaces and technologies.

Australia's income support system is complex, inadequate, punitive and difficult to navigate. The Greens are committed to developing a 21st century social safety net that supports and underpins an inclusive community and a fair and just society, where we have a productive workforce. We will continue to campaign for a social safety net that truly supports those in our community and meets the needs of the 21st century. But right now there are those that are unemployed and on Newstart who are struggling to survive because the payment is inadequate and puts them below the poverty line, living on extremely low incomes. In fact, poverty is a barrier to trying to find employment. So we are very proudly bringing this bill in to address that most immediate issue.

The evidence presented to the Community Affairs References Committee inquiry into inequality in Australia in 2014 showed that the level of the Newstart payment is too low. In conclusion, the report Bridging our growing divide: inequality inAustralia—The extent of income inequality in Australia found it is clear that income is a key factor in determining the economic wellbeing of most Australians. A low income or low-transfer payments will often exacerbate the disadvantage suffered by a person and their dependants. Take the case of a retrenched worker who may be forced to live on savings or the Newstart allowance for a period of time. This may mean forgoing health services, out-of-pocket expenses, remortgaging or ending child care or private school tuition for the children. A more prolonged period of unemployment may lead to despondency, mental health problems, marital breakdown and homelessness; again, underpinning the impact low Newstart payments have on people.

This same inquiry looked at what principles should inform a well-designed social security system. One of the principles put forward by ACOSS and COTA Australia was the principle of adequacy. The word 'adequacy' is the key point here. Generally, adequacy of income-support payments is considered fundamental and, in fact, goes undisputed. Currently, the ratio of the Newstart payment to the full-time minimum wage is 38.54 per cent. This comparison relates to the maximum fortnightly payment for a single Newstart support recipient with no dependant children and does not include other allowances such as individuals may be receiving. However, it does provide an indication of the inadequacy of the base rate of the payment itself. Sadly, this ratio has been falling since the mid-1990s. In fact, it has even fallen further since this report.

Professor Peter Whiteford told the committee that the relative financial position of a Newstart recipient today is lower than it was in the early 1990s. He said that the poorest 10 per cent are 40 per cent better off than they were in the early nineties. But if you are on Newstart, the real increase in your payment is negligible. Someone who is at the 10th percentile is 40 per cent better off, but a person on Newstart compared to somebody who was on Newstart in the early nineties is not 40 per cent better off. The reason is that people on these income payments are moving down the income distribution. Back in the early nineties, if you were a single person on Newstart, you were about $6 to $10 a week below the tenth percentile point. You are now about $160 a week below that point—this was in 2014. People on these payments are falling down, so to speak. I would have thought a person on Newstart, or Youth Allowance, is now right at the real bottom of the income distribution.

The committee was clear on the importance of the payment levels of income-support payments being adequate to ensure that people are not living in poverty, yet still nothing has been done. The Australian Greens want to see people who are unemployed move into stable and suitable employment. We do not support the argument the keeping people in poverty helps that. A number of submitters to the Senate inequality inquiry took issue with the argument that a lower payment would promote participation in the workforce. Current payment levels are so low they could hinder an individual's ability to find work. For example, this could be because an individual is unable to meeting the cost of clothing themselves or meet the cost of transport to a job interview. Such incomes can lead to physical and mental ill health. An adequate base payment would reduce the stress factors Newstart recipients face and provide them with a springboard to find employment and join the labour market.

Australia's key unemployment benefit, Newstart, has not had a real legislated increase in over two decades. A single person on Newstart receiving the maximum payment has to live on $38.39, including the energy supplement, a day. This is less than half the minimum wage. The Australian Greens have long been calling for an increase to Newstart and had a bill in two previous parliaments to increase the single rates of Newstart and independent Youth Allowance. Leading community organisations, businesses and the community have all called repeatedly to increase these inadequate payments. Despite this, both Liberal and Labor governments have failed to act, despite frequent calls and strong campaigning.

Instead, governments have successively hacked away at the income support system, reducing much-needed supports. Instead, the government has deliberately—in fact, I would say maliciously—propagated myths about those on unemployment benefits and takes every opportunity to demonise those accessing income support, without any compassion or understanding of the reality of those living below the poverty line who are trying to make ends meet when they are on Newstart.

Now, in fact, we see the government harassing people on Newstart, with letters with the AFP logo on them and, one week later, following it up with a text to people on income support, including people that have poor mental health. Imagine the impact on those people. The fact is that there are not enough jobs for people on Newstart at this point. According to the ABS, in February 2017, there were 186,400 job vacancies in Australia, while there were 743,700 people who were unemployed. Young people are more than twice as likely to be unemployed.

Humiliating, demonising, attacking people and making people's lives harder is not the way that we should be addressing this issue. Making it more difficult for people to re-enter the workforce is not the way we should be addressing this matter. We recognise that single people living on Newstart and independent youth allowance are the ones who are typically the most disadvantaged by our current income support system. The maximum fortnightly payment of Newstart for a single person with no dependent children, at the time of this bill's introduction, is $535.60. That is $338.60 less per fortnight than the maximum rate of the payment for singles, including the pension supplement on the age and disability pensions—and those are considered too low. The maximum fortnightly payment for youth allowance living away from home is $437.50. That is $98.10 less per fortnight than the rate of Newstart for a single person with no dependent children.

The Social Security Amendment (Caring for People on Newstart) Bill 2017 will give effect to the Australian Greens' commitment at the last election to increase the single rate of Newstart and the single independent rates of youth allowance by $110 per fortnight. For single Newstart recipients, it does this by introducing a Newstart supplement of $110 a fortnight. For single independent youth allowance recipients, the maximum basic rates are also increased by $110 a fortnight. It is not hard to image what people trying to live on these payments could do with that additional money. They will spend it and drive the economy at the same time as it helps improve their situation. This change will help by bringing some relief to those on the very lowest rates of income support and will assist them to make their lives just that little bit better.

The focus on singles is based on evidence that these households are the most at risk of poverty. The ACOSS report Poverty in Australia in 2016 found that single people generally faced a significantly higher risk of poverty than couples—26.4 per cent compared to 10.1 per cent. Thirty-three per cent of single-parent families are living in poverty, compared with 11.3 per cent of couples with children. This reflects, in part, the economies of scale available to people living with partners.

This bill will also index these payments to those of other income support payments, such as the pension. We know that the rates of indexation between the pension and Newstart are different. The pension has coped with the increasing costs of living a lot better, and has risen a lot more, than the Newstart allowance, so this bill addresses that issue. The call for an increase in the base rate of allowance payments has received widespread support, not only from social services organisations but also from business groups, unions and various economists.

In 2012, the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee report entitled The adequacy of the allowance payment system for jobseekers and others, the appropriateness of the allowance payment system as a support into work and the impact of the changing nature of the labour market found that the payment rate of Newstart was inadequate. That was in 2012—five years ago! Despite these findings, both Liberal and Labor governments have refused to take action. The Greens are the only party that are calling for a rise in this inadequate payment.

As well as assisting people out of poverty, the other key reasons for increasing the single rates for Newstart and the independent youth allowance include: the extended length of time that many recipients now have to spend on these payments; the cost of living pressures faced by those in receipt of the single rate of the allowances; and the growing gap between the pension and allowance payments due to these different types of indexation. This bill will directly assist single people living on Newstart and the independent youth allowance. It is imperative that these people receive an increase in this allowance.

The gap between the allowance and the pension payment is increasing. Newstart allowance is indexed to the movement in the CPI in March and September; the youth allowance is indexed once in January. Pensions are indexed twice a year, in March and September, by the greater of the movement in the CPI or PBLCI—an index designed to better reflect the price changes affecting pensioners. The rate is also benchmarked to a percentage of the male total average weekly earnings. It is time that Newstart was similarly indexed.

This bill will address this widening gap. A $110 per fortnight increase in eligible payments will ensure a fairer and more straightforward social security system and immediately help Australian people who are living in poverty on these low-income support payments. Better indexation will help maintain the value of an increase into the future. This is one of the ways that we need to address the growing inequality in this country.

The Greens have long advocated for this increase. We have long advocated and recognised that inequality in this country is growing. Part of that is due to these low rates of payments. The ideological approach of this current government gets in the way of their seeing that this is an imperative and must be done. For those who care about inequality in this country, this is a logical step that needs to be taken.

I commend this bill to the chamber and urge everyone in this chamber to realise the urgent need to increase Newstart and the independent rate of youth allowance and to take this vital step. I acknowledge there are other things to do to address inequality, and we will be addressing those, but this is one thing that we can do now to increase the payments that people are struggling to live on and to start to address inequality in this country.

Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS (New South Wales—Minister for International Development and the Pacific) (16:43): I rise to contribute to the debate on the Social Security Amendment (Caring for People on Newstart) Bill 2017. Australia is fortunate to have a strong social security safety net to assist those in need. As Minister for International Development and the Pacific, I travel extensively and have seen firsthand many systems that do not do this.

A good social security system is the hallmark of a modern, prosperous and egalitarian society. Our social security system has prevented thousands of people over the decades from going hungry, or going without clothing or shelter. But while our welfare system achieves the fundamental objective of ensuring people are not without the basics, it has also created problems that were never intended. Our welfare system represents a third of our budget. It costs $160 billion per annum. It represents 80 per cent of all individual income tax raised in Australia. This means that 80 per cent of Australians' income tax goes towards footing the welfare bill. It is growing by six per cent per annum, which is faster than inflation or GDP growth. But the most pressing problem is that our welfare system is failing too many of the individuals it was set up to serve.

There are now whole regions where there are as many people receiving income from welfare as there are actually working in a job. Too many people are led into lives of dependence and passivity, with insufficient incentive to make the most of their innate potential. For them, welfare has become a destination, not a safety net. While welfare for a short period can be a blessing for a capable person temporarily out of work, long-term welfare dependence can become a poison. Over time, welfare dependence sucks the life out of people and can diminish their capacity. It can impact on their confidence and their mental and physical health. The purpose, the structure and the dignity which come from work are lost. And sometimes dependency crosses over to the next generation. A system which encourages such dependence does not need to have fuel added to the fire.

To many welfare rights advocates, including the Greens, and the Labor opposition, say the only way you can assist people is to provide them with more cash payments, preferably without conditions. The Greens bill here today again demonstrates this. They want to increase the welfare bill even further. As usual, the Greens have absolutely no idea—no idea—how you're going to pay for it, and no interest, quite frankly, in finding that out. You haven't even bothered to include the cost of your proposal in your legislation. But we have done our due diligence, and I can tell you that this proposal will cost taxpayers over $2 billion per year. That is upwards of $8 billion over a four-year budget cycle.

The Greens have justified this bill to increase Newstart by saying that the payments are too low. If they had done their due diligence, they would have found out that less than one per cent of Newstart recipients actually receive Newstart alone. The other 99 per cent of Newstart recipients receive additional payments and supplements. These are based on their circumstances, as part of our strong social security safety net. It includes providing rent assistance to those in the private rental market, and family tax benefits to those raising children. Other supplementary benefits include a pharmaceutical allowance, an approved program of work supplement and a telephone allowance, as well as a concession card. The system also allows recipients to earn income from work or other sources before their payment is affected. It is also important to note that many recipients of Newstart do not remain on the payment for long.

So, on those two points, in fairness to Australian taxpayers, it's vitally important that, if you are coming into this place to make this sort of assertion, you actually do your calculations and you do them appropriately, taking into account the bigger picture, the whole picture—the fact that your Newstart recipient is receiving not just one payment but a whole range of other payments as well. As I said, many recipients of Newstart do not remain on the payment for long. Around two-thirds of those granted Newstart exit income support within 12 months.

Our welfare system and the reforms introduced by the Turnbull government encourage those capable of work or study to do so, but they also support vulnerable people within our society. Work is more than money. It is self-worth from self-reliance. It is friendships. It is purpose. It is a meaning to life. Of course, there is another very strong reason why even a job that pays only the same or somewhat more than welfare still has a very strong economic benefit, and that is that the best way to get a better paying next job is through the experience and skills gained in the first job.

The OECD found that nearly 600,000 young Australians aged between 15 and 29 were not in education, training or employment, and around two-thirds of them were not actively seeking work. We need to change the attitude that simply spending more on more of the same payments inside the same system will actually improve lives. More spending in and of itself is no guarantee that key groups have or will have their lives improved in any material, ongoing or significant way. While the welfare system must always be about providing appropriate support for those who are unable to work, real social progress means an intensity of focus on those programs, settings and structures that have the proven effect to better prepare people for and transition them to employment. The Turnbull government's objective is to put people on better pathways, to encourage reskilling, if required, to help people off addictions, if they are present, and to gear all the incentives towards looking for work and taking jobs when they are available.

We must make our system more financially sustainable. The great moral objective of our welfare reforms is to support able people to enjoy the dignity, the self-empowerment and the economic independence which come from having a job. That is why the Turnbull government is getting on with growing the economy and creating more jobs. Under the Turnbull government, more than 240,000 jobs were created in the last financial year. This is the largest increase in jobs since before the GFC. In comparison, Bill Shorten is doing nothing but trying to exploit the politics of envy and division, without actually announcing anything but higher taxes. He says, in an example of one of the great platitudes of all time, 'Inequality kills hope. It feeds that sense, that resentment, that the deck is stacked against ordinarily people, that the fix is in and the deal is done—that it's not what you know; it is who you know.'

Contrast this with facts. The experts, including the HILDA survey—the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey—tell us that Bill Shorten is wrong and that, since 2001, income inequality has actually improved. Despite this, we know that some in the community don't feel like things have gotten better. Wages are stagnate, and many haven't had a pay raise in a time. But what is Mr Shorten's fix on this? He goes out there and makes speeches and then he says that we need to increase taxes on companies, workers and small business. In the process, he is crippling ambition and taking money out of the economy that would have otherwise been used to create jobs for the people who actually need them.

What hypocrisy from Mr Shorten and those opposite! For six years you sat on the Treasury benches and what did you give us after six years? More debt and more deficits—six years of fiscal vandalism. When you came to power there were billions and billions of dollars in the government coffers. You squandered all of that money in the coffers. You squandered all of that money that had been to you—billions and billions and billions of dollars. You squandered it on pink batts and useless things, and now somebody has to pay for it. We are now left with that legacy of fiscal vandalism and we now have to pay for your debts. So don't come into this place all high and mighty and be hypocritical. Look at and properly reflect on the legacy of fiscal vandalism that you left this country.

Our approach is different. We want more jobs created, which we are doing, and we want to support people into those jobs. That is why we are actually delivering policies to make this possible, unlike the Greens proposal here, which is just another funding hike. We have redesigned the working-age welfare system to make it simpler for people to navigate and ensure that the focus remains on finding a job. Labor cannot bring itself to support this. We are rewriting the mutual obligation system to make sure more people remain connected to the workforce for longer. This change has obvious benefits for anyone looking for work, and Labor won't say if it will support this.

We have announced a national expansion of ParentsNext. This is a $260 million program designed to help disadvantaged parents increase their skills and find a job. But what is Bill Shorten's response to that? 'Inequality is workers in their 50s and 60s, displaced, struggling to find work again, job interview after job interview unsuccessful.' In the last budget, we committed $98 million to the expansion of mature-age reskilling programs, and this is despite Labor not having a single policy to help mature-age workers. We still don't know if Labor and those opposite are going to support our policy.

It was the Turnbull government that made the $100 million investment in the Try, Test and Learn Fund, finding new ways to help people in disadvantaged positions. It was those on this side that proposed reforms to disability employment services to help more people with a disability find and keep work. It was us on this side who have reinstated homelessness funding after Labor left the budget without a single cent for the homeless.

I have often sat with Senator Siewert at community affairs committees, and that is the reality of what she and the Labor-Green alliance left us with. When she comes in here and bleats about homelessness, let's not forget that, when those opposite left government, it was left to us—those on this side—to reinstate homelessness funding. Labor left the budget without a single cent for the homeless, and it was those on this side that made this funding permanent. We made it permanent.

We are the ones who are fixing Labor's National Affording Housing Agreement so that it actually delivers affordable homes. We are the ones fully funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme so that everyone, whether they are earning $50,000 or $300,000, will be fully protected in case they become severely disabled. Our plan for the NDIS means it is finally guaranteed but, more importantly, it is a fair system. Low-income earners will be exempt from the Medicare levy, while those earning high incomes will contribute the most. But Bill Shorten opposes this.

Labor voted against $23.5 billion in extra school funding and historic reforms to child care, which will primarily benefit low- and middle-income families, and they still claim to be about reducing inequality—sheer hypocrisy by those opposite.

The Turnbull government's policies are all focused on growing the economy, creating more jobs and helping people into them. Those opposite just want to increase the tax burden, with individuals, homeowners and small businesses hit the hardest. Now, of course, the Greens want to add a bit more onto that debt pile, as if we don't have enough paying off Labor's debts after six years of fiscal vandalism. The problem is that Bill Shorten has no plan for how to help those in our society that need it, apart from taking money away from those in our economy who are actually creating jobs and paying taxes.

Senator CAMERON (New South Wales) (16:59): I am quite amazed by that speech by Senator Fierravanti-Wells. In speaking on the Social Security Amendment (Caring for People on Newstart) Bill 2017, I want to try and correct some of the statements that have been made.

Let me go to the Greens first. The Greens indicated they are the only party calling for an increase in Newstart. Labor has acknowledged that Newstart is too low. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, has said on a number of occasions in recent years that it is too low. Labor acknowledges that too many Australians are living in poverty. It was Labor that defended young, unemployed Australians when the Abbott-Turnbull government wanted to make young people wait six months to access Newstart.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells said, 'Don't add fuel to the fire.' There'll be plenty of people on Newstart who won't have any fuel—whether it's electricity or gas—to actually keep themselves warm. Senator Fierravanti-Wells says it would cost an extra $2 billion per annum to increase the Newstart allowance to the allowance that's been proposed by the Greens in this bill. How ridiculous is it that we have a coalition that want to hand $65 billion in tax cuts to the big end of town, and yet they stand here and argue that they can't look after people on Newstart? They are a party that wants to look after big business but ignore people who are doing it tough. We've seen them: they're all about the vilification and demonisation of people who are down on their luck and relying on Newstart.

This argument of, 'You've just got to get a job and everything will be okay,' I suppose, is alright if you live on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, the eastern suburbs or the wealthier areas of Australia where you don't actually have to see much unemployment. But what the coalition needs to understand—and they obviously don't—is that there are 189,200 jobs available within Australia. There are 726,800 unemployed in Australia. So it's not as if you can just get your gear on in the morning, lob out there and find a job. You never hear the coalition talking about that figure. It's not easy to get a job in some areas, and it's impossible to find a job in other areas.

I notice that we're going to have coalition people speak to this later, and we have two National Party members in the chamber now. If you look at the National Party seats, they've got some of the highest unemployment in Australia. Senator Williams would know it's not that easy to go out and actually find a job in some areas in National Party electorates. In National Party seats, unemployment has risen by 1.3 per cent on average since the coalition came to power. Since September 2013, unemployment has risen by 1.3 per cent on average in National Party seats. What a great example of how the National Party come here and suck up to that nonsense that we just heard from Senator Fierravanti-Wells, but are out there presiding over some of the highest unemployment in the country. It just beggars belief.

All they want to do is vilify the unemployed, vilify those that are down on their luck. Look at what the government did when they first came to power. They wanted to make young Australians wait six months to access Newstart. What would that do to young people in National Party seats where there were no jobs? They would either have to have rich parents or be part of the rural hoi polloi, or they would be left starving. It's an absolute disgrace the way the National Party and the Liberal Party have dealt with unemployment and social security benefits over the last period of time. They wanted to abandon young jobseekers for six months. Starve! That was their approach, and Labor defeated that.

After we defeated it, the Liberals tried to make young people wait five weeks before being able to access income support. Remember the argument that was put forward by Senator Fierravanti-Wells: 'Just go out and get a job. That's the best inoculation from welfare. Just get a job.' Well, I repeat again: there are 189,200 jobs available in Australia, and there are 726,800 unemployed. Many of those unemployed would not have the skills, the training or the capacity or live in the region where these jobs are, so it becomes really, really difficult.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells ran the same nonsense that 'Labor squandered money when they were in government'. What Labor did was to implement one of the most effective—if not the most effective—approaches to dealing with the global financial crisis that we had, and we kept jobs being created around the country. That's what Labor did because we understood that, if jobs were lost, then intergenerational unemployment would increase. So we spent money on keeping people in jobs—in National Party seats around the country. Not only were individuals looked after by Labor, but communities were looked after and families were looked after. They had jobs when workers around the world were being thrown on the scrap heap.

But those opposite seem to forget that there was a global financial crisis. They forget that, just as they don't have any idea or don't want to recognise that there is global warming and a real problem for the future. They don't want to recognise that they don't have the policies and they don't have the cohesion internally to actually deal with any of the problems that are facing Australians around this country.

So Labor defeated those cuts that were put there. We defeated the unfair Liberal and National Party cuts to paid parental leave. We defeated the Liberal and National Party unfair cuts to pension indexation. This is the mob that wanted to cut the pensions of Australians. That's what they wanted to do, and it was only Labor standing against it that stopped that. We defeated the Liberals' unfair GP tax that would have undermined Medicare as our universal health system. We defeated the Liberals and Nationals' unfair cuts to young people that would have seen thousands of young Australians shifted from Newstart onto the lower youth allowance payment. We have consistently stood up for vulnerable Australians against this government's unfair cuts.

I just find it beggaring belief that the National Party, who represent the victims of the Liberal Party's ideology, come in here and vote with them to cut the social security payments for their constituents in their seats around the country when there are not the jobs available in National Party seats around the country. The National Party are an absolute disgrace. They just hang off the coat-tails of the Liberal Party, and then they try and run the Liberal Party when it comes to some ideological approach that they want to push. They are an absolute disgrace.

We have led the debate in this country on inequality. Bill Shorten, Wayne Swan, Jenny Macklin and Andrew Leigh have all been doing important policy work on the issue of inequality. Inequality isn't just the gap between the rich and poor; it's about the millionaires getting tax cuts under this government and large multinationals getting $65 billion in giveaways, while millions of Australians have had no wage rise for years. It's about inequality in the housing market because first home buyers are lining up against property investors who have been subsidised by unfair and distortionary policies like negative gearing. It's about the gender gap in the pay that men and women in this country receive and the unfair deal that women are getting. It's about the gap between Indigenous Australians and the unfair outcomes they're getting in health, education and housing.

And any conversation about inequality also has to focus on poverty. We know that Newstart is too low. We know that too many Australians are living below the poverty line. As last year's Growing together, Labor's agenda for tackling inequality, document stated:

The net replacement rate for the Newstart payment for a single person is equivalent to just 28 per cent of the average wage. That compares with an average of 47 per cent in other major English-speaking nations, such as Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. While the mechanisms for supporting the unemployed differ in each of these countries, there is no denying that income support for unemployed Australians is very low by international standards.

We are doing the policy work. That's why at the last election Labor said that we'd establish a review into the adequacy of the Newstart allowance for people of working age and their place in the wider system of working age payments and employment supports. We won't be coming here when there's not enough jobs for every Australian that's looking for them and tell them, 'The best thing you can do is get out and find a job.' It's an absolute lie, perpetrated by the extremists in the Liberal and National parties who are presiding over some of the lowest paid in their electorates, and some of the worst unemployment and some of the worst housing conditions in the country. So much for the National Party and so much for the Liberal Party!

We've have said that, when we do the review, we'll look at the adequacy of the base rate of Newstart to meet what is widely understood to be the essential living costs required to achieve a reasonable minimum standard of living. We will look at the adequacy of the current indexation of allowance payments in the context of indexation arrangements across the social security system. We'll look at the role of the Newstart allowance and other working age payments in promoting and supporting workforce participation, including through smooth transitions to paid employment, help with the cost of job search, training and employment. Labor wants a comprehensive and independent review into the adequacy of Newstart that we think should be done against two primary objectives: one, alleviating poverty and, two, encouraging work. We also believe that the review should consider the adequacy of Newstart for people raising families, particularly single parents.

I'd dearly love to see an increase to Newstart, but this bill isn't the right way of going about it. Let's be clear: it's a stunt by the Greens political party. It's symbolic. It won't pass the parliament. The Greens know that this would never get through the House of Representatives. The Greens know that the appropriations bills in the House have to be introduced by a minister. Yet they introduce this bill in the Senate and give so many Australians false hope that Newstart might be increased—and it's all for their own political purposes.

It's worth noting that this bill has come on for debate on the same day it was introduced into the Senate. It's not a fair dinkum proposal and the Greens know it. They haven't done the proper policy work. They haven't done the hard work of policy development that you need to make this kind of change. They haven't even discussed it with the opposition before springing it on us today.

Unlike the Greens party, the opposition requires proposals to be properly developed, costed and considered before we can support them. The truth is, if you want to see an increase to Newstart, you have to change the government in Canberra. You have to vote out the Liberals, because they will never help the vulnerable. They've never helped the unemployed. The last time there was a significant increase to social security payments, it was done by a Labor government.

In 2009 it was Labor that increased the age pension and the disability support pension by $30 a week—the largest increase to the pension in its history. And you know how that came about? The newly elected Labor government commissioned the Harmer review into the adequacy of the pension. A proper policy process was undertaken, there was consultation with key stakeholders, and we increased the age pension and DSP. It was announced in the budget and paid for in the budget. The pension was increased by $30 a week and, as a result, one million Australians were lifted out of poverty. That's how you bring about change. That's how you lift people out of poverty. It didn't happen because of a stunt in the Senate from a minor party like the Greens. It happened because a Labor government was in office and able to bring about change. Labor can actually bring about change, not just talk about it like the Greens.

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (17:17): Isn't that surprising? Labor is promising another review. My colleague Senator Siewert has tirelessly championed this increase for some of the most vulnerable Australians through three separate parliaments, including the Labor government prior to the 2013 election. So let me say to Senator Cameron: three times, in three separate governments, we have raised this issue. We are nothing if we are not consistent when we are battling for low-income Australians who shouldn't be living on $38.39 a week.

This week the Commonwealth Bank put out their annual results. We know that their chief executive officer, Ian Narev, although he's going to get a small 'haircut', is still going to be paid over $10 million a year. Do you know how much that is every day? It is nearly $30,000 a day. We live in a country where our corporate elite are paid obscene amounts of money and we have low-income, vulnerable Australians who should be supported by a safety net, our social security system—a system that we could afford if we had decent revenue-raising policies in this country—and yet they are struggling to survive on $38 a day.

My party is proud to be a party that constantly strives to achieve outcomes and, to be totally blunt, tries to drag the Labor Party over the line on some of these key policies. I could list a number of policies as long as my arm that we've been proud to achieve in getting Labor over the line on. A royal commission on banking is just one example. We campaigned on that for years. It was called exactly what Senator Cameron called this today: a stunt. So let me say this again: Labor got up and said that our call for a royal commission—a motion we put through the Senate—was a stunt. Would you even know it now? I'm glad that Labor's called for a royal commission. I'm glad that they have joined the chorus for this royal commission into the banking sector. There are so many other policies.

Guess who it was who decided to raise the issue—and it was almost heresy when we raised it—of removing negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions, these perverse incentives that have created not only a housing bubble and systemic financial risks in this country but a housing affordability crisis for so many young Australians and so many low-income Australians who may never get to own their own home. There is this disparity, this inequality, in wealth in this country. It's fine for Senator Reynolds to come in here today and talk about how the HILDA numbers show that income inequality has been static, but she neglected to mention that, for wealth inequality in this country, the charts are horrendous for young Australians. Home ownership in this country has dropped nearly 30 per cent because of perverse government policies that allow mostly older and wealthier Australians to buy multiple homes, at the expense of younger and poorer Australians. It was the Greens who first raised the idea that we need to scrap these investor incentives. And, good, Labor came out eventually and supported that as well, and that's now, I understand, a key policy of theirs.

Taxing trusts as corporations—guess who took that to the last election. The Greens did. That was one of our policies that we'd had in place for some time. And, lo and behold, less than a month ago, Mr Bill Shorten came out and announced that Labor would tax trusts as companies, and we congratulated him. That was great. There's a bit of a trend in what I am saying here that is contrary to what Senator Cameron's come in here and said—that somehow what we do in in place is insignificant and that it's a stunt.

I'd like to pay tribute to Senator Siewert. There are very few senators in this place who work as hard as she does, and this is something she has been an absolutely tireless champion on now for a long period of time. She's a senator, and in her tool box she has the chance to raise this issue in the Senate through a whole range of different things such as motions and referrals to inquiries, and she's introduced again, for the third time in a row, a private senator's bill to help low-income Australians who are suffering and who need our support.

No doubt Senator Williams would raise the question: how do we pay for this? That's a really good question, Senator Williams. How do we pay for this? I believe and my party believes that we can afford to raise the safety net for low-income Australians, for the unemployed—the people we should be looking after. I remember, in the 2013 election, talking to unemployed Tasmanians who were receiving Newstart and talking to single mothers on family payments. In this political debate, there is this cookie cutter approach: if you're unemployed and you've been on Newstart, especially if you are long-term unemployed, somehow it's a character trait or a character fault of yours. With these people I met, all their stories were different and a lot of them were heartbreaking. We have a duty to these people.

Numerous parliamentary inquiries have found that Newstart is too low. So why do we need Senator Cameron's suggestion of another inquiry, another review? We already know it's too low. Thirty-eight dollars and thirty-nine cents a day is not a lot of money to live on. We get paid shiploads—I'll use the 'p' word—more than that in here, don't we, Senator Williams? We get paid a lot more than that. Some people think we're overpaid, and they're entitled to their opinion, but we recognise that $38.39 a day—and that's including the energy supplement—is virtually nothing. It's less than half the minimum wage.

Of those on income support in this country, 36.1 per cent are living below the poverty line, including 55 per cent of people receiving the Newstart allowance. That's a pretty stark and scary statistic. The Australian Greens had a bill back in 2011 and 2012 to increase the single rates for Newstart and independent youth allowance. It did not get supported by Labor, contrary to what Senator Cameron was saying. He was saying that somehow this is a stunt that we have brought up with a government under which—because they control the lower house, the other place—we know this will never get done. We've tried it—we've tried it previously under a Labor government.

We took this policy to the last election, and our platform was fully costed. Now, it's easy to come in here and say that we are a party that's—to use a term Senator Williams often uses—somehow down the bottom of the garden with the fairies. I would like to stand here and say we have some of the best economic policies of all the parties in this place, and we spend an incredible amount of time working with the Parliamentary Budget Office to get everything costed. Our platform, at every election we go to, unlike the other parties, is transparent and fully costed, and that takes an incredible amount of work, trust me. I've been on our committees actually getting this done. We have had this costed, and we know that we can support an increase in payments of $110 a fortnight by doing some pretty simple things.

I recently travelled to Western Australia with the economics committee, and we were looking at the petroleum resource rent tax in this country—a super-profit tax, supposedly—on the economic rents that are earned by the petroleum and oil and gas industry in Australia. These rents are supposed to reflect a fair payment to the Australian people for the resources that we own in the ground that we should sell to multinational companies, some of the biggest and wealthiest oil companies in the world. But what do I find out when I go to this inquiry? We have given them, through our tax system, $238 billion in tax credits. How many Gonski fundings could we fit into that? How many NDIS fundings could we fit into that?

All we're asking for here is an increase of $110 a fortnight for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. I've looked at how these oil companies have been able to accumulate that much deferred tax—tax that could pay for so much—and managed to get away with that. Well, we had said, for these rates, that they can uplift their operating expenditure and their exploration expenditure at 15 per cent plus the bond rate every year. They can compound their tax deferrals by 15 per cent plus the bond rate every year. Imagine getting that kind of return on your investment? That's what we're giving them—15 per cent. If we tweaked that 15 per cent by even half a per cent or 0.1 per cent, we could pay for this. It's ridiculous! Why aren't we taking on some of the biggest and most wealthy oil companies in the world? We're giving away our resources for nothing, when we know we need revenue to pay for things like this. Believe me: it wouldn't take much at all.

What about removing negative gearing and capital gains tax? Labor's come part of the way with a reduction in what they think should be paid on a capital gains tax, if you sell your house and you're an investor. And they have come some of the way to removing negative gearing. But, if we remove the entire lot, we could not only solve a key problem in our housing affordability crisis; we could actually raise another $10 billion to $20 billion of revenue on forward estimates—enough to pay for a small, very modest increase for Australians who need it the most.

What about a diesel fuel rebate?

Senator Williams: What about it?

Senator WHISH-WILSON: I bet Australians don't know that the big mining companies—once again, some of the biggest and most profitable corporations on the planet—get nearly $20 billion, on forward estimates, in diesel fuel rebates from the Australian taxpayer. We've never come at taking that away from farmers, Senator Williams, but we do have a problem with the big miners who earn billions of dollars in profit getting taxpayer subsidies. There are so many different things we could do, if we just had the courage and conviction to tackle them, and that's what it takes in this place. If we're actually going to have a functioning, healthy economy and a social safety net that's meaningful, then we've got to start passing a lot more legislation and doing a lot more policy work in this place. It's going to take courage and conviction to fix inequality in this place and make a difference. It is people like my colleague Senator Siewert, who's been in the Senate for many, many years, who every single day comes in as a champion not only for youth allowance and increases to Newstart but for payments to single parents and to first Australians. Senator Siewert deserves a huge pat on the back for the work she's done, and I hope that she succeeds and that this is supported by the next government. I hope that the next government is the Labor Party and not the current Liberal government, and I hope that they do increase Newstart when they get into parliament.

Why aren't we having a mature debate in this country about how we can raise revenue? I understand that there's got to be a balance in the incentives that are needed for businesses to function and stay profitable. If we didn't have businesses making profits, we wouldn't necessarily have the jobs to pay our workers, so I accept that we need both. But I can tell you: my party and I feel very strongly that there is a much bigger role for government to play in our lives.

We had a very interesting matter of public interest on Tuesday this week—only a couple of days ago—about how we could get the economy working for Australians. If we're talking about increasing Newstart, why aren't we also having the bigger discussion about the disruption that's coming to our economy in the form of automation and artificial intelligence and the potential massive retrenchment and unemployment that we're going to see in the future? I watched a Catalyst episode just the other night, and it's not just blue-collar jobs that are being threatened by artificial intelligence and automation; it's white-collar jobs too—paralegals, for example. Someone's just written a computer program, which is being used now by lawyers, that is going to essentially replace paralegals. All you need to do is type in a search and it can achieve the most amazing results. These are the trends that we're going to face in the future if we don't think about a universal basic income and other radical ideas that Senator Siewert and others are saying won't be so radical in the future.

We're going to have to look at a lot more than just paying unemployed Australians Newstart in the future if we're going to see entire industries and potentially millions of people put out of work by the changing nature of our economy. These are the sorts of big questions that we are going to have to tackle and think about. An increase of $110 a fortnight in Newstart payments isn't going to seem like much at all, especially when we consider some of the universal basic income trials that are occurring overseas. These are the big questions that I'm proud to say my party are happy to lead on. We're happy to speak in parliament on these challenges that face our nation, our workers, our companies and our communities. We're not asking for much here at all.

This is particularly a big issue in my home state of Tasmania—a state, may I say, that receives its fair share of GST. Unfortunately, there are no Western Australian senators in the chamber right now. The way the GST is distributed around the country is designed to help the states that are going through harder times. Although, I am proud to say, our economy in Tasmania has been on the mend, we unfortunately do have many Tasmanians who are on the poverty line and are receiving Newstart. When Mr Tony Abbott's cruel, zombie budget came in in 2014, I was handing out brochures in the mall in Launceston, where I live and where my office is. I can tell you that Tasmanians were furious with Mr Tony Abbott for his budget—trying to cut pensions, cutting Newstart, cutting medical payments to the most vulnerable; the list goes on and on and on—because they had trusted his government to look after them.

This brings us back to the point that government must play a very important role in our life if we're going to tackle the economic challenges of our time. Senator Milne, in her time here, for many years worked with Senator Siewert and always stood up in this place and said that inequality is the great challenge of our time. I am glad that it took Mr Shorten one speech to get it on the short-term political radar, and I hope it stays on the political radar for some time, because it absolutely is something that this parliament needs to debate. But if we're not going to tackle giving the most vulnerable Australians a very, very small increase in their Newstart allowance, and we're not going to tackle executive pay rorts in this country or even our Public Service salaries, then we're always going to have income inequality.

We are not asking for much—especially when we know that, if we had some political courage in the Senate, in this place, and next door, we could actually raise the revenue that we need to have a fairer and more equal society. And what is the problem with inequality? I can tell you that, when you look all around the world at the political backlash that we're seeing in America, in Europe and in Brexit in the UK, what they all have in common is inequality. People have given up on trusting their parliamentarians and their institutions to tackle these big issues. We're not asking much here today. This is not a stunt. This is a long, long road that Senator Siewert and the Greens have been walking down, making sure that this issue stays on the political agenda, is heard by the decision-makers and is tackled by parliamentarians, who have a unique opportunity to make a difference to low-income Australians.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Marshall ): The question is that the bill be now read a second time. As a division is required, pursuant to orders of the Senate, that division will become an order of the day for the next day of sitting.

Debate adjourned.

Senator WILLIAMS (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (17:39): I take note of the Finance and Public Administration References Committee report, Operation, effectiveness, and consequences of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (Location of Corporate Commonwealth Entities) Order 2016. I would like to say a few words about the report. It was quite amazing when, earlier on, Senator Cameron was referring to the cost of houses and living et cetera. Here in Australia, in the cities—Sydney, Melbourne, and even Canberra—housing is extremely expensive. But it's not the housing; it is the land. The demand for land is where the money is. You might hear of a situation in Sydney where someone will buy a little wooden house on a block of land for $3 million. The first thing they will do is knock the house down and build a new house. They were after the land. The amazing thing is: what do we have more of per capita in Australia than do those in any other country in the world? We have plenty of land. In the cities it is a case of demand exceeding supply, and one day Senator Cameron might learn the actual economic fact that, when demand exceeds supply, prices rise.

My leader, Minister Barnaby Joyce, moved the APVMA out to Armidale. They welcomed it immensely. The Senate Finance and Public Administration Reference Committee held hearings in Canberra and Townsville, but not in Armidale, where the APVMA was to be relocated to. There were four Armidale submitters to the inquiry, but none were invited to appear as witnesses. It is amazing that we have the report of this Senate inquiry from the FPA, yet they did not even go to Armidale. Armidale is a dedicated hub that inspires innovation. It is home to the University of New England Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit, the Agricultural Business Research Institute, the Poultry CRC, the Sheep CRC and CSIRO. The median price of a three-bedroom home is just $320,000. Compare that with Canberra prices. We talk about the Australian dream and of not being able to buy your own home. Move out to the country towns. You can buy a good three-bedroom brick veneer home on 700 or 800 square metres in Inverell, the town near where I live, for around $260,000. That wouldn't buy you a dog kennel in Sydney, because the land is in such demand.

Decentralisation is a very important issue, and that didn't start with Minister Joyce. In 1992, under Minister Armstrong, the Nationals in the New South Wales state government relocated the Department of Agriculture from Sydney to Orange. The New South Wales Labor government moved at least seven agencies from Sydney to regional areas between 2000 and 2005, including the Department of Mineral Resources, which was moved to Maitland. The Keating Labor government moved ASIC to Traralgon in the early 1990s. A key component of the government's 2016 election commitment was to create a centre of agricultural excellence with the University of New England and nearby research organisations such as the CSIRO, Meat & Livestock Australia and the Institute for Rural Futures. The APVMA is now open for business in Armidale, with a transition office in place, and the interim CEO is Dr Chris Parker. The process is underway to find permanent office accommodation to be leased from July 2019. I look forward to Minister Joyce pushing ahead with the relocation of the APVMA, which will form part of the centre of agricultural excellence.

What does it do when we move the people from Canberra to Armidale? It frees up housing so there's a bit more supply on the market. Hopefully, when we free this up and move people out to areas where we have the room and we have the housing, that'll help someone somewhere to get into a house. In conclusion, it's planned that the APVMA will go to Armidale—that's where it is. Yet I'm just amazed that four submitters from Armidale made a submission to this inquiry and the committee did not even go to Armidale. We look forward to decentralisation continuing. It will help regional Australia and free up a bit of space in the cities. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator RICE (Victoria) (17:45): by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I am responding to the ministerial statement which was the response for our order for the production of documents regarding the conduct or constitutionality of the postal plebiscite that the government is proposing. Our order for the production of documents asked for any advice on the conduct or constitutionality of a postal plebiscite or ballot from the Solicitor-General, the Auditor-General, the AEC, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Australian Statistician or any other legal or constitutional or electoral experts because there are many questions that still remain to be answered about this proposed postal plebiscite, postal survey, postal opinion poll. And yet the response that we got from the minister today was very perfunctory. She said that it's not the practice of any government to release privileged legal advice made in the course of the normal decision-making processes of government. Privileged legal advice is the smokescreen, the catch-all, so that the community can be kept in the dark about the details of this most extraordinary, most unusual postal plebiscite.

There are so many questions that need to be answered that we had hoped that the government might have come forth with some answers in their response today—but, no. They, essentially, are really thumbing their nose at the Senate and thumbing their nose at the community who want to know answers to some very serious questions about this postal plebiscite. Some of them, which people have forwarded to me today, which we are now compiling—and, in fact, that I have submitted as questions on notice—are with regard to the capacity of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to undertake this. They want to know whether it's an opinion poll, whether it's a survey, whether it's a plebiscite—it's been very unclear—and what the advertising constraints are going to be. It takes the Australian Bureau of Statistics five years to coordinate the census. What processes are going to be put in place for the votes to be administered effectively in such a short time line?

In particular, we note that, given that the announcement that the Electoral Commission roll is going to be closing in only 14 days, there has been a huge number of people trying to enrol online, and, as of this afternoon, the AEC website has gone down. This means that people who want to enrol, who want the opportunity to participate in this postal plebiscite, are being denied that right this afternoon. They've got to go back and try again and again and again. The issues of disenfranchisement of people on this so-called opinion poll, so-called survey, are massive. These are the sorts of questions that the government should have been answering and that the Senate asked them to answer today.

On the issues of advertising, will advertising election materials still require to be authorised, as in section 328 of the Electoral Act? Will advertising election materials still be required not to mislead or deceive an elector in relation to the casting of a vote, as in section 239 of the Electoral Act? Will false statements with respect to the enrolment of voters still be a punishable offence, as under section 330 of the Electoral Act? If we had been privy to some of the advice that the government has been given on this plebi-survey, then we may have had some answers to these questions that people are asking. They are very serious, legitimate questions that people are asking.

Given that we know how damaging, how divisive and how hurtful the public debate over this issue is going to be, and we've already seen that really hurtful material start to appear in the public, is the government going to be providing additional funds to national mental health services, such as beyondblue and the LGBTIQ telephone and counselling services such as QLife and Lifeline to provide coordinated and timely counselling to LGBTI people and their families? Has there been any advice to government that this may be necessary? We don't know. Has the government even thought of that? We don't know. This is such a shonky scramble of a process, just to be serving the political purposes of the Prime Minister, just because Prime Minister Turnbull has not got the ticker to stand up to the right wing of his backbench.

Then there are the issues regarding the electoral roll, voter fraud and lost ballots. What role will the AEC or AEC-seconded staff play in administering the plebiscite? What measures will be put in place to protect the personal information of electors? Will voters whose ballots have been either lost before delivery or lost prior to return have any ability to cast a ballot? We don't know. What recourse will eligible voters have who have not received postal ballots in time to return them? What measures will be put in place to ensure that the ballots are received and completed by the intended recipient? What measures will the government be putting in place to militate against vote-buying? Some of these questions may have been responded to. There may have been some advice given by the Australian Electoral Commission, particularly when the government has decided to go down the track of using the services of the Australian Bureau of Statistics to conduct this survey, opinion poll, plebiscite, plebi-survey—whatever you want to call it. I'm sure that the AEC would have had some opinions about this, but we don't know. The government has told us it's privileged legal advice.

Then we have the issues of access to this material by Indigenous communities and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Will the postal plebiscite advertising material and ballots be translated into the same 27 languages and 13 Indigenous languages produced by the AEC for last year's federal election? Will there be options to complete the vote in languages other than English? How will remote Indigenous communities participate, if they currently do not receive Australia Post services? Then there is the access to voting for people in aged and disability services. How will voters in nursing homes, hospitals, supported accommodation and people residing in other health and support services be provided a ballot paper? What arrangements will be made to ensure that people who are blind or visually impaired are able to complete the vote? And then there is the youth vote, the overseas vote and late enrolments.

What happens if people enrol or update on the last day of enrolment on 24 August? Will their enrolment be processed or included for the vote, as the AEC website says it could take up to three days to update the electoral roll with their information. How will people who live or who are travelling overseas be able to vote? These are all incredibly legitimate questions, and there are more questions that people are asking. These are things that people need to know with this very significant expenditure of $122 million of our money and these very significant processes that are going to be underway. We don 't know the answers to these questions. We don't know whether the government has been given advice on these questions. We don't know what advice the government has been given in terms of voter turnout. Do they expect to have a voter turnout of 70 per cent, 80 per cent, 50 per cent or 40 per cent? What is the advice that they have been given about the legitimacy of this as a way to survey the community, as a way to vote, as a plebiscite?

All of these things are really important questions that the government should have told the community. But the government's not having told the community about them underlines the whole illegitimacy of this process. What we will have is $122 million of our money being spent on a process that is going to hurt LGBTIQ people, without that legitimacy. We will have a shonky, non-binding, non-compulsory, completely workaround process just to fulfil the political needs of the Prime Minister. We will do this instead of acknowledging that we have a parliament here that could do its job. We are going through this shonky process instead of letting the parliament do its job and allowing it to vote on the issue of marriage equality.

If we allowed this parliament to do its job, to vote on the issue of marriage equality, to have a free vote of all the members of parliament in this place, I am very confident that we would end up with marriage equality extremely efficiently and quickly—just like the German parliament, which made a decision to have a free vote on the Monday and had marriage equality on the Friday. We could do that next week. We could decide, when we come back here on Monday, that we've got a bill that could be put before the parliament, and we could have marriage equality by next Friday, without going through this ridiculous process. We would then be able to celebrate the love of two people who would be able to get married and have their relationship recognised by the community.

Senator LEYONHJELM (New South Wales) (17:57): On 11 October 2016, the Senate established the Select Committee on Red Tape with a wide-ranging brief to inquire into, and report on, the effect of regulatory restrictions and prohibitions on the economy and community. This included economic and employment impact; compliance costs and burden; the effect of previous efforts to reduce red tape; and alternative approaches. As chair of the select committee, I can advise the Senate that our work to date has revealed the importance and scope of the task. It has also revealed very clearly the opportunity presented by reducing red tape to help facilitate employment and economic growth. Pursuant to this, I wish to provide senators with an outline of the recent report of the committee on its inquiry into the effect of red tape on tobacco retailing.

The committee looked at tobacco regulation from all perspectives, including the impact of the National Drugs Strategy, the National Tobacco Strategy, and the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to which Australia subscribes. All of these seek to control and minimise the use of tobacco. The committee heard about the serious adverse impacts of plain packaging laws and display bans on retailing. It heard how plain packaging has created considerable difficulties for retailers, who must spend a lot of time finding particular brands and brand variations among the many variables. This has the effect of consuming staff time and annoying customers for no tangible public health benefits.

The committee heard how retailers have had to invest in special, lockable cabinets that comply with display bands and storage requirements, costing tens of thousands of dollars. It heard how small retailers, which typically have a higher dependence on income from tobacco retailing, have been most adversely affected by these measures. It heard how there has been a significant increase in error rates in supply, delivery and sales of cigarettes because they look so similar. Retailers report that there has been increase of up to 30 per cent in staff time to unpack, check, store and find products required by customers. Staff have had to be retrained so that they know what the regulations are and to ensure the store complies. And, of course, all this costs time and money for which there is no pay-off in terms of additional sales margins or public health benefits.

The committee also heard how efforts to discourage consumption by making tobacco less affordable are having limited effectiveness at minimising use, but are resulting in increasing rates of tobacco theft and sales of illicit products. This is hardly surprising considering tobacco is an addictive product and, therefore, like illegal drugs which sell for exorbitant prices, tobacco sales are not as easily influenced by price signalling as would be the case of a non-addictive product. To enforce the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, the health department is empowered to employ punitive measures up to and including civil and criminal penalties. But these measures are directed at legal products and retailers; those who sell illicit tobacco products have little to fear. The committee recognised that the consumption and retail sale of tobacco products both remain lawful activities.

Thousands of jobs continue to depend on the importation, distribution and retail sale of tobacco. Those involved in the sale of lawful products are law-abiding citizens who pay their taxes and are entitled to have their commercial efforts respected. The National Retail Association and MGA Independent Retailers expressed their concerns at the regulatory burden placed on their members who sold tobacco products, expressing the complaint that it was a bit like they were in the business of compliance with a little bit of retailing on the side. The Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association also expressed concern that excessive regulations not only were unfairly burdensome to retailers but also exposed employees to risk through inadvertent noncompliance. Retailers that operate in more than one state face differing regulations affecting signage, storage, display, licensing and definition of products, each with very significantly different compliance costs.

The committee considered the massive regulatory burden generated by public health concerns and found that it created a major impediment to lawful commerce and job creation, with questionable benefit in limiting tobacco consumption. Rather, overregulation was found to be damaging lawful businesses and causing a shift in sales from legal tax-generating retail to illegal importation and black market activity by organised crime, in much the same way as prohibition of alcohol and drugs helped establish organised crime in the US.

In its conclusion, the inquiry report recommended that state and Commonwealth governments undertake a cost-benefit review of their tobacco control measures. The report urged that this involve an emphasis on reducing unproductive and counterproductive regulatory measures that simply inhibit legal commerce but do little or nothing to reduce demand for tobacco or improve public health. Instead of red tape, healthier nicotine delivery mechanisms, such as e-cigarettes, for those who choose to use tobacco, were emphasised as a more effective approach to public health policy. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.