The PRESIDENT (10:01): I remind senators the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. There being none, I will call the Clerk.

Senator HANSON (Queensland) (10:01): The purpose of this legislation is to give parents the legal right to protect their children from indoctrination at school. Educators argue there is no need for legislation to protect children from indoctrination because schoolchildren can use their critical thinking skills. That is a cop-out, because students are no match for an adult using their positional power to instruct. Parents have the responsibility to decide how their children will be educated, provided it is in the best interests of the children. Parents want their children educated, not indoctrinated.

Firstly, the bill seeks to prevent indoctrination by placing an obligation on the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to develop a balanced curriculum for states and territories to adopt. This is currently not the case in many subject areas, including climate. The current climate curriculum states as fact that near-surface temperatures are increasing, sea levels are rising and mountain glaciers are melting. Further, the Australian curriculum says most agree that human activity is responsible for the majority of measured global warming. Climate science is far from settled, however, with no-one knowing the climate's sensitivity to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Secondly, the bill seeks to tie federal education funding to the existence of state and territory legislation which prohibits indoctrination in schools. Gender fluidity theory is widely taught in schools, even though it is a medical and scientific fact that inheritance from your father of a Y chromosome makes you a biological male and inheritance from your father of an X chromosome makes you a biological female. Most parents do not support the promotion of gender fluidity theory being taught in schools, and they are quite right because it is dangerous. Parents can move their children to another school or homeschool them, but they ought to have the right to challenge indoctrination when it occurs.

I am going to use climate studies and gender studies as two examples of why we need the laws proposed in this bill. In 2007, Mr Stewart Dimmock challenged the way climate studies were being taught in English secondary schools, where the government had beliefs identical to the ones now being taught to our children. The court had the power to look at Mr Dimmock's concerns because sections 406 and 407 of the UK Education Act 1996 dealt with indoctrination in schools. The case concerned teaching materials described as 'the English secondary schools climate pack', which included Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth.

Two graphs presented in the film relate to a 650,000-year time period. One graph shows increasing CO2 and the other increasing temperature. Al Gore says the two graphs provide evidence that increasing CO2 has caused increasing global temperature. The judge did not agree, and found that the two graphs simply showed increasing CO2 and increasing temperature had occurred over the same time period. The two graphs equally support the two opposing theories at the centre of the climate debate, which are, firstly, increasing CO2 is causing an increase in global temperature and, secondly, increase global temperature is causing increasing CO2. Either Al Gore made an interpretative mistake or, like the writers of the Australian curriculum, decided to support one of the theories about global warming.

Al Gore is a climate crusader with no obligation to present both sides of the debate. In the UK, teachers in schools are obliged to present verifiable facts and provide a balanced presentation of theories which explain those facts. Unfortunately, Australian teachers in schools are not under the same legal obligation. The British government gave an undertaking to the court to correct all the factual areas in the film, including Al Gore's mistake.

Three years after the An Inconvenient Truth case finished and the judgement had been written, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, owned up to a shocking scientific fraud concerning the melting of the Himalayan glaciers. If the judge had known that a media release from an activist group was the source of the scientific claim that the Himalayan glaciers were melting, it would not have relied on the IPCC documents tendered to the court as evidence. Sadly, Australian teachers in schools are still relying on IPCC reports that make claims that are not supported by science. The IPCC is a repeat victim of dodgy scientists and dodgy science, meaning that the IPCC can no longer be considered an authoritative source on climate. The Australian climate curriculum would benefit from the study of the case of An Inconvenient Truth, glacier-gate and climate-gate scandals, because students need to be open to the possibility they will be misled and lied to by scientists.

So how did teachers and teacher unions in the United Kingdom respond to the findings of the high court of England? They were outraged that the teacher guidance notes were rewritten to include references to all the errors in the film. They were further outraged that the court found teachers were not experts in climate studies and would be required to warn pupils that there were other scientific opinions on global warming and that students should not necessarily accept the views in Al Gore's film. The largest teacher's union in Wales questioned the right of any judge to say what should be taught in schools and how. I expect this attitude is widespread here in Australia, because educators feel they know better than parents.

The growing lack of quality education provided means that some students are worried about the future of planet Earth. This indoctrinated young people believe the severity of the current bushfire season is attributable to man-made global warming, but, like Al Gore, they lack the necessary critical thinking or research skills to discover the real reason. The real reason for the tragic loss of live and property in the past few months is the direct result of the government's failure to reduce fuel on the floor of national parks and the government's failure to allow landowners to clear their properties. Exaggeration about global warming comes from groups like Extinction Rebellion, who want to replace capitalism with socialism. Their environmental interests are just a means to that end.

I now want to turn to gender theory indoctrination in schools, which involves some teachers in schools pushing the idea that a child's biological sex does not determine whether they are male or female. It is based on the theory of gender fluidity pioneered by Alfred Kinsey, who believed children were sexual from birth and that the age of consent should be lowered to seven. The fathers of transgender theory, Dr Harry Benjamin and Dr John Money, liked Dr Alfred Kinsey's theory of gender fluidity and his ideas. They ruined the lives of an unknown number of children, including the Reimer twins, but still some teachers and schools in Australia are attempting to encourage gender confusion among children. These teachers and schools have had some success, because gender confusion is increasing among young children and teenagers. Even the Australian Medical Association is worried about the dramatic increase in the number of children seeking hormone and surgical treatment for gender confusion. In Queensland it has been reported that the number of children and teenagers seeking hormone treatment has increased by 330 per cent in the past five years. The preoccupation with gender identity among some teachers and in some schools is correlated with an increase in children identifying as transgender, which is why I say these educators are transgendering our children.

How do educators create gender confusion at school? In Queensland, some teachers are reading stories like The Gender Fairy to four- and five-year-old children. The Gender Fairy shows young children that they can choose their gender because their body parts don't make them a boy or a girl. In Western Australia, some eight-year-olds are spending learning time dressing up as the opposite sex using a government supplied box of dress-up clothes. By the time these students are in year 9 they will have a new vocabulary based on gender diversity theory and they will have been taught the art of sex texting and advanced sexual techniques.

In Queensland the government has decided that parents cannot be allowed to know whether the safe schools program is being taught in a school their child attends. The Safe Schools Coalition has labelled Queensland parents homophobic and transphobic, and it says the government's decision to keep the program secret from parents is justified. Well, I don't agree. Advocates for the safe schools program say this program and others like it promote equality of opportunity and combat bullying at school. In practice, nothing could be further from the truth, because girls are being bullied into losing their rights. Students who do not show the required level of enthusiasm for the radical LGBTQI agenda, including materials like 'the genderbread person', are humiliated and embarrassed by teachers, according to reports from parents.

School policies in every state and territory are based on the belief it would be discriminatory to separate biological males from girls with whom they share the same gender identity. Transgender policies in the education system mirror policies underpinning the laws in Australia where biological sex has been redefined to include chosen gender identity. These policies provide a small number of transgender people with rights at the expense of the majority, particularly girls and women. The following recent case came before a Canadian court but could just as easily have come before the Human Rights Commission in Australia. Jessica Yaniv now identifies as a transgender woman. Jessica has also sought relationships with underage girls. In 2018, Jessica complained to the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal because several women in beauty salons had declined to provide waxing and other beautician services to Jessica's male genitals. Jessica argued that the women were guilty of transphobic discrimination. The case was lost in 2019, in part because the court found Jessica was motivated by money and revenge on South-East Asian women who held ideas hostile to LGBTQI people.

The point I want to make is that the redefinition of a person's biological sex as gender identity in law will be abused. Policymakers say they want to protect minorities. There is nothing wrong with that. But when educators protect the rights of a minority by stripping girls of their rights then something is wrong. We all see that in the decision of education bureaucrats who provide unisex toilets at the Fortitude Valley State Secondary College. I understand the school, which opened in 2020, has now changed its unisex toilet policy and returned to segregated toilets. This decision followed angry protests from parents and students. But that does not end the matter. The Queensland government needs to explain why boys and girls aged 12 and 13 had to give up their right to dignity, safety and privacy. It is to accommodate the needs of one transgender child who may attend the school. If the schools suggest that all they are doing is creating the same situation as the children have at home, I can tell them that that explanation met with outrage at another school. The decision to force children to use unisex toilets is just part of a larger plan to get children preoccupied with gender issues. Other policies which aid gender preoccupation include gender-neutral uniforms, library policies by gender theory affirming books and teachers putting gender theory stores on reading lists.

How did we get to this situation where schools are preoccupied with gender theory issues? It begins with the belief that our experience is rooted in our membership of a gender group, and that membership of that gender group makes it more likely we will suffer discrimination and oppression. These left-leaning beliefs see life as one long battle of identity groups for social justice. Identity politics causes division and undermines democracy, which is precisely what socialists and progressives want, because it undermines our democracy, which is based on common interests. We need to stop that kind of indoctrination at schools where it starts.

In 2017 President Trump rolled back the transgender rights put in place by Obama. We should do the same. Our children deserve an education that will allow them to reach their potential, and will, as the late Roger Scruton stated, 'provide society with a store of knowledge to be passed from one generation another'. We want our children educated for life, not indoctrinated so they can be controlled by others. We need laws to guarantee parents' rights to challenge indoctrination.

Australian 15-year-olds are falling behind their counterparts on global tests of literacy and numeracy. The curriculum is overcrowded. I suggest teachers in schools focus on the basics so our children don't leave school with skill levels three years behind their global counterparts. In my view, parents should be required to give their consent to their children's participation in the teaching of LGBTI+ theory. Parents do not have the right, but they can move their children to another school or homeschool them.

Senator CHANDLER (Tasmania) (10:16): Our schools play a central role in equipping young Australians with the knowledge and skills they will need to successfully participate in the workforce and make their own way in the world. This government understands that we need to ensure children are provided with the right skills and the right knowledge to get the best out of their education. The best way to ensure the Australian curriculum is working to provide this necessary knowledge and necessary skills base to Australian students is promoting discipline specific knowledge in key areas such as maths, science, English and technology. This government has a sharp focus on decluttering the curriculum where appropriate to ensure teachers can get on with teaching the fundamental skills to students—the skills that students will need to prepare them for the future.

We are committed to working with the states and the territories to support quality schooling for all students, and the provision of successful pathways to further education, training and employment once students complete their learning. The government is already working to ensure the Australian curriculum is providing students with the skills that they will need to have a successful education and success in the workforce and their community post education. There is no more important time for us to be considering this as right now when we are experiencing an economic crisis due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the federal government of the day, of any day, plays an important role in education nationally, it is vital, in considering this private senators' bill before us today, to be clear about the primary role of state governments to deliver education. The states run schools in their respective jurisdictions. Where there are instances of schools or individual teachers teaching something that is against the curriculum, or is just simply inappropriate or wrong, it's primarily the state governments and their education departments which need to take responsibility for putting a stop to that, and that is largely the issue that the government has with this bill and the method it is proposing for attempting to regulate content in schools around the country.

To ensure that the Australian curriculum is working for students, the Morrison coalition government formally commenced a review of the curriculum in July this year. The terms of reference were agreed at 12 June 2020 meeting of the Education Council of federal, state and territory education ministers. The review will be undertaken by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, ACARA. This review is an important step forward in addressing concerns that the Australian curriculum is not providing students with contemporary knowledge and essential skills to lift Australia's performance in literacy, numeracy and science. Given the central role which states play in delivering education, as I said earlier, having primary responsibility for running state schools, this seems to be the most appropriate way to improve the Australian curriculum and ensure that those improvements actually flow through to the students in schools regardless of which state they live in. This review will de-clutter the Australian curriculum so it better serves students' needs and promotes academic excellence.

ACARA has undertaken extensive research and monitoring of the existing curriculum and will be engaging with teachers and stakeholder groups. ACARA will report on its progress, with the initial learning areas of mathematics and technology to be considered by Education Council in June 2021 and all other learning areas in September 2021. The review of the curriculum, as I said, is an integral part, a very important part, of what the Australian government is doing to support quality education in Australia.

The government has concerns about the practical effects of what this Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill is proposing. The bill would give the Commonwealth the power to make federal education funding to a state or territory conditional on the state or territory having laws enforced that prohibit a staff member at a school promoting partisan views or activities to students and require a staff member of a school when teaching a subject to ensure that there is a balanced presentation of opposing views in relation to that subject.

I spoke in my maiden speech about my own experience with civics education from a wonderful teacher at my primary school who insisted that it was possible for us to learn about how Australian political systems and Australian parliaments operate without necessarily providing us with a partisan view on that operation, and I certainly stand by that. Students at school should not be subjected to partisan political views in a learning environment from any side of political thought. One of the most important reasons why we have civics education at school is so our young kids can learn about how politics operates and, I hope, later in life, determine their own views on what they think about the world and how they think the world operates; it shouldn't be imposed on them by someone providing that education.

Under Australia's constitutional arrangements, the states and territories have responsibility for education in their jurisdictions, and any compliance with the balanced presentation of opposing views proposed in the bill would fall to them in the first instance. But requiring the teaching of two different views on a range of issues also opens up the possibility of unintended consequences. We wouldn't want to see a situation where a teacher or a school has been teaching a particular subject absolutely correctly and appropriately but suddenly feels compelled by this legislation to also present an alternative interpretation or view which most parents would agree is clearly incorrect.

There are also legal considerations to take into account in regards to this proposed bill. This bill does not provide clarity on what constitutes a balanced presentation of opposing views, which is a subjective legal standard and, therefore, difficult to implement. The proposed amendments to the Australian Education Act 2013, I'm advised, run a substantial risk of being subject to constitutional and other legal challenges and may be difficult to interpret, implement, comply with, and enforce.

As I said earlier, it is important that state governments take responsibility for the content taught in their state schools. Parents have a right to expect that their children are being taught factual content, along with basic skills in core subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics and science. And as I said, there is no more important time for us to be considering the alignment of the skills and training that our young people receive in this country, and how those skills and that training will prepare them eventually for the workforce than during very difficult economic times that we now find ourselves in.

But, from time to time, we do see examples around the country where a school or individual teacher strays from this concept that children should be taught factual content—and parents, quite rightly, express concerns with that. One of the areas where I believe it is incredibly important for children to be taught factual, age-appropriate information is in the area of science and biology. I've spoken in the Senate a number of times previously about institutions and elements of our bureaucracy that repeatedly conflate gender identity with sex to the point where some of these bureaucrats can't even tell you what the definition of a woman is. There is very good reason for parents to be concerned about what will be taught to children in schools when government agencies like human rights commissions present misleading information about differences between the two sexes and the laws that are in place to protect sex based rights and services.

As an example that's been raised with me since I've taken an interest in this subject, the Queensland Human Rights Commission advises schools that it is not lawful for school athletics carnivals to operate on the basis of sex because an athletics carnival does not count as competitive sport. This is official advice from the Queensland Human Rights Commission to Queensland schools, yet it is so clearly wrong. Both the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act and the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act clearly allow for sport for children 12 years and older to be operated based on sex. It's absolutely beyond dispute that boys at that age have inherent biological advantages over girls, and to suggest that a school athletics carnival isn't competitive is just farcical.

We also know that there have been numerous examples of schools in Australia teaching students unapproved content about gender fluidity—materials like The Genderbread Person. Parents are entitled to be concerned about this when there is significant contention in the medical community about why there has been such dramatic rise in the number of young children—particularly, and sadly, girls—seeking medical intervention to block puberty or change their bodies to affirm their identified gender. So, in terms of schools having a responsibility to be accurate in what they teach and to avoid teaching opinion or activism and presenting it as fact, that is certainly a concern that is raised often with me and, I suspect, all parliamentarians, and I've spoken about these concerns in this place many, many times.

But this bill that we are debating here today does not seem to be the right way to deal with that issue. It's certainly important for parents to be engaged in their child's education and to be comfortable that what is being taught to their child is accurate and appropriate. To achieve that, there needs to be a joint approach between state governments, the federal government, education departments, schools, principals and teachers. But, given the legal issues that have been raised about the constitutionality of this bill that we're debating here today, as well as the practical considerations about how it could really be implemented, I do not think that this bill can be supported.

Senator GREEN (Queensland) (10:28): Labor opposes this bill, the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020. These amendments would undermine evidence based teaching in our schools and would allow the teaching of fringe conspiracy theories to Australian kids. The curriculum taught to Australian kids should be informed by evidence and expertise. While it's important for students to learn about opposing political views, this bill extends to opposing views on science and historic events as well and could theoretically include any event over which opposing views allegedly exist. Our kids need to be learning the facts about science and history, not about conspiracy theories. The bill is offensive to teachers, who, like other essential workers, have been working incredibly hard during this pandemic. This bill is damaging, poorly drafted and should not be passed.

It is not surprising, but it is disappointing, that One Nation are debating this bill today. When One Nation get an opportunity to present legislation to the national parliament, this is what they choose to prioritise. In the middle of a recession, in the middle of the worst jobs crisis since the Depression, all they care about are these tired culture wars. They're putting all of their energy into the content of education classes, but they go missing when Queenslanders are losing their jobs. Why aren't they talking about the hundreds of jobs lost in Rockhampton at the Central Queensland University? Why aren't they talking about the government's push to make mine workers permanent casuals? One Nation love to profess their support for workers, but, when they have a chance to actually help them, they present us with this.

This discussion on these issues is always devoid of fact and it's about spreading conspiracy theories, creating fear and division. We know what this bill is really about. We know from the contribution of the government senator before this what this bill is really about debating. We need to understand how we got to this point. What has led to the introduction of this bill and an environment where it would be considered possible to debate conspiracy theories in this parliament? We know part of Senator Hanson's motivation is to fuel outrage, which is self-serving and wholly aimed at whipping up Facebook clicks and media reporting. It is not about supporting Queenslanders.

But the other reason that we got here is this: it has become necessary for these crossbench senators to compete with the conservative views within the Liberal Party because the true Liberal Party is far from modern or liberal. These so-called modern Liberals are unable to stand up to the hard Right of their party room. The Liberal Party is being taken over by the hard Right, as we saw from media reports of branch stacking in the Victorian Liberal Party designed to punish and purge socially progressive MPs. Senator Hanson hasn't introduced this legislation in a vacuum. We know that there are climate change deniers in the Liberal party room. That is why they haven't taken any credible action on climate change ever. Liberal Senator Rennick has accused the Bureau of Meteorology of changing temperature records to fit a global warming agenda.

On this side of the chamber, we believe in science and we trust scientists. We don't try to peddle discredited conspiracy theories, but we know that that is happening in the Liberal party room. We also know that, while public support for marriage equality silenced many hard Right conservatives on gay relationships, the hard Right of the Liberal Party, jockeying to outdo each other when it comes to preselection, is still at its core deeply opposed to LGBTI equality. Since the COVID-19 crisis began, Liberal Senator Chandler has made at least two speeches in the Senate on these issues, trying to veil her transphobic views as faux feminist values. In her second reading speech on this bill, Senator Hanson said:

… when educators protect the rights of a minority by stripping girls of their rights then something is wrong.

Well, we know where Senator Chandler's getting her speeches from, because she said in a speech to the Senate:

I stand with JK Rowling and millions of women around the world who are determined to ensure our rights as women are not traded off in the name of diversity.

Liberal Senator Stoker has an active petition on her website. She says:

How can you stand up to the transgender agenda

She's asking people to sign this petition. She says on that website:

These issues are not hypothetical. They are coming up for debate in the parliament and in our public discourse all of the time.

Well, these debates are happening, but they are happening because the Liberal Party is having them, because they are giving speeches, creating petitions and endorsing views of this kind in the middle of an economic crisis, when youth unemployment is skyrocketing, especially in regional Australia, because fuelling self-serving outrage to protect their own jobs is more important to them than protecting the jobs of young Australians.

The biggest concern for young people and their parents right now is the huge surge in youth unemployment. They're concerned about how they're going to get a job, the quality of the TAFE course that they're considering or whether there will be enough university places for them. Parents and kids aren't sitting up at night worrying about the lack of conspiracy content in their local school; they're worrying about their jobs and whether their kids will have jobs in the future. Will they get the same opportunities that other generations have had?

It occurs to me that there may have been some contributions to this debate today that were incredibly hurtful to young people, especially LGBTI youth and their friends and their families, so I want to finish today on a positive note. Last Friday was Wear it Purple Day. Wear it Purple Day is about showing young LGBTIQ people that they have a right to be proud of who they are. It is about creating safe spaces in schools, universities, workplaces and public spaces to show young LGBTIQ people that they are seen and they are supported.

In Australia, 75 per cent of LGBTI youth will be bullied because of their identity, and 80 per cent of those people will experience that bullying at school. These kids are vulnerable. They are at risk of suicide. It was only three years ago that they watched a public debate take place about whether their relationships were worth the same as their peers', and we are here again debating their worthiness, their existence and their equality. I was one of those kids once, and now I am standing in the Senate to tell them this important message. They have every right to be proud of who they are, and they have every right to feel safe and to feel supported. If you're an LGBTI kid, it doesn't just get better; it gets really awesome. Labor opposes this bill.

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (10:37): I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak to the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020 which has been introduced by Senator Hanson of One Nation. The bill amends the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Act 2008 to require ACARA to ensure that school education provides what the bill refers to as 'a balanced presentation of opposing views on political, historical and scientific issues'. It also amends the Australian Education Act 2013 to make financial assistance to states and territories conditional on them having certain laws enforced that would also prohibit what Senator Hanson calls 'indoctrination' in schools.

The Greens vehemently oppose this bill. This bill is transphobic. This bill is antiscience. This bill has nothing to do with historical issues that Senator Hanson wants to talk about. Let's start at first principles. There is no doubt that there is benefit in ensuring that Australian schooling exposes students to diverse viewpoints and to diverse perspectives and enriches them through a comprehensive education. Students benefit from having their thinking challenged and from considering ideas and subjects through multiple lenses. But let's be clear that ensuring this is not the intention nor the anticipated outcome of this piece of legislation that we are debating here today. This is a dangerous and pathetic piece of legislation. There is no more or less to say about it. It is an attempt to force a rewrite of the curriculum to require teaching of climate denialism and harmful conservative ideas of gender and sexuality.

Senator Hanson's tabled second reading speech on this bill was not given much attention at the time—and probably for good reason—but, reading it back and listening to the senator this morning, it's clear how much of this push for so-called balance is driven by her contempt for transgender people. This is nasty stuff. This bill is pretty hate filled, and it will hurt and damage our LGBTIQ community. Here is the right-wing victim complex at its most paranoid and on display for all to see. Senator Hanson seems convinced that our schools are brainwashing children by teaching them about the science of climate change, for instance. Senator Hanson honestly believes that sinister education department officials are plotting to turn our children into communists and revolutionaries.

This bill is nothing more than a publicity stunt and a poorly considered attempt to bully teachers and curriculum developers into feeling they aren't doing their jobs unless they jam the curriculum full of right-wing conspiracy theories. Obviously neither Senator Hanson nor anyone in this chamber has any direct power over what goes into the curriculum. The curriculum should be based on independent evidence and expertise, not Senator Hanson's latest bigoted thought bubble. As for Senator Chandler, there is absolutely no reason for parents to be concerned about what is being taught in schools. I think this should be very clear to every person in this chamber.

This belongs nowhere but in the bin. Senator Hanson's spurious claims that human-caused climate change is unsubstantiated and that schools teach gender fluidity and realignment to infants can go with this bill in the bin. It's vital that every child learns the reality of the climate crisis, the truth of Australia's settler colonial past and how to have respectful relationships in the context of comprehensive sex education in schools. Teachers, working with educational experts, do a great job of supporting students, often working without the resources they need. They certainly don't need One Nation's meddling and bullying. The Greens oppose this bill.

Senator VAN (Victoria) (10:42): I also rise to speak on the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020. As my fellow senators—from this side of the chamber, at least—have already stated, the government will not be supporting this bill, no matter how well intentioned the senators from One Nation think they are being. That's not to say I don't have some sympathy for what they're trying to achieve. All too often I've had complaints from parents and heard from their children about being scared to death at school by lessons on climate change—not just the fact, but about how they should be scared—and scaring of children is not something that should happen in the classroom.

There is no doubt that we believe that schools, universities and vocational training institutions all play a central role in equipping all Australians with the knowledge and skills they all need in order to live and work successfully in the 21st century. In many ways the challenges of the current COVID-19 environment, with disrupted learning, remote classes and fragmented assessments, has meant that getting that education delivery right is fundamentally important for properly equipping Australians for the challenges of the modern world. But it is interesting that when you talk to parents there is still a strong emphasis from them on the key skills of reading, literacy and numeracy—or, as we used to say, reading, writing and 'rithmetic. As a result, the government is wary about a growing push for soft skills at the expense of disciplined, specific knowledge. We know that well-developed, deep subject-matter knowledge is the key to success in today's modern society.

As such, this government believes there needs to be a focus on providing the foundations for deep learning within Australia's national curriculum, equipping the next generation with the deep foundation skills needed. This can be done by simplifying and decluttering the education environment, focusing on the basics—as I said before, reading, literacy and numeracy—to ensure that Australia's children, especially those in the early years, to year 10, get the basics right. This simplifying of the learning environment not only ensures that children acquire the foundations for deep learning that will ensure that they gain the skills early to have successful professional lives but also supports teachers. This simplification ensures that teachers can get on with teaching the basics and frees them from excessive red tape—something I'm sure Senators Hanson and Roberts will be very supportive of.

This bill crafted by One Nation would preoperatively give the Commonwealth the power to make federal education funding to a state or territory conditional on that state having laws in force that require a number of things. Firstly, it would prohibit a staff member at a school from promoting partisan views or activities to students and would require a staff member at a school, when teaching a subject, to ensure that there is a balanced presentation of opposing views in relation to that subject. Unfortunately, the bill does not provide clarity on what constitutes a balanced presentation of opposing views. As I'm sure the good senators from Queensland know, the determination of what constitutes balance is a subjective test and is awfully difficult to implement even as a legal standard, let alone as a teaching standard.

The proposed amendments to the Australian Education Act 2013 put forward by Senator Hanson run a substantial risk of being subject to constitutional challenges. As I'm sure this chamber is aware, subjective tests are hard to prove and are difficult to interpret and comply with or enforce. One of the situations that we do not want to see with our education system is teachers wasting their time dealing with disgruntled parents who are upset about the level of balance provided within the classroom. By imposing such subjective tests, you are guaranteeing that teachers right across the country will be spending half their days justifying their classes' subject matter, rather than teaching children to justify their math problems. As we move into a world where STEM subjects are going to be more vital and more important, I know what I would rather our teachers be doing.

Under Australia's constitutional arrangements, state and territory governments are responsible for ensuring the delivery and regulation of school education to all children within the jurisdictions. That is why we must work in partnership with our state and territory counterparts to achieve the best results for our children—not dictating to them, as One Nation would wish the federal government to do. I'm not going to say that such a partnership is an easy thing. To get the balance right requires the involvement of governments, parents, teachers and, of course, the students themselves. However, it would never just focus back on the age-old debates of school funding—debates exacerbated by the Gillard government's much lauded, but never funded, Gonski review on school funding. As this government has done, it should focus on the content and quality of the education students are receiving and the skills and knowledge of those providing it.

That is why in 2017 the government commissioned the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools. The report called for a prioritisation of learning progressions for literacy and numeracy in curriculum development in the early years of schooling to ensure that the core foundations for learning are developed by all children by the age of eight. The report recognised that school education needs to maximise individual learning growth and attainment to ensure that every student is ready to succeed in a changing world. Following on from that process, the Foundation-Year 10 Australian Curriculum review formally commenced in July this year, despite the challenges of COVID-19 for the education system.

The terms of reference of this review were agreed at the 12 June 2020 meeting of the Education Council of federal, state and territory education ministers. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority is tasked to undertake this review. The review will declutter the Australian curriculum so it better serves students' needs and promotes academic excellence. Although the review aims to concentrate content in all learning areas, priority will be given to the primary years. This process is an important step forward in addressing an overcrowded curriculum and lifting Australia's performance in literacy, numeracy and science.

What this bill fails to do, though, is recognise that curriculum is only part of what makes a great education system. Part of it is also about those people who seek to have a career in teaching by encouraging them into the profession, ensuring proper training and rewarding those who achieve high standards in delivering that education. Despite the objections of some in the teaching unions, this government is committed to supporting teachers to go back to basics, focusing on literacy and numeracy and developing students' understanding of essential content. Without these foundational building blocks, it is difficult to develop strong educational outcomes down the track.

The Morrison government has implemented and continues to implement national reforms to improve the quality of initial teaching education. This includes reforms focused on strengthening selection requirements for those entering initial teacher education programs as well as providing confidence in those graduating from initial teacher education. All those studying teaching must meet clear literacy and numeracy benchmarks before graduation and, through the introduction of final year teaching performance assessments, demonstrate they have the practical skills required to be classroom ready. Even in these unprecedented times, maintaining an expectation of high-quality teaching is vitally important. As such, the requirement for initial teacher education students to meet the standard of the literacy and numeracy test prior to graduation remains in place. Under the National School Reform Agreement, all governments are working together to develop a national teacher workforce strategy, which will further strengthen the teaching workforce.

Many schools in regional, remote and low-socioeconomic areas experience significant challenges attracting staff and finding teachers with the subject expertise they need. The Australian government is investing $28.7 million in our future teaching workforce by funding the High Achieving Teachers Program. The program provides two alternative pathways into teaching for high-achieving university graduates. In 2020, 170 participants with experience and qualifications from a range of industries commenced the program. In 2021 and 2022, the program will attract and train a further 280 new teachers. These high-achieving individuals will work exclusively with schools experiencing teacher workforce shortages, including in regional, rural and remote communities. Unfortunately, COVID-19 has impacted the delivery of the program in schools in 2020. Providers are working with the Australian government, state and territory governments and partner schools to continue to support the education of Australian secondary school students through this unprecedented time.

As you can see, through the hard work of Minister Tehan and working in partnership with states, parents, community and students, the Morrison government is working to modernise, simplify and declutter the current education system and is working closely with industry to ensure that our children are equipped with the skills today for the jobs of tomorrow, bringing education back to the basics—reading, literacy and numeracy—and getting the foundations right for deep learning within key areas. The bill proposed by Senator Hanson does not support the government's agenda. It will do nothing to support the education of our children, and, as such, the government won't be supporting it.

Senator AYRES (New South Wales) (10:54): I had the opportunity this morning to listen to Senator Green's, Senator Faruqi's and Senator Van's speeches in relation to this bill, the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020, and I might just reflect briefly on Senator Van's contribution. I thought it was a thoughtful contribution to the debate. While I largely disagree with many of the conclusions that Senator Van reached, it underscored the importance of the way in which we disagree and how important it is in this place that we spend a bit of time reflecting carefully on what it is we're going to disagree about. I think it would be useful to have a debate about the curriculum in education and the balance between the hard skills that Senator Van was talking about—he said, colloquially, 'reading, writing and 'rithmetic' but I think he would concede that could go more broadly across the sciences, geography and a proper appreciation of English literature and the great things that can happen for students in the study of English literature—and how much we value critical thinking, the spirit of inquiry and research skills. Those are useful things that this place could spend its time debating and considering.

I also think that the contributions from speakers before me emphasised how difficult these unprecedented times and the necessary public health response have made it for students, particularly students in years 11 and 12. All of us in this place should send a message to those students and their teachers across the country, but particularly in Victoria, where uncertainty has made studying much harder—where accessing content and lessons through Zoom, or whatever the platform schools are using, has made their work more difficult—that we appreciate their work and wish them the best and that, no matter how this year and next year go, those students and their teachers will be supported.

Labor opposes this amendment bill because it undermines evidence based teaching. It would mandate the teaching of conspiracy theories in our schools. It appears to have, on the face of it, significant constitutional difficulties, and, even if you accept Senator Hanson's outline of the desired intent of the bill, it's very unlikely that it would be able to achieve its objectives. We in this place should be focused on the overall performance of our schools. We should be focused on equality of access to top-quality education. We should be focused on inclusion: including all of our students in a decent, high-quality education in a school system where they feel valued and supported and where they can make choices about deepening their study and acquiring the skills that will support them in their later lives. We should be about excellence, equity and participation.

This preoccupation by some with matters of sex, gender and climate change as the focus of what the parliament should be talking about is unnecessarily prurient. It is an effort by some to frighten people in the Australian community and create division and, indeed, hatred where there should be excellence, equality, inclusion and a focus on making sure all of our kids in the school system are looked after. That means low-income families, disadvantaged families and regional families should all have an equal go. All kids should be included, regardless of their gender or gender identity, their sexuality or their background. It is a confusing and challenging time for kids, particularly around issues of gender and sexuality. It is hard enough for adolescents, without making it worse, without us in this place making it tougher for kids.

The curriculum taught in our schools should be based on evidence and expertise. This amendment would undermine evidence. It would undermine evidence based teaching and would allow fringe conspiracy theories to be taught in our schools. The teaching of science is vital to our national interest. There should be more science, more maths and more evidence based material taught, not less. Now there comes from a fringe of conservative politics—a bit overrepresented in this place—a challenge to empiricism, a challenge to rationality in the post-Enlightenment era. These characters want to return to a sort of pre-Copernican and Middle Ages era where one person's superstition had as much value as scientific inquiry, and we should not indulge it. It might be in some people's temporary political interest to indulge it, but we should not indulge it.

We've seen over the past months the acceleration of climate change denialism being weaponised and fuelled by some in the Liberal and National Party. We've seen an acceleration in this unprecedented period of anti-vax conspiracy theories and 5G conspiracy theories. We've seen Mr Kelly, who's an enthusiastic proponent of conspiracy theories. We've seen his conduct over the course of the last few months. Never forget that Mr Kelly was Scott Morrison's preferred candidate in the recent Cook preselection. There was an enormous effort to overwhelm the local voters in Cook, who'd had enough of Mr Kelly's blatant—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fierravanti-Wells ): Sorry, Senator Ayres. I think you mean Hughes.

Senator AYRES: I do. I get my shire seats confused sometimes. Their boundaries change so often that it's sometimes difficult to know whether you're in Cook or whether you're in Hughes. Sometimes their local members appear indistinguishable, and one wonders whether the views of their local members are the same. Why would Mr Morrison have fought so hard to get this climate-denying, hydroxychloroquine conspiracy theorist back into the parliament over the views of locals otherwise? It's hard to understand.

Mr Kelly, of course, threatened to go to the crossbench—arguably, where he belongs. He's done enormous damage to the standing of the Liberal Party, and the damage continues. He has spent a significant part of his parliamentary career on late-night television as an avid climate denialist. He's probably done more than anybody in the House of Representatives to wreck successive governments' efforts to have a coherent energy policy in Australia. If you're worried about power bills going up, think about Craig Kelly and his climate denialism. If you're worried about emissions going up, think about the member for Hughes. If you're worried about investment in generation capacity going down, you can think about Mr Kelly again. He's done more than anybody else.

But, more concerning, more immediate is his conduct and behaviour in relation to conspiracy theories that undermine the public health effort. Last week he was promoting theories in relation to 'compulsory COVID vaccinations for everybody coming soon', which he posted. 'No, you are not dreaming, and this is not a sci-fi novel,' he said. That video's title, shared by the biggest oversharer of far-right memes in Australian politics, is, 'Bill Gates Says Everyone Has To Get His Vaccination'. The week before, he said that the Premier of Victoria should go to prison for 25 years.

There hasn't been a moment where the Minister for Health or the Prime Minister has rebuked Mr Kelly. No-one in the leadership of the Liberal Party has made any effort to send out a clear message that these sorts of ideas are rejected by the leadership and by the parliament in here. Nobody has done it. So you do wonder what the commitment of the Liberal Party and the National Party really is to science, what the commitment of the Liberal Party and the National Party really is to evidence and what the commitment of the Liberal Party and the National Party really is to focusing on the real needs and public confidence in the public health effort that is so needed to fight back against the COVID-19 virus.

Mr Kelly is more protected than the koala bear. His meme was shared by Mr Evans, a cook, who is an avid conspiracy theorist about 5G and all sorts of things. The health minister has declined to comment. Last week, there was an enormous effort in the House of Representatives to defend Mr Kelly from a censure motion brought on by Mr Bowen. Instead of rejecting this madness, the government has shielded Mr Kelly from criticism. Instead of clarifying the issues, the government has obscured the issues.

If Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party won't act in the interests of science and evidence, the school system becomes even more important. School students should leave school with the skills and the facts and critical thinking capacity to be able to reject this kind of behaviour. I have enormous respect for teachers all over the country who are working hard in our schools to deliver an inclusive and excellent education. The Liberal Party and the National Party think that teachers are the enemy, part of some cultural Marxist plot to undermine educational standards. We should be elevating teachers and supporting them, not denigrating them in this place.

There is a base political strategy at operation here. It's all about donations and clicks on the internet. It's not just a One Nation strategy; there are members of the government parties who engage in this behaviour, who want to frighten people and want to encourage fear and division. They make wild claims about what is taught in our schools, which on closer examination turn out not to be true. But the modus operandi is to just keep making the claim. The claim is made. It is refuted. And then we move on to the next claim. There is a bewildering blizzard of misinformation out there. The purpose here is not to change the law. The purpose is to add to the confusion. The Minister for Education should be there in the House of Representatives setting the record straight, and his representative here should be doing the same thing.

Haven't we made progress on some of these questions? Many Australians are uncomfortable with frank discussions of sex and gender. Fair enough. But the dial has shifted in the right direction. Kids feel included. They feel loved and looked after in our schools. Why on earth are people in this place making it harder? Why on earth are we trying to shift the dial back from acceptance to rejection? I realise that I've run out of time—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fierravanti-Wells ): Are you seeking leave to continue your remarks?

Senator AYRES: I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (11:10): Before I speak to the Freedom of Information Legislation Amendment (Improving Access and Transparency) Bill 2018, I want to briefly share some FOI philosophy. I'll quote from James Madison in 1822:

A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

We'll move forward 150 years to 1976, and one Malcolm Fraser, as the Prime Minister, said:

If the Australian electorate is to be able to make valid judgements on government policy it should have the greatest access to information possible. How can any community progress without continuing and informed and intelligent debate? How can there be debate without information?

Wise words.

People are granted access to information through our FOI Act. It provides, by way of statute, a default right to information. Indeed, it is for government to say why you can't have the information rather than for a citizen to say why they should. That is the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act 1982. Unfortunately the implementation of the act is broken. You just have to wander up to level 2 of this building and speak to journalists who want FOI information to help them do their job of keeping government to account. It's also necessary for accurate reporting. Yet many of them will tell you that it's a process that simply isn't worthwhile conducting. That's an indictment. If you ask constituents, they're uncomfortable about FOI as well. Some constituents just seek access to information about themselves, and they're entitled to do that. They're entitled to know what it is that government has on record about them. Indeed, the FOI Act does provide them with rights to annotate records if they think they are incorrect. But it's also necessary for citizens if they want to contribute to debates. I have helped constituents with FOI when they've been trying to understand why government is doing what it's doing. That can be at the local, state or federal government level. Of course, we're focused today on the federal government level. Unfortunately, what happens when you submit an FOI is that departments make cavalier claims that deny access and then seek to wear the applicant down through process, be it an internal review, an Information Commissioner review or extending up to the AAT.

The number of FOIs is rising. It's not like it's a dying requirement. In actual fact, people are more interested in information than they have been in the past. Look at the number of Information Commissioner reviews. Just to be sure that everyone understands what I'm talking about, I'm not talking about FOI applications but applications to the Information Commissioner when they are denied access. In 2011-12, there were 456 applications for an Information Commissioner review. In 2017-18, that number had almost doubled to 801 applications. Not all of those applications go to decision. Once an application has been submitted to the Information Commissioner, sometimes the department will reconsider. Indeed, throughout the process, they may reconsider. So we saw that, in 2011-12, whilst there were 456 applications, only about 25 applications went to final decision, and, in 2017-18, we were up to 123 decisions. That's almost one every couple of days, which is relevant to what I'm going to talk about a little bit later in terms of underresourcing of the Information Commissioner.

In terms of finalisation times, how long does it take to get access to FOI through the Information Commissioner? Typically, 30 days is the initial application time. You can then go through an internal review if you want to, or you can send it to the Information Commissioner if you've been denied access. About 39 per cent of applications are completed within 120 days, and 47 per cent are completed within six months. The number rises to 69 per cent by the time we're talking about reviews completed under nine months. For reviews completed under 12 months, it's 84 per cent. So, if you do go through this process—and these are 2017-18 numbers—you'll find that you may well be waiting a year. Indeed, 16 per cent of applications in 2017-18 were longer than a year in progression. That was 97 applications. So 97 people who wanted access to information and who wanted timely access to information were waiting for over a year for the Information Commissioner to complete her review. There's something wrong, and my bill seeks to deal with some of those things that are wrong.

The first thing my bill does is require the government to fill the three offices of the Australian Information Commissioner—that is, the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner and the Freedom of Information Commissioner. There are three commissioner positions in statute; unfortunately, only one of them is filled. The Australian Information Commissioner Bill passed in 2010. Professor McMillan, a very honourable law professor, was the Information Commissioner. He had James Popple as the FOI Commissioner, and Timothy Pilgrim was the Privacy Commissioner. They started up the office, they commenced doing training across government and they produced guidelines. They worked very hard. Then, in 2014, the Abbott government tried to disband the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. That was rejected by the Senate. And what happened then? The Abbott government starved them of funds. Many may recall articles in the paper about Professor McMillan working from home with almost no staff supporting him.

Thankfully, when he became Prime Minister, Mr Turnbull relented, and, since then, we have seen an increase in funding. However, we didn't ever fill those additional positions. From about 2014, the Information Commissioner was only one person, Mr Timothy Pilgrim—interestingly, a person without a degree. I'll talk about that shortly. Since March 2018, we've had Ms Angelene Falk. She does have a degree. Unfortunately, she's been loaded up with additional work relating to, for example, the Open Government Partnership and additional privacy tasks. You'll recall that, in relation to COVIDSafe, she was engaged to look at privacy related issues. She's got to be one of the hardest-working public servants around. I don't like the fact that Information Commissioner reviews take a long period of time, but I don't necessarily blame Ms Falk. I think she does the best she can. This is why we need to fix things. We do need to have three commissioners: the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner and a dedicated Freedom of Information Commissioner. The office is underresourced.

We should allow citizens, if they want to, having been dissatisfied with the department, to bypass the Information Commissioner, to pay their $920 and go straight to the AAT. That should be permitted and that's what this bill seeks to do. If the Information Commissioner gets to a point where she can't make a decision within 120 days, it should be a free pass to the AAT, which is a much larger and better-resourced organisation. That's what this bill asks.

This bill also prevents agencies from making submissions to FOI decision reviews that have not been advanced by the agency in its own decision-making process so that it can't switch exemptions halfway through. That would prevent the current practice, where you have an applicant who's quite successful, who eats away at a particular exemption, and the government just stick their hands up and say, 'We're going to make a new one.' I can see Senator Stoker sitting there quite concerned that I'm suggesting we interfere with the way in which merit reviews are run de novo because it's a legal principle, but, right now, there is abuse in this area. I'll give you one example. In October 2018, I made an FOI application made to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's office made a decision on a really complex and nuanced piece of law, an erroneous argument relating to jurisdiction. Of course, I went to the Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner looked at it over a period of time and it took her about six months to work out that she didn't want to touch it with a barge pole, so she denied the review for the purpose of allowing me to go to the AAT. So I take the matter to the AAT, I pay my $920 and, as soon as I get there, what do the Commonwealth do? They abandon the argument that they had. They realised it was so erroneous, it wasn't going to stand up and so presented another argument based around parliamentary privilege. Somehow, the executive were proposing a legal argument that parliamentary privilege must be recognised as protective of an action by the executive to prevent something being tabled and debated in the parliament.

The Bill of Rights in 1688 was signed after the hanging of King Charles, after a 1649 trial in Westminster Abbey by prosecutor Mr Cook with the approval of Mr Cromwell because they wanted to prevent the king from interfering with the parliament. Now we have the AGS arguing, for some reason, that parliamentary privilege somehow protects the king or the executive when he seeks to censor the parliament. Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, I remind people, says:

That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.

And yet they tried to abuse that. They wanted to mount an argument in relation to that, so the matter was elevated to a presidential member, to the Honourable Justice White. It turns out he knows a lot about parliamentary privilege. He dealt with the matter. So what happened the day before the hearing? The Commonwealth pulled out because that's their strategy. They raise an exemption then they abandon it. It's all about making sure that, when information is provided to a person, it's provided late, when the value of the information has diminished considerably. That matter is still before the AAT on just standard FOI stuff now, a decision is pending, and I suspect I'll be informing the chamber of that particular decision. I've lodged over 180 FOIs in my time as a senator and I know exactly the tactics that they play.

We also need to make sure that the FOI commissioner should have a legal degree. Mr Pilgrim did not. I don't cast any aspersions on Mr Pilgrim, but we should have lawyers sitting in the role of people who are making these decisions. It's a requirement of the law that the freedom of information commissioner has to, but we don't have one of those. It's filled by an Information Commissioner, who doesn't have to have a law degree. Angelene Falk, the current Information Commissioner, does. It also requires agencies to not publish FOIs until after about 10 days. After a journalist has gone through all of this, the last thing they want is to have their story taken away from them. We need 10 days in the legislation. We also need to make sure things like external costs are disclosed so we can see how much the government is spending trying to keep information from people.

This bill fixes a number of issues that slow down the FOI process. A well-informed citizenry is the lifeblood of democracy and, in all arenas of government, information—particularly timely information—is the currency of power. There's clear dissatisfaction amongst FOI users. Something needs to be done, and this bill is a good start.

Senator STOKER (Queensland) (11:25): Freedom of information is a topic that excites and thrills us all! Oh, hang on. Sorry. Wrong speech. FOI excites and thrills almost nobody, and yet it is really important to transparency and accountability of government. So here we are, speaking on the Freedom of Information Legislation Amendment (Improving Access and Transparency) Bill. The government supports the general intent of this bill to make government more transparent and more accountable, to assist citizens and the media to access information under the law and to improve the effectiveness of Australia's freedom-of-information laws. However, despite that good intention, the measures contained in this bill just don't achieve those objectives and, in some cases, would unnecessarily duplicate laws and obligations that already exist.

That's why a bipartisan report—Labor and the coalition working together—of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee recommended that this bill not be passed by the Senate, outlining a number of unnecessary and duplicative requirements. If it were the case that the coalition's support of this bill reflected some grand conspiracy to hide information—as, no doubt, some other senators would suggest—then it simply wouldn't have had that bipartisan attitude displayed. I think that's an important point to make.

Let's go through what the bill does and step through some of the reasons why it just doesn't do what it sets out to do. Firstly, the bill includes a requirement for the National Archives of Australia to publish more-detailed information about expenditure on legal advice for requests for records. On its face, it doesn't sound bad. But the requirement would largely duplicate existing reporting requirements for legal expenses that exist under the Legal Services Directions of 2017, while also creating a reporting obligation that would be inconsistent with whole-of-government arrangements that apply under those directions.

The second thing the bill does is require the Australian Information Commissioner to have legal qualifications to review freedom-of-information decisions. I'd suggest that's a requirement that is entirely unnecessary. It is often not essential for senior public servants or statutory officers who make decisions that have a legal impact to themselves hold legal qualifications. It's quite common practice for decisions to be made at all levels of the Public Service on technical matters or procedural matters that have a legal impact. But the idea that that means everyone in the Public Service should be a lawyer is one that is misplaced, indeed. Even if it were necessary to sometimes access legal information in order to make these decisions, it's also true to say that people within an office—for instance, the office of the information and privacy commissioner—might have legal qualifications to support the person who is running the show.

I'll give you an example. The former information and privacy commissioner, Mr Timothy Pilgrim—a person held in such high regard that he's been recognised with the Public Service Medal—successfully made a large number of freedom-of-information review decisions despite not having legal qualifications himself, and he did so in a manner that maintained the respect and dignity of the office and in a way that was, for all relevant purposes, legally sound. I can't help but think Australians would be less than enthused if we started applying more and more obligations to put more and more lawyers at every level of the public service, and I say that—full disclosure—being one myself.

Third, the requirement that agencies publish details about freedom of information requests on their FOI disclosure logs between 10 and 14 days after granting access, as opposed to current arrangements which require publication within 10 days, would actually slow down the publication of information on FOI disclosure logs. Additionally, nothing under the current FOI laws prevents an agency or minister from proactively releasing information, as long as there are no other legal restrictions preventing the release of that data. If this requirement was enacted, there could actually be uncertainty about whether the provision prevents an agency or a minister from otherwise releasing information that is subject to the provision before the 10-day minimum disclosure log publication time frame had expired. We wouldn't want to provide disincentives to the free disclosure of information.

Fourth, the bill exempts parliamentarians from charges under the Freedom of Information Act—criminal charges, that is. The existing public interest test that must be applied to freedom of information charges decisions is flexible enough to deal appropriately with the circumstance where we are dealing with requests from parliamentarians. Section 29(5) of the Freedom of Information Act provides that ministers and agencies, in responding to an applicant who is contesting a charge for access, must take into account 'whether the access to the document is in the general public interest' in determining whether or not reduce a charge. I doubt it could be said that exempting parliamentarians from criminal accountability of any kind would pass the pub test for Australians in the street—maybe that means Australians in the pub!

Fifth, the bill prevents agencies and ministers from relying on arguments that were not relied upon during an initial FOI access decision during a later Information Commissioner review. That proposal isn't consistent with the efficient and effective operation of the Information Commissioner review framework. If information has come to light by the time of that review then there's no obvious reason why that additional information shouldn't be able to be taken into account, in an effort to make a decision that is as good as is possible on the basis of the data that is to hand at that moment in time, particularly given that this process is in large part about avoiding the need to take matters like this to court. For example, the FOI Act provides that the purpose of an Information Commissioner review is to determine the correct or the preferable decision in the circumstances, and it allows the Information Commissioner to access all of the relevant information and material in making that review decision. Additionally, what's proposed at item 11 of this bill would frustrate the ability of an Information Commissioner to consider all relevant material to reach a correct and preferable decision when doing so on review.

Sixth, this bill allows applicants to apply directly to the AAT, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, for review of a freedom of information decision or to apply to the AAT where the Information Commissioner would take longer than 120 days to complete a review. This would significantly increase the AAT's already high workload and it would undermine the objective of facilitating FOI review decisions in a timely way. Any significant increase in the workload of the AAT resulting from the proposed amendments would adversely affect the AAT's ability to finalise matters that are already on its books. In turn, this is likely to lead to longer finalisation time frames and increased backlogs across the workload of the AAT, which, as we know, covers many different disciplines. Additionally, the proposal to make transfers exempt from AAT applications is inconsistent with the AAT's current fee-exemption reasons, which at the moment are with regard to matters like financial hardship or particular vulnerabilities of the applicant.

There's also scope for this provision to be misused by applicants who are seeking to avoid paying AAT application fees. Madam Acting Deputy President Fierravanti-Wells, you know I am always for reducing the cost of people's access to government; I'm always for reducing the cost to Australians of dealing with red tape. Indeed, we should be removing as much of that red tape as possible. But these particular fees do, at times, play an important role in deterring vexatious litigation, and that's important because the taxpayer bears the cost of running the courts and resourcing the people needed to deal with those many vexatious claims before the AAT.

I'll turn to the final thing that this bill does, which is to require agency annual reports to include information about external legal expenses that relate to freedom-of-information requests. Again, this would unnecessarily duplicate existing reporting arrangements which require agencies to provide this information to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. I recently touched on red tape, and this is another example of a place that simply doesn't need to be burdened even more. Each time we impose more reporting requirements, each time we impose more administrative burdens, there is a cost associated with it, and ultimately those costs are passed on to people who want to make FOI applications, people who want to use our legal system. So, while the imposition of this additional requirement may be well intentioned, we should tread with caution in circumstances where it really doesn't add anything to the information that is available on the public record.

The government remains steadfast in its support for transparency, for the value of the freedom-of-information arrangements and for providing substantial funding to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner so that it can do its job of making sure Australians can access important information from governments. For instance, in the 2018-19 budget $25.1 million was provided to enhance the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's enforcement capability and to enable it to effectively oversee increased Privacy Act penalties and new online privacy rules. A further $2.6 million has been committed, over five years, to ensure that expanded Medicare data-matching activities that occur do so in compliance with the Privacy Act and other laws that protect Medicare Benefits Schedule and Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule data.

While the objectives of transparency, accountability and freedom of information are objectives that are highly valued and shared by this government, the measures contained in this bill simply don't achieve those otherwise noble objectives. So I urge members of the Senate not to support this bill. That's not because we don't think transparency is important—of course we do—but because, sadly, this bill doesn't assist in achieving those important objectives.

Senator WATT (Queensland) (11:38): The Freedom of Information Legislation Amendment (Improving Access and Transparency) Bill 2018 seeks to address some of the failings of the FOI system as it has been operating for the past seven years under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. Clearly, Senator Patrick is frustrated about the way in which the government continues to trash the freedom-of-information system, and Labor shares Senator Patrick's frustration. There is no doubt that the freedom-of-information system, designed to make the government more accountable to the people who elected it, has been absolutely trashed over the past seven years of this government.

This government hates scrutiny. This government has contempt for basic notions of accountability. This is a government that prefers to operate in the shadows. It is not difficult to see why, because, every time sunlight does find a way in, Australians do not like what they see. Whether it's sports rorts, Angus Taylor's latest outrage, the awarding of contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars to companies headquartered in beach shacks or the government's shocking and scandalous record on aged care, the Morrison government does not want Australians to know what it is up to. Make no mistake: that is why the government hates our FOI laws and treats those laws with such contempt. That is also why the government continues to starve the Information Commissioner of resources—so that it takes the commissioner so long to review a rejected freedom-of-information request that the applicant just gives up.

Senator Scarr: Murray, is that why you're reading a majority of the report?

Senator WATT: If Senator Scarr chooses to listen to the rest of my contribution, he might have an answer to that question. I understand he's a bit agitated about FOI.

The Morrison government have resisted our FOI laws for the same reasons they resisted the banking royal commission. The Morrison government have resisted our FOI laws for the same reasons they have resisted establishing a genuine national integrity commission of the kind that Labor has pledged to create—because they fear transparency, fear accountability and fear the Australian public knowing what they are really up to.

This bill, introduced by Senator Patrick, is well intentioned, and many of the proposals it puts forward warrant close examination. For example, the bill would require the government to fill all three offices of the Australian Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner and the Freedom of Information Commissioner rather than forcing the information commission to fill all three roles as the current government is requiring it to do. That is something the Labor Party has been calling on the government to do for some time.

The bill would also allow FOI review applicants to elect to have their matter bypass the Information Commissioner, who can take more than a year to make a decision on controversial issues in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. While we understand why Senator Patrick has put forward that proposal, it is a proposal that, in our view, treats a symptom rather than addresses the underlying issue, which is that this government has starved the Australian Information Commissioner of the resources she needs to review FOI decisions. If we were to shift more of the burden of reviewing these decisions onto AAT, the government would simply do the same thing to the tribunal—starve the FOI division of resources. Fundamentally, the biggest problem with the current freedom-of-information system is not the law; it's the current government—a government that is at war with accountability, a government that is at war with transparency and a government that is at war with itself. Labor has a strong track record of respecting our FOI laws and will do so again if we are returned to government.

I will now say a little about Labor's proud record on FOI. We in Labor understand that freedom-of-information laws are an important aspect of a healthy democracy because they give the Australian public and media access to information about what the government, elected by the Australian people, is doing in their name. Labor have long championed FOI laws with the establishment of the Commonwealth FOI Act, a part of Labor's policy platform since 1972 when Gough Whitlam first called for such laws in a speech when he was opposition leader. Though these laws were not passed for another decade, it is yet another example of the reformist vision that characterised Gough Whitlam and reinforced his place in history as a great leader of this nation.

Since FOI laws were first introduced in Australia in the 1970s, Labor has worked to strengthen these laws to improve transparency in government and to champion the public's right to know. Prior to the 2007 election, the federal Labor Party made an election commitment to substantially overhaul the FOI Act as part of its policy platform to restore trust and integrity in government after the secrecy and abuses of public trust that characterised the later Howard years. Labor's commitments were set out in the policy document titled Government information: restoring trust and integrity.

When elected in 2007, Labor fulfilled its election commitment to restore the public's right to know. Labor engaged in extensive consultations on the proposed changes to our FOI laws in 2008 and 2009, including through a parliamentary inquiry by the Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee. The reforms were passed into law by parliament in May 2010. A key part of these improved laws was the establishment of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. This office was created to provide independent oversight of the FOI regime and to champion freedom of information across government. This reform was applauded by the public, by legal experts and by the media. In speaking on Labor's reforms to FOI laws in this place on 13 May 2010, Senator Ludwig noted that the passage of the FOI Act was a 'milestone for Australia'. He said:

The Rudd government continues to recognise that we are responsible and accountable to the people we serve. For this reason, when we were in opposition we committed to overhauling the FOI Act and we have delivered on this promise. This legislation expressly recognises that giving the Australian community access to government-held information strengthens Australia's representative democracy, recognises the role that this object serves to increase public participation in government processes and increases accountability in the government's activities.

But, since this Liberal government took power in 2013, they have been at war with freedom of information, at war with transparency, at war with accountability to the Australian people, who elected them, so Senator Patrick is to be congratulated for bringing forward this bill, which demonstrates his belief that FOI laws need to be strengthened and in the need to undo some of the harm that the Morrison government has done to our democracy in its trashing of FOI and its obsession with secrecy and cover-up. However, Senator Scarr, the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee examined this bill closely and, based on the expert evidence presented, the committee found that a number of the measures would not achieve their intended outcomes. Ultimately, the committee recommended against passing this bill. Labor accept the committee's recommendation and will not be supporting the bill at this time, but we look forward to further engagement with Senator Patrick on these important issues.

Senator WATERS (Queensland—Leader of the Australian Greens in the Senate) (11:47): I rise to speak on the Freedom of Information Legislation Amendment (Improving Access and Transparency) Bill 2018, and I do so in the context that this is the least transparent government in history. They do everything possible to resist scrutiny. They systematically obfuscate, and, when they're backed into a corner or people are getting dangerously close to an inconvenient truth, they try the dead cat strategy. Under this government it's freedom from information, rather than freedom of information. So we're very pleased this bill is coming on for debate today.

The suspension of parliament sittings this year has really emphasised the critical role that parliament plays as an oversight and accountability mechanism. FOI laws are a core component of a transparent and accountable government, and they allow timely access to information so that the community, the media and other political parties can understand and scrutinise government decisions. But the current FOI regime has been systematically undermined. Some applicants are having to wait more than 12 months and pay exorbitant fees only to receive heavily redacted documents. This is not how robust democracies are meant to work. The Greens believe that national FOI laws need to be strengthened to facilitate proper scrutiny and to encourage well-informed public debate on issues that affect the nation. This bill is a step in that direction, and we will be supporting it.

I note that FOI laws haven't been comprehensively reviewed since, I believe, 1994, so we actually need a full root-and-branch review. When the government made a commitment to the national action plan for open government in 2016 and then a commitment to the second national action plan in 2018, there was some hope for greater accountability, but, sadly, we've seen absolutely no action. In fact, we've gone backwards, and this continues to be one of the most secretive governments in Australia's history. They reject the premise of the question. It's the Canberra bubble. They don't answer questions, or they come back months and months later with answers that are so massaged and workshopped that they are meaningless. They refuse FOI requests or they redact them beyond utility. The other tactic that has been frequently used and abused in recent times is the delegation of decision-making functions to bodies like the national cabinet, the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and the COVID-19 Coordination Commission. Delegation to those sorts of bodies is making it harder and harder for the public to access information, because frequently those bodies are not subject to FOI laws.

In 2013, Dr Allan Hawke recommended a comprehensive review of Australia's FOI regime. Sadly, Dr Hawke's recommendations have been ignored—much as they were for our environmental laws, I might add. In fact, the Abbott government proposed abolishing the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which is of course the body that reviews FOI decisions, but the Senate blocked him from doing that. Abbott had to settle for slashing the information commissioner's funding. So they’ve now got fewer than half their previous staff, yet they have a 72 per cent increase in complaints. So, of course, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has been unable to properly discharge their functions. They are underresourced and overworked.

The Guardian's transparency project has described the culture of secrecy within government departments as being:

… aided by a flawed freedom of information regime beset by delays, understaffing and unnecessary obfuscation.

The key findings of the transparency project's research include the fact that at least 20 agencies have reduced the size of their FOI team. The Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility has rejected 99.4 per cent of the FOI requests that it has received. That's got to be a record. People will remember that this is the same body that approved lending Adani $1 billion in taxpayer funds and the same body that is currently working behind the scenes to support gas pipelines for this government's misguided gas led recovery.

The transparency project has also found that more than 2,000 FOI requests have taken longer than three months past the statutory time frame to be finalised and that the Department of Home Affairs is a serial offender in not meeting statutory time frames. Perhaps that won't surprise anyone. Many documents have lost relevance by the time they're released, if they are released at all.

In the past year, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has found that the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Human Services and the Australian Federal Police have unreasonably and inexplicably delayed FOI decisions, which raises concerns that those agencies are holding back information based on political cycles. The ANAO also found a 68.4 per cent increase since 2012 in the number of exemptions to FOI disclosure relied on by various agencies. The Department of the Environment and Energy was criticised for falling months behind in updating its FOI disclosure log. Thankfully—according to answers I've received to questions in estimates—that problem seems to have been rectified. Timely access to information should be the cornerstone of any government, no matter which political flavour it is. Yet this government is determined to hide information.

The Your Right to Know campaign, which was championed by media organisations, provided more examples of the sorts of information being denied to the public, including information about the scale of abuse and neglect in the aged-care sector, whether Australians are fighting as mercenaries in the bitter conflict in Yemen, communications between Australia and the UK about journalist Julian Assange, and awarding a $1 billion government travel contract to AOT, which is a subsidiary of Helloworld, which was run by then Treasurer Joe Hockey. He was a shareholder in Helloworld, and I think they also gave a freebie to Senator Cormann for a while there. FOI applications from journalists pursuing that story were repeatedly delayed on a number of different grounds.

Senator Scarr interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fierravanti-Wells ): Senator Scarr, I think you'll have an opportunity next to tip your own bucket.

Senator WATERS: I'll continue on. I didn't hear that interjection—it's one benefit of being remote; you don't get to hear all the wonderful interjections! Anyway, carrying on: the reasons for delay for FOI were multitudinous: first that it was commercial in confidence, then that it would compromise DFAT operations overseas, then that releasing the information would be contrary to the public interest and then that it was a complex case. After more than six months and an appeal, heavily redacted documents were finally released, but the delay meant that the 2016 election had already happened and the controversy had lost some of its significance.

Some of the other issues that the Your Right to Know campaign has emphasised have been kept hidden by poor FOI laws include details of kids being kept in adult watch houses, which sadly is still the case. Even a request for the menu from the Parliament House dining room was caught up in months and months of to and fro. It boggles the mind. Then of course we get to the persistent secrecy over political donations. While most states and territories have recognised the importance of transparency and require disclosure of donations within between seven and 21 days, political donations at the federal level can be kept secret for as long as 12 months. People would know that they get disclosed from 1 February every calendar year.

These remain prohibitive for small not-for-profits and for media. In a particularly egregious example, the Australian Conservation Foundation was asked to pay almost $500 for documents showing internal discussions on leaving climate change out of the government's 2015 Intergenerational report. After paying that fee, ACF got the documents with 241 of the 243 relevant pages deemed exempt and the remaining two pages partially redacted—and that cost almost 500 bucks. Without a robust FOI process, many details of concerning government behaviour come to light only through the bravery of whistleblowers—and of course our whistleblower protection legislation also needs to be strengthened—exposing sources and journalists relying on them to significant legal risk. Just ask Annika Smethurst, Daniel Oakes, Sam Clark, Witness K, Bernard Colleary, Richard Boyle and many others.

The culture of refusal and delay has resulted in a significantly higher workload for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, but they are chronically underfunded, and delays are banking up. In a response to a recent application for review submitted by my Senate colleague Senator Faruqi, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner said: 'You will be advised about the next steps in the information commission review process once your application has been assessed by a senior member of the FOI team. Unfortunately, the OAIC has received an increase in the number of IC review applications, and we're endeavouring to process these as soon as practicable. The assessment by a senior member of the FOI team can take eight to 12 weeks and sometimes longer, depending on the complexity of the issues raised in the IC review. Due to the number of IC review applications on hand, allocation to a review officer may take up to 12 months. The act does not specify a time for completion of an IC review. The time taken will depend on a number of factors, depending on the complexity of your review.'

Clearly a delay of up to 12 months to even allocate an application for review to a particular officer is absolutely outrageous and unjustifiable. Without additional support to both internal FOI officers and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, agencies have no real incentive to proactively share information with the Australian people—which I'm sure suits the government down to the ground. The chronically underfunded FOI regime that we have makes it next to impossible for the public to stay informed about what its government is up to. The Greens will be supporting this bill as a step in the right direction to making FOI laws work, to give Australians access to information and to not facilitate government's further hiding of information.

We will continue to call for measures to hold this government to account, whether that be through more strongly enforced and independently administered ministerial standards, lower thresholds and real-time disclosures for political donations, or a strong, independent federal corruption watchdog. This is the least transparent government in history. It's the Canberra bubble. It's the words: 'We reject the premise of the question.' 'Cabinet-in-confidence' has been such an overused exemption to our FOI laws. You wheel something through the cabinet room, out it goes again and, hey presto, 'We don't need to tell anyone about it.' In terms of the Prime Minister's ministerial standards, you wouldn't even know whether or not he's applying them, although, if you look at the litany of scandals, it's pretty clear they're not being applied. But the process is so opaque that you have to seek to find out when they've been enforced. You aren't told about the process that's been used. Sports rorts is a perfect example there; we still don't have the Gaetjens report. There is absolutely no transparency about the enforcement, or otherwise, of those ministerial standards.

We still have no federal corruption watchdog. It's been almost one year since the Greens bill for a federal corruption watchdog passed the Senate, and it still hasn't been brought on for debate in the House of Representatives. The government initially used the excuse that they were going to introduce their own bill. In February of last year, they described that bill as 'imminent'. So, 18 months ago, their integrity commission bill was imminent. When I asked the minister about this unjustifiable delay, his excuse was the global pandemic, which has been on foot for six months—yet the bill was 'imminent' 18 months ago. So this excuse absolutely does not hold water. This government just can't hack scrutiny. It wants its ministers to be able to continue to engage in disreputable conduct and, often, in conduct involving conflicts of interest, and it wants them to continue doing so with impunity. We've seen executive powers used far more than is safe and robust for our democracy in this calendar year. The least we can do is tighten up FOI laws to make sure that members of the public and the media can access the information that they need, when they need it, at an affordable price.

The Greens will be supporting this bill, and we commend it to the chamber.

Senator SCARR (Queensland) (12:02): It's a real shame that, on occasion, someone comes into this place and uses parliamentary privilege to gratuitously tip a bucket on someone else. It's a real shame on a number of levels. It's a shame because it denigrates everything else they say. As soon as any of us comes into this place and gratuitously tips a bucket on someone else, that detracts from everything else that is said—in this case, everything else that was said in the 15-minute speech that Senator Waters from my home state of Queensland just made. That's a real shame because, in that speech, there may have been some points for us all to reflect on, but the reality is that the opportunity was taken under parliamentary privilege to tip a bucket on, amongst others, the honourable Leader of the Government in the Senate. A whole shopping list of people had the bucket unceremoniously tipped upon them. That's a great shame, and I think my fellow senator from Queensland should reflect on that. That's all I have to say in response to her speech.

With respect to Senator Patrick, I have great regard and admiration for Senator Patrick. I think he performs an outstanding service in this place in raising issues which should be reflected upon by this place. He is an avid user of the Freedom of Information Act process.

Senator McKim interjecting—

Senator SCARR: There are no 'buts', Senator McKim. There are absolutely no 'buts'. I'll take that interjection. I, Senator Scarr, can disagree with someone on points of policy but also have respect for them. I have difficulty respecting people who come into this place and use parliamentary privilege to tip a bucket, but I have respect for Senator Patrick. He has used the FOI Act process with great accomplishment on a number of occasions, and he should be commended for that. In fact, in preparation for my contribution on this legislation, I actually read one of the more recent decisions Senator Patrick led the Information Commissioner to make with respect to the disclosure of information in relation to the national submarine project. It was certainly a good way to prepare myself for this debate and to understand the intricacies of freedom-of-information legislation. So I do commend him on his contribution to this debate. I commend him for the work he's done in relation to the bill. There are many themes and points which he's raised in his contribution which have the intent underlying this bill and that I agree with a lot of as well.

However, whilst there's that respect, as matters of policy there are things that I disagree with, and I will turn to those shortly. One point I would make, though, generally with respect to all the comments that have been made on this debate so far, is that senators should remember that the FOI Act process provides that commercial parties, third parties and private citizens have a right to raise objections with respect to the disclosure of information under the FOI Act processes. It is not just government. It is not just the executive that can raise issues with respect to the disclosure of information under the FOI Act. Third parties whose information is referred to in FOI Act applications can also object, and they have a right to object under the process under the FOI Act, as Senator Patrick would well know. That is consistent across all jurisdictions in Australia. They have a right to object, their objections need to be considered and the rule of law needs to apply. So it is simply not the case that this is only about the applicant and government. It also can concern third parties.

In the Naval Group case which I referred to earlier, Naval Group actually objected to the disclosure of some of that information that was the subject of Senator Patrick's application. Their objections had to be considered and given weight to, and ultimately a decision was made as the commissioner saw was appropriate under the act. So I think that is something we need to bear in mind in relation to this legislation.

With respect to the other senator from Queensland who made a contribution on this debate, Senator Watt, I can certainly respect his contribution to this debate far more than I can that of Senator Waters from the Greens. I say to Senator Watt that, whilst his boyhood hero, Gough Whitlam, no doubt supported FOI Act legislation, it was one of my heroes, Malcolm Fraser, who actually brought it home in 1982 in a Commonwealth sense. So it was actually the coalition government that introduced the FOI Act into the Australian parliament in 1982.

The second point I would like to make in relation to Senator Watt's contribution is on how he talked about resourcing. I think it's a key point, to be frank. It's absolutely a key point. If we are going to have an FOI Act regime, there needs to be appropriate resourcing provided for it. It doesn't matter who's in government; there needs to be that appropriate resourcing. When I read the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, page 9, paragraph 2.9 says:

When asked whether there needed to be more resources at both the early resolution stage, as well as at a later stage, to enable more Information Commissioner reviews to be finalised earlier, Ms Falk stated:

At this point in time, that's not what I'm seeing. I'm seeing that where I need to focus is on working with government to increase the offices resources to increase the capacity at the case-officer level and potentially, the executive level. If that were to be increased and then have a flow-on effect to more Information Commissioner reviews being required of the commissioner and that being something that's not manageable within other functions then that would be something that I would bring to the attention of government.

Those are the actual words from the Information Commissioner in the report. In my respectful view, they do not support the characterisation of this matter by Senator Watt, from my home state of Queensland.

Having responded to some of the contributions made by other senators in this place, I would now like to provide my own observations to the Senate with respect to this matter. Firstly, I believe and I believe passionately that freedom of information legislation at all levels of government is absolutely essential to the workings of an open, transparent liberal democracy. There is absolutely no question about that. I think it yields scrutiny of government, I think it yields informed debate and I think it gives the public knowledge and information in relation to government spending, which, of course, is the spending of taxpayers' money. So there is no argument from me with respect to the importance of Freedom of Information. I think we've seen case and case again where information has been divulged through the freedom of information process. It is a very powerful tool to keep the government and the executive—no matter what party—to account. In doing this, the Information Commissioner has a key role regarding the consideration of exemptions.

I think it's worthwhile noting that there are two types of exemptions. There's the unconditional exemption or the conditional exemption, which is subject to a public interest test. In relation to unconditional exemptions, these cover things such as matters affecting national security, the disclosure of trade secrets and federal cabinet documents. I share the reservations of some other speakers with respect to—at all levels of government, no matter what their political party—whether or not federal cabinet, or state cabinet in my home state of Queensland, exemptions had been used in a way that perhaps was not intended. With respect to the conditional exemptions these concern things such as information about deliberative processes. Coming back to Senator Patrick's most successful review of a decision that was one of the matters which was considered—

Opposition senators interjecting—

Senator SCARR: Five zero—I'm not surprised. You've had lots of practise! I'd be disappointed if you were less than five zero.

In relation to conditional exemptions, they have to be balanced against the public interest. The act does provide guidance with respect to that public interest weighting. On one hand you're looking at scrutiny and on the other hand you're looking as to whether or not things such as deliberative processes would be impacted in such a way as to mean it was against the public interest for information to be disclosed. On this point, we must remember what the factors are which should not be taken to be against the public interest in terms of disclosure. Factors which should not be taken into consideration include embarrassment, misunderstanding or confusion. They are not excuses for refusing to release information.

I commend the Information Commissioner in relation to the judgement I referred to before. I think it was a very good judgement. It certainly acted as a tutorial for me in terms of getting up to speed with this debate.

I now turn to the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee which recommended against adoption of this bill. However, as I've been saying during this contribution, it did say that there were elements of this bill which are certainly worthy, at least in terms of their intent. I have spoken about the need for there to be adequate resources with respect to the support of FOI Act processes. I think that is an important point.

One point Senator Patrick touched on was the need to have legal qualifications. I did reflect on this as I was reading the case. It seemed to me that, to some extent, at first blush what is perhaps needed more than a lawyer is common sense and practicality. I think with a lot of these concepts where someone will say, 'This is commercial-in-confidence' or 'This is something which is going to impact the deliberative processes of an executive agency' you really need a bit of common sense and practicality to make that assessment. I can't see any reason why, whoever the decision-maker is—provided that they have access to appropriate legal advice—that decision-maker can't actually make that decision based on common sense and practicality. Examples have been given with respect to a previous holder of the relevant commissioner position, Mr Timothy Pilgrim, who did not have a legal qualification but who apparently discharged his obligations quite professionally in this regard. So I don't agree that you need to have a legal qualification. I don't believe that lawyers are the answer to everything. Provided there is access to appropriate legal advice, in this case there could be some benefit in having someone who's got a bit more practical experience making a judgement as to whether or not something should be exempt or not exempt.

With respect to the timing on publication, I think Senator Patrick makes a very good point on the position of journalists. I think it is fair to say that, if a journalist has spent a terrific amount of time and invested resources making an FOI Act application, it would be disappointing for that journalist, having got to the end of the process, to have managed to procure the relevant documents through that process, for those documents to be dumped in the public domain without the journalist first having an opportunity to review them and to do whatever the journalist thought they should do with those documents.

However, as I understand it, there are guidelines in place which are meant to take into account factors such as that. I'm happy to hear whether or not those guidelines are working as they're intended to work, but certainly the information I've been provided with is that there are guidelines which are there in order to take into account matters relating to the timing of disclosure. But, in that regard, we should always remember that, once it has been decided that the document should be made public, it should then be made public, and, to some extent, it is then outside the realm of the original applicant. It's a matter for the polity at large; it's a matter for the community at large to have an interest in those documents being made public. I think the two elements need to be weighed, but, given how nuanced the discussion could be in a particular case, it is a matter which could be more appropriately dealt with in the guidelines.

With respect to charges, I do note that section 29(5) of the Freedom of Information Act provides that an applicant can contest a charge for access and that that will be considered on the basis of whether access is in the general public interest. Again, I'd be interested to know how that works in practice, but there is a process there for charges to be waived. I think there is a bit of tension—on one hand, seeking additional resources for Freedom of Information Act processes and, on the other hand, raising questions over whether or not there should be charges involved in terms of accessing those documents. Certainly, in some cases, Freedom of Information Act applications can be extremely wide-reaching and cover huge amounts of documents, and I think the two competing interests need to be balanced in a reasonable way.

The last point I'd like to make is with respect to referrals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. It does concern me that that proposal may simply be a matter of kicking the can down the jurisdictional road. So all you're doing is feeding into another traffic block, if you like, and congestion down the jurisdictional path. You're simply pushing the issue down to the AAT when, if there is an issue, it needs to be resolved earlier in the phase.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Scarr. Senator Chisholm, you've got about three minutes.

Senator CHISHOLM (Queensland) (12:17): I think that it is an opportune time to be having a debate on this issue, given the role parliament has played this year and the constraints within which we have been operating. Given the commentary that was provided last week by the Senate President, no less, around parliament and its ability to provide scrutiny of government, today is an opportune time to be discussing this bill. I acknowledge the words earlier of Senator Watt, who outlined Labor's position on this bill, and I also acknowledge the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee report into this, which was done in the last term of parliament, before I became a member of that committee.

I also want to acknowledge the work of Senator Patrick in this regard. Whilst I often find things that I disagree with Senator Patrick on and very rarely would I ever say anything nice about him inside or outside this chamber, he is well intentioned, very determined, relentless and, indeed, principled on these matters. Having dealt with him around OPDs and so forth in the last parliament, I know Senator Patrick always made a principled decision on those. He would provide support to those on every occasion that I went to him on something like that. So he is very consistent.

I want to talk a little bit about the work that I've been doing as the chair of the inquiry into the granting of sports funding. I think what we've seen through the course of this year is that the government, basically, have looked for every opportunity to avoid scrutiny, to avoid transparency and to avoid accountability, and they have exploited that. Of the examples that I have been involved with this year, there has been no better example than the inquiry into the granting of sports funding, which saw the resignation of a minister, no less. But still the government are reluctant to release the documents they have on their decision making. We still do not have access to the infamous colour coded spreadsheet. What was provided to us was a redacted copy from which all the information that is relevant to us doing our job was basically blacked out.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you, Senator Chisholm. The time for this debate has expired. You'll be in continuation.

Senator BIRMINGHAM (South Australia—Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) (12:20): I thank the Senate for the opportunity to speak in response to Senator Patrick's questions and take the opportunity to correct some of the fundamentally incorrect statements in his original motion that brought this matter to the chamber.

Senator Patrick notes that the government denied the Senate access to water-valuation documents used to inform the purchase of water from Eastern Australia Agriculture in 2017. That is not actually the case. The government complied with the order of 16 November 2017 and released documents to the Senate on 12 February 2018. To assert that the minister made an improper public interest immunity claim, as has been done, is simply false. The documents were released in a redacted form to protect the commercial interests of the Commonwealth. Assessments of the potential impact of releasing details of evaluations are made on a case-by-case basis. The valuation documents used to inform the purchase of overland flow water entitlements from Eastern Australia Agriculture in 2017 were assessed in February 2018 as containing commercially sensitive information.

It is now 2½ years since the tabling of those redacted documents—a significant period of time. Logically, valuations become less commercially sensitive as they become more dated and less relevant to any negotiations or decisions of the day being made by government. In light of this, in association with the request under the Freedom of Information Act, the department considered the commercial value of the documents now to have reduced, and so it recently released further material. It is simply a question of the passage of time since the documents were first tabled. If the Senate made the request via an order for the production of documents now, then the valuations would have been released without commercial information redacted, as they have been, under the Freedom of Information Act.

Despite the senator's efforts to undermine confidence in the recovery of water for the environment, he has been unable to identify any nefarious acts in relation to these purchases. More importantly, the Australian National Audit Office recently completed an audit of exactly the purchases that the senator is claiming were overpayments. They found that the department and government did not pay more than the market rate for that water. The Senate has ordered the government to explain why the Commonwealth paid more than the independent valuer's range. To repeat—and to be very clear—the government did not overpay. The ANAO found that all strategic water purchases, including the water purchased from Eastern Australia Agriculture, were at or below the market rate identified by independent market valuations. I quote from the Auditor-General's Audit report No. 2 2020-21: Performance audit:procurement of strategic water entitlements, page 9:

The price the department paid for water entitlements was equal to or less than the maximum price determined by valuations.

The valuation for standard overland flow entitlements of the type purchased provided a market-value range of $1,100 per megalitre to $2,300 per megalitre. The valuation also clearly stated that the department should be prepared to pay 10 to 30 per cent above the standard market rate—that is, up to $3,000 per megalitre—for 'properties of a high standard that have achieved above average levels of water use efficiency' in this region. In fact, the department paid less than the top end of the expanded valuation range provided for in the valuation and purchased some 28,740 megalitres of nominal overland flow entitlements for $2,745 per megalitre, reflecting the nature of the property. This was based on the department conducting a full and rigorous assessment of all available information. Senator Patrick and others in this place have desperately tried to besmirch the name of ministers and of the hardworking and dedicated public servants delivering the Basin Plan and undertaking the recovery of water. However, the ANAO investigated these matters and found no evidence of improper dealings.

Senator Patrick interjecting—

Senator BIRMINGHAM: I note Senator Patrick is attempting to besmirch the Auditor-General through interjections as well. What the senator should be mindful of are the environmental benefits for the Culgoa Floodplain and the Lower Balonne River, including the Narran Lakes, a Ramsar-listed wetland of international importance. That, as part of the Basin Plan, is what this water was purchased with an intent of delivering.

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder recently estimated that 95 gigalitres of water contributed to flows in the Lower Balonne at the start of 2020, including from the overland flow licences purchased from Eastern Australia Agriculture. These were the most significant inflows to the Narran Lakes since 2013. The Narran Lake Nature Reserve Ramsar site supports 40 migratory bird species, including 19 listed under international agreements, and threatened species such as the Australasian bittern, the Murray cod and winged peppercress.

As we recover from COVID-19, sites like this wetland of significant importance will attract domestic travellers—travellers who will see Australia's flora and fauna on display because of water recovered and used to benefit the environment because of this government's work in delivering the Basin Plan. More importantly than those tourism and travel benefits and economic dividends, of course, is the reality that the work under the Basin Plan to recover this water is delivering the environmental benefits intended through supporting wetlands of this world-class nature and the species that depend upon them.

Our government is getting on with the job of delivering the Basin Plan. We are delivering for the environment, for communities and for farmers, notwithstanding the many difficulties faced in the delivery of that plan. We will not be distracted by ill-founded beat-ups, conspiracy theories or those who seek to shamelessly and shamefully undermine confidence in the Basin Plan, which is one of the most important environmental measures this parliament has put in place.

Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (12:27): I move:

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

I want to talk about the context of this OPD, how we got there and some things that have happened along the way. I refer senators to my first speech, when I spoke of the work that the Senate does other than legislation. I said:

…probing and checking the administration of laws, of keeping itself and the public informed and of its requirement to insist on ministerial accountability for the government's administration. With words so relevant to us that they are quoted in Odgers, US President Woodrow Wilson described the informing role of the congress, stating:

It is the proper duty of a representative body to look diligently into every affair of government and to talk much about what it sees. It is meant to be the eyes and the voice, and to embody the wisdom and will of its constituents. Unless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country must be helpless to learn how it is being served …

The philosopher John Stuart Mill, quoted with approval in the High Court case of Egan and Willis, summarised the task as: … to watch and control the government: to throw the light of publicity on its acts …

Applied to the Senate, these principles make it clear that our role is not just to review and pass legislation. Indeed, as President Wilson stated, 'The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function.' In the House of Representatives the government has the majority, usually, and so that function is not performed there. Governments can never be relied on to supervise and scrutinise themselves. The Senate must take this role most seriously. The Constitution, particularly section 49, grants the Senate power to carry out this informing function.

I also talked about OPDs, and I said that all too often orders for the production of documents are being met with contempt. An order for the production of documents gets made, the government advances an argument for public interest immunity, however tenuous that argument might be, and, invariably, the Senate does not accept the public interest immunity claim but the government insists on it and refuses to provide the documents. Then the Senate does nothing except weaken itself. In those cases where the Senate arguments are strong for the documents to be produced, the Senate weakens itself by not using its powers to insist upon their production.

I just want to go to a few examples that are relevant to this government's allergy to transparency but also are criticisms of the Senate itself. On 17 November 2014, there was an OPD seeking access to any documents produced by macroeconomics.com.au as the result of a particular tender, including economic modelling and other examinations of the potential impact of the SEA 1000 submarine project on the Australian economy, amongst other subjects. That was refused to the Senate on the grounds it was cabinet-in-confidence. This is the cabinet-in-confidence document I'm holding. You might reasonably ask: how is Senator Patrick holding a cabinet-in-confidence document? The answer to that question is I got it under FOI. Sadly, I got it under FOI. It was denied to this chamber by this government as cabinet-in-confidence.

On 9 October 2016, the Senate made an order for the production of the design and mobilisation contract signed between the Commonwealth of Australia and DCNS on 30 September 2016. It was refused to the Senate on the grounds that it was commercially confidential and involved national security—and yet here I am holding it. It contains national security information, yet I am holding it here. How am I holding it? Because I got it under FOI. It was refused to the Senate, but I got it under FOI. Are you starting to see the pattern?

How about the future frigate contract? The tender went out. It was a tender where the government desperately did not want the Australian public to understand that they had sidelined two Australian companies. So there was an OPD in relation to this. There was an OPD on 4 September 2017 seeking access to the tender document. Again, I'm holding it here not because the government complied with the Senate's orders, not because the Senate insisted upon its right to receive the documents, but because I got it under FOI.

Here I have the Australian Industry Plan, a document you would think is quite reasonable to be in the public domain. It was Naval Group's commitment to what they would do with Australian industry were they to win the submarine contract, which they then, of course, did. When they won the competition, I asked to see this. I asked in the Senate, and the Senate gave me support, for an order for the production of documents to provide this and it was denied. Public interest immunity prevented me from getting access to it. Here is the decision of the Information Commissioner that eventually got it released to me. It did go further to the AAT, but eventually the Commonwealth backed down and agreed and we end up with it being in the public domain now. It's a sad state of affairs.

There was another OPD on 20 June 2018 that sought to find out what the price offered to Australia was for 12 French submarines. That's a reasonable thing to ask—to understand what their offer was, particularly in circumstances where we've got a project that went from something between $8 billion and $33 billion back in 2009 to $89 billion now. The Senate asked the government, by way of OPD, to hand over the documents. When they didn't, the minister—it was Minister Payne at the time, when she was defence minister—was asked to come and explain the circumstances. On 17 September 2018 we had a debate on why there was a public interest immunity claim. The government stood up—Senator Payne stood up and Senator Fawcett stood up—and gave the Senate a lecture on why this was confidential. I don't have that document, but what I do have in my hand is a decision made on the 13th of this month that requires the Department of Defence to hand it over to me. Again, the Senate ordered the production of this document. It was refused, and I'm about to get it under FOI—assuming the government doesn't appeal it, which would simply cost more and I'll get it anyway.

I also have a document here which is marked 'protected and sensitive'. It's an Auditor-General's report on the Army’s protected mobility vehicle—light. This is a document that the Attorney-General issued a section 37 certificate to censor the parliament from having. There's a matter before the AAT. I'm awaiting a decision on full release of this document, but, already, I have information in here that was denied to both houses of parliament because the Attorney-General issued a certificate saying it was sensitive. Can everyone see what's happening here? The Senate orders the production of documents so that it can do its job, it can do its oversight job—its most important job—and yet the documents don't get returned to us. They don't get returned to us, and then someone like me can go and get them under FOI.

That's exactly what happened in the case of the current motion that we're referring to—the valuation in relation to 'watergate' and the Clyde and Kiora properties. On 16 November 2017, the Senate ordered the production of water valuations. I know that because I lodged the motion on 15 November, my very first day in the Senate. We were refused the documents. Senator Birmingham is correct: some information flowed to us—in fact, quite a lot—but the critical information on what the actual valuations were was hidden. We went for a second round, and another set of documents were tabled on 26 October after a bit of negotiation with the government, but still the valuations were kept secret. Of course, the minister says: 'They were kept secret because they were confidential. They were commercially sensitive. These were valuations.' Anyone who buys a house knows that when you get a valuation on a house, sure, you might want to keep that hidden from the people you're purchasing it from, but after you've bought your house it's irrelevant. It has no meaning. The market price has been set.

In this instance, we had the Commonwealth purchasing water—$80 million worth of taxpayers' money for 29 gigalitres at a price of $2,745 per megalitre. Many thought, and still think, that that's expensive for overland flow water. There are other valuations in the same valley that say that water is worth nothing. Okay, so that's what they paid. They were open about that. They responded to questions. But I wanted to see the valuations. I wanted to see whether it fitted within the ranges recommended by the valuer, and they withheld it. They withheld it both in the OPD and in questioning. They withheld it when I used FOI with it as well. The department did not want to know that the value range was nothing like what they paid for it. The valuation, which I have here now, released to me under FOI—not under an order for production—says that the value should be somewhere between $1,100 and $2,300 per megalitre, yet we paid $2,745. Minister Birmingham makes the statement that somewhere in the valuation they were talking about paying between 10 and 30 per cent extra for higher-quality properties—and he is correct, it is in there. But it's in there as they work their way through trying to get to the final position, which they then state, which is really clear: this water is worth somewhere between $1,100 and $2,300. That includes all of those factors, including the view on whether or not it's worth 10 or 30 per cent more. The government paid outside of the value range. I will be asking questions. I'm sure there will be many people asking questions at estimates as to how they came to that conclusion, because it is either maladministration, incompetence or fraud. This is taxpayers' money. This might be embarrassing. I have the greatest respect for the Auditor-General, and I think there's been an error made. I will give him the opportunity to answer my questions as to how he thinks that it was within the range. It's clear it is not within the range if one looks at the valuation.

We're in the chamber talking about two things today. One of them is that we paid extra for water—extra taxpayers' money that didn't need to be spent. We should always be concerned about that. We're also in this chamber today talking about the ability of the Senate to do its job properly. There should never be a case where an OPD is made and denied on public interest grounds, when at some stage later a citizen is able to FOI it. It actually puts shame on the government and it puts shame on the Senate for not actually standing up for itself. We need to think about that. We need to think about how we do our job properly. It doesn't matter whether you are on the government side or on the opposition side or on the crossbench. We have a duty to conduct oversight. Whatever we do whilst Labor sits on this side will affect the Liberal Party when they are in opposition and when they want to hold the government to account. It's an important principle. Sadly, the government has made false public interest immunity claims and, sadly, the Senate has let them do it.

Senator O'NEILL (New South Wales) (12:42): I rise to make a contribution that echoes much of the sentiment that's been put on the record today by Senator Patrick. I want to make a couple of opening remarks about Senator Birmingham's response. Let me say that, having watched Senator Birmingham in action for some years here in this chamber, I've come to know that the more slowly and deliberately he speaks, the more it looks like he's actually trying to cover up, and that's what comes out afterwards. We saw a slow, deliberate and careful response to this order for production of documents debate that we're having because, I believe, the minister and his government are chronically addicted to covering up—covering up everything that they possibly can. That's why they don't produce the documents that the Senate needs to do our job on behalf of the Australian people: to critique, to observe and to ask questions based on fact about what's going on in this country. But the cover-up is on day in and day out from those opposite.

Senator Birmingham was claiming that this is just an attempt to besmirch the minister. You don't have to have an event like this in the Senate to know that the government has very much besmirched ministers in their ranks. You only have to look at Minister Angus Taylor, who attacked the people of New South Wales, defending his family business against environmental concerns. He attacked the truth of councillors on the Sydney council, and his government stood up for him and helped him and covered over. Then there's Minister Stuart Robert and robodebt. This is a handful of papers that has come through my office today, claiming the minister has made a public interest immunity claim with respect to any legal advice obtained in relation to the income compliance program and to the circumstances surrounding any legal advice obtained in relation to the income compliance program. That's the cover-up for robodebt. This government is so void of integrity that it doesn't see that covering up information about what they did to the Australian people in raising illegal debts is against the public interest. They say that telling us anything here in the Senate about that is against the public interest. What a crock. What a load of rubbish. This government has made an art form of acting against the public interest and an art form of then attempting to cover it up at every single turn.

I would particularly like to focus on the Minister representing the Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia, Minister Birmingham, because of his incompetent and overzealous use of public interest immunity claims to shut down government transparency. The Murray-Darling Basin is a wonderful and critical feature of Australia's agricultural and environmental legacy. Its rivers provide homes and breeding areas to countless animals and plants, and its waters help irrigate fields of citrus, grapes, rice and cotton as well one-fifth of all Australian dairy farms. It matters to this nation. It matters to me as a senator for New South Wales. It is a place of pride in our psyche as Australians.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is teetering. Its solid pillars of environmental science, respect for Indigenous communities and sustainable irrigation are being swept away by a tsunami of corruption, opaque regulations and market lack of faith in this bureaucracy. Too many scandals, years of drought without water for most licences and the lack of transparency in the water market have left many irrigation communities teetering on the brink. Their anger is evident in protests like the one held last year at Parliament House or the one on the river at Tocumwal show. Australians will not accept cover-ups or insider deals anymore. They are sick of the cover-ups. They are sick of this government trying to pull the wool over their eyes. People from the country parts of Australia are too hardworking and too decent to be treated in this disdainful way by this Liberal-National government.

I ask the minister: please, as the tide of social licence ebbs, end these cover-ups. End the bogus public interest immunity claims. End your government's war on truth and accountability. Allow the river communities to actually hear what's really going on. Nearly three long years ago, the Senate ordered the production of all documents relating to water purchases across the Murray-Darling Basin from 1 January 2017. The community has a right to know. These documents were provided to the Senate but they were heavily redacted. For people following the debate at home who don't pay much attention to what goes on, basically a big redacted document is one that has most of the toner from the printer all over it. It's just a black blanked-out document. What they blanked out included the valuations of the Clyde and Kia Ora purchases in Queensland. Despite denying full disclosure to the Senate, the department since released these valuations to a private citizen under freedom of information laws.

So what we're talking about here today is a government that refuses—arrogantly, intransigently—to come before the Senate and put documents before the senate and the senators of this great nation so they can interrogate the truth. The truth doesn't matter to this government. Hiding the truth is what matters to this government. How can it possibly be that the government is so afraid of this Senate, so allergic to accountability, that it will redact duly ordered documents to the Senate yet can release them to members of the public? That is the ultimate insult to senators duly elected to this place. And, through them, it is an insult to the nation of Australia and its great citizenry. I don't for one moment begrudge the disclosure of the valuations to any citizen of this country. But it is this government's contempt of the Senate, through these bogus public interest immunity claims, that really has to be explained today. How can a public interest immunity claim be valid to the upper chamber of the Australian parliament but not valid for information to be delivered to an ordinary Australian citizen? How on earth does the government expect people to swallow that?

It just doesn't pass the pub test, and it's because this minister and all ministers of this Liberal Party and National Party government are at war with transparency. In being at war with transparency, they are at war with the best interests of Australia.

The government have no shame in trying to cover up their failings—in this case, the questionable spend of tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money for water licences from a company that was co-founded by a fellow member of their cabinet. It's the old boys' club. There are a few more women around the chamber—thank God for that—but the old boys' club seems to linger longer. It's past its use-by date. Australians are sick of it. We're over this insider trading that is the hallmark of the government's practices.

I applaud Senator Patrick for his tireless work on government accountability in this matter and other matters, and I note several examples that he's mentioned and provided to me of claims that the government have put forward to avoid disclosure of documents or decisions only to be later forced to provide them by the Information Commissioner due to their initial reasoning being fundamentally flawed. This is how they roll. They hope that people don't understand all of the plays, all of the language and all of the practices of this Senate, and they hide in that space between what ordinary Australian people know and what journalists who churn through this place know. The government rely on a lack of deep knowledge of how the place operates, and in that space they seek to hide.

The government want to hide information about the Collins submarine macroeconomic report. They refused to offer that as an order for the production of documents because they said it was 'cabinet in confidence', but it was released to a private citizen under FOI, and—

Senator Patrick: Here it is.

Senator O'NEILL: I believe this cabinet-in-confidence document is in the hands of Senator Patrick right now in the chamber. He can get that as a private citizen, but the government denied the Senate to have access to it. This is a total disgrace, and there are very many more examples—the submarine design and mobilisation contract, the future frigate tender and the other matters to which Senator Patrick has referred today. To me as a citizen of this great nation, why is none of this information allowed to be released to the Senate under the appropriate orders yet is able to be provided to members of the public even if its production has originally been classified as doing possible damage to national security? When the Information Commissioner sat still and had a look at this without the rush and the push, it didn't meet the test.

How is it not in the public's interest to know if their money is being spent wisely when it comes to buying back tens of millions of dollars in water entitlements from a Cayman Islands based entity through opaque tender processes? I would think that knowing that is in Australian citizens' interests. Why did the government seemingly fail to obtain value for money with a company desperate to sell these entitlements? The Australian public have a right to know, and their duly elected representatives should be treated with a respect that trust entails.

As a duty senator to most of western New South Wales and many river communities that depend on the plan, I demand on behalf of the citizens of New South Wales that the government be upfront with the members of this chamber. This is not just a one-off case of poor judgement; it's a systemic issue. These PII claims are thrown up like paper roadblocks, obstructing our work here for months and months—and, in some cases, years—through what are revealed now by the release of documents by the Information Commissioner as clearly and ultimately specious reasoning, but they get the job done that the government want them to do. It's a deceptive government that hides its failures in darkness.

This lot over here clock on day in, day out, they continue to collect money as they pass go and they are treating the Australian people like mushrooms—loads of manure and lots of darkness. That is both their policy and their practice. They think they win when the public moves on, when journalists move on, when the momentum dies down and the government regains from the brief and piercing shaft of sunlight interrogating their disgraceful practices.

I'll tell you what happens when a government is addicted to darkness, to hiding the truth and preventing the truth from being told in this place. What happens is what's happening right now in aged care. Today, 412 Australians in aged-care settings are not with us. Their families are mourning their loss. Their families are desperately seeking answers. They want to know how this could happen to somebody they loved—somebody they put into a place that was subject to the scrutiny of the federal parliament under the minister. The reason it's happening is that this government has hidden and hidden and hidden for years and years. We have seen seven long years of government neglect of the aged-care sector, seven years of failing to respond to reports and seven years of ignoring the plight of decent, hardworking Australians who did nothing wrong except become older and find their way into an aged-care setting. The government is running and hiding from that as well.

This is a government of darkness and denial. This is a government that refuses to tell the truth. This is a government that hides documents that this chamber needs in order to hold it to account. It's replete in every single policy area. There is robodebt, with hundreds of thousands of Australians served up with debt. The government, to this day, claims public interest immunity. It claims that it is not in the public interest for us to know if it took legal advice before it hurt all those lives. In this place, on this very day, we have been debating the impact of that decision. Just a couple of weeks ago, I put on the record details of the suicide of two young men. There are many more who have just lost hope because of the actions of this government and I dare say, if decent scrutiny were applied, if we had access to the documents that we need, if we had a government that showed some decency and remorse for its failings, we might have a lot more of those 421 Australians alive in aged care. We might not have the terrible trauma that has been inflicted on people across this country because of robodebt, and we might have a better idea about what went on in the Murray-Darling Basin sales. This is a disgrace. It's got to stop.

Senator HANSON-YOUNG (South Australia) (12:57): I rise to take note of the minister's statement earlier today in relation to the government's failure to be transparent and upfront with this chamber. It's the Senate's job to inquire into what the government is up to. It's the Senate's job to make sure the government of the day is held to account. It's the Senate's job to make sure bureaucrats in the Public Service are doing their job. It's senators' job to make sure that we inform ourselves of the decisions that are being made and the reasons taxpayers' money is being spent under certain programs and in certain ways. It is our job. It's actually the reason we have Senate inquiries; it's the reason we have Senate estimates. It's the reason we have a process in this chamber each sitting day to ask the questions the community needs answers to and to which they want answers from the executive. That is our job.

This government is obsessed with cover-ups and secrecy. It has sheer arrogance and a contempt not just for the powers and the role of the Senate but also for the public's right to know. The public has the right to know how much of its money this government wants to spend on a cosy deal negotiated by Barnaby Joyce, the former water minister. The public has a right to know what Mr Joyce was up to. The public has a right to know what the impact of a piece of legislation passing this chamber would be. That's why we have Senate inquiries. This government is obsessed with secrecy and with hiding from public scrutiny. The fact that day after day after day in this place the government denies access to documents and information that this Senate asks for is a disgrace. The Senate is not a rubber stamp for the government. The government may be annoyed by the role that the Senate plays. They may wish that the Senate would just get out of the way. Well, tough luck. It is our job to hold this government to account. It is our job to make sure we are fully abreast of the decisions that are being made. It is our job to get the information that the public deserves to have.

In this particular case, what we know is that a special, cosy deal was negotiated by the former water minister, Barnaby Joyce, who spent too much money purchasing the water. This, of course, is the government that says that they are the arbiters of all wisdom when it comes to budgets and the economy. Mr Joyce crows about the fact that he's the only accountant in this place, yet he signed off on a deal where he spent too much money—more money than was required—for a company that his mate in cabinet Mr Angus Taylor has a connection to. It's all very cosy on that side, on the front bench. It's all very cosy indeed. No wonder this government doesn't want the public to know what has been going on. No wonder this government is obsessed with secrecy. It's all okay, in their nice little cosy circle on the front bench, to scratch each other's backs, to pay each other's bills and to snuggle, snuggle. They just don't want the public to know what they're up to. That is why time after time after time in this place they are in contempt of Senate orders.

This particular water purchase is just one example. Only in the last sitting period, this Senate asked for a number of reviews and reports in relation to the Water for Fodder Program. Despite this Senate asking for that documentation to be tabled, released and given to us so that we could do our job it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't released until it was given as an exclusive drop to a journalist weeks later, after they had been in contempt of the Senate. The Senate wasn't allowed the information but they gave it to their mates at News Corp. So not just is it contempt for the Senate, it is contempt for the Australian people, because this is the Australian people's right to know what is going on, and it is our job as senators to get them that information.

Last week this government blocked the Senate from sending a piece of legislation to a Senate inquiry. The government wants to rush in their environment law changes to make it easier for the big corporations to dig more mines, cut down more trees and put more profits in the bank balances of Rio Tinto and others. This government stopped this Senate chamber from being able to refer this legislation to a simple inquiry. The arrogance and the cover-up of this government grows day by day. The Australian community should be very, very wary. Every time this government says no to information being revealed, or a Senate inquiry occurring, or a particular bureaucrat appearing before a Senate hearing the Australian people are becoming more and more aware that that means there is something being covered up. Of course, this government stopped senior federal bureaucrats from appearing in front of state based royal commissions. Whether it's the Ruby Princess or the Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, this government doesn't want the truth out there. They just say: 'No, we're not answering any questions. We're not even going to show up.' The obsession with secrecy is palpable, and you've got to ask why. What are they hiding? Why are they covering this up? Why are they denying the Australian people's right to know what on earth is going on by denying this chamber the ability for us to do our jobs?

Former water minister Barnaby Joyce obviously thought that this money was his own personal piggy bank, that he could spend whatever he wanted and give it to his mates with no accountability. No wonder he didn't want the Senate to get into this. No wonder this government has covered up these documents for so long. These bogus claims of public interest immunity just so they don't have to answer questions are becoming more and more of a joke. In my home state of South Australia, more and more voters are voting against the major parties. More and more voters are saying: 'No, we don't want this: their way or the highway. We actually want people in this place who are prepared to hold the government to account, to keep the bastards honest.' That is our job, and we will not be denied it. However long it takes, we will stand up and call you out. However long it takes, we will stand up and make sure the public know what is going on in their names and with their money. You may try to gag debate, you may try to block Senate inquiries, you may try to stop documents from being released, but in the end the truth always wins out. We will hold you to account and we will make sure the public have the full information of what you are doing in their name and with their money.

You can't trust the government. You just can't trust them. You can't trust them with aged care, you can't trust them with issues of transparency and you certainly can't trust them with the environment or water. The most recent water minister, Keith Pitt, is carrying on the long legacy of carrying that National Party mantle for this government, holding the water portfolio and keeping the public in the dark. And, of course, what do we know Mr Pitt is more focused on at the moment than doing his job as water minister? He's trying to knock off the current Deputy Prime Minister. He wants his job. That's what he's more interested in; he is more interested in knocking off Mr McCormack so he can have the job for himself than he is interested in anything to do with managing the Murray-Darling Basin or making sure that the public know what's going on.

The government are obsessed with themselves, and why do they cover it up? Because they don't want anyone to know that all they care about is self-interest, paying off their mates and keeping each other in a job. It's pathetic, and it doesn't matter how many times you deny us in this place as senators on the crossbench from asking the questions, we will keep asking. We will keep pushing for the information to be out there. This self-obsessed, secrecy obsessed, power obsessed government keeps going. The public see through it. They see what you are doing, and, ultimately, it'll be your own downfall. But stopping this place from doing its job? No. You're never going to get away with that.

Senator DAVEY (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (13:10): Just before I start, Mr Acting Deputy President McGrath, through you, I note Senator O'Neill earlier today referred to Senator Birmingham as the Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia. He is not that minister. He represents that minister in this chamber, but he has his own portfolio responsibilities, and I'd like to get that on the record.

What we're talking about today is an order for the production of documents that was originally lodged in 2017. At that time, the decision was made that parts of the information requested had an element of commercial sensitivity. That seems to be what the furore is about. But let me explain why commercial sensitivity in an issue such as the water market is so real. Back in 2010, the Financial Review noted that, before the government began its buyback process, prices for permanent water licences were trading at around 50 per cent less than when the government started purchasing water. Government actions in the water market have an impact, so it is quite right that we take time in releasing commercial information about water prices to let the market restabilise.

But I note that Senator Patrick and his friends on the other side want to talk about the government doing dodgy deals and the government keeping things in house. I note that there have been a lot of shared talking points on the other side today, and they have obviously done a deal. When they talk about water purchases and wanting openness and transparency about government water purchases, they draw a line at 1 January 2017. Why is that? Is that because, back in 2010, when the Financial Review did its investigation into the impact of government actions in the water market, they were particularly interested in a purchase by the government from the Twynam agricultural company? It was a $303 million deal that the Financial Review found was at least a $40 million premium across all of the water licences purchased—one bulk lot of water licences.

We are talking about licences across multiple valleys, for which Twynam got a premium. In the Macquarie, they got a nine per cent premium. In the Gwydir, they got a nearly 10 per cent premium. In the Lachlan, it was a 17 per cent premium. In the Murrumbidgee, they got a premium. But the crossbenches and the opposition don't want to investigate that water purchase. Why is that? It is because that was a purchase done under former water minister Penny Wong.

Senator Patrick interjecting—

Senator DAVEY: I agree with you, Senator Patrick: two wrongs don't make a right. But what we, as the government have done, is learn from the way Labor conducted their water purchases. In fact, Labor themselves changed their own water purchase processes to a round of blind tenders. It was found that blind tenders did not have the same negative impact on the water market as did the open tenders that were so prevalent in the early days.

Another water purchase that we could talk about is the purchase of Toorale station and Toorale station's water holdings, which was done back in 2008 with no tender. The day before a public auction, the New South Wales and federal governments—

An honourable senator interjecting—

Senator DAVEY: Yes, a blind tender. But this was done quietly, and they turned Toorale station into a national park.

One of the differences between the premium paid on Kia Ora's water licence and the Toorale Station experience is that part of the contract for Kia Ora was that they had to decommission their on-farm levee banks to ensure the water was returned. Even though the purchase of Toorale Station occurred in 2008, as late as last year, 2019—with good rainfall for the first time in years up in the northern basin, and an estimate of 23,000 megalitres of water from localised rainfall flowing down the Warrego River—a mere 600 megalitres a day managed to get from the other side of Toorale Station, because the levee banks are still in place. The levee banks were never removed.

If we are talking about what is efficient use of taxpayers' money, we need to look at that. Leaving those levee banks there has meant that no water flows back to the Darling. Contrary to then Minister Wong's assertions that it would lead to at least 20 gigalitres a year in extra flows down the Darling River and 80 gigalitres a year when there's flood, that has not occurred. That water still gets captured by the infrastructure on Toorale Station, which now the New South Wales government is looking at upgrading so that it can water the ecological wetlands that have evolved there over the 100 years of levee banks existing on that station. Was that a good and efficient purchase of water? If the intention was to keep and maintain those wetlands on Toorale Station, all well and good. But that was not how the deal was sold to the Australian public at the time. At the time, it was said that it was going to restore the health of the Darling River, but that water doesn't get to the Darling River. So let's think of that.

We’ve had water purchases right back from 2008, so if we're going to investigate water purchases we have to investigate every single one of them, not just pick a random date in time that suits the purposes of a conspiracy theory of the crossbench and the Greens. We need to look at all of them, to go right back to the very beginning of water purchases, because what we have seen time and time again is water purchase tenders or water recovery programs. The opportunistic ones take advantage of it. The stressed farmers who have their backs against the wall take advantage of it. But the people who are left hurting at the end of the day are the farmers that remain who, unlike Johnny Kahlbetzer, can't take their $303 million and go and purchase land in South Africa and start farming in a whole new nation. They are left behind, trying to compete in the water market against the huge and enormous almond developments that have blossomed in South Australia, have blossomed in north-western Victoria and are now blossoming in sections of New South Wales—all downstream of natural delivery constraints, like the Barmah Choke, like the Lower Goulburn Choke. The water can't get through. Those people are left competing and struggling.

Meanwhile, the purchases that Senator Patrick wants us to focus on today, the Kia Ora and Clyde purchases, are actually having great environmental outcomes. They are effective, because, as I said before, they decommissioned the infrastructure. They now allow the natural flows to flow down the river. We heard at Senate estimates this year that around 100 gigalitres made it to the internationally recognised wetlands associated with Narran Lake.

I might add that that water delivery had great outcomes for birdlife, including the Australasian bittern. Where else did we get good outcomes for the Australasian bittern, which is an endangered species? On our rice farms. The Ricegrowers Association should be commended for the environmental and ecological work they've done to help with the Australasian bird-breeding events in the Riverina and now at the Narran Lakes wetlands, which is a fantastic use of environmental water. It is getting down the river. The $80 million purchase of this river represented 30 per cent of the water needed to be recovered in that valley. We keep getting told by the Greens and others that we need to get on and deliver the Basin Plan. But, when we undertake a purchase that is consistent with the valuation that requires decommissioning to ensure we get the environmental and ecological outcomes we want and we do a big lump sum at once, we get slammed for it.

Let's also bear in mind how many water licence holders there are in the part of the river relevant to Narran Lakes. There are four, and we've purchased one of them out. When you have such a limited pool of contenders—and no-one else is expressing an interest—the way water works, you can't go out with a Basin-wide water tender program and expect to get outcomes in the Narran Lakes when you're purchasing water from a river that goes nowhere near it. It was purchased within the valuation. As highlighted by Senator Birmingham in his response, it was a purchase that covered the value of the water, it covered the decommissioning and it was a highly sensitive area of the river. Tick, tick, tick—it ticked every box. The only reason why Rex Patrick has a bee in his bonnet is that, when he first lodged his order for the production of documents, it was so close to the time of the purchase occurring it was deemed commercially sensitive. And I get that. I support ensuring that our government actions do not impact on the water market. This is why the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has open and transparent processes for operating in the market. This is why we saw such negative impacts on the water market through open-purchase tenders, which even the Labor Party walked away from. It's because the impact on the water market was negative. It was having a negative impact on our farmers and their ability to produce the food and fibre our nation needs.

So I say, Senator Patrick, that I understand your frustration, and obviously it's an ongoing frustration. As I said before, you've shared your talking points about all of the FOI successes you've had in the past with all of your colleagues over on that side. However, when we're in government and we are responsible, we need to make sure that we proceed with caution so we don't negatively impact on the jobs and businesses of the people we represent.

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (13:23): I seek to take note of the minister's response. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I note that there is a reason this matter will not go away, and it is not just the dogged pursuit of this scandal by Senator Patrick, for which he is to be complimented and commended. I've spent many weeks touring the Murray-Darling Basin, listening to locals who are telling me that this deal is crook. The government purchased water licences that have been assembled into one line by a local company called Eastern Australia Agriculture that Mr Angus Taylor formed, owned and registered in the Cayman Islands before selling out to unknown buyers. Mr Joyce, as minister, bought this on behalf of the government. This is a case of the Liberals and the National Party working closely together—no split here.

Let me share the context and the facts so that people can make up their minds themselves. This was not real water; it was overland flow, meaning that the water can be taken only if the Condamine-Balonne Valley is in flood. By its very nature, overland flow is unreliable water. A qualifying flood occurs once every five years on average. So, this is lower security than low security. This is why overland flow is the cheapest form of permanent water licence—the cheapest. The Australian National Audit Office gave this water a very generous valuation in the range of $1,100 to $2,300 per megalitre. It's also worth noting that the unredacted valuation document advised the Commonwealth that a price in the lower end of that range would be appropriate, most likely because the actual value of this water in the market at the time was between $750 and $950 a megalitre. This is based on the only previous large sale of overland flow water in the lower Balonne, in 2008, for just $800 a megalitre and despite the water being valued on Eastern Australia Agriculture's own books at just $950 a megalitre.

In a move that makes a joke of good governance, the government paid $2,745 per megalitre. That's almost three times what it is valued at on Eastern Australia Agriculture's books and way over double what the Australian National Audit Office valued it at. Much attention has been given to who Eastern Australia Agriculture are, so I don't need to go there as well. I would just like to point out that water flows into the Murray-Darling Basin in 2020 are exactly equal to their long-term average. The whole premise of this purchase of reduced inflows caused by climate change requiring urgent government action is statistical rubbish—it is nonsense. One Nation agrees that there are substantially reduced flows coming from the Northern Rivers into the Darling and then into Menindee Lakes. This is not coming from climate change, and it is not being caused by farmers taking water for which they have a legitimate licence. These reduced flows are being caused by illegal floodplain harvesting.

The minister is not doing enough to restore the integrity of water licences in the basin and, through that, restore environmental flows that are being hijacked by illegal floodplain harvesting. The question now is: why did the government buy this water at all? The water was purchased by the Commonwealth towards environmental flows under the Murray-Darling Basin Plan—the infant born out of the Water Act 2007 that's now doing so much damage in this country. What does not make sense is that flood flows are environmental flows. This periodic flooding waters native vegetation in an entirely natural cycle. Australian flora, as most people understand, has evolved to thrive on receiving a good drink only every few years, followed by long periods with only the natural rainfall to tide them over to the next flood. The government has effectively bought environmental flows for use in a flood and paid $80 million of taxpayer money to do it—$80 million to pay for environmental flows in a flood.

What extra good would that little bit of new environmental water do in amongst all that environmental floodwater flowing down the river in a major flooding event? Nothing! It wouldn't do a thing. The only way this water could have been useful to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office is if the water had been stored in a public dam and then released after the drought to produce environmental flows at the discretion of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office. Once water is stored in this manner and released at the discretion of the owner, it is not overland water; it's general security water. Here's the problem with doing that. The licence attached to overland water allows that water to be used only on the property the licence belongs to. It has no legal standing once it's removed from the property.

The Commonwealth government was prepared to pay $1,800 per megalitre over the market—that's three times the market—for 27,000 megalitres of water, because it had every intention of quietly reclassifying overland water into general security water. Where are the approvals for that? Where's the business case? Where's the due diligence? Where is the environmental impact study to show that watering forests outside of their natural cycle does any good at all? The office of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder has been watering the Barmah Forest, for example, nonstop for 18 months now. The forest has never been allowed to dry out as it naturally would. The result, thanks to the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, has been devastating to the natural environment. Trees are dying; native grasses are dying; the flora of the forest is black with rancid, dead water.

At no time has this aspect of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan been reviewed. The minister's department has allowed water purchases that were not needed at a price that borders on criminal incompetence. The minister's department have treated the terms of their water licence as a joke and set out on unsupervised, unaccountable vandalism of the natural environment. Meanwhile, the government's mates are laughing all the way to the bank. What a scandal!

Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (13:31): I also seek to take note in this debate. After listening to the contributions this morning, I would note that I am probably the only person in this debate who was actually in this place at the time of the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, when in 2012, under the former Labor government, the basin states signed off on a plan to achieve a triple bottom line. Do you remember the good old triple bottom line? You still included the economy and how it affected humans, and you brought in consideration of environmental outcomes. I've seen this plan roll out in the communities that I represent—those in the southern basin, obviously, but also, to a broader extent, National Party communities right throughout the eastern seaboard—and it hasn't achieved the outcomes that were sought. The environment has been favoured, shall we say, over the economies, health and future of rural and regional basin communities.

The fun fact is that the Murray-Darling Basin Plan wasn't Moses coming off the mountain with a couple of tablets, words carved into stone never to be changed. The 10 commandments back then are still the 10 commandments today, but the Basin Plan was meant to be adaptable and flexible, because we knew then that we didn't have the data and information available to be prescriptive—to pull numbers out of the air, really, in many cases—about what the environment really needed, what the irrigated agricultural sector needed, et cetera. The reality is that, as we have rolled out the infrastructure projects and gotten better with our technology and our metering of waterways, we're getting a lot better data. And we're realising—to Senator Roberts's point—that we may be watering environmental assets at a really bad time for those assets. I have been on the ground in the Barmah Forest. What is happening there is a tragedy: wet-rooted gums in a country where the trees haven't evolved to have wet roots. Because of inappropriate application of the plan, we're seeing negative and unintended environmental, social and economic impacts across the board. So I would call on all basin states to remember that the Basin Plan was to be adaptive, and not to be evangelical and fundamentalist about how the plan is rolled out.

We've been highlighting, in regional Victoria, a whole lot of issues in the recent past: the conflict of interest for unregulated water brokers; the few rules there are to guard against behaviour that manipulates water prices; the fact that well-resourced corporate entities are gaining unfair advantage over family farms by manipulating the complexity of the water-trading market—and that's not just me saying it; it's the reality, the interim report, recently handed down, of the ACCC's review. The different regimes within basin states makes it very difficult for irrigators to ensure that the market works for them.

The expansion of the almond industry has had a hugely detrimental impact on delivering existing entitlement. In the debate today you might have heard about natural constraints such as the Barmah Choke. Trying to get deliverable water somebody has a share for down the river to be used in irrigated agriculture has been put under incredible pressure because we have allowed unmitigated development of almond plantations downstream of the Barmah Choke. That's why we have been calling for a moratorium on those developments until we can understand the impact. The Victorian state Labor government has done the right thing and put a moratorium on it. But that means the South Australian and New South Wales state governments are now allowing those developments to go ahead. State basin ministers could act right now to stop these developments occurring and putting untold pressure on deliverability for existing entitlement holders, and I call on them to act in the interests of our communities out in regional Australia.

This is complex. It is very opaque. We need to make sure the market is fairer, more transparent and better regulated, not just for the environment but for the over 9,200 irrigated agriculture businesses in the basin. The basin is home to 2.6 million people and produces billions of dollars worth of fabulous food products that we export around the world. To prioritise environmental assets over human outcomes, as has been happening over the last eight years, I think, is a great tragedy.

We have heard a lot about the potential issues of oversight, et cetera. It's not just the Senate. I'm a great believer in the Senate holding the executive to account. We have all had great examples of how that's occurred. In our democracy, it's not just this chamber and our committees that can hold executive government to account. The fourth estate, the media, has a fundamental role in actually ensuring that the public debate is well informed. I am reminded throughout this debate of an article Aaron Patrick wrote for the Fin Review which I think really highlights the importance of that. It is topical on this particular issue but also on the importance of the media. It's entitled, 'Soggy "scandal" doesn't hold water'. The article outlines how distorted the debate has been publicly. There were claims on Twitter: 'Tomorrow is a big day for transparency and accountability in our biggest river system'. They're talking about the acting Auditor-General finishing examining this particular issue of the $3.1 billion program. I'll quote from the article:

Instead, acting auditor-general Rona Mellor, who is accountable to Parliament, not the government, concluded the opposite:—

This wasn't a hidden smoking gun—

Joyce was kept in the dark by his department on key facts, the prices weren't above commercial valuations, and the scheme—which was driven by environmentalists—has obtained almost all the 2075 gigalitres of water targeted to revive wetlands and bird sanctuaries in Australia's most important river system.

Mellor's conclusions received cursory coverage, unlike the original watergate story.

Here we have a journalist actually doing his job: reporting the facts and not letting emotions and perceived political motives—being an activist, shall we say—override, but actually reporting on the facts and ensuring that the public is kept informed of what the acting Auditor-General actually had to say about this. I commend the media for continuing to do this.

I have been here since the Labor Party implemented the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, and their management of water and water recovery has been incredibly damaging to our community. Remember the Swiss cheese effect?

We had water being bought out by the Labor Party Senate leader, Senator Wong—when she was water minister—in horrific volumes for an outrageous amount of money. There were stranded assets as water was purchased here, there, everywhere—no strategic intent. We're still dealing with the fallout of those purchases that long ago. She made the largest water purchase ever: $303 million in the Murrumbidgee.

It was the Labor government who embarked on a campaign of damaging direct water purchases from our irrigators. There is a litany of responses. Our government has commissioned a piece of work by Robbie Sefton on the socioeconomic impacts of these buybacks on our communities. It is clear. It is unequivocal. We know it because we live there. It is tabled here in the Senate that it has had a significant detrimental impact on people's lives and livelihoods. You can't ignore the data. You cannot take any more water from our irrigated agriculture communities. The 450 gig will not be coming from our farmers. It will not be coming from the southern basin irrigated agriculture communities. Enough is enough. You have taken enough. There will be no more. We're unapologetic about standing up for our regional communities and what they do best, which is produce fabulous clean, green food.

We're calling for the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to be split into separate entities, scrapping the 450 gigalitres of water recovery. We're calling for no new extraction licences to be issued unless we can actually guarantee there's no increased risk to existing entitlement holders. State governments need to get serious about that.

In the southern basin we are very concerned about the flood plain harvesting practices in the northern basin, which Senator Roberts touched on, that do impact on flows through the system. We need to get serious. As the inspector-general for the Murray-Darling Basin plan outlined in his report, we need to meter that properly. We need to get the data and understand what's happening, because there is a lot of mistrust, and rightfully so, through basin communities about the role of governments in how this plan has been implemented.

In the ACCC interim report, that was handed down recently, there were no surprises there to basin communities. There were no surprises in its recommendations and further work plan on what's actually needed. We need to regulate these water brokers. We need to understand what's happening with foreign ownership of our most precious asset: water. We need to make sure that we have improved transparency.

I want to see regional communities grow, prosper and thrive, and they cannot do that unless they have access to water. It's that fundamental. We need to make sure that as we roll out a plan, that all state basin ministers agreed to in 2012 and the federal government at that time—under Kevin Rudd I think it was, but who can be sure, as it did change a lot back then—signed up to, that it actually delivers on its intent. It was not ever meant to be a plan only for the environment and only for South Australia. It is a plan to continue the productive capacity of regional communities right throughout the Murray-Darling.

Question agreed to.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (13:44): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. The Labor Party is supporting this bill, but that's not to say we think that the bill is perfect—it isn't. We have some serious concerns about parts of the legislation, concerns my colleague and very good friend Tony Burke, the shadow minister for industrial relations, outlined in some detail in his speech in the other place.

Let's start at the beginning. It was the Labor Party and the unions that first called on the government to implement a wage subsidy, an idea the government ridiculed until they saw the Centrelink queues, the tragic face of their original and wrong decision to simply consign workers onto welfare. Eventually they saw what everyone else, including business and employer groups, saw: the need for a wage subsidy. So they came up with JobKeeper. It was somewhat flawed and involved the biggest costing bungle in budget history, but was still a much needed lifeline to businesses and millions of people employed by them in this country. They said it would end in September. That was pretty optimistic, as it turns out. Again, Labor, with unions and employer groups, had to tell them that it needed to be extended. Everyone could see that there would be no miraculous snapback, as Prime Minister Morrison so famously boasted. But, again, they said no, and, again, thankfully, they overcame their natural stubbornness and changed their mind.

We are supporting the legislation because we support the extension of JobKeeper. As the shadow Treasurer has often said, the JobKeeper wage subsidy is a very good idea being badly implemented. Too many Australians are left out and left behind—some accidently but, regrettably, many quite deliberately. From day one, we've said that the scheme should be better targeted so that the people who really need it can get it, but we don't waste taxpayers' money. We were very concerned about the government's plan to rip this support out from the economy for all workers and industries at the end of September. It made no sense at all. So we welcome the extension of JobKeeper for a further six months.

However, as I said earlier, despite completely supporting the extension of JobKeeper, Labor has some serious concerns about the bill. That's because the government has seen fit to introduce some extreme elements into the bill. I'm referring to the extension of the emergency industrial relations powers to businesses who no longer qualify for government JobKeeper support. As expected, the bill contains provisions that extend the timing of the JobKeeper enabling stand down direction that are currently set to be repealed on 28 September. These provisions were included in the original JobKeeper legislation, and back in April we were told they were critical to ensuring that the JobKeeper payments could be operationalised and that these powers could only be used for that purpose. Now, in this bill, the government wants us to agree to those same emergency powers being extended to employers who had previously qualified for JobKeeper but were now no longer eligible—the so-called legacy employers. By the very definition, legacy employers are those the government considers to have recovered sufficiently to no longer need government support. And, although they are sufficiently recovered to no longer need government support, they can use the fact that they may still have a 10 per cent decline to cut the hours of their workers by as much as 40 per cent.

The government has not made the case as to why these extraordinary emergency industrial relations powers are necessary at this time. That is why Labor will be moving to ensure that only businesses still eligible for JobKeeper can access these extreme powers. The government claims these powers are modified and have safeguards. One of these supposed safeguards is that the employer cannot reduce a worker's hours by more than 40 per cent. But this so-called safeguard will result in many low-paid workers, including in the retail industry, experiencing a very substantial pay cut.

A 40 per cent reduction in hours for workers on the minimum wage would mean that they would lose $300 a week from their normal wage of currently $750 per week under the JobKeeper rate. There are many workers who are paid just above the minimum wage. In fact, anyone earning less than $32 per hour who has their hours cut by 40 per cent will be worse off than they have been under JobKeeper mark 1. How is this fair? This creates a situation where a worker, at a time when the businesses they work for are doing better, will have their pay cut. The attempt to extend emergency industrial powers to employers who don’t receive JobKeeper is of extreme concern to the Labor Party.

Back in April, when we were passing the original JobKeeper legislation, we were told these flexibilities were critical to operationalise the JobKeeper payments. We were told that these provisions could only be used by JobKeeper eligible businesses. Now we are told it's essential that it be extended to businesses no longer eligible for JobKeeper. We can see what's next: the government testing their future plans for industrial relations. There will be a trial for how their flexibility dream might look and work. The next thing is that the government will move for them to be made a permanent feature of this legislation. The government will claim that it's all in the name of saving jobs, when in fact it is an attack on decent secure jobs of ordinary Australians.

That's why Labor will move its amendments, firstly, to remove the extension of JobKeeper flexibilities to the employers that the government themselves have determined no longer need assistance and for which the government has made no case. Secondly, should that not be agreed to, we will move an amendment that ensures that no employee who has had their hours cut will drop below the JobKeeper rate. We sincerely hope senators support this amendment to protect some of our lowest-paid workers from bearing the cost of a business recovery when the government has wiped its hands of those people.

Australians have worked together to combat the virus but more work must be done by the Morrison government to ensure that our hardest hit Australians are not left out and left behind in this recovery.

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (13:53): I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak to the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. The bill extends the prescribed period of operations for the coronavirus payment framework, which allows JobKeeper to be extended until March of next year. It also enables the ATO to share some JobKeeper payment information with the Commonwealth, state and territory government agencies. The bill extends the temporary JobKeeper fair work provisions in part 6-4C of the Fair Work Act, except for those relating to annual leave, until next March.

Much of the detail will be left up to delegated legislation. The Greens have been supportive of the JobKeeper wage subsidy and are on record as having pushed for a way to guarantee wages from very early on in the COVID-19 crisis. My Greens colleague in the other place, the member for Melbourne, Adam Bandt, said, in speaking to this bill last week:

When the crisis started to hit, the Greens were the first party in parliament to call for some form of wage and job guarantee. We made it very clear that the government's initial response—shovelling billions out of the door to help business—was only part of the response.

Has JobKeeper been a success? Well, it has been a mixed bag.

There's no doubt that millions of people who would otherwise be out of work have benefited from the scheme. Plenty of businesses have accessed it and it has allowed them to stay afloat and keep their staff on board. This is, of course, a good thing. However, there are many cracks in the system and things haven't been smooth sailing. Unconscionably, temporary visa holders were locked out of the scheme. This set Australia apart from other countries in how we have taken care of members of the community who don't happen to be citizens or permanent residents. It has created a tiered system of residents in this country and, frankly, we should be ashamed. Businesses with reliable hardworking, highly skilled employees have been unable to receive JobKeeper payments for their staff. It's nonsensical, it's spiteful and it's just plain wrong.

Also infamously locked out have been casuals employed for less than 12 months, arts and creative industry workers, and our public university staff. Shamefully, early learning and care workers were the first to be kicked off the JobKeeper payment last month. It was reported last week that Crown Resorts has received at least $111 million in JobKeeper payments, but our public universities have not received a single cent. This chamber very narrowly voted down my disallowance motion which would have scrapped the rules that exclude some of the universities from accessing JobKeeper payments. But the government dug its heels in, and university job losses continue to mount in the thousands upon thousands. I have to say that it has been incredibly devastating for our universities who are already grappling with the loss of international students that will cause financial pain not only this year but over the next few years and possibly much of this decade. On top of that, we have the government choosing this moment to introduce a bill that will cut university funding even more. You really can't make this stuff up.

Let me be clear: the Greens support the extension of JobKeeper. There is no other option than to continue to provide a wage subsidy. JobKeeper has provided much-needed support to many thousands of people, but there were real problems and gaps in the original package, and there are big flaws in this bill as well. We have serious concerns with this bill and the related proposals. As, I understand, the Labor Party and others on the crossbench will, I also will move amendments in the Senate to make this bill more equitable for people. I will identify some of these issues that I've highlighted at this point and I will have more to say about the legislation at the committee stage.

This bill creates what is effectively a new category of employee. This is someone who is employed by a business that was eligible for JobKeeper payments and could access the emergency industrial relations powers that give businesses the power to reduce their hours, but now the business turnover has improved somewhat and they are no longer eligible for wage subsidy. In this scenario, the government won't provide JobKeeper for the business, but it will continue to allow them to follow the emergency powers and reduce their employees' hours. As my colleague Adam Bandt put it in the other place:

… there will be a category of businesses that, on the one hand, the government thinks are doing so well that they don't need to give JobKeeper to their employees but, on the other hand, are apparently doing so badly that they can cut their employees' pay.

This is perverse, and it's a cynical outcome. We will be looking at amendments to change this at the committee stage. The bill would force workers to foot the bill for businesses' recovery by letting legacy employers cut workers' hours by up to 40 per cent. For shift workers, it would mean the loss of even more than 40 per cent of their income if they lose hours that are subject to penalty rate loading. For a government to do this in the midst of a recession is nothing short of cruel.

Another objectionable part of the new JobKeeper proposal, I would point out, is its creation of a two-tiered system of payment, where people employed for less than 20 hours a week will receive a much lower payment than those employed with more hours. Those who are far more likely to be in insecure or part-time work are far more likely to be women, and they will see their payments cut. Women are already bearing the brunt of the economic impacts of the pandemic—so much so that economists have said we are in a pink-collar recession and so much so that women have lost their jobs twice as fast as men when the economy was shut down. Women are overrepresented as casual workers and in industries most affected by shutdowns like retail and hospitality. Women are underrepresented in the few industries—

The PRESIDENT: Order, Senator Faruqi. You will be in continuation.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT (15:35): Thank you. I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. There being none, I shall now proceed to the discovery of formal business.

Senator DEAN SMITH (Western Australia—Government Whip in the Senate) (15:37): At the request of Senator O'Sullivan, I move:

That—

(a) the time for the presentation of the final report of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System be extended to the last sitting day in February 2021; and

(b) a message be forwarded to the House of Representatives seeking the concurrence of the House in this variation to the resolution of appointment of the committee.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (15:37): Madam Deputy President, I think Senator Waters wants to seek leave to make a short statement.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Let me seek agreement to that. Leave is granted for one minute, Senator Waters, but we are having trouble with the audio. I'm sorry, but that's not going to be possible. Yes, Senator Siewert?

Senator SIEWERT: I wonder if I could seek leave for Senator Waters to incorporate her statement in the Hansard, once I've shown it to the whips.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Yes, with the concurrence of the whips, thank you, that will be incorporated. Yes, Senator Smith?

Senator Dean Smith: Could you confirm that we're incorporating Senator Waters's one-minute statement because of the technical interruption? That's right?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Yes, and that's with the concurrence of the whips.

The statement read as follows—

A coalition of more than 100 women and children's safety organisations have condemned this inquiry as unnecessary and dangerous. They feared it would embolden abusers and put women and children at greater risk. They urged the government to focus instead on implementing the over 200 recommendations that have already been made by numerous previous inquiries.

Since March, there has been a 70% increase in urgent family law applications in the Federal Circuit Court and a 200% increase in urgent complex matters in the Family Court, driven by family violence. We still have 1 woman being killed each week by a partner or former partner. As the economic stress of the COVID crisis continues, the Chief Justice of the Family Court predicts even higher numbers.

The Law Council of Australia, originally supportive of the inquiry, changed its position after giving evidence at a hearing. They've now called for the inquiry to be discontinued and said it was clear that the inquiry "is being used for political purposes to undermine domestic violence claims made by women".

The Greens have opposed this inquiry from the outset and we're disappointed by this extension. We don't need a further 5 months of toxic hearings, we need urgent action and funding to ensure the family law system is safe.

Question agreed to.

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (15:39): I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 758 in the terms circulated in the chamber.

Leave granted.

Senator FARUQI: I move the motion as amended:

That there be laid on the table, by the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management, by no later than 10 am on Thursday, 3 September 2020, the following documents:

(a) documents relating to the MV Al Kuwait voyage which departed Fremantle in June 2020, including:

   (i) all daily voyage reports,

   (ii) the end of voyage report, and

   (iii) the Master's report,

(b) all records of meetings and correspondence to and within the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment regarding the exemption decisions made on 2 June 2020and 13 June 2020 by the Department relating to the MV Al Kuwait voyage.

Senator DUNIAM (Tasmania—Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries and Assistant Minister for Regional Tourism) (15:39): I seek leave to make a short statement?

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.

Senator DUNIAM: The Australian government supports the welfare of animals exported by sea. We have already released a summary in the Kuwait independent observer report and additional voyage report, and agree to provide the full report to the Senate. The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment released its decisions relating to exemptions for the export of livestock during the Northern Hemisphere summer in June. An appeal against the 13 June decision to grant an exemption was dismissed by the Federal Court on 16 June. These were decisions taken by an independent regulator, and it is important that independence is respected.

Question agreed to.

Senator McKIM (Tasmania—Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens in the Senate) (16:50): I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

I rise to take note of a series of assessments of detention arrangements conducted by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, and they are Nos 23 to 27 of 2020. These assessments contain a litany of examples of people who have been detained for long periods of time in Australia's immigration detention system, some for well over five years.

I do want to refer briefly to one case, which is in assessment No. 23 of 2020. The reports are de-identified, so I'll just refer to the person as 'Mr X', as the Ombudsman does. This assessment by the Ombudsman found that this person was found to be owed protection in October 2017, and yet his case has not yet been assessed against the guidelines under section 195A of the Migration Act. The Ombudsman's assessment has found that 'the Ombudsman is concerned that Mr X is likely to remain in immigration detention for a prolonged period while his immigration matters remain ongoing and that this poses a significant risk to Mr X's health and welfare.' The Ombudsman has recommended that the department assess Mr X's claims against the guidelines under section 195A of the act and that the department commissions a contemporary, independent assessment of Mr X's risk to the community, to inform the minister's decision as part of any referral to the minister for consideration of a bridging visa under section 195A of the act. Unfortunately—as is so often the case—the department has rejected the Ombudsman's recommendation that it commission a contemporary, independent assessment of Mr X's risk to the community. I just raise that one case because it's an exemplar of so many cases of people in immigration detention—people who are languishing there, having committed no crime. They are not in prison, they are in administrative detention, and this department is cruelly and callously allowing them to languish there.

I make these comments in the context of an immigration system that is being run by this government as a punishment for people rather than as an administrative detention system. In a recent report on the current state of immigration detention, the Ombudsman has raised some incredibly distressing concerns. There are cases of people who have been held in immigration detention for over a decade—over 10 years. They are held at the pleasure of the minister. This is cruel and unconscionable punishment. The Ombudsman has previously found there was an excessive use of force by Serco and departmental staff. Worse still, the complaints by detainees about the use of force were incorrectly rejected by the department. We also know this government is in the process of legislating to try to take people's mobile phones away from them in immigration detention, and of course mobile phones are how a lot of the abuses that go on in immigration detention are brought to light.

It is impossible to overstate the cruel nature of immigration detention in this country. This government has complete contempt for people in its care and is abrogating its duty of care to so many people who are in immigration detention. These are not prisoners, despite the government's desperate attempts to make the conditions in immigration detention prison-like. We're in the middle of a pandemic—these are high-risk scenarios and facilities. The government needs to come up with a plan to release significant numbers of low-risk people into the community so that they can be adequately supported there.

One day there will be a royal commission into offshore detention and onshore immigration detention, and I hope the architects of these cruel and callous policies are held to account, that apologies are made and, most importantly, that we can try to ensure that this dark and bloody chapter in our country's story is drawn to an end and never happens again.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Walsh ): Senator McKim, are you seeking leave to continue your remarks later?

Senator McKim: I am.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (16:57): I move:

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

Question agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (16:58): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

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

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

This Bill delivers on the Morrison Government's election promise to give Australians greater flexibility to contribute to their superannuation as they approach retirement.

This Government recognises the realities of the modern Australian workplace – a workplace that has become more flexible than ever before.

Far more Australians are taking career breaks or working part‑time to raise children; and in particular, we are seeing an unprecedented number of women re-joining the workforce. Many people are choosing to work longer, often part time - choosing to maintain a connection to their professional lives.

And as our workplaces evolve, so too must plans for retirement.

With this great progress comes an imperative for government: we must ensure our superannuation system is equipped with the same flexibility as our workplaces.

The superannuation bring forward arrangement already provide flexibility in the superannuation system to allows individuals to make up to three years' worth of non-concessional contributions to their superannuation in a single year.

This Bill amends the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to extend access to the superannuation bring-forward arrangements to people aged 65 and 66 from

1 July 2020, to better reflect the changing nature of work.

Through this measure, the Morrison Government is helping older Australians to boost their retirement savings, especially if they have returned to the workforce, by giving them a greater flexibility to make superannuation contributions as they enter retirement.

It also aligns the cut-off age of 67 for the bring‑forward arrangements with the eligibility age for the Age Pension, which is scheduled to reach 67 on 1 July 2023.

The measure is a part of broader package announced in the 2019-20 Budget context – "Superannuation – improving flexibility for older Australians". The remaining measures will:

allow people aged 65 and 66 to make both voluntary concessional and non-concessional contributions without meeting the work test; and

allow those aged 70 to 74 to receive spouse contributions.

The Government will give effect to these remaining measures by amending the relevant Regulations.

By fulfilling our election commitment through this Bill, the Morrison Government is continuing to ensure all Australians have additional flexibility in how they save as they transition to retirement.

Full details of the measure is contained in the Explanatory Memorandum.

Debate adjourned.

Senator RENNICK (Queensland) (16:59): It's good to finish off the speaking on this bill. I seem to recall that last time we started off by pointing out that this side of the chamber is the side of the chamber that believes in jobs for working-class Queenslanders and all Australians. I'd like to welcome back my coal-loving patriot friend, Senator Canavan. If it weren't for Senator Canavan, who has his finger on the pulse of the Queensland people, I probably wouldn't be a senator.

Matt Canavan listens to the people. So does the LNP, and so does the federal coalition. We know that what matters is jobs. All we want to do is help look at a scoping study to see if it's possible to put a coal plant in North Queensland so that north Queenslanders can have some jobs, because, heaven knows, the Queensland Labor Party is doing its best to destroy jobs. They've brought in the reef regulations, which are a threat to our cattle and cane industries—two industries that are synonymous with the great state of Queensland. But that's not enough. No. They want to destroy the coal industry as well, and tourism, and it goes on.

They're subsidising a foreign wind farm that is to be built in a national park—that's right, a multinational owned wind farm in a national park. But do you know who they won't let in national parks? Do you know who they're kicking out of national parks in Queensland? Australian beekeepers. National parks are where the bees go to have a rest after they have helped pollinate all the trees that grow the fruit et cetera. And I want to give a big shout-out to Rodney Smith from Chinchilla. He's a beekeeper who took me out to Barakula State Forest one day and showed me how it all works. The bees love their eucalypts. But I digress.

What's so annoying about this motion is the sheer blatant hypocrisy of it. It is sheer blatant hypocrisy that we can't look at all forms of energy generation—the power, the industries—that this country needs to get some jobs and some economic growth so we can get out of COVID. I'll explain why. The federal government has laid down $10 billion for the clean energy fund, another $5 billion for the Snowy Hydro project, another $3½ billion for the Climate Solutions Package, $2½ billion for the Emissions Reduction Fund, $1½ billion for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, another $1 billion for the Grid Reliability Fund and half a billion dollars for the National Hydrogen Strategy.

An honourable senator: How much is this?

Senator RENNICK: It is $24 billion—about 10,000 times more than what the subsidy is or what we're going to put in for a scoping study at Collinsville. It is 10,000 to one. Is it that hard?

But it doesn't end there. The madness continues, because the Queensland state Labor government is signing offtake contracts with multinational companies to build wind farms. What's so frustrating about this is that the state of Queensland has twice as much supply as demand. The highest demand that Queensland has ever had on one day, 14 February 2018, is 9.7 megawatts per hour. On the supply side, it has 13 gigawatts in coal and gas, and it already has about another four or five gigawatts in renewables, so it has plenty of supply. But that's not enough, because, in order to meet their 50 per cent renewable target, they're basically going to build all these windmills and all these solar panels that they don't actually need. It's like 10 people going to the movies and ordering tickets for 30 seats. You don't need it.

What's annoying about it is that this is undermining the people of Queensland's own energy assets: the coal fired power stations. They are coal fired power stations that are going to last until 2040 or 2050. We have all the energy to meet the needs of Queensland until 2040 and 2050, yet the state Labor government is subsidising foreign multinationals to build wind farms that will be obsolete before the coal-fired power stations become obsolete. But it doesn't end there. The cheapest operational cost for the production of energy, as shown in the Finkel report in Australia, was at Kogan Creek—$9 a megawatt. At Callide and Tarong, the cost was $17 a megawatt. There is 200 years worth of coal at Kogan Creek. It's sitting right there on the surface—mine mouth coal. You just scrape it up and put it straight in.

What is interesting is that 60 to 70 per cent of the energy in this country is provided by 21 coal-fired power stations. To get renewables to make up that difference, AEMO says you're going to have to spend $100 billion on transmission lines to get the power to the market. Transmission lines are made up of lots and lots of switching gear and, in that switching gear, there is a product called sulphur hexafluoride. That has a global warming potential 23,000 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. Why would you put a toxic synthetic gas into the atmosphere that has a global warming potential 23,000 times greater than that of carbon dioxide? Might I add: all molecules absorb and emit. One of the big myths about carbon dioxide is that it traps heat. Nothing traps heat. Gustav Kirchhoff in the 1850s said that atoms absorb and emit at the same frequency. Carbon dioxide emits at four frequencies: 2.8, 4.3 and two degenerate vibrational frequencies at 14.8. What's interesting is that the atmospheric window is between nine and 11 microns, and we know that because of Wien's law. Wien is the guy who got a Nobel prize in 1911 for physics. Wien's law proved that the atmospheric window the earth emits at is about 10 microns. And what emits at 10 microns? What's the atmospheric window at? Between nine and 11. It's a function of pressure. It just happens to be sulphur hexafluoride. Why would you be putting this stuff that goes straight through the atmospheric window into the atmosphere? It's not very smart at all, is it?

But, of course, it takes more than transmission to make renewables work. The unicorn farmers over here think that they're going to run manufacturing on green energy. It's never going to happen, because you can't build big enough batteries to power industrial use. Even if you could, it would cost a fortune. I'll explain why. Lithium batteries are made from lithium, which is a one per cent ore body. That means you've got to mine 100 tonnes of the stuff just to get one tonne of it, so you're going to be digging some very big holes to get this stuff out of the ground. Then it takes four energy-intensive processes to extract the metal out of the ore. And that's only for the anode. You haven't even started on the cathode, which could be cobalt, nickel or who knows what. That will mean another great big hole in the ground. The hypocrisy of all of this is: when these solar farms and these wind farms are built, does the state government charge them an environmental bond? No. Mining companies have to put down an environmental bond when they start a mine. Yet again, we're giving a free pass to renewables. Let me tell you: in 100 years time when the atmosphere is full of sulphur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride, which is the stuff in solar panels—that's the stuff used in solar panels, not the stuff used in etching solar panels. The stuff used in etching solar panels is silicon tetrachloride. You probably don't hear of that, because that's made in China, like neodymium, which is also made in China, because it's a rare earth. They're the only country that makes this filthy toxic stuff. Silicon tetrachloride is more toxic than nuclear waste. But, of course, they'll never tell you about that, will they? No, of course not! So I— (Time expired)

Senator AYRES (New South Wales) (17:09): I'll try not to take up too much of the Senate's time this afternoon on this disallowance motion. I will just say to those opposite: if you think that that contribution was good for your argument, if you think it's a very good idea to put that front and centre, you're going to lose touch with this debate. That was—with the greatest respect to Senator Rennick—an incoherent ramble that had no basis in science, no basis in economics and no basis in engineering. I say to you, Mr Acting Deputy President: at the very least, if Senator Rennick believes that there is too much supply in the Queensland energy market, why on earth does he want to build a coal-fired power station? What on earth do you want to do that for?

If we look at the company that that outfit over there want to allocate $3.3 million worth of borrowed money to, we first need a bit of close examination of who that outfit are. Are they—

Government senators interjecting—

Senator AYRES: Do they have a record—

Government senators interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Brockman ): Order!

Senator AYRES: Do they have a record of delivery of any project anywhere in this country? A power station is a very significant and complicated—

Senator Canavan interjecting—

Senator AYRES: I don't think you're—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Canavan! Senate Ayres, please resume your seat. I will remind everyone that—

Senator Canavan interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Canavan, please cease the interjections! I will remind you that all interjections are disorderly, Senator Canavan. Senator Ayres, you have the call.

Senator AYRES: What a bag of wind—really, what a bag of wind! That's what this is all about: it's about cheap politics. It's got nothing to do with the energy market, nothing to do with delivering cheap power for Australians. If that were what it was about, you would be on a very different path. What it's really about is a cruel hoax on the people of North Queensland. It's a hoax on the people whom you claim you want to represent. If you really wanted to demonstrate a commitment to the industries that are there and should be there—the resources industry, export coal, manufacturing—you would be on a very different path. You would be on a very different path if you wanted a plan for investment in new jobs, if you had a plan for cheaper energy, if you wanted to deliver for the steel and aluminium sectors. It's certainly not been evident in anything else that the Liberal National Party has done in Queensland. That's why Robbie Katter belled the cat the other day. He could see this plan for the fraud that it is. He could see straight through it.

When you look at who is there in Shine Energy, the personnel who are driving this corporate shell of a company, what you see is former Katter Australian Party people and former LNP people, not a single engineer or energy market expert. What you see is these guys perpetrating a fraud on people in North Queensland, who actually need an outfit that is prepared to stand up for North Queensland jobs.

Senator Canavan has never seen a good, permanent coalminer's job that he hasn't wanted to turn into a casual, low-paid job.

Government senators interjecting—

Senator AYRES: That's what you're about. Your job here is spruiking for people who want to strip communities, strip jobs, drive wages down and drive jobs offshore. A close examination of Shine's publicly available material—because none of their governance material is available publicly in the material they provide on their website—just shows that it's a company that is not capable of delivering this project. There is no support for this project among the Brisbane Liberals; they are very clear on that. The Queensland LNP says, very clearly, 'We do not support this project, so what on earth are you doing here?' The energy spokesman for the Queensland LNP says, very clearly, 'We are not for this project.' But you're all down here, posturing and posing, a bunch of carpetbaggers who are here pretending to be something that you are not. These former Productivity Commission economists—no friends of the workers, jumping on in the high-vis, doing the press conferences, doing the podcasts—have no record of delivery. The closest things that this outfit opposite here have, in terms of northern Australian infrastructure, is their fraud of a northern Australian infrastructure fund, which delivered a big fat zero for northern Australia.

When people look at this debate and they watch the way that this debate is being conducted, they ought to think clearly and carefully about whose interests Senator Rennick and Senator Canavan are really representing in this debate.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Ayres, resume your seat. You are getting very close to a direct imputation on others in this place and I would ask you to be very careful with your choice of words. Senator Rennick?

Senator Rennick: I have a point of order. That is exactly what I was going to say: there is an imputation that somehow this side of the chamber's corrupt. It's not the first time that Senator Ayres has done that. He has absolutely no evidence. All we want to do, as we stated before, is protect jobs in North Queensland. Yet Senator Ayres continually walks into this chamber and casts aspersions as to our integrity.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Rennick, this is not an opportunity to debate the issue. I have already brought Senator Ayres's attention to standing order 193. Senator Ayres, I ask you to choose your words carefully.

Senator AYRES: I'll choose them very carefully, Mr Acting Deputy President. It was certainly not my intention—there's a high level of sensitivity over there. When I talk about 'whose interests', I don't mean whose pecuniary interests. I mean: is it in interests of jobs in North Queensland? Is it in the interests of lower power prices in Queensland? Is it in the interests of driving investment because of lower energy prices? It certainly isn't. It delivers nothing. What it does do is contribute to what Mr Buckley, the energy expert at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, called 'energy policy chaos on steroids'. That's what this is all about. More chaos, no energy plan, more disruption, more ideological fixations, and no focus on the practical things that are required to have a cogent energy plan that deals with the big challenges that Australia faces. I'll leave it there.

Senator WHISH-WILSON (Tasmania) (17:18): Sadly, this august chamber that we are so privileged to be part of is not the only place in the world at the moment where careful and rational argument is being defeated by short-term political interests and short-term economic advantage. The fact that this disallowance is before us today, that this grant has even got to this stage, is a clear sign that this parliament and this government have been corrupted. When I talk about corruption—Acting Deputy President Brockman, I heard your contribution with the last speaker—I am talking about institutional corruption. I am talking about big business and big politics in bed together. That's what this is: clear and simple.

Let's go through this. We have this small company, Shine Energy, that wants to get up a project, the Collinsville coal-fired power station in Queensland. Everybody, to a tee, says this project is not economic and is not viable. I could sit here and list as long as my arm the people who have come out and said this, including within the Liberal Party. On the other hand, we have a marginal seat going into a federal election. We have trouble within the government between the coalition partners—the National Party and the Liberal Party. We have senators, including senators in the chamber now, who are totally outspoken about wanting to promote coal. We know this has caused division and concern within the Liberal Party; that's a matter of public record. But we also have a large international coal company—the tax-dodging Glencore, a significant donor to the Liberal Party—deciding to throw their hat in with Shine Energy and become their partner. Why would Glencore do that? They can make good political mileage out of this—a new coal-fired power station on the political agenda. Coal is not going away; it's still potentially a future generator of energy in this country regardless of what the science says, regardless of what the energy experts say and regardless of what the economic experts say. Glencore throw their considerable weight behind this project, and it gives it credibility

We have the perfect storm here. It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes from a favourite Australian author, David Gregory Roberts. He says, 'The only thing more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics'—and that's what we're in—'is the politics of big business.' When they get into bed together, they're an unstoppable force. The fact that this is even before us today is a farce. It is the most egregious example of the fact that the Liberal Party and National Party in government simply don't care how this looks any more. They are so arrogant that they feel they can get away with providing $3.6 million of taxpayers' money to a company that's got no hope. I agree with what Senator Ayres said earlier. It's actually offering a false hope to the Queensland people purely out of short-term political interests.

I will say very clearly: there are political interests from the likes of Senator Canavan and Senator Rennick. They're the renegades within the Liberal-National coalition that want this kind of project to get up. It might just be a coincidence that the LNP retained this marginal seat and that this project was thrown into the political mix during an election campaign. What a great thing to do politically. It wedges Labor. It puts them on the spot. We know that they're divided on climate policy and coal use. Certainly LNP senators are given a chance to do one of their favourite hobbies, which of course is to pour buckets on the Greens and give a couple of very famous Murdoch publications the opportunity to do the same.

You get to promise jobs and a future for Queenslanders through a coal-fired power station in a marginal seat that desperately needs real leadership and real direction. That's a perfect storm. If that isn't institutional corruption—or crony capitalism; they're both the same thing—I don't know what is. I don't know what crony capitalism is if it's not a big Liberal Party government giving a big international coal company money for a feasibility study for a power station that nobody thinks is viable and for a power source that nobody thinks is viable in an industry that is very shortly going to be filled with stranded assets.

I want to talk a little bit about Tasmania, because it's not just a Queensland debate. What we've seen in parliament in the last week is not just to do with this Collinsville dodgy grant. We saw the government raising issues in the House last week to make the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the CEFC—an agency set up by the Greens and Labor to invest in renewable energy and an agency which the LNP have done everything they can over the last seven years to destroy—and its money available for gas infrastructure and gas investment. Of course, what better way to ruin the legacy than to open it up to investment not in renewables but in fossil fuels? We have seen the initial proposals to, as my colleague Senator Hanson-Young says, take a chainsaw to Australia's already weak environmental laws at a time of a biodiversity and extinction crisis.

Let's frame this up. While we have got this push on in federal parliament through the government to develop fossil fuels under cover of COVID, under cover of a pandemic, around the mantra 'jobs, jobs, jobs, economic recovery', the Liberal state government in Tasmania, in partnership with the Liberal federal government, are saying to Tasmanians, 'Look, at this fantastic project we have, this Marinus Link. We are going to build infrastructure to sell renewable energy to the grid.' Tasmanians don't see what is really going on. They don't see that that pet political project is on the Prime Minister's priority list. The Small Business Council released a report saying the infrastructure wasn't viable and it would actually drive up power prices in Tasmania.

Putting that aside, this pet project is nothing but a fig leaf, a smoke screen, to what this Liberal National Party government is trying to do around this country—that is, not only lock in business as usual but ramp up fossil fuel production and infrastructure. In other words, give this industry that is a significant donor to the Liberal National Party a final leg-up following this catastrophic summer of fires and the third mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in five years, which, 10 years ago, we didn't think that would be possible in my lifetime. We have seen it. At a time when you think you would be going exactly the other way and all working together to transition to clean energy, to a renewable future, and to investing in new industries, new technology, new jobs, what do we get? We get more of the same.

The government are cynically using a pandemic and the fact that we have to grab whatever jobs and whatever investment we can get, when what we should be doing is setting up this country not just for the next decade but for the next 50 to 100 years, at a time of record low interest rates, at a time we could invest billions of dollars in building a new future, not one just that creates jobs and productivity but one that also solves the great dilemmas and challenges of our time, like rising emissions and climate change. We are in the middle of a climate emergency and economic inequality. We went into significant debt after World War II, and a decade of growth dividends retired that debt. We are in the same position now, but what are we getting at a time when Australians are calling out for leadership, at a time when Australians are calling out for a green new deal, for a new way forward? What do we get? We get a $3.6 million feasibility study for a project that no-one thinks is going to be viable—no-one, perhaps, except those whose direct political interests are served: the National senators in this chamber.

This is politics at its worst, and I am genuinely disgusted. I haven't even gone into detail of the timeline that has led to this proposal that is before us today. The fact that the money is even flowing, that the company was invited to apply for it two days after the government had announced they were giving the money to this company because they made this promise in an election campaign—a promise to shore up a marginal seat in order to shore up their own power. Australians will see through this. This will not go well for the government, and my party, even if we're the only ones in this place, will continue to stand up for good governance, for a proper plan and for a vision for this country.

Senator CANAVAN (Queensland—Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate) (17:30): I want to deal with some of the spurious arguments we've just heard from the previous speakers, but to start with I'd like to return to the substantive issues facing this country and why we should seek to use our natural resources to grow and develop our nation and create jobs. I believe that we have a strong future as a country as a manufacturing nation. I think we should be seeking to bring back manufacturing jobs here to this country, which we have, unfortunately, for too long seen hobbled—our manufacturing industry has been hobbled—with jobs disappearing to other countries. We have to face the facts that the policies we have pursued at least for the past 10 or so years have been ones of failure for our manufacturing sector. We have to face facts, particularly now the coronavirus epidemic has shown the fragility of the supply chains and the importance of having domestic manufacturing. We need to face facts.

The facts are that the last decade has been the first decade on record that the Australian manufacturing industry has gone backwards in real output, in real terms. The share of manufacturing as a percentage of our economy has been declining for some decades, as it has in most developed countries, but even during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s our manufacturing output continued to grow every decade, almost every year, even though it was a smaller share of the overall economy. The last 10 years have actually seen a decline, a decline in absolute terms, and that's a decline I think we should work to reverse. Because of that decline, we've seen fewer jobs in the manufacturing industry. In 1990, 1.2 million Australians worked in manufacturing. Today, the figure is around 900,000. It bottomed out at about 850,000 mid last year. So we've lost about 300,000 jobs in manufacturing over that time, and that's something we should seek to reverse.

It was summed up nicely by Senator Ayres that apparently there are some industries we can support now and some that are a third rail, at least for the Labor Party and the Greens, that we can't support. Senator Ayres said we should focus on industries like exporting coal. We should export coal according to Senator Ayres. Of course, given his contribution was on behalf of the Labor Party, that means they don't think we should use coal here; we should export it to other countries but not use it here. That is the position of the modern Australian Labor Party—that somehow it is okay for other countries to have access to our natural resources, to create jobs in their nations, to send back the goods for us saps to buy, but it's not good enough for us to use the same resources ourselves to create jobs in this nation. Well, I think that's a tower of absurdity; it's an absolute tower of absurdity that we would help empower, help arm other countries to compete against our own businesses but deny the same natural resources for the use of those same Australian businesses trying to compete on the world stage, trying to grow and develop their manufacturing base. It is ridiculous.

As Senator Ayres sort of implied—he didn't say it, but he implied it—there obviously is a market for the export of coal, or the Labor Party think there is. There are people in this country who are building coal-fired power stations. In fact, around three Hazelwood power stations—people might remember the Hazelwood Power Station that shut in Victoria; it was 25 per cent of Victoria's electricity supply—a week have been built in our region in the past decade, so there's a very strong market for Australian coal. Particularly given the high quality of our coal with the predominantly low ash content, it will be in greater demand as countries seek to improve their air pollution and the environmental circumstances in their country. There's a great demand for that. So, if there is a demand overseas, if other countries are using it and think it seems to be worthwhile for them to create manufacturing industries and create jobs, why would we deny ourselves access to the same resources? Why would we just say, 'No; nothing; not at all'? We can't even look into it. The only reason you can fathom that that position would have any kind of coherence is that the Labor Party cannot support it because of the votes they need in inner-city areas and the preferences they need from the Greens. That's why they have this absurd position, where they'll apparently support coalmines but just not the use of the coal in Australia. What the Labor Party support, basically, is that there should be a direct channel from the coalmine to Japan or Korea or China, and we can't touch that. It's got to go straight from the mine onto the ship and overseas, and none of it can be touched or put to use here in this country. That is the public position of the Labor Party. The reality is that all of us here, every day, rely on our high-quality Australian coal to get our energy, to get our electricity. In fact, I've just checked the figures right now—you can check them all the time—and in New South Wales 80 per cent of the power in this area is coming from coal-fired power. In Victoria it's 67 per cent.

I tell you what, Madam Acting Deputy President Stoker, I think I've been the only North Queenslander to actually contribute to this debate—and this is about a project in North Queensland. A lot of people are taking interest in North Queensland, which I welcome and love. But I am the only North Queenslander to take an interest here in this debate. I'll give you a guess what the figure is of coal-fired power being generated in North Queensland right now. You don't have to check a live app: it is zero. There are no coal-fired power stations in North Queensland. The last—the northernmost—coal-fired power station is at Stanwell, just west of where I live, in Rockhampton, and anywhere north of that has no coal-fired power stations—none at all. As I said, they're welcome to have their views, but, to be clear, the view of a bunch of southern Queenslanders and the Labor and Greens parties is that it's okay for us here to rely for the majority of our power on coal-fired power—to power our homes, to keep our lights on, to keep the factories running. That's okay. But for North Queenslanders: you can't touch it, you can't have any of it. You can't even think about building one there.

Why are Labor and the Greens so desperate to avoid supporting a $3.4 million feasibility study into something? Why are they so desperate to avoid even the question being asked? It's because, I think, they might not like the answer. That is the reason. There has been a study put in place into a coal-fired power station at Collinsville in recent years—in fact, it was commissioned by none other than Mr Wayne Swan, the world's greatest Treasurer apparently, according to some. He commissioned a study into a Collinsville coal-fired power station—I think it was a deal he had to do with Mr Bob Katter at the time. Mr Swan commissioned it. He didn't really want to do it, but he was forced to do it. The study came back with a report in 2014 from GHD, a respected engineering company: 'A major 800-megawatt coal-fired power station will put strong downward pressure on electricity prices.' It was pretty clear that, guess what, if you produce more power, you get lower power prices. It's not rocket science. And that, fundamentally, is why they don't want the question to be asked—because they're afraid of that answer. And that answer would make the absurd position of the Labor Party—that we'll export coal but not use it—even harder to sustain.

I want to get onto and rebut some of the arguments that have been put forward here. I've been away for a little while. This is my first day back in a couple of months, and I think there is a little confusion as to what democracy is. We are in a democratic chamber. We've all been elected here. And in the other place they go to an election every three years. They've all been elected. But there seems to be a little confusion about exactly what democracy is.

An honourable senator: Give us a reminder!

Senator CANAVAN: I thought we lived in a democratic system, where governments and parties, and all of us, put our policies out before an election and take them to the people, and there's a vote, and then the party that has the greatest number of people over there in the other place gets to form a government, and the government, generally, will seek to implement all those promises and policies that it put forward to the Australian people and that were voted on.

Senator Scarr: Sounds good.

Senator CANAVAN: It sounds like a pretty good system I think, Senator Scarr. I think we should seek to adopt it here in this country—or, at least, the Greens and the Labor Party should get behind it and support it. Because guess what has happened? All these words that have been bandied around, and all the scandalous comments—guess what has happened here in this instance?

The Liberal and National parties, before last year's election, said to the Australian people and to the people of Central and North Queensland: 'If we're elected, we will fund a feasibility study into a coal-fired power station at Collinsville. Given the previous work has been done, given there's some argument for it. Given the ACCC report, which showed clearly that we need investment in base load and reliable power.' Clearly there are some market failures preventing that investment. We haven't seen a base load power station built in this country for over 10 years. So, given all that evidence, we said to the Australian people, 'We think it makes sense to have a look at this.' We publicly and openly said it to the Australian people, and they supported us. They voted for us. We achieved a majority in the House of Representatives. That gave us the right to form a government. Now the government is implementing the promises it took to the Australian people.

Apparently that process that I've just mapped out—and I don't think anyone contests that was the process—is the basis for a great scandal according to what we just heard from Senator Whish-Wilson and Senator Ayres! Have you ever heard anything more absurd than a government implementing its own election promises? That's the basis for some great scandal!

A government senator: Never heard of it!

Senator CANAVAN: Never heard of it! It has never been done apparently. Maybe they've never done it. They should try it some time. The real reason we come back to is: why is this motion being moved? Let's look into it a bit more.

The motion is being moved by Senator McAllister. Senator McAllister is from New South Wales. If you go to Senator McAllister's website on the New South Wales Labor Party's site, it says:

In 2003 Jenny founded the Labor Environment Activist Network, and served as one of its inaugural convenors

Otherwise called LEAN. I think that LEAN these days use the term 'Labor Environment Action Network'. But apparently it must have been an 'activist' network to start with. That's very interesting. I didn't know that. So Senator McAllister formed this LEAN group, which is basically the Bob Brown wing of the Labor Party. They now are moving this motion to prevent jobs and investment in North Queensland. Where are the Queensland Labor senators? I don't think any of them have spoken. I don't think any of them have moved this motion. None of them had the guts in this place to come up and tell the people of Queensland why they don't support coal jobs.

They're a bit shy on this, because they know that the people of Queensland have worked them out. Ms Jo-Anne Miller, the former Queensland member for Bundamba has said, Labor would like to take the royalties from the coal industry in Queensland with one hand and with the other hand poke the industry in the eye. The people of Queensland have worked them out. Until you get into this place and actually have the guts to come forward and put your arguments—not sit behind the LEAN group, the Bob Brown wing of the Labor Party—the people will continue to desert a once proud Labor Party in Queensland.

What did we see from LEAN the other day? This tells you a bit about who they are. Probably not many people know about LEAN. I think you're about to hear a lot more about them. Apparently the LEAN group the other day sent an email to their supporters, which was reported in The Australian last week:

The Labor Environment Action Network is launching a campaign to encourage people to junk their gas-powered household appliances, as the party's environmental wing escalates its campaign against using the resource as a transitional energy source.

The email goes on to say:

… a residential gas-to-electric program comes with an added bonus: it will free up gas for industry…

They want people to get rid of their gas appliances! This is their policy.

I've heard of a lot of political parties over the years who have wanted to come up with a policy or a program that is a barbecue-stopper, but I think this is the first time in Australian political history that a party has actually taken a literal barbecue-stopper as their policy. This policy is to shut down barbecues. I don't know about you, but my barbecue is powered by good old LPG. That's what I hook up to it every week. I fire it up. Most Australians probably have a gas fired barbecue. You could use coal; there are some of those around. I don't. Maybe I should, but I don't have a good old coal fired barbecue. I've got a gas fired one.

They want to shut them down. They want to stop all the barbecues in Australia. This is the madness that is coming if you just scratch the surface of the modern Labor Party. It is the madness that is underneath. This is what people like Mr Joel Fitzgibbon in the other place is exposing. He is doing his best to cover it up with a few high-vis shirts but it's becoming increasingly difficult. As he said the other week, he might have to split away. I don't think he has to form his own party. He can come and join us. He will fit in well in the Nats. We'll take him. A bit of polish and he will be right.

We need to expose this to the Australian people. This debate is very important because it shows the actual motives. It shows the direction that the Labor Party is headed in in this country. People hear the word 'Labor' and they think it must be something about jobs and workers. But that was a long, long time ago. They now want to take people's gas appliances away from them. I didn't think it would get this crazy but it has. This is from their own people. They want to take away people's barbecues. They don't want to support the use of our own natural resources to support our manufacturing industries. They basically now want to help out competing countries overseas with our own resources and then buy back solar panels and wind turbines at great subsidy, to the cost to the Australian taxpayer. I'm standing here as someone who wants to use our natural resources to create jobs in this country, because I want to see our manufacturing sector come back to strength, and that won't happen while we deny Australians the use of our own God-given, high-quality natural resources.

Senator RICE (Victoria—Deputy Australian Greens Whip) (17:45): We are debating an appalling decision tonight, an appalling decision to give away $3.6 million of your, and my, taxpayer dollars, hard-earned taxpayer dollars, for a coal-fired power station. This decision ticks all of the boxes of bad decision-making. There are at least four big reasons as to why it is totally the wrong thing to be doing. I'm going to talk through these in my contribution tonight. Firstly, the last thing that the world needs in a climate crisis is a new coal-fired power station. Secondly, a new coal-fired power station is totally economically irresponsible. Thirdly, it's just a cruel hoax. It's just teasing the North Queensland community with the prospect of jobs and economic development that is just not going to happen. Fourthly, the process of giving this grant is totally corrupt. I want to talk through these and finish up with what we need to do about it, because actions outside this place, sadly, are going to be needed to get ourselves to a place where we can have hope for our future.

You just heard from Senator Canavan. We just heard from Senator Rennick. Sadly, there is no hope that this government, supported by their tinfoil-hat-wearing sidekicks, One Nation, are going to come to their senses. They are not going to listen. Time and time again they have shown that they are not listening to the reality of what lies ahead for our world because of our climate crisis. They have their heads firmly in the sand. They have their fingers in their ears and they are saying, 'La, la, la, la, la, la' as loudly as they can without getting a mouthful of sand.

Let's start with the fact that the last thing that the world needs is a new coal-fired power station. In case someone has just woken up from some Rip Van Winkle-type sleep—they've been asleep for the last 30 years—here are the simple facts: the climate crisis is real, it is happening now and it is caused by the burning of coal, gas and oil. It fuelled the unprecedented bushfires that we experienced last summer that burnt the biggest area of forest in Australia in one summer ever, and the biggest proportion of forest on a continent anywhere in the world ever, killing three billion animals. It was the climate crisis that fuelled the smoke that blanketed our cities for months on end. It is the climate crisis that is creating the unprecedented drought that our farmers have been struggling with. The Nationals, as represented by Senator Canavan, are in denial about the link between the climate crisis and the drought. It is the unprecedented heat that is making these droughts get worse and worse and making it really difficult for us to grow food, destroying the livelihoods of our farmers. It is the climate crisis that is causing the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, and rising sea levels that threaten to wash away huge parts of our cities, pushing animals and plants—whole ecosystems—to the brink of extinction. You get the picture. This is a crisis. It is an existential crisis for humanity and for the world. We are doing severe harm to life, to our life support systems and to ourselves, and we've got to stop.

What do we need to do so that it doesn't get worse? It's very simple: we've got to stop burning coal, gas and oil as soon as possible. There is no time to waste. There is no carbon budget left. Every tonne of carbon released into the atmosphere is doing us and the planet harm. The last thing we need to be doing is building new coal-fired power stations. And, yes, I'll take Senator Canavan's point: we also don't need to be exporting coal for other countries' coal-fired power stations. Labor don't quite get the extent of this climate crisis either. But how does the government respond to this? We just heard Senator Canavan basically saying that everything was fine with burning fossil fuels. Basically, they are just totally in denial. They're saying that it doesn't matter because, in their view, building a coal-fired power station might somehow be good for the Queensland economy.

This of course brings me to my second point: a new coal-fired power station for North Queensland does not stack up. It's cheaper to build renewable power than it is to build new coal. Let me quote economist Frank Jotzo, who specialises in climate and energy policy. He makes it very clear that the high cost of building and running the plant, coupled with the falling costs of other energy sources, particularly renewables, means it's unlikely to be viable. In fact, his expert opinion is:

The average cost of producing electricity from a new coal-fired power plant, if one were built now, might be as high as two times higher than the average cost from wind and solar plants, even if you factor in the cost of smoothing out the intermittency of those plants with energy storage—

that is, the battery or the pumped hydro or the concentrated solar thermal that might be needed, or the hydrogen that might be needed, to store up the energy to buffer for any intermittent factors. He says:

The financial risk of any new coal-fired power plant would be massive. Any new coal-fired power plant would need Government support subsidies and a guarantee that a carbon price would never be applied. It would need to be the taxpayer that underwrites all of this. And it would be the taxpayer that pays the inflated bills for decades to come.

So that is a total fail on economics.

That is why my third point as to why this grant is so bad is so important. Clearly, this grant for a feasibility study is basically just the government tearing up $3.6 million and throwing it into the wind. They are doing it so it looks like they're doing something. They are trying to buy votes and give hope to people who are struggling, who want and deserve some economic security. This is just cruel. This power station isn't going to be built. It doesn't stack up. It's pretending to offer hope, economic security and jobs when they are a mirage.

There is so much more that this government could be doing with this $3.6 million to help transition away from the dirty industries of the past to a clean, jobs-rich economy. It could be doing things like—yes—massive investment in solar and wind, making hydrogen for domestic use and export, carbon farming, environmental restoration, health and aged care, education, investing in public housing and improving the ability to work remotely—like we are sort of managing to do here today—so that people can be living in remote areas and working with other people all across the country. This is where the jobs of the future are. This is what any government looking sensibly and strategically at how to improve the fortunes of a town like Collinsville would do, instead of throwing them a bone that stinks to high heaven. It's a bone that should have been well and truly thrown out last century.

But here is where it gets really stinky. Who are Shine Energy, who have had this $3.6 million windfall just land in their laps? Shine Energy is a company that has no expertise in building coal-fired power stations and a company that has links to the big coal company Glencore, who just happen to be a megadonor to the coalition. How did they get this $3.6 million? It was through a total farce of a process, where the grant was awarded two days before an application was even put in, in a grants program that was invented just to give them the grant. In fact, on 8 February this year, when the country was still burning, Minister Taylor announced that Shine would receive up to $4 million of public money for a feasibility study into a so-called 'low-emission' coal-fired power plant. Yes, you're right—it's for something that doesn't exist. Two days later they were asked to apply—two days after they had been announced as the winner of this public money. It gets worse. The company that would get this windfall gain, Shine Energy, has connections with coal giant Glencore, who donate a whole heap of money to the coalition and would directly benefit from the coal power station's construction. Funnily enough, Glencore have been very actively lobbying the government to support this power station and the coal industry overall.

This stuff matters. This is corruption. People like to believe that Australia has good processes, that we abide by the rule of law. Undermining good processes, trashing good processes, not only leads to corrupt outcomes that favour the rich and powerful, leaving people and the environment in their wake, but destroys trust in government. Trust in government matters. Being in a pandemic makes that very clear. We need to be able to trust that our government is acting responsibly, doing what's necessary to keep us safe. We need trust in our government so that we can have hope for a safe and healthy future. Trust in government is a critical thing. It's critical for a healthy, well-functioning society.

Of course, when it comes to trashing trust by rorting grant programs, the coalition has form. The Senate is still trying to uncover everything that went on with the sports rorts program, a $100 million pre-election rort that was all about buying votes—colour-coded spreadsheets going backwards and forwards to fund projects that suited them, with the then Minister for Sport, Bridget McKenzie, emailing the Prime Minister's office dozens of times about which projects would get approved in which electorates. Of course, during the sports rorts Senate inquiry we've uncovered sports rorts 2 and sports rorts 3, two more pre-election slush funds—sports rorts 2 being the female facilities and water safety stream, $150 million that was funnelled into swimming pools in marginal coalition seats. It was blatant pork-barrelling. And then sports rorts 3, which we uncovered just in the last couple of weeks, was the $45 million pre-election cash splash where 99 per cent of the money went to seats that were either coalition seats or marginal seats, without any requirement for an application and where the funding criteria have been described as 'light touch'—that is, just a nod and a wink between an MP and their mates so they would have an election announcement to trumpet.

I personally know how hard it is when you are in a community that isn't in a marginal electorate. I've lived in one all my life. I was the mayor of one. When you're the mayor of a council that's in a safe Labor seat, the coalition just ignore you when they're in government and Labor just take you for granted when they are. It's incredibly frustrating to see your community miss out because of this corrupt process.

It's the same when we're trying to shift our economy to a clean, green energy future. We are being held back by grants like this one, billions of dollars of subsidies to the mining companies, allowing them to get cheaper diesel than you or I can get. Instead of splashing our money to help out their mates, propping up coal and gas and oil, there's so much they could be doing to invest to recover from the crisis we're currently in. We could be leading the world as a renewable energy giant. Renewable energy projects could mean thousands and thousands of jobs across Australia, particularly in regional Australia. We could be building the sustainable transport and energy infrastructure that we need for this century. We could be building the affordable housing that's so critical for a fair and equitable society. But no; instead the coalition are looking after their mates—big business and big politics working well together—and not serving the interests of Australia. They are devastating Australia, in fact, through their refusal to act in the national interest.

I want to finish by focusing on what we, the people of Australia, can do about it. As I said, we've heard, from the contributions to this debate, that they are not listening. They are listening to their mates; they are not listening to the people of Australia. We need to get more active. We need to get our friends, our families, our neighbours and our communities informed and active, and we need to turf this lot out of office. We can elect a government that the Greens share power in, and we can then be on our way to building a future that doesn't have this corruption as part of it, that is clean and green and fair, and that we can feel hopeful about rather than despairing about. And do you know what? I'm really looking forward to people getting on board, because I'm very confident that the people of Australia will see through this. They will see that the only way out is to turf this lot out and elect a government that is going to work in the interests of people in the community. And I am really looking forward to working with the people of Australia in doing this.

Senator McMAHON (Northern Territory) (17:59): This is a commitment that we took to the last election, and we on this side honour our commitments. Apparently, as we heard tonight, it is only we on this side who believe in honouring election commitments. It's something I'm quite proud of. Labor don't support mining, and they don't support the regions that rely on it. Labor has just gone through an NT election claiming that they support the onshore oil and gas industry. Is that about to change? Are they about to follow their southern masters? It's no surprise that last week, when Labor stood up against mining jobs, the CFMEU announced that they are backing away from Queensland Labor. Is our NT onshore oil and gas and future coal industry the next thing they're going to attack? 'But we don't need oil, gas, coal et cetera, because we have renewables'—renewables, or the dole bludgers of the energy mix, as my good friend Senator Canavan calls them.

Last week in this place Senator McAllister brought up the Territory's Sun Cable project, and I'm glad she did. For those who aren't aware, this project involves filling a cattle station paddock on the Barkly full of solar panels and running an extension cord over to Singapore. Present estimates for this project are that it will cost about $25 billion, or over eight small modular reactors. Labor brags about this number of $25 billion as though it is something to be proud of. Let's not forget, this project is predicated on a raft of technologies that do not exist. One only needs to look at Labor's history of fiscal mismanagement to understand how this massive expense rolls off their talking point sheets so easily.

Compounding their gross lack of understanding of renewables is their adherence to the inane notion that solar and wind power is free. That's right: they tell people that renewables are free or cheaper than coal- and gas-fired power stations. Why? Because you are the hoaxers, Senator Ayres and Senator Rice. You are the hoaxers, not those of us on this side of this place. The fact that the sun shines and the wind blows only partially explains their position. But the most alarming element is that when Labor spends taxpayers' money on rebates and subsidies they pretend that the money came from nowhere. Indeed, they factor that spending into their argument to make the cost of renewables appear lower. As with all Labor governments I've seen in Australia, that economy is a false one. In reality, the sun shines less than half the time; the wind blows intermittently. When renewables do produce power, you need to have a means by which to store that power. Those of us on this side of the house know this, and the concept is one that we see, understand and plan for. Labor prefer to remain in their fantasy world of unicorns and flying horses, of making announcements and pretending they will become a reality.

The productivity report into the power and water authority in the Northern Territory that came out earlier this year highlighted the imminent collapse of significant portions of the NT power grid because, while solar farms are being built everywhere, nobody actually thought to install a battery. Worse, they didn't even have any future plans to do so. That's right: all sun and no fun. When the sun sets, the solar power goes away, and then Territorians must rely on something other than renewables. For more than four months every year, the monsoon season rolls across the Top End of the NT, and guess what? There's no sunlight. In Queensland, right now, communities can have a coal-fired power station for about $2 billion. Two billion dollars is a great deal of money, but it's a fraction of the $25 billion for the solar powered project in the Northern Territory.

My Queensland colleagues in the Senate assure me that the sunshine state is, in fact, sunless for at least half of every day. I also know that in northern parts of Queensland many areas are affected by the seasonal monsoons inhibiting sunlight. How much impact do these attributes have on power in communities in Queensland? They have none. And do you know why, Madam Acting Deputy President Askew? It's because Queensland has coal-fired power stations.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (18:05): I rise to put a few comments in the Hansard in this debate on the Industry Research and Development (Bankable Feasibility Study on High‑Efficiency Low-Emissions Coal Plant in Collinsville Program) Instrument 2020. I rise as the shadow finance minister, because I think it is important, when we're having this discussion about where money is going at the moment, to remind everybody in this chamber that every cent of the $3.3 million feasibility study that's going to go to this project is borrowed money. It is—

Senator Rennick interjecting—

Senator GALLAGHER: Senator Rennick, I sat and listened to you, and now I'm going to make a few comments myself. The $3.3 million is all borrowed money, and we think that the government should consider that against the comments its own team members have made, in the sense of: 'It's fine because it was an election commitment. So we can go ahead with it, even though it costs $3.3 million, because the project's not going to get up anyway.' Those are the comments of your own team, whether they be from Mr Zimmerman, Mr Sharma or Mr Falinski.

We don't think that's right. We don't think we should be in a position where gross debt was, I think, as of last Friday, $768.6 billion, almost $300 billion of which was borrowed before the pandemic hit. Although we'll wait for the final budget outcome, we know that the budget for last year has a deficit of $85.8 billion. This financial year, in July, the government was forecasting a deficit of $184.5 billion, and we know they've made additional expenditure commitments since that time, so I would imagine the deficit will be significantly bigger than that when we are given that update in October. You are making further expenditure decisions in a time when you have record debt and record deficits, when you're heading into your seventh and eighth budgets, when you're delivering your seventh and eighth budget deficits in a row after promising a budget surplus in every year in your first term—remember, that commitment doesn't get spoken about very often anymore, does it? 'We will deliver a budget surplus in the first year and every year after that.' It never happened. 'We will pay down debt.' It never, ever happened.

Now, when those fiscal conservatives opposite should be looking at ways to repair the budget, we find ourselves in a situation where we have a project that it seems universally accepted won't get government funding to continue, but it's okay to hand out $3.3 million just to keep the Nats quiet. That's what it seems to be, because there hasn't been a very strong defence from Liberal members on this point. Well, we did have your contribution, Senator Rennick. I reaffirm that we haven't had a very strong argument from Liberal members of the coalition to defend this. It's a pay-off to the National Party.

It's $3.3 million. Imagine what that $3.3 million could be used for. I have witnesses before the COVID committee on an almost weekly basis who would have equal claim to that, whether it's to create jobs or to put food on the table for families that are struggling or to pay support for all the people that are excluded from JobKeeper. You name it; there's a whole range of worthy causes where you could actually argue the case for extra expenditure. I'm not sure a project which the government's own members acknowledge will not get up without further government subsidy is the right way to be spending $3.3 million in a time when we have record debt and record deficit, when we're heading into our seventh and eighth budget deficit under this government, and when the Parliamentary Budget Office is telling us that we are going to be in deficit for the next decade. That is the financial situation we are in, and, for some reason, those opposite who have argued the case tonight think it is fine to chuck $3.3 million to a private company whose project, on all the information I have read, is unlikely to get up without further government expenditure. And if there is going to be further government expenditure, why should this $3.3 million dollars be flushed away on a feasibility study that is apparently, according to government members, going nowhere?

Senator COLBECK (Tasmania—Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians and Minister for Youth and Sport) (18:10): I sum up for the government. This was a commitment the government took to the last election. We keep all our election commitments, including this one, to the people of North Queensland. We are creating jobs and opportunities for Australians particularly, as we move into a post-COVID-19 world. We want a stronger economy supported by affordable and reliable power. A vote to disallow is a vote against jobs in North Queensland.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that business of the Senate order of the day No. 1 be agreed to.

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (18:17): I rise to continue my speech on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. Women are already bearing the brunt of the economic impacts of the pandemic—so much so that economists have said that we are in a pink collar recession. Women lost their jobs twice as fast as men when the economy was shut down. Women are over-represented as casual workers and in industries most affected by shutdowns like retail and hospitality. Women are under-represented in the few industries which received targeted stimulus, such as the construction sector. Young women have been forced to dip into their already meagre superannuation balances at disproportionate rates to make it through the crisis, which is going to decimate their retirement savings.

The government's approach to early childhood education and care was a double whammy for women and their earning potential. Not only did the government rip away access to free child care—potentially one of the most significant boosts to women's capacity to enter and remain in the workforce in a generation—but it carved the highly feminised early learning and care workforce out of JobKeeper altogether, months before the scheme was originally scheduled to end.

There has been no job creation for women during this crisis and there is none planned for the recovery. Instead, women have been totally shafted and left to fend for themselves. I've said it before and I'll say it again: our recovery plans must have women at the front and centre of planning and decision-making. This recovery must be a feminist recovery.

Creating this two-tier JobKeeper system will also be a disaster. Can I remind the chamber that we are in the middle of a pandemic and in the middle of a recession. This is not the time to be cutting the critical JobKeeper payment, which is $1,500 at the moment; it's really barely a living wage to begin with. A cut down to $1,200 and a staggeringly low $750 in the case of part-time workers will put extra stress on people at a time when we should be doing everything we can to reduce anxiety and economic uncertainty and maintain household liquidity. JobKeeper should remain at $1,500 and there should be no tiered system.

The worst part is that the government didn't need to package up cuts to workers' conditions and incomes with the extension of JobKeeper. We could have enabled the extension of JobKeeper and the existing flexibility measures for eligible businesses simply by changing the prescribed period of the existing act. We didn't need to bring down the payments. But of course this government couldn't pass up the opportunity to wedge in some corporate welfare, weaken employment conditions for swathes of workers and shift the cost of recovery on to workers who are already doing it tough.

We know that protecting people's incomes is one of the most effective mechanisms to cushion the blow of an economic downturn. We know that low incomes perpetuate recessions and depressions. We know that one of the key drivers of homelessness is unaffordable rents at the bottom of the private market. Yet, when the economy needs more stimulus as it reopens, we see the government choosing contradictory policies. Slashing JobKeeper and JobSeeker and allowing businesses to cut workers' hours and wages will drive hundreds of thousands of people closer to poverty and homelessness. This could not come at a worse time, with an approaching end to the ban on evictions. This cliff is upon us—the federal government must extend the ban on evictions alongside extending JobKeeker and making sure that the current rate of JobSeeker continues.

When the government finally introduced measures like the coronavirus supplement to JobSeeker and other social security payments and the JobKeeper wage subsidy earlier this year, what we saw from them was an acceptance that, when a crisis hits, economic and social reality beat ideology. The government was rightly afraid of the public health catastrophe that we faced. But let's not forget that this irresponsible, economically illiterate government actively encouraged workers to dip into their superannuation in the worst possible market conditions—shifting the costs of the pandemic on to ordinary workers and hollowing out their retirement savings. Yet even that theft of people's future security was an acknowledgement by the government that what the economy needs right now is cash flowing through it and that the state holds the levers to make that happen.

The pandemic has exposed the great neoliberal lie that governments don't have the power to end poverty and homelessness, the lie that there is no alternative to inequality and insecure work and housing—that they're unavoidable conditions of modern life. The government's response to this crisis was uncharacteristically interventionist because reality forced their hand. What we are seeing now are desperate attempts at winding back that intervention before it's too late. Sadly, to this government and their corporate backers, emerging from this pandemic with a population that expect the state to provide an expanded, decent social safety net, would be disastrous. The government could have chosen simply to extend the JobKeeper package or, even better, to improve it by expanding eligibility to all workers who need it and ensuring that all workers could access paid pandemic leave to protect their incomes, their jobs and the health of their families and the community. Instead, the government are returning to form with a vengeance: devaluing the sectors of the economy where women make up a high proportion of the workforce, making policy decisions based on culture wars and backwards economic thinking, pushing people back into poverty and blaming them for it, and putting the interests of business before the interests of ordinary people. We cannot let them get away with it.

The Greens will seek to fix this bill, and I urge the Labor Party and the crossbench to stand up for workers and the community by voting to maintain adequate income support and protect workers' pay and conditions. Together we can force this government to give people the support they need to stay out of poverty and to ensure that workers are not the ones footing the bill for this pandemic. We can and must emerge from this pandemic safer and more secure, committed to building an economy and a society with people's needs at their heart.

Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia) (18:24): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020, and I do so with great pleasure. May I add that I welcome the Labor Party's support for this bill. It was great to see Senator Farrell, earlier in the debate, acknowledge how successful this program has been. He was trying to wrangle credit for the program for the Labor Party, but I welcome the support of this bill by the Labor Party nonetheless.

This bill extends the prescribed period of the coronavirus payment framework for the JobKeeper payment from 31 December 2020 to 28 March 2021. This bill also amends the information-sharing arrangements to enable the ATO to share JobKeeper payment information with Commonwealth, state and territory government agencies to assist them in their efforts to address the impacts of the coronavirus, and this would include such information as uptake of differing programs by area. The JobKeeper payment is a key part of the government's response to the significant economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic—and these effects are still being felt by many, many businesses—and the government is extending and better targeting the JobKeeper payment to support businesses and their workers as they manage and recover from the economic effects of the coronavirus.

As a senator for Western Australia, I've travelled extensively across the state this year, as I know Senator Brockman has done. I acknowledge his presence and his commitment to getting out into the regions. He, I'm sure, would share the same sentiment that we're feeling—that, as we get out and about, this response to the coronavirus pandemic in supporting businesses has been very, very significant. I've said in this chamber many times before that I've heard some quite inspiring stories of invention, ingenuity, adaption and resilience, and I've also heard many stories of those hit hardest by the pandemic and hit hardest by the economic shutdown and the resulting economic shock. Businesses right across WA and those around the Perth metro area, also including those in the great southern and right up in the far north of our state, have all the felt the impacts of the economic shock that's come as a result of the coronavirus.

The industries and the impacts that they have sustained have been substantially different—of course, no two stories are the same—but the Morrison government has continued to back them. This pandemic is impacting businesses differently. Whether you're across various parts of the state or across the nation, it certainly has—and no two stories are the same. This has been reflected in all of my conversations around Western Australia. Time and time again, I've heard stories of how JobKeeper saved jobs and allowed businesses to keep their doors open.

In Albany, in the south of my state, I spoke with Toni from World of Cars who was going to have to let go of her staff. On the day that she was about to announce to her staff that she was going to have to stand them down, the announcement of JobKeeper came in. That announcement came just at the perfect time, because it was only going to be later on that afternoon that she was going to deliver the most awful news to her staff—that they were going to have to be stood down. But because of the JobKeeper program and this government's response, she was able to hang on to those 25 full-time employees. As she told me this story, she was holding back tears. These people are small business people who care deeply about their employees. They know what it would mean to them, but they also recognise what it would mean to their business had they lost those staff. The cost of letting go of staff and then having to rehire and retrain people is astronomical, and it would be a major barrier to their business getting back up and running after we're through the impact of this economic shock.

We continue to listen to businesses like Toni's, and we continue to back them. We will continue to do everything we can to make sure that they are in the best possible position to bounce back in the recovery phase. On 21 July, the government announced that the JobKeeper payment would be extended for an additional six-month period—from 28 September to 28 March 2021—with eligibility retested and targeted to those businesses most in need. In addition, the payment will be restructured into a two-tiered system from 28 September 2020.

As I've gone around Perth, I find that Perth has actually been doing remarkably well through this pandemic. Many businesses are doing quite well. A good friend of mine runs a plumbing business, and he says he's actually never been busier. But then you look at other businesses, particularly those in the hospitality sector or the tourism sector. In my travel up north, I was in the east Kimberley. Broome is doing quite well; Broome is in the west Kimberley. But, in the east Kimberley, businesses are really suffering. They call the Great Northern Highway the longest cul-de-sac in the world because of the border closure. The grey nomads who normally come up from the south to escape the winter cold would often spend some time in Broome and then start heading east towards Kununurra. Many would do a full lap around the country. Quite possibly, those coming from the east would start in the north, head to the Kimberley and Kununurra and then go all the way down to Perth. But, because of the border closure, there is a cul-de-sac, essentially. These businesses are really, really struggling.

The government recognises that there are businesses that are doing okay and there are businesses that are not. Because of the nature of their business and where they're situated, they're going to have differing impacts. This legislation is all about supporting those businesses whose downturn came more recently than others who were affected right at the very beginning. We are responsive to that. We've recognised where the program can be improved. We've taken feedback. We've listened to businesses and we've listened to people on the ground. We've taken that feedback on board and we're implementing it in such a way that the impact is felt where it is most needed. These temporary amendments to the Fair Work Act 2009 support the practical operation of the JobKeeper scheme and help to keep Australians employed and connected to their workplaces. They've been absolutely critical in keeping more people in work.

A survey of employers commissioned by the Attorney-General's Department shows that the flexibility measures issued under the temporary Fair Work Act amendments have been vital for businesses to survive the impact of the pandemic and save jobs. That is the singular focus not just of this legislation but also, importantly, of this government—to do what we can as a government to ensure that we are protecting jobs at this critical time. We cannot allow industrial issues to get in the way of a good commonsense approach to keeping a job and enabling people to be sustained in that job. This legislation goes to addressing the issues that many businesses have been facing. What employers have fed back to us is the flexibility of it, and that's why we have implemented it as part of this bill. Due to the ongoing economic impacts of the coronavirus and the extension of the JobKeeper payment scheme, the temporary changes in the Fair Work Act will be extended until 28 March 2021. However, the provisions relating to annual leave agreements will be repealed on 28 September 2020, as originally intended. Employers who qualify for the JobKeeper payment scheme on or after 28 September 2020 will be able to access the remaining temporary flexibilities in the Fair Work Act.

Businesses, as I've said, have had to deal with so much through this coronavirus pandemic—the health issues and the resulting economic impact. It is this government's commitment that we will ensure that we're adapting and that we're responsive to needs as they come up. In Western Australia, we need to really see things energised and to get back in a sustainable way. I look forward to having further contributions in the debate around what we need to be doing, because it is more than just keeping people safe. We of course must keep our communities safe and prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and everyone needs to be doing absolutely everything they can.

We also need to be looking at what we can do at various levels of government—whether local government, state government or federal government—to ensure that we are creating the right economic environment so that businesses can actually grow, develop and take advantage of the opportunities that are being provided through economic stimulus programs that are putting resources and capital into the economy. But none of that would be possible if businesses were having to let go of people because they couldn't hang onto them. It's only possible to take advantage of the stimulatory measures that are being put in place by this government and then state governments because of the support that is there for businesses to hold onto their staff. That's why this legislation is so critical. I'm very pleased that the opposition supports this and look forward to hearing further debate.

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (18:35): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payment) Amendment Bill 2020. I move:

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

(a) notes that:

   (i) this legislation gives the Treasurer extraordinary powers to set the rate and eligibility arrangements for the Jobkeeper Payment; and

   (ii) millions of workers and struggling businesses continue to be excluded from the Jobkeeper Payment; and

(b) calls on:

   (i) the Treasurer to use his power under this legislation to ensure the Jobkeeper rate is tailored to conditions in the economy, including rising unemployment; and

   (ii) the Government to permanently increase the base rate of Jobseeker payment, to help people keep out of poverty and enable them to get back to work".

This bill extends the end of JobKeeper from its original end date at the end of September through to the end of March next year. The bill also makes some changes in relation to the industrial relations arrangements which are linked to the JobKeeper extension, and I know my colleague Senator Farrell has spoken in his second reading debate speech on those.

Labor welcome this extension to JobKeeper. Unlike the Prime Minister, we never believed in the September snapback, not just in JobKeeper but for the coronavirus supplement. It was always going to be untenable for the September snapback to occur, with over 1.6 million Australians on unemployment benefits and more than 3.5 million Australians receiving JobKeeper. We also know there are another 400,000 Australians predicted to lose their jobs by Christmas. Those numbers alone tell you enough about what would have happened if the September snapback were allowed to happen. This bill simply legislates the extension of the JobKeeper program to the end of March. When it comes to extending JobKeeper until March, Labor fully support that extension. Indeed, we argued for it well before the government announced it as part of their economic and fiscal update in July this year.

What this bill doesn't deal with is the payment rates, including the tapering the government announced as part of their economic and fiscal update. The government intend to reduce JobKeeper rates for full-time employees from $1,500 to $1,200 a fortnight from the end of September and then from $1,200 a fortnight to $1,000 at the start of January. It is solely in the Treasury's power to change those rates at any time. For employees working less than 20 hours a week, the rate will be reduced from $1,500 to $750 and then down to $600 in January. The issues around eligibility for JobKeeper are also in the Treasurer's power to change.

This takes me to two issues with JobKeeper arrangements that Labor continues to have concerns about. On eligibility, despite the government budgeting for over $101 billion to be spent on JobKeeper, it still leaves out millions of workers—casuals, workers at universities and aviation workers such as those at dnata, which this chamber has heard a lot about. They were all left out of the original JobKeeper and will continue to be left out by this latest version of the wage subsidy scheme. Because of this deliberate design feature to lock out large numbers of workers from JobKeeper, the unemployment queues are going to be longer than they could have been. That's because of the choices of this government. When it comes to the payment rate of JobKeeper, we note that the government made the decision to reduce the rate of JobKeeper in two stages based on the economic conditions forecast at that time. But since those rates were announced there has been a further deterioration in the outlook for both the economy and the unemployment rate.

Labor have been arguing that the level of support in the economy needs to be tailored to the economic circumstances of the time. Our position is a sensible one and one which is supported by the RBA and respected private sector economists. We need to get the economic recovery right and we need the interventions from government to be as good as they can be and in the national interest.

What worries us on the Labor side is, whilst we know how much support the government want to remove from the economy, they don't have a plan for jobs for the economy. This legislation offers nothing in mapping out a plan for jobs in the recovery stage. Australia desperately needs a plan for creating good, secure jobs. We need to be protecting the jobs people have now and we need a blueprint for growing new jobs into the future. We need the government to show some urgency for all of those who are about to enter the labour market for the first time and for those who have lost their jobs or their businesses over the last six months. We all know that this government is big on slogans and spin. Snappy titles are easy to announce—JobMaker, JobTrainer, HomeBuilder—but living up to the titles is proving to be more difficult for this government.

When you look at JobMaker, the department of employment—that is, the department of jobs—didn't even know about it until the Prime Minister announced it in his speech. The same department couldn't explain what JobMaker was other than that they weren't responsible for it.

JobTrainer had the usual big announcement followed by—well, we don't know yet. We have to wait to find out what the skills focus will be, because that wasn't known when the announcement was made. The Skills Commission hadn't decided what the skills focus should be but apparently it's coming soon.

The photo opportunity for HomeBuilder was on 4 June, and yet more than two months later the government is just getting the application processes in place. The last time Treasury appeared before the COVID committee, just a couple of weeks ago, there were no successful applicants and there was no money out the door.

Australians need more from this government than slogans and spin. The country needs a comprehensive jobs plan—a real plan, not a slogan—that identifies where the opportunities are and outlines how the government is going to drive that plan. Witness after witness before the COVID committee, from backgrounds as diverse as you could imagine, is crying out for the same thing. They want a government that responds in a timely way. They want a government that takes their feedback seriously. They want support. They want certainty. They want to be valued for the jobs they do and for the businesses they run. They are desperate for the government to drive confidence up across the country, because without confidence there will be no incentive to invest or to grow jobs. In the end, what this is all about is the focus of the economic recovery. It has to be all about jobs.

In terms of instilling confidence, I think there are a range of suggestions for the government to consider. Labor has been talking about the need for a national jobs plan for months, but there are others things that government could be doing: taking responsibility for aged care, not using the royal commission as an excuse to do nothing. The country will be immeasurably better off in so many ways if older Australians are cared for respectfully. Get an energy plan in place to drive investment and create jobs. Seriously look at how you can support women into work by making sure the early childhood sector supports them and doesn't make it harder for them. Support the university sector. Stop telling us how rich and undeserving they all are as thousands of jobs are cut and teachers, researchers and scientists are thrown into early retirement or onto the unemployment payments, many for the first time in their lives. Stop looking at IR through the single lens of flexibility for the employer. How about broadening that to start dealing with the structural unfairness across our labour market faced by employees, the working people in this country who live hand to mouth, shift to shift with little or no entitlements to leave. Let's imagine a better way for those in insecure work.

Stop undermining superannuation—a quick dollar now that can't be replaced. Thirty-three billion dollars have already been approved to leave accounts. Hundreds of thousands of young people have balances of zero and will have to start again to save for their retirement. It's an indictment on this government that early access super—that is, people's private savings—was the single biggest economic stimulus into the recovery from April to August this year.

But this is just the start. Move beyond the media cycle and focus on delivery rather than the announcement, because it is increasingly obvious that the slogan, the spin and the marketing are always ready to go, but, when it comes to the substance, the delivery and the outcomes for people on the ground, the government is missing in action.

We know that the state of the budget is dire. High levels of debt and budget deficits are going to be with us for the next decade, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. This means that every dollar spent, which needs to be borrowed, needs to be appropriately targeted and prioritised—prioritised to job creation, job security, keeping Australians safe, supporting families and the vulnerable to get through this really difficult economic time.

It is so important to get the response to the pandemic right. It's so important to ensure that we have a proper plan on the other side that will support and grow the economy, because the consequences of not getting it right mean that more people will face unemployment, more families will be in hardship for longer, the time taken to reduce the unemployment rate will be longer and more businesses will hit the wall.

JobKeeper has an important role to play going forward—we acknowledge that. We think the bill could be and should be strengthened to provide protections for working people so that their wages aren't able to fall below the JobKeeper rate. We are hopeful for the Senate's support and, indeed, for the government to consider that as a worthy amendment.

We urge the Treasurer, when setting the rates, to do something that is not in this bill: to consider the economic circumstances of the time. A decision made in July may not be the right decision for Australians or for the economy in September. The parliament has granted the Treasurer these unprecedented powers so the government can do the right thing. Consider the workers that they've excluded from JobKeeper, consider the economic circumstances right now and make sure the unemployment queues are not one job longer than they need to be. Make sure when you withdraw the money from the economy that you don't jeopardise the economic recovery. You've been warned by the Reserve Bank not to pull out support too quickly. We know from the government's own figures that they are expecting 400,000 workers to lose their jobs by Christmas. The last unemployment numbers said that, for the first time in our history, we had more one million unemployed Australians. So, Treasurer, as you get your pen out to set the rates and the eligibility for JobKeeper, think about the Australian families that are depending on you to do the right thing by them.

Senator WATERS (Queensland—Leader of the Australian Greens in the Senate) (18:45): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. What we have here is a bill that extends the time frame for JobKeeper but facilitates cutting of the rate of JobKeeper and that doesn't address the fact that so many people have missed out on JobKeeper. Moreover, it now reduces some workers' rights even though the business of that employer has recovered. Whilst we support the extension of JobKeeper, there are some serious stings in the tail of this bill.

I think we all acknowledge that this global pandemic has not only challenged us all this year but has really revealed the existing inequalities in society. We know that young people have lost their jobs at record rates, which came after an already too-high youth unemployment rate. We know that more women are losing work than men—there is a disproportionate gendered impact there—and we know the industries that have been hardest hit are where young people and women are over-represented as workers.

We've said no-one should be left behind. The government, in its response, has chosen to leave people behind. It had the opportunity in this bill to fix that and to broaden the coverage of eligibility for JobKeeper, but it's chosen not to do so. When the crisis first hit, the Greens were proudly the first to call for a wage and job guarantee, so we welcomed the government's foray into this field. But, sadly, so many people were left out. Over a million casual workers missed out on eligibility for JobKeeper simply because they hadn't been in a job for more than 12 months or, at that magic date of 1 March, didn't meet that employment criteria. As I'm sure colleagues of mine will speak to, this had a massively disproportionate effect on gig economy workers and on people in the arts and recreation sector, who don't do traditional hours. They work seasonally. They work gig-to-gig. They've missed out on support. There have been some hastily patched-up promises that, frankly, do not give people the hope they deserve. We saw childcare workers have JobKeeper removed from them prematurely and, of course, the free childcare has ended, which has increased the pressure on many households when it should have been kept. We saw universities, which have already been subject to massive, successive cuts by this government, were not eligible for JobKeeper either. In some bizarre parallel universe, we're somehow meant to recover from a pandemic but there's no investment in the training and tertiary skills to do so.

This government have now come to us with a bill to extend the parameters and the Treasurer's ability to extend the parameters of JobKeeper, which we support, but they've left these stings in the tail and have failed to address that lack of coverage. We think JobKeeper, and JobSeeker for that matter, should continue at the current rates for as long as they are needed. That is how we get economic stimulus and that is how we help the community in a global pandemic. So we support this continuation, but we will be moving amendments, which my colleague Senator Faruqi has already mentioned, and she will be championing those amendments in the Senate.

The first of those addresses the fact that this bill creates a new category of employee. This bill allows the employers who were previously able to get JobKeeper for their workers because their business had been suffering to that relevant proportion and who have now recovered—they might have had a 10 per cent cut in their profits, but they're essentially on the road to recovery—to have huge powers to reduce their workers' hours up to 40 per cent, which we know might actually be greater than 40 per cent in monetary terms if you're talking about penalty rates. Businesses which are on the road to recovery and have essentially bounced back are now able, according to this bill, to reduce their workers' rights. Perhaps if they were still eligible for JobKeeper we could deal with that, but if they are on the road to recovery such that there's less than 10 per cent of an impact on their business they should not be given the right to slash their workers' hours by up to 40 per cent. That's not how you protect people in a pandemic. That's not how you reduce unemployment figures in a pandemic. Essentially, those employers are now feeling the economic benefit off the back of their own workers. So we'll be supporting amendments that have been moved by the opposition in that regard, and we have our own amendments drafted as well. We could pass the good bits of this bill without having those sorts of nasty provisions included in it.

The other concern that we have is that this bill, as the government has flagged, sets us up for a two-tiered system. The bill sets people up who were previously working low hours and generally not by choice—it was generally all of the shifts that they could actually get. For the first time they had finally been earning a living wage. That original rate of $1,500 was actually having a huge impact on pulling people out of poverty. It was helping single-parent families. It was helping kids. It was helping so many people actually meet their daily expenses, yet the government now wants to dump people who are, often through no fault of their own, working lower hours onto below a living wage.

I can tell you something about those people: they're disproportionately women. I've got some figures here. Many of the JobKeeper recipients who've previously earned less than the weekly minimum wage. That is, those low-paid, low-hours insecure workers who I've already said are predominantly women will now disproportionately—twice as many women as men—be affected by this change. Of course, many of the industries with the highest proportion of workers who work less than 20 hours a week, including retail, accommodation and food, arts and rec, have been hardest-hit by COVID and, again, are disproportionately worked in by women. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that this government still hasn't got the memo about gender equality despite it being the 21st century. We should not be cutting people's income in a global pandemic at a time of economic crisis. That's another unnecessary sting in the tail of this bill and another issue on which we'll be moving amendments to excise those nasty bits that are, frankly, unconscionable in the situation that we're in.

I hope that we have support on that amendment. It's not clear to me where the opposition stand on that front. People will recall that for a time Labor were saying that people who were getting paid more than their original wage didn't deserve that. It was a bit bizarre having the opposition party advocating for folk to be returned to below a living wage, but such are the strange times we live in. I hope they've changed their perspective on that and I hope they support our amendment when it comes to a vote.

Here we have a bill that extends out JobKeeper and the time it will go for, but it doesn't fix the fact that so many millions of people have been left out from getting that necessary income support, and I want to go to some of the categories of those people: casual workers, temporary visa holders, and university and childcare workers. Despite the fact that the scheme is still $44 billion under budget, this government does not want to help casual workers, university employees, childcare workers and temporary visa holders, and that is an unconscionable choice this government is making with this bill. So we will be moving in the committee stage to expand JobKeeper to include those categories of workers in JobKeeper eligibility. We have a choice here. The government has dipped its toe in the waters of the wage subsidy, which has been shown to really help people. It's necessary in the global situation we are in, and we urge the chamber to continue with these supports, not to slash them, not to continue to turn a blind eye to folk who are missing out on that support and to actually start extending that support to the folk who need it. I look forward to the committee stage of this bill.

Senator POLLEY (Tasmania) (18:56): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. This bill seeks to extend the ability to make JobKeeper payments until 28 March 2021. The Labor Party supports this extension of JobKeeper, as it is crucial in providing the support Australians need in order to recover from the co-occurring health and economic pandemic. However, grouped with this amendment are additional provisions that give no clear understanding of how companies can implement cuts to hours and wages. We feel that this bill can be used as a Trojan Horse to introduce permanent changes that allow employers to, with minimum consultation, alter their employees' condition of employment.

The Coronavirus Economic Response Package passed by parliament on 8 April this year amended the Fair Work Act by inserting a new part that would temporarily enable employers to issue JobKeeper enabling directions. The directions were intended to provide for increased flexibility around employees' hours of work via new enabling stand-down directions, performance of duties and location of work. However, these directions also enabled employers and employees to make agreements for increased flexibility around annual leave and days and times of work. The Labor Party criticised this policy and as part of negotiations with the ACTU the government agreed that the legislation would specify that the amendments would expire in September.

The government's decision to extend JobKeeper for an additional six months means they also want to extend the JobKeeper enabling direction provisions. The bill does that at the same time as introducing a new category of so-called JobKeeper flexibility legacy employers. Legacy employers are those who will no longer be eligible for JobKeeper but who, according to the government, remain in distress. To qualify for this, employers must prove a mere 10 per cent drop in average business activity. These legacy employers will be able to access the extended flexibility arrangements. Why is the Morrison government giving companies that have been determined to no longer need financial support these additional rights? Well, the introduction of these thresholds is at least a concession to the public arguments Labor has made with respect to not extending the flexibility arrangements to businesses that have completely recovered.

However, this rings alarm bells, as these types of flexibility arrangements are often ones that employer groups have wanted for a long time, regardless of the pandemic. These WorkChoices-like policies mean that the Morrison government can sneak in this controversial legislation under the veil of a pandemic. This would have otherwise been subjected to lengthy scrutiny and negotiations. Policy such as this is something the Liberals have failed to introduce in the past 20 years and now, bundled with the JobKeeper extension, it will silently pass through.

Employer groups will claim that these provisions have worked so well during the pandemic that they should be retained indefinitely. The claim will be made that they allow businesses to employ more workers, but we cannot ignore that this would be on the basis that they were able to reduce and change workers' existing hours, duties or location of work without any notice. This is effectively eroding the rights of workers. This legislation provides a provision which allows legacy employers to reduce employees' ordinary work hours, despite employers having to commit to a minimum of 60 per cent of normal working hours. This would result in many low-paid workers previously receiving JobKeeper experiencing a substantial pay cut. This is just another example of the Morrison government not looking out for those who are most vulnerable, leaving people behind in this pandemic.

Thankfully, the one change to the existing flexibility arrangements is that annual leave provisions will be repealed. The annual leave provisions enabled employers to request that employees take annual leave. The Labor Party condemned this provision, and so it has welcomed the improvement.

With an additional 400,000 Australians expected to lose their jobs before Christmas, the unemployment rate at 7.5 per cent—a 22-year high—and people clearing out their superannuation accounts just to be able to cover their costs of living, it is clear that the economy is not going to go back to normal. Mr Prime Minister, there will be no snap back. Removing the substantial JobKeeper support from the economy without a jobs plan is irresponsible. It's not the plan to begin the winding back that assistance before many people who would otherwise be unemployed are currently not because of JobKeeper. We need to keep it going for as long as it is needed.

I would like to touch on some of the areas where there is still real concern. The JobKeeper wage subsidy proposed by the Morrison government was never expanded to support local government employees. That would have been very beneficial in the Tasmanian community. People who were casual employees, visa holders and local government employees still do not currently qualify for the payment. These workers were left to fend for themselves by this government. Despite moving amendments to this effect in the House of Representatives and the parliament, the Morrison government did not support these workers. We will keep fighting on this side of the chamber for all Australians. The Treasurer has the ability to expand the coverage of JobKeeper to more workers. It really is only a stroke of a pen. The Prime Minister was happy to foist this issue onto premiers, arguing that local government was their responsibility.

They do not want to take responsibility for anything. That is a hallmark. That's what defines this government—no responsibility, no accountability, no transparency, just spin. That's what they are about—making announcements without delivering. There are others who have been working really hard to protect their communities: the leaders and state premiers around this country. But what do we see, day in, day out, in this chamber? The government trying to blame Premier Dan Andrews in Victoria for the COVID-19 impacts on the aged-care sector. In my home state, as it is around the country, local government workers are fundamental as key people working within our local communities. They are very much in need of support and deserving of any support in relation to JobKeeper.

If we want to look at some other areas of real concern that affect my home state, there is also the aviation sector. The government has left that sector high and dry, without any support. We have seen tens of thousands of airline workers from Qantas and Virgin losing jobs without any support from this government, which means the impact on Tasmania's tourism has been devastating. We know that the state economy is going to be badly impacted by this COVID-19 pandemic. Tasmanians, if and when we see more flights out of our own states, or out of my own airport in Launceston, know airfares will be expensive. All of this goes to the detriment of the Tasmanian community.

Let's turn our minds to the universities. This government has, in fact, given them no support at all. We have seen university lecturers, people working there, losing their jobs and, at the same time, this very government is making it harder and harder for people to be able to go to university, increasing the costs of courses. Again, this is having a huge impact on my community in Tasmania, and I know it will have a huge impact around the rest of the country.

This Prime Minister has no real plan to get us out of this pandemic, to rebuild our economy, to give confidence to the Australian community that he is a prime minister of action, a man with vision and a man who will lead his government, be accountable and provide the transparency that this community needs. That sort of leadership is what is needed now. Victorians are turning to Dan Andrews as their Premier for that leadership, as they are in Western Australia, in Queensland, and even, might I say, in Tasmania, where a Liberal Premier is being responsive to what his community is telling him. What we need from this Prime Minister is for him to be able to step up, be accountable, take some responsibility for the failings, and do something about them.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (19:06): I rise to make a contribution to the debate on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. This bill allows for the Treasurer to extend JobKeeper and make rules regarding the rate of pay and eligibility until the 28 March 2021. It also allows the minister for social security to extend the JobSeeker payment beyond the end of December, and I say 'thank goodness'. The capacity to do that always should have been there, because we know the impacts of this pandemic are going to last.

When the announcement was made about extending JobKeeper to March next year, the same should have been for the JobSeeker payment. Having said that, it doesn't mean that the minister will make that extension. We are deeply, deeply concerned about the uncertainty that those on JobSeeker are facing right now, because not only are they going to see a $300 cut per fortnight in just under a month's time; they also don't know what is going to happen to them after December. For us, it is essential that further support is provided to Australians doing it tough. This pandemic has not just exposed just how flawed our social security system is but has exposed the inequality that exists in our country. This pandemic very strongly risks extending that inequality, because we know that different groups and different cohorts are being disproportionately impacted by this pandemic, such as young people, women, older workers.

This bill does a number of things, including create a new class of employers called 'legacy employers'. These are employers who received JobKeeper between March and September this year but will be ineligible from September as they have recovered and will no longer meet the turnover tests of 30 per cent or 50 per cent decline in turnover. Although they will not receive the JobKeeper payment, legacy employers only need to demonstrate a 10 per cent decline in turnover in order to access the new flexibility measures established by this bill. Legacy employers will be able to direct employees to vary or reduce their hours of work and alter the location, duration and duties of their work. Workers who were depending on JobKeeper will now have this payment ripped away and face losing over 40 per cent of their income for up to six months. In other words, it is condemning people to uncertainty, to the risk of losing hours and the risk of actually descending into poverty.

People who work for businesses that have experienced a 10 per cent decline in turnover have no guarantee of minimum income, even though their employer is better off, comparatively. Again, this is disproportionately impacting certain cohorts of Australians. People are going to be left behind. The government has not made the case for giving employers extraordinary powers to cut their workers' hours and wages whilst leaving workers without any guaranteed source of income. If the government believes that employers are so in need of support, the government should do something about it; these employers should not be funded by cuts to workers' wages. We can pass the extension of JobKeeper and the flexibility measures for people who continue to receive JobKeeper without creating the new class of legacy employers, which amounts, in our book, to corporate welfare. The Greens will move to excise this appalling legacy employers amendment and their powers from the bill.

The government has announced their intention to cut the JobKeeper payment and introduce tiered payments. This will effectively mean that low-paid workers do not get paid a living wage. Slashing payments for underemployed low-income workers in insecure work will predominantly impact women and young people. The government apparently will not hesitate to kick workers when they are down and throw vulnerable workers off a financial cliff in the midst of this pandemic and recession. While this is not in the current bill, we must use this opportunity to prevent cuts for low-income workers and the establishment of a two-tiered system. The Greens will be moving amendments to prevent tiered payments, to ensure low-income workers are protected.

It should be noted that this bill does nothing to protect the millions of workers who have been left behind by the government during this pandemic. The government continues to deny millions of workers access to a wage subsidy they so desperately need and forces casuals, temporary visa holders, and childcare and university workers into unemployment. Again, people are being left behind. The Greens will be moving amendments to extend eligibility for JobKeeper to the millions of workers who have been left behind by this government and are struggling and depending on our hardworking social services and community sector.

As I said at the beginning of my contribution, this bill also makes JobSeeker changes. The bill extends the period over which the social security minister can make legislative instruments to change the coronavirus supplement and related payments. This means the minister has the power to extend the coronavirus supplement until 28 March 2021. This change will bring a small amount of relief to the 2.3 million Australians receiving the coronavirus supplement. However, I want to make it clear that there are no guarantees that the minister will actually use this power to extend the coronavirus supplement from December until March. The minister has repeatedly failed to commit that the JobSeeker payment will not go back to $40 a day. I have asked on a number of occasions and have received no such assurance. It is deeply distressing to Australians that, in fact, this issue is still not resolved. As I said earlier, there is no way that anybody could foresee a future where you could manage to survive on $40 a day.

We already know that the government has plans to wind back income support payments. The coronavirus supplement is being reduced by $300 a fortnight from 25 September. This means that 2.3 million people currently receiving the coronavirus supplement will see cuts to their income, taking them below the poverty line. The government is deliberately dropping all those people below the poverty line. I am also extremely worried that the 1.1 million children who are living in these households will have their incomes cut in September. What does that mean for child poverty in this country?

The ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods estimates that the number of people in poverty will increase by 740,000 when the rate of JobSeeker reduces in September. The researchers also found that the coronavirus supplement led to dramatic reductions in poverty rates, poverty gaps and housing stress amongst households who relied mostly on the JobSeeker payment. The poverty rate of this group was 67 per cent before COVID-19, but the supplement reduced the poverty rate to 6.8 per cent, thereby clearly demonstrating the value of having an adequate social security payment.

Not only is the government taking $300 per fortnight from people; millions of unemployed people still don't have certainty about the rate of payment after December. This lack of certainty around the rate of JobSeeker payment means that people are unable to plan for their future, causing a great deal of anxiety and contributing even further to people's poor mental health, which is already adversely affected by this pandemic. Australians are incredibly distressed about their income dropping in September and then again in December. We are going to see a lot of hardship and people defaulting on their mortgages or having to leave their rental properties because of the choices this government is making.

I'm incredibly worried about what will happen to Australians on low incomes when the supplement is cut. We will see people having to borrow money and getting deeper and deeper into debt. This is particularly true for those cohorts that are particularly affected, such as young people, women and older people. The numbers of people on the JobSeeker payment for over-50s in the three cohorts 50 to 55, 55 to 60 and 60-plus have more than doubled. All of them have more than doubled. If you're over 60, I'm deeply concerned about your future and your ability to find work. This government is condemning them to poverty by taking $300 a fortnight from them, further undermining their ability to have an adequate quality of life as older people moving into retirement.

In the middle of a pandemic and a recession, amid so much uncertainty, we should be providing an adequate, livable income to unemployed Australians. Not only is this obviously good for them, keeping them out of poverty; it also helps stimulate our economy. As far as the ministry is concerned, the JobSeeker payment will be dropping back to $40 a day after 31 December, because the government and the minister will not clarify and will not commit, hand on heart, that it will not drop to $40 a day. This is at the exact same time that our effective unemployment rate is predicted to reach 13 per cent. The $350 coronavirus supplement has had a huge impact on the lives of unemployed Australians. It has brought JobSeeker above the poverty line. Because I understand there has already been a second reading amendment moved, I foreshadow that I will be moving a second reading amendment about the impact of lowering the coronavirus supplement and calling for the current rate to be maintained.

Last week, ACOSS asked community service workers what kind of impact the coronavirus supplement is having on the lives of people they help. A team leader from a housing and homelessness service said, 'Extra payments for COVID-19 meant people could pay for accommodation and to eat.' Imagine that. A child, youth and family service worker said that the double JobSeeker payment has meant that, for the first time in years, very low-income single mothers have been able to buy new winter clothes, replace broken white goods and repair cars. A practitioner from another housing and homelessness service said, 'We work with rough sleepers who have not, as yet, been negatively affected by COVID-19. We are more likely to see an increase in rough sleeping if the additional funds for JobSeeker and JobKeeper cease and people from the private market lose their accommodation.'

For the first time, many people in our community on JobSeeker have been able to cover the essentials without needing to make difficult choices. We should all have the opportunity to afford fresh food such as fresh fruit and vegetables, turn on the heating and buy essential medications. We cannot go back to $40 a day. As I said, this is why I'll be moving a second reading amendment to call on the government to retain the full $550 COVID supplement and increase JobSeeker permanently.

I particularly want to point out that people on the DSP or carer payment are still missing out. I'm very disappointed to see that additional support for people on the disability support pension or carer payment is absent from the government's plans. Since March, the Greens have been campaigning alongside the sector to have the DSP or carer payment recipients included in the coronavirus supplement. The government keeps telling us disabled people and carers were excluded because they don't receive working age payments. I can tell you that people on the DSP or carer payment do work and have lost work from COVID-19. Data from DSS shows that around 43 per cent of people on the DSP have had their hours reduced compared to this time last year.

Disabled people and their carers are doing it extremely tough, and they have been since the start of the pandemic, experiencing higher costs when it comes to groceries, food deliveries, transport and PPE. It's likely that disabled people and carers will face longer periods of lockdown and quarantining and will return to work later because of the nature of COVID-19. I once again call on the government to provide the $550 corona supplement to people on the DSP or carer payment. We need to acknowledge the thousands of Australians on the DSP or carer payment who need the extra support during this crisis.

This bill fails to close those gaps that are widening in our community because of COVID-19. It fails to address the critical need for income support above the poverty line. It fails to address the fact that those on the DSP or carer payment are missing out. I want our government to be supporting every Australian who needs help through this crisis. We have a responsibility to do this—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Griff ): Thank you, Senator Siewert. Senator Sheldon.

Senator SHELDON (New South Wales) (19:21): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020—a bill that offers, on one hand, a reduction in JobKeeper payments and, on the other hand, an extension of extreme and extraordinary industrial powers to companies without the need for them. The government has backed down on some earlier proposals, but there is no compromise—it is still a deliberate belting of secure work with the added insult of no JobKeeper payments.

COVID-19 is a once-in-a-generational shock to our economy, to our healthcare system and to our society. Just look at some of the few facts. Underemployment is at 7.5 per cent—more than one million without work. Alarmingly, close to 20 per cent of people are either unemployed or underemployed. Roy Morgan reports that consumer confidence was three-quarters of what it was this time last year. The government's response should be leadership. It should be working in a bipartisan way—a way that should be above politics. During Australia's last economic crisis—the global financial crisis—that was how Labor operated. It showed leadership, it acted quickly and it saved this country from a recession. Instead, this Prime Minister and his government have been found wanting. He has done as he always does but never enough to do the whole to support workers. Promising to have everyone's back, he legislated JobKeeper policy that left millions of Australians without support.

Under the cover of COVID, the Prime Minister and his renegade backbench have acted to undermine our superannuation system. The effect would be to see millions of Australians denied dignity in retirement. Why not help put back the money that would afford people dignity in retirement? I won't be holding my breath, because, with this government, the policy is always the same—austerity for working people in good times and even more austerity in the bad. And now here is this legislation before the Senate.

The government continue to seek to extend extreme powers to businesses—powers that continue their pre-COVID policy of wage suppression and insecure work. It would be one thing to keep powers for those businesses that are still doing it tough but entirely another that they try to keep them for businesses doing better than ever. This government would have given these powers to companies like dental company 1300SMILES, who are paying out a dividend of which two-thirds was funded by its JobKeeper payments, passing on the wage subsidy to shareholders. They would have given the power to cut hours and wages to companies like Adairs, who received more than $11 million in wage subsidies at the same time as its online sales soared. Why would they need these extreme and extraordinary powers? If you have enough to be paying dividends to your shareholders and you don't need to reduce the hours of your workforce or reduce their wages, profits are up then you don't need extraordinary powers to reduce wages.

The government is yet to adequately explain why a business experiencing a 10 per cent drop in revenue should be able to reduce a worker's hours by up to 40 per cent, with considerable wage loss when taking into account shifts and other penalties. Indeed, employers already have the ability to make changes to their operations by mechanisms in the relevant award or agreements that require the companies to consult with their workforce and their representatives over a suitable period of time. In the middle of a pandemic, this government has no plan for jobs. It wants people to spend and support the economy, but they need the certainty of secure employment where possible. And, while I support the continuation of JobKeeper, an adjustment to the existing scheme is much needed. There are more changes the Prime Minister could be bringing in this place.

When the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and the Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, announced JobKeeper, the Treasurer said: 'Australians know their government has their back.' Except they didn't have everyone's back. They didn't have the backs of casuals. They didn't have the backs of migrant workers. They didn't have the backs of those who work in the arts, in local government, in higher education or in child care, and they certainly didn't have the backs of those who work for companies like dnata, an aviation company the government excluded. The workers at dnata are getting tired of hearing more talk from this government and no action to help them. Dnata workers Natasha and Donna, over their working lives, have paid their fair share of tax. Many dnata workers work for Qantas and still provide meals to Qantas passengers. Many are still being paid entitlements by Qantas. And yet, because of the sale of the catering arm to dnata, they are considered employees of dnata and are cut off from any government support. And now, with the cowardly announcement by Alan Joyce, another 2½ thousand jobs at Qantas are to be replaced with external companies like dnata. We will see workers who are currently receiving JobKeeper move to new companies, perform the same work they have done for years, and stop receiving JobKeeker. This is the cruel situation the Prime Minister and the missing minister for transport have created by abandoning the aviation industry.

The government could right some wrongs, like the exclusion of migrant workers and international students from accessing JobKeeper or JobSeeker. So deplorable has been our treatment of these guests in our country that it is no wonder many are telling friends and family to reconsider studying or working in Australia, at a future major cost to our economy. Despite countries such as the UK, Canada and Ireland offering wage assistance to Australians who are stuck abroad, we are not returning the favour. Unions NSW recently published a survey of 5,000 international students and they found 60 per cent had lost their jobs, 31 per cent no longer had the income to pay their rent and expected to be evicted soon, 26 per cent were sharing bedrooms to save money, and 46 per cent were skipping meals on a regular basis.

I support the extension of JobKeeper to March and the introduction of eligibility criteria so that companies making record profits can't reduce their workers' hours and wages, just so they can deliver bigger dividends. And there is much more that could be done to fix JobKeeper so that it offers some meaningful support to people who need it. There is much more that could be done to stop businesses like Qantas from taking more than half a billion dollars in public money and then abusing the spirit and intent of the financial support.

Senator LINES (Western Australia—Deputy President and Chair of Committees) (19:29): I rise tonight to also make a contribution to the debate on this legislation. As you've no doubt heard from many Labor senators this evening and earlier today, Labor does support the extension of JobKeeper but we continue to call for improvements. In the first round of JobKeeper we saw the exclusion of local governments, backpackers, visa workers and international students. We saw real poverty and hardship amongst those groups. I have to say that, certainly when I've spoken to local government in Western Australia, they have been absolute champions of looking after residents, particularly seniors, yet they have had to manage on their own. This new iteration of JobKeeper, this extension until March, is also lacking. We continue to exclude casuals, we continue to exclude what international students are left—and we are bringing a whole lot back into South Australia. We continue to exclude the visa workers who have remained here. This scheme now drops the rate and makes it more difficult for employers to be eligible.

Of course Labor was calling for the extension and we thank the government for finally listening to us and extending it. But really I think we need greater certainty than what we've seen. What we know with this government is that there is always a sting in the tail. The sting in the tail in this extension is the cuts to people's incomes—those who have been surviving on JobKeeper—and making it harder for employers to access the payment.

I want to focus particularly on Western Australia because it is hard for us to get a bit of a look-in. I'm not saying that with a chip on my shoulder, but there are some particular fundamentals that have been ignored around Western Australia. What I would say at the outset is that there are nine ministers amongst the Liberals in Western Australia, five of whom are cabinet ministers, and yet we have not seen any particular champion of Western Australia. What we do see is those ministers simply toeing the lines of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, standing behind them nodding in furious agreement, like those toy animals on car dashboards. Yet Western Australia has some significant problems. A recent report by REMPLAN has shown that five local government areas in Western Australia are amongst the 10 biggest users of JobKeeper. I bet you haven't heard that from any of the Western Australians on the government benches today.

In Shark Bay and Exmouth, areas in the electorate of the minister—Melissa Price, the member for Durack—we have a couple of the highest users of JobKeeper. Over 64 per cent of businesses in Exmouth and Shark Bay rely on JobKeeper. There is a whole range of other local government areas in Ms Price's electorate, and yet where is she? Is she out there saying, 'We can't afford to cut JobKeeper, because it will damage those businesses in Exmouth and Shark Bay and across Denham more generally'? No, she's not. She is completely silent on that. Shark Bay and Exmouth are second to Byron Bay. That's not because the Western Australian border is closed; it's because the Australian border is closed to the international visitors who normally flock to those regions. But you would not hear that from Minister Price, who is simply missing in action on JobKeeper.

Earlier tonight I heard another Western Australian government senator who had recently been to Broome say, 'Broome's doing fine.' I don't know who he spoke to. Perhaps he walked down the main street of Broome and spoke to only a couple of businesses, because Broome also has a high reliance on JobKeeper. Almost 50 per cent of businesses in Broome—again, this is Ms Price's electorate—rely on JobKeeper. Is Ms Price championing for Broome and for the government to not cut rates and to not exclude employers? No, she's standing behind the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, certainly not representing the interests of Western Australians.

In Dundas, a significant number of businesses are reliant on JobKeeper. It is one of the top five LGA areas. It's largely in the O'Connor electorate of Mr Rick Wilson. Where is Mr Wilson on this? Completely silent once again. I haven't heard him out there, saying, 'We can't have cuts to JobKeeper because it will affect significant voters in my electorate and damage local businesses.' No. Like Ms Price, he has been silent on the matter.

The other hotspots in Western Australia are in the south-west in the electorate of Forrest of Mrs Nola Marino, another Morrison government minister. We have the international hotspot tourist area of Margaret River. It's beautiful country. It's wine growing. Tourists flock there. There's very high use of JobKeeper. 'Where is Mrs Marino?' you might ask. She is with Ms Price and Mr Wilson—completely silent.

So we have these three large Western Australian regional electorates—Durack, O'Connor and Forrest—and their Liberal members, two of whom are ministers with, you would think, some influence on the Treasurer and Mr Morrison, yet they're silent. They've just signed up to a JobKeeper scheme which will potentially cut the take-home pay of voters in those electorates and lock out employers who are currently eligible. It will lock some of them out in the future, yet they've given it the big green tick. The other point about these nine ministers is that five of them are in cabinet. You'd think they might be able to take a Western Australian perspective—but, no; they've lined up with the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and said, 'We've got to make a cut to people's take-home pay and we have to ensure that in the future some businesses will be ineligible.'

I want to look at the metro areas. Let's look at the electorate of Pearce, the electorate of our Attorney-General, Mr Porter. He went on the record as not supporting Western Australia, as are all the Liberals, over the state border closure when he lined up with Mr Clive Palmer. They did not line up with the millions of voters in Western Australia, no. They didn't. They lined up behind Mr Palmer, so much so that they were part of his court action to try to force open Western Australia's border. Perhaps they are not in WA enough or perhaps they are not taking a test of the temperature, but something like more than 90 per cent of Western Australians think the border should remain closed, but not the tiny little Liberal cohort, not the nine ministers and certainly not the five in cabinet. Although they did finally get the message a couple of weeks ago and have subsequently pulled out of the case, it's too little, too late. But where is Mr Porter, the Attorney-General and the member for Pearce, on this? Pearce is one of the outer metro suburbs with a very high reliance on JobKeeper. Where is he on this? Completely silent. He's just signed up to cut local voters' take-home pay and make some of the voters ineligible.

Another cabinet minister, Mr Wyatt, is in the seat of Hasluck, an electorate where there is high eligibility for and high reliance on JobKeeper. Where is he? Has he been out saying, 'Hang on a minute. This is a bit unfair. This is going to mean people have less take-home pay. This might mean some businesses in the seat of Hasluck will no longer be eligible.' But, no, he has signed up as well.

So they're all missing in action. Every single one of those five cabinet ministers is missing in action when it comes to paying Western Australia some attention and looking after the interests of Western Australian voters. We've seen this; they've got form. First of all, they backed Clive Palmer over Western Australians' interests, and now they are backing cuts to JobKeeper and making sure that some businesses won't be eligible in the future. Some might say that the Liberal Party only listens to the chamber of commerce. Well, guess what? The chamber of commerce is also saying this. It's got a survey out that says one in three Western Australian businesses is very concerned about what will happen come March when, presumably, JobKeeper will disappear. The confidence that we like to talk about in business is completely missing for one in three businesses. That's outstanding. That's a horrible statistic. Where are those cabinet ministers, where are those other ministers and where are those Western Australian backbenchers? They are all standing behind Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg, nodding in agreement and cutting out the interests of Western Australian voters.

Western Australians are watching. They're certainly very angry about what the Liberal Party have done in relation to Clive Palmer and they will be just as angry about this. You cannot have five out of the 10 local government areas across Western Australia—across the electorates of Ms Price and Ms Marino—be the highest users of JobKeeper and have those Liberals opposite from Western Australian just ignore Western Australian voters and put their own jobs and their own self-interest first.

Senator PATRICK (South Australia) (19:42): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. On 21 January, Australia stood up its National Incident Room to deal with something referred to by most as the 'Wuhan coronavirus'. Since that time, we've been through a lot. We've had the Ruby Princess. We've had a first wave. We've had lockdowns. We've had emergency legislation for JobKeeper and JobSeeker. We've deployed the ADF to aid civil power. We've had border closures. We've now got a second wave, although, hopefully, we're seeing that curve flatten in Victoria.

Our response to coronavirus, COVID-19, hasn't been perfect, but I think we've done okay. The federal and state governments have done okay. The Public Service have done okay. Healthcare workers have done a great job. Our emergency services and the ADF have done a good job as well, and I'm sure everyone in this chamber is grateful for the work that they have done. But the response has been exactly that: a response. It has been reactive. We're seven months in, almost eight, and we don't have a plan. We know that there is a vaccine in sight. We don't know how effective it will be. Will it be 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 90 per cent effective? We simply don't know, so we're going to have to have a plan that deals with those potential outcomes.

It's certainly possible for us to have a third wave, and perhaps even a fourth. We're already seeing contingencies being put in place to deal with spot outbreaks. Again, we're dealing with a response package, not a plan. We should be dealing with a plan. We shouldn't just be looking at this legislation and saying, 'Does this do something positive?' We ought to be looking at this in the context of a much broader economic plan that tells us how we're going to get from where we are now to being a prosperous nation on the other side of COVID-19. We're getting a little bit of information but not enough. We need to have a plan that directs government procurement towards maximising local benefit in our economies. We need to have a plan that encourages R&D. We need to have a plan that promotes manufacturing, that helps us out with resilience and, certainly, ends the state we've been in for the last 100 years where we're simply exporting rocks and other commodities. We need to be value-adding and building that resilience. We need to make sure that we take our raw commodities and produce goods, and we need to make sure that we create jobs and wealth when we do so. Where's that plan?

We need to be looking at things like multinational tax avoidance. Tax transparency data that has been made public by the tax office in accordance with the law shows that, over five years, 221 companies have earned $850 billion in revenue and paid zero tax. If we understand how we're dealing with that sort of circumstance then we can understand whether or not we can afford to be more generous or less generous. This legislation is being presented in the absence of a plan, and that's hugely problematic in my view. I've actually been waiting for a plan since the commencement of this parliament. I remember sitting in this chamber, listening to His Excellency the Governor-General. I have no criticism of him. It wasn't his speech; it was the Prime Minister's speech. It had no inspiration. It talked about a pie and how that pie was going to be cut up. It didn't talk about making a bigger pie or making a tastier pie. All of that was absent. I find myself in the same situation again. I want to see a big plan so I can see where this piece of legislation fits into that plan, but it's absent. It's left me with the view that our Prime Minister has managed well but is not a leader.

Even at the lower level, the Senate is being asked to pass legislation that relies heavily on rules that no-one's seen. Sure, we've seen media releases. I've seen some fact sheets. But we do this time and time again in the Senate; we just work on blind faith that regulations will flow. When we were looking at the SDL changes for the Murray-Darling back in May 2018, we were committing huge amounts of public money but we had no idea of each of the projects around the country that were designed to help return water to the Murray-Darling. We just had blind faith, and that's not the way we should do business. So I say to the government that, whilst I support what you're trying to do with this legislation, proper process demands that we should be seeing the rules before we consider the legislation. We are, in effect, granting a power to allow the Treasurer to do many different things that we may have to correct at a later stage. When JobKeeper 1.0 came along, we needed to have flexibility. I understand that. But things have stabilised, so we need to be little bit more careful as we grant powers to ministers to expend public money. We should be seeing the rules upfront.

I indicate that I will support the bill. I will support the extension of JobKeeper. That's the pragmatic thing to do. It's about making sure we look after our businesses and their employees. We need to do it in a way that is flexible, so I even support the ideas behind the press releases and the fact sheets. We want to be able to target JobKeeper in different ways for different areas of the economy that are doing things at different speeds. Again, the rules should permit that. It's just sad that we haven't been presented with the rules.

There's certainly a contentious part of this bill, which I'm going to address briefly, and that relates to legacy employers. They are those employers who are no longer hitting the JobKeeper eligibility, either through a 30 per cent reduction, or through a 50 per cent reduction in the case of larger businesses. For those that sit between a 10 per cent reduction and a 30 per cent reduction, the government wants to introduce changes to the Fair Work Act that will give businesses some flexibility. Whenever we have that sort of legislation being put up, there is contention. There is a need to balance the needs of the business and, indeed, the needs of the workers. Anyone who's run a business—and I have—knows that, actually, to run a business you need to have a good workforce. When workers and businesses come together, you get productive outcomes. Therein lies the problem with this contentious part of the proposed legislation. We could grant powers for companies to have greater flexibility, but I point out that there is already flexibility in the current industrial relations legislation that permits employers to sit down with their employees, explain the circumstances that they're in and seek to make changes. There's nothing to stop that from occurring right now.

In trying to strike a balance, in trying to work out where the better outcome lies, I've had to think about employers who look after their employees. I know that, in those circumstances, those conversations can occur; the employer can talk to the employees and they can work out something that will help both of them through the crisis. However, it worries me when you have an employer who is not prepared to do that and who might otherwise simply treat their workers as cash cows rather than as part of their team. That's the only circumstance that I can think of where the IR changes that are being proposed would be necessary. In all other circumstances, I think the current rules will allow a good outcome. In terms of the changes, it is a fine balance, and it's not going to hold me either way, but I will be supporting Labor's amendment in relation to legacy employers—that is, to remove the additional powers that businesses are seeking. But I do so in recognition that there is already in place industrial relations legislation that allows workers and employers to sit down and work their way through a particular crisis.

I will support this bill. It brings stability. It helps us to look after businesses. It helps us to look after employees. I commend it to the Senate.

Senator GREEN (Queensland) (19:54): There is no denying that JobKeeper has been an important lifeline, keeping Australians in work and businesses going. Labor knew from the outset that this country couldn't have had this support snapped back on 27 September as the Morrison government initially had planned. The opposition has always been constructive during this crisis, and I hope the government will continue to listen to our suggestions to improve our economic recovery. We called on the government to introduce wage subsidies despite their ruling it out earlier this year. We called on the government to abandon its proposal to extend emergency IR powers to businesses that have fully recovered—and they have. We have called on the government to extend JobKeeper, and today they are doing that. So, Labor will be supporting this legislation.

I said at the beginning of this crisis, in February, at a meeting with tourism operators and business owners in Cairns that this pandemic would hit Cairns first, and worse—and it has. More than 6,000 businesses in the Cairns region were relying on JobKeeper in July, during a time of uncertainty over the future of the program. For too long, the LNP believed it could stick to its snapback strategy, which would have led to mass unemployment queues, particularly in regional Queensland. The member for Leichhardt at the time was out there saying that extending JobSeeker was a no-brainer, while the member for Mackellar called for the scheme to be shut down even earlier than September. The government was saying one thing in Cairns but another thing in Canberra, and this led to uncertainty and confusion in the community.

I spoke to businesses, workers and community groups in regional Queensland, and the overwhelming consensus was that Far North Queensland could not afford to have JobKeeper snapped back too early. I started a campaign calling on the government not to cancel JobKeeper too early, and it was supported, particularly by hospitality businesses but also by the community sector. This bill allows the Treasurer to make that extension. So, I want to thank all the community groups, the hospitality businesses and people in the community who supported this campaign and called for this extension. It should not have taken so long for the government to commit to that extension, but I'm happy that we are here.

As we know, this bill allows for an extension to changes to the Fair Work Act which allows employers to reduce employee working hours down to the rate of the JobKeeper payment without breaching workplace conditions. Employers also retain the right to effectively cut the rate of pay for JobKeeper recipients who continue to work normal hours. The government has since said that they want to extend this flexibility for workers who are no longer on JobKeeper. The perverse effects of these changes mean that a low-paid worker would have their hours cut to 60 per cent of their ordinary hours and earn less than the rate of JobKeeper. Labor can see where the government is going on this. The government is testing their future plans for permanent industrial relations changes in the name of so-called flexibility, when really they are attacking decent jobs. Australia's lowest-paid workers could lose up to $300 a week from their pay packets during the deepest economic crisis in our recent history—many essential workers who have helped us get through this crisis. Labor will stand up for these low-paid workers by fighting this change.

It has also become clear that there are a number of things missing from this legislation. Firstly, we know that this legislation doesn't fix gaps in JobKeeper that Labor has for some time been arguing need to be fixed, and can be fixed, by the Treasurer. Too many Australians are being left out and being left behind, some by accident but many deliberately. The Treasurer retains the power to include 1.1 million short-term casuals, university and local government workers and temporary visa holders in the JobKeeper program. He retains that right and yet he continues to leave them out of this program.

The other thing missing from this legislation, and from the government's overall response to the coronavirus, is a plan for jobs. Jobs—actual jobs—not re-announcements of previous measures or projects, which are taking too long to get off the ground; not the promise of a project to be constructed in, say, 2022 or 2023, as we heard the other day with inland rail; not fancy sounding slogans without any substance; not grants that sound great, but when a business applies for the grant they find out they're not actually eligible, which we know is what happened with one of the arts grants announcements where a Gold Coast arts company is not eligible.

For the first time in history one million Australians are out of work. The government's own figures show that 400,000 will be out of work by Christmas. Despite being faced with mounting job losses and rising unemployment this government's instinct is to remove substantial JobKeeper support from the economy without any plan to replace it, without a plan for jobs, without a plan for how those people who will lose their jobs before Christmas will find a job again. After seven years of the LNP so many jobs in regional Queensland are at risk. We are facing an unprecedented economic crisis and without a plan the unemployment queues will continue to expand.

Finally, I will say this: we know that the government's track record is to cut, sack and sell. We know that of the Morrison government and we know that of the LNP in Queensland. The Morrison government doesn't have a plan for jobs. They don't have a plan to bring manufacturing back home. They don't have a plan to bring forward infrastructure projects that regional Queenslanders desperately need. That is the glaring omission from this legislation—lots of announcements, lots of press releases, but no plan for jobs. Regional Queenslanders who have been hit hardest by this economic crisis deserve better from this government.

Senator RICE (Victoria—Deputy Australian Greens Whip) (20:02): This pandemic has changed our world. In January I didn't expect to be dialling in remotely to give a speech to parliament here from my office in Melbourne. We didn't expect the closure of state borders to be one of the most talked about political decisions. We didn't expect that we would be waiting every day to see what the infection statistics are like in our cities. We didn't expect to be racing to share the good news, as I have done with my friends over social media in the last couple of days, that we've had another day when the number of new COVID cases is under 100.

The impact of this virus has been profound. In my personal story, the main way it has impacted me has been through my son John, who was one of the thousands of Victorians who caught the virus. He is no longer an active case, but like so many others he is still dealing with the long-term effects of having had COVID-19. He is now living with me so I can help him recover. I also help care for my elderly mum, who has hardly been outside her house for the last six months. Caring during this pandemic has only highlighted how important caring for older Australians is.

For so many others, of course, the story of COVID has been a loss of work, the loss of certainty, the loss of income and the deep worry about what the future looks like and how they're going to get through.

This pandemic has shown us how important a government's response is. The Australian people overwhelmingly supported the government when, early on in the pandemic, they brought in the doubling of the rate of Newstart to create the JobSeeker allowance and brought in JobKeeper. The Greens support JobKeeper but not unconditionally. We need a people-first response to COVID-19 that leaves no-one behind, because we've seen the devastation that can occur in situations where governments can't, or won't, put their citizens' welfare first.

Very early on in this pandemic we called for a wage guarantee and we are glad the government took that step. But supporting that step doesn't mean that we become an uncritical cheerleader. The truth is the government's response has left too many people behind: casual workers, university students and the university sector overall, artists, musicians and those working in the arts. We've seen childcare workers left behind, despite the vitally important work they do in our community. Women have borne the brunt of the crisis, in terms of child caring, in terms of the economic impact of casual workers who have lost work in the crisis and in so many other ways. Twice as many women compared to men work part time, women are going to be disproportionately affected when the JobKeeper payment for part-time workers is slashed in coming months.

Despite the nature of the crisis and despite the need to be looking after everybody, the coalition is still trying to make it easier for big companies and harder for workers. We are particularly concerned that this legislation today is creating a new category of companies that are doing well enough that they no longer receive JobKeeper but they still get new powers that alter the balance between workers and employees, allowing employers to cut workers' hours by up to 40 per cent if that is what they want to do. But these workers who are potentially going to have their hours cut by 40 per cent, undermining the existing conditions in the Fair Work Act, are not going to have their phone bills cut by 40 per cent. Their rent is not going to be cut by 40 per cent. Their other outgoings and other expenses are not going to be cut by 40 per cent.

Let's be clear. In the middle of a pandemic with so many people struggling in a recession, it is profoundly cynical of the coalition to be trying to advance their ideological agenda of cutting workers' rights in the interests of big business, because we can extend JobKeeper without cutting workers' rights. We can give people the support they need, without shifting the balance between workers and their employers. As we've seen with the second wave in Melbourne, this pandemic creates enormous challenges. Now is not the time to be cutting support and making it harder for people who are already struggling so much.

There are ways this legislation can be improved. The Greens will be moving amendments to this legislation to do just that. We want to see everyone accessing JobKeeper get the support they need. We do not want to see some workers—vulnerable workers—relegated to a second tier. We certainly should not be cutting people's income in the middle of a pandemic, and certainly not people who are on low hours and low pay in insecure work. We completely reject the idea that there should be a two-tiered system. We want the Fair Work Commission be able to deal with eligibility disputes. The Greens believe that all casuals should have access to JobKeeper. University workers, temporary visa holders and so many people have been left behind by this government.

My office has worked with one of my constituents who started a small business before the pandemic struck. They, like so many others, were devastated by the impacts of the pandemic. They went into lockdown and their income dropped off. On virtually every metric, our understanding is that they were eligible for JobKeeper. But they were denied access. Why? Because of the visa status of one of the business owners.

This is a government that is happy to hand out millions of dollars in subsidies to mining companies, to prop up fossil fuel companies, to give grants willy-nilly to their mates, whether it is the $3.6 million to Shine Energy or the almost $200 million in sports rorts, but they won't provide support for a small business in Victoria because the business owner is a temporary visa holder trying to build a life in Australia.

I personally know any number of university students who had casual work pre-COVID. A lot of them were working in hospitality or the arts to top up their student allowance because, as we know, student allowance is not enough to live on. It's completely inadequate to live on. The only way students can survive is to be doing part-time work. Of course a lot of those part-time jobs—working in hospitality, working in retail, working in the arts—all went when COVID struck. These students weren't covered by JobKeeper. Many of them hadn't been working for one employer for more than 12 months. They've survived COVID so far because of the double rate of student allowance under the JobSeeker supplement, but they are desperately worried about what's going to happen when the extra supplement is wound back, because their jobs are not going to be coming back in a hurry.

They're looking at such uncertainty about the future. Will they be able to pay the rent? Will they be able to keep studying? We should not be putting our young people through this—our best and brightest, our hope for the future, Australia's future. What does it do to your ability to study when you feel so uncertain about the future? It's hard enough to stay motivated when all your studying is online, as it has been for the last six months, but when you have to worry about whether you're going to have to ditch your studies altogether because you worry about being able to survive, that's putting young people through such pain and is just not fair. It is not equitable, it is not fair and it is not what a country like Australia should be doing.

So we support the extension of JobKeeper, but let's be clear: we must and we can improve this legislation. The government should be doing so much more. The Greens launched our Invest to Recover platform outlining so much more that the government could be doing. A government-backed jobs and income guarantee would help create hundreds of thousands of jobs and ensure that everybody has an income that they can live on. In particular, this would guarantee those young people a job if they wanted one, guarantee them a place for tertiary study or guarantee them an adequate income to live on. We cannot afford to leave our young people in the ranks of the long-term unemployed. We know from previous recessions that, once people are in the ranks of the long-term unemployed, it is very hard to get out. People need to have work, and there is so much work that is there and that could be done. There are the jobs that are there, and those jobs need to be filled and can provide work for Australians. We need to create new jobs and opportunities with bold government investment in manufacturing and sustainable infrastructure, building the foundations of a fair, clean economy. We need massive government investment in services for our communities, in health, in education, in child care, in aged care, in housing and in public services that would improve everyone's lives. There is so much more that this government could be doing to support people in the difficult times that we're currently going through. Things could be radically different if we have the courage to strive for a better future.

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (20:13): I rise to speak on the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I want Australians to stop being slaves and to start living freely. Let's look at some facts. Australia's COVID-19 death toll stands at over 650. Let's compare with Taiwan. Taiwan has a similar population, 24 million—compared with Australia's 25 million—but on a tiny island, with higher population density making virus transmission far easier. Taiwan is close to mainland China, the virus source. Taiwan imported the virus onto their shores earlier than Australia did. Taiwan has far more people moving to and from China. How many deaths have they suffered in Taiwan? Seven. Not 700, just seven. While we locked everyone up in quarantine, trashed our economy and racked up massive debt for younger generations, Taiwan is steaming ahead. Despite its large markets in Europe and America suffering economically due to the virus, Taiwan has hardly had a blip. Why?

How can that be? Several words—'data', 'plan', 'leadership', 'trust' and 'truth'. That's the secret to Taiwan and other countries similar to Taiwan; they're not the only ones. They acted quickly and closed their borders.

Following SARS in 2003, Taiwan established a central command centre for epidemics. By January 2020 the command centre was coordinating the government's response to the coronavirus. It quickly compiled a list of 100 action items, including border controls, school and work policies, public communication plans and resource assessments of hospitals. Taiwan's government introduced a travel ban on visitors from China, Hong Kong and Macau soon after the number of coronavirus cases began to rise in mainland China. Anticipating the high demand for masks in late January, the Taiwanese government started rationing the existing supply of masks. Taiwan then leveraged the strength of its manufacturing sector and invested approximately $6.8 million to create 60 new mask production lines. This increased Taiwan's daily mask production capacity from 1.8 million masks to eight million masks. This has been called Taiwan's 'mask miracle'. The proof is in the pudding.

Taiwan have had, as I said, seven COVID deaths, compared with Australia's 652, yet they were exposed to it earlier. They have technology for early detection. The Taiwanese government has also used data technology to help medical personnel identify and trace suspected patients and high-risk individuals. The Taiwanese government also provide support for those put under quarantine. Local village leaders, for example, will bring a bag of basic supplies like food or books to quarantined individuals. Taiwan didn't lock up everyone; they locked up the sick and the vulnerable. They said, 'That's the way democracies are handling quarantine during the coronavirus outbreak.' It's very different from authoritarian governments.

Compare Taiwan with mainland China. This is a case where democracies should leverage their data and technologies appropriately so they can triage people to the right place and follow up with appropriate care. We did not behave like a democracy. Taiwan's strategy was the opposite of ours. Taiwan isolated the sick and the vulnerable and let everyone else get on with their work and social lives, and they've had one ninetieth of the deaths that Australia has had.

Taiwan focused on people's lives, remembering medium-term, long-term and immediate issues. People's health in Taiwan is No. 1, and, because of that, their economy has continued beating hard. So, as I said, the key ingredient is data. The Taiwanese had the data. They gathered the data—if they didn't have it, they went out and got it—and then they shared that data. They trusted their people. They developed a plan very quickly and they shared that plan with their people. Contrast that with our Prime Minister's six-month hibernation.

We still haven't seen a solid plan. We have been told lots of times what's happened, what has been happening and what has been done, but we aren't being told what will be done. The Taiwanese did tell people that. That's leadership. The Taiwanese leaders trusted the people with the data, with the facts and with the plan, and they shared the responsibility with business owners to manage their workplaces to keep people safe. Contrast that with Australia: severe lockdowns and severe punishments.

When we ran out of masks early on, our state and federal political leader said: 'Masks are not effective. Don't worry about it.' When we eventually built up a stockpile of masks, political leaders changed their tune and said that masks are essential. Which one do we trust? Which story? Trust is built on truth. There's no way around that. When leaders lack data, lack a plan, lack trust and don't give trust, they are eventually exposed, and that's what we're seeing now. The Prime Minister, the Victorian Premier and the Queensland Premier have been exposed and are being exposed not just on coronavirus but on the mess our country was in before February—before the virus arrived on our shores.

Think about the real issue here beyond coronavirus—the recovery. The Prime Minister and the premiers are focused on recovering back to February. They haven't got a clue how to do it, but that's the economic level they want to get back to. We should be focused instead on our economic strength when we were No. 1 in the world for gross domestic product per person, income per person. The coronavirus revealed—as we said early on, in March—our country's demise since 1944 and the loss of our manufacturing. We are now ranked with under-developed nations in the lack of sophistication of our manufacturing. Why? Because we've jacked up energy prices three times—they're triple what they were. We've replaced our independence with interdependency, which is really another word for dependency.

We've destroyed our economic resilience, our economic sovereignty and our productive capacity, thanks to the United Nations Lima Declaration that Labor signed in 1975 and the Liberals ratified the next year. We shipped our jobs to China. That shipping of jobs and that destruction of our productive capacity continued with the 1992 United Nations Rio Declaration that Labor signed and the Liberal-Nationals implemented. Then the UN's 1996 Kyoto climate protocol that destroyed our electricity sector, and for which the Howard government stole farmers' rights to use the land that farmers had bought and owned. Then the UN's 2015 Paris Agreement that the Liberal-Nationals signed to accelerate the destruction of industry—manufacturing, agriculture, trade-exposed industries.

And then, as I said, we heard the Prime Minister's initial response to the coronavirus: six months hibernation—no plan, no data. Stories about what we have done rather than what we will do. Now we have calls for a plan to get back to the February level of performance—still no data, still no plan. After almost 80 years of pandering to foreign agreements, we are living with declining living standards and higher costs of living. Why not aim to be No. 1 in per capita income? Let's get down to the basics. That's where we were in the early years of our federation. But now, instead of having competitive federalism, we have competitive welfarism—thanks to Chairman Dan. Sloppiness in Victoria led to complete breakdown of the control of the virus there—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Bilyk ): Senator Roberts, you must refer to the Premier by his title or his correct name.

Senator ROBERTS: Premier Daniel Andrews. We in One Nation said from the start that we need to treat the virus seriously. We said we must put lives first. We said there's no manual. We said we were understanding. We said we would support an open chequebook and do whatever is necessary. And we said we would come looking and hold people accountable. On accountability, the Queensland Premier has said she has handed control to the Queensland Chief Health Officer, Dr Young, who has honestly admitted that her sole responsibility is people's physical health. Who's going to manage the economic health? Who's going to manage people's mental health? Experts now estimate that the number of deaths from suicide will be far greater than the deaths from COVID-19. Queensland Labor have abdicated yet again. They've tossed the running of the state over to a health officer who's focused only on physical health—not mental health, not economic health. Just as the former Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller courageously and publicly said today: 'Labor has abandoned us in Queensland.'

I listen to Neil Breen on 4BC in the mornings, and I commend him for holding the government accountable: stories of Labor control freaks being so heartless—twins flown to Sydney on a 16-hour trip rather than a half-hour helicopter ride to Brisbane to get treatment, and one of the twins dying; cancer treatment for a Ballina woman just south of the border—denied; an infant under cancer treatment, in hospital alone and needing his mum—abandoned; suicides; and a newsagent in Currumbin who, to get there from the Tweed, had to drive to Sydney and fly to Brisbane and stay in quarantine, and then drive to Currumbin. These are insane things. And then the Queensland Premier—remember—welcomed the Black Lives Matter protesters, with 30,000 people on our streets spreading the virus.

The Prime Minister created the national cabinet, which is handy for dodging the blame if it goes pear-shaped. I must commend Senator Patrick for pointing out the messy failure. The Prime Minister has created a monster: the premiers and the Prime Minister making decisions without data. I wrote a letter to the Queensland Premier a few weeks ago, calling for her to provide the data on which she bases her decisions. She pointed to two websites. Our staff went there—no data.

Let's look at the symptoms of what's going on in our nation. We've handed sovereignty to foreign agencies. Senator Cormann in representing the Prime Minister responded today to my question with: 'We are going to live up to our international obligations.' To hell with the international obligations! Let's put foreigners behind Australian people. We have an obligation in this Senate, in this parliament, to Australian people.

Look the Water Act of 2007 that's gutting our food production and the Murray-Darling Basin. Look at our energy policy, where we've gone from the lowest cost electricity to the highest cost electricity. Why aren't Australians getting the benefit of our wonderful, high-energy, low-pollution clean coal? Why are our farmers losing their rights to use their land? Why are Hunter Valley coalminers with no safety protection told to not report accidents or be sacked with no workers' compensation and no accident pay? They're 40 per cent underpaid compared to permanents right next door to them in the same job to on the same mine site. Long service leave entitlements are not being tallied correctly and they were refusing to be audited until I came onto the scene. They have no leave. They have no protection. They've been abandoned by the state government, abandoned by federal government agencies and abandoned by the Hunter Valley CFMMEU, which has made deals with employers, undermining these miners. Local, state and federal Labor MPs like Mr Joel Fitzgibbon have abandoned them.

Queensland Labor are controlling farmers. They are misquoting and misrepresenting the science to control farmers. What we see now is control. We see this headline from Katrina Grace Kelly, writing in The Australian: 'After all this time'—meaning seven months—'we still haven't got a recovery plan'. It's not just me who thinks this way. Then we have this from Terry McCrann: 'Waiting for Godot, from one pandemic debacle to the next'.

This is hopeless. It is absolutely hopeless. It is an abdication of responsibility and accountability. We need trust and truth based on data for a plan to ensure recovery, back to Australia being No. 1 in the world for per capita income. We would start with just a simple plan to recover from COVID, because at the moment, as I said in my introduction to this speech, Australians are slaves. We are slaves to COVID. We know that there's a second wave coming. It started in Victoria. What are we going to do? Are we going to stay locked up until everyone has had many, many waves and we've locked down each time? That's no way to run a country. That's not leadership. That's abdication. We need strong leadership like Taiwan's and we need to get it quickly. Instead of being slaves to COVID, we need to master COVID. Taiwan has shown us. Sweden have shown us to some extent. You don't have to agree with their ideas, but at least they tried something. Israel has mastered COVID. Singapore has mastered COVID. South Korea has mastered COVID. Taiwan is not the only one.

We need to get on with the job of eating humble pie, admitting our mistakes, getting the data, telling the truth, developing a plan and providing real leadership. That's what the people expect. That's what we deserve. And that's what One Nation are going to continue to push for. We are going to expose the shortfalls in this government, the shortfalls in the last 80 years of government, and then we are going to put Australia on the right track. We were keen to see the Nationals today at least recognising some of the things we have been saying and doing. So there is hope, but we must get by with the truth and trust. (Time expired)

Senator AYRES (New South Wales) (20:28): It's become a bad habit of mine to reflect on the comments of the speaker who's preceded me and I don't intend to do it in relation to all of Senator Robert's speech, but I will just say this: a speech that presumably is produced for distribution in social media in Queensland where the refrain 'Australians are slaves' and an inference—more than an inference—that other senators in here aren't putting their obligations to the Australian people first is deeply offensive and it's calculated for a pretty base political purpose and ought to be treated that way. I have deep disagreements with the people who sit on the other side of this chamber and some of the characters who inhabit the southern end of the show, but I do think that people actually are—sometimes in a misguided way—putting the national interest first. I think that we all ought to reflect on those kinds of comments and reflect on how language is important, and how political language is especially important.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Labor Party called for a wage subsidy package to support the Australian economy. I remember because I was one of those people calling for it. It was rejected by the government. We supported it because we could see the international evidence amassing in comparable economies overseas where they were adopting a wage subsidy approach—in the Scandinavian countries, in Europe and, not least, in Boris Johnson's United Kingdom. We knew how important it was to preserve the relationship between workers and their employers. We knew how important it was to prevent mass lay-offs and the catastrophic effects of long-term unemployment, particularly in our suburbs and regions. We knew that it was necessary because it would allow the Australian economy to recover more quickly.

We have cooperated with the government's approach. We have criticised it, but we have taken a constructive approach to dealing with the questions of stimulus in the economy. We do think that the government has got some elements of this wrong. We do think that the early access for superannuation program, which has provided the lion's share of the stimulus package so far, has meant that low-income Australians' retirement incomes in the future have been squandered. We know that if the government had moved faster thousands of jobs could have been saved.

There are many people excluded from the JobKeeper package: one million casual workers; workers in local government, many of whom have already lost their jobs; workers in the university sector. It is still hard to fathom why a government would take action that is so destructive to our national capability in research and teaching, but there will be mass lay-offs in the university sector. That will have a devastating effect on Australia's research capability, and it is not in the national interest. It will have a devastating effect on school leavers and their certainty about getting into the courses that they need to get into. That will have a long-term devastating effect. Childcare workers are excluded. Arts and entertainment workers are excluded. And, of course, we've seen in all of our capital cities the spectacle of food queues of foreign visa workers and university students from overseas.

There are also important design problems, which other speakers have addressed. We are being deeply critical of the September cut-off date—the snapback. Well, now it's a taper-off. We will support the legislation because it's necessary to, because the alternative is a deeper catastrophe. But we do say that the conditions that necessitated a wage subsidy are still with us, and the withdrawal too early or tapering off too early of the wage subsidy program will have long-term serious effects in the Australian economy, particularly in terms of people's jobs.

Snapback was always a bad idea. The government knew it was a bad idea. It is consistent with the Morrison government's now tried-and-true approach: step 1, hold a press conference; step 2, announce a program with a focus-tested name; step 3, dodge questions; step 4, refuse any accountability and blame somebody else. It is government by press conference. We've seen it in HomeBuilder, the government's home building scheme, which was an abject failure. HomeBuilder was announced at a press conference. It is a portmanteau name that sounds like it came from a third-rate marketing agency. They continually dodged questions about it and refused accountability. I imagine that is in no small part because the minister responsible for it has other matters that he needs to attend to in the Victorian branch of the Liberal Party and possibly isn't focused upon his real responsibilities. We've seen it in aged care. We saw it in the arts rescue package. There was a big press conference, this time with a big arts and entertainment industry name, Mr Sebastian. The package was announced on 25 June. Not a dollar has been spent. In fact, the facility that they named it in, the business that they announced it with, hasn't got a zack out of the program—not a dollar.

There's the COVIDSafe app. You can take the marketing boss out of Tourism Australia but you can't take the marketing out of this Prime Minister. No matter how serious the national crisis, no matter how overwhelming the pandemic, this bloke, the member for Cook, doesn't have any other speed but marketing. The snapback didn't come, and that's a good thing, but it still lives on in the imagination of many of the Liberals and Nationals on the other side. Take, for example, Mr Joyce, the member for New England—the seat where I grew up. In April, one in five workers in the electorate of New England were receiving JobKeeper, with 5,205 businesses and 19,780 workers' jobs supported by the JobKeeper package. The total fortnightly amount going into the New England economy was just over $30 million. However, he told local papers in May that he wanted the program to end as soon as possible. He said:

I hear what the Labor Party have been talking about and that is keeping these stimulus packages going longer.

Of course our hearts say that could work, but of course the accountant side of us says it can't, because it is money that is borrowed and money that has to be repaid.

He went on to say:

One of the peculiar things people have got to understand is this money is borrowed from overseas and in many instances from China, which we have to pay back to them, yet that was the source of the disease in the first place.

It sounded a little bit like Senator Roberts's recent contribution. It's an absurd approach. Following it through would have devastating consequences for the people of New England—the people Mr Joyce claims to represent. It's wrong. It's deeply wrong economically, but, most importantly, it's in direct contradiction to what his own constituents say they need. Regional manager for the NSW Business Chamber, Joe Townsend, said:

We haven't seen the economy come back at all. It could be something that could be wrapped up just before the end, but as it stands, JobKeeper should remain in place. The government does have to be very smart about its physical budget and not over do it, but given they have granted this, they should certainly see it out through to the end.

Who knows what will happen if Mr Joyce is successful in his quest to regain the leadership of the National Party? The Australian people don't need Mr Joyce with a stronger voice at the cabinet table. The snapback was never based on economics or any coherent understanding of debt or how the economy works. It's always been a slogan. It's always been based on a callback to what Mr Frydenberg called the 'Reagan and Thatcher model'.

We have a tough week coming up in front of us, I think. Payroll data from last week suggests that 50,000 Australians lost their jobs in August. Accounts data is coming out this Wednesday, and we know that there must be grim statistics coming because of the Treasurer's performance this morning, when he waved his arms around a lot and blamed the Premier of Victoria for everything that was going wrong. We're still expecting 400,000 people to lose their jobs between now and Christmas. This is a deep and difficult recession and we cannot cut our way out of it. What we need from this government is a plan for jobs. What we need from this government is a sustained commitment, but not to marketing and announcements. We need this government to follow through and deliver a package that will deliver jobs for Australians, particularly in our suburbs and in our regional centres.

Senator MARIELLE SMITH ( South Australia ) ( 20:39 ): I also rise to speak in support of the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020, and I do so because the future of this payment and the JobSeeker payment are the most critical issues before our parliament at the moment.

I'm speaking today remotely from my office in Adelaide and it is important that I do so, because I'm here speaking for Adelaide, and I'm speaking for my state of South Australia, because the future of JobKeeper is pertinent to our economic recovery in SA. Economically, in my state, we were already doing it tough before the pandemic. In June it got worse. We reached our highest rate of unemployment in 20 years at 8.8 per cent. Whilst we saw a welcome drop in July we know that figure is likely to really be much higher than the figures reveal. The Treasurer himself has said that about the national figures. The real unemployment rate is probably well over what the reported figures are telling us.

As of July 2020 for the first time in our history more than one million Australians are unemployed. Almost 346,000 are young people, young Australians, at an unacceptable rate of 16.3 per cent. Many of those young Australians are in my state of South Australia. Of course, these statistics don't just tell us numbers. They don't just tell us a broad picture. They all contain individual stories, individual stories of young people, of families, without jobs losing hope, people who are scared about the future of our economy, scared about what a second wave in South Australia might bring.

I've spoken to small business owners in SA who are still struggling to pay their bills each week. They've taken credits cards out. They've maxed them to the limit paying the bills while waiting for the payments and support to come in. Owners have withdrawn their super under the early access scheme, often to the complete detriment of their super balances, just to pay the bills, just to keep their businesses afloat.

The latest ABS data tell us that 71 per cent of small businesses reported that revenue had decreased as a result of the pandemic. While many of these businesses hope they can survive and recover the fact is this depends on the case numbers remaining stable in South Australia, because these businesses won't survive another lockdown. They need JobKeeper extended. Of course, it's not just small businesses. It's across our whole economy. Whole sectors have suffered terribly at the hands of this pandemic and continue to do it tough.

At the start of the pandemic the economic implications became rapidly clear, what the impact of social distancing and isolation would be on our economy, on our businesses and on our way of life. That's why early on it was Labor who called for the government to implement a wage subsidy with urgency. As is often the case from the government side, they dismissed our idea at first, but eventually they saw the necessity of it and JobKeeper was born. Notwithstanding our support for JobKeeper—I mean, it was our idea—and notwithstanding our support for this extension, there still remain considerable questions which have gone unanswered by the government. With mounting job losses and rising unemployment substantial support is being removed from our economy without a jobs plan set to replace it. This support needs to be tailored to conditions in the economy, including rising unemployment.

The Treasurer himself has extraordinary powers to set the rates and eligibility arrangements for the JobKeeper payment. The bill here doesn't specify the rate. The Treasurer alone has the power to decide what that rate is and who receives it, yet we know there are millions of workers and struggling businesses in Australia who continue to be excluded from the JobKeeper payment.

The most important test for this government's management of the recession and its aftermath will be what happens to jobs and what happens to businesses in Australia. Australian workers, businesses and communities all need a plan from the Morrison government that will promote growth, protect and create jobs, support business, support jobs and set Australia up for an economy. And, of course, it needs to be a plan that doesn't leave Australians behind. We are so committed to making sure that the most vulnerable Australians who have been hardest hit by this pandemic aren't left behind by any response the government takes, and that's something Labor has always fought for and will continue to fight for throughout this pandemic.

Early on in the rollout of this scheme we saw significant blunders from the government and significant challenges in the way that the scheme was implemented. Support was too slow, creating too much uncertainty and excluding too many people. There were one million casuals excluded, despite these workers being some of the hardest hit by the pandemic. We saw botched figures, with the $60 billion JobKeeper bungle, and we saw years of underinvestment in Centrelink and the Australian Public Service exposed. Queues spiralled out the door for blocks and blocks as Australians sought to access JobSeeker and couldn't get the support they needed to do so.

During this time, my office was one of many that fielded countless calls from South Australians, most of whom never ever expected to find themselves on social security payments. They had lost their jobs through no fault of their own and were in the unemployment queue seeking support from their government. They had no idea how to navigate the Centrelink system, no idea what to do. They waited in queues for hours on end and sat on phone lines for hours on end never to get through to someone, terrified about the future and unable to get help when they needed it. A big part of that was the huge underinvestment of our government in our Australian Public Service and Centrelink. We've also seen the government drag their feet on paid pandemic leave. No worker should ever have to choose between staying safe and healthy, and keeping their community healthy, and paying the bills, keeping a roof over their head.

Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of the government's response during this crisis has been the handling of superannuation. Their early-access scheme has forced three million vulnerable Australians to raid over $30 billion from their superannuation accounts. This is at those workers' expense. It is not the government's expense, not a package expense but from these workers. Superannuation is a great Labor reform—one of the greatest Labor reforms—and an important equaliser in our community. But it is under attack from this government, and, when super comes under attack, it is the most vulnerable workers in our community who pay the greatest price. It is women who pay the greatest price. It is young people who will pay the greatest price. The very idea, the very purpose, of super is completely undermined if Australians are forced to raid it well before they reach retirement age.

Of course, we know that the government's attacks on superannuation don't end there, through this scheme. They're there with government members taunting Australian workers with their ideas for scrapping the legislated superannuation increase. Those in support of this idea argue that it will result in pay rises for Australian workers, but we know that wage growth was stagnant prior to the pandemic. Where is the evidence to support the idea that suddenly we'll see wage growth if we get rid of the superannuation increase? It's not there. This is a legislated increase. Australian workers expect it. It's essential to realising the promise of superannuation—what it can mean for our community, for my state. While the minister may be ambivalent on it, Labor are not. We will take up the fight on super right to the end, because we always stand for Australian workers.

Throughout this crisis, Labor have worked responsibly and constructively with the government on the passage through the parliament of legislation to support Australians. We've done this because it's our priority to protect jobs to help Australian workers, businesses, families and communities get through, and to ensure that vulnerable Australians are supported and not left behind. We have been responsible and constructive, and our support for this bill is part of that. But that doesn't mean we'll be silent where there are serious failures in implementation going on. Australians have worked together to combat this virus. More work needs to be done by the government to ensure that the hardest-hit Australians are not left out or left behind in the recovery.

Senator GRIFF (South Australia) (20:48): Through the early months of the pandemic, JobKeeper was a lifeline for business. Without any time to prepare or adjust, and facing a sudden loss of demand, many businesses were preparing to lay off staff and close their doors. It could have been, and almost was, economic carnage. The JobKeeper subsidy, along with other government support and rent relief, meant businesses could keep going through the worst of the pandemic.

Sadly, even with all of this support, not all businesses have managed to survive, and many of their staff have found themselves seeking new employers at the worst possible time. Many more businesses will fail in the months to come as support is withdrawn or reduced. The cessation, in most states, of the commercial rent moratorium will further exaggerate this. The businesses that will survive are those which are able to adjust to the new reality. This could mean changing the business's products or changing processes, which will often mean having to move staff to new teams or, sadly, cutting back on staff numbers. Absolutely nobody in this place wants to see people left unemployed. Even when the economy is booming, the toll that unemployment takes on a person's financial and emotional position is brutal, and it's even worse when the economy is in recession and opportunities for re-employment are scarce. As a former small-business owner, I've seen firsthand how important it is to adjust your workplace arrangements when you experience a downturn. Being able to move staff around, to adjust your focus and to restructure your business gives you the best chance of long-term survival. Employees might not love the change, and neither do employers, but it's a lot better than having everything taken away from you and losing that business. I don't believe parliament should be preventing people from saving their businesses and their employees' jobs. I know businesses are doing everything they can do to stay afloat, and I believe we should be backing them however we can.

At the present time we are all still dealing with a great deal of uncertainty. It will take some time for the economy to bounce back. It will be a real slog just to get back to where we were at the start of this year. The various state and federal government support packages have helped many businesses to survive and retain staff. They must continue, but they must also change. Freezing the economy has saved jobs, but it's also prevented the adjustments that are needed so we can return to growth after the pandemic has passed. JobKeeper has frozen the labour market. The rent moratorium has frozen the commercial real estate market. Easing back these arrangements is necessary to allow the economy to adjust to the new normal. It will be painful but it will, unfortunately, be necessary so viable businesses can grow and hire staff. It's necessary so our economy can grow.

Under this bill, the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020, the end date for the JobKeeper payment and workplace flexibility arrangements would be extended from the original September 2020 end date to 28 March 2021. The bill also creates a new class of employer: what the government is calling 'legacy employers'. These are employers who no longer meet the threshold to qualify for JobKeeper but who continue to experience at least a 10 per cent drop in turnover, which means they'll be able to access modified workplace flexibility arrangements. These modified arrangements mean, for instance, that instead of being able to negotiate an employee's hours down to any number including zero as a result of the impact of COVID-19 on their business, employers can only ask employees to reduce their hours to 60 per cent of their pre-COVID-19 hours. The modified arrangements also mean employers will have to give an employee seven days notice of any proposed changes to times, days or location of work. This is up from the current three days. Employers must also consult and invite feedback from their employees before making any changes.

Labor's proposed amendments remove the provisions for legacy employers from this bill. This means businesses that no longer qualify for JobKeeper will not have ongoing access to flexible workplace measures, even these modified ones. I agree with Labor that employers who are back on their feet should no longer need to rely on such flexible workplace arrangements. But I don't agree with stripping these provisions from this bill. It is far too soon to wind them back. Not all of these businesses are truly back on their feet. These provisions will be important in helping many of the legacy employers continue to reconfigure their operations over coming months in order to keep their businesses viable. Legacy employers include those whose turnover is just below the eligibility threshold, which for most businesses is a 30 per cent drop in turnover. But an improvement in turnover is not necessarily a recovery. Turnover doesn't equal gross profit, which you use to pay your wages—not in this environment. It is often just a 'less worse' position. Many legacy employers will continue to run at a loss in the current environment. Let's also keep in mind that these reforms terminate in March. They are temporary measures, and I support them because they are temporary, with a clear end date.

Labor also has an amendment that would require legacy employers to ensure that employees are not paid less than the JobKeeper amount, even when their hours are cut. I am truly sympathetic to Labor's argument. We need to have a safety net for these workers, but struggling businesses shouldn't be paying for the top-up; that's the government's role. In the end, I think we can all agree that the best thing for employees is to ensure that the businesses that employ them survive the pandemic. Centre Alliance will therefore be supporting this bill.

(Quorum formed)

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Leader of the Government in the Senate, Minister for Finance and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (20:57): I thank all senators who've contributed to this debate and commend the bill to the Senate.

The PRESIDENT: The question is that the second reading amendment, moved by Senator Gallagher, on sheet 1024 be agreed to.

Senator SIEWERT (Western Australia—Australian Greens Whip) (21:04): I move:

At the end of the motion, add:

", but the Senate calls on the Government to:

   (a) end its plans to reduce the coronavirus supplement by $300 a fortnight which will cause millions of Australians to fall below the poverty line;

   (b) continue to provide the current $550 coronavirus supplement throughout the pandemic to ensure unemployed Australians receive adequate support;

   (c) commit to a permanent and adequate increase to Jobseeker Payment that allows unemployed Australians to live above the poverty line".

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

Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (21:12): by leave—I move opposition amendments (2), (9), (10) and (11) on sheet 1014:

(2) Schedule 2, item 9, page 8 (line 20), omit "5A,".

(9) Schedule 2, item 47, page 31 (lines 4 and 5), omit the item, substitute:

47 Item 9 of Schedule 1

   Omit "5,".

(10) Schedule 2, items 49 and 50, page 31 (lines 8 to 11), omit the items, substitute:

49 Item 10 of Schedule 1

   Omit "5".

50 Item 10 of Schedule 1

   Omit "789GJ(2)".

(11) Schedule 2, item 51, page 31 (line 18), omit "or 789GJD(2)".

We also oppose schedule 2 in the following terms:

(1) Schedule 2, items 2 to 8, page 7 (line 3) to page 8 (line 14), to be opposed.

(3) Schedule 2, items 10 to 22, page 8 (line 21) to page 21 (line 5), to be opposed.

(4) Schedule 2, items 25 to 27, page 21 (lines 15 to 24), to be opposed.

(5) Schedule 2, item 29, page 21 (line 28) to page 24 (line 16), to be opposed.

(6) Schedule 2, items 30 and 30A, page 24 (line 24 to 29), to be opposed.

(7) Schedule 2, items 33 and 34, page 25 (lines 4 to 7), to be opposed.

(8) Schedule 2, items 36 to 38, page 25 (line 10) to page 28 (line 2), to be opposed.

These amendments remove all references to the so-called legacy employers from the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Jobkeeper Payments) Amendment Bill 2020, thereby removing access to the fair work flexibility provisions for businesses no longer eligible for government support. Labor believes the extension of JobKeeper flexibility provisions are unnecessary. The same businesses doing well enough to lose all government support are now being allowed to take away the job security of their workers. The government is shifting the cost of supporting businesses onto ordinary workers. Why should the pay of workers go down when the business's revenue is improving? How is it that a business suffering a 10 per cent hit is allowed to inflict a 40 per cent hit on its workers?

Extending the fair work flexibility provisions for people who are no longer receiving JobKeeper is a complete shift from what we were told when we first supported the Fair Work Act changes. We were told that the only reason the government wanted these sorts of changes was to make the JobKeeper payment operational. Now we discover that they want those same flexibilities to continue for workplaces that used to be on JobKeeper but no longer use it. We have shifted from a circumstance where the changes were simply to make the payments operational to an argument from the government that part of the recovery is to cut some of the conditions of workers in Australia on, apparently, a temporary basis.

The government has not made the case for these changes and, as such, Labor moves that they be removed from the bill. We urge all senators is in this chamber to support these amendments.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Leader of the Government in the Senate, Minister for Finance and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (21:15): The government will oppose these amendments. The workplace flexibilities provided for by this bill will assist employers who are continuing to experience financial distress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic—overwhelmingly small businesses—to help them stay afloat and to keep their employees in a job. This includes employers who no longer qualify for JobKeeper but who continue to experience financial distress, a cohort that is referred to as legacy employers, many of whom will be unable to put their employees back on full-time hours and duties without having to cut jobs. This is particularly likely given the recent impact of the Victorian outbreak on the Australian economy, ongoing restrictions on businesses and economic uncertainty more broadly.

These flexibilities were developed in close consultation with a range of stakeholders, including union movement and industry and employer group representatives. The bill will allow legacy employers greater flexibility so they can keep people employed and their businesses afloat. All of the flexibility measures in the law as it stands are accompanied by a suite of comprehensive safeguards for employees, reflecting the close consultation with stakeholders, including the union movement, in the design of these provisions. These safeguards will continue under the bill, alongside some new safeguards applying specifically to employees of legacy employers.

Under the safeguards, employees of legacy employers cannot be stood down to zero hours under the provisions, but must still work at least 60 per cent of their pre-COVID ordinary hours and no less than two hours in a day on which they do work. Any direction issued by an employer must be reasonable. The employer must give notice to and consult with the employee or their representatives about the direction, and the direction must be put in writing. The Fair Work Commission is also available to resolve disputes about these provisions.

Directions to reduce hours can only be given where the employee cannot be usefully employed for their normal hours or days of work. Directions about duties of work and location of work require the employer to have information before that leads the employer to reasonably believe that the direction is necessary to continue the employment of one or more employees of the employer. Existing protections within the fair work system, including unfair dismissal rules, general protections, antidiscrimination laws, and work, health and safety all continue to apply as per usual. Crucially, none of the temporary Fair Work Act changes can reduce an employee's hourly rate, and any penalty rates or allowances applicable to hours actually worked must always be paid as usual.

Significant penalties apply under the Fair Work Act to employers who fail to meet their obligations or otherwise misuse the JobKeeper directions. The extension of the powers is temporary, and the provisions will be automatically repealed on 21 March 2021, with all terms and conditions reverting to normal on that date as though no direction or agreement had ever been made.

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (21:18): I rise on behalf of the Greens to support the Labor amendment. This amendment removes the new category of legacy employers. These are employers who are no longer eligible for JobKeeper, but they will still be able to use the flexibility measures, such as reducing workers' hours by up to 40 per cent and changing dates, locations and shift times. In allowing employers to reduce hours by up to 40 per cent, what the government is actually doing is shifting the cost of recovery from businesses and the state to the workers, and this is at a time when workers are suffering like nobody else.

The government is suspending workers' entitlements without guaranteeing them support, when workers need support more now than at any time before.

The CHAIR: The question is that items 2 to 8, 10 to 22, 25 to 27, 29, 30, 30A, 33, 34 and 36 to 38 of schedule 2 stand as printed.

The CHAIR (21:25): The question now is that amendments (2) and (9) to (11) on sheet 1014 be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (21:28): I move Labor amendment (1) on sheet 1015:

(1) Schedule 2, item 22, page 13 (after line 17), after paragraph 789GJA(1)(c), insert:

   (ca) the jobkeeper enabling stand down direction will not result in the amount payable to the employee in relation to the performance of work for the employer for a jobkeeper fortnight that is within the jobkeeper enabling stand down period that is less than the amount that would be payable to the employee if the employer were entitled to a jobkeeper payment for the employee for the fortnight; and

Given that our previous amendment was unsuccessful, Labor is moving this amendment because it's critical to protecting the pay and conditions of low-paid workers. If this bill is passed unamended, we could see a situation where businesses which have recovered to the point where their turnover decline is less than 10 per cent can cut the hours of their employees to the tune of 40 per cent. Let's not forget that, in income terms, it could actually be much more than that, because it's a cut to hours.

If hours that are cut are hours that attract penalty rates then the worker may lose much more than 40 per cent of their take-home pay. A full-time retail worker, for instance, who normally works Wednesday to Sunday and who has their weekend shifts cut—which amounts to a 40 per cent cut in hours—would lose nearly half of their income. Remembering that retail workers have by and large stayed at work during this pandemic, this amendment has the effect of ensuring that no worker whose employer is no longer eligible for JobKeeper can cut their hours to the point where their take-home pay is less than the prevailing JobKeeper rate. Not to support this amendment means the employees working for companies which are recovering will be worse off than the employees working for businesses which, by the government's own definition, are in stress. I urge all senators to support this amendment.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Leader of the Government in the Senate, Minister for Finance and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (21:30): The government will not support these amendments. The overarching intention of the temporary industrial relations flexibility provisions in this bill is to keep businesses in business, to keep employees connected to their workplace and to preserve as many jobs as possible. The provisions in this bill facilitate this outcome by, among other things, providing legacy employers the ability to reduce an employee's hours in certain circumstances to 60 per cent of their normal hours to take account of the fact that the business is in distress and greater flexibility means a greater chance to save jobs.

Crucially, and this is something the proposed amendment apparently fails to recognise, a legacy business can only reduce hours where the employee cannot be usefully employed for their usual days or hours because of COVID-19—that is, the only employees who could ever be subject to a direction by their employer to have their hours reduced are those who could not be usefully employed to work their normal hours anyway. As such, any comparisons of income obtained by working full hours are deceptive and misleading, as working their full pre-COVID hours would simply not be possible for the employees we are talking about here.

Imposing an artificial minimum income equivalent to JobKeeper payments, as this amendment proposes, may also see an employer forced to pay an employee not to work, as, while the employee in question would be unable to be usefully employed for their normal days and hours, the amendment could have the effect of requiring them to be paid for those days and hours anyway. That is precisely the sort of thing that legacy employers, who, by their nature, must be financially distressed, simply cannot afford right now and that risks further job losses and business closures. Even if the 'cannot be usefully employed' safeguards did not exist, an artificial minimum income might be too expensive for the financially distressed employers we are talking about here and could lead to job losses otherwise avoided through the approach of a temporary and moderate reduction in hours proposed by the bill in its current form.

Finally, the amendment and the various claims of income reductions made by those opposite completely ignore the interaction with the social security system, which can operate to significantly offset the impact of a reduction in hours.

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (21:32): It's a real shame that the government refuses to guarantee support to workers by their opposition to the previous amendment, which removes the new category of legacy employers. This amendment at least would prevent JobKeeper legacy employers from paying employees who have their hours cut less than the JobKeeper payment, and that payment would be employer funded. There's no reason for anyone not to support this amendment, and the Greens support this amendment.

The CHAIR: The question is that amendment (1) on sheet 1015, moved by Senator Farrell, be agreed to.

The CHAIR (21:33): I will just inform the Senate, as a number of requests for amendments have been circulated, I advise that, as required, senators proposing requests have circulated statements of reasons for framing them as requests, together with statements by the Clerk on whether the amendments would be regarded as requests under the precedence of the Senate. Is it the wish of the committee that the statements accompanying the circulated requests be incorporated into Hansard immediately after the requests to which they relate? There being no objection, it is so ordered.

Senator FARUQI (New South Wales) (21:40): by leave—I move Greens amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 1008 together:

(1) Clause 2 , page 2 (at the end of the table), add:

(2) Page 33 (after line 21) , at the end of the Bill, add:

Schedule 4—Fair Work Commission powers to deal with jobkeeper-related disputes

Fair Work Act 2009

1 Section 789GA (paragraph beginning "This Part provides that the FWC may deal")

Repeal the paragraph, substitute:

This Part provides that the FWC may deal with a dispute about the operation of this Part, a dispute about whether a person who is a relevant employee of an entity should be treated as if they were an eligible employee of an entity and the entity entitled to a jobkeeper payment for the purposes of the jobkeeper payment rules, and other disputes arising between entities and employees in relation to eligibility and payments under those rules.

2 Section 789GC

Insert:

eligible employee has the same meaning as in the jobkeeper payment rules.

relevant employee has the same meaning as in the jobkeeper payment rules.

3 After section 789GV

Insert:

789GVA FWC may deal with a dispute about eligible employees or related matters under the jobkeeper payment rules

(1) The FWC may deal with a dispute about:

(a) whether a person who is a relevant employee of an entity should be treated as if they were an eligible employee of the entity for the purposes of the jobkeeper payment rules; or

(b) other matters arising between an entity and a relevant employee or eligible employee in relation to eligibility or payments under the jobkeeper payment rules.

(2) The FWC may deal with a dispute by arbitrat ion.

Note: The FWC may also deal with a dispute by mediat ion or conciliat ion, or by making a recommendation or expressing an opinion (see subsection 595(2)).

(3) The FWC may deal with a dispute only on application by any of the following:

(a) an employee;

(b) an employer;

(c) an employee organisation;

(d) an employer organisation.

(4) The FWC may make any order the FWC considers appropriate in relation to a dispute, including any of the following:

(a) an order that a relevant employee is an eligible employee;

(b) an order that a relevant employee has met any requirement of the jobkeeper payment rules;

(c) an order that the entity employing a relevant employee has met any requirement of the jobkeeper payment rules;

(d) an order that the entity employing a relevant employee is entitled to a jobkeeper payment for that relevant employee or one or more other relevant employees.

(5) The FWC must not make an order under this section on or after 29 March 2021.

(6) In dealing with a dispute referred to in paragraph (1) (a), the FWC must, to the extent possible, give effect to the "one in, all in" principle.

Note: If an entity elects to participate in the jobkeeper scheme in relation to one relevant employee, it must participate in relation to all relevant employees: see section 10A of the jobkeeper payment rules.

4 Section 789GW (heading)

Omit " dealing with a dispute about the operation of this Part ".

5 Section 789GW

Omit "dealing with a dispute about the operation of this Part", substitute "made under this Part".

These amendments actually broaden the scope of the Fair Work Commission's dispute resolution powers to deal with disputes relating to workers' eligibility for JobKeeper. The Fair Work Commission currently has the power to deal with disputes relating to JobKeeper directions given by employers, including when a worker has had their hours, duties or location of work changed. The amendment would expand the Fair Work Commission's existing power to include issues relating to whether a worker is eligible for JobKeeper payments.

At the moment, the decision about whether a worker is eligible for JobKeeper is entirely at the employer's discretion, and workers have no way to dispute their employer's decision. Workers can make a tip-off to the ATO; however, they can't resolve individual cases, because privacy laws prevent the ATO from providing updates or the result of the tip-off. These amendments also support the one-in-all-in principle which is a key element of the JobKeeper scheme. They require participating employers to nominate all their eligible workers. Unfortunately, this principle is not enforced, leaving workers with no way to access the scheme if they have been left out. So broadening the Fair Work Commission's existing powers to deal with disputes relating to the eligibility for JobKeeper would ensure that workers are not missing out on payments that they are actually entitled to. I commend the amendments to the Senate.

Senator CORMANN (Western Australia—Leader of the Government in the Senate, Minister for Finance and Vice-President of the Executive Council) (21:42): The government will not be supporting these amendments. The JobKeeper program was designed as a self-assessment scheme to allow it to be rolled out quickly and make it as easy as possible for employers to participate. This has contributed to the strong uptake of the program. Eligibility for the JobKeeper program is set out in the JobKeeper payment rules. The rules require employers to provide all eligible employees with knowledge of their election to participate in the JobKeeper scheme. This must include information on how to provide a nomination form to the employer to participate in the JobKeeper scheme. An employer who refuses or fails to give such notice commits an offence under section 8C of the Taxation and Administration Act 1953, which is punishable on conviction by a fine not exceeding 20 penalty units, currently $4,400.

I would encourage employees in the first instance to have a discussion with their employer if a disagreement arises about eligibility for the JobKeeper scheme. If this does not resolve the issue, employees can contact the Australian tax office, which has carriage of enforcement and compliance for the JobKeeper payment rules. The ATO has a tip-off line if employees consider there is an instance of improper employer behaviour. The Fair Work Commission's jurisdiction under the JobKeeper provisions of the Fair Work Act concerns the application and interpretation of those provisions. The Fair Work Commission is an industrial relations tribunal and does not have expertise in taxation matters.

Senator FARRELL (South Australia) (21:43): I indicate that the Labor Party is supporting these amendments. It was Labor that identified early on that some employers were planning to pick and choose which of their eligible employees would receive JobKeeper payment. The potential for employers to discriminate between eligible employees on a range of grounds was obvious. Experience from our MPs was that employees were being given no reason, or otherwise totally spurious reasons, for being excluded from the program. Thankfully, the Treasurer eventually listened and created the one-in-all-in principle. The one-in-all-in rule requires employers who have decided to participate in the JobKeeper scheme to nominate all eligible employees for the scheme. The issue that this amendment seeks to address is the fact that, in a situation such as the one described above, there is no authority for the employee to go to in order to challenge or appeal an employer's decision to exclude them from JobKeeper on eligibility grounds.

The Fair Work Commission has previously reported that a large proportion of complaints about JobKeeper had been about eligibility, which was outside their jurisdiction. This amendment extends the Fair Work Commission's jurisdiction to deal with disputes about whether or not an employee is eligible for the JobKeeper scheme. Proposed section 789GVA provides for the Fair Work Commission to deal with a dispute about eligible employees and stipulates that, to the extent that it is possible, the Fair Work Commission must give effect to the one-in-all-in principle in dealing with disputes. The Fair Work Commission may also make an order to give effect to the one-in-all-in principle, including an order that the employee is eligible for the JobKeeper payment. The Fair Work Commission may deal with disputes about whether a relevant employee of an entity which is participating in the JobKeeper scheme is an eligible employee for the purpose of the JobKeeper payment rules. We therefore offer our support for this amendment.

The CHAIR: The question is that amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 1008, as moved by Senator Faruqi, be agreed to.