Senator HINCH (Victoria) (12:31): I seek leave to make a short personal statement.

Leave granted.

Senator HINCH: At home in Melbourne we are fighting a losing battle to save 200 precious trees on our fabled St Kilda Boulevard, and it seems now the destructive tree-chopping disease must be in the air, because we returned here to Canberra yesterday to be greeted at the Parliament House Senate entrance security gate by a scene of destruction. While we were all away from the capital, authority was apparently granted for three majestic gum trees to be chopped down. Not a single protesting tree-hugger was in sight—not even a Greens senator. Mr President, I presume this was authorised. How many more will go? What is the rationale for the removal of traditional gums, which I assume were planted for the opening of this parliament 30 years ago? I chaired a crossbench meeting this morning, and no senators present had any idea this was going to happen. I'm wondering if somebody can fill us in.

The PRESIDENT (12:33): There are two options. This is something you could ask at question time or the end of question time. If the chamber is so of a mind for me to answer that now, I can give you a brief explanation now. It is a part of the security fence works. The trees primarily were removed for security fence purposes. Secondly, some of those trees were at end of life. Some trees have been interfering with the underground works—sewerage and electricity, I believe. Also, some of the trees had been incorrectly planted contrary to the original design; they're too big for the areas. And some are dangerous. In fact, I believe one actually crashed into the outside wall of a senator's office in high winds earlier this year. I believe 20 in total are going to be removed or have been removed already. Once the new fence goes through, they will be replaced with shrubs either side. I can give you further detail about that if you want to see me privately as well, Senator Hinch.

I presume it's safe for us to return to business. I thank Senator Ketter for his indulgence.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:04): Under standing order 74(5)(a) I seek an explanation from the Minister for Communications and the Arts, Senator Fifield, as to why questions 298, 300, 301, 312, 313, 342, 357 and 359, which I placed on notice on 26 and 27 June 2017, and question 365, which I placed on notice on 19 July 2017, remain unanswered. I note that my office contacted the minister's office at 12.42 pm today to inform them I would be seeking an explanation this afternoon. My office has not yet received a response.

Senator FIFIELD (Victoria—Manager of Government Business in the Senate, Minister for Communications and Minister for the Arts) (15:05): The senator's office did contact my office. My understanding was that that was a courtesy to let me know she would be raising these matters here. That's the ordinary course of events; you raise the matters here and I respond. I am happy to do so and appreciate the opportunity.

I want to acknowledge at the outset the senator's ongoing interest in the NBN and her participation in the committees of this Senate in relation to the NBN. I think it's fair to acknowledge that the NBN is one of the most scrutinised agencies in the parliament. The company and my department have appeared at nine separate hearings over the past 12 months, including supplementary budget estimates plus an additional spillover hearing; additional estimates plus an additional spillover hearing; budget estimates plus an additional spillover hearing; and several hearings of the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network. In addition, my department and agencies in total have spent in excess of 55 hours before committees for Senate estimates or the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network. I can advise the Senate that the total number of questions on notice raised in all estimates hearings over the past 12 months is 2,057. The total number of questions on notice answered in the last 12 months is 2,048 for the Senate estimates committee and 81 for the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN.

Turning to the most recent budget estimates hearings, which relate to the senator's outstanding questions, I can advise colleagues the hearings were held over three days on 24 and 25 May and 15 June this year. Following these hearings a total of 417 questions on notice covering my portfolio were received. One question was withdrawn. Senator Urquhart has made reference to eight answers to questions on notice that remain outstanding. I can advise the Senate that in relation to the budget estimates process to which these questions on notice relate, key members of NBN's team attended the scheduled hearings. In addition to the five hours of testimony from the company on 25 May, the committee requested a subsequent spillover hearing, which was set down for 15 June. In the interim, 78 questions on notice were submitted to NBN specifically with a due date of 7 July. In the meantime NBN again appeared before the committee for a further two-hour spillover hearing on 15 June. Fifty-four of the 78 NBN-specific questions from the first estimates 2017 hearing were answered in advance of the set deadline and all 78 were responded to by 10 August.

As a consequence of the spillover hearing of 15 June, at which the NBN and my department appeared, a further 84 questions on notice were submitted, with a due deadline of 28 July, and Senator Urquhart has placed a further five questions on notice following the aforementioned 84 questions, with a deadline of 24 August. I can advise the senator that, of the 333 questions on notice lodged following the May budget estimates hearing, 88 per cent were finalised within the deadline. I note that a second spillover hearing of the Senate estimates committee will be held on Thursday of next week, and we all eagerly anticipate that. I undertake to the senator that I will endeavour to ensure that the handful of remaining questions on notice related to the committee's inquiries will be answered as soon as possible prior to the next spillover hearing.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:09): I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

The minister's explanation is quite remarkable. He didn't admit that the responses to questions on notice had been in his office for weeks. We don't know that. He has not tabled the responses. He did explain that we had received a large number of responses but not why we haven't received these final nine. I think the minister mentioned eight, but there are actually nine. He didn't mention what is so special about these final nine that there has been a delaying, delaying and delaying of the minister's response. It is completely unacceptable.

It's bad enough that the Australian people struggle to get information on the NBN, and it's bad enough that they struggle to get basic internet connection from the NBN. Not only can they not get a proper connection; but they cannot get any advice or questions answered. We put detailed questions on one of the largest infrastructure projects in this country's history and I'm really concerned that we're faced with a government playing political games. We on the NBN committee hear all the time when we're out there talking to people that the only way to get a basic answer from NBN Co is to go to a politician or the media. That's what people on the streets are saying, that's what the media are reporting and that's what the talkback shows are all saying. We hear all the time that NBN Co will tell you the bare minimum of information, if anything, which is often nothing at all, unless you go to the media. It seems to whip up some sort of a frenzy when the complaints end up in the media and miraculously a solution is often found. A solution is often found for people who go to the media and raise issues about the NBN. Those who don't want to go public—a lot of people aren't confident about doing that; they don't want to be seen as complaining—get left behind in this process.

The standing orders of the Senate clearly state that answers to questions on notice should be provided within 30 days. Everyone understands—I think we all do here—the workload of ministers and departments, but we haven't left it for 30 days; we've left it for longer. This has been a problem all year with Minister Fifield. Time and time again, it has been 60 to 70 days before we've received a response to questions on notice at all. It's a real concern. What it relates to is the transparency around NBN Co's operations and the clear politicisation of the rollout of the NBN by this government.

In May this year, the night before the communications and arts budget estimates, the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee distributed 108 responses to the questions on notice. Of those 108 responses, 107 related to the NBN Co. By the morning, when the Department of Communications and the Arts were due to appear, 17 questions relating to NBN Co were still outstanding. It's been over two months since those were placed on notice. At that stage, when we had the hearings, the then chair of the committee, Senator Reynolds, and I expressed our disappointment to the minister and to the secretary of the department about the lack of response and the time frame that it took to get that response. At the time, the secretary of the department gave us a commitment to double down their efforts next time. Well, the doubling down doesn't seem to have amounted to very much at all.

Of the questions placed on notice after the first spillover hearing in June, and a few weeks later in July, 58 were received only last week—weeks and weeks after they were due. As I've just told the minister, eight are still outstanding from the spillover and one is overdue from mid-July. There were also six answers to questions placed on notice in June where NBN Co have essentially said answering the question is too hard. Minister, what is it about these questions that is so hard to answer? What is it that you don't want the Australian people to know? After answering these questions, perhaps the minister could then provide the Senate information on when the office received the responses from the department. Was it at the same time as those questions answered last week?

If we look at the questions that remain unanswered, questions on notice 298 and 359 relate to the cost of the commissioned research. What is it that NBN Co and Minister Fifield don't want the Australian people to know? What is it they don't want them to know? Why is the cost of these reports so difficult to disclose? Across the two questions, I asked about the cost of research reports released over the past couple of years. This is a standard question that all sides of politics ask of government agencies and departments from time to time. It's nothing unusual. The people of Australia have a right to know what NBN Co is spending on research and the purpose of that research. I won't read the names of all 20 reports but some of interest to colleagues include The nbn GranTechie Report, where a new wave of silver surfers are closing the generational gap; the nbn Silver Economy Report, which revealed that the silver economy is set to boom; the nbn Digital Parenting Report, where we found out that school is back and parents are embracing the future; and the nbn Digital Dream Report, where Australians' top life goals were revealed once and for all. The front page of this report has a woman with a huge smile holding a golf club in an alleyway and wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with 'Keep calm and carpe diem'. The Aussie app-etite: connected devices building the future home report revealed that homes in Australia will have three times the number of connected devices in 2020. What a revelation! On sport, NBN Co commissioned the nbn Future of Sport Report, where it was revealed that the lines between sport and entertainment have blurred beyond recognition. This is just a sample of some of the research reports that NBN Co has conducted to market their product to consumers. That's fine, but let's be transparent about it—and why won't they release the costs of these reports?

NBN Co has a fixed pool of funds to conduct its activities and roll out the network. Surely a dollar spent on these reports is one dollar less that can be spent on rolling out fibre. Are these reports really worth it? We don't know because we don't know what the cost is. Some, no doubt, are worth it, but the only response to recent questions on notice about research reports that I've received was to question on notice 356. In this question I asked:

What was the cost of the Lifestylepreneur Report commissioned by NBN Co?

The lifestylepreneur report revealed that Launceston in Tasmania is one of the nation's top entrepreneurial hotspots. It is interesting that the media release associated with the report didn't mention once—not once!—that Launceston is the first city in the country where gigabyte services are being offered. Not once did it mention that. The release didn't mention that fibre to the premises has been rolled out to nearly all of Launceston. NBN Co's response about the cost of this report was:

nbn has a publicly available advertising and marketing budget within which it operates in order to generate revenue and ensure a return on investment to taxpayers. Within that budget, nbn runs a number of consumer campaigns and research insights are commissioned as part of these campaigns to make sure people are aware of the benefits of the nbn network in an aim to drive activations. The details of the individual costs of these research reports are commercial-in-confidence as nbn works with numerous/multiple research vendors.

'Commercial-in-confidence,' they say—how can that be so? What is NBN trying to hide? Why are they trying to hide? What's going on? We can't find out from the minister; we can't find out from NBN. It's a payment for a report. That's what it is. And, if this is the response to this research question, why have questions on notice 298 and 359 not been answered? Surely the answers will be the same non-answer, or are you prepared to disclose the costs of some reports and not others? It is truly bizarre.

While I'm talking about Tasmania, I'll move to question on notice 365, which is also outstanding. Question 365 sought information about the new node that NBN Co is installing at the Burnie hospital on the North West Coast. NBN Co has declared the area ready for service, but when the cardiology clinic attempted to connect to the NBN it was discovered that the node servicing the consulting rooms at the Burnie hospital was 1.7 kilometres down the road. After the issue was taken to the media and a question was asked of Minister Fifield in question time, NBN Co then—not before, but then—provided some assistance to the clinic. They decided that they would install a new node 500 metres from the front door. So the question is: why 500 metres? They won't tell us. They won't disclose why.

My question on notice 365 sought a basic range of information about this new node, and it was in six parts. They are: how many premises are to be serviced by the new node? What is the longest distance from the new node to a premises to be serviced by that node? What is the average distance from the new node for premises to be serviced by that node? What is the difference in cost between a revised FTTN service and a new FTTP service for the Burnie hospital site? What is the difference in cost between a revised FTTN service and a new FTTP service for the other premises to be serviced by the new node? And what is the difference in reliability of a fibre-to-the-premises connection and a fibre-to-the-node connection at 400 or 500 metres from the Burnie hospital site?

The thing with this new node is that the clinic required basic upload speeds of 10 megabits per second. The Turnbull NBN only has a minimum expected upload speed of five megabits per second. Despite going to the effort of building a new node, NBN Co were unable to guarantee the basic upload speed that was required by this clinic to enable them to do their work. And so it came that the clinic found a different fibre provider that could guarantee a basic upload speed that would enable the clinic to connect to its main server in Launceston. Launceston is the city I mentioned earlier where fibre to the premises is everywhere. NBN Co commissioned lifestyle reports about its benefits.

It's interesting that NBN Co are now silent on question on notice 365. My question is: is it embarrassed by the situation? What will it do now with this node, how many premises will be serviced by it and how reliable will their service actually be? It's also interesting that NBN Co has answered question on notice 364, which was lodged at the same time as question 365. In this response, NBN Co revealed that the node near the Burnie hospital is the first node in the country set for installation in an area that has been declared ready for service. NBN Co explained that it is rare to deploy a node or a micronode into an area that is already ready for service. No doubt. Countless others across the country will be very interested to hear that NBN Co is now, on occasion, going to install new nodes where the distance from a current node is too great. I suggest that those with deep concerns and a strong case go to the media, because we know NBN Co is listening.

Given the unreliability of a fibre-to-the-node service, in a response to a question from Senator O'Neill NBN Co revealed that six per cent of fibre-to-the-node consumers cannot achieve download speeds of 25 megabits per second and 35 per cent cannot achieve 50 megabits per second. So it's no wonder the clinic had to go to a private provider to get the service they needed.

Question on notice 342 asked about the costs of a fibre-to-the-node rollout. NBN Co were asked four very simple questions relating to the construction of the nodes, connection of power to the nodes, active electronics within the nodes and connection of fibre backhaul to the nodes. These are basic questions about the component costs of building fibre to the node. So why is the government sitting on this information? Is it because they're embarrassed by fibre to the node? We all remember that the Minister for Regional Communications, Senator Nash, has referred previously to fibre to the node as the 19th century solution. Or is it that the costs are more than they budgeted? Is that what it is? Unless they answer, all we can do is speculate. We have no idea. So the government need to reveal these costs. The minister needs to do that.

I want to move away from fibre to the node. Question 328 asked for a simple state-by-state breakdown of the deployment of fibre-to-the-curb technology. Fibre to the curb is NBN's new golden child, with one million premises set to receive fibre all the way to the pit on the nature strip. NBN Co pushing fibre deeper into the network improves reliability, improves upgradability and improves speed. It costs slightly more but it will deliver a better product for customers and will require less maintenance and less work to upgrade it in the future. Of course, FTTC is not Labor's preferred option. We have always wanted a fibre-to-the-premises rollout. But, after the efforts of Prime Minister Turnbull and Minister Fifield, the Australian people just want the best that they can get. Like everything under the government's multimix technology mess, it's completely luck of the draw as to what your community will be allocated. Question 328 was a simple question. NBN Co did not provide an answer to this question. But, wow, talk about an unsatisfactory response! The response included a broken link to NBN Co's website and it said that it was too hard to add up the premises by state. How is it too hard? NBN Co have this information at their fingertips. Is it too hard, or is it simply that they do not want to provide it? After all, it will show that Tasmania is set for zero premises under fibre to the curb.

Despite the rollout on the west coast presenting a perfect opportunity, construction on the west coast's fibre-to-the-node rollout has not commenced, and the response to question on notice 368, part 2, confirms delays in the ready-for-service date of around three months, from the middle of next year to the second half of next year. It is such a debacle that the responses to parts 1(a) and 1(b) of the question demonstrate that NBN Co either don't know or won't disclose whether the detailed design work is complete for this region. In just the past few months, since the announcement in June this year, I've been asking numerous questions of NBN Co, including: will the west coast of Tasmania also be included in the fibre-to-the-curb rollout? For months I have had nonanswers from NBN Co and a request that I lodge the questions through the estimates process. Fine! That's what I did. And I still get an ambiguous response.

Last week, after the response to question on notice 368 was received, my colleague the member for Braddon, Justine Keay, and I issued a statement to the Tasmanian press calling on the Prime Minister to direct NBN Co to clear up this ambiguity and roll out FTTC in Queenstown, Rosebery and Zeehan on the west coast. These communities were slated to have fibre to the premises under the original NBN, and then Prime Minister Turnbull, as communications minister, broke his promise to complete the fibre-to-the-premises rollout in Tasmania and turfed these west coast communities onto satellite. But, after a concerted community campaign, Labor promised to roll out fibre to the premises to these communities, and those opposite promised to roll out fibre to the node in Queenstown, Rosebery and Zeehan through the NBN Co's Technology Choice Program. The minister should really go and check the weather on the west coast this week: rain, rain, snow, rain. What does copper hate? Rain. The copper on the west coast is already significantly degraded. The region is one of the wettest in the country, yet they want to replace copper with new copper. It is ridiculous!

Do you know what else is ridiculous? During Ms Keay's radio interview last Thursday, the NBN Co's Corporate Affairs Manager for Tasmania, Russell Kelly, tweeted that the west coast would receive a fibre-to-the-node rollout. There was no explanation and no further information. He subsequently went on radio and said that there were no delays and construction would start soon. That evening I emailed Mr Kelly with some basic questions, in particular how a change from a mid-2018 ready-for-service date to a second half of 2018 ready-for-service date is not actually a delay. Guess what? I haven't had a response.

Senator O'Neill: Oh, big surprise!

Senator URQUHART: Is that not a surprise? I could sum up this whole saga by saying it's easy to tweet, as we saw from Mr Kelly in Tasmania the other day, but it's obviously very, very hard for the government to explain to us and the people we represent. We need to get their answers to actually be able to go back to those people and talk to them about the issues they've got with NBN Co. NBN Co is not being transparent, and neither is the government, in the delivery of NBN. (Time expired)

Senator IAN MACDONALD (Queensland) (15:29): Another stunt by the Labor Party, because we happen to be on broadcast today. We've just had a 20-minute adjournment speech on a matter where a senator hopes to get a headline in her local media over these issues, which, in fact, if you know about NBN Co, all stem from the mess NBN Co was when Labor senator Conroy designed it on the back of an envelope in an aircraft. The whole difficulty which this government has been trying to deal with is the fact that Senator Conroy and the Labor Party could not organise a chook raffle, let alone Australia's biggest ever business.

I congratulate Minister Fifield on the answer he gave to Senator Urquhart's question. This session of the Senate is supposed to be about finding out why questions on notice have not been not answered. Senator Fifield was given some notice an hour or so beforehand, and in that hour he was able to come up with accurate details of the huge number of usually irrelevant questions asked by Labor senators at estimates, on notice and otherwise that involve the department, Commonwealth bureaucrats, in hundreds of hours of research, trying to find the answers, which, I will bet you, Madam Deputy President, the Labor senators who ask the questions never even read. That is obvious, because you go to the next estimates and they ask exactly the same questions, and the public servants say, rather embarrassingly, 'I'm sorry, Senator; we already answered that on notice, in writing.' Senator Fifield gave us statistics. Most of the questions have been answered.

I am still waiting for answers to a couple of questions that I asked of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, which finished four years ago. I put questions at estimates two years before that, and I am still waiting for the answers from Labor ministers. That was par for the course when the Labor Party was in government. But I congratulate Senator Fifield on getting so many of the answers and explaining that those that had not been able to be addressed by public servants because of the time taken would be answered very shortly.

Could I suggest to Senator Urquhart—if she is not just after a cheap headline in the local rag—that she does what I do now and what I used to do even in the term of the Labor government. If I have a serious question, a serious wish to help a constituent, I will go and approach the minister. I have done that a number of times with Minister Fifield. Different constituents have had problems that I thought his office might be able to deal with, and so I've gone to see him in his office. He is very, very helpful. If you have a serious question about the Burnie hospital, if it's a serious question, if it's something that requires immediate attention, don't try and get a cheap headline in the local rag; go and see the minister's office, and see if they can give some help.

Senator Urquhart interjecting—

Senator O'Neill interjecting—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

Senator IAN MACDONALD: If you're serious about your constituents—and I suspect that few Labor people are; the only constituent they are interested in is the union movement, who put them here, and that is the constituency they respond to all the time. But, if you do have a hospital that has a problem, don't issue a media release and get your photo in the local rag; go and see the minister and try and fix the problem.

Opposition senators: We did!

Senator IAN MACDONALD: That is what senators should do. That is what senators on this side do.

Senator Urquhart interjecting—

Senator O'Neill interjecting—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

Senator IAN MACDONALD: Could I also suggest to Senator Urquhart that, if she wants to know something about NBN and some of the mess that they were in earlier, she talks to her colleague the former Queensland Labor MP Mike Kaiser, who was thrown out of the Queensland parliament for fraudulent electoral activity but who then—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Polley, on a point of order.

Senator Polley: I bring to your attention that we give leeway to senators in their contributions, but, as usual, Senator Macdonald is just on a rant. Can you draw him back to the topic before the chamber?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Polley, I have been listening very carefully. For most of his response, Senator Macdonald has been talking about the question at hand. Please continue, Senator Macdonald.

Senator IAN MACDONALD: I don't like to say this, but if Senator Polley were following the debate she would be aware the motion is that the Senate take note of the answer, which is certainly what I am doing. The President has ruled rightly. When there are things that the Labor Party are sensitive about they always make a point of order objection to sit me down—but I won't be sat down.

As I was saying, if you want to know anything about the NBN, go and see Mike Kaiser, the Labor member in the Queensland parliament who was thrown out of parliament for electoral fraud and who then got a job in the Labor Party years as the government relations manager for NBN.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order!

Senator IAN MACDONALD: Would you believe that? NBN is a government organisation and suddenly NBN decided, on instructions, I know, from the shareholding ministers—

Senator O'Neill interjecting—

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator O'Neill, I have called order a few times. I ask you to listen in silence to Senator Macdonald's answers.

Senator IAN MACDONALD: The shareholding ministers were Senator Conroy and another Labor minister in the Rudd-Gillard government, and suddenly Mr Kaiser, having been sacked from the Queensland parliament, pops up as the government relations manager for NBN. Why NBN, as a government owned organisation, would need a government relations manager, no-one could ever tell me. Why they were paying Mr Kaiser in excess of $400,000 to do government relations between a government company and the government—the Rudd-Gillard government—no-one has ever been able to explain.

I notice Mr Kaiser has now popped up as a director of KPMG in Brisbane. Senator Ketter would be aware of this. Suddenly Mr Kaiser is a director of the once great KPMG. And I see the Queensland Labor government recently engaged KPMG to do a survey on why employing more and more bureaucrats in Queensland was a good thing. How could that possibly be needed?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator O'Neill, on a point of order.

Senator O'Neill: Senator Macdonald is nowhere near the topic of the NBN. He is not taking note of the questions that were clearly identified. He is talking about commissioned public relations. He could talk to question 298 and the failure of the government to respond. He is ranging far too widely.

The PRESIDENT: This is a wide-ranging topic, and Senator Macdonald is referencing issues around the NBN. Please continue, Senator Macdonald.

Senator IAN MACDONALD: Again, for Senator O'Neill's benefit, the motion is that the Senate take note of Senator Fifield's answer, which was answering questions on NBN. I have said to you, 'Go and ask Mike Kaiser if you want to know about the NBN,' because he was the $400,000-plus government relations manager for NBN when NBN got us into the mess that Mr Turnbull and Senator Fifield are now trying to resolve.

I don't want to delay this debate any further. I am not going to speak for 20 minutes on what is clearly an adjournment topic. But some of the rubbish that is spoken here, particularly on broadcast day, needs to be challenged, because the misinformation that is given out about these issues has to be corrected. That is why I have taken a little time to congratulate Senator Fifield on his response to the questions that were asked, highlighting again the abject waste of taxpayers' money in paying highly skilled public servants to answer literally hundreds and hundreds of questions on notice that those opposite don't even read. I say that because they come to the next estimates, they ask the same questions and the public servant embarrassedly says, 'I'm sorry, Senator—we've given the answer to that to you before.' That shows that most Labor senators never read any of the answers to those literally hundreds and hundreds of questions that are placed on notice.

I make the point again because there are taxpayers who are listening to this debate, and those taxpayers pay these highly skilled, highly paid public servants to go around and answer all of these hundreds and hundreds of questions that are never looked at by Labor senators. It is just an abject waste of taxpayers' money that these questions should be asked and the answers never read. Senator Fifield indicated that most of the hundreds of questions that have been asked have been answered. There are a few that have not been answered, and he gave the reasons for that. He indicated that, at the very earliest time, they will be answered.

I again say to Labor senators: if you're serious about helping people like at the Burnie hospital, don't go to your local paper and get a headline; go and talk to the minister's office. If you're seriously trying to fix a problem, go and talk to the minister's office. I know you'll be well served. But if you just want to play politics—if you think that is a cheap way of getting Mr Bill Shorten as Prime Minister of Australia—at least be honest about what you're doing and don't clothe it in these questions about technical matters that you'll never even read or understand the answers to.

Senator O'NEILL (New South Wales) (15:41): Listen to the last couple of words—'technical matters that you'll never read or understand'. If we wanted language to symbolise the smug superiority of this government with regard to this rollout of NBN, we just got it from Senator Macdonald. That's probably the only decent contribution that he's made because it reveals absolute contempt for the Australian people, for our businesses, for health, for education and for all those innovators around the country who are begging for the opportunity to grow businesses and jobs, to educate at distance and to absolutely transform our economy. They've been sold down the river by this government who thought that we were too stupid and were going to stay stupid long enough to be unable to figure out what a dud it's selling us.

The lemon NBN that the government are delivering us—fibre to the node—is breaking down all over this country. They thought they'd get away with it, but the Australian people are onto them. We want to know the facts about what the government are doing, and that's why we've put all of those questions on the record—because the government have attempted to hide every single possible thing they can about this disastrous rollout.

I want to make some comments about Senator Fifield's opening remarks. We have, from this senator, this constant positioning of: 'Be calm. Don't worry about it—everything is fine. You shouldn't be concerned. Yes, we are spending $29 billion.' He forgets to tell you about the additional $20 billion that they had to put in on top of that because the market was awake to the rollout and understood how bad the rollout was, so the market wouldn't come in with the last $20 billion. So we've got $49 billion in a government business enterprise of which Senator Fifield is our representative.

We have asked questions. Yes, we have certainly asked questions. This is a massive spend—it's $49 billion. What we've got is Senator Fifield saying: 'It was a lot of questions. It seems to be an unreasonable number of questions.' How many questions do you reckon the Australian people should get for $49 billion? I reckon we should get a lot of questions, and we should also get some decent answers. What we are calling the government's attention to—and thank you, Senator Macdonald, for letting us know it's broadcasting day—and what we are letting the Australian people know is that the government are hiding what they're doing from you with regard to the NBN.

I want to put on the record a number that you should ring if you are experiencing trouble with getting the NBN connected at your place. Let me tell you that, in my situation, my husband and I were able to build an entire house and move in the time that it took to get the NBN connected to our old house. That's how bad the delays have been. I want you to take this number down if you're listening, or if you're here in the chamber or the gallery today, and you're concerned. The number is for the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, and it is 1800062058. I will repeat it before I finish my remarks this afternoon. People are sick and tired of getting this nonsense, this rubbish run-around, from this government. They're getting it from the NBN, they're getting it from their retail providers like Telstra, Optus and all of those companies that are providing the NBN around the country. People are sick and tired of being caught up in a blame game that goes from one person to another. They are also sick of what the technology is not delivering. They're sick of the continuous dropouts that are hurting their businesses. They're sick and tired of the impact on their families of not being able to get the access they have been promised. This government said the NBN that they were going to deliver would be cheaper. That's wrong. They said it would be faster than what people had. We're hearing right across the country that people want their ADSL back because their NBN connection is slow and fragile. They said it would be cheaper and faster and they said we would get it sooner. That is absolutely not the case. They are way behind and they have a massive problem going on with one part of the system that they rolled out, another kind of technology that clearly Senator Macdonald thinks we're all too stupid to understand, the HFC cable, which is the equivalent of a Foxtel line into peoples' homes, which the government said would be good enough for us to get information down.

We want to know some important things about what's going on with the NBN. Let me go to the substance of some of the questions. The first thing I would like to go to is service class zero. I'm sure there will be people listening to this debate somewhere around the country who cannot figure out why they can't get an answer out of the NBN or out of their telecommunications company, their retail service provider, about why they can't get the NBN. These are people who are often in a community where everyone else in their street has finally got connected—they're not happy, but they've got connected. But they're sitting there on their own at the end of a street, or sometimes in the middle of a street, and they simply cannot get a connection. NBN, when they hit these in-the-too-hard-basket cases, have this Orwellian term for it. They call it 'service class zero'. I suppose there is some truth in it, because you get zero response from the NBN, you get zero delivery of the NBN and you get zero explanation about why you can't get that connection at your house.

We did ask questions about service class zero. We asked for a breakdown by the technology, because they are rolling out fibre to the node, HFC, and there is talk they are going to roll out fibre to the kerb. We wanted to know, by technology, how many premises were in service class zero. We wanted to know that for households and businesses. We wanted to figure out what was going on. That is one of the questions we wanted an answer to. This issue is affecting thousands of Australians who can't get an answer. But this minister didn't go to any of the substance of the matter. He simply made the argument that there have been a lot of questions asked and they are working really hard and there is nothing to see here.

The problem is that Australians need access to a service. They want the real NBN, they want the fibre NBN and they are going to want it more and more as our use of technology increases. Those who are caught in the service class zero spiral are in a desperate need. This is why this is so egregious and why it is so wrong that some of these questions are not being answered. We know that the NBN produces a weekly report which contains the aggregate number of the service class zero premises. It's not like they don't have the information. Why won't the minister have that handed over and put into the public domain? We know that the information is there. It's at their fingertips. Why should it be that the Senate, asking questions on behalf of the Australian people, should be kept in the dark about information that is actually available on a weekly basis to the minister if he should ask for it from NBN, which he is in charge of? He's not separate from NBN; we have to remember that. The minister is responsible for the NBN.

Other questions that we asked included about the commissioning of research. There's nothing extraordinary about this question. This is the sort of question that's asked of government agencies all the time. We asked it because we believe that taxpayers have the right to know what NBN Co is spending on research and what the purpose of that research is. We know that some of the pieces of research conducted by NBN Co include The nbn GranTechie report, the Future of sports report, the Gen nbn 2020 and beyond report and The nbn digital dream report. The Senate can be assured that the NBN has been anything but a digital dream in every possible way. But why has this government not been able to produce a response to this question on notice? Surely, having commissioned the research, the purpose of it must already be known. The cost of it must already be known. But it's not known in this chamber and it's not known to the Australian people, because this government is hiding as much as it possibly can about its failed delivery of the NBN.

We also asked for figures underpinning the 2016 corporate plan, which is the main document that gives us a sense of what is going on with the NBN. Often at those Senate estimates when Senator Urquhart and I are both there, with our colleague Senator Chisholm, asking these sorts of questions, we get referred: 'Just wait; the next corporate plan will be out.' It's as though all is going to be revealed—except it isn't; it never is, because strategic pieces of information are being kept from public view. We have a request in that the NBN provide the underlying ready-for-service assumptions that they've relied on in their 2019-20 financial year explanations or revelations in their corporate plan. We know that the government's tried to avoid answering this question and another question, question 176, from additional estimates. So, in the name of transparency, we've asked it again, and there's still no response.

This is a pretty important question to get an answer to: what are the figures that the NBN is relying on for ready for service? That's part of their business plan. And is this business sustainable? Is it working? What assumptions are embedded in it? If you run a business you have to have those basic assumptions to understand what's going on with your business. Surely NBN Co, with $49 billion invested in it—taxpayers' dollars—should be able to answer the sorts of basic questions that a year 11 business class could answer regarding the assumptions that underpin NBN Co's financial plan. There are other questions that concern me that we haven't got answers to, including question 313—again, figures underpinning the corporate plan for 2019-20. Again, why can't we have those?

Let me go then to fibre-to-the-node costs. I want to take the opportunity again, in case people who were listening didn't have a pen the last time I said it, to tell you the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman's number again. If you're getting pushed from pillar to post, around and around, and you're sick of the NBN circle, you need to call the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman and they will get on the case of your retail service provider. The number is 1800062058. Why am I giving you that instead of saying, 'Talk to the minister', as we heard from Senator Macdonald? It is because five million Australians can't all talk to the minister and, as we know, the minister doesn't answer questions anyway. Why aren't I telling you to go to your local member or senator? It is because our offices are already inundated with people calling on us, over and over, to try to help them solve problems. It has got to the scale now, with the rollout of this dodgy NBN, that even our offices can't keep pace with it. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman can force the companies to actually answer some of your questions and to do something within 10 days. So don't waste your time anymore. Don't let this government cost-shift its mismanagement of the NBN onto your business. Don't let that happen. Call the TIO on 1800062058 and get somebody to take some action on your behalf, because it's a pain for the retail service providers to actually be contacted by the TIO.

I know from people in the electorate who have spoken to me and from people who are working behind the scenes for telecom organisations, who are desperately worried about the practices they are being asked to enact, that they are being told: 'Do everything you can to prevent the complaint going to the TIO.' Why would that be the case? Because it costs them some money, it costs them pain and it puts a timetable on the responsible action. It also means this government can't continue to come in here and say, 'Everything is fine,' because they will actually have to report the TIO figures. The TIO is the only tool we have that is really effective right now to get a sense of how bad this NBN rollout is going. You should call the TIO and let them know so that this government can't continue to come in here and mild-manneredly say, 'Everything is okay,' because you know it's not okay, I know it's not okay and the government, deep down, know it's not okay. That is why they are hiding. That is why they're not answering these very important questions.

Question 357 is about NBN technology trials. The Turnbull government like to talk about how the NBN is trialling new technology. They do this in order to attempt, in Senator Macdonald's vein of 'They're too stupid to figure it out,' to distract Australians and the media from the fact that they are deploying a second-rate 19th century copper network. Senator Urquhart revealed the source of that comment, and that is Senator Nash. The government's own minister for regional affairs has indicated that she thinks the NBN technology that her government is rolling out is a 19th century technology. We don't always like the answers we get from Senator Nash, but, on that, she is telling the truth. We have asked the government to explain how much taxpayer money has been spent on trialling technologies that it hasn't deployed. How much has been spent on this grand experiment, cooked up by the now Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull, when he was the communications minister? How much has been spent? We are still waiting. No answer.

One of the things that we asked about was the wholesale speed tier mix in the 2016 corporate plan. This is important, because we asked the NBN to provide the numerical data that was underlying an important graph contained in their own corporate plan. The government has tried to avoid this question by providing data from the 2017 corporate plan, instead of the 2016 corporate plan, but we will continue to pursue it. We have requested it again to get the facts and the details on the table. The response from the NBN Co is absolutely outrageous. The volume of detailed questions on notice and the limited time available to respond mean that the NBN must prioritise questions that are not answered in whole or in part in regular reporting vehicles such as weekly updates, the corporate plan, annual reports, quarterly financial reports or on their website. This is simply ridiculous. The NBN Co is a government business enterprise accountable to the minister, who should be acting on behalf of the Australian people. They should be called to account. They should be writing full and fearless answers, giving the facts, keeping proper scrutiny on this $49 billion spend that is underway. What type of a racket is this government trying to run? It is the equivalent of the NBN waving a white flag and saying, 'This is all just too hard.' The company that is tasked with the wholesale provision and rollout of the NBN right across this nation is saying to us that it is simply too hard to answer our questions.

We have asked a question about a simple breakdown of where they are going to do fibre-to-the-curb, which is a new technology that the government have decided that they are considering deploying. We simply asked: where are they going to do it? We can't get an answer from the NBN. They have got to have this information at their fingertips but they are arbitrarily determining that they have a right to the information but the Australian people, through the Senate, do not. That is absolutely unacceptable. It cannot continue to be the case.

In the last couple of minutes that remain, I would like to indicate that the folder that I have brought in here—which I could go through—is just of the first hundred people we have documented who have problems with the rollout of the NBN on the Central Coast. Recently we had a hearing on the Central Coast, and I was very disturbed by stories of the kind that I have told you here this afternoon of people waiting for service, people unable to get information and people whose service had fallen over. But I want to make some points about this government, which pretends to be the friend of small business. Let me tell you: in Gosford we have a perfect example, in a small part of the seat of Robertson, of where the real NBN has occurred. We took evidence from a company there that received multiple international awards, whose business is entirely in the cloud and is employing 20-plus employees in a great little office in Gosford and delivering world-class, award-winning technologies to councils and other major organisations all around the world. They've got the real NBN. That's what is happening for them. NIB, the insurance group, brought their call centre to the middle of Gosford, in Robertson, because it has the real NBN.

Around the edges of it, though, in the second part of the testimony that we heard, we heard from local small businesses who own gyms or who are art creators and sellers of their own art. One gentleman, whose NBN connection was delayed by four months, lost $70,000 because he could not get any internet connection to sell his artworks online in the lead-up to the Christmas period. That is just one small business. We heard about alarm calls in a 24-hour gym on the Central Coast, where for weeks and weeks and weeks on end the owner was there trying to resolve the problem. It took him months to get a response. We heard story after story of people who were getting the run-around. Labor is listening to the people of Australia. We know you're getting the run-around from the NBN and the RSPs, and this government is trying to give the Senate the run-around. We will not stand for it. That is why the government must answer these questions. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.

Senator POLLEY (Tasmania) (16:02): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Regional Development (Senator Nash) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to her status as a senator and as a minister.

I started question time yesterday asking Senator Nash a question in relation to whether or not she has the right to still sit in cabinet and make decisions when there are questions over her citizenship. Yesterday she tried to lecture us in relation to respect for Australians. Today I ask the minister: when is she going to show respect to the Australian people? We know what the political objective is and why she is still in cabinet. That is clearly to protect Mr Barnaby Joyce, in the other place, and also to protect the Prime Minister and his government because they have such a slim majority in the House of Representatives. What it also clearly established is that we have a Prime Minister who is too weak. He is not a strong leader, as he tries to tell us. He is very weak because he won't deal with this issue.

Senator Nash was asked a series of questions by senators Bilyk, Collins, Pratt, Kitching and O'Neill. She was not able to—or wouldn't, actually—answer any of those questions. One of the questions which is fundamentally important to the Australian people is: from whom did she seek her advice that she is relying on to be able to sit in cabinet and make decisions? When was she given that advice? We haven't asked for her to table that advice, but we have a right to know. When did she seek that advice, and who was that advice sought from? We have advice from some of the best legal minds in this country that says there is a clear doubt as to whether or not Senator Nash is eligible to sit in cabinet. We have clear advice that Mr Barnaby Joyce is ineligible to sit in the other place. When Senator Nash was trying to deflect these questions, she referred to the important work that she has done for regional Australia. But what she didn't say, and what she refused to answer, was anything about the $1.7 billion budget she oversees as a cabinet minister. Of those grants that she is able to make throughout Australia, how many will be challenged if she is found to be ineligible to sit in the chamber?

These are serious questions, and the Australian people deserve answers. It is not just about who she's giving those grants to; it is about whether those who have applied for these grants and are rejected then challenge her right to make decisions if she's deemed to be ineligible to sit in this place?

There is a huge grey cloud—in fact, it's a black cloud—hanging over this government. They are seen for what they are. The government are governed by a Prime Minister who is weak and indecisive. We have a government that is led by someone who does not even have control of his own caucus. He promised at the last election that he would have an innovative, agile, adult government. When, Mr Prime Minister, are you going to bring that government to town? Quite clearly, the way these issues with Senator Nash and Mr Barnaby Joyce have been dealt with has not given any confidence to the Australian people. Others in this place who have questions hanging over their citizenship and their eligibility under the Constitution have stepped aside from the cabinet. Senator Canavan has stepped aside, because he knew that morally it was the right thing to do. The cloud is clearly over Senator Nash. She's not a very effective minister anyway, and you'd have to be pretty desperate to be propped up, as she was this afternoon, by the likes of Senator O'Sullivan—somebody who has a very dark cloud over him as to whether he's entitled to be here, because his family companies have gained financially from the Commonwealth government, which make him ineligible to sit in this place. We have a minister who is still sitting in the cabinet and who should go to the backbench but is failing to do so, and we have a Prime Minister who is so weak and so beholden to others that he won't deal with this issue. (Time expired)

Senator REYNOLDS (Western Australia) (16:07): After listening to these questions to Minister Nash over the last two days, I'm not only embarrassed as a senator but also ashamed as a woman to see a conga line of women over the other side, as if somehow the fact that only women are asking Minister Nash these questions makes what they've done okay. It is not okay. For two days in Senate question time, when we should have been talking about energy prices, national security, North Korea and jobs in regional Australia, they have persisted with these disgraceful questions. I have never been as proud of any of my Senate colleagues as I have been of Senator Nash in the last two days in the way she answered these questions from the female senators over the other side of this chamber. She was graceful, she was calm and she was very clear in her answers to the same questions over and over again. She could not have been any clearer. I heard what she said in this place on 17 August, and I've read what the Attorney-General said on 18 August. To keep coming in here asking her these same questions is nothing short of disgraceful, particularly when you know she is entitled to be the minister, to make the decisions and to get on with the job for regional Australia in the way that she is.

Those opposite keep asking the same questions over and over again. If they missed Senator Nash's comments in the chamber on 17 August and haven't bothered to go back and read the transcript of what she said or the very detailed explanation the Attorney-General gave to a committee the following day, I will now answer the questions, as Senator Nash has over and over again, and provide the detail that those opposite have been seeking. They have asked about the time line and about the evidence. Senator Brandis said:

… on Monday evening, the government was made aware of advice from the British Home Office that, on the basis of the limited facts then available, it appeared that Senator Nash may be a British citizen by descent. She advised the Prime Minister early on Monday evening and the Prime Minister advised me. I then called the Solicitor-General to let him know that we would be seeking his urgent advice …

Then it goes on to more things that happened on the Monday. On Tuesday, the Attorney-General said his office:

… received an email from counsel assisting the Solicitor-General saying that the Solicitor-General would like expert advice from a United Kingdom citizenship lawyer in order to prepare his opinion. During the course of Tuesday and Wednesday—

when that further advice was sought from a United Kingdom citizenship lawyer—

further information was sought from Senator Nash to identify or establish relevant aspects of her family history.

It continues:

… by Wednesday we had identified a suitable English QC who was an expert in UK citizenship law and who was available to advise the government urgently. On Wednesday evening, again at 7.16 pm, one of my staff emailed John Reid, who is the head of the Office of International Law within the Attorney-General's Department, with instructions to the UK barrister

It goes through exactly who said what and did what, what advice was sought and what advice was received. The advice from Dr Donaghue, the Solicitor-General, was received at the Attorney-General's office at 'approximately 5 pm last night', which was the Thursday night. Senator Brandis said: 'The Prime Minister dropped into my office at 6.15 pm on the Thursday to discuss the matter' and they immediately called the governance committee of cabinet to review the matter, straightaway, on Thursday night. It continues:

The governance committee resolved that the matter should be referred to the Court of Disputed Returns under section 376 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The Prime Minister asked Senator Nash to come and see him. She arrived a few minutes later.

That is, around 7 pm.

We decided, between 6.30 and 6.50, roughly, that Senator Nash should go into the Senate immediately to tell the parliament and the public what the position was.

And what the legal advice had been.

A brief statement was drafted for her, and she went into the Senate, as you know, and made the statement to the Senate at about 7.05 pm. The statement to the Senate was made approximately 50 minutes after the Prime Minister and I first saw the Solicitor-General's legal advice.

It could not be any clearer that Senator Nash—Minister Nash—has done the right thing. She is entitled to be a minister here, and for you to do what you've done is utterly disgraceful. You should be ashamed. (Time expired)

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:12): I note that almost nothing provided in the contribution from Senator Reynolds deals with the questions being asked today in the chamber. Senator Reynolds has outlined the steps that Senator Nash took to clarify her citizenship status by seeking legal advice, but the questions we asked today were not about that. The questions we asked today sought to understand the basis of Senator Nash's decision to retain her position as a minister and to continue to exercise her functions as a minister. I am extremely surprised at the cavalier way Senator Nash brushed off those questions, because other people don't think they are trivial.

George Williams, as everybody understands, dean of law, acknowledged constitutional expert, gave an address last week to the National Press Club and explained the problem in quite a bit of detail. He advised that the wisest course for ministers Nash and Joyce would be to refrain from making decisions, or to step down pending the outcome of the High Court hearing. He said:

This was because their authority to run their departments and to make decisions under legislation depends upon the law regarding them as being properly appointed. Section 64 of the constitution says that 'no minister of state shall hold office for a longer period than three months unless he is or becomes a senator or a member of the House of Representatives'.

If current ministers are ruled in breach of section 44, they will have made many decisions without apparent legal support from when the three-month period of grace ran out late last year. This would be especially problematic from the point at which they and members of the public became aware they were in jeopardy of being disqualified. Decisions from this point on, including any about contentious matters such as Adani's Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, might be challenged in the courts.

It is that issue we are seeking to explore with Senator Nash today, and it is that issue she comprehensively avoided in every answer she provided.

She maintains she is not required to disclose legal advice. That may or may not be so, but she was not asked to do that. She was asked by Senator Collins: 'Who sought the advice, and when and from whom was the advice received?' and, 'How have decision-making processes been varied as a result of that advice?' She refused to answer any of those questions of process. These are ordinary questions of process which are routinely answered in this chamber and in the committees of the Senate. Her refusal to answer speaks to absolute contempt for this chamber and also for the public, who have a right to understand the basis on which she continues to exercise her functions. If advice has been sought then the minister ought to provide the details we have requested: who provided it, when and who requested it?

I want to observe also that Senator Nash has used very precise language in describing her own decisions since referring herself to the High Court. On at least three occasions, she has told the Senate that she is entirely confident her decisions are 'well considered and appropriate'. It's nice that she is willing to give herself a pat on the back, but that doesn't answer the question that's at stake. Senator Wong's point of order today made it pretty clear. She asked if the decisions were 'beyond challenge'. My question yesterday to Senator Nash was very clear: 'On what basis can she assure us that her decisions will be valid?' The question isn't whether these are smart decisions—whether they are considered and appropriate. The question is: are they validly made? This is a question on which Senator Nash has provided no assurance.

The National Party is working at the very boundaries of acceptable constitutional and parliamentary practice. Serious doubts have been raised about the validity of ministerial decisions taken if ministers are indeed ineligible for election. Any serious party of government would have an answer to those questions and would take those questions seriously. But this is not a priority for the National Party. Their principal concern is to protect their guy: Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce. Their concern is to protect the National Party position in the 12th Senate spot in New South Wales, and they are willing to do that through overlooking serious concerns about the eligibility of their parliamentarians to sit as ministers. They provide no assurance for the residents of Geelong, none for the residents of Wide Bay, none for the general public, and it is unacceptable. (Time expired)

Senator BUSHBY (Tasmania—Chief Government Whip in the Senate) (16:17): I rise here today and ask the question: why don't those opposite care about regional Australia? They asked question after question today of the minister responsible for regional Australia, but did they ask her about issues that impacted on regional Australia? No, they did not. They focused on issues purely to score political points. I ask: why do they not care about Australians? They had an hour of question time to ask any minister a question about matters of importance to Australians. They could have asked questions about the economy. They could have asked questions about energy prices, which are going up drastically right across the country, largely as a result of policies put in place by the former federal government and also by state Labor governments right across the country. They could have asked questions about security, about issues very pertinent to what's going on in the world, such as the security threats that are impacting on people right across the world—Australians who are overseas and also Australians at home. There are real risks. But did they take the opportunity during that hour to ask questions about security? No.

On a related topic, did they ask questions about defence? The world currently faces one of the most serious threats to international peace since the Cuban missile crisis in the early sixties, but did they ask questions about what was going on in the Korean Peninsula? No. They chose to ask purely political questions of Minister Nash. Did they ask questions about jobs in regional Australia, or about things that matter to Australians: jobs and the ability to put food on their table, put a roof over their heads and warm their families? No. They chose to ask purely political questions. They asked questions about things that, to use a legal term, are a mere spes. Unless and until the High Court decides that the senators and members of the House are ineligible to sit in their respective places—and the circumstances of each are different—this is just pure speculation.

It's important to also note that the government has strong advice that suggests, particularly in the case of Senator Nash but also others, that they have a strong case and that it is likely the High Court will find otherwise than that they are ineligible. This issue, until such questions have been decided by the High Court, is a moot one. There's no point standing up and arguing the issue in this place because, until and unless the High Court decides something that has an impact of the sort they are talking about, there is no way that the questions can be answered. The opposition and the others can speculate all they like but, until such time, this is mere speculation.

The opposition, during question time and whilst taking note, have referred to the questions that they would like answered. All those questions can and will be answered when the High Court makes its decisions. Senator McAllister says that she wants answers to those questions but, as I say, these questions are merely being asked to stir the pot. They are pure politics. They are being used to beat up Minister Nash, who is undoubtedly one of the most capable and competent ministers in her area that this country has seen for at least 10 years, and, by extension, to beat up the government. Neither Senator McAllister nor Senator Polley talked about anything of relevance to Australians or about what Australians would like to hear their members talk about—matters that matter to them. Rather, the question time performance and the performance by Senator McAllister and Senator Polley was a disgraceful attack on a highly competent, capable female senator. They clearly haven't looked at the facts as presented by Senator Nash and also Senator Brandis.

It's a shame that, at a time when the opposition could be asking questions about these matters, they persist with this type of petty politicking. The matter has been referred to the High Court, and that was the appropriate thing to do. Senator Nash has been, from day one, completely open and transparent about her citizenship status, including requesting that she be referred to the High Court. It's a shame that those opposite refuse to adhere to the same level of honesty and transparency across the board of their caucus. As was outlined in Senator Nash's statement to the Senate on 17 August, she advised the Senate of her status upon receiving advice from the Solicitor-General. She wanted to put those facts on the record as quickly as possible, which she did.

Senator CHISHOLM (Queensland) (16:22): What we see is an extraordinary response from those opposite. They care so little about regional Australia that they're happy to have an illegitimate minister overseeing decisions that are going to have an impact on that community. It's incumbent on those of us on this side to raise those questions because we care so much about regional Australia. We want to see the so-called money that they are going to spend on regional jobs packages which they promised more than a year ago and still haven't spent. But if they finally do spend it over the next couple of months then it will be called into question. So, absolutely, it is the right thing for us to question Minister Nash, because there is a cloud hanging over her decision-making.

The other thing that's remarkable from Senator Reynolds's contribution is the timeline. They're not the luckiest government I've ever seen, but how lucky was that timeline! They find out on the Monday that they had an issue, and then it just happened that they concluded, through their legal advice, that it was a legitimate problem five minutes before the Senate shut down on the Thursday. It was very fortuitous, indeed, that they were able to quickly scramble in here and make an announcement! Of course, the honourable thing to do as soon as they knew on the Monday would have been to announce they had a problem, say they were seeking advice and stand down Senator Nash. The one thing that Senator Nash couldn't answer—Senator Reynolds didn't touch it and Senator Bushby didn't touch it—is: what is the difference between why Senator Canavan has stood down but Senator Nash hasn't? Not one of them went near it, and that is the key question that they have not answered. Senator Canavan did the right thing where we see Senator Nash refusing to do so.

I'm almost starting to feel a little bit sorry for Senator Nash—just a little bit—because it is pretty clear that she knows she is doing the wrong thing, but she knows she has to provide the protection racket for the Deputy Prime Minister in the other place. What a farce we're going to have in a couple of days when he is the Acting Prime Minister. What an absolute farce! They try and talk about all the important issues facing the country. Well, this guy is going to be the Acting Prime Minister, with that cloud hanging over him, later this week. What could be more important than that? It is absolutely important that we highlight it.

For the last two days, we have asked questions of Senator Nash about her role, and we've had to do that because, as I said, she came in here five minutes before the Senate shut down to make her announcement about her dual citizenship. She has not faced the media since then. The only time we've had an opportunity to ask her questions started yesterday and continued today, and haven't the answers been unsatisfactory? I'll go to those now. What is the difference between Senator Canavan and Senator Nash? They have not given a coherent response on that. Why is the minister refusing to meet the standard set by her colleague Senator Canavan? There are questions about the ability of the minister to make decisions that are going to hold and cannot be challenged.

We've heard the expert advice from Professor Williams with regard to that, which Senator McAllister touched on, but it seems that this minister is determined to hang on despite this cloud hanging over her head. We also know that this is about providing a protection racket for the Deputy Prime Minister, Barnaby Joyce. You get the impression that Senator Nash understands how important and serious this issue is, but you can't help but conclude that that is their motivation. Senator Canavan stood down many weeks ago now, but this was too close to the issues surrounding Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy Prime Minister, so Senator Nash was unable to do so.

What does it go to at the heart of this government? Yes, there's dysfunction and chaos, and you see that no matter where you go. I know that, in my travels through Mackay and Bundaberg over the last two weeks, I have received the response a lot that people are in open ridicule of this government. The government know that there is chaos and dysfunction at the heart of what they are doing and the decisions they are making, but the consequences for Australian families are real. We know about the jobs packages from Senator Nash. Are they actually going to make decisions that are going to have a benefit for local people in terms of gaining employment? We now have the illegitimate Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. They haven't made a decision so far. Are they going to be bold enough to do it with a cloud hanging over his head? We also know that they have gone nowhere on energy policies. So, yes, there is chaos and dysfunction, but the cloud and the questions that are hanging over this government actually have serious consequences for the Australian people. It's a sad and tawdry situation that the government have found themselves in and, again, it's the Australian people who are losing out.

Question agreed to.

Senator McKIM (Tasmania) (16:27): I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment (Senator Cash) to a question without notice asked by Senator McKim today relating to asylum seekers on Manus Island.

We didn't get much out of Senator Cash, and that's, I suspect, very strongly because there's actually not much to be had out of Minister Dutton with regard to his intentions for the over 800 people who Australia is responsible for and who we have currently imprisoned on Manus Island and at Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea. It's clear, from the responses that we did get from Minister Cash today, that Minister Dutton has completely lost control of his cruel, inhumane and torturous policies. One thing we did get from Minister Cash is that, in just 57 short days, it is still Minister Dutton's intention to close the Manus Island prison camp that Australia has been funding and operating using Australian taxpayers' money for well over four years now.

The question before Mr Dutton, and the one that Minister Cash did not respond to today, is: what is going to happen to the over 800 people—the overwhelming majority of whom have been found to be genuine refugees—once that camp closes? What we do know is that the Papua New Guinea government, through its Attorney-General, Mr Steven, has said very clearly that the closure date of 31 October was not mutually agreed upon between the Australian government and the Papua New Guinean government. We also know through Mr Steven, the PNG Attorney-General, that the Papua New Guinea government is 'not going to allow' a situation where Australia withdraws and leaves behind the over 800 political prisoners of Australia in Papua New Guinea.

One thing we did find out from Minister Cash was that, in secret, Minister Dutton visited Papua New Guinea last Friday to meet with the Papua New Guinea Prime Minister, Mr O'Neill. He secretly went over there without notifying the Australian media and without notifying the Australian people, and had a conversation with Mr O'Neill, the contents of which still remain secret as I stand here today. The question that Mr Dutton and his representatives in the Senate need to answer—Mr Dutton having scurried over in secret to Port Moresby on Friday with his tail between his legs—is: what exactly was agreed, if anything, at that meeting between Mr Dutton and Prime Minister O'Neill? Was there any further financial consideration offered by Australia or accepted by the Papua New Guinea government at that meeting? Crucially, has Papua New Guinea agreed to accept the over 800 political prisoners of Australia on Manus Island and agreed to support them, to the best of their capacity, once the Manus Island prison has been closed by Peter Dutton?

This incompetent, heartless and cruel minister has some serious questions to answer, but I don't think he has the answers. He is basically just crossing his fingers and making it up as he goes along in this portfolio. In doing so, he is playing Russian roulette with the lives of over 800 people—people who stretched out a hand to Australia for help, people who the Labor and Liberal parties in this place have kicked in the teeth repeatedly. How telling it is that many of these people are now too scared to come out of their prison on Manus Island—a place where they have been murdered, assaulted, tortured and at shot at by the Papua New Guinean navy. Their prison is now the least unsafe place they know in that country. What a disgrace this is—what we are doing to these poor people. What has become of our country, where their rights can be trampled and their freedoms and liberties denied, yet in this place the Labor and Liberal parties collude to implement misery on them?

Question agreed to.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (16:35): by leave—I table a document from Mr Clinton Pryor and elders outlining a list of demands that Mr Pryor brought to the tent embassy and presented to us at the tent embassy this morning. Mr Pryor is the gentleman who walked 5,500 kilometres across Australia. I committed that we would table this document. I understand that Ms Burney is tabling the same document in the House of Representatives.

The PRESIDENT: It is so tabled.

Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (16:36): I seek leave to table a nonconforming petition. I have spoken to the whips and they were okay for that to happen.

Leave granted.

The PRESIDENT: It is so tabled.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:38): I move:

That consideration of the business before the Senate on Tuesday, 17 October 2017, be interrupted at approximately 5 pm, but not so as to interrupt a senator speaking, to enable Senator Brockman to make his first speech without any question before the chair

Question agreed to.

Senator KAKOSCHKE-MOORE (South Australia) (16:38): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

   (i) payday loans and consumer leases can impose crippling interest rates and fees and trap people in a debt spiral,

   (ii) these loans and leases were examined by the Small Amount Credit Contracts (SACC) Independent Review Panel which reported to the Government in March 2016 – the report was released publicly by the Government on 19 April 2016,

   (iii) the SACC Independent Review Panel made 24 recommendations to the Government about reforming the SACC sector,

   (iv) the Federal Government announced on 28 November 2016 that it will adopt 22 of the 24 recommendations – legislation was expected to be introduced in 2017,

   (v) consumer groups such as CHOICE, the Consumer Action Law Centre and community legal centres continue to call on the Government to implement reforms to help prevent the exploitation they continue to see,

   (vi) the reforms recommended by the SACC Independent Review Panel have in­-principle cross-party support, and

   (vii) ongoing harm is being caused, in particular, to financially vulnerable consumers, the longer the Government fails to act to reform the SACC sector; and

(b) calls on the Government to urgently introduce its bill to amend the National Consumer Credit Protection Act 2009, in accordance with the recommendations the Government has adopted from the SACC review.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:38): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The government is committed to implement the vast majority of recommendations from the review of the small amount credit contract laws and introduce legislation before the end of 2017. Reforms are urgent and are being treated so. It is important to follow proper process in the lead-up to the introduction of legislation. It is only appropriate that the government allocate appropriate time to meet with industry stakeholders to consult on the upcoming changes.

Question agreed to.

Senator SMITH (Western Australia—Deputy Government Whip in the Senate) (16:40): I move:

That the Senate notes:

(a) that 3 September 2017 was Australian National Flag Day which celebrates the occasion the Australian National Flag was first flown in Melbourne in 1901;

(b) the date of 3 September was first recognised as Australian National Flag Day in 1996 by then Governor-General Sir William Deane as the date for commemorating Australia's National Flag;

(c) the Australian National Flag enjoys strong community endorsement as the pre-eminent Australian national symbol; and

(d) the Australian National Flag is an expression of Australia's democratic values such as freedom of speech, rule of law and freedom of association.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (16:41): I seek leave to move an amendment to the motion.

Leave granted.

Senator SIEWERT: I move:

At the end of the motion add:

(e) however, while the current flag has served its purpose in Australia's past, it is time for a new flag for our shared future that doesn't hoist Australians with UK heritage above all others.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:41): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The government opposes the amendment, as it substantially changes the intent of the motion. The Liberal-National Party government will never change the flag, nor will we shift Australia Day, nor will we be tearing down statues or chiselling off plaques or rewriting history. We are very proud of the flag and we will continue to fly the flag as long as we are in government.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the amendment moved by Senator Siewert be agreed to.

Question negatived.

The PRESIDENT: The question now is that the motion moved by Senator Smith be agreed to.

Question agreed to.

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (16:42): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

   (i) the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society conducted anti-whaling activities in the Southern Ocean, beginning in 2005, that prevented the slaughter of thousands of whales,

   (ii) the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society announced last week that they will no longer be conducting patrols in the Southern Ocean because the Japanese whaling fleet is now being supported by the Japanese military,

   (iii) Japan again plans to slaughter 333 Minke Whales in the Southern Ocean this summer under the guise of so-called 'scientific whaling' – most likely in the Australian Whale Sanctuary – and that the Japanese Parliament has recently passed a law to facilitate a return to full commercial whaling, and

   (iv) the Coalition Government promised in the lead up the 2013 election that they would send a patrol vessel to monitor whaling activity in the Southern Ocean, but that they have failed to fulfil this promise; and

(b) calls upon the Australian Government to:

   (i) outline the legal action Australia will be undertaking to prevent whaling in the Southern Ocean, and

   (ii) conduct monitoring and surveillance activities in Australian territorial waters in the Southern Ocean and in the Australian Whale Sanctuary.

I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator WHISH-WILSON: Mr President, it was indeed your political party, the Liberal Party, that banned whaling in Australia under the previous Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and since that time all cetaceans, whales and dolphins in Australian waters and in the Australian whale sanctuary in the Southern Ocean have been protected under Australian law. I would like to acknowledge today the brave conservationists and activists from around the world who have joined Sea Shepherd, gone to the Southern Ocean and literally stopped thousands of whales being killed by illegal Japanese whaling—every Christmas, while we spend time with our families and go on holidays,

This motion today recognises the fact that Sea Shepherd has spent 13 years in the Southern Ocean protecting whales. They have been very successful in that campaign. Sadly, they no longer will be conducting a Southern Ocean campaign, and this calls on the Liberal government to enact its election promise and send a customs vessel to the Southern Ocean this summer.

Senator BERNARDI (South Australia) (16:44): I seek leave to make a brief statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator BERNARDI: For the benefit of Hansard and the Australian people, I would like to point out that the Prime Minister is currently Malcolm Turnbull. It is incumbent upon Senator Whish-Wilson to refer to him in the present tense rather than as the former Prime Minister.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:44): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: Australia is working hard to end commercial, or so-called scientific, whaling and promote whale conservation. We continue to make representations at the highest levels in Japan to this effect and we continue to work hard through the International Whaling Commission to uphold the global moratorium on whaling. The decision by Sea Shepherd to cease its activities in the Southern Ocean is a matter for that organisation. The government does not condone any actions at sea that might be considered dangerous or unlawful.

Question agreed to.

Senator MOORE (Queensland) (16:45): I, and also on behalf of senators Kitching and Collins, move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

   (i) the life and work of Ms Fiona Richardson, member of the Victorian parliament and Australia's first Minister for Women and the Prevention of Family Violence,

   (ii) that Ms Richardson, as a member and minister, was deeply committed to the importance of effective family violence policy which was focussed on the needs and experiences of victims,

   (iii) that Ms Richardson bravely made her personal family experiences public, making a strong commitment to the community to implement and resource the recommendations of the Victorian Royal Commission, and to eradicate violence in the home within a generation and to end its dangerous and costly impacts on families and children,

   (iv) that Ms Richardson's inspiration and practical strategic planning have supported women and children across her state and contributed to the national response to the scourge of violence, and

   (v) that Ms Richardson's challenge that we can do more and must do more will continue to lead the debate; and

(b) sends its sympathy to Ms Richardson's family, her friends and community.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:45): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The government expresses its condolences to the family and friends of Fiona Richardson, the Victorian Minister for Women and the Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence. The government worked with Fiona on the bipartisan issue of tackling the scourge of domestic violence. Her passion for protecting women and girls was admirable and her contribution will be remembered by all sides of politics. Fiona will be missed by her constituency in the seat of Northcote and her colleagues in the Victorian parliament.

Senator RICE (Victoria) (16:46): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator RICE: The Victorian government deserves praise for launching a royal commission into domestic violence. Fiona Richardson, as minister, was there right through the inquiry and out the other side to implement those findings. She was determined to eliminate inequality in women's lives and workplaces. The Greens thank her for her hard work and commitment on this crucial cause. Her own direct experience with family violence, explored in the most intimate and confronting way by Australian Story last year and rebroadcast last week, informed and drove her groundbreaking work in this area. She has changed the course of history for many Victorian families and communities for decades to come. We owe her our gratitude for those lives she will inevitably have saved. She died before her time and well before her work was done. The onus is now on every one of us to carry on this legacy and fight for a fairer, safer world for women across the country.

Question agreed to.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (16:47): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

   (i) it has been reported that a coffee chain in Melbourne allowed an intern to work hours well beyond the maximum 50 hours per fortnight as part of the Government's Youth Jobs PaTH program, and rostered on another young job seeker before the internship had even begun, and

   (ii) on both occasions, management at the coffee chain offered visa gift cards as payment;

(b) acknowledges that:

   (i) we are already seeing allegations of exploitation as predicted just months into the program, and

   (ii) similar internship programs overseas saw systemic exploitation and churn, and this was repeatedly raised as a concern; and

(c) calls on the Government to:

   (i) permanently ban the coffee chain responsible from further partaking in the Government's Youth Jobs PaTH program, and

   (ii) carry out an audit as a matter of urgency of the Youth Jobs PaTH program to ensure no other employers are exploiting young job seekers.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:47): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The government fully supports the PaTH program, which has resulted in almost 10,000 young people getting jobs. This program is clearly working. The business mentioned in this motion was recently removed from the program immediately following allegations regarding breaches of their conditions, and the Department of Employment is conducting an audit of participating employers. The PaTH program contains stringent safeguards. All internships are voluntary and must be agreed between the employer and the intern. To be eligible to host an internship, a business must have a reasonable prospect of employment for the intern. If the intern is dissatisfied, they can leave at any time during the internship without penalty.

Question agreed to.

Senator BERNARDI (South Australia) (16:48): I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 443 standing in my name by replacing 'like-minded organisations' with 'associated organisations'.

Leave not granted.

Senator BERNARDI (South Australia) (16:50): I seek leave to make a brief statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator BERNARDI: I am disappointed the notice couldn't be amended. Nonetheless, I would like to point out that the petition that was moved against Dr Pansy Lai was inherently against the freedom that this place is upholding, which is the right of people to express a view which may be contrary to other views without vilification, without victimisation, without the sort of racist abuse that is so characteristic of those of the Left of the political spectrum. In fact, those who preach tolerance the loudest and demand tolerance the loudest are often the singularly most intolerant individuals, and we have seen that in this debate. Dr Pansy Lai has been victimised, she has been vilified and she has been bullied, most inappropriately. There is a counter-petition going on which has more signatures than the original one with its racist vilification of Dr Pansy Lai. I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes the attempts by GetUp! and like-minded organisations to pursue the medical deregistration of Dr Pansy Lai for exercising her right to free speech concerning the marriage survey;

(b) condemns those organisations and individuals for attacking freedom of conscience and speech; and

(c) supports Dr Lai exercising her freedom of conscience and speech in participating in the public debate about the Federal Government's marriage survey.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:51): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The government calls on every Australian to participate in the marriage law postal survey process with courtesy and respect. Groups and individuals have the right to express sincerely held views in a respectful manner, without fear of intimidation.

Senator RICE (Victoria) (16:51): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator RICE: The Greens will not be supporting Senator Bernardi's motion. It is full of inaccuracies, and, shambolically, he even tried to amend it on the floor.

An honourable senator: Delete!

Senator RICE: Delete it—that's right. GetUp!, the organisation, were not calling for the deregistration of Dr Lai, and in fact the petition calling for that has now been removed from the CommunityRun petition site. This is not an issue of free speech. The calls for Dr Lai's deregistration weren't, as alleged by Senator Bernardi, for exercising her right to free speech, but out of deep concern regarding her seeming support for discredited, dangerous and ineffective gay conversion therapy. We as the Greens do not support the call for Dr Lai's deregistration; however, we do unequivocally oppose gay conversion therapy. Memo to Senator Bernardi: LGBTQI people exist, we're going to continue to exist, we cannot be converted and we deserve to have our rights treated as equal under the law.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (16:53): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator GALLAGHER: Labor will not be supporting this motion today. In opposing this motion I'd like to put on the record that Labor believe that all Australians should be afforded an opportunity to express their views as part of the public discussion about marriage equality, but to do so in a respectful and factual manner. We do not believe the Senate should become a mechanism for the condemnation of the views of individuals or organisations in this debate.

On the specifics of this motion, I would like to note that GetUp! has stated that it does not support the petition targeting Dr Pansy Lai which was uploaded over the weekend, nor did GetUp! endorse or organise it. In the context of complaints that were received in response to the petition, I understand a review was triggered, and, following the review, the petition was found to breach CommunityRun's terms and conditions and was taken down on Monday morning.

Labor have been clear about our position: we do not support a public opinion poll on peoples' relationships, in the form of either a plebiscite or a postal survey, and I note the ongoing cases before the High Court on this matter.

Senator HINCH (Victoria) (16:54): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator HINCH: I will support Senator Bernardi on this. I support the 'yes' campaign passionately, but I do believe in freedom of speech. I do not like some of the comments reportedly made by Dr Pansy Lai, especially on things like conversion therapy, which has been discredited all around the world. But I do believe in freedom of speech. I hope that, on both sides of this argument, the yes and the no, this sort of hatred can dissipate. I don't support probably 80 per cent of what Senator Bernardi has said here today, but I do support the right of freedom of speech for everybody in this discussion, left and right, yes and no. For that reason, I will be supporting Senator Bernardi's motion.

Question agreed to.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (16:57): At the request of Senator Di Natale, I move:

That the Senate does not consider coal-fired power to be clean.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (16:57): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The coalition government considers that high efficiency, low emissions coal technology has been demonstrated around the world to reduce emissions and maintain essential base load power supply. Coal is good for you.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the motion moved by Senator Siewert on behalf of Senator Di Natale be agreed to.

Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (17:04): I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 454 standing in my name for today, relating to the contamination of Australia's Defence Force facilities, in the terms circulated in the chamber.

Leave granted.

Senator RHIANNON: I move the motion as amended:

That the Senate:

(a) notes that:

   (i) the 2016 Senate inquiry into contamination of Australia's Defence Force facilities and other Commonwealth, state and territory sites in Australia concluded that there were many points of failure in the Department of Defence's response to PFOS/PFOA contamination at the Williamtown RAAF Base,

   (ii) there are still residents in the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) mandated "Investigation Area" in Williamtown, known locally as the "Red Zone", who report relying on bottled water shipments from the Department of Defence, despite repeated requests to be connected to the reliable and uncontaminated town water supply,

   (iii) there is growing concern of reports of an extensive cancer cluster of up 49 cases, particularly around the area of Cabbage Tree Road, and

   (iv) many residents in Fullerton Cove, outside the current EPA- mandated "Investigation Area", have reported returning abnormally high results for PFOS/PFOA contaminants in their blood; and

(b) calls on:

   (i) the Federal Government to immediately release information on what actions and strategy its PFAS (poly-fluoroalkyl substances) Task Force have and are taking regarding property values in the Williamtown Investigation Area,

   (ii) the Federal Government to investigate the design of a voluntary buy-out scheme for affected properties,

   (iii) the Federal Government to urgently develop, make public and implement a plan to prevent further contamination and clean up existing contamination from the Williamtown RAAF Base, and

   (iv) the Department of Defence and NSW EPA to re-examine the current boundaries of the Williamtown "Investigation Area" and investigate reports of extensive contamination outside the current boundaries.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (17:05): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The coalition government understands the uncertainty that has been generated by PFAS detections around defence bases, particularly at Williamtown and Oakey, and the need to respond as quickly as practical. The whole-of-government task force within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet will ensure appropriate actions continue, including consideration of any additional support for local communities that may be required. Defence has provided over $4 million to Hunter Water to connect properties in Williamtown to town water, and this work is underway. The government has commissioned a study to help authorities better understand the potential impact of PFAS to human health.

The government is also providing $12.5 million over four years to establish a national research program to study the potential effects of exposure to PFAS on human health. The investigation area at Williamtown was set by the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority. Any change to the boundaries is a matter for the New South Wales government.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (17:06): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator GALLAGHER: Labor has consistently led from the front on the PFAS contamination issue. The Williamtown community has its own champion, the member for Paterson, who is fighting hard for the people of Williamtown and is working with the defence minister and the PFAS task force. The Turnbull government has said it is working on a solution for residents of Williamtown and surrounds, and Labor calls on the minister responsible for the PFAS task force to release the details of the solution without further delay. This is why Labor must oppose the motion as it is presented. The Turnbull government adopted many of Labor's PFAS policies from the 2016 federal election, including the establishment of the PFAS task force. The task force has been investigating community concerns regarding property valuation and is developing a policy solution for affected communities. Labor shares the anger and frustration of residents and calls on the PFAS task force to announce its PFAS solution as soon as possible to provide some certainty for affected communities, including Williamtown.

Senator BURSTON (New South Wales) (17:06): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator BURSTON: Almost two months I ago I wrote to the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Senator McGrath, for the government's response to an article titled 'Cabbage Tree Road cancer figures "mind-boggling"', published in the Newcastle Herald on 8 July 2017. The response from Senator McGrath was extremely disappointing, especially considering the revelations in that article that a 49th person with cancer had come forward, having lived in the red zone at Williamtown. Senator McGrath's response included the line: 'There is currently no consistent evidence that exposure to PFAS causes adverse human health effects.'

One Nation have offered a number of solutions to the government for funding the work on remediation and voluntary buyouts, but they have fallen on deaf ears. We have been urging action on this matter since well before the last federal election, and we will continue to fight for the severely affected communities. One Nation strongly support this motion.

Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (17:08): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator RHIANNON: Dangerous toxic contamination continues to pour out of the Williamtown base. The defence department has taken total responsibility for this severe contamination. Now we hear that Labor and the coalition will not be supporting what is really a very measured motion. All we are asking is for the task force to release the information for the federal government to investigate the design of a voluntary buyout scheme. It's a way to work through solutions for people who are at their wit's end because of the lack of action. Let's remember that in 2015 this Senate signed off on the investigation into what was happening at Williamtown. We came forward with some very solid recommendations. The chain is still being dragged. Now Labor is kicking it into the long grass. That's no way to treat these people.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the motion moved by Senator Rhiannon be agreed to.

Senator DI NATALE (Victoria—Leader of the Australian Greens) (17:20): I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that:

   (i) 31 August 2017 marked the 16th annual International Overdose Awareness Day, commemorating all those who have died or been seriously injured due to drug overdose,

   (ii) annual accidental drug-related deaths are now more than double the road toll,

   (iii) Aboriginal people are drastically and tragically over-represented in our overdose death numbers at a rate of 18.3 per 100 000 compared with 5.9 for non-Aboriginal people, and

   (iv) the significant increases in deaths related to pharmaceutical opioids continue to rise; and

(b) calls on the Government to urgently address the rising rates of harm associated with drug use by implementing and appropriately resourcing evidence-based harm reduction policies, including:

   (i) greater access to needle and syringe programs across the country, including urgent rollout of trials inside prisons,

   (ii) expanded access to medically supervised injecting facilities across Australia,

   (iii) promoting awareness of the life-saving opioid reversal drug naloxone, highlighting its availability over the counter in pharmacies,

   (iv) working with state and territory governments to cease the use of drug sniffer dogs at festivals and introduce urgent trials of pill testing during the upcoming festivals season, and

   (v) speed the introduction of real time prescription monitoring of pharmaceutical opioids.

Senator McGRATH (Queensland—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) (17:20): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator McGRATH: The coalition government do not support enhancing people's ability to take illegal drugs. The majority of the matters raised in the motion are primarily the remit of the states and territories. The government's position on these matters is consistent with the principles set out in Australia's National Drug Strategy, which encourages all governments to support people to recover from substance-use dependence and to reintegrate with the community. A drug-testing service is not part of our commitment to tackling drug use. Our balanced approach is based on evidence and incorporates prevention, early intervention and healthcare strategies, as well as law enforcement. The government do not support making illegal drugs more accessible. We do not support ceasing the use of sniffer dogs. In July, the government announced an investment of over $16 million to deliver the national rollout of real-time prescription monitoring for medicines to directly address the needless loss of life from misuse of these drugs.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (17:21): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator GALLAGHER: Labor has a proud record of minimising the harms that come from drugs. For example, it was the Hawke Labor government that established the national Needle and Syringe Program. In the decade to 2010 alone, the NSP is estimated to have prevented over 30,000 cases of HIV and around 100,000 cases of hepatitis C. But policies in this complex and sensitive area should not be made by stunt motions on the floor of the Senate. Several of the recommendations in this motion also require careful coordination between the Commonwealth and states. So, while Labor recognise International Overdose Awareness Day, we will not be supporting this motion.

Senator DI NATALE (Victoria—Leader of the Australian Greens) (17:22): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator DI NATALE: It is a great tragedy that we are now seeing more accidental drug deaths than we are seeing people die on the roads. In fact, the number of accidental drug deaths is now more than double the road toll, with Aboriginal people tragically overrepresented. We are now seeing more people die from prescription opiates than we are seeing people die from heroin. We need to recognise that the war on drugs is not a war on drugs; it's a war on people. It's time we started treating this as a health issue, not simply a law-and-order issue. We need to remove the criminal penalties associated with individuals who use drugs and make sure that they see a doctor, not a policeman or a judge, because they have a health issue. We need to ensure that we expand the role of harm reduction with needle and syringe exchange programs in prisons, with drug testing at festivals, by removing sniffer dogs, which cause more deaths than they save people, and by ensuring that we have real-time prescription monitoring for pharmaceutical opiates. We need to change what we are doing.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the motion moved by Senator Di Natale be agreed to.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sterle ) (17:27): I inform the Senate that, at 8.30 am today, six proposals were received in accordance with standing order 75. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Gallagher:

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

The need for the Turnbull Government to provide economic leadership to make the tax system fairer, fix the budget in a fair way and address housing affordability.

Is the proposal supported?

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

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

Senator KETTER (Queensland) (17:28): I rise to speak on this matter of public importance, the need for the Turnbull government to provide economic leadership to make the tax system fairer, fix the budget in a fair way and address housing affordability. Australians look to their federal government to provide the economic leadership needed to address our current challenges, yet we see the Turnbull government letting Australians down. Whether it's budget management, energy policy, penalty rates or housing, we see a government with its priorities in all the wrong places.

I will address each of the three elements of the MPI. When it comes to making the tax system fairer, when it comes to the priorities of the government, it can't be clearer that their budget proposal to increase the Medicare levy is misguided. They claim it is to fully fund the NDIS but, let's be clear, when Labor was last in government it fully funded the NDIS. To be even clearer, a future Shorten Labor government will continue to fund the NDIS.

When it comes to the levy increase, it is dumbfounding that at a time of low wages growth, high cost-of-living pressures and the government already presiding over a cut in penalty rates for low- and middle-income workers the Treasurer is prioritising an income tax hike for those same workers. Mr Turnbull's tax increase means that a worker on $55,000 a year would pay $275 extra a year in tax, while someone on $80,000 would face an extra $400 in tax. A worker earning $85,000 a year would lose the full benefit of last year's 'sandwich and milkshake' tax cut and actually end up paying more in income tax. When it comes to multinationals paying tax, we see a government failing to take strong action to make the system fairer.

It's not fair on everyday Australians or on proper taxpaying companies that other companies can use sharp business practices to evade their proper share of tax. I have been looking into this matter in the Economics References Committee's corporate tax avoidance inquiry. Of the $4 billion in liabilities raised by the ATO, which the government loves to talk about, we see that it's actually Labor legislation that is being applied—legislation that the coalition voted against. There's more to do in terms of closing loopholes and increasing transparency, and I call on the Turnbull government to adopt Labor's multinationals tax policies to make the system fairer.

I also want to briefly mention the recent announcement by Labor to make sensible reforms to discretionary trusts. It shouldn't be the case that there is a two-tier tax system—one for ordinary Australians and a business class tax system that lets you minimise your obligations if you have a high income. There should be one system, one that's fair for everyone. A 30 per cent minimum tax rate on discretionary trust income splitting is a sensible move to make the tax system fairer.

When it comes to fixing the budget, let's also be clear: Labor understands that there is a need to fix the budget, not just over the forward estimates but over the medium term as well. In this term of parliament Labor has been very constructive when it comes to fair budget repair. Whether it was the measures in the omnibus bill or measures such as the bank levy, Labor has scrutinised the Turnbull government but worked constructively to repair the budget. You can also see from Labor's tax policies that we are strengthening the budget in the medium term. Negative gearing, capital gains tax and discretionary trust reforms all strengthen the budget in the medium term. And we're looking further ahead than are the government, who seem fixed on trying to make the numbers look good just over the forward estimates—when they're not preoccupied with themselves. When it comes to budget repair, priorities don't get much bigger than the company tax cut. It's now a $65 billion—not $50 billion—ramraid on the budget at a time when there could be more productive investments in areas such as infrastructure and education. When it comes to budget repair, you can't trust this government. Only this side of the chamber has a credible plan to properly repair the budget in a way that's fair and in a way that aligns with our values and priorities.

I will now turn to the very important matter of housing affordability. This issue just seems to be worsening, yet the government seems to be doing little on this matter. Even in recent times the Committee for Economic Development of Australia has raised concerns that affordability issues might persist for as long as 40 years. A survey by law firm Slater and Gordon found that 26 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds need to rely on an inheritance from their parents before they can buy a home. Home ownership is getting out of reach. The HILDA survey shows that for couples with dependent children home ownership fell from 55.5 per cent in 2002 to 38.6 per cent in 2014. Home ownership rates have also collapsed for under-40s, from 35.7 per cent in 2002 to 25.2 per cent in 2014.

We also see the links between housing affordability and inequality. Again, the HILDA survey found that among men aged 18 to 39 homeowners earn $87,182 whereas non-homeowners earn $41,832. The reason young people aren't renting is not alleged lifestyle choices; they are being locked out of the market. And what do we see from the Turnbull government? We see a threadbare housing affordability policy announcement in the budget. We still haven't seen the legislation, and it's now September. The Treasurer does not seem to see it as a priority, yet Australians are entitled to information so that they can make an informed decision about whether to access it or not. The super scheme will do nothing to address housing affordability but will instead work to undermine Australia's world-class superannuation system, and Labor will not support it.

Labor has sensible policies to address housing affordability, including negative gearing and capital gains tax reform. That's well known. There are also other policies that the shadow Treasurer has announced, such as prohibiting direct borrowing by self-managed superannuation funds, the introduction of a uniform vacant property tax across all major cities, an increase of foreign investor fees and penalties, the establishment of a bond aggregator to increase investment in affordable housing, boosting homelessness support for vulnerable Australians and, importantly, getting better reform through housing agreements with the states. It's a comprehensive suite of policies that can meet the challenges Australians currently face.

When we're talking about tax, I can't miss the opportunity to once again bust the mythology that those opposite have that theirs is the party of low taxes and responsible spending. I am indebted to the research done by Stephen Koukoulas, who shone a spotlight on this matter. He showed that eight of the 10 years since 1980 with the highest level of tax-to-GDP ratio have been under coalition governments, and all 10 of the 10 years with the lowest tax-to-GDP ratio have been under Labor governments. That busts the mythology about those opposite being the party of low taxes. When it comes to responsible spending, the IMF working group busted that myth as well and showed that profligate spending occurred on two occasions under John Howard. In conclusion, the Turnbull government has let Australians down when it comes to— (Time expired)

Senator HUME (Victoria) (17:36): I rise today to speak in response to the matter of public importance submitted to the Senate by our parliamentary colleague from the ACT Senator Gallagher. I am very pleased that Senator Gallagher has submitted this motion to the chamber because it gives me the chance to inform you of all the wonderful things that the Turnbull coalition government is delivering in taxation, budget repair and housing affordability. Senator Gallagher would like the chamber to consider:

The need for the Turnbull Government to provide economic leadership to make the tax system fairer, fix the budget in a fair way and address housing affordability.

I would be delighted to do so.

Senator Gallagher's motion has a number of parts, and I'd like to address each one of those in turn. Firstly, the senator brings up the alleged need for a fairer tax system. 'Fairer'—goodness me, that word comes up in this chamber an awful lot. I can hardly be the only one in here who is sick to death of the opportunism and insincerity coming out of Mr Shorten's Labor Party, centred on fairness and inequality. I apologise for my repetition, because repetition it is. It seems that, every time I rise to my feet, we are speaking on the same thing. I feel an enormous sense of deja vu when I once again call out this rhetoric for exactly what it is. It is a shroud for a radical redistributive agenda. As successive statistics repeatedly have proven, inequality is in fact falling in this country, not rising. Any claims to the contrary just don't stack up. Populist catchcries, however, are clearly on the rise.

The Australian Labor Party, under Mr Bill Shorten, is forgoing sensible economic policy for the base politics of envy and class warfare. History has condemned socialism for the economic nonsense that it is, yet Mr Shorten's Labor wishes to pursue it nonetheless. The Australian people, however, are smarter than that. Make no mistake: Labor's tax plan will freeze productivity, freeze economic growth, limit jobs growth and hold back wages growth. Mr Shorten should know better. As the recipient of a very high-quality Victorian education, one would imagine he would be well aware that a nation cannot tax its way to prosperity. Enterprise and hard work both need to be rewarded, not penalised, if we're to realise economic and wage growth for all Australians. It is indeed galling in the extreme that Senator Gallagher would blindly follow her leader into the empty rhetoric of redistribution and socialism. It is perhaps the case that voters in Ecuador might appreciate such political sensibilities but not here. Australians are smarter than that—so much smarter than that. Australians know that high taxes do not increase their wages. Labor's tax winter will penalise Australian families and whack small businesses. Quite simply, the worst thing that could happen for Australia's future economic prosperity is the election of a Shorten-led Labor government.

Senator Gallagher also called on this chamber to consider the need for the Turnbull government to fix the budget. The hypocrisy of those opposite on this issue is appalling. While in government, the Australian Labor Party were more than happy to rob future generations of Australians by running up enormous debt with unsustainable levels of expenditure. Now, in opposition, they block sensible measures to return the budget to surplus. Where the incoming Labor Party government under Rudd inherited a budget surplus from their predecessor, this government inherited baked-in spending and a structural deficit. It is patently ludicrous for any member of the Labor Party to attempt to use a matter of public importance to lecture the coalition on budget repair.

The Turnbull coalition government is acting to curb the insidious growth of federal government expenditure by passing the omnibus savings bills and providing substantial budget savings in the areas of education, social security and many more. While we can agree that more can be done and more must be done to finally return the budget to surplus and pay down the debt we inherited from the previous Labor government, we on the government side are doing everything within our power to do so while those opposite politically obfuscate to block measures that would have saved billions of dollars to the budget bottom line. How rich it is that Senator Gallagher and her colleagues would lecture those of us on this side of the chamber on the need to pay down debt. It is simply extraordinary.

Finally, Senator Gallagher has called on the government to address housing affordability. I'm not entirely sure where those opposite have been, because it gives me great pleasure to inform the chamber that much is being done by this government right now to address housing affordability. This is a government that recognises that housing affordability is a vital issue for many millions of Australians, and we are seeking to address it where we can, how we can and when we can. Very recently, crown land in the great city of Maribyrnong, Mr Bill Shorten's own seat, was released, which will enable the construction of thousands of new homes. Indeed, in the other place, in this very sitting period, we will see the introduction of two measures spoken about in the budget that will combat housing unaffordability. The government will pass the first home buyers super scheme, announced by the Treasurer on budget night, which will allow individuals to make voluntary contributions of up to $15,000 per year and $30,000 in total to their superannuation account to purchase a first home. These concessional contributions are taxed at only 15 per cent and can be withdrawn along with attributed earnings to make a deposit on a home. For most people this will boost the savings they can put towards a deposit by at least 30 per cent compared to savings in a regular savings account. Additionally, the government will pass a measure which will allow people aged 65 and over to make an exempt non-concessional superannuation contribution of up to $300,000 after selling their main residence of the last 10 years. This increased flexibility to contribute proceeds to superannuation will reduce barriers of older Australians to downsize homes that no longer meet their demands and, importantly, help free up housing stock for younger, growing families. This is a government that wants to do all it can to fairly—and I use that word without empty rhetoric—assist younger Australians to get into the houses they need.

It should be painfully apparent to those watching that the Turnbull government is providing the economic leadership in the fields of tax reform, budget repair and housing. (Time expired)

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (17:44): We can walk and chew gum. Here's the oil: we can actually make this society and economy fairer, we can help fix the housing affordability crisis and we can take some of the pressures out of the financial system by doing a few simple things. We could actually do it this week if the government had the guts to bring forward some decent legislation.

We talk about socialism, capitalism and everything in between. At the end of the day, it's ironic that what's causing the housing affordability crisis in this country—and inequality—is the market system itself, and the perversion of that market system by governments, successive Labor and Liberal governments, who have put in place investor subsidies and perverse incentives that allow investors to go into the market and get taxpayer deductions for buying real estate and building their wealth.

We know that investors are the problem in our housing market, especially in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. They get tax deductions on their capital gains when they sell a property, which of course makes it more profitable for them. They get to claim, through negative gearing, expenses—especially interest expenses—against their rental income. We all know this. Both these policies were put in place a long time ago to help stimulate the real estate market, and of course the real estate industry loved that. Mostly older Australians who have built their nest eggs have been able to invest in property and do well out of it, thank you very much.

The HILDA Survey recently showed how stark the picture is in this country, where younger Australians and lower-income Australians are facing a housing affordability crisis. In some categories, their homeownership levels have fallen by over 30 per cent since the last five-year survey was done. That's how bad it's got in this country. But it's also about financial risks in the system.

I had to recently get in my bathtub at home and have a bubble bath, with a beer, and do a video to promote this particular issue. Yes, after we had a very good—

Honourable senators interjecting—

Senator WHISH-WILSON: I recommend it! It's on my Facebook page if you'd like to see it.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sterle ): Order! Order!

Senator WHISH-WILSON: It's a shameless plug for a very serious issue. And my dog was involved with it as well! Just to get Senator Bernardi's interest in this particular debate, my dog was in the bath with me! This is an issue that the Greens have taken very seriously, every estimates. Let me go back to two years ago, when I took over the Greens Treasury portfolio and we put the issue to the Treasury secretary at the time: 'What are you doing about housing affordability? What's the holistic approach? What's the package?' It was directionless—aimless. This government, if it is doing anything now, has been dragged kicking and screaming to this issue by the Greens, and recently by Labor, who jumped on the bandwagon with negative gearing changes and, hopefully, also, capital gains tax concessions. It's simple: let's get rid of these investor subsidies that are allowing investors to outcompete first home owners in our heated markets, especially in Sydney and Melbourne. We know we can do that over time, we can grandfather it or we can go for a more radical approach of removing them immediately.

You want to talk about other money that's sitting out there, Mr Acting Deputy President Sterle? There's your home state of Western Australia. We have recently heard about the WAxit debate from the secessionists in the Liberal Party there who want to form their own country. Good luck with that! They complain about GST revenue, but what about the $238 billion—I will say it again: $238 billion—in tax deductions that the wealthiest oil and gas companies in the world have been given through the petroleum resource rent tax deductions? Two hundred and thirty-eight billion dollars—that's money that we could use for schools and hospitals, for fairness in this country, and it could underwrite some really good economic policies.

So there are plenty of places we could look to to raise revenue to help make Australia fairer, but we just need the political courage to do that. And it's actually not that hard. We've been campaigning on these issues now for many, many years—and I'm glad that the Labor Party have become more progressive in recent times. Whether you call them socialists or not doesn't bother me. If all of us in here are focused on getting good outcomes for the Australian people, on tackling inequality and on having a fairer country then I think that's a good thing and you're to be congratulated on it. (Time expired)

Senator CAMERON (New South Wales) (17:49): I've got to say I don't think that was the smartest speech I've ever heard from Senator Whish-Wilson, especially when Senator Bernardi is waiting to come on next. Talking about dogs in the bubble bath, talking about having a beer in the bubble bath, probably wasn't your best move, Senator Whish-Wilson. But, anyway, that's up to you. I want to try to get back to some of the serious issues.

The issue we saw reported today in The Australian was Senator Ian Macdonald going to the coalition party room and complaining about the government's dire position in the opinion polls. What he said was: if the government are going so well with their economic policies, why are the polls so bad for the government? That is something that I think the government should actually try and think about. I can tell them why they are going so badly—because inequality is increasing. Anyone listening to Senator Hume would wonder what planet she lived on. She was in here saying that there is no inequality, that inequality is not getting worse; it is not a problem. You go to any shopping centre and people will tell you what they're complaining about. They're complaining about power prices. They're complaining about power prices because this mob, this rabble of a government, can't get their act together even to deal with the recommendations they got from the Finkel report. They put the Chief Scientist up and say, 'Tell us what to do?' Then they adopt every recommendation except the key recommendation, and that is to have a clean energy target that would put a price in place to make sure that people would invest in electricity generation in this country. We now hear them talking about rebuilding Liddell power station. I was a fitter at Liddell power station for over seven years. Even when I was there, which is a long time ago, trying to deal with some of the issues that were starting to appear then, after 10 years of operation, kept a lot of maintenance fitters pretty busy, a lot of boilermakers pretty busy. Now they're talking about extending the life of a power station that's nearly 50 years old. I don't know how the government can even contemplate being seen as economically viable by the community; they're just not.

Senator Hume said she was going to talk about all the wonderful things that the coalition were doing. Senator Macdonald has basically given the game away. Whatever they're doing isn't working. Senator Hume, whatever you're doing is not working. Inequality is increasing. Workers are doing it tough out there. People are having big problems trying to make ends meet. Fairness and inequality are something Labor have been talking about and dealing with ever since we were formed as a party. We hear all the rhetoric about envy and class warfare. It's not class warfare to say that everybody should get a fair go. It's not class warfare to say that workers' penalty rates should be protected. It's not class warfare to say that workers should be able to send their kids out to school with shoes on their feet and put food on the table when they come home from school. That's not class warfare.

With the nonsense we've heard from this coalition, it's no wonder Senator Bernardi jumped ship. It's no wonder he got out, no wonder he said, 'I can't put up with these fools anymore.' True, isn't it? Yes, Senator Bernardi. Thanks for nodding. That is exactly what Senator Bernardi did. He knew this mob were going down the tube, he knew that they had absolutely no chance at the next election, so he said: 'I'll cut and run. I'll get out and I'll make sure I can get back in here.' There are a lot over on that other side who won't be back. Anyone listening to Senator Hume telling us that inequality is not a problem and everything is going great under the Turnbull government would know that it's an absolute farce from a rabble of a government that just can't put one foot in front of the other. Every time they make an announcement, they have to change it next time around. Do you remember Prime Minister Turnbull saying that he was going to bring in all of these great changes? His first economic issue was to put in a 15 per cent GST. Remember that? How long did that last? I think it lasted about six weeks and then he retreated as fast as he could. The next economic thing that was going to be put in place was the states being allowed to tax. Taxation powers would be given to the states. I think that lasted about two days. Then the next big economic approach that the government was going to take was put in a big tax cut—a $65 billion tax cut—including for the banks that Senator Williams had been complaining were ripping off workers, ripping off people, day in and day out. Give them $65 billion: $7 billion to the banks and the rest to multinational corporations. This is just a nonsense. No wonder the community can't see any hope in Malcolm Turnbull. No wonder the community won't change, even if he puts on a new leather jacket—not that one from the seventies. He could put on a new leather jacket and that would mean nothing.

This is a government that has lost the plot. This is a government that cannot understand the challenges that ordinary working people in this country are facing. It is only Labor that are going to deal with housing affordability. Their policy was described as one where you would need an electron microscope to see any difference it would make to housing. Senator Bernardi, you did the right thing. You cut and run. You got out. Well done. (Time expired)

Senator WILLIAMS (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (17:56): We talk about fairness, we talk about jobs and we talk about the cost of housing affordability and the budget. I have said it before and I will say it again: why are houses so expensive, especially in Sydney and Melbourne? It is the simple case of demand exceeding supply; it is as simple as that. What is the cost? The cost is the land. The land is the cost. When they pull down the old house—they pay $2 million for a little wooden house and then pull it down—they put up a $2 million home. Land is so scarce. Yet, what do we have in this country? What do we have more per capita than any other country on the planet? We have land.

We keep saying: move out to country areas. Where I live in the beautiful town of Inverell there is an ample supply of water. We never have water restrictions. It is very good value. I think it is still about a dollar for 1,000 litres. Use as much as you like. Even in a drought, we never have water restrictions. You can walk into Inverell and into many other country towns—there are nice country towns in New South Wales, as I imagine there are in every other state in Australia—and for $275,000 or $300,000 you can buy a three-bedroom brick veneer home on about a 600, 700 or 800 square metre block. That is not expensive. But the first thing people say is: 'Where are the jobs?' Where I live, we are lucky to have Bindaree Beef, a large abattoir, which employs 800 people. We have unemployment—we have too much unemployment; it's too high—but we can't get workers to work at the abattoirs. We have to bring them in from Brazil, the Philippines—you name it. The jobs are there. What I am saying is that, if I was a young fellow—and I only wish that I was 25 years old—who lived in a city and I had a basic job, I wasn't well educated, I didn't have a tertiary education, I wasn't a specialist and I had never had an apprenticeship—I wasn't a fitter and turner, a mechanic, a plumber or a tradie or in some other specialised field—I would move to a country area, because I know that if I go out there I will get a job. If I am prepared to work, I will get a job. I have never seen a situation yet where someone who tries and tries to get a job does not get a job. If you persist, try hard and have a good work ethic, you will always get a job. It mightn't be the best job, but it will be a job.

I am simply saying that we need to move more people out to country areas, and we are getting condemned for it. Barnaby Joyce moving the APVMA from Canberra to Armidale is making room in the city here. Housing is expensive in Canberra. I'm sure those of you who've bought houses here would be well aware of it. I haven't bought a house here. We're trying to make more room, yet we're getting condemned for doing exactly that.

Senator McAllister interjecting—

Senator WILLIAMS: Exactly. The point I make is: we have plenty of land in this country; why don't we use some? I'm sure where Senator Dodson comes from there's stacks of land, heaps of room. Why we insist on stacking people into the cities, especially Sydney and Melbourne, is beyond me.

I want to talk about fairness, equality and the cost of living. Electricity prices are too high. State and federal governments of all persuasions have made mistakes in this field for a long time. Coal is the cheapest way to generate electricity—there is no question about that. In a motion before the Senate earlier today, the Greens and the Labor Party voted against coal once again. I don't know how the CFMEU support this mob. You don't support their industries, yet they back you financially all the time. Those opposite say, 'We can't build coal-fired generation in Australia, because we're going to change the CO2 levels around the world; we're going to save the planet.' As I speak to you now, 621 units of coal-fired power generation are being constructed. A unit is one generator. If you go out to Liddell or Bayswater in the Hunter Valley, you'll see the four big cement cooling towers with the water vapour coming out of the top. They are four-unit power stations, and 621 units of coal-fired generation are being constructed around the world, as I speak—299 in China, to add to the 2,100 units they already have. Those extra 299 units will produce more CO2—670 million tonnes, in fact—than the whole of Australia produces. These are the additional coal-fired generators being produced in China. There are some 120 in India and even 34 in Vietnam. Australia has just 73 units of coal-fired generation. Are we building any more? Not as yet, but we're going to have to, because it's getting too expensive, and coal is the cheapest way to generate electricity. We know that labour costs are expensive in Australia compared to many other countries. If we want to remain competitive, electricity is one cost we need to keep down.

Speaking of equality, John Laws is a person I've listened to on radio for probably 40 years. In the shearing shed, on the tractor, in the sheep yards, my late father, Reg, my brother, Peter, and I would be drenching or jetting a mob of sheep, and we'd listen to John Laws. He said for years, 'You don't make the poor wealthy by making the wealthy poor.' How true that is! Someone has to have money to create jobs, to invest, to kick off the factories, to employ the people. That's what the wealthy people do. They don't just sit it in a bank and live on it forever; the people with money, a good business initiative and the interest to have a go are rewarded for their great work, smart thinking and investment. That's what the country is about. Making them poor will not create more jobs; it will create fewer jobs. That's why we've reduced tax for small business, to give small business a go to actually grow.

This whole debate is about jobs. Let's look at the facts. Today's figures show that total employment rose by 27,900 in July to a record high of 12.2 million. We now have 12.2 million Australians working. In the past 12 months, 239,300 new jobs have been created, three times as many as in Labor's last year in government. Of those, 197,700 were full-time. Of the nearly 240,000 jobs created in the last 12 months, almost 200,000 were full-time. In the last seven months, full-time employment has increased by 153,200, the largest increase in full-time employment over the first seven months of a calendar year since 2008. Female employment has increased by 124,600 over the past 12 months, to a record of high of 5.677 million women now in the workforce. Isn't that great? Youth unemployment has fallen by 0.4 percentage points over the past 12 months. So the jobs are being created. The unemployment rate was 5.6 per cent, down from last month's revised figure of 5.7 per cent. The annual rate of employment growth of two per cent is well above the decade's average rate of 1.6 per cent. The jobs are being created—as I said, 240,000 in the past 12 months, three times as many as in Labor's last year in government. This debate put forward by Labor is about jobs. We have the record for the increase in jobs. The record's there and the facts are there to prove it.

In winding up can I say that one good thing I am proud and pleased about is the free trade agreements we've made and how rural Australia is looking so positive. Even the grain prices are good, along with the cattle prices, the wool prices, the mutton prices and the lamb prices, and the cotton jobs are going well, and many others. Jobs are available in regional areas. If you can't afford to buy a house in the city, move out to a country town. Put your head down—you'll get a job, you'll do well for yourself and you'll be most welcome and will fit into those country communities.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Williams. If only you had a 1800 number!

Senator BERNARDI (South Australia) (18:05): Governments of all persuasions in the last 10 years have not done a service to our country. By whatever metric you want to balance it, you will find that the Australian people are being disadvantaged. When they talk about tax reform in this place, make no mistake, I say to the good people of Australia, that they are talking about putting your taxes up. It has zero to do with making your taxes lower or reducing your cost of living. What they are looking to do is to get more of your money to pay for more programs to try and fix the problems they've created from their previous programs and ideology that goes with it. It's an extraordinary assessment and indictment of where we are in politics today.

If you want to have a fairer tax system, you will lower taxes. Lowering taxes will mean there is less incentive for people to try and avoid them through complicated schemes or through negative gearing. You will encourage a greater proportion of the population to actually pay some tax. About half the Australian people get more in benefits than they pay in taxation. It is not because there are no jobs out there. It is because we are incentivising people to do the wrong thing. This is what leadership is all about: determining that government is too big, too cumbersome, too expensive. It is not the cure to the problems that we face. It is the problem that we face.

If you want any further indication of that, you have to examine the electricity market in this country. It is a debacle. Every single issue related to it is caused by government regulation, government intervention and government involvement. They will not acknowledge that. They still cook up schemes to try and fix the problems they've created, and it is making it worse. If you want fairer, simpler taxes, if you want fairer, simpler government, you need to vote for the Australian Conservatives.

Senator POLLEY (Tasmania) (18:08): I'd like to make a contribution to this debate. I think we have to start from the very beginning. When this Prime Minister went to the last election, he promised that he would be delivering leadership. He promised at the election that there would be an agile, innovative and adult government. We're still waiting for that to emerge. The Prime Minister wants credit for just saying that things are going to happen when, in fact, this is just rhetoric. It's fine to say that, but what the Australian people are looking for is leadership. They are looking for the leadership that was promised to them by this Prime Minister, but he has failed. He has failed miserably in being able to bring any solutions when it comes to the inequality in this country, when it comes to stimulating the economy, when it comes to creating full-time jobs. It's alright to come in here, as Senator Williams has, and quote the figures, but what we are seeing out in regional and rural Australia is very different to what is really being delivered by this government.

What we do know from this Prime Minister, though, is that he looks after his mates. He looks after the top end of town. But if you want to look for a future government that is actually going to deliver in terms of changes and real reforms around taxation, about making housing affordable for young Australians and young families trying to get their foothold into the housing market, that will be a Shorten Labor government. We have already been out there talking about negative gearing and the changes that need to happen in relation to capital gains tax. We have put this out for the community so they will know well in advance what our economic policies are going to deliver for their futures, and for those families trying to get into the housing market. This government is paralysed by the dysfunction that we see day by day in this place, and that the Australian people see. And it's not just me saying that. I won't do what Senator Abetz normally does and say 'Guess who says this?'—I will quote from a newspaper report of the Liberal-National Party caucus meeting this morning:

Malcolm Turnbull has fended off a backbench complaint about the government’s dire position in the opinion polls in the wake of this week’s Newspoll showing the Coalition is trailing Labor …

The important thing here is that this was a Queensland Liberal Party backbencher, and a very experienced former minister, I might add. He rose in the coalition joint party room on Tuesday morning to ask the Prime Minister why the government was doing so poorly with voters if the economic policies were supposedly working. It is not just an issue being raised by people on this side. People out in the community talk to me on a regular basis about how difficult it is, about not getting a fair go and about their concerns over housing affordability, whether it's in Tasmania or around the rest of the country. I was in WA last week and the same issues were raised. This is a former minister. Okay, he was sacked twice from the ministry but, nevertheless, he was a minister. If he is asking those sorts of questions in their caucus room, then surely this government—surely the Prime Minister, and surely the Treasurer—can come up with some sort of visionary outlook for the future direction that they need to take to make our taxation system fairer.

When we are talking about taxation, every time Mr Morrison complains about tax increases millions of low- and middle-income earners need to remember he wants to increase your income tax. That's the reality. Every time Mr Morrison complains about wage growth, Australians need to remember he backs a cut to your penalty rates. Every time Mr Morrison talks about Labor's economic or tax policy, he just invents new numbers. We know that. They made these outlandish claims about the Parliamentary Budget Office doing the calculations on our policies, and they were complete and utter lies. They are so desperate; they are so dysfunctional. They are a chaotic government without any leadership. The Prime Minister tells us he's a strong leader—well, in this place he won't show the leadership that he needs to in ensuring Senator Nash steps out of cabinet and goes to the backbench until her citizenship is established by the High Court. He is a weak leader. (Time expired)

Senator PATERSON (Victoria) (18:13): Judging by that contribution, Senator Polley's knowledge of how the coalition party room works is about as detailed as my knowledge of how the Labor Party caucus works, but at least I know that, when they meet, it is called a caucus and when we meet it is called a party room—but I'm sure Senator Polley's next contribution on this matter will use the correct terminology. I'm very pleased for a couple of reasons to contribute to this discussion tonight. First of all, I'm really heartened by the Labor Party's new-found concern for and focus on fixing the budget. It's not a concern that they showed very much when they were in government, obviously, given that they turned what was the best set of books in the Western world into the worst set of books in the Western world in just a few years, but obviously it is a concern that they have now discovered. I have to say, it is not really a concern they've even had in their first few years in opposition after losing office, because they have fought tooth and nail every single step of the way to deny our choices to fix the budget and to stifle our attempts to bring the budget back into shape. I am pleased to see they now have a concern about fixing the budget. Perhaps we will see in this new-found attitude from the Labor Party a willingness to support some of the savings measures that the government has proposed but have not been successful with in this chamber, in part due to their opposition.

Perhaps the government should bring back to the Senate some savings initiatives that were previously rejected by the Senate, given the Labor Party's new-found concern for this issue.

And they should be concerned about this issue, as we all should be concerned about this issue, because there is nothing fair at all about giving the next generation the obligations that this generation weren't able to meet. There's nothing moral or fair about expecting our children and grandchildren to pick up the tab for the lifestyle that we are leading today and for the expenses that we have failed to meet. Every time the government runs a budget deficit we are spending money on ourselves today that we have failed to fund adequately. I believe that is a very unfair thing. And I'm sure, with the Labor Party's concern about budget fairness, that they will soon reverse their opposition to our savings initiatives and support them to ensure that we can return the budget to surplus more quickly.

I'm also pleased to know that they want to make the tax system fairer, although I am concerned that their policy proposals to do so are somewhat inconsistent with that goal. There is nothing fair about increasing taxes by $150 billion, as the Labor Party propose to do. They propose to do so by increasing taxes on small business. Do we really think it's fair to increase taxes on small business, as well as medium and large businesses, to the tune of $65 billion by not supporting the rest of our Enterprise Tax Plan and reversing the existing tax cuts that we have already delivered to small business as part of our Enterprise Tax Plan? They're planning to increase taxes on housing by $32 billion by scrapping negative gearing, about which I will have more to say in a moment. They're planning to increase taxes by $13 billion by increasing the capital gains tax, which, again, I will have more to say about in a moment. They're planning to increase taxes on family trusts—or, more accurately, small businesses and eventually, no doubt, farmers as well—by $15 billion. They're proposing to increase income taxes on some of the hardest working and most productive Australians by $22 billion. And of course they propose to raise $20 billion more in superannuation than the government currently is, although they haven't specified exactly how they're going to do that.

So, with more than $150 billion of tax increases, I think we are entitled to ask how that is delivering a fairer tax system. How is slugging the Australian people with more tax than they already pay—which, frankly, I think is very high by world standards and higher than I would like it to be—a fair thing to do? If we are to ensure that the tax system is more fair, there is one way we can do that, and that is by cutting taxes. I'm proud to be part of a government that has started to do that, and I look forward to the government being able to do so even more in the future when the budget returns to a state that allows that. Of course, that process will be expedited by hopefully the opposition's newfound position of supporting savings measures in the Senate.

But of course if we want to cut taxes in a fair way then we have to look at who currently pays taxes and who pays the most taxes. It's only logical that those who are currently shouldering the biggest burden of tax should be those who receive the first and most significant tax cuts if such cuts are to come. I'd like all Australians to have a tax cut, but I'd especially like those Australians who are shouldering a particularly heavy burden of tax at the moment to receive a tax cut, and that is particularly those taxpayers who are in the pay-as-you-go tax system who have high incomes and an especially highly taxed form of income.

This motion also relates to housing affordability, and they wouldn't be the Labor Party if they didn't think you could roll up a radical change to the tax system to address an unrelated social problem, which is the very serious problem of housing affordability. All the best international evidence shows, as I have said in debates like this before and as Senator Williams alluded to in his contribution earlier, that the most significant factor in the affordability of housing is not the price of the house itself but the price of the land on which the house sits. The best thing any government can do to ensure that housing becomes more affordable is to make that land more affordable. And how do you make land more affordable? You make more land available. That will increase the supply of land and decrease the price of land. Unfortunately, that's not something that's within the remit of the federal government to control. That's something that state governments control. And I note for the record that the majority of those governments are of the Labor Party persuasion. So perhaps this motion today is intended to shame those state Labor governments into releasing more land so that they the supply of housing can be increased and prices can be reduced so that young people who want to enter the housing market—my generation, many of my friends among them—can do so in a more affordable way.

Finally, we've seen in this debate, as we often do at these times, references to inequality, the catchcry of the Labor Party, which they seem to have picked up from the Greens. There was a very timely research note put out last week—a parliamentary research brief—by the good people at the Institute of Public Affairs, who, some senators will know, I have an association with as my former employer. Daniel Wild published an excellent piece on four facts about inequality in Australia. In the interests of full disclosure, I did not work with Mr Wild directly; he joined the IPA after I left. He published a number of really pertinent facts about the inequality debate, the most important of which is the fact that inequality, as measured by the most academically accepted and reliable measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, has not increased in Australia; in fact, it's decreased. When you rely on both ABS measures and the superior—in Mr Wild's view—HILDA measures, which I agree are a more a reliable source, income inequality is shown to have decreased—slightly, I admit—from 2001, where it was 0.31, to 0.30 in 2015. That is a positive development.

It is also worth pointing out that although Australia has wealth which is distributed in an unequal way—like all countries that have a free enterprise system do to some extent—by world standards we are a country with very equally distributed wealth. In fact, in the distribution of wealth we are the third most equal country in the developed world, behind only Japan and Belgium. That's according to a recent Credit Suisse report. We are more equal than New Zealand, France, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, United States and Denmark. That is an impressive achievement for Australia.

Senator BURSTON (New South Wales) (18:21): I would like to thank the Ecuadorian senator for bringing attention to these problems her party has worked so hard to create. Let's not forget that it was the Labor Party that wrecked our budget in the first place with cash handouts for dead people and pink batts that burnt down houses and killed people. The Rudd government shovelled money out of the door, literally throwing away money for the sake of it. They blew a $22 billion surplus left by the Howard government. This was mad, reckless spending with no economic justification. The Keynesian arguments imported from America never applied to Australia, as we were never in a liquidity trap.

Now the Labor Party finally wake up to the fact that the budget they broke needs fixing—now that it is someone else's problem. They still will never support even a dollar being trimmed from our bloated welfare budget. They are no longer the party for working Australians. They now represent higher taxes and handouts. In Labor's world, all the work of budget repair will be done with new taxes, paid for by the working Australians they used to represent. They want to bring back the carbon tax—literally a tax on the air that we breathe—to stop the ocean rising a few millimetres in the next hundred years. This will raise electricity prices beyond the reach of many Australians. They want to levy new taxes on family trusts, which are used by virtually every family business in Australia. That's what you get from Labor when you try to earn a buck and help out your family, but if you sit on your bum, shoot up ice and demand a disability pension, don't worry: they'll be right in your corner.

Labor says they want to make housing affordable, but look what they do: they strangle the housing supply with regulations and green tape. At the same time, whenever they are in government they flood this country with immigrants and sell Australia piece by piece to foreign interests. You are never going to make housing affordable by supporting massive immigration and making more and more people fight over less and less.

Once again, thank you to Senator Gallagher for using some of her little remaining time in parliament to draw attention to these issues. The best way we can get started on fixing them is by never sending another vote in Labor's direction ever again.

Senator McALLISTER (New South Wales—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (18:23): Last week the Reserve Bank issued its 2017-18 corporate plan. No doubt everybody here had this marked in their calendar. It makes for interesting reading because it sets out what the RBA thinks are the key risks for its monetary policy functions in the year ahead. It draws attention to two particularly interesting sets of risks. The first is slow wages growth. The RBA identified, with classic economist understatement, that wage growth has declined to low levels in recent years. In fact, over the last year, overall annual wage price index growth has been at almost exactly 1.9 per cent. This is the lowest figure recorded by the ABS since it began the data series in the nineties. Private sector real wages have been negative. In other words, private sector wage earners are now worse off than they were 12 months ago.

The second set of interesting risks identified by the RBA relate to household debt. The RBA notes that there has been a substantial build-up in household debt, and it recognises that the high debt levels mean that monetary policies' ability to stimulate growth may be more limited than in the past. Let's be clear about what that refers to. Housing debt is now so high that the Reserve Bank is worried that it can't use interest rates to stave off a recession. The RBA is right to be concerned about debt. We are taking on more. Average home debt has doubled in real terms since the early 2000s. We're also taking longer to pay it off. Since 1990, the number of people with a mortgage debt has doubled in the 45-to-55 age group and has tripled in the 55-to-65 age group. People are entering retirement with mortgage debt. People who can't afford that level of debt are being locked out altogether from the housing market, and the rate of home ownership for under 40s is 50 per cent less than what it was in the early 2000s. Those are the two key risks highlighted by the RBA—wage growth and housing affordability.

There's a lot in the economy that you can't control when you're in government. It's the worst-kept secret in Canberra. There are commodity price spikes, global recessions and cyclones that wipe out entire banana crops. But what about wages? You can do something about wages and housing affordability, but this government has not only refused to act but also refuses to even admit that these things are a problem. We will never forget that the former Treasurer's solution for housing affordability was to 'get a better job' or that the Minister for Finance, until recently, just denied that there was any kind of demand problem in housing. We shouldn't forget that, at the same time as the RBA is talking about the problems posed by slow wages growth, this government has been reducing incomes for the most vulnerable. It's been cutting penalty rates, cutting benefits and cutting payments. Its only solution for jobs and growth seems to be corporate tax cuts that deliver nothing more than dividends and share buybacks.

The Treasurer is still filling out the practise exercises from the back of a 1987 economics textbook. Today's economic problems are different, but the problem is that this government is so fixated on fighting the class war from decades ago that it cannot act on the issues that are facing people today. It cannot act on housing affordability, it cannot act on slow wages growth and it will not act on the root cause of soaring electricity prices. We know what the solutions to these problems are—reform to negative gearing to tackle the distortion of investment into that sector, a fairer tax system and empowering workers to bargain for higher wages. But what we also know is that this government will never have the vision to put those things in place.

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