COMMITTEES

2014-02-12 44 1 2 House of Reps 0 0

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

The SPEAKER ( Hon. Bronwyn Bishop ) took the chair at 9:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.

COMMITTEES 149 COMMITTEES Human Rights Committee 149 Report 149 09:01 Mr LAURIE FERGUSON 8T4 Werriwa On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights, I present the committee's report entitled Examination of legislation in accordance with the Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011, bills introduced 9 to 12 December 2013, legislative instruments received 23 November 2013 to 31 January 2014. Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e). Mr LAURIE FERGUSON 8T4 by leave—This second report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights in the 44th Parliament sets out the committee's consideration of 12 bills introduced during the period 9 to 12 December 2013, 315 legislative instruments received between 23 November last and 31 January 2014 and six responses to the committee's comments in previous reports. The committee considers that the majority of the bills and instruments it has considered do not give rise to human rights concerns. Some of these bills and instruments do not engage human rights, some engage and promote rights and some engage and limit rights, but are accompanied by statements of compatibility that set out an adequate justification for each limitation. The committee has identified nine bills, 12 legislative instruments and two responses for which it will seek further information before forming a view on compatibility with human rights. The committee has deferred its consideration of three instruments to allow time for consideration of recommendations for review of certain legislative schemes made by the committee in the 43rd Parliament. Six instruments have been identified that do not appear to raise any human rights concerns but are accompanied by statements of compatibility that do not fully meet the committee's expectations. The committee has written to the relevant ministers in a purely advisory capacity providing guidance on the preparation of statements of compatibility. In the statement at the tabling of the committee's first report of the 44th Parliament I set out the committee's expectations of statements of compatibility. The importance was emphasised of a statement of compatibility setting out the objective of the legislation and the manner in which human rights have been considered in framing the legislation to achieve this objective. It was noted that this is particularly important when, in order to achieve a particular objective, certain rights are to be limited. It was stressed that the committee's expectation is that the statement of compatibility will demonstrate that there is a rational connection between the limitation and the objective and how the limitation is proportionate to that objective. It was also stated that the committee expects statements of compatibility to set out the safeguards that will be applied to ensure that any limitations are implemented in the least restrictive form. Regrettably, the committee notes that some of the statements of compatibility accompanying bills and instruments considered in this second report have fallen short of the committee's expectations. The committee is particularly concerned to note that some statements of compatibility provide assertions with no supporting evidence. The committee wishes to emphasise that it is not enough for a statement of compatibility to merely claim that a measure will contribute to the achievement of a particular object or that a measure is 'necessary, reasonable and proportionate'. The committee considers that the sponsor of a bill or instrument bears the onus of demonstrating that this is the case. Where the matter is capable of evaluation in light of empirical evidence, the statement of compatibility should set this evidence out in sufficient detail to facilitate the committee's consideration of the compatibility of the measure with human rights. Where further information is required to determine these questions, the committee will write to the sponsor of the legislation in a spirit of constructive dialogue to request clarification. I commend the report to the House. BILLS 150 BILLS Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2013 150

Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2013

Second Reading 150 09:05 Mr ROBERT HWT Fadden It is a great pleasure to sum up the Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Bill 2013. As I said quite briefly last night, this bill clarifies, improves and updates veterans' affairs and related legislation. It is part of the coalition's commitment to cutting red tape and removing redundant legislation. Furthermore, the bill takes another firm, concrete step towards fulfilling the coalition government's four-pillar election commitment to veterans and their families, which includes recognising the unique nature of military service. Along with supporting this bill, let me categorically state not only for this place but also for the nation that the government will implement our commitment to deliver fair indexation for DFRB and DFRDB military superannuants aged 55 and over and that it will come into effect from 1 July this year. It is a firm commitment, a commitment that the Prime Minister when opposition leader signed a number of covenants with the defence community about. It will come to pass and it will be a great day in this place when the coalition brings about justice on this matter. The amendments to the Veterans' Entitlements Act and the Australian Participants in British Nuclear Tests (Treatment) Act will clarify the approval and authorisation arrangements for travel for treatment for eligible persons and their attendants. Travel expenses for treatment can include the cost for transport, meals and accommodation for eligible persons and, where necessary, an attendant to accompany the eligible person. In 2012-13, the Department of Veterans' Affairs processed over 165,000 claims for travel expenses for treatment. Amendments to the act will make it clear that the Repatriation Commission may approve or authorise travel for treatment before or after the travel has been undertaken. Other beneficial amendments in the bill will enable special assistance under the VEA and Military Rehabilitation and Compensation Act to be delivered in a more timely manner. Changes to these acts will enable special assistance to be provided by legislative instrument instead of the current practice of using regulations. This will result in a streamlined and quicker process for providing special assistance to veterans, members, former members and their dependants. The remaining amendments in the bill will make minor changes to clarify and update veterans' affairs legislation and will further align the VEA with social security law. These are good changes. They make a difference to the lives of veterans. I believe that they will be supported widely by both sides of the House, as they should be. As a nation, I think we have one of the best veteran systems in the world and it is our strong intention to continue to ensure that remains the case. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced. Third Reading 151 09:09 Mr ROBERT HWT Fadden by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Migration Amendment Bill 2013 151

Migration Amendment Bill 2013

Second Reading 151 09:10 Mr MARLES HWQ Corio I rise to speak in support of the Migration Amendment Bill 2013 and, in doing so, commend the minister on the appropriate length of his speech, which has allowed me to speak at this moment. This bill does a number of important things in relation to the Migration Act and providing certainty. It clarifies the intent of the legislation and makes the protection visa process more stringent. We support the bill as it clarifies the intent of the principal legislation and provides greater clarity for the decision makers within the system. The bill contains three schedules. The first is a technical but very important schedule which deals with the timing of a decision by a decision maker in relation to the granting or not of a protection visa. It makes clear that the date on which a decision is taken to be made is the date when the decision is put in writing as opposed to the date on which the decision is notified to the person to whom it applies, which had been the finding in the court decisions. This is important because a circumstance where the date of a decision is taken as being the date of notification—and indeed the appropriate fulfilling of the making of a decision requires the appropriate notification—can lead to a situation of uncertainty for the decision makers, the department, and that is something that needs to be clarified. It is a technical matter but a very important matter and the opposition support this amendment to the Migration Act to provide for certainty around that issue. The second schedule deals with the grounds upon which a person can make an application for a protection visa and specifically prevents somebody from making an application for a protection visa where they have failed in a previous application for a protection visa on another ground. To make that more clear, it ensures that a person seeking a protection visa must put all their grounds in the first application and not be in a situation where they can put a subsequent application in on differing grounds. This is an important measure because it prevents working the system such that a person might be able to put in an application for a protection visa on a particular ground, have it go through the entire process, have that process end in an unfavourable result and then make another application on a separate ground. There are basically four grounds on which a person could seek a protection visa and were this not dealt with there would be an ability to have four separate processes which could extend into years. This schedule makes it very clear that once a person has failed in the granting of a protection visa, having gone through the entire appeal process, that is then the end of the matter and they are then prevented from being able to make another application for a protection visa. The opposition supports this amendment to the Migration Act. The third schedule deals with the sensitive issue of persons who have a negative ASIO assessment. This schedule now makes it completely clear that persons who have a negative assessment from ASIO will be unable to gain a protection visa and that fact will not be reviewable by any tribunal or indeed, ultimately, by the minister. This is a significant step to be taken and a decision we come to very cautiously and carefully, but ultimately we accept this change to the Migration Act. We do so on the basis that the Stone review process within ASIO, which is a mechanism for having one's negative assessment by ASIO reviewed within the ASIO system, remains intact. It is an important safety valve for persons who have a negative ASIO assessment to be able to have that reviewed. But if that is not successful and a negative assessment remains—and indeed so long as a negative assessment remains in relation to a person—then a person with such a negative assessment is prevented from gaining a protection visa within the migration review and application system. We are pleased that the Stone review process has been kept intact. That is an important consideration for us in taking the decision that we have. We note that this, in essence, removes any review rights within the migration system itself and actually removes the minister's ability to review these circumstances, but the reality is that no minister is going to review a decision to prevent a person from getting a protection visa based on a negative ASIO assessment without some comfort through a process such as the Stone review process. In those circumstances, this legislation, I believe, confirms the reality of the way in which the immigration system was being managed by the former government and is being managed, I am sure, by this government as well. The opposition supports these three schedules. We see these as matters which will provide for greater certainty and clarity within the Migration Act. We see these as matters which honour the intent of the Migration Act. They make the process of obtaining a protection visa more stringent but in doing so they also make the process more certain for everyone concerned. Finally, I make this point: it is important to have a robust and fair system in place for the granting of protection visas—one which meets our international obligations. I note that in the explanatory memorandum there is an extensive discourse about how these particular amendments to the Migration Act conform with our international obligations; that is an important consideration from the point of view of the opposition in supporting this bill. It is important that we get the balance right when we put our migration system, and the way in which decisions are made and reviewed, in place—that there is in that process a fairness, a dignity and an efficiency and indeed, importantly, a certainty, but that it remains a rigorous and stringent process as well. Ultimately we see this bill as being consistent with those objectives and so, on that basis, the opposition are supporting these amendments. 09:19 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina I endorse the remarks of the shadow minister and member for Corio. This is a bill to amend the Migration Act 1958 in order to further clarify the operations of the act in light of a number of recent court and tribunal decisions. The government believes that these decisions are inconsistent with the policy intention of the Migration Act and accordingly seeks to make the intention of the act clearer, as the shadow minister just pointed out. This bill reflects the government's ongoing commitment to ensuring that we have in place a rigorous protection visa regime which balances the rights of protection visa applicants with our domestic security objectives. The bill provides for three specific changes to the Migration Act. Firstly, it clarifies when a decision is made and the meaning of 'finally determined'. Secondly, it provides a statutory bar against further protection visa applications. Finally, the bill inserts a specific criterion with respect to protection visa applicants assessed to be a risk by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, ASIO. These amendments are vital for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to process the visa applications by asylum seekers and noncitizens. Further, these amendments are critical to ensuing that Australia has a strong and rigorous refugee-processing regime in place that meets our international protection obligations whilst also giving full effect to the policy intent and purpose of our own domestic laws. Obviously, as part of a government committed to restoring the integrity of our immigration system, I very much support the intent and the purpose of these amendments in the House today. The bill gives clarification of when a decision is made and the meaning of 'finally determined'. Schedule 1 of the bill puts a range of matters beyond doubt to provide very clear guidance to the courts about the intention of the act. For example, it puts beyond doubt that a decision by the minister or delegate of an application for a visa, cancellation of a visa or revocation of a visa is taken to be finally made and the decision maker is taken to have discharged their powers at the time and on the day a record of the decision is made. This schedule, new subsection 5(9A), also puts beyond doubt that a decision by the Refugee Review Tribunal or the Migration Review Tribunal on an application of review is taken to be made, other than an oral decision, by the making of a written statement and to have been made on the day and at the time the written statement was made. This schedule further puts beyond doubt that an oral decision by the RRT or the MRT is taken to be made and becomes final on the day and the time it is given. The amendments contained in this schedule will provide additional clarity and certainty to the administration of the act by making clear when a person may become a lawful noncitizen. The bill provides a statutory bar against further visa applications. Schedule 2 provides further clarification to section 48A of the act and specifically prevents an applicant who has been refused a protection visa or who has had their protection visa cancelled from making any further applications for a protection visa whilst still in the migration zone. That is extremely important. This amendment was necessitated by the decision of the Full Federal Court in SZGIZ v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, which held that there were effectively different sets of criteria by which a protection visa can be applied for and granted. The court found that section 48A did not prohibit a noncitizen from making a further application on the basis of a different criterion to that which was relied upon in a prior unsuccessful application. The Abbott-Truss government submits that this decision is contrary to the policy intent of this section. But, in keeping with the purpose of this bill, we are taking the opportunity to remove any doubt by amending the law to ensure that once a review decision is refused, irrespective of the grounds of the refusal or the grounds on which a protection visa was cancelled, an applicant cannot reapply for a protection visa on different grounds regardless of whether alternative grounds existed earlier or not. That is, once a review decision is refused, there are no further grounds upon which an applicant is able to seek additional review. End of story. There are specific criteria with respect to applicants assessed to be a security risk by ASIO. Schedule 3 of the bill sets out a new specific criterion that requires that an applicant is not assessed by ASIO to be directly or indirectly a risk to security within the meaning of section 4 of the ASIO Act. Again the proposed amendment will put beyond doubt that the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal do not have the power to review a visa refusal decision relying on, or a visa cancellation because of, an assessment by ASIO that the applicant or visa holder is directly or indirectly a risk to security. This amendment addresses issues raised in the matter of plaintiff M47/2012 v Director General of Security & Ors. In this case the High Court held that the public interest criteria 4002 of part 1 of schedule 4 to the Migration Regulations 1994 was not a valid criterion upon which to grant a protection visa as it was inconsistent with the Migration Act. The new amendment will reflect the terms of PIC 4002 so that an applicant will be refused a protection visa if they are assessed by ASIO to be directly or indirectly a risk to security within the meaning of section 4 of the ASIO Act. This bill ensures that the Migration Act operates as intended and provides certainty to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection in the processing of protection visas. The proposed amendments also provide much-needed clarity to the courts in their consideration of matters that might engage these sections of the act. With these amendments the government is striking a balance, a necessary balance, between the rights of protection visa applicants and important domestic security objectives. This bill has relevance to the Riverina, particularly the city of Griffith, which is the multicultural cradle of Australia. I acknowledge this bill has the support of the opposition. It is important—indeed, essential—that, as former Prime Minister John Howard famously said in 2001, 'we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come'. The first role of government is to protect its borders. This legislation certainly assists that process. I commend the bill to the House. 09:26 Mr THISTLETHWAITE 182468 Kingsford Smith I speak in support of this bill, the Migration Amendment Bill 2013. The amendments made by this bill are essentially administrative but do provide important clarity particularly for the courts in assessing protection visa applications. Schedule 1 of the bill puts beyond doubt that a decision on review or a visa refusal, cancellation or revocation decision by the minister or his delegate is taken to be made at a time when a record of it is made and not when the decision is notified or communicated to the review applicant, visa applicant or former visa holder. The second schedule clarifies the operation of the statutory bar on making a further protection visa application. The amendments also make it a criterion for the grant of a protection visa in section 36 of the Migration Act that the application is not assessed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to be a risk to security within the meaning of section 4 of the ASIO Act and associated measures. The bill is aimed at providing certainty to what has been seen as the intention of the legislation and making the protection visa process much more stringent and clear. Schedule 1 of the bill amends the Migration Act to put beyond doubt that a decision of the Refugee Review Tribunal or the Migration Review Tribunal on application for review is taken to be made on the day and at the time the written or oral statement is made. This amendment comes on the back of two important matters before the Federal Court. One was the judgement in 2012 in the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and SZQOY in which the court held that a decision by the Refugee Review Tribunal on an application for review under part 7 of the Migration Act did not become final until the review decision was notified outside the Refugee Review Tribunal, externally and irrevocably. On 11 September 2013 the full court delivered its judgement in the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship and SZRNY. Again, the court held that a notification of a review decision by the review tribunal forms part of the core function of review and until both the review applicant and the Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection are notified of the review decision according to law the decision of the relevant applicant remains subject to review and not finally determined within the meaning of section 5(9) of the Migration Act. So this amendment clarifies that a decision on review or a visa decision by the minister is taken to be made on the day and at the time when the record of it is made. That finalisation is not dependent upon when the decision is notified or communicated, which provides important clarity for applicants and indeed for the court. Labor accepts that it is important that decision makers and applicants have that clarity regarding the timing of final decisions, but we are also satisfied that these changes to the Migration Act do not impeach the procedural fairness obligations of the government or, indeed, of the court. Labor broadly supports this bill as it clarifies the current positions of the courts and removes some of the uncertainty around protection visa procedures and processes. It is appropriate that recent decisions of the courts are clarified to ensure consistency in decision making. Schedule 2 of the bill amends the Migration Act to clarify that section 48A of the act prevents a noncitizen who has been refused a protection visa, or had a protection visa cancelled, from applying for a further protection visa while in the migration zone. This amendment was precipitated by the judgement of the Federal Court in SZGIZ v the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, a decision of that court in 2013 which held that the act does not preclude a noncitizen seeking a further protection visa application based on criteria which did not form the basis of a previous unsuccessful protection visa application. The amendment will mean that the department, the Refugee Review Tribunal and the courts will no longer have to dedicate the resources to repeat protection visa applications. Labor accepts that the decision of the court that an applicant with an unmeritorious claim may seek to delay the procedure has the potential to create a burdensome ongoing workload for the department, associated bodies such as the Refugee Review Tribunal and the courts generally. However, the process should still be handled in accordance with affording applicants procedural fairness. Schedule 3 of the bill amends the Migration Act to insert a criterion for the granting of a protection visa subclass 866 that the applicant is not assessed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation to be directly or indirectly a risk to security. Again, this is a provision that Labor supports, and I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS 156 MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS Closing the Gap: Prime Minister's Report 2014 156 Reference to Federation Chamber 164 10:08 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I declare that the resumption of debate and the motion to take note of the copy of the Closing the Gap Prime Minister's report 2014 is referred to the Federation Chamber. BILLS 164 BILLS Migration Amendment Bill 2013 164

Migration Amendment Bill 2013

Second Reading 164 10:09 Mr BANDT M3C Melbourne I rise to oppose the Migration Amendment Bill 2013 on behalf of the Greens and to record our shame and disgust that Labor is now supporting a position that will see people who may have done nothing wrong at all locked up for years on end. This is Kafka on steroids. If this legislation passes, it will mean that someone who comes here seeking our help and is told, 'No, we can't help you because there is a security assessment,' and who then says: 'I think that's not right, I want to challenge it. Tell me why you say I can't be here,' will be told, 'No, we can't tell you because that is a matter of national security.' When this was raised under the previous government, it was rightly acknowledged that there was a problem. It was acknowledged that this puts people in a legal limbo where they are denied the basic right that every other Australian citizen has, which is to know the case against you and to be able to have it challenged and reviewed independently. There were some steps taken—albeit, we would say, insufficient—to put in place a process of independent review so that someone who was in that legal limbo could at least have their case heard, if not bindingly determined. This legislation not only takes that away but puts people who are coming here seeking our help in a situation that no Australian citizen would ever want to be in: you end up in a situation where you do not know the case against you and you have no right to challenge it. This legislation is an affront to the basic principles of the rule of law, and for a party that calls themselves 'liberal', this is reactionary. There is nothing liberal about saying that an individual, whether or not they are a citizen of the country, has no right to know the case against them, but that is exactly what this government is doing. This bill seeks to amend Australia's rigorous refugee determination process by overturning a number of High Court and Federal Court decisions, and the amendment is inconsistent with Australia's international obligations. It does not afford procedural fairness and it further entrenches the practice of indefinitely detaining men, women and children who have been found to be genuine refugees but who are deemed a 'security threat'. There are currently about 50 refugees, including five children, who have been indefinitely detained as a result of this and the former government's practice. In August of last year, the UN Human Rights Committee found that Australia was in breach of its international obligations and had committed 143 human rights violations by indefinitely detaining 46 refugees, including children, due to adverse ASIO assessments. Rather than addressing these violations and improving our processes, this bill seeks to do exactly the opposite. As I alluded to at the start of my speech, individuals who currently receive an adverse security assessment have some limited rights for appeal, and the Greens welcomes the announcement of the independent reviewer as an acknowledgement that, under Australian law, there is no fair legal process for refugees who receive a negative assessment. We acknowledge the work of the Honourable Margaret Stone in reviewing a number of ASIO assessments, but we remain concerned that the independent reviewers powers are not binding or compellable. The Joint Select Committee on Australia's Immigration Detention Network last year resolutely rejected the indefinite detention of people without any right of appeal and recommended that the Australian government and ASIO establish and implement periodic reviews of adverse refugee security assessments to ensure that genuine refugees were not subject to indefinite detention. They went on to recommend that the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act be amended to allow the security appeals division of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to review ASIO security assessments of refugees and asylum seekers. It remains our view that those recommendations should be adopted, but instead the approach of this government is to condemn potentially genuine refugees who have done nothing wrong to indefinite detention. I do not know whether the minister has spoken to any of the people who are in this situation, but I have. I have spoken to and visited people who are in detention and who find themselves in this Kafkaesque legal limbo. One of them told me that he was in a country where there was a civil war going on. He happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and, together with other members of his extended family, was moved out of their home into another area and was directed to attend a certain school for a while. He told me that he got out of there as quickly as he could because he did not want to go to that school. What he wanted to do was go on and become an engineer, so he got out of there to find a place where he could go and study and become an engineer. He said he was coming to Australia because he thought that it could be that place. He also said that ASIO had told him: 'No, you were in that place at that school. We believe that that school has links with something objectionable under Australian law, so we are refusing your assessment.' Well, he was not even told that; that is what he interpolated, because he was told nothing, but that is what he assumed. Was he right that he was someone who had done nothing wrong and deserved to be treated as a genuine refugee, or was ASIO right that that was just a front story for someone who in fact should not be here in Australia? I do not know. I do not know the answer to that, but it should be able to be tested. It should be able to be tested in exactly the same way as, if a government department has made a decision about an Australian citizen that has wrecked their life, that decision is able to be tested. What this bill will do is say, 'It doesn't matter that that person might have actually been right; we will just take ASIO's word for it.' Maybe ASIO was being overcautious. Maybe ASIO did not know anything about the individual but was just making a generalised risk assessment about people who came from that place. But we will never know, and we may have just condemned someone—who could have gone on to become a valued Australian citizen and an engineer working for us—to a lifetime of indefinite detention, if not to being returned to a place where they might be killed. That is the effect of this government's bill. It is shameful that Labor is now supporting it. It is absolutely shameful. Come the first test, in this new year, of standing up to the brutality of the Abbott government and its willingness to use cruelty to gain votes, it is disgraceful that it looks like this bill will pass this House and potentially even this parliament. People may also remember the case of the woman from Sri Lanka that got significant media attention. She and her children spent many years in the Villawood detention centre because of an adverse security assessment. She did not know why she was facing indefinite detention, but she knows that her children, one of whom was born in detention, are suffering. This bill further entrenches that practice, meaning that refugees like Ranjini and her children are being locked in detention for the rest of their lives, despite being found to be in genuine need of Australia's protection. It would be appalling if the Australian government treated an Australian citizen in this way or if a foreign government treated an Australian citizen in this way. We are effectively saying that some people are more equal than others—that some people have the right to go to court and have adverse decisions against them tested and independently reviewed to work out whether they were rightly or wrongly made, but, if you happen to have the misfortune of fleeing civil war, fleeing persecution, fleeing torture and coming here seeking our help, we will not give you that support. When I spoke to one of those people who was in indefinite detention, he was more than a week into a hunger strike. He said to me, 'I am very fear to die.' That was the second time I spoke to him personally. As I spoke to him, he was fighting back tears. He said he just could not understand why he did not know the case against him. Why could he not respond to these unknown claims about why he would not be a good member of Australian society? He struggled to understand his predicament. He said, and he repeated, that all he ever wanted to do was to complete his engineering studies and not be a threat to anyone. As I say, I do not know whether that is right or wrong. What the minister is saying is that he knows in the case of everyone who comes here seeking help. He knows absolutely that they all deserve to be sent back. He expects he will win a few votes out of it. He expects it will show this government up as being brutal and uncaring and that that will work to its advantage. We have in this parliament the opportunity to stop a major plank of cruelty from this Abbott government. Really, now, the light turns onto Labor as to whether they are prepared to do that or whether they will be complicit. For people like Ranjini and like the young man that I spoke to who was in detention, it is now up to Labor as to whether they will lock those people up indefinitely and perhaps send them back to a life where they risk fear and persecution. Lastly, there is much debate in this place and around this country about asylum seekers and about boat people, about people who come here seeking our help. Can I say to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that if I were in a situation where my life was threatened, where my family's life was threatened, where people I cared about were at risk of being killed or persecuted or tortured, and I was caught up in the middle of a civil war and forced to be in places that I did not want to be, I would jump on a boat to get out, and I reckon everyone else here would as well. I would do whatever I could to bring myself and my family to safety. And I would hope that if I landed in a rich, developed nation they would look at my case. They would not just say, 'You came from a place where there are potential terrorist activities going on, so you must be a terrorist yourself.' If those things were not going on in that place, they would not be fleeing in the first place. Of course there are always going to be these issues. But I would hope that if I landed here my claim would be independently assessed, and that if there was a case against me I would have the right to argue it in front of a court. If I lost then you would accept the decision. But to not even have that basic right to know the case against you, to be condemned to a Kafkaesque legal limbo for your whole life because you are told you are a national security risk but you cannot be told what the case against you is for national security reasons, is something that we should all be deeply ashamed of. I just hope that if I was in that situation I would be treated better than the current minister is proposing to treat everyone else who comes here seeking our help. 10:23 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I thank members for their contributions to this important debate. The Migration Amendment Bill 2013 amends the Migration Act 1958 to remedy three distinct issues resulting from recent court and tribunal decisions that significantly affect the operations of my department, particularly its capacity to process visa applications and to be clear when a person is available for removal from Australia. The bread and butter of my department's work is facilitating the movement of people across our borders for commerce, tourism, trade and study, and one of the department's most important roles is nation-building through a targeted immigration program. The role is also rooted in a matter of national security and the protection of that national security, and the decisions that are made carry important consequences and an important responsibility for those who have to make decisions in government in this country. One important responsibility is to enable legitimate visa holders with a genuine purpose to travel and conduct business here whilst ensuring that those persons who are a threat to national security or are seeking to abuse the system are prevented from entry or removed from Australia when they have no permission to remain. It is critical that Australian legislation supports the work and decisions made by Immigration and Customs and Border Protection officials on our front line and enforces the integrity of these processes. We are committed to restoring integrity and confidence in our immigration program. That is fundamental to having a successful immigration program that Australians have confidence in and Australians support and that enables us to continue to run an immigration program which is the cornerstone to so much of both economic and social success in what I describe as an immigration nation of Australia. The measures contained in this bill before the House today go towards achieving that purpose by clarifying and remedying matters that have arisen in a series of recent court decisions. The first schedule to the bill will put beyond doubt that the decision on review or visa refusal, cancellation or revocation decision by the minister or his delegate is taken to be made on the day and at the time when a record of it is made and not when the decision is notified or communicated to the applicant or the former visa holder. The amendments address the decision of the full Federal Court in the case of the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship v SZQOY of 2012 that the RRT's decision-making power in respect of review is not exercised or spent until the review decision is notified irrevocably and externally. The amendment also addresses the full Federal Court's decision in the Minister for Immigration, Multicultural Affairs and Citizenship v SZRNY of 2013 in which the full Federal Court extended the judgement in SZQOY and found that an application is finally determined that is no longer subject to a form of merits review only when the review decision of the RRT is notified to both the review applicant and the secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection according to law. It was immaterial that the review decision had been notified externally and that the review applicant has actually been notified of the review decision despite any error in the notification itself. These findings cause potential difficulties and risks in the administration of the act. For example, the concept of an application being finally determined is crucial to liability for removal under section 198 of the act. These amendments are critical, as they will remove any doubt as to when the decision by the minister, delegate or tribunal is taken to be finally made and when an application is finally determined. The second schedule of the bill clarifies that a person in the migration zone who has previously been refused a protection visa or who held a protection visa that was cancelled is prohibited from making a further protection visa application. This applies regardless of the basis on which the earlier protection visa application was made or granted and regardless of the basis upon which the further protection visa application purportedly relies. The amendment addresses the decision of the full Federal Court on 3 July last year in SZGIZ v the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. In that case the full Federal Court found that section 48A of the Migration Act only prohibited the making of a further protection visa application that relied on the same ground or criterion as the previously refused protection visa application. That means that, for example, if a noncitizen previously made a protection visa application raising claims under the Refugee Convention section 48A of the Migration Act would not prohibit a new protection visa application based on complementary protection claims. By restoring the intended operation of the statutory bar in section 48A of the act the amendment will preserve the integrity of Australia's protection visa program and avoid its abuse by preventing noncitizens without meritorious claims for protection from delaying their departure from Australia by making repeat protection visa applications on different grounds each time. The third schedule of the bill addresses the decision by the High Court in Plaintiff M47/2012 v the Director-General of Security and Ors. In October 2012 the High Court of Australia found that the use of Public Interest Criterion 4002 in the Migration Regulations 1994 was not a valid criterion for the purposes of a protection visa application. Public Interest Criterion 4002 states that the applicant is not to be assessed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, or ASIO, to be directly or indirectly a risk to security within the meaning of section 4 of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act. In the absence of PIC 4002 the protection visa assessment process for persons with an adverse security assessment is currently problematic, as each case requires individual consideration as to whether the person does or does not pass the character test in section 501 of the Migration Act. This bill will amend section 36 of the Migration Act to insert a new specific criterion for a protection visa that the applicant is not assessed by ASIO to be directly or indirectly a risk to security within the meaning of section 4 of the ASIO Act. The new criterion in section 36 reflects the terms of PIC 4002. Additionally, the amendments introduced by the bill will put beyond doubt that the Migration Review Tribunal, the Refugee Review Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal will not have the power to review a decision to refuse to grant or to cancel a protection visa on the basis of an adverse security assessment by ASIO that the applicant for or holder of a protection visa is directly or indirectly a risk to security within the meaning of section 4 of the ASIO Act. The amendments will also reflect current paragraph 504(1)(c) of the Migration Act by confirming that the Refugee Review Tribunal does not have the power to review a decision to refuse to grant or to cancel a protection visa made on the basis of one or more of articles 1F, 32 or 33(2) of the refugee convention or paragraphs 36(2C)(a) or 36(2C)(b) of the Migration Act. Paragraph 501(c) provides that only the AAT has the jurisdiction to conduct a merits review of those decisions. To meet community expectations, the government must have the ability to act decisively and effectively wherever necessary to protect the Australian community. The government must also have the legislative basis to refuse a protection visa or to cancel a protection visa for those noncitizens who are a security risk. We must prevent and deter any threats posed by those who are a risk to the security of our nation and must implement legislative amendments such as those proposed in this bill to ensure the security and safety of the Australian community. The best thing a government can do to support our agencies that work on the front line in immigration and border protection and who make these decisions is to equip them with the resources they need and provide clarity through legislation so they can do their jobs to the best of their ability in Australia's interests. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection employs over 10,000 people. The people who work in the department have always demonstrated extraordinary passion and professionalism. They have a deep care and interest in the work they do that is shared by the many other agencies that serve our nation well, including, of course, ASIO, who have an extremely difficult job in making these decisions. But that is the job we have given them to do—on our behalf, in the national interest. Indeed, many have dedicated almost all of their professional lives to this great work they do. Such commitment is an incredible asset that has guided us through incredibly difficult times and will continue to do so in the future. In support of them—the work they do on our behalf to ensure that we have an immigration program and particularly a refugee and humanitarian program that has integrity and that maintains the support of the Australian community—I commend this bill to the House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D The question is that this bill be now read a second time. A division having been called and the bells having been rung— The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D As there are fewer than five members on the side of the noes in this division, I declare the question resolved in the affirmative in accordance with standing order 127. The names of those members who are in the minority will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings. Question agreed to, Mr Bandt, Ms McGowan and Mr Wilkie voting no. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 170 10:39 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 170

Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013

Second Reading 170 10:39 Ms KING 00AMR Ballarat This bill seeks to amend the way the indexation of the private health insurance rebate is calculated. People will remember that Labor introduced changes to the Private Health Insurance Act in May last year. These changes created a base premium for each individual health policy. This was to be indexed annually by the lesser of the consumer price index and the actual increase in premiums by insurers. The changes were to come into effect in April. The change made the government's expenditure on the rebate more sustainable and made more funds available to be invested in other areas within the health portfolio. The original bill introduced by Labor did not alter the premium-setting process. Rather the bill introduced a base premium amount that changed the way the rebate itself was calculated, ending its link to rise automatically with the commercial increases in premiums. Instead the base premium was linked to cost-of-living increases. The changes resulted in the indexation factor being the lesser of CPI and the actual commercial premium increase. The change the government is proposing in this amendment has no effect on the substantive objective of the measure Labor introduced in government. The changes Labor made were about sustainability of health expenditure, with expected savings of around $700 million over the next four years. They will still be realised in this bill. At the time the original bill was presented by my colleague the member for Sydney, she quoted the then-Treasurer that the 'rebate currently costs around $5 billion a year and its growth rate of 6.3 per cent over the forwards is unsustainable'. Despite the concerns raised by those opposite, the changes Labor made when in government to the private health insurance rebate, particularly in relation to means-testing, did not see more than a million people getting rid of their policies. Indeed, what we have seen is more people taking out private health insurance than ever before. The most recent data available from the Private Health Insurance Administrative Council demonstrates that more than 105,000 people took out private health insurance between June and September last year, and compared to the same time the previous year more than 255,000 Australians had private health insurance cover. In percentage terms, that represents the highest rate of insurance cover ever, with 47 per cent of Australians having hospital cover and 55 per cent having general cover. As a matter of principle, Labor believes it is very important that there is a sustainable private health insurance industry in Australia. It is important that we have the public-private mix to provide health insurance for Australians. As I have said, despite opposition raised at the time and comments that more than a million people would give up their cover, that simply did not happen. The intent of this bill is to change the way insurers calculate how the rebate is applied. Instead of insurers calculating the application of the indexation based on each of their individual products, it will be applied based on a formula calculated using the average industry premium increase and the consumer price index. Labor believes that there should be greater competition in the private health insurance sector and that consumers should have access to information they can understand and that best enables them to select a policy representing value for money and providing the level of service they seek. To date the government has not demonstrated it shares the belief in promoting competition and doing what is right for Australian consumers. Since the coalition came to government, the minister has announced the highest increase to private health insurance premiums in almost a decade. This decision was announced by the minister two days before Christmas, in what I would assume was a fairly cynical move designed to avoid public scrutiny. When Labor was in government, ministers would routinely take several months to approve increases to private health insurance premiums, often going back to insurers many times to ensure that premium increases were justified and that Australian consumers were getting the very best deal possible. Industry has put to me and other members of the opposition that with the changes proposed in this bill less administration will be required and, in turn, less cost which would otherwise be passed on to consumers. The principal concern of Labor is that any changes not have a detrimental effect on a consumer's ability to understand their policy and that it should not become less affordable. It is also important that there continues to be strong competition in the private health insurance market, and that consumers are able to seek out the best possible policy for them and to move between products when that is not the case. I acknowledge representations from insurers that this amendment will require less administration and therefore less cost to consumers. Having talked to the peak body and to a number of private health insurance companies, I understand that this is a position now shared across the entire industry. When Labor introduced this change last year, there was debate around the best implementation methodology and some insurers argued indexing the premium at an industry level would be easier to implement. From this bill, that is an argument that the government has accepted. One of the principal concerns put by the Department of Health at that time was that implementing the indexation at an industry level, as is proposed in this bill, would put small insurers at a competitive disadvantage. Having received representations from smaller insurers, including their peak body, I have accepted these representations and am satisfied that smaller insurers have stated that they should not be disadvantaged by these changes. I acknowledge that changes required with any legislative change will of course be more difficult to implement from an administrative perspective for smaller insurers than for larger insurers, which have more staff and more resources to make the changes. Labor accepts that smaller insurers have argued this change will be easier for them to implement and will result in less administration. However, I remain concerned that the government has not indicated in the second reading speech, the explanatory memorandum of the bill or the briefing the minister was kind enough to allow me to have from the department how it will promote competition or better competition in the private health insurance sector, how it will ensure the interests of Australian consumers are protected and how this change in particular does that versus what was proposed originally. It is worth reiterating the advice of the department last year which was contained in the letter from the secretary to the Senate legislative affairs committee inquiring into the original bill. The department's advice at the time was that the implementation method put by the Labor government in the bill was one that increased transparency and provided greater competition and certainty for consumers. The government does need to better explain how the new method proposed in this bill will improve competition and the capacity for consumers to get value for money. That being said, Labor will not oppose the bill. However, at the end of my contribution I will be moving a second reading amendment that highlights the opposition's concerns around the issue of competition. The broader issue is of course what the government's longer term intention is in health and in private health insurance in particular. As is well known, the government has begun a scoping study as part of its plan to sell Medibank Private. The government is so confident of the benefits to the Australian public and Australian consumers of private health insurance and the sale of Medibank Private that it has engaged a public affairs consultant at a cost of $2,000 a day, as reported in the media today, to sell the benefits of the sale of Medibank Private. It has engaged independent PR consultants and has been paying them $2,000 a day since January, despite the fact that the scoping study into whether to sell Medibank Private is not due to be handed down to the government for several weeks, let alone it being made available to the public. The other issue that is of concern is that the government have committed to reverse Labor's means-testing of the private health insurance rebate. They strenuously opposed it at the time and have said that they will now reverse that. That is a substantial cost within the health portfolio and I remain concerned about that commitment. The other area that I remain concerned about in relation to private health insurance is the tacit approval and apparent support for the move by private health insurers into primary care. There is a trial currently being undertaken in Queensland and I am informed by the private health insurer undertaking the trial that it does not believe it is breaching current legislation. I think it is getting very close to entering into the private health insurance market where there is the potential for those people who have private health insurance to be provided with a better opportunity to access a GP than those people in the community who do not have the means for private health insurance. It is an area that I remain most concerned about. As stated previously, this bill does not change the amount of money the government will save by indexing the private health insurance rebate—some $700 million. The question of course remains what the government will do with the savings that the original bill actually realised. The minister has yet to make any statements about what the government's priorities are in health or what the government plans to do to improve the health of all Australians. So far we have only seen concessions to industry that are to the detriment of consumers, cuts to the health portfolio, cuts to very important health infrastructure projects, cuts to front-line services that Labor committed to such as cancer nurses in integrated cancer centres, and also cuts to smaller organisations like the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council—the body that has been providing advice to governments, including on such matters as alcohol fuelled violence, since Robert Menzies was Prime Minister. I remain concerned on two further matters in relation to this bill. Whilst accepting the propositions put to it by the private health insurance industry—and I have no reason to doubt that those propositions are correct—that the changes to the method of calculating the indexation will put significant administrative pressure on private health insurers, the government has not made the case for why this change in particular will improve competition and the circumstances for consumers. I would certainly ask the minister, in his summing up speech, to make a stronger case, understanding the administrative complexities, for why this particular change will be better for consumers as well. I also remain concerned as to what the government's intentions are in relation to private insurance overall and certainly what the government's intentions are to do with the savings that Labor was realising through the implementation of these changes. That being said, I reiterate that the opposition will not oppose the bill and I move: That all the words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: “whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading the House note that the bill does not adequately demonstrate what additional competition will be achieved that is in the interests of Australian consumers” The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D Is the amendment seconded? Mr Dreyfus HWG I second the amendment. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Ballarat has moved as an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the amendment is agreed to. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to. (Quorum formed) 10:57 Dr SOUTHCOTT TK6 Boothby I am very pleased to speak on the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, which is very important. There are 10.6 million Australians who have some form of health insurance. In my electorate of Boothby, 76.3 per cent of voters are covered by private health insurance—either hospital cover or extra cover. In the previous six years, we saw people who hold private health insurance under constant attack from the Labor Party. Those 10 million-plus policyholders saw the value of their private health insurance constantly under attack. When Labor left office in 1996, the private health insurance industry was in a terrible state. When Labor left office in 2013, again they left the industry in a terrible state. They went to the 2007 election promising not to change the private health insurance rebate; yet in every budget when they were in government the Labor Party changed the rebate and reduced support for private health insurance. They broke promise after promise on private health insurance, putting the sector under significant pressure and creating uncertainty. The coalition government are now cleaning up the mess left by the Labor Party, ensuring that private health insurance is sustainable and affordable. Given Labor's damaging policies, all insurers last year sought increases in their health insurance premiums. These applications were thoroughly scrutinised to ensure that each increase was justified. Over 2013, there was an eight per cent increase in benefits paid to health fund members, increasing pressures on the insurers. The premium increases will assist the industry to absorb these costs and will end the uncertainty created by Labor. A strong and viable private health insurance sector is necessary to ease pressure on the public health system. That is what this side of politics has always believed—that there is a very strong role for private health insurance. Under the Howard government a number of changes were introduced to have sustainable private health insurance, including the private health insurance rebate and Lifetime Health Cover, which was introduced by the Howard government on 1 July 2000. This has been an important part of private health cover reforms that significantly increased private health insurance coverage. The intent of Lifetime Health Cover is that if you stay out of private health insurance after you are 30 you will pay an increased premium each year that you are out of private health insurance. This was intended to ensure that people take out private health insurance at an early age and maintain their cover. From what we have seen, we can assure the 10 million Australians who hold private health insurance that they will have certainty, sustainability and stability in this. People who hold private health insurance—and who rely on it for visits to physios, dentists, optometrists or speech pathologists, for hospital cover and for maternity—can be sure that it will be sustainable under this government. You will see a sustainable private health insurance. We on this side believe that private health insurance has a very important role in taking pressure off the public hospital system. 11:01 Mr GRAY 8W5 Brand I congratulate the minister opposite on his portfolio and his elevation to the status of health minister. I wish him well. This is the first opportunity I have had to do that since the election and the first time since the election that I have been in the chamber making remarks on a piece of legislation. Last week marked the 30th anniversary of Medicare. The nature of Medicare in the context of global healthcare systems is quite unique. It is unique in that it embraces a healthcare system which is a cocktail of both private and public. It is unique in that it is strongly supported by our community and has, over the 30 years since its introduction, been supported on the basis of a bipartisan approach in this parliament. From the election of the Howard government in 1996, where it was made very clear by Howard that there would be no attempt to remove or reduce Medicare, we have seen the system of health insurance through Medicare and through private health insurance only get stronger and provide for the people of Australia the best possible healthcare insurance systems. It is something of which we should be proud. We should stand back and take note of how our public systems and our private systems work effectively to the benefit of all Australians. It works seamlessly with our public hospital systems; it works seamlessly at the local practitioner level. The Labor Party believes and always has believed that private health insurance plays not simply an important role but an extremely important role in the provision of healthcare support, certainty and peace of mind for members of our community. Personally, as a husband and as a father, I have always carried an optimum level of private health insurance. That is an attitude that was drilled into me by my father and by my mother. It is something that continues to cover my children and something that I will continue to do. I think it both prudent and good value for money. I also think Medicare is a system that is outstanding public administration. It is outstanding public policy and it in turn delivers an outstanding benefit to all Australians at a relatively small and highly efficient cost. It is a system of which we need to be proud. We in the Labor Party believe in complementing our healthcare system of Medicare with private health insurance. We believe that the government has a responsibility to ensure that the health insurance industry remains sustainable, that insurance premiums are affordable and that the providers provide policies that are good value. The former Labor government supported the sustainability of the health insurance rebate by introducing the means-testing of the rebate and then by capping the rebate through the enactment of the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. It is a further amendment to that reform that we are here to address today. Despite the coalition's claim that Labor's reform would discourage uptake of private health insurance, there has in fact been a substantial growth in membership in recent years and, as a consequence, an increase in rebate expenditure. The most recent data available from the Private Health Insurance Administration Council tells us that 47 per cent of Australians have hospital cover and that 55 per cent have general cover. This means that private health insurance uptake at the end of the term of the former Labor government was the highest rate of insurance that we have ever seen in our country. That is a good thing. As a local member of parliament I was subject, during the previous two terms of the former Labor government, to continued lobbying from the private health insurance industry. We received box upon box of forms generated by the industry to provide me as a member of parliament with views of my constituents. When I checked those forms with the electoral roll—when my office rang the people whose names had been recorded on those forms as a form of petition—we found that an alarmingly high proportion of the names on those forms did not match the informed views of the people who had filled in the forms. On too many occasions we found absolutely no knowledge at all that a person's name had been used on those forms. I made the point privately with health insurers in Western Australia that I did not take their campaign seriously for that reason. I made the point that, although it appeared that box upon box of such petitions had been delivered—and on many occasions there were photographs in the local paper and in the West Australian of many of these boxes—they simply did not match a reality. Here is the conundrum that I face: I strongly believe in the integrity of our private health insurance system. I strongly believe that the effective partnership that we have between public and private that works in the interests of all Australians and works in the interests of our healthcare system has to be taken seriously by all the players in it. I was genuinely surprised when I looked at those forms, which had been provided by a private health insurer in Western Australia as an indicator to me of the sentiment of electors in my electorate of Brand that there was no way that a serious and objective view of those forms, cards and names could be taken by me as a member of parliament. It was in effect an abuse of people who did not know that their names and addresses were being used in such a way by a private health insurer—enough said about that; not enough said about the need to respond appropriately to this legislation. Labor ensured that more money was made available to invest in our public healthcare system, which rightly remains not just a Labor priority but a priority, I believe, for all parliamentarians: money well spent supporting the health care of all Australians. Labor's health spokesperson, Catherine King, has already explained that the coalition's current amendment does not change the amount of money the government will save on the private health insurance rebate, nor does it alter the objective of Labor's intended measure; it just changes the way private health insurers make the calculations to apply. We accept that these new amendments will streamline calculations and we support their implementation; however, the intent of Labor's proposed implementation model was to create greater competition and transparency for consumers. It remains incumbent upon the government to demonstrate how this bill will increase competition and transparency. We in this parliament know and understand both the allocative power of a market and that markets cannot work without proper information and transparency, and that is why an efficiently operating market and the transparency measures to which I referred are critically important. In 1984 when former Prime Minister Bob Hawke reintroduced universal health care after the Whitlam government's Medibank scheme was repealed in large part by the subsequent Fraser government, there was a moment of great pride in our parliament. The work that Neal Blewett and the highly professional staff in the Commonwealth Public Service did to create Medicare in 1984 was simply second to none. It was a symbol of the egalitarian nature of our nation. It was a symbol of the public administration's capability to deliver a universal healthcare system that was fair, effective and addressed the needs of the by then many millions of uninsured Australians—a story very familiar to those who have watched North American politics in recent years. Uninsured families were exposed to crippling costs and a healthcare future that was simply not the future that we aspire to in this place for our nation. Medicare put in place not simply a safety net but the best possible framework for supporting the population in its primary healthcare needs and making that system work effectively between GPs and our hospital system. Medicare only became stronger and better. The Health Insurance Commission's capability of delivering health insurance through Medicare marks itself as a global leader in public administration. It marks the capability of our Australian Public Service and it marks some of the greatest aspirations of our parliament and of successive governments to ensure effective spending of taxpayer dollars, of ensuring that a dollar spent on health care through Medicare is spent in the most effective way for our families. Last week I attended my local Medicare office in Rockingham to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Medicare. We cut a cake. The clients and the staff in the Medicare office shared in the enjoyment and the entire office engaged in that. We discovered that two of the current employees in the Rockingham Medicare office had been working for Medicare for 30 years, for all of its life. They reported proudly that Medicare was not just a good employer and that their work in the Rockingham office was not simply something that they enjoyed; it was something in which they took great pride, because they could see an organic link between good work as a public servant in that office and the direct impact on the health care of the community in which they lived and in which their children grew up. In that office there were two young children, each too young even to go to school, attending at Medicare on one occasion with mum and on another occasion with mum and dad. How wonderful it was to note that both mum and dad, in both cases, were themselves younger than Medicare itself. It shows the virtuous circle that has been created in healthcare delivery by a strong public system through Medicare and a strong private system through private health insurance. It shows the need that we all have to ensure this system continues. It shows the requirement on our government and on our parliament to ensure that at the most basic level our health insurance remains affordable and that Medicare remains the best possible delivery system that we have in this nation for a universal healthcare system, and it shows that we in this place need to be constantly vigilant to ensure that the way in which these systems work is as good as it can possibly be and lives up to the highest expectations and aspirations not just of government but also of those Australians who need the best healthcare system. We all need the best healthcare system from time to time, and we in this place have a responsibility to make sure that our healthcare system is as good as it can be. I took great pride in being with my Medicare workers last week and I take great pride in Medicare. I make this statement: I will continue to support a healthcare system that supports Australians—and so should this parliament. 11:16 Mr LAMING E0H Bowman I find myself here a very proud Australian. I am very proud that we have such excellent health and education systems in this country—systems to which the rest of the world turns. Part of the benefits of our health system is the option that we provide every Australian to take up private healthcare if they wish. Of course, devising the private health insurance rebate—the 30 per cent rebate that saved private health in this country—was a massive achievement of the Howard government in the late 1990s. Together with community rating and the incentives to take out private health insurance early and to allow for penalties for those who drop their private health insurance and choose to join again for a later date, we can now proudly boast 47 per cent hospital and 55 per cent general private health cover in this country. They are important numbers. Just like we have independent school education in this country, we are the only country in the world where, on average, typically one in two citizens has private health insurance and also accesses for their children independent education. Having those two sectors strong and thriving—and, yes, potentially at times competitors—is possibly the best combination and the best blend of services one could hope for. This morning I want to focus on health and the importance of this very important bill, the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, which simplifies the operations of private health insurance. What is most important of all is that every family in this country should have the option to pay more for better health services if they so choose. It has been a generational battle with the party on the other side of this chamber to protect the right of Australians to access private health insurance if they choose to do so. Despite the smooth words of the previous speaker, this has at times been a dirty, ugly battle. It has involved Labor Party pre-election promises that private health insurance would not be touched, but, like many of their pre-election promises, that is not actually what transpired. A private insurance sector, and the private hospital sector that hangs off that, and all of the great Australian health practitioners who work in both the public and the private health space are completely reliant on trusting that a federal government can stick by its words and provide the fundamental conditions where private health can thrive. That was not always the case. We saw the numbers erode under Hawke and Keating. We saw a rearguard rescue effort that saw the number and percentage of Australians with private health insurance recover in the 1990s, and I am pleased to say that those numbers continue to grow—albeit slowly—even to this day. The great falsehoods that have been promoted by the other side are quite simple. One is that every dollar that is spent on private health insurance is a dollar ripped away from public hospitals. The second one is that every dollar that people spend on private health insurance in some way creates a two-tiered health system. That is right: a two-tiered health system where one group of people can only dream of being on the other tier of healthcare. But, in reality, this is typically said by Labor members of parliament—one of which I can hear bellowing right now—who do not actually talk to the very families who scrimp and save the dollars to be able to afford those rising premiums each year if they do choose to have private health cover. They also want to preserve their right to send their children to an independent school if, for their own reasons, they choose to. The party on the other side of the chamber has fought against that every step of the way. Running through their veins, running through their entire circulatory system, is a desire to be as tough as they can on people who take up private health or choose to send their children to an independent schools. That is okay; that is banter in this chamber. If it were only that it would be okay, but what has happened is that our entire health and hospital system has been held hostage to a Labor government taking power once every decade and undermining the very principles of private health insurance. I do not need to list what is already in the Hansard and has been described many times, but it was a Labor government that before the election would promise you everything was okay and the moment they were elected they would nickel and dime the private health insurance system, finding ways to make it even harder for you to meet your premiums. Though they denied it, up would go premiums every year at between six per cent and eight per cent, and the families of Australia paid the price for that insecurity that the Labor government imposed upon Australians. Let us think of it another way. If you go to a hospital emergency department, it is 100 per cent free. If you go to see your doctor and you discuss the doctor's billing arrangements, you will be bulk-billed 100 per cent free. If you go to child care and you are under a childcare rebate, that will be almost completely free. If you go to university, it will be free. But, suddenly, when you decide to actually leave the public health system, unburden it, and pay your own way, that mob over there resent that you get a 30 per cent rebate back on those expenses. They resent that. That is ridiculous, isn't it? I think they know deep in their heart it is. If you choose to send your child to an independent school, we happily rebate to every one of those independent schools between 30 per cent and 80 per cent of the cost of the education of your child, who does not go to a state school. And that has been a battle as well. So, in relative terms, the 30 per cent rebate is, I think, utterly defensible. Let us think of the family right at the margins considering whether or not to take up private healthcare. They will think about whether they can afford the policy with the 30 per cent reduction. Self-evidently, if it was 30 per cent more expensive, thousands and thousands of families would drop out. We know that from research that is publicly available. Having that 30 per cent rebate draws people who would otherwise be in the public hospital system to pay for their insurance every year to use the private system. The other 70 per cent comes from their own pocket and funds the construction of private hospitals that will be there when we retire, that will be there for future generations who choose to use the private system. That 70 per cent of money would never be there were there not a 30 per cent rebate in the first place. This is billions and billions of dollars that pay for those private hospitals that are there at those moments when you have a severe condition, a public hospital will not treat it quickly and you have the option of quickly seeing a private doctor at the private hospital for a consultation and still get most of the cost of that visit back on Medicare. That is right: the private hospital system provides an alternative to public care that actually raises the quality and the expectations of our public system. Further, public hospitals in the last decade or so have woken up to something very interesting. If a public hospital can increase the quality of its service, people with private cover will say, 'I'm happy to stay at this hospital tonight,' and all of the money is paid by the private health insurer direct to the public system. This has become a massive earner for our public hospital system. If you travel to Brisbane, with the big, fancy, shiny Princess Alexandra Hospital, with the lovely wide corridors and the impressive meal service—I am very proud of my local public hospital—many private patients say, 'I'll stay here, thanks.' When I talk to the private hospitals, with their pokey 1950s corridors and their ageing infrastructure, many of them say, 'We envy the impressive public hospital infrastructure, which has been funded mostly by state governments that are now drawing a lot of custom away from us.' What I am describing is genuine competitive tension that is constructive, that delivers better services for Australians and gives them two options, and you cannot ask for more than that. You know that you are better off with two choices than one. In a country where your only hospital is full, refuses to see you or refuses to change your hip, it is awfully nice to have another option in your back pocket. The coalition fought for that second option against incredible resistance from the other side. We are the architects of it, we designed it, we supported it and that is why today we stand here simplifying the legislation that was dreamt up at five minutes to midnight in the previous Labor government's term. Yes, they found another way to nickel-and-dime Australian families: this time it was to not index the rebate each year. As hospital costs went up, they said, 'No', we will only raise it by the lesser of the commercial premium or CPI.' Everyone knows CPI is only going to be two or three per cent so there would be a six per cent gap that was never to be rebated by the government from the moment they dreamt up this idea. Today we go partially to redressing that injustice by removing that complex indexation measure that has an acronym so unctuous and so complex it cannot even be pronounced, so I am glad to see the end of it in legislation. Instead we will use a very simple indexation measure which the sector itself supports. We have moved from an era where a Labor government did not listen to the private sector to an era now where it has a say in decision-making like everyone else. Do not forget that this is not about wealthy insurers; this is not just about big, fancy, shiny hospitals; this is about everyday average Australians being able to afford private health if that is where they choose to invest their money. The only thing this chamber has to do is to make sure it remains as affordable as possible for those average Australians. Keep in mind—the numbers do not lie—that 10 per cent of all people with private health insurance have incomes less than $25,000 a year. There are some people with low incomes that choose above all else to be privately insured. They may forsake independent education to do that. They could forsake living in a larger home to do that but they retain the option if they think health care is more important to them than anything else to get the best care in the world—and that is fair enough for me. From where I see it, every Australian deserves that choice. Historically this has been an unseemly battle between two political parties over something where there should be no argument. There should be no argument over giving Australians this choice and the ability to access private health care as a completely viable alternative to our fine public health system. We are a nation with strong welfare, pensions and safety nets around MBS and PBS to ensure that nobody misses out on the highest-quality public hospital care. So why should there not be another option for people who choose to invest in it? As I said earlier—and it is rarely vocalised in the media—for every person availing themselves of the 30 per cent rebate who otherwise would not take out insurance, that person is reaching into their pocket and adding 70 per cent of that rebate, thousands of dollars a year, into Australia's health system for the future. As we all know and those in the camber would be aware, it is all fine when you turn 60, suddenly start getting a sore hip and realise that you cannot get into the public system to then seek out private cover. But we have not made it possible for everyday Australian families to access private health insurance, to pay into the system early and so there will be nothing there when they really need it. The private health insurance system is utterly vital because it funds the infrastructure. It means the hospitals are there 20 years ahead of when we need them. Isn't that a revolutionary notion? In an age where government operates in debt and does not build roads for today let alone yesterday, we have one sector in this country building the infrastructure even before we need it so there will be beds there when we need them, and that is the great and unsung benefit of private health insurance. This is only a start. Today's legislation, I concede, is a small modification to make it simpler to operate, to remove the complexity which we all here have begun to associate with legislation produced by the previous administration. It is welcomed by the sector. What was dreamt up here was not dreamt up by the health department. I need Australians to know that the nickel-and-diming of Australians over their private health insurance was all done by Labor's Treasury department. These were Treasury motions to save money. It was never the health department saying, 'We can make the system work better by reform.' If you go through the last six years of Labor health reform, it was exclusively driven from Treasury, from a Treasury desperate to minimise the damage being done by an overinflated stimulus during the GFC. The debt that we now carry—$123 billion net debt—was, I suppose, as little as Treasury could manage given the context of the Labor leadership at the time. Now we have a small chance to redress it. Now we have a small chance to look Australians in the eye and say to them, 'We are a friend of people who take out private health insurance, just as we are of every Australian who accesses the public hospital system, the GP bulk-billing system and our wonderful PBS.' These are the four strong pillars of the Australian health system. It is my regret, when I look back at the last 10 years in this place, that, as far as our opposition here is concerned, Australia's health system only has three pillars. There is a very significant problem with that. We have never been able to talk with the other side of politics about genuine, smart and clever reforms, because, the moment you do, there is an instant debasing debate about whether a dollar is being spent in the private sector that should have been spent in the public. This debate is over, for any unbiased observer. You can go to Joondalup hospital and see the most efficient emergency department in this country, and it is a private emergency department. I am not for one minute saying that that is the only way to go, but if there is one thing you remember from this contribution today it should be that we must keep both sectors strong, well resourced and well supported and never should anyone who is a private health insurer, anyone who is running a private hospital or anyone who accesses private hospitals feel less of an Australian because of a Labor government that is continuing to nickel-and-dime them as they seek out the best health care they can. 11:31 Mr CHAMPION HW9 Wakefield Listening to the previous speaker in this debate on the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, you would have thought that Labor was still in government. I do not think he has caught up. His conclusion did not seem to reflect the reality that the coalition are in government, they are making changes and they are responsible for these things now. I would point out a few facts for the benefit of the gallery, who were constantly addressed during the previous speaker's contribution. More than 105,000 people took out private health insurance between June and September last year. Those are the Private Health Insurance Administration Council's own figures. In the previous year, some 255,000 extra people had private health insurance in Australia. In percentage terms, that is the highest it has ever been. That would seem to indicate that there is not really a very strong linkage between the private health insurance rebate and the level of coverage in the community. We saw that when the rebate was first introduced by the Howard government. They threw money at the private health insurers, and the rates of insurance held by Australians did not go up, just as they did not go down when we means-tested the private health insurance rebate. What drove those numbers higher was things like Lifetime Health Cover. That is, it was the penalties that were introduced by the Howard government—taxation penalties, penalties allowing private health insurers to, in effect, make different conditions for people dependent on when they joined, whether they joined when they were young or later in life. It was those changes—the penalties, the stick in the 'carrot and stick' arrangement—that drove up private health insurance rates. I guess this reflects a conservative approach, which has traditionally been to throw money at the private sector in the vain hope that, if you provide some tax concession, people will take out a private product. We heard the phrase 'nickel-and-dime' before, but their modus operandi has been to starve the public system, to starve Medicare, to constantly cut back, to make massive cuts to the funding that goes to states for our public hospital system. That was what they did in the Howard government. That was reversed under the previous government, and we now await the audit commission. We know what the audit commission will recommend. It will recommend big cuts to health, and that is what we are waiting on now. I do not know where all of this fits in with the famed line in the sand that the Treasurer apparently has drawn, or the end of the age of entitlement. We are told constantly, day after day, about how workers in several industries should not rely on public subsidies and should tighten their belts and should be prepared to give up wages and conditions that have been fought for and won over rounds of enterprise bargaining. That is what we have been told in other areas. If you are in the auto sector, apparently there cannot possibly be any investment of taxpayers' money to secure your jobs or your industry in a time of extreme economic conditions, in relation to our dollar and other things. But apparently the private health insurance rebate—which does not go directly to consumers; it is paid directly to the private health care funds; it bypasses the individual; it just gets taken off your premiums—the public money that is paid to private insurers, is somehow this sacrosanct part of a public-private partnership that cannot be touched. I just wonder how the government is going to reconcile those two conflicting notions—on the one hand, the end of the age of entitlement and, on the other, this desire to extend the rebate to high-income earners and to all and sundry. They opposed every set of means-testing of the private health insurance rebate during our time in government. Every single time, they opposed it, despite apparently the end of the age of entitlement. It appears to me—and it would appear, I think, to most fair-minded Australians—that the approach of the Abbott government is dual. Which rule will apply in relation to the spending of taxpayers' money depends on which industry you are in. If you are in automotive manufacturing then any industry assistance is bad and you should lose your jobs, lose your wages and conditions and face the dole queue, but if you happen to work in the private health insurance industry then you will be deserving. To suggest that private health insurance rebates should be in some way curtailed is un-Australian, according to the previous speaker. So there is this duality, and behind that there is their standard modus operandi of cutting in the public sector and throwing money at the private sector. In the end, what they want to create is—and let's make no mistake about it—an American-style health insurance scheme. That is, you pay top notch—you pay a lot of money for insurance in America—and, if you do not pay, you fall out of coverage or the health insurer can squib out of covering you for some disease or health issue, then you fall back on a very basic set of conditions. I think that is wrong. Health should not be linked to your income; it should be linked to your health needs, and, as a nation, the fundamental thing that makes us fair in this country has been our commitment to universality of health coverage and Medicare. Most Australians know that, and they reward governments that take care of Medicare and they dispose of governments that do not, because they know that it is critical to a fair go, to the national character and to our sense of ourselves as Australians—not just in a historical context, but also going forward. We want fairness, and we know that, unfortunately, during conservative governments in this country—not all the time, but some of the time—they set out to smash the universality of the system and, with that, the equity that underpins the country. The tragedy is that it is Liberal and coalition voters who have the most to lose in this situation. One of the things we found when we did healthcare reform in the previous parliament under the Rudd and Gillard governments was that, if you had cancer, the type of treatment you got and your survival rate for those cancers directly correlated with how far away you lived from the CBD. The further you lived from that, the worse chance you had of surviving cancer. In South Australia, that meant if you lived in Clare, Blyth or Burra—places in my electorate and northwards—then you had to travel a very long way to treatment. You were looking at driving in some weeks for chemo every day or every week. What that meant was that your survival rates were not very good and you were constantly admitted to hospital. One of the things I am most proud of in relation to the previous government—and it is one of the things that we do not talk about, that will not be listed in any of the newspapers today or tomorrow and that will probably only get a mention in history books—is that we opened cancer centres around the country in regional areas. If you go to Clare Hospital today you will find people in a modern chemo unit getting treatment. Instead of driving three or four hours, they might be driving half an hour or an hour. They are being treated in a hospital in their local community by people they feel comfortable around and do not have to battle the big cities. It is the same in the metropolitan bit of my electorate in places like Elizabeth, the working class community based around Holden. There were no cancer facilities north of Gepps Cross, so you had to go into the centre of Adelaide to get those sorts of treatments. One of the best things the previous government ever did was to fund those things. I think that underlines the point that people who live in regional and rural communities—who tend to vote conservative—actually have the most to lose when the government cuts from the public sector and gives to the private sector. The private sector is generally not interested in regional, rural or remote areas because there is not a dollar in it. Only the public sector can reach out to the bush, to the country and to regional communities. We hope that the government looks at the pragmatic and practical nature of these things and realises that we are a country that a) desires universality in our healthcare system and b) pragmatically needs it as a matter of course. This bill, despite all the debates about it, is a simple bill. It changes the way that we index the cap on the private health insurance rebate. This is related to some $700 million in savings—$700 million in savings. We hear all this hoo-hah about SPC and the quibbling over giving $25 million to them to save some 5,000 jobs of farmers and factory workers in Shepparton, and yet here is a saving which they would not have and they are not the authors of—it is a previous government that is the author of these savings. They will the savings and they will talk about the importance of private healthcare rebates and say that they would not have touched it, but let's be clear about it. The effect of their ideology is to hand a tax concession to people on high incomes who can afford to pay the full tote. This bill is important. It brings forward savings to the taxpayer. It allows us to spend that $700 million on things like cancer centres in rural communities—places like Clare, places like Gawler—and even in the outer suburbs, in places like the Lyell McEwin Hospital. When you make those savings, when you rigorously apply logic to the system, you can then afford to do other things. We know that healthcare inflation is rising. We know that that is because of the technology available now. It is running much faster than normal rates of inflation, and that means that we have to make more efficiencies in our healthcare system or we have to spend more. The previous speaker would have you believe that, if only we spent more on private health insurance, that is an effective way of dealing with that problem. But in fact we are going to have to have serious discussions about what our hospitals do, when they do it and how to tackle that issue of ever-rising costs and do it efficiently. I do not think we can afford to be handing money through tax concessions, through rebates, to high-income earners. I think we should make those people pay their way. Let's be plain about it. That is what the previous government decided to do. We have saved the taxpayer an enormous amount of money over the course of the forward estimates. Despite all the rhetoric of those opposite, they will not reverse those changes, because they were sensible and prudent and they were made because they were the right thing to do, not because of any budgetary constraint. The Labor Party, as always, supports the universality of health care. It is a fundamental thing, I think, to the character of this country, and we will continue to defend it against the actions of the government. 11:46 Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Solomon I just want to pick up on a point that the member for Wakefield made in saying that the private sector is not interested in investing in the regional and remote areas. What a load of hogwash! I live in a regional centre, and there are plenty of private sector people who want to come in and invest in the Territory. Have you heard of Northern Australia, Member for Wakefield? Mr Champion HW9 I lived there. I lived in Darwin. Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Well, you do not live there now. You do not live there now, Mr Champion. Let me tell you: there are plenty of people who want to invest in Northern Australia. The Abbott government does understand just how important it is to have a strong private health system to support a dynamic public system. It really does. In the Territory, this is very, very obvious. The coalition recognises the importance of planning for the long term to meet the challenges that will come with an ageing population. We plan to continue to encourage growth of the private health system in order to relieve some of the pressure that our ageing population is putting on the public system. This happens in my electorate of Solomon. That is why it is very important that we have a very solid, vibrant, private health system. The growth and stability of the private health system in my electorate is of particular importance. Under the previous government, we all saw that there were attacks on our private health system, in turn increasing pressure on our public system and putting the health of my constituents at risk, and I was not happy about that. I know that this government will protect our private health system and ensure the stability and certainty of health care for my constituents in Darwin and Palmerston. I rise to speak on the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 and support the coalition's plan to untangle the mess that Labor has left behind in our health system. This bill seeks to reduce the burden placed on our private health system by the previous Labor government's private health insurance base premium measures. The Labor government placed enormous regulatory burdens and implementation difficulties on our private health system, in turn complicating our system and confusing our consumers, who are our constituents. Under the previous Labor government's changes, the government's contribution to the rebate on private health insurance would be capped and indexed by the lesser of the consumer price index or the actual increase in premiums from 1 April 2014. This would apply to every one of the 34,000-plus policy products. This measure that the previous government proposed would apply at a policy level, resulting in a complicated and costly system. This bill will change this process by using a single rebate adjustment factor across all policies. The adjustment factor will be a ratio representing the proportion of the increase in the consumer price index compared to the average private health insurance premium increase. These changes will greatly reduce the complexity for consumers and make it easier to compare products at an industry level. It is estimated that the changes will save the private health insurance industry approximately 80 per cent of the administrative costs associated with policy level implementation. This government recognises the importance of supporting our private healthcare system, as did the former Howard government, which left office with a legacy encouraging the uptake of private health insurance, supporting those Australians who wished to take out private cover for their families, while supporting a vibrant public health system. Following the former coalition government's introduction of measures to support private health insurance, including the private health insurance rebate, Lifetime Health Cover and the Medicare levy surcharge, the number of people with private hospital cover grew dramatically from around six million people in the late 1990s to nine million people by late in the year 2000. This has always been the coalition's approach to health care: reduce complexity in the private system and encourage those who can take out private health insurance to cover their family in times of sickness and of health. Yet the Labor Party continues to destroy our system with red tape, regulation and confusion. Mr Deputy Speaker, you know that that is the Labor way. As I always maintain in my representation of the people of Solomon, we are in a unique position in the Territory and providing health services in such a vast and remote jurisdiction faces extra difficulties in comparison to other major cities. With the Territory's increasing ageing population, more than ever we require the support of the private health system to relieve the pressure on our public system. According to Private Health Care Australia, there are 35 private health insurance funds providing cover in the Northern Territory—a significantly smaller number than other states and territories. Nevertheless, they are there. As at September 2013, the Northern Territory had 99,983 people covered by some form of private health insurance. This included 93,386 persons with hospital cover and 99,871 persons with general treatment cover for ancillary care such as dental, chiropractic and optical services. That is around 50 per cent of the Territory's population covered by some form of health care. Yet the previous Labor government did not recognise the importance of supporting our private health system. Could you imagine the state of public health care if 50 per cent of the Territory's population suddenly relied on the public system? With that figure being Territory-wide, we can assume that the percentage in my electorate of Solomon would be much higher. Additionally, hospital coverage in the Northern Territory increased by 4.3 per cent from September 2012 to September 2013, while general treatment coverage increased by around five per cent. In the year ending September 2013, private health insurance paid benefits for over 1,000 public hospital episodes that would otherwise have been paid for by government. This is an extremely significant assistance to the public health system. We are experiencing an influx of people moving to Darwin and Palmerston and with our public system struggling to cope, there has never been a more important time to support our private health system. The coalition recognises the importance of investing in both our private and public systems here in the Territory. That is why I pushed so hard for a new hospital in the Territory and Minister Dutton listened. I am delighted that the Abbott government has committed to $110 million of investment for a new hospital in the Palmerston area, with the Country Liberal government contributing $40 million. That $150 million for a new hospital in my electorate will alleviate strains on Royal Darwin Hospital and help to provide first-class health care to the people of Darwin, Palmerston and the greater rural area. I commend the bill to the House. 11:55 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor The Australian Labor Party has always known the importance of a sustainable private health insurance sector, and the indexation of the private health insurance rebate is an important part of keeping this sector sustainable. It is often said that one's health is one's wealth. If this is true, it is fair to say that a nation's wealth is the health of its people. No party understands this better than Labor. Time and time again Labor has come to the defence of our nation's health system. Time and time again we have rebuilt it after the conservatives have recklessly slashed budgets and relentlessly sought to tear down Medicare. Time and time again, it has been Labor that has had the courage to tackle the threats to our nation's health by listening to health professionals and formulating sound health policy. But Labor also understands that this comes at a cost. Health expenses count for 19 per cent of Australian government expenditure. We must always be looking at ways to make savings and strive for efficiency, but not at the cost of the health of our citizens. The indexation of the private health insurance rebate is expected to raise about $700 million in savings over the forward estimates. This is money that can be reinvested into the health system, a system that the Prime Minister himself commended as being 'in pretty good shape' after the stellar work done by the previous Labor government, work led by former health ministers Nicola Roxon and our Deputy Leader, Tanya Plibersek. This bill will not affect the amount of money saved on the private health insurance rebate, and it maintains the integrity of the former Labor government's intent. This bill aims to change the way private health insurers make the calculation to apply and administer it. I was a school principal in my previous life. I therefore understand paperwork and the burden of administration. I also understand the time and effort required when implementing new systems. As a principal, I was privy to the amount of work involved when new processes were introduced, and I know firsthand how much of my staff's time was taken up with administration. So I am sympathetic to the health insurers and their wish for the quick and efficient implementation of this legislation, and I support this bill and its aim. But I would like to highlight that the rights of policy holders should not be diluted or lessened by health insurers' understandable aim to reduce their administrative burden as a result of this amendment. When the Labor government introduced this change in May last year, there was a debate centred around whether the indexation of the rebate should be calculated at the product level as implemented, at industry level, or at the individual insurer level. The Department of Health and Ageing was concerned that proposing the indexation at industry level, as this bill does, would put smaller insurers at a competitive disadvantage. We on this side of the House, and I assume many of those opposite, value the importance of not only a competitive private health insurance market but one that offers a diversity of choice. This is why I share the concern held by the Department of Health and Ageing and those raised by the member for Ballarat earlier that this amendment may put smaller insurers at a competitive disadvantage. At the core of Labor's proposed implementation model was an aim to create greater competition and transparency for consumers. It is now up to the government to show how this bill will do just that. It is now up to the government to reassure the smaller insurers that they will not be at a competitive disadvantage. It is now up to the government to reassure that private health insurance consumers will not suffer through lack of choice, and that they will not suffer the adverse effects of being at the mercy of an uncompetitive market. As I said earlier, Labor is and has been committed to there being a sustainable private health insurance sector, so it stands to reason that we support measures that enhance competition. But we go further—we stand up for consumers too. This is what separates us from those opposite. While the coalition consistently sides with big business, Labor advocates for consumers and stands up to a government that cares little for the rights and needs of the average Australian. Labor is the only party that can see the value of, and advocate for, a competitive marketplace that enhances the health and wellbeing of its population and not just the health and wellbeing of big business. Like many in this place, I am a student of history and I think that examining the past reveals much. So let us take a look at this government's record when it comes to private health insurance so far. This is the government that has approved the biggest increase to private health insurance premiums in almost a decade. This is the government that tried to sneak through these changes, making it more expensive for every Australian with a private health insurance policy, just two days before Christmas. This is the government that says it wants the private health insurance industry to have a greater involvement in the delivery of health care, but, really, they are seeking to destroy Australia's system of universal health care by creating a two-tier health system. This is the government that, the public are hearing, intends to sell Medibank Private while failing to demonstrate in any way how it will improve competition or help Australian consumers—not a single argument as to why we should sell an asset like Medibank Private. Despite the constant criticism from the coalition when in opposition, the number of people with private health insurance was at its highest rate in Australia's history under a Labor government. Unlike so many of the Abbott government's assertions, this can be backed up by statistics and data. The most recent data from the Private Health Insurance Administration Council shows that over 105,000 more people took out private health insurance between June and September last year. Compared to the same time in 2012, more than 255,000 Australians had private health insurance cover. In percentage terms, this represents the highest rate of insurance cover ever, with 47 per cent of Australians having hospital cover and 55 per cent having general cover. It was under the former Labor government that a means-tested rebate for private health insurance was introduced. This meant more money available to invest in our health system, more money to fund much needed and lifesaving medicines, and more money to build important health infrastructure like the network of regional integrated cancer centres. Labor did this because the health of every single Australian has always been our priority. We see this in our proud history in wider health reform. We are, after all, the party of Medicare, the party of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, and the party of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Under a Labor government, Australians had greater access to more doctors and more nurses, as well as a record number of GPs and health professionals being trained. It was a Labor government that ensured that seeing a dentist became as easy as seeing a doctor for 3.4 million Australian kids, that pensioners and low-income earners gained access to improved dental services and that our young people gained access to a dedicated and committed mental health service in headspace. It is always Labor that cares about the health and wellbeing of everyone in our community. It was under Labor that bulk-billing became easier and more accessible. I see Labor's commitment to health demonstrated in my electorate every day. I see it in the tailored and integrated health care provided by our South Western Melbourne Medicare Local. I see it at the Werribee Mercy Hospital, which received $28 million in funding to build a 30-bed sub-acute service and a community rehabilitation centre. I see our commitment to health care when I visit the soon-to-be-opened Wyndham Vale GP superclinic. And I know I will see it when our local headspace opens, providing much needed mental health services to our young people. I see Labor's commitment to health every day, because we believe that every Australian, young or old, wealthy or not, deserves great health care. But imagine if this free and fair system did not exist: if we had a government that did not recognise how important funding health infrastructure and services was; if, instead of having equitable access, seeing a GP depended on how much money you had in your pocket, not how much your need was; if concessions to business and industry were more important than the health and wellbeing of the Australian population. We do not have to imagine too hard, unfortunately, because under this government it could become reality. In contrast to Labor, Mr Abbott was the health minister that cut $1 billion from our hospitals and health services. It is his party that has failed to commit to Medicare Locals and that failed to see just how important services like Medicare Locals are to communities like mine. This is also the party that opposed the introduction of GP superclinics, and the party that refuses to acknowledge existing care shortages and see the benefit of holistic health services like the Wyndham Vale GP superclinic. It is also this party that seeks to impose a tax upon the sick—in other words, a tax upon the most vulnerable in our community. Because, despite their promises to the contrary, this is not a party that cares about the health of every Australian. Instead, it is Labor that stands for universal access to health care so the most vulnerable Australians can access the highest quality care available. And it is Labor that supports a sustainable private health insurance sector. 12:05 Ms RISHWORTH HWA Kingston I am pleased to rise to talk on the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. I think from the outset it is important to note that I and Labor have always supported a sustainable private healthcare insurance system. Indeed, the support for the private health insurance system has been an important complement to our universal public healthcare system. Labor has always advocated for a universal public healthcare system. It is something that I raised in my first speech here in this parliament—the importance of ensuring that, whatever your circumstance, you can actually get access to public health care. Indeed, it is certainly recognised around the world how accessible our public healthcare system is. I do plead with the government not to dismantle it and not to add a $6 fee that will rise and rise and rise—a copayment to visit a GP. I hope they do see sense in that proposal and rule it out, because having a universal healthcare system, a system that allows you to get medical help when you need it and that is affordable, is incredibly important. But there is also the complementary private health insurance system which is an important complement to the public system. It allows people to pay a contribution to get other services or discounts that they might not otherwise have been able to. Labor has always believed in ensuring that our private health insurance sector is sustainable. That is why we moved, in the last parliament, to raise a number of savings measures over the forward estimates to ensure that does happen. We brought in means-testing for the private health insurance rebate, which was an important sustainability measure for government in terms of the subsidy. Unfortunately those on the other side railed against this continually, with apocalyptic predictions about what would happen. What we have seen is that the number of those taking up private health insurance has actually increased. All the concerns, the predictions of the whole system falling apart, have not eventuated. Indeed, it seems a very sensible measure to means-test those who can afford it—who can actually pay without getting a rebate from government—while still targeting those who do need assistance to take up private health insurance. Self-funded retirees and a lot of pensioners continue to choose to take out private health insurance and they are the ones we targeted to ensure they get support. The government railed against that while in opposition, but now we do not hear too much from them. They said they were going to repeal the means-testing and get rid of it; now we hear that commitment change somewhat, because they have seen the light. They have realised it did not lead to the huge problems they predicted. In fact, as I said, we have seen those numbers increase in real terms. Labor is committed to sustainability, and that is why we will be supporting this bill. It makes the same savings over the forward estimates as proposed under Labor: approximately $700 million. It is a sensible and sustainable way to support the private health insurance rebate and the government's contribution to it. I really hope that we will see some sense from the current government when it comes to private health insurance. They are pretty sneaky, this government. Despite publicly saying they have made no preconceived decision and have no intention of selling off Medibank Private, we now know from reports in the paper today that they have engaged someone from a consulting company on $2,000 a day to prepare a communication strategy to prepare the public for the sale of Medibank Private. That is pretty tricky, without proper public debate or the release of the report that was meant to guide the government in their decision-making. They have pre-empted that report and made their decision. They are working out how they can best pull the wool over the eyes of the Australian people by paying a consulting company $2,000 a day. That money would be better reinvested into our health system to ensure that people can see a doctor or get into a hospital when they need to. They could invest in the infrastructure around this country which is so important and necessary. I hope that the government will be transparent with the Australian people—that they will come clean about what their intentions for Medibank Private are and provide information to the Australian people about what their reasoning is and what the report said. One can only assume that if they have made their decision they have actually received that report, but of course that is unlikely. It seems this is a decision that has already been agreed to. It is important that, as we move forward, we look at both sustainable private and sustainable public healthcare systems which complement each other rather than overtake each other. I know the shadow minister was in here talking about some concerns around ensuring the private sector does not stop the public sector from flourishing, and I certainly share those concerns. The other key element, when it comes to private health insurance, is the role for government in determining what those premiums are. I was very disappointed, at two minutes to Christmas, when the minister rubber-stamped the largest premium hikes we have seen in a decade. For those out there who are choosing to take out private health insurance it is an important investment to make, but it does cost. There is a role for government to get private health insurance companies to justify that increase. When Labor was in government we spent a lot of time working with the private health insurers to determine what was a reasonable hike in premiums. Under the coalition, companies came and proposed an increase and the minister, without a thought for the cost-of-living increases it would impose on families, just rubber-stamped it. It was the largest increase in close to a decade. I would ask the minister, when that time comes around again, to think especially of those who are contributing to the cost of private health insurance. Give some thought to them. Give some thought to the premiums they are paying. Really ask some tough questions—do not just rubber-stamp. Ask some tough questions about why this rise is justified. Maybe it is just that the minister is learning; he is starting to adjust himself to being the minister. But he should ask some tough questions and get a justification of why insurance premiums have to rise, because it does have an effect. It has an effect on families, and it was quite cruel to do that just before Christmas. I am sure the government felt that if they brought it in just before Christmas it could just be swept under the carpet and no-one would notice—but people in my electorate noticed. They noticed the increase and have asked me to pass on to the government their request to give some consideration to their cost-of-living issues. The shadow minister for health has moved an amendment highlighting the importance of competition in this sector. I certainly concur with the shadow minister on that amendment. I think the amendment is very sensible. We need to ensure we are not only improving competition in the sector—and I think we are providing the groundwork for that—but also standing up for consumers. Those on the other side might not think there is a role for government in that but certainly we on this side of the House think that is also really important. I commend this bill and the amendment to the House. I ask the government to continue focusing on delivering good outcomes for consumers and not just to rubber-stamp increases in premiums that have no clear justification and have no hard questions asked of them. When this time comes round again I ask that the minister give that proper consideration. 12:16 Mr GILES 243609 Scullin I rise to make a brief contribution in support of the shadow minister for health's second reading amendment to the Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013. As the member for Kingston just indicated, this amendment will put this government to its proof in terms of competition—a value often espoused by members opposite—and clarifying the support for consumers in this industry. The bill amends the Private Health Insurance Act 2007 to make clear that a single rebate adjustment factor to be determined in accordance with the private health insurance incentives rules will be applied to all rebates. The bill amends the implementation of the indexation of the rebate by applying a single rebate adjustment factor to all types of insurance products. I note the Minister for Health described this as a move to redress implementation concerns in this legislation. This should make it easier for consumers to understand and cheaper for private health insurers to administer. I will speak to the questions of consumers later. Private health insurers, including small insurers, have also argued that these changes would be easier to implement. I understand that is an important and significant consideration to be borne in mind. Labor stand for universal access to health care. We are proud to be the party of Medicare, which is 30 years old this month—a birthday all Australians have celebrated. The most vulnerable Australians must be able to access the highest quality of care available based on need not financial capacity. Today of all days we must recognise this when we have come together in a bipartisan manner to work towards closing the gap on Indigenous health outcomes. Labor also supports a sustainable private health insurance sector. I note that, despite what was said by members opposite when they were in opposition and indeed today in this debate, when Labor was last in government the number of people with private health insurance was at its highest rate in Australia's history. The means testing of the private health insurance rebate that Labor introduced in government meant simply that there was more money available to invest in life-saving cancer drugs and to build health infrastructure, like the network of regional integrated cancer centres. In short, there was more money available to get maximum value from our health expenditure to deliver better and fairer health outcomes for Australians. Despite the constant negativity of the coalition in opposition, people did not cancel their private health insurance in droves. It was quite the reverse. Instead, more people than ever have private health insurance, both in percentage terms and in real numbers. I am grateful for the member for Wakefield's contribution on this point. Labor recognises it is important to have a sustainable private health insurance sector in Australia, as I have said. The indexation of the rebate, the concession, was introduced by Labor in order to make more money available to invest in health. It is expected to realise about $700 million in savings over the forward estimates. Importantly, this legislation does not change the amount of money the government will save on the private health insurance rebate; nor does it alter the objective of the former Labor government's intended measure. It simply changes the way private health insurers make the calculation to apply. The intent is that this will require less administration on behalf of those insurers, and that is something to be encouraged. Labor will always support measures that enhance competition. This is consistent with our position that we need to have a sustainable private health insurance sector in this country working cooperatively, as the member for Kingston said a minute ago, with the public system. When we are talking about private health insurance we cannot but mention the highest increase to private health insurance premiums in a decade that took place on 23 December last year. There was an announcement made—absent consultation—at a time when most Australians were concentrating on other matters. This evidences very little concern for consumers. Now I turn to the real concern for consumers, a matter squarely addressed by the amendment moved by the shadow minister. If this bill will make it easier for consumers to understand their policy then that is to be welcomed, but the government has not as yet adequately demonstrated how it will stand up for consumers. This area of private health insurance is complex for consumers with complicated products. It presents real challenges that will require some working through. The amendment proposed by the member for Ballarat draws this out. It asks them to demonstrate what additional competition is in the interests of Australian consumers. That is a fair enough proposition, so it should be supported by the government. Health was a priority for Labor in government and it always has been. Of course it is a priority for us now. We are committed to a world-class universal healthcare system today and into the future. On the other hand, this government is yet to demonstrate its positive agenda for health—in particular, its real commitment to our public hospital system and to Medicare as a universal safety net, a matter canvassed before the good burghers of Griffith in recent days. Instead, we have seen what appears to be the privatisation by stealth of Medibank Private, absent any consideration of its impact on competition—a matter very relevant to the broader debate this bill touches upon. With the Commission of Audit about to hand down its findings that will shape the next federal budget, people in Scullin are anxious. They are anxious about health care; they are anxious about Medicare. They see the difference between Labor's commitment to health and the coalition's. They see it in a physical form with the GP superclinic in Mill Park, opened last year and delivering important health services. They see it in the Teaching, Training and Research Precinct at the Northern Hospital in Epping—a fantastic initiative of the Labor government that will deliver high quality services and world-class research and will do great things to keep the best quality health professionals working in the outer suburbs and not draining into city centres. They also see the work of our Medicare Local for the northern suburbs of Melbourne—a great body which remains under threat. In supporting the opposition shadow minister's amendment to this bill, we are broadly supportive of the principles it embodies to make administrative adjustments to sound Labor legislation to release more funds to deliver better health outcomes for Australians. The amendment seeks to clarify this and to put the government again to its proof on the question of competition and to ensure that the interests of consumers of private health insurance products are at the centre of this debate. But we cannot forget the broader remit of the health debate that is before us because that is what is on the minds of the people I represent in this place. 12:23 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson I thank all of those members who have contributed to the debate on this bill. The Private Health Insurance Legislation Amendment Bill 2013 simplifies implementation arrangements of the previous government's base premium measure. The previous government's changes would have applied at a product level and would have effectively led to a different rebate for each policy type—cumbersome to administer and difficult for consumers to understand. This bill amends the Private Health Insurance Act 2007 to create a single adjustment factor under a legislative instrument. The rebate will be adjusted uniformly across all insurance policies each 1 April by a factor to be determined in accordance with the private health insurance incentives rules. The adjustment factor will be a ratio representing the proportion of the increase in the consumer price index compared to the average private health insurance premium increase. Industry has advised that this bill will result in a significant administrative saving to the costs of implementing the previous government's base premium act. The bill also makes a minor amendment to clarify the definition of 'restricted access group'. I note the shadow minister's concerns, late found as they may be, in relation to private health insurance and consumers. It is the case that when Labor were in power they attacked private health insurance at every turn, at every budget, and even promised before elections that they would not make adverse changes to private health insurance that would affect the almost 11 million Australians with private health insurance. But, true to form, as they did in the Hawke-Keating years, they did so again in the Rudd-Gillard years. People understand that Labor do not appreciate, support or see as part of the health future the private health insurance product, and for that they should be condemned. So we will not be supporting the shadow minister's second reading amendment, and I commend this bill to the House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Ballarat has moved as an amendment that all words after ‘That’ be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. Question negatived. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D The question now is that the bill be now read a second time. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 193 12:26 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH 193 GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH Address-in-Reply 193 12:31 Mr CRAIG KELLY 99931 Hughes I rise to speak in reply to the Governor-General's speech, which was made some several months ago now. It was a great pleasure to sit in the Senate and to listen to the Governor-General spell out the plans for this coalition government's term in office. I would like to start by thanking the electors of the seat of Hughes for putting their trust and their confidence in me to represent them in this place, in our federal parliament. I give my commitment to the people of Hughes that I will not let them down and I will stand up for issues that are important not only to our national economy but also to our local area. In doing so, I take this opportunity to reflect on what we learnt over the 5½ to six years of Labor government. There is a thing called Mauldin's law, and I think it is something we should reflect on and learn from. Mauldin's law states that, for every government law hurriedly passed, designed to fix some perceived crisis, there will be at least one unintended consequence which will have equal or greater negative effects than the problem it was designed to fix. It goes on: A further corollary is that laws passed to appease a particular group, whether voters or a particular industry, will have at least three unintended consequences, most of which will eventually have the opposite effect than the intended outcomes and transfer costs to innocent bystanders. Mauldin's law, those unintended consequences having negative effects, is actually a way of summing up the last 5½ or six years of the previous, Labor, government. That is something we should learn from. Something I see in my own electorate to which Mauldin's law about unintended consequences applies is the proposal to build an intermodal freight transport hub at Moorebank. To quickly explain, the perceived problem is congestion at Port Botany in moving containers to and from the port, from Sydney and elsewhere in New South Wales. But the problem is not at the port. The port currently has two stevedores, and a third stevedore is due to open within the next few weeks. So the congestion is not at the port itself; the congestion is at the roads around the port. The concept of the intermodal is that those containers which are now transported by truck to areas in Western Sydney would instead be put on a train. There could be 30 to 100 containers on the one train. They would be shuttled out to Western Sydney and then distributed from the proposed location, Moorebank. The concept that is being promoted around the Moorebank intermodal is that it would take trucks off the road. That is actually a completely flawed concept. Unless you have a rail siding where the containers are taken off, you are not taking trucks off the road. At the very best, all that relocating to the west of Sydney would do would be to reduce the distance trucks had to travel by road. Very careful analysis needs to be undertaken of where those containers go. When that analysis is done—and it has not been done in any of the modelling by the Moorebank Intermodal Company or the private sector—it will show that the Moorebank is not where they end up. Most of the containers that would go to Moorebank to be redistributed would end up at Wetherill Park or the Eastern Creek area. To get them to those areas from Moorebank would require a 20-kilometre trip via truck. So the entire concept of the Moorebank intermodal is flawed. All it would do would be to slightly reduce truck mileage. Secondly, the intermodal concept adds another step in the distribution chain. A truck can pick a container up from the port and take it directly to the warehouse, factory or other location where it is to be unloaded. It is simply a straight transfer. An intermodal would put an extra step in the way. Instead of a container being loaded on a truck at the port, the container would be loaded onto a train. That train would then go out to Western Sydney. The container would then be unloaded from the train onto a stack and then put onto a truck. So it is an extra handling process, and that extra handling process has additional costs. The only way that those additional costs can be offset effectively is if you actually move the intermodal far enough away from the port and close enough to where those containers need to be distributed from, and when you look at the analysis of the location of Moorebank it fails on every one of those terms. The other issue is that this is simply transferring a problem of road congestion at Port Botany to the Moorebank-Liverpool area. Our roads around Liverpool—the M5, the Hume Highway and the surrounding roads—are the most congested in Sydney. They are equally as congested as the M5 around the Port Botany area. In fact the section of the Hume Highway around the back of Liverpool, where it is estimated that 80 per cent of these truck movements will head through, is voted by many agencies as one of the most dangerous and accident-prone sections of all roads in New South Wales. This is an area through which the plans are to divert over 10,000 trucks a day. If an intermodal were to be built at Moorebank, there would be billions and billions of dollars' worth of costs for road upgrades. The third problem with the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal suggestion is the idea that it will reduce air pollution in Western Sydney. There is an ounce of truth in that, because if you are moving a container via rail as opposed to road you are actually using half the amount of diesel fuel. With steel on steel, moving goods on rail as opposed to road is actually more energy efficient, by half—you are using half the diesel fuel to start with. So you do have a reduction in the emissions of carbon dioxide. But what is missing from every single analysis on moving the containers by taking them off the road and putting them on to rail is the amount of particulate pollution that these locomotives actually spew into the atmosphere. In fact, if you compare the particulate pollution from a modern truck engine that has been built from 2007 onwards with the current locomotive fleet you are talking about an eight- to 10-times increase in particulate pollution from the locomotive engine. So even though you are saving half the diesel fuel, because that diesel fuel is spewed into the atmosphere and burnt in such old and dirty locomotives you are still ending up with eight to 10 times more particulate pollution in our atmosphere in Western Sydney. And I do not know of anyone in Western Sydney who has become sick or ill, or who has died, from the emissions of CO2. But there are hundreds of people every year in Sydney who die from particulate pollution. The models are simply flawed on this; they do not look at the correct pollution that is causing harm to people in Western Sydney. The fourth major flaw with the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal is the financial analysis. If we look at the headlines they say that this will have a $10-billion benefit to the economy. But when you actually look at it, the $10 billion is in future dollars. The value that they say in current dollars is $2.5 billion. Let us just take those through; let us just assume that all the economic benefits to add up to $2.5 billion. What is not counted in those benefits is firstly the cost to build the Moorebank intermodal. We are relocating the School of Military Engineering from Moorebank to Holsworthy at an expense of close to $1 billion. So $1 billion is being spent just to move the School of Military Engineering to give a clear patch of land. So before even a sod is turned on this development there is an extra $1 billion worth of costs, and that is not included in the analysis. The other thing that is not included in the analysis is the opportunity cost of the land. Here we have in Sydney riverside land, right beside the Georges River. Anyone who goes there will realise what a magnificent area this is—this natural river that Macquarie first came down when he travelled from Parramatta and established the town of Liverpool. Macquarie noted in his journals what a magnificent natural site this was. This is the land that we have; it should be open to the public. It should be a prize in our estate, in our natural area. Instead, the plans that we have are to build a giant transport hub on that and to deny the public access to some of the best and most environmentally sensitive and environmentally beautiful land in all of Western Sydney. If you add those two things in, you end up with almost zero economic benefit. And that is before one single cent is counted on the road upgrades and the road infrastructure that needs to be added to cope with up to 20,000 trucks a day. I will say that again: 20,000 additional truck movements a day are expected to be put in the Liverpool area because of this plan. We have absolute road congestion at the moment in our area; it simply cannot handle an extra thousand trucks a day, let alone the 20,000 trucks a day that are planned. So this is a deeply flawed project. However, there is a better way; there is a better solution. If we are going to build a new, second airport for Sydney, which will actually be Western Sydney's own international airport at Badgerys Creek, it makes perfectly logical sense to relocate that intermodal transport hub for Western Sydney adjacent to that airport. That frees up the land at Liverpool to do enormous things: to build a business park—a technology park—that was planned by the local council, something that will actually bring thousands and thousands of jobs into the Liverpool area. We have to extend the rail line out to Badgerys Creek airport to make it viable. We can simply extend the Southern Sydney Freight Line, put the rail link out through Leppington and take it up to Badgerys Creek so that an intermodal transport hub will be viable there. The other thing we must remember is that when I discuss this with so-called experts they say, 'Well, yes, we might also have an intermodal at Badgerys Creek, and we might also have one at Eastern Creek, and we'll also have one at Moorebank; therefore, let Moorebank go.' However, the one factor they overlook is that we have a capacity on the Southern Sydney Freight Line to move these containers. That capacity is a theoretical capacity of 1.9 million container movements, or TEUs—20-foot-equivalent units. So we have about a 1.9 million theoretical capacity, which they say comes down to an actual capacity of about 1.2 to 1.3 or maybe 1.4 million, absolutely stretching it. But the problem we have is that that freight line already has to accommodate 300,000 TEUs to the Enfield Intermodal, which is due to open any week now, and another 250,000 TEUs at the Minto Intermodal, which has been expanded. So we will be struggling with the Moorebank Intermodal to have an extra 1.2 million containers. We will simply saturate the total capacity of that Southern Sydney Freight Line by building the Moorebank Intermodal. If we are going to locate this intermodal in Western Sydney we are only going to have one shot in the locker because of the capacity constraints on that Southern Sydney Freight Line. If we get this planning decision wrong, this will be a multi-billion-dollar mistake; it will cause traffic chaos in Western Sydney for decades to come. Currently I have a local group—a company called Transport Modelling—that is preparing a detailed report, which I hope to table in the coming weeks here in this parliament, to demonstrate the folly of the government proceeding with the Moorebank Intermodal and showing that it would be far more socially, environmentally and economically viable for that intermodal to instead be located at Badgerys Creek. I would also like to address one of the big issues we saw over the last six years in which the Labor government had a detrimental effect on this country. That has been the decline in small business. Never before in our history—probably going back to the Great Depression—have we seen such a decline in the percentage and the emphasis on small businesses as we have in the last six years. We cannot underestimate the importance of small business in our economy. I hear so many times, from speakers on both sides, about the importance of small business. Often we talk about it but we introduce policies into this place that actually harm small business. Our future economic prosperity is not based on the companies we have today, or the industries we have today. Our future economic prosperity is based on the new start-up businesses—the new businesses that will bring new innovations. That is what will drive our economy in the future. But we have every single thing turned against small business. One thing I hope the coalition quickly brings to this parliament to legislate is our promise to introduce unfair-contract terms. This is something we expected the previous Labor government to introduce. It was brought in for consumers, but at the very last minute small business was cut out. There was a coalition election commitment to bring in unfair-contract terms to apply to small business. We have already seen the High Court act on this in relation to penalty clauses. And the argument that was used by certain companies, businesses and sections of our economy—that what was really a penalty clause was in fact a fee for service—has been thrown out by the High Court. Already we have seen a decrease in some of the bank fees. We have the bank fee case going through the courts at the moment. But that decision of the High Court, combined with the coalition's legislation to be introduced on unfair-contract terms, will level the playing field a little bit more for small business. There are many things we need to do during this term of government. We have a lot to do. But the first thing we must do is learn from the mistakes of the past. Yes, we can criticise, but the time for criticising is over. It is now the coalition's time to move forward. But in doing so we should never forget the mistakes of the past six years—those unintended consequences and how, even though some policies may have been introduced with good intentions, they fell over. 12:51 Mr MARLES HWQ Corio It is my pleasure today to rise to give my address-in-reply to the Governor-General's speech to this place. In commencing my address-in-reply I would like to acknowledge the presence in the chamber today of the member for Corangamite. I was looking at my address-in-reply from three years ago, and it happens that the member for Corangamite then, also by coincidence, was in the chamber. The electorates of Corio and Corangamite are inextricably linked; they are the two federal electorates that represent the great city of Geelong in this parliament. Of course, the circumstances are very different now to those in which I made this speech three years ago, in terms of both the side of the House from which I am making the speech and the political representation of the member for Corangamite. I congratulate her on her election to this place. We have many differences, as you would expect given the parties we represent—and we argue those differences vigorously—but we share a passion for Geelong. We work together on matters relating to Geelong, and I look forward to working with the member for Corangamite over the course of this term of government. We live in a time when Geelong faces many challenges. We are a manufacturing city, a car city, and over the last few months we have had very difficult news in relation to both the car industry and the manufacturing industry. It is very much my view that a country makes a conscious choice on whether it has a car industry or a manufacturing industry. It concerns me that the Abbott government clearly has made a choice not to support a manufacturing or a car industry, and I will come back to this point. The principal basis upon which we make an address-in-reply is to thank the many people who supported our election to this place and the many people who support our ongoing participation in the federal parliament. I begin by thanking the Labor state MPs in Geelong as I work very closely with them: John Eren, the member for Lara; Ian Trezise, the member for Geelong; Lisa Neville, the member for Bellarine; and Gayle Tierney, the member for Western Province. I have worked very closely with them all in representing the interests of Geelong at every level of government, including the state level. An enormous number of volunteers helped in my election, and an enormous number of volunteers give their time to support all of us in being elected to this place. Being elected to this parliament is a big thing, and if I have learnt one thing in my time here it is that my being here is the result of the work of an enormous number of people. It is not just about me—far from it. These people deserve recognition and I will put their names into the Hansard to thank them from the bottom of my heart for all their work and time. I thank Andrew Alexander, Desiree Balaburova, Tony Beck, John Bugge, Gorge Camorra, Chris Couzens, Ray Craske, Jim Cuthill, Paul Dabkowski, Oliver Dojcinovski and Soner Ekerbicer. I thank Sumeyra Eren, Ekrem Eren, Enes Eren—all the children of John Eren and they have been very strong supporters. I thank Damian Gorman, Ferg Hamilton, Emma Henderson, Stephen Hogg, Jeannette Johanson, Wendy Jones, Christine and Chris Kelly, Brian Kent, Jim Kontogeorgis, Richard Lewandowski, Zoli Luczo, Kate Maybin, Craig Meddings, Glenn and Russell Menzies, Justin Mills, Rita Monkivitch, Slavco Pantelic, Kathleen Pender, Adam Peterwood, Matt Podvinsek, Brett Robb, Michael Tate, Craig Taylor, Nandi Youny, Pinar Zegin and the Bosnali family, Senol and Semiha. I thank Gail Cook, Colleen Gibbs, Cameron Granger—a longtime friend and supporter—and Joanne and Ashleigh Law. Joanne gives a lot of time to my family, and I really appreciated her support on election day. I thank Sam Lowrey and Wayne Mader—the Victorian branch secretary of the Transport Workers Union, the union at which I first worked. It was a real pleasure to have Wayne assisting on the day. I thank Joe Pavlovic, Jill Petersen, Vlad Selakovic and Leonie Sheedy. Vlad and Leonie are Forgotten Australians who were raised in institutions. They were instrumental in getting the apology to Forgotten Australians a number of years ago. I appreciate their support. I thank Roger Lowrey, a stalwart in supporting me over the years. I thank Sabrina Lewicki and Simeon Flanagan, friends of my son Sam, who did a great job to get them involved. I thank Nancy Saunderson and Lou Brazier, a great supporter. I thank Mark Donohue, a former staff member and very important supporter. I thank Darren and Natasha Lamont and Kelly Toyne. This is a large list, but not the entire list. Mentioning their support for what I do in this place is the very least I can do to thank them for all their time, energy, advice and counsel. This collection of people keeps me very grounded in the community I represent. Many people have worked for me over the course of the last three years, both in my electorate office in Geelong and in portfolio work as the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs and the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs and then the Minister for Trade. Without our staff nothing happens. They put in endless hours and get precious little thanks as they do not earn huge salaries. They work out of a commitment not just to supporting me but to serving the country and pursuing their beliefs. They deserve acknowledgement. I thank Sophie Andrew, Merric Foley, Hayley Bamford and Damian Hickey. I thank Saverina Chirumbolo, who has worked with me since 2000 when I was at the ACTU. I am not sure what I did in a past life to deserve Sav, but I am very glad that Sav is in this life, because without her I would not be able to do this job. I thank Zac Power, Geraldine Eren, Grant Dew, Vanessa Mantella, Rachael Wakeley and Jo Woodbury, who was my chief of staff as the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs. I thank Pauline Braniff, Bassel Tallal, Haykel Handal, Ella George, Kylie Nicholson, Mark Mulligan, Berna Doksatli, Chris Balaam, Karyn Murray, Maxine Parisotto and Virginia Greville, who was my chief of staff when I was Minister for Trade. I thank Trish Rowley, Ruimin Gao and Glenda Price. I thank all of them for their great effort, which is deeply appreciated and not taken for granted in the slightest. One of the nice things about running for public office is to have old friends involved who stand by you—in my case, people whom I went to school with in Geelong. I feel nervous about admitting this 30 years later, but that is the number. In fact, it is the 30th anniversary this year of my leaving school, a fact that I am struggling with and quite significantly resent! It is wonderful that those people were able to support me on election day. To Clare Lawrence and Ninian Lewis and William Reeves, and Peter and Gitte Little and Darren and Jo Fox, who were not able to be there on the day but have been long-time friends of mine, I very much thank them for the personal friendship and support they have given me over the years. Having known each other from childhood, we are genuinely the witnesses of each other's lives and I cannot think of a better group of people to witness mine, and I hope I honour them in witnessing theirs. To my extended family. My parents Faye and Don Marles were there on the day, which was great. I thank my sisters Liz Marles, Vic Marles and Jenny Green for being there. I thank my brother-in-law Geoff Westcott and my nephew Alex Marles for the effort they made. I thank all my family and extended family who have contributed so much to my life over the years. It was a wonderful thing that they were able to help me on the day. I also acknowledge my nieces and my nephew Katie and Angus Quail and Evie Green, who live in Sydney and were unable to be there on the day. They too give me enormous support. There is of course my own direct family: my wife Rachel Schutze and my children Sam, Bella, Harvey and Georgia—all of whom were conscripted to help in my campaign commensurate with their age and ability. I thank them for being with me. In relation to Rachel, it would be impossible to do this job without her support, particularly over the last three years. Being involved in a foreign affairs portfolio, particularly in the lead-up to Australia's successful campaign to be elected to the UN Security Council, involved an enormous amount of travel in addition to being here in this parliament. She was really heroic in the role she performed not only in pursuing her own career, which she does very professionally, but also in keeping our household and our lives together. I am deeply indebted to Rachel for that. I would also like to mention four other people who have been real supporters and advisers to me on the work I do in Geelong: Peter Dorling, Andrew Balaam, Frank Costa and Brian Cook. The member for Corangamite knows all those people. I am sure they give the member for Corangamite sage advice as well. They have been the elders of our community—in experience if not necessarily in age. If any of them are listening, you are very young people! They provide us with a lot of guidance and our city has been incredibly well served over many years now by virtue of those people contributing to the civic leadership of Geelong. We hear a lot about the football club which is deeply important to Geelong and a lot of us here. You cannot be involved in Geelong without being involved in the football club. Brian Cook is the CEO of the club and Frank is a former president of the club. The success of the club has been emblematic of the development of Geelong and each of those individuals has been a really important part. If you wind back the clock, say, 15 years, we were known as sleepy hollow. No-one uses that term about Geelong today. I think the football club has had a bit to do with that. The contribution that those four people, and indeed a lot of others, have made to Geelong has gone a long way to changing the nature of Geelong and the positive way in which Geelong is seen. I thank all of them. Those are my thank-yous. There are many more people whom I also could have mentioned, but in mentioning that list please see it as representative of the enormous number of people who have given me support and provided help in what I do, and I am deeply thankful to all of them. The election campaign in Geelong involved a number of issues. On some specific issues: I was pleased that Labor was able to commit to the beginning of work to build a hospital in the northern suburbs of Geelong. I am glad that we were able to commit to providing initial funding to begin the process of stage 4 of the redevelopment of Kardinia Park, Simonds Stadium. I was pleased that we were able to commit to the building of bike paths because unfortunately Geelong has a sad recent history of bike rider fatalities and injuries. We are not a particularly bike friendly city and we need to be more so. I was also pleased to be able to commit to funding towards the redevelopment of the Leopold Sportsmans Club. None of those commitments will see the light of day. It is of deep concern to me that the Liberal Party in its candidacy in Geelong made no promises to the people of Geelong. Two of those projects will not come to fruition even though money had been allocated in last year's budget. The Liberal Party came to the seat of Corio and promised to take federal government interaction away from the seat. That concerns me. Putting aside the specific projects, at the time of the election in Geelong I felt that it was a choice about the future of manufacturing in Australia. As a manufacturing city that necessarily means it was a choice about the future of manufacturing in Geelong. Labor went to the last election with a billion-dollar different proposition in relation to the car industry than the coalition. We promised to increase funding to the car industry by $500 million; the coalition went to the election seeking to decrease funding from the status quo by $500 million, a difference of $1 billion in the two propositions that were put to the people of Corio at the election. I had no doubt at the time when I said that would make the difference between whether or not we have a car industry in this country. I also made the point that the making of automotive vehicles is the highest technical manufacturing that we do in Australia, that if we took the car industry out of Australian manufacturing we dealt manufacturing an enormous blow and that that would affect other forms of manufacturing not only in Geelong but also around Australia. I did not expect that within six months of the election we would have seen both Holden and Toyota make announcements that they would be ceasing the manufacture of cars in Australia. I did not expect that we would see at the end of last year the Treasurer of this country effectively goad one of those companies to leave the country, making the continued operation of the other impossible, but that is what we have seen. The darkest prediction of what was at stake in the election has come to pass and we now have a government which is making a conscious decision not to have a car industry in this country. I want to make the point that in countries around the world which have a car industry it is always a public-private partnership—it is in Germany, it is in Britain, it is in Japan and it is in the US. Indeed, the amount of subsidy being provided to the car industry under the then Labor government and under the Howard government was less than the subsidy you would find in the countries I have just mentioned. The idea that you cannot make automotive vehicles, the idea that you cannot engage in manufacturing in a First World economy is absolutely wrong. Advanced manufacturing, of which making cars is the single best example of our highest technical manufacturing in Australia, is emblematic of what it is to be an advanced economy. The fact of the matter is that, with the car industry now leaving Australia, we are skilling down in our manufacturing. That is a really big concern when I stand in this place representing a car town and a manufacturing town. What we saw under the Labor government was a willingness to support manufacturing and an attitude where we sought to keep the car industry here. What we did not do with Ford and what we saw the government do with Holden was to goad the company out of the country. That is the huge difference. A billion dollar difference in the proposition that we took to the last election is the difference between whether or not we have a car industry in this country. We stand here today awaiting a very difficult decision by Alcoa about its future. One thousand people are employed at Point Henry in my electorate. There is a huge difference today between Labor and the coalition when it comes to manufacturing. It is a difference that needs to be debated and articulated at a human level. Whatever decisions are made by virtue of whatever policy, it is important that everyone in a community that is affected comes together to help and I very much know that the member for Corangamite and I will do that. I know that the Mayor of Geelong, Darryn Lyons, is doing a great job selling an optimistic view of Geelong at a very difficult time and I take my hat off to him for everything he is doing. He will be in this place tomorrow to support manufacturing in our city. 13:11 Dr SOUTHCOTT TK6 Boothby Firstly, I would like to congratulate the Hon. Bronwyn Bishop, member for Mackellar, on her appointment as Speaker of the House. In speaking about the campaign, I would like to thank the voters of the electorate of Boothby for the privilege and honour of representing them for a seventh term in parliament. Representing the most marginal coalition seat in a hung parliament meant there was always a lot of interest in the campaign and in the seat. The previous parliament was a tough three years where every vote was important and the difference between being in government and being in opposition was only one seat. This was my seventh election campaign. The way everyone combined—the staff, Liberal Party members, my supporters, state members and candidates and state and federal secretariats—was exemplary. It was a model campaign. I would like to thank my electorate staff who really put in the hard yards and went the extra mile during the campaign: Ann de Cure, Ryan Post, Matthew Hee, Marion Themeliotis, Zoe Darling, Tom Schinckel and Courtney Nourse. Of my volunteers, again who gave up hours and hours of their own time and who were so keen to see a change of government, I would like to mention a couple in particular: Bill Heycox, Fran Southern, Paul Gesti, Matt Shilling, Graham Copley, Ralph Walker, Sam Croser, Kathy Hee and Janet Hillgrove. The campaign relied on hundreds and hundreds of volunteers—old friends, new friends and people who were desperate to see a change in government. I would like to thank the state and federal secretariats, state director Geoff Green and deputy state director Matt Halliwell for their assistance throughout the election and for their prompt guidance when it was needed. I would like to thank Brian Loughnane and Julian Sheezel for their interest and for their words of advice. I would like to thank the state members and candidates, all of whom played a role in the campaign: Iain Evans, Duncan McFetridge, Martin Hamilton-Smith, and the state candidates David Speirs, Caroline Habib, Sam Duluk and Cory Wingard. I would like to thank the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and Minister for Foreign Affairs, all of whom visited the electorate last year and who greatly assisted the momentum in our campaign. I would like to thank all of the other ministers who visited over the previous three years. Lastly, I would like to thank my family. I thank Kate for her enormous support over the last 15 years, and I thank my two youngest volunteers, Henry and Georgina—Henry at 11, and Georgina at nine—who again were very much our secret weapon. This was an important campaign. The 2010 election had been close, so we knew that every vote counted. The electorate of Boothby is a great electorate to represent. It has terrific institutions and schools—including Flinders University and Waite Agricultural Research Institute—and important hospitals like Flinders Medical Centre and Daw Park. One of the major issues was the lack of investment in infrastructure that we saw in the south. I had been fighting for six years to see South Road become a non-stop north-south corridor. One of the issues in Adelaide is that unfortunately the state made a decision 40 years ago not to invest in expressways or freeways. When you travel around Australia you realise that the road infrastructure in Adelaide is particularly poor. We do not have the expressways or freeways that other capital cities do. One of the things that Adelaide desperately needs is a non-stop north-south expressway. The RAA identified this in their 2005 report. There have been various promises made over the years. One that I have been particularly focussed on which has been promised since 2006 is having a grade separation at South Road and Sturt Road. All the traffic surveys show that this is the major cause of delay on South Road now that Grand Junction Road and Cormack Road have been dealt with by the superway. In my regular surveys, doorknocking and listening posts, traffic congestion is often at the top of my constituents' concerns. Adelaide used to be known as the 20-minute city. Now what we see is increasing traffic congestion because of a failure to invest in infrastructure going back decades. So I was particularly pleased in late April when the now Prime Minister Tony Abbott made an announcement that, working with Infrastructure Australia and the South Australian government, we would invest $500 million in federal funding to improve South Road where it connects to the southern expressway—that is, having an interchange of the southern expressway going onto South Road and grade separations at Flinders Drive and Sturt Road. We are also providing the funding for the South Australian government to complete the business case for the Darlington Interchange project. This is a project that state Labor first promised in 2006—eight years ago—and there has been no progress on it since. It is very important, if we are to build the roads of the 21st century, that we start to address the major bottlenecks on South Road. We need to see this project underway as soon as possible. As I have already said, we are allocating $500 million to complete the Darlington Interchange and the Darlington project as a priority. We are committed to upgrading the entire South Road within a decade, and it is expected that more funding in the coming years will be allocated to get the Torrens to Torrens project completed and additional upgrades underway. However, the Darlington upgrade is the priority. This is what we need to improve our productive capacity in the future. One of the other major issues during the campaign was the issue around cost of living. One of the most important things this parliament could do is abolish the carbon tax. We are trying to abolish the carbon tax, and this is an important thing. All families bear the cost of the carbon tax. It is our bill to cut your carbon tax bill. Scrapping the carbon tax will mean that families on average will be $550 better off next financial year. Electricity bills will be $200 lower a year, and gas bills $70 lower a year. Abolishing the carbon tax will provide a stimulus to jobs, it will provide a stimulus to the economy, and it will reduce the pressure on families' costs of living. I saw in my electorate how the carbon tax was damaging to businesses. When the Belair Hotel was hit with their first electricity bill under the carbon tax, they saw their off-peak power rate increase by 45 per cent as a direct result of the carbon tax. Another initiative that I am particularly pleased to see come back is the Green Army. The Howard government implemented the Green Corps program as a way of employing young people in environmental projects to preserve and restore our natural and cultural environment. Green Corps provided young people with improved career and employment prospects through accredited training, on-the-project training and personal development, while participating in environmental and heritage projects. Over the life of the Green Corps program, participants propagated and planted over 14 million trees; they erected more than 8,000 kilometres of fencing; they cleared over 50,000 hectares of weeds; and they constructed or maintained more than 5,000 kilometres of walking tracks or boardwalks. The coalition will create a standing Green Army that will gradually build to a 15,000 strong environmental workforce. We will create and properly resource the Green Army as a larger and more lasting version of the former Green Corps. It will be Australia's largest ever environmental deployment. It will mark the first time Australia has approached environmental remediation with the same seriousness and level of organisation that we have long brought to bushfire preparedness and other local and regional priorities. I have had a number of projects submitted to me as possible Green Army initiatives: the removal of weeds and olive trees in Marino Conservation Park; maintenance of Belair National Park, including the creek which runs from the park through Glenalta, Hawthorndene and Coromandel Valley to Sturt Creek; the creation of a wildlife corridor between parks and open spaces to plant native trees and provide nesting boxes for wildlife; the removal of weeds along main roads and railway lines; and installing benches along trail walks to encourage people to go out and enjoy the parks of Boothby. Mitcham Hills will be one of the first sites nationally to benefit under the coalition's Green Army. The Mitcham Hills has a lot of undergrowth, a lot of woody weeds, which lead to a fire hazard. The Minister for the Environment has announced that a coalition government will undertake feral olive and woody weed eradication in the Mitcham Hills as part of its commitment to build a 15,000-strong Green Army nationwide. Woody weeds and feral olives create significant amounts of bushfire fuel throughout the Mitcham Hills. Last weekend we saw how one spark can start a bushfire when on Saturday morning a blaze started in Belair, an 850-hectare national park. Fortunately, the CFS, the SES and SAPOL responded promptly and the blaze was contained to three hectares. Another major issue that the state of South Australia faces is the economy. We continually lag in all measures compared with other states. We have seen 27,000 jobs lost over the last four years. We need to create an environment whereby businesses feel confident to invest, grow and employ new staff. Abolishing the carbon tax will help that. Reducing red tape will help that. Building our infrastructure such as South Road will improve the productivity and the economy of our state. I am pleased that, while the news was very bad that Holden has decided not to continue manufacturing in Australia, the Prime Minister has acted promptly by establishing a South Australian review panel, including some eminent South Australian businessmen such as Raymond Spencer and Robert Champion de Crespigny. The Waite Institute in my electorate is an area where we have a competitive advantage. South Australia has always been good at exporting grain—wheat—and wine. The Waite Institute is a world-best scientific facility in the areas of ag science and genomics which is providing an enormous competitive advantage. The approach the government will take is: backing our strengths. With the new SAHMRI, South Australia has the potential to develop a biotech precinct in the North Terrace area in the same way Parkville in Melbourne is a long-established biotech precinct, and in the way Brisbane is. Adelaide has the opportunity to build on our existing strengths—Australia's renowned excellence in research, in clinical trials—and we need to foster a climate where that can occur. In my electorate of Boothby, the former site of the Mitsubishi car plant at Tonsley Park offers enormous opportunities. Flinders University have moved a number of their functions—computing science, engineering and maths. Flinders University have existing strengths in the area of medical devices—and this is another area where South Australia could become a centre for innovation and, again, focus on something that we do well. In the area of health I was very pleased in the last parliament to focus very much on primary health care. The GP superclinics were something that I was heavily critical of, because I believe it was a misguided policy. It distorted the whole market for investment in general practice. When we look at Australia's primary healthcare system, we have a good system but I believe that we can do much better in areas like diabetes, cardiac failure and COPD. There are a number of chronic diseases where we could have better incentives to make sure that people get the gold standard. We have a good primary healthcare system, but I believe it could be better and that is something that I will be focusing on in this next term of parliament. In the area of PBS listings, Australians should have timely access to innovative new treatments that are safe, effective and cost-effective . Subsidisation of new medicines through the PBS was for a long time a stable, bi partisan process that was widely respected here and abroad. It was understood by all the participants. The PBAC was put in place to advise governments and make recommendation on new medicines. Yet what we saw under the previous government was a chaotic process. They signed a memorandum of understanding with the sector to provide policy stability in return for savings and then, within months of signing that memorandum, they deferred the listing of seven medicines and a vaccine that had been recommended by PB AC and would have had to have gone to c abinet for approval. It was chaotic decision making. There was no clarity for businesses. There was no clarity for consumers. The coalition has said we will restore the PBS process to a stable, apolitical, evidence based approach. The PB AC will return and its recommendations will not be ignored . The health minister will have authority to list lower cost treatments that have been recommended by the PBAC without cabinet approval f or medicines that do not cost more than $20 million in any year over the first four years of listing s. Priorities and accelerate d clinical trial reforms will a llow new medicines to be tested and will provide faster access to treatment for patients . We need to restore transparency, certainty and confidence to the process for listing medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. In the area of private health insurance we see that private health insurance plays an important role in taking pressure off the public health system. We will reinvest in private health insurance once fiscal circumstances allow . The current g overnment understand s that private health insurance plays a key role in reducing waiting lists and keeping pressure off the already struggling public hospital system. It allows people to have a choice of doctor, a choice of specialist, a choice of surgeon, a choice of anaesthetist , a choice of allied health practitioner and a choice of hospital. The coalition has always recognised this and will continue to fight for the role of private health insurance in our health system. In my electorate this is a key issue. Seventy-six per cent of voters hold some form of private health insurance, and this has always been a big issue in every election that I have fought. Two thousand residents in my electorate petitioned to have the private health insurance rebate retained intact. This is something that the previous government promised to do and then broke its promise in 2008, 2009 and 2010. In conclusion, I would like to thank the voters in Boothby for the opportunity to serve them in parliament. It is a great honour, and I look forward to representing them over the next three years. 13:30 Ms COLLINS HWM Franklin It is indeed a real privilege to be here to speak in the address-in-reply debate. When the Governor-General gave her speech on the new government in this parliament on 12 November this year, there was much rhetoric about a change of government and, indeed, there were many slogans and repetition of some election commitments. But it has now been five long months since the election and since the coalition came to office and what we have seen can only be described as one of the worst starts to a new government in political history. Far from having a honeymoon period, voters are now experiencing a bit of buyer's regret. The election promises and commitments are being broken one by one and the rhetoric they held in opposition was thrown out the door on day one. The rhetoric has changed and is sometimes even the complete opposite of what they said when they were in opposition trying to achieve government. Indeed, we have seen major policy failures, blatant mistruths, missteps and many backflips. We have seen this in almost every portfolio area—from the economy, to immigration, to foreign policy with our closest neighbours and to education, healthcare and even of course government debt. The new government have already broken a shopping list of promises, contradicted themselves at every turn and showed the public that they do not have what it takes to run this great country. The worst aspect of all of this is that the government is saying one thing and then doing another. There are millions of Australians who are now worse off because of decisions of this new Abbott government—with many more to come. As a Labor member of parliament, the most unsettling thing is the disregard for jobs, especially in regional areas. Jobs that this government seems set on destroying are sadly adding up to the tens of thousands. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have used the guise of 'business must get its house in order' to punish working Australians—people who now will be without a job because this government was not there when they needed them. The workers at Holden, Toyota, the Gove refinery, SPC Ardmona and the many smaller businesses that supply these larger companies are all now being let down by this Prime Minister and this new government. They are being let down by somebody who claimed before the federal election that he supported Australian manufacturing. But now that he is in office, where is that support? Sadly, there will be tens of thousands of workers who will be joining an unemployment queue because this government was unwilling to help secure their jobs here in this great country. We know that in coming weeks and months these workers will sit around their dinner tables wondering what on earth their next move will be. Many of them have spent a lot of their lives manufacturing a world-class automotive product and now they are being tossed aside. What will they do? Where is the support? As the shadow minister for regional development, I am particularly concerned about how these jobs are affecting regional and remote communities. Many of the companies just mentioned have bases and suppliers in regional and rural Australia. Often the factories in these areas are major employers. Take Orange in New South Wales, for example, where Electrolux have recently announced that they will be closing their manufacturing plant. It was the last factory in Australia that produced household fridges and freezers. It directly employs over 500 people and contributes over $70 million to the local economy. How much federal government support did these workers and this company get? Where was the government? More recently we have seen the government deny co-investment support to SPC Ardmona—a $25 million co-investment, with the parent company prepared to invest an additional $161 million, to support hundreds of direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs. This government could not bring themselves to support these jobs. They could not bring themselves to support these workers, and now we will see factory workers and manufacturing workers being laid off and we will see fruit growers and farmers pulling out trees and wondering what their options are. The government are instead spending some money on a royal commission—a political witch hunt—rather than having crime dealt with by the police. This royal commission was announced as the workers of Toyota were told the devastating news. The government are doing this under the guise of saying that they cannot be there to prop up multinationals, that businesses must be able to stand on their own two feet. That is all right, but try telling that to all these workers and to the Goulburn Valley farmers who have worked for years to make a living from the land, who will now have no-one to supply their product to because SPC Ardmona is competing with a high Australian dollar and cheap, dumped imports. Try telling those farmers that they do not have their house in order. They will quickly tell you that government need to get their house in order. In a further hit to regional jobs in regional communities the new government cut support from local community development when it cancelled approved grants for local projects in communities right across Australia like parks, and swimming pools, walking paths and bike tracks—small projects that would have had a big impact on the local community both for their amenity but also for the injection of jobs in their local areas. The cutting of the Regional Development Australia Fund round 5, $150 million dollars, with funds going to regional councils will further exacerbate the situation in regional Australia. The government walking away from regional Australia is highlighted in my home state of Tasmania. As we all know, the Tasmanian economy has been doing it tough. When the Labor Party were in government we set the agenda for growth in Tasmania—record investment in infrastructure; a $100 million jobs and growth plan—but, of course, since the Abbott government came to power in September last year I have been approached by countless Tasmanians who already feel let down by this new government. In the coalition's plan for the Tasmanian economy—a little glossy brochure—we got lots of inquiries, committees and reviews. What has happened since? We have had two of the 31 projects committed by Labor announced by the new government. They did say they would match the $100 million of funding, but these businesses do not yet have the money and these jobs are not yet happening. High-value downstream processing jobs in areas like science, technology, agriculture and viticulture are very valuable jobs in the Tasmanian economy. We have seen some inconsistency in how the Abbott government has been treating employers, with Cadbury receiving $16 million to keep and create jobs in Tasmania—a great project that gets our support. But where is the consistency? How is that consistent with SPC? When and how will the money flow to Cadbury? There was also a commitment in the federal election for an upgrade to Hobart airport in my electorate. Again, it was another great project which of course I support. But I do ask: how is the government providing $38 million—50 per cent is owned by Macquarie Bank—when the bank is only putting in $2 million itself? Again, it is not consistent. We have already seen 56 Department of Human Services jobs moved out of the state. The government said at the time: What we've said is we want to look at boosting Commonwealth presence in regional areas, not reducing the Commonwealth presence in regional areas, not reducing the Commonwealth presence in regional areas. That is another broken promise because those jobs are gone. We had road funding and infrastructure projects announced by Labor in the last budget reannounced by Minister Briggs last week. But there is $100 million for the Midland Highway missing. I am not quite sure where that has gone, but obviously that money was not required in Tasmania. Sadly, letting down regional Australian workers and workers in Tasmania is not the only policy failure of this government to date. I have spoken with schoolteachers and parents at some of the schools in my electorate about Labor's BetterSchools Gonski reforms. Everybody will remember the 'unity ticket' the coalition was on prior to the election. But the teachers and parents in Tasmania do not know whether the $400 million for Tasmania is going to arrive or not because much of the funding was in years 5 and 6, so another broken promise. Parents have just sent their kids back to school for the new school year. They have gone out and bought new school uniforms, stationary, text books, lunch boxes, aprons, haircuts and new shoes—as a parent of three children, I know this only too well. Parents do this because they want their children to have the very best start in life. But we also know that these things cost money. Even with one child the costs can be prohibitive, and that is why Labor introduced the Schoolkids Bonus. We know that over a million Australian families, nearly 7,000 families in my electorate, were relying on this money to help get their kids to school. The coalition believe it is expensive and unnecessary. They even said parents could not be trusted to spend it wisely, and now it is gone. This comes on top of the cut to the low-income superannuation co-contribution affecting low- and middle-income families. The coalition seem to keep taking from low- and middle-income Australians while giving money to the big end of town. Families are amongst those most concerned about the attack on Medicare. Australians like and respect Medicare. Since it was introduced by a Labor government, Labor has worked hard to ensure a universal healthcare system that Australians are rightly proud of. It is one of the most revered public healthcare systems in the world. The Commission of Audit has floated an additional GP levy to be paid when you go to your GP. It will be another cost for families—and not one word of this prior to the election. It will be interesting to see what the 'commission of cuts' recommends when it finally is released. Today we have the sale of Medibank out there. I wonder if that will lead to increased premiums or reduced premiums for private healthcare cover? Pensioners, people on disability pensions and people on unemployment benefits come into my office concerned about the media reports and what will happen to their pensions and benefits. Pensioners are the people government should be supporting. We should be supporting them and their everyday costs. This announcement and the stuff in the media has them panicked and frightened. Pensioners are waiting anxiously for the Commission of Audit to see what is in it. When I get out and about in my electorate I get a lot of questions about when people are going to get the national broadband network. It was a great Labor policy to be introduced right around the country. Before the election, Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party said that Tasmania would get the full fibre rollout. After a review and a backflip or two it seems that tens of thousands of Tasmanians will actually miss out. In my home state there will be the haves and the have-nots of communication technology. All I get in my home state of Tasmania is, 'When will I get the NBN?' People want this technology, they want it now and they want it as quickly as they can get it. My constituency want the real full NBN, not the pretend NBN. This government does have a problem with communication, whether it be technology or trying to give information to the media. We know that the government is in hiding. There has been a real veil of secrecy, not just around 'on water operations'—as they are being called—but around a whole range of matters. Of course, one of the biggest items on this government's list of failures and backflips has been our economy. Before the election, anyone listening to the rhetoric from the coalition would have thought that our economy was about to fall apart. There was a budget crisis—then a budget emergency—that needed to be fixed. But, like everything else, this suddenly changed when the Abbott government came to power. The DEPUTY SPEAKER YT4 You have five seconds to go. Ms COLLINS HWM In closing, I would like to say that I sincerely hope that this government improves and stops breaking its promises and commitments to the Australian people. I would like to thank the good people of Franklin for re-electing me once again. The DEPUTY SPEAKER YT4 Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member for Franklin will have to leave to continue her remarks when the debate is resumed. STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 209 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Chappell, Mr Barry 209 13:45 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton I rise to become a personal recruitment agency for one of my constituents, Mr Barry Chappell, who contacted me last year but unfortunately 90-second statements were cancelled. He is having trouble getting a job. He is 52 years old and has been unemployed for nearly three years. Some of you might have seen him on Channel Seven's Sunrise on 24 April last year. He has made over 600 job applications. Unfortunately, he rarely gets an acknowledgement. He does not receive any benefits. He has two bachelor's degrees, a postgraduate certificate and three master's degrees, covering accounting, economics, law, policing, intelligence and counter-terrorism. He has completed nearly two years of an arts degree in Australian and Asian politics and history, and many of his subjects relate to the Asian century. He said in his email: All I hear from politicians from both parties is rhetoric. I want work! Well, I am doing my bit for you, Barry, to make sure that your plight is publicised. He said he is very tired of being unemployed. He wants to work. He is obviously very skilled and probably not suitable for a labouring job, but, if people have anything to offer Barry, who is in the southern suburbs of Brisbane, they should contact my office and I will do what I can to make sure we put you in contact with Barry. I know he is listening in to this now and he is keen to make contact with as many people as possible. As he said, he is a bit concerned about people only having rhetoric, but obviously, Barry, I am not an employment agency; I am only able to mention your name here. (Time expired) Hinkler Electorate: Disability Services 210 13:46 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler It is with great pleasure that I rise to speak about last Friday night's Ability Ball in Bundaberg. The Ability Ball is a formal night for clients of local disability support organisation Community Lifestyle Support. A smashing success in previous years, the Ability Ball sold out very quickly again this year. I would like to thank the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, for providing a special message for the evening. The Prime Minister acknowledged the assistance Community Lifestyle Support provides to individuals with a disability and their families. Their hard work makes a real difference to peoples' lives. I must say it has been some time since I have been in a room with so many Elvis impersonators. The show attracted a large number of clients to the stage, demonstrating their dance moves: the moonwalk, the sprinkler and many other favourites. We literally had to move the front tables out of the way to allow more access to the dance floor. Last month I also presented the Endeavour Foundation with a new Australian flag. Service Development and Innovation Manager Lynn Quirk showed me around the centre and informed me that Bundaberg has the highest rate of disability in Queensland, at 8.2 per cent. I left both events inspired by the clients and the staff, especially Mark Searle, the flag raiser at Endeavour. It is organisations like these that help remind us of our duty to the electorate and the work we still have to do for so many. The government shares their vision of empowering people with disabilities. That is why we are committed to delivering the National Disability Insurance Scheme. South Australia: Employment 210 13:48 Mr KELVIN THOMSON UK6 Wills I was astonished to read that the South Australian Liberal Party's bright idea for responding to the impending closure of General Motors Holden is to increase migration into South Australia and even more astonished to read that the Prime Minister is supportive of the idea, talking about giving South Australia special migration rules. The last thing any community or economy suffering from rising unemployment needs is population growth. How are the Holden workers who will be displaced to get other jobs if new workers, who are in all likelihood happy to work for low pay and conditions, are being brought into the state? This is a recipe for ferocious competition for lower paid jobs and for long-term unemployment, where older workers who lose their jobs are never able to find secure work again. Some people say that an ageing population, an ageing workforce, is a bad thing, but it is good news for the Holden workers because, as older workers retire, it means that there are jobs that they can apply for. We should let population and workforce ageing open up opportunities for workers who are going to lose their jobs. Let me conclude by noting that Dick Smith said to me some years ago that Adelaide was just about his favourite city, because it had the right scale, not too big. It is a city you can easily get around, not bedevilled by the traffic congestion and high-rise anonymity of the bigger cities. Long may Adelaide remain a city that you can enjoy living and working in. Sochi Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games 210 13:50 Mrs WICKS 241590 Robertson The Central Coast is known by many for its beautiful beaches, but today I recognise the remarkable achievements of two athletes from my electorate of Robertson who are stars in the snow at the Winter Olympics and Paralympics at Sochi, in Russia. Matt Graham, from Narara, has finished an impressive seventh in the moguls. In an event usually dominated by Canada, the 19-year-old qualified for the finals in cold three-degree temperatures. He was eliminated from the medal race by finishing seventh in the second final, but by the slimmest of margins: 0.01. Matt is at his first Winter Olympics and his talent is undeniable. At the world championships last year, he placed fourth. He has been chasing his Olympic dream for most of his life, including his time at Central Coast Grammar School. The result is a credit to his determination and skill. It is an inspiring story, and the Central Coast is rightly proud of his achievements. Congratulations, Matt; you have a bright future ahead. We also have a representative to be proud of at the Winter Paralympics. I would like to congratulate Victoria Pendergast, a talented 23-year-old from East Gosford at her first ever games. Born missing the lower part of her spine, Victoria, or Tori, will represent Australia at Alpine skiing. She has embraced the technique of sit-skiing and loves hurtling down a mountain at top speed in her custom-built sled. Congratulations to Victoria and Matt and both their families. They are superb representatives of our electorate on a world stage. Australian Jockeys' Association 211 13:51 Mr THISTLETHWAITE 182468 Kingsford Smith The Australian Jockeys' Association, or AJA, represents all 850 jockeys throughout Australia. Many of them live in my electorate and work at the wonderful Royal Randwick racecourse. The AJA recently received legal advice that jockeys, like every other worker in Australia, may be entitled to superannuation. In the wake of that advice, the AJA sought a ruling from the Australian Taxation Office. For exercising this right, Peter McGauran, the CEO of the Australian Racing Board and a former National Party member of parliament, described the Australian Jockeys' Association and jockeys in this country as 'unethical', 'immoral', 'hypocritical' and 'cowardly' and he said that they were holding a gun to the head of racing authorities. Mr McGauran's comments are shameful, Dickensian and disrespectful to the 850 hardworking jockeys in this country, 25 per cent of whom are women. They work in a dangerous occupation and have relatively short careers. They deserve to be paid superannuation. Jockeys should not be persecuted for exercising a workplace right available to other workers. This should be determined by the Australian Taxation Office and not unjustifiable hysteria from the likes of Mr McGauran. I ask that the Minister for Sport and member for Dickson condemn these comments of Mr McGauran and disassociate himself from them. Festivale 211 13:53 Mr NIKOLIC ( 137174 Bass ) ( ): I rise to acknowledge the success of Festivale, a three-day celebration and showcase of the very best of Tasmanian food, drink and entertainment in Launceston from 7-9 February. It is an iconic Tasmanian event celebrating what we can offer the world and has certainly come a long way since its 1988 origins as a multicultural street party. Around 40,000 patrons attended Festivale this year. Tasmania has a well-deserved reputation as a fine agri-food and wine producer. By way of example, at the 2013 Decanter Wine Awards, the Josef Chromy 2011 Chardonnay was judged the world's best chardonnay. Our agri-food producers are closer to the Antarctic than they are to Shanghai. They cannot compete on production quantity, but they can, and do, compete on quality. Small, larger, artisan and family businesses are all found at Festivale, meeting customer demand for exceptional-quality products. Festivale is also a showcase for other important Tasmanian values: networking, volunteering and the significant role of community groups. Festivale is run by a volunteer committee and supported by volunteer organisations like my Lions Club, the Riverside Lions Club. I acknowledge particularly the efforts of Lou Clark as Chair, David Dunn, Chris Veevers, Jo Waldren and the Festivale team for an outstanding contribution to the Northern Region of Tasmania and to the rest of Tasmania in terms of its brand recognition. Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month 212 13:54 Ms BRODTMANN ( 30540 Canberra ) ( ): February is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month; and, as the ACT's ambassador for Ovarian Cancer Australia, I am using this month to promote awareness of this disease and to encourage Australians to raise funds for vital research. We do not know what causes ovarian cancer, and sadly there is currently no reliable early detection test or screening program for it. Each year, more than 1,200 Australian women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer and around 800 will die from the disease. On average, three Australian women are diagnosed every day. Unfortunately, when most women are diagnosed, their cancer will be at an advanced stage. More than half these women will not live for five years after their diagnosis. But, if ovarian cancer is found in the early stages, up to 95 per cent of women will be alive and well after five years. The key to early diagnosis is to know the symptoms and to see your doctor if they arise. Almost all women diagnosed report four symptoms: abdominal or pelvic pain, increased abdominal size or persistent abdominal bloating, needing to urinate often or urgently and feeling full after eating a small amount. This February I ask you each of us here to learn these symptoms and to make sure our wives, mothers, sisters, daughters and friends know these symptoms too. Tonight I am pleased to be co-hosting—along with my fellow Ambassador, Kelly O'Dwyer, and also Sarah Hanson-Young—drinks to raise awareness and funds for Ovarian Cancer Australia. Duthie, Mrs Jeanette Elizabeth 212 13:56 Mr HUTCHINSON 212585 Lyons People in my electorate of Lyons in Tasmania—and indeed Australia—witnessed the end of a political era just prior to Christmas with the passing of Jeanette Elizabeth Duthie. Mrs Duthie, who was 95, was the wife of Tasmanian political legend Gil Duthie. Mr Duthie was the federal member for the Tasmanian seat of Wilmot from September 28, 1946 until 13 December, 1975. The Wilmot electorate's name was changed to Lyons in 1984. Wilmot's and Lyon's constituents have always chosen their federal representatives with care. Many politicians, both at federal and state level and of all political persuasions, have modelled themselves on Gil Duthie's political way of doing things. Detailed in his book I Had 50,000 Bosses: Memoir of a Labor Backbencher, new candidates are still advised that the only way to win Lyons is the Gil Duthie way: by doorknocking until your shoe leather has worn out and then by buying new shoes and doing it all over again. Mr Duthie, a former Methodist minister, was also renowned for his integrity and his unrelenting campaigning on behalf of the people. His family paid tribute to the part their mother played in his long and impressive political career in the days following his passing. Mr and Mrs Duthie's daughter Jan said that she and her sisters, Colleen and Denise, had been talking only this week about the way that their mother had supported Mr Duthie in all the 29 years he was in politics. She said that Mrs Duthie was a quiet and reserved sort of person who had suddenly been thrust into a very public role as the wife of a federal politician. (Time expired) Bendigo Electorate: Bushfires 213 13:58 Ms CHESTERS 249710 Bendigo Today I rise to acknowledge and thank the amazing CFA crews of my electorate. From Macedon to Elmore, our community knows that the CFA is there if the worst occurs. One way in which we are showing our support and saying thanks is by participating in National Red Balloon Day. National Red Balloon Day will be held on 28 February, the last day of the typical fire season. Residents are encouraged to buy red balloons and to tie them to their letterboxes, gates and fences as a symbol of thanks. Two Bendigo women, Jodie Hardiman and Aleasha Gilbert, are encouraging the community to participate in this festival. Jodie, like many on Black Saturday, was evacuated, and she said it is one of the scariest things to have happened to her and her family. These guys do it without wanting thanks and they do it because they want to protect their community. I agree with Jodie. Bushfire season is a fact of life when you live in regional Victoria. In the back of everybody's mind every day is, 'Be ready to act, be ready to go to.' Our hearts sink when we see an alert pop up on social media or on our phones, and we feel guilt when we breathe a sigh of relief that the alert is not for our town but potentially one on the other side of the Calder. So far in Bendigo we have been lucky, and we hope that luck continues. If our luck runs out, we know, like everyone in the Bendigo electorate, that our local CFA crews will be there—and for that we say thank you. The SPEAKER SE4 In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded. CONDOLENCES 213 CONDOLENCES Gietzelt, Hon. Arthur Thomas, AO 213 Report from Federation Chamber 213 14:00 The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the motion moved by the honourable Prime Minister be agreed to. As a mark of respect, I ask all present to signify their approval by rising in their places. Question agreed to, honourable members standing in their places. The SPEAKER SE4 I thank the House. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 214 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Employment 214 14:01 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his election promise to visit East Arnhem Land in his first week as Prime Minister. Given that Rio Tinto will close the alumina refinery by the middle of the year and the Prime Minister's commitment today to improve Indigenous employment, why hasn't the Prime Minister been to Gove, and what is his plan to help the 1,200 people losing their jobs there? 14:01 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah I should not blame the Leader of the Opposition for the construction that he put on the statement I made at the Garma Festival last year, because some people did put that construction on it, but what I actually said— Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 We will have silence. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 On my left! Mr ABBOTT EZ5 What I actually said was that the first remote community that I would visit and stay in as Prime Minister would be a community in East Arnhem Land, and that is exactly what I am going to do. I will spend a week in East Arnhem Land later in the year. It will be the first remote Indigenous community that I visit in this way as Prime Minister. I am very much looking forward to it. I am very, very much looking forward to it because, amongst many other things, Galarrwuy Yunupingu has been one of the fathers of Indigenous advancement in this country, and I was particularly honoured that he was so keen, up at the Garma Festival, that East Arnhem Land should be the first Indigenous community that I volunteer in as Prime Minister. As for the refinery at Gove, like the Leader of the Opposition, I deeply regret the decision that Rio Tinto have made to close that refinery. They have made that decision because the refinery is uneconomic. They have made a commitment that the Indigenous workers will all be found work in the mine that will remain open and operational. My understanding is that they are hoping to provide alternative employment to all of their other workers at the refinery. Without wishing to be too partisan about this, but given that the Leader of the Opposition has chosen to raise it in this way: if the Leader of the Opposition were as concerned as I believe he is, he might have a word to his senators about passing the carbon tax repeal legislation. Economy 214 14:04 Ms GAMBARO 9K6 Brisbane My question is to the Prime Minister. How is the government delivering on its commitments to deliver a strong and prosperous economy and a safe and secure Australia? 14:04 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah I thank the member for Brisbane for her question. I can point out to her and the House that, while the government has only been in office for five months, a good start has been made. We inherited from the former government unemployment that had gone up by 200,000 over six years. We inherited from the former government a situation where their loss of control of the borders had led to more than 50,000 illegal arrivals by boat. And of course, under the former government, debt was skyrocketing towards $667 billion. I can report to the member for Brisbane that the new government is stopping the boats. We are fixing the budget. And we are building a future where every Australian can expect a fair go and every Australian will be encouraged to have a go. That is the kind of future that we are building. We have sensible savings before the Senate—$15 billion worth of savings for which we sought a mandate at the election, including $5 billion worth of savings for which Labor sought a mandate at the election, so you would think, would you not, that members opposite would facilitate the passage of those savings. We have the carbon tax repeal legislation, the mining tax repeal legislation and the Australian Building and Construction Commission restoration legislation similarly before the Senate. All of these things were put before the people at the election, and we have a mandate for them. As part of being open for business, the Minister for the Environment has given approval to new projects worth a potential $400 billion, and I thank the minister for his work. As part of being open for business, the Minister for Trade has successfully negotiated a free trade agreement with Korea, which will be very good news for Australian agriculture as well as being good news for Australian consumers. We said we would stop the boats, and it has now been 55 days without an illegal boat arrival on our shores. That gives the Australian people great confidence that border security can be re-established. But part of building a safe and secure Australia is closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes. As I reported to the House today, there is still a long way to go but great progress has been made. I would like to be an infrastructure Prime Minister but I would also like to be known as the Prime Minister for Indigenous affairs. Employment 215 14:07 Mr SNOWDON IJ4 Lingiari I remind the Prime Minister that before the last election he said in Arnhem Land: Why shouldn't I, if you will permit me, spent my first week as Prime Minister, should that happen, on your country? Given the devastating impact the closure of the alumina refinery will have on people in this community, including small business owners like Kelly Murray and her husband, who run a bait and tackle shop in Nhulunbuy, why hasn't the Prime Minister been to East Arnhem Land to outline his plan for new jobs for the community, who feel abandoned by your government? The SPEAKER SE4 Before I call the Prime Minister, that question was full of argument. Perhaps the member would like to rephrase it and in so doing make sure it is different from the question that has already been asked. Mr Burke DYW Madam Speaker, I raise a point of order. The only issue that could possibly be taken as argument is quoting the Prime Minister's words back to him that he has just denied. The SPEAKER SE4 You did not listen attentively to the question. I did. I call the member for Lingiari. Mr SNOWDON IJ4 With great respect, Madam Speaker, are you directing me not to say that Kelly Murray and her husband feel that the government has abandoned them? The SPEAKER SE4 It is not relevant to the question. Mr SNOWDON IJ4 I will repeat the question. 'Why shouldn't I,' you said, Prime Minister, 'if you will permit me, spend my first week as Prime Minister, should that happen, on your country?' Given the devastating impact of the closure of the alumina refinery on the people of this community of Nhulunbuy and the surrounding region, why hasn't the Prime Minister been to East Arnhem Land to outline his plan for new jobs for the community, who feel abandoned by his government? The SPEAKER SE4 I will call the Prime Minister. I feel he has answered a lot of that question already but I would give him the call to do so. 14:09 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah Let me inform the member that my first week in a remote community as Prime Minister will be in East Arnhem Land. My first week in a remote community as Prime Minister will be in East Arnhem Land, and I suggest that the member should quote the sentence or two that came before the sentence that he quoted to this parliament. For the benefit of members opposite, let me repeat: my first week in a remote community as Prime Minister will be in East Arnhem Land. I am looking forward to going. I am looking forward to meeting with the traditional owners and with other Indigenous leaders led by Galarrwuy Yunupingu. It will happen later in the year and I look forward to meeting while I am up there anyone who feels that the federal government can be doing more to help. What I intend to do is as far as is humanly possible be a Prime Minister for all Australians. I can understand why the people in Nhulunbuy are unhappy, why people involved in the Gove refinery are feeling disappointed. But I have spoken on a number of occasions with Rio Tinto about this and, as I said, the assurance I have had is that the Indigenous workers at the refinery will be offered new employment in the mine and that as far as is humanly possible every worker at the refinery will be offered redeployment within the Rio Tinto business. Indigenous Education 216 14:11 Mr WYATT M3A Hasluck My question is to the Minister for Education. Will the minister outline to the House the government's plan to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in literacy and numeracy outcomes? 14:12 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I thank the member for Hasluck for his question. As members would be well aware, today the Prime Minister delivered his Closing the Gap report for 2014 and he announced that we would be attempting to end the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in terms of school attendance within five years and that would be added as one of the targets of the Closing the Gap program initiated by the previous government. As the Prime Minister said this morning, no-one has ever received a good education by not turning up to school. Upon coming to government we have moved quickly to try and address the issue of school truancy but also meaningful education at school that keeps bringing students back every day. In the Northern Territory alone, my cabinet colleague Senator Scullion tells me that 13 per cent of Indigenous students attend less than 80 per cent of the time that they should be at school. That makes it virtually possible for them to achieve the same outcomes as non-Indigenous Australians. So we have moved quickly. We have allocated $28.5 million to employ 400 school attendance officers in 40 communities in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, South Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. Early signs since the beginning of this year's school year show an increase in attendance from 60 per cent to 90 per cent in those communities, which is a tremendous result. Let us hope we can continue that throughout the year and into the future. Once we get children to come to school, we want them to be taught meaningfully. Last week I was in Bamaga and Injinoo at the top of Cape York with the member for Leichhardt and visited school communities there. What has been most transformative in that school community has been a focus on phonics teaching through explicit instruction. Over the last five years that was the first school in Queensland to adopt explicit instruction. Their NAPLAN results between 2008 and 2013 have dramatically improved. And while I do not have time to go through the results in this answer, they are startlingly good. That is why we intend to expand direct instruction, explicit instruction and phonics into more rural and remote communities, particularly Indigenous ones, through a $22 million program, the details of which will be announced over the coming weeks, to give a meaningful education to Indigenous children when they present at school and to keep them coming. Through these measures, we will not only reduce school truancy but also improve the outcomes of students and start to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in terms of school attendance and outcomes. Economy 217 14:15 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon My question is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to the fact that 54,000 full-time jobs have been lost since the election and that this is a worse outcome than Australia experienced for the whole of the 2009 calendar year during the global financial crisis. When will the government take responsibility for these job losses? 14:15 Mr HOCKEY DK6 North Sydney I thank the member for the question. It might surprise the member for McMahon that we are unable to turn the economy around on a two-bob piece. We have to actually get through our legislative program, which actually helps to build a stronger economy. The best thing Labor could do is to help us repeal the carbon tax. And the best thing Labor could do is to help us repeal the mining tax. And the best thing Labor could do is to help us fix the budget. And the best thing Labor could do is to help us pay down the $123 billion of deficit that is Labor's legacy. And the best thing Labor could do is to prevent this country from ending up with $667 billion of debt, thanks to the largesse of Labor over the last six years. That is going to create the jobs. Lift the burden off business if you want to create jobs. The Labor Party does not understand: it is not the government that creates jobs; it is business that creates jobs, it is enterprise that creates jobs, it is small business that creates jobs. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 The member for Moreton; the member for Adelaide will desist. Mr HOCKEY DK6 You've got to love the chutzpah of the Labor Party. They have got nothing else. They left us with an unemployment rate that is rising to 6¼ per cent. They left us with a deteriorating terms of trade, they left us with an economy that is slowing below trend growth, and now they complain about their legacy. Research and Development 217 14:18 Ms McGOWAN 123674 Indi My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. We know that innovation is the key to Australian agriculture remaining competitive. During the election the government committed to an additional $100 million for agricultural research and development. Given the current public debate about the future of agriculture manufacturing and the need for innovation, would the minister please outline the time line for this funding to become available, and how it will be distributed? 14:18 Mr JOYCE E5D New England Thank you very much for the question. I am astounded, because it is the first question I have actually received from the other side, so I would like to thank the member for Indi for the question. It is a good question, because it is about research and development. The Commonwealth each year delivers about $700 million in research and development. About $250 million comes from my department alone. We made an announcement through the budget that a further $100 million over the forward estimates will be delivered, and that will roll out from 2014-15. It is very important, because research and development goes to the crux of how we expand our industry. As a former member of the Rural Research and Development Council—correct me if I am wrong—you would be aware of the report that says that we get $11 return for every $1 spent. It is those sorts of returns that, in our history, have seen us deliver things such as pink lady apples, the rust-resistant wheat that Farrer was instrumental in and that allowed us to develop blacksoil plains, the stump-jump plough—to help us get through the Labor Party! And then there is Droughtmaster cattle, and the Cactoblastis moth—there are so many things you can do with a smart country that actually invests. And we do invest. But who used to remove investment? CSIRO lost about $63 million through the Labor Party. And what I also might say is that we have seen some reports that confuse the issue between research and development and subsidies. Research and development are not subsidies. And when we hear reported that $63 million goes into the grains industry for research and development, that is a good investment, when you have $7½ billion coming back from grains. Ms McGowan 123674 Madam Speaker, a point of order on relevance: the question was about investment of $100 million— The SPEAKER SE4 There is no point of order. Mr JOYCE E5D The member for Indi would be aware that it is in the budget, and it rolls out from 2014-15, and it is $100 million over the forward estimates. This gives us the capacity to build on the $250 million a year that comes from my department alone, the $700 million that is already part of the Commonwealth's investment through other organisations and other entities, such as the CSIRO. This is all very important because that is why we can invest $19 million in dairy and get a return of about $2½ billion. This is the smart country that we wish to stand behind, because that is how— (Time expired) Economy 218 14:22 Mr GOODENOUGH 74046 Moore My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline the debt and deficit situation inherited by the government? What are the challenges to this parliament in addressing the debt and deficit position? Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 I remind those on my left that we will have silence. 14:22 Mr HOCKEY DK6 North Sydney I thank the member for Moore for the question. I recognise that he knows, as I know and now the Australian people know, that Labor left behind deficits of $123 billion. On the estimation of the Treasury, the budget would never have got to surplus under Labor. The only way to repay debt is by having a surplus. The Labor Party's legacy is $667 billion of government debt, unless we can get the budget back to surplus. We have not mucked around in trying to address this. One of the first things we did was to introduce legislation to repeal the mining tax and all its associated expenditure. The Labor Party's great benchmark legacy of incompetence was the multitude of designs associated with the variations on the mining tax. How incompetent could you be in designing a tax that raised on average $20 per person over the last three years but has $700 per person of expenditure over the next four years associated with that revenue? Only Labor could introduce a new tax that leaves the budget worse off. That is the peak of incompetence, and they met it last term. They all have to accept responsibility. What did we do? We came into this parliament, said we were getting rid of the tax and we have to get rid of the expenditure associated with it. We have to take the hard yards, and that starts on our turf. We made those decisions. We went to the electorate and said, 'We're sorry, Australia, we had to get rid of the schoolkids bonus.' We said that not because there is any ideological satisfaction in it, but because we knew that it was unfair to burden our children with the debt of handouts to parents today. Every dollar that goes out is borrowed from our children. The bottom line is: Labor does not care about that, but we do. We care about intergenerational debt. The Labor Party are now opposing $20 billion of savings that are sitting in the Senate. It gets worse every day, because the longer those savings are delayed, the less opportunity there is to repair the budget now. Labor do not care about the future. They do not care about the future at all, and that is why they do not care about deficit and debt. That says everything about the Labor Party. 14:25 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong My question is to the Prime Minister. Between September and December last year, 54,000 full-time jobs were lost. That is a rate of about one job for every three minutes that the Abbott government has been in power. When will this job-losing government take responsibility for job losses and stop blaming the people who lose their jobs? 14:26 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah None of us like to see jobs lost. We all deeply regret the fact that sometimes jobs are lost. I do not wish to say this in a party political sense but it is hard to avoid it, given the suggestion we have just had from the Leader of the Opposition that somehow every unfortunate thing that has happened in the first five months of the coalition government's life is the coalition's fault. Was it the coalition that put the carbon tax on energy intensive industries? Was it the coalition that put the mining tax on the resources sector? Was it the coalition that wrapped up so many of our industries in environmental green tape? Was it the coalition that abolished the Australian Building and Construction Commission? Was it the coalition that was responsible for the loss of at least 33,000 jobs in 2012—not just according to ABS statistics; these were the job loss announcements made by businesses when the Leader of the Opposition was the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Really and truly, the hypocrisy of members opposite is astounding. I say again to the Leader of the Opposition: all of us in this place, including the Leader of the Opposition, want to create jobs. Let me pose the question again to members opposite: is it easier to create jobs with a carbon tax or without one? Is it easier to create jobs with a mining tax or without one? Is it easier to create jobs without an Australian building and construction commission or with one? I am absolutely confident that the workers of this country know who are their best friends in this parliament. Carbon Pricing 220 14:28 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack My question is to the Minister for the Environment. I refer to this bill from Derby Industries that shows that Western Australia's major meat-processing plant, Talloman, is being charged around $250,000 in higher electricity costs as a result of the carbon tax. How is the carbon tax reducing the competitiveness of Australia's export industries and why is it important to scrap the tax as soon as possible? I seek leave to table this electricity bill. Mr Shorten 00ATG We have not seen the document. Leave is not granted. Leave not granted. 14:29 Mr HUNT 00AMV Flinders I want to thank the member for Durack, because the member for Durack represents an export electorate—an electorate which produces minerals, energy, crops and, in particular, livestock. She knows that competitiveness is absolutely essential, in this global environment, to creating and maintaining jobs. So, against that background, when you see that a particular firm is faced with a $250,000 bill—that is $19,000 a month plus GST—just for the carbon tax, you have to ask yourself: how does this create jobs; how does this help competitiveness; how does this help Australian exports; and how does this help Australians maintain the ability to be competitive? The answer is that what we see from Derby Industries at Talloman is a very simple proposition. They are hit with the carbon tax through their electricity bills. But abattoirs around the country are not just hit with that; they have to pay the carbon tax through their electricity bills but they also have to pay the carbon tax through the direct emissions. They pay the carbon tax through gas; they pay the carbon tax through diesel generation; they pay the carbon tax through refrigerants. Do you know what—if the Leader of the Opposition gets his way they will also pay the carbon tax on their trucks, because every time they drive their goods to market or from the processing centre, under his proposal there will be a carbon tax on trucks. We are waiting for the esteemed Leader of the Opposition to say whether or not he still stands by a carbon tax on trucks, because that is his policy. Beyond that, it is not just this one abattoir; it is also abattoirs such as Master Butchers— Ms Rishworth interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 The member for Kingston will desist. Mr HUNT 00AMV in the electorate of Port Adelaide, where the Chief Executive Officer, Warren McLean, said, 'The carbon tax has cost this business over $330,000 in higher electricity and gas costs in 2012-13.' This equates to a whopping $15,000 per employee in the member's own electorate. Against that background let me be absolutely clear. There is a $7½ billion tax break to help improve competitiveness, which we can give to Australian companies. Right now that tax break is before the Senate. Right now the Leader of the Opposition has his senators on an industrial go-slow. It is an area of expertise! If the Leader of the Opposition wants to help he should send his senators back to work and repeal the carbon tax. Automotive Industry 221 14:33 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong I was watching the clock. Thank you, Madam Speaker, for your guidance. My question is to the Prime Minister. Today the Australian Financial Review reported that Toyota had blamed unions in a meeting with the Treasurer on 3 December. The Treasurer has since confirmed that that report is correct. However, Toyota denies the report and confirms that they have never blamed the union for their decision to close their manufacturing operations. Prime Minister, who is telling the truth: the Treasurer or Toyota? The SPEAKER SE4 I call the honourable Prime Minister, although I find it curious that it was not asked of the Treasurer. Mr Pyne 9V5 Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The question is out of order. The Prime Minister could not possibly know the answer to that question. The question should be directed to the Treasurer, and even then it might not be in order. There is a pattern here of questions that are not really in order. It is probably time that the opposition learnt how to draft a question. I ask that you rule that question out of order. It is not directed to the correct minister. Mr Burke DYW Madam Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition is asserting that the Prime Minister is not responsible for the conduct of his ministers. That would be a complete change from all precedence in the way this House has conducted question time. Mr Abbott EZ5 The Treasurer can answer the question. The SPEAKER SE4 Before I call the Treasurer—the Prime Minister is totally in order to direct that that question be answered in that way—I believe that the Leader of the House had a valid point to make about the nature of the question. But we will allow it to stand and have the Treasurer answer it. 14:34 Mr HOCKEY DK6 North Sydney The report, as it related to the content of the discussion between myself and Toyota, was correct. Toyota's statement today is also correct. Toyota did not blame the unions because, at that time, Toyota still wanted to say in Australia. Mr Dreyfus interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 The member for Isaacs will desist or remove himself from the chamber. Mr HOCKEY DK6 They wanted to stay in Australia. You talk about the front page of the Australian Financial Review. Here is the front page you should be looking at. It says, 'Toyota demands IR reform.' Remember when Max Yasuda went onto the Australian Financial Review in 2012? Courageously, Max Yasuda, a Japanese chief executive, went on the front page of a national newspaper in Australia and said, 'We need IR reform to maintain our business.' I table that document. If IR was not an issue in relation to Toyota— Mr Burke DYW I rise on a point of order with respect to direct relevance. I appreciate that the Treasurer may not have been attentive to the question because it was directed to the Prime Minister, but it— The SPEAKER SE4 There is no point of order. The member will resume his seat. There was a perfectly valid point about whether the question was in order at all. The Prime Minister elected to ask the Treasurer to answer it. The Treasurer has the call. Mr HOCKEY DK6 In their November submission to the Productivity Commission review of the automotive industry, Toyota identified four key requests in relation to their business in Australia. No. 4 is industrial relations. I table that. On 10 December, seven days after I met Toyota, I spoke in this place, before Holden had even announced they were leaving Australia. I will quote myself from Hansard, because I was pretty good on that day! Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 The member for Parramatta will remove herself from the chamber under 94(a). The member for Parramatta then left the chamber. Mr HOCKEY DK6 I said: They have gone to their employees— that is, Toyota— and said, 'We need to have this deal go through to help to manage—just to manage—the cost of employment in Australia so that we can go back to Tokyo and say to them in good faith that the workers of Australia really do want a manufacturing business.' So the best thing the Labor Party can do is put aside the politics and ring up its mates at the AMWU and tell them to accept the deal being offered by Toyota, which will give them job security. So yes, on 10 December in this place I raised industrial relations, which followed that meeting with Max Yasuda on 3 December. Mr Burke DYW Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. An answer about 10 December cannot be relevant to what happened at a meeting on 3 December. The SPEAKER SE4 The member will resume his seat. The Leader of the House. Mr Pyne 9V5 Madam Speaker, the Manager of Opposition Business is playing fast and loose with the standing orders. He has already had his point of order on relevance and, therefore, that point of order was entirely out of order and does not even require a response from you. The SPEAKER SE4 Quite correct. The Treasurer has the call. Mr HOCKEY DK6 My comment in this place on 10 December confirms what was said to me on 3 December. Mr Bowen interjecting— Mr HOCKEY DK6 Listen! And on 11 December I said it again in this place. I went through the agreement between the AMWU, the workers and Toyota management and pointed out that Toyota was gravely concerned that, if they had to close over the Christmas period, it would put pressure on their ability to supply the market in the Middle East. Now, what happened on 12 December? Have a look at Toyota's release on 12 December after they lost the court case to the AMWU, which says: The proposed changes— from Toyota— were designed to remove outdated and uncompetitive terms and conditions that make it difficult to compete with other Toyota plants throughout the world. Get your facts right, Labor, and maybe you will understand that they tried to stay in Australia and it is partly the responsibility of your mates. Mr Dreyfus interjecting— The SPEAKER SE4 The member for Isaacs will remove himself under standing order 94(a). The member for Isaacs then left the chamber. Carbon Pricing 223 14:39 Mr VAN MANEN 188315 Forde My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. I refer the minister to this email from Thiess Australia stating that the carbon tax is costing this food processing business $5.5 million a year in higher electricity prices, higher gas prices and direct emissions charges. How does the government plan to reduce the costs for the Australian food industry? 14:40 Mr JOYCE E5D New England I thank the member for Forde for this question, because Beenleigh abattoir is in his district. Beenleigh abattoir can process up to 1,400 head per day and has in excess of 800 people—working men and women—who support the local economy. Beenleigh abattoir is part of a group which employs in excess of 2,000 men and women of this nation and has to pay tax—apparently, the omnipotent bodies on the opposite side can single-handedly change the temperature of the globe!—and this is costing them in excess of $920,000 a year. If the Labor Party can charge us to change the temperature of the globe then I want them to make it rain. That would seem fair enough. This is what we have to do. It is not just the direct costs; it is the fact that electricity prices are going up and that gas prices are going up, but part of his question is very important: what are we going to do about it? We are going to scrap the tax. We are going to get rid of the tax. We do not deny that the government has changed. We believe that the government has changed and that, therefore, the process must change. When the Australian people asked for a change in government on the mandate that we scrap the tax, you were supposed to respect the result, but of course, you did not. So we are still dealing with the anomaly that they believe that $920,000 is what you have to pay for the privilege of employing in excess of 2,000 Australian men and women. Maybe one day you would like to go to the food-processing sector to have a look at what these people do, to see how they are growing an industry. You may like to realise how we have a great future in the beef industry because one of the other anomalies which we had with their side—and it is also associated with the beef sector— is that Labor were the geniuses who shut down the live cattle trade. Overnight they decided that we would no longer export to one of our major partners. Our solution, for the member for Forde, is that we are going to get rid of the tax because we do not believe, as you do, that we can single-handedly change the temperature of the globe. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 224 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 224 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Automotive Industry 224 14:42 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon My question is to the Treasurer. I refer to the front page story in today's Australian Financial Review entitled 'Toyota blamed union'. Did the Treasurer himself or anyone on his behalf provide information to the Australian Financial Review about the Treasurer's meetings with Toyota? 14:43 Mr HOCKEY DK6 North Sydney I tell you what: I do not discuss those sorts of conversations and I certainly don't discuss— Opposition members interjecting— Mr HOCKEY DK6 Hang on! Hang on! Do you know what? Before you get carried away, I do not publicly discuss what is said to me by members of the Labor Party frontbench either. I do not know whether I should, but if I break the seal and start revealing everything that is said to me or that I say to the media, I will have to do it for the Labor Party frontbench, and that could be pretty embarrassing. Education 224 14:44 Mr IRONS HYM Swan My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. I remind the minister that my electorate of Swan is home to Curtin University's Bentley campus. Will the minister please update the House on the government's New Colombo Plan and how it will benefit undergraduate students in my electorate? 14:44 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin I thank the member for Swan for his question and I note the great support that he gives to the students and staff at the Bentley campus of Curtin University. I am delighted to confirm that the coalition government is delivering on its election promise to establish a student scholarship scheme, the New Colombo Plan, which will give undergraduate students an opportunity to study at universities in our region and undertake work placements and internships. This gives expression to our foreign policy focus on our region. The pilot program for the New Colombo Plan was launched last December, and today the Minister for Education and I are announcing the first round of student grants for placements in the first semester of 2014. This year, more than 300 Australian undergraduates, from 24 universities across Australia, will be undertaking studies and work placements in the four pilot locations of Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan. The member for Swan will be interested to know that 10 engineering students from Curtin University will be undertaking studies at universities in Indonesia and work placements with leading Indonesian companies and global companies operating in Indonesia in telecommunications, mining, engineering and geophysics. In fact I had a great conversation yesterday with Foreign Minister Natalegawa about the enhanced opportunities for student exchange between Indonesia and Australia. We will also have students studying in the agricultural sector, particularly focussing on the beef sector, which will be an important engagement with Indonesia. There are other opportunities for the 300 students that will be in this first tranche. Australian medical students will be undertaking clinical placements in Singapore. In Japan there will be internships in state-of-the-art technology companies. In Hong Kong Australian students will be studying business and Chinese language at universities. Later this month the second tranche applications will open. The applications for the prestigious 12-month scholarships are already open. In 2015 we hope to roll out the New Colombo Plan across the region. Our vision is for a two-way student exchange. Already the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is managing about 4,400 inbound scholarships. The New Colombo Plan will comprise the outbound component, and this will give rise to our vision for deeper engagement in the Asia-Pacific. I want to place on record our thanks to: Her Excellency the Governor-General for agreeing to be the patron; the New Colombo Plan reference group, chaired by the Secretary of Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; vice-chairs, Kevin McCann and Sandra Harding; Kate Duff and the team at DFAT; the NCP secretariat; the staff at the education ministry; and the opposition for their bipartisan support for ensuring that the New Colombo Plan is a success. Automotive Industry 225 14:47 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong My question is to the Prime Minister. The Treasurer has given some false accounts of private meetings with Toyota; he has attacked General Motors in parliament; and he is letting the agriculture minister— The SPEAKER SE4 The introduction to your question is out of order. You are making assertions. If you wish to do that, there are proper forms of the House in which to do that. You might care to rephrase your question. MOTIONS 225 MOTIONS Prime Minister 225 Attempted Censure 225 14:48 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong I seek leave to move a motion of censure against the Prime Minister. Leave not granted. 14:48 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Maribyrnong moving immediately: That the House censure the Prime Minister and the Treasurer for leading a job destroying Government which is intent on blaming employees and their negotiated employment conditions for the loss of their jobs, in particular: (1) censure the Prime Minister for: (a) failing to lead a Government united in supporting Australian jobs; (b) having no plan for Australian jobs; (c) failing to fight for Australian jobs; and (2) censure the Treasurer for: (a) goading Holden out of Australia; (b) giving false accounts of private meetings with Toyota; and (c) blaming workers for his failure to fight for Australian jobs. 14:49 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I move: That the member be no longer heard. The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the member be no longer heard.

The House divided. [14:53]
(The Speaker—Hon. Bronwyn Bishop)

88 AYES Abbott, AJ Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hockey, JB Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Tudge, AE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 54 NOES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Palmer, CF Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Shorten, WR Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

14:59 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon I second the motion. One job lost every three minutes under this government and all this government can do is blame background and smear. Take no responsibility, blame the work— The SPEAKER SE4 The member will resume his seat. 14:59 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I move: That the member be no longer heard. The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the member be no longer heard.

The House divided. [15:04]
(The Speaker—Hon. Bronwyn Bishop)

89 AYES Abbott, AJ Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hockey, JB Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Ramsey, RE Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Tudge, AE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 53 NOES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Shorten, WR Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

15:11 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt The opposition is a sad and pathetic rabble that has wasted question time— 15:12 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That the question be now put. The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the question be now put. Question agreed to. The SPEAKER SE4 The question now is that the motion moved by the member for Maribyrnong be agreed to. The House divided. [21:15] (The Speaker—Hon. Bronwyn Bishop) 51 AYES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Shorten, WR Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Zappia, A 91 NOES Abbott, AJ Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hockey, JB Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McGowan, C McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Ramsey, RE Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Tudge, AE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Wilkie, AD Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 231 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Asylum Seekers 231 15:21 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Will the minister explain how the government is keeping its commitment to deny permanent visas for people who have arrived illegally in Australia by boat, and are there any challenges to the government fulfilling that promise? 15:21 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I thank the member for Pearce for his question. He has a keen interest in these issues, particularly in managing issues around the Northam centre. A commitment was made by the coalition before the last election, and that commitment is being honoured. It is being honoured despite the frustration of those opposite, because what we are doing is cleaning up the mess on our borders that was left by those opposite. The key contributors to that mess I still see sitting on the frontbench of the opposition. I still see them there. We have got the member for Gorton, who was responsible for 12,500 arrivals. We have the member for Watson, the Manager of Opposition Business. He was only there for two months, but he was responsible for almost 5,500 arrivals. Of course, the daddy of them all was the member for McMahon. The member for McMahon, who wanted to come to the dispatch box and remind us all about records in this very question time, was responsible for 25,000 arrivals in 400 boats. It was the member for McMahon who left me the boats and it was the member for McMahon as Treasurer who has left this Treasurer the budget with a deficit of over $120 billion. If there is a gold medal for ministerial failure—in multiple portfolios, as we know—it is the member for McMahon, particularly so in immigration. This government is going to continue with the policies that are working, despite the opposition that continues to come from those opposite. That opposition extends to them continuing to try and deny this government the reintroduction of temporary protection visas, which has been core coalition policy for over a decade and is part of a suite of measures that we know stops the boats. We took it to the election, we had the mandate of the Australian people and they have sought to deny and frustrate that in the Senate by teaming up with their partners in crime, the Greens, when it comes to border protection policy failure. We know what happened when they got rid of temporary protection visas when they were in government. We know that 800 boats turned up, we know that 1,100 people perished at sea, we know that there were 8,000 children who turned up on boats after they got rid of temporary protection visas and we know that they handed out 15,000 permanent visas to people who turned up illegally by boat. They think the best message to send to people to not come to Australia is to give 30,000 permanent visas to people who arrived illegally on boats on their watch. This government does not agree with that. This government is going to honour its commitments that are stopping the boats and implement the measures that they did not have the strength to implement. Mr Abbott EZ5 I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORTS 232 AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORTS 15:25 The SPEAKER SE4 I present the Auditor-General's Performance Audit No. 19 of 2013-14, Management of complaints and other feedback by the Australian Tax Office. Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper. COMMITTEES 232 COMMITTEES Selection Committee 232 Report 232 15:25 The SPEAKER SE4 I present Report No. 3 of the Selection Committee relating to the consideration of committee and delegation business and private members' business on Monday, 24 February 2014. The report will be printed in the Hansard for today and the committee's determinations will appear on tomorrow's Notice Paper. Copies of the report have been placed on the table. The report read as follows— Report relating to the consideration of committee and delegation business and of private Members' business 1. The committee met in private session on Tuesday 11 February 2014. 2. The committee determined the order of precedence and times to be allotted for consideration of committee and delegation business and private Members' business on Monday, 24 February 2014, as follows: Items for House of Representatives Chamber (10.10 am to 12 noon) COMMITTEE AND DELEGATION BUSINESS Presentation and statements 1 Committee statement: Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters — Statement relating to inquiry into the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Above the Line Voting) Bill 2013. The Committee determined that a statement may be made—all statements to conclude by 10.15 am. Speech time limits— Mr Smith — 5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 1 x 5 mins] PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS Notices 1 MR BANDT: To present a Bill for an Act to amend the Public Service Act 1999, and for related purposes. (Public Service Amendment (Employment for all of us) Bill 2013). (Notice given 10December 2013.) Time allotted—10 minutes . Speech time limits— Mr Bandt — 10 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 1 x 10 mins] Presenter may speak to the second reading for a period not exceeding 10 minutes—pursuant to standing order 41. 2 MR WILKIE: To present a Bill for an Act to restrict the export of live animals for slaughter pending its prohibition, and for related purposes. (Live Animal Export Prohibition (Ending Cruelty) Bill 2013). (Notice given 12December 2013.) Time allotted—10 minutes . Speech time limits— Mr Wilkie — 10 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 1 x 10 mins] Presenter may speak to the second reading for a period not exceeding 10 minutes—pursuant to standing order 41. 3 MR S. P. JONES: To move: That this House: (1) notes: (a) that funds were allocated for Regional Development Australia Funding (RDAF) Round 5 in the 2013-14 budget; (b) that RDAF Round 5 provided assistance to local government projects to fund the construction of important pieces of small scale infrastructure to support local communities and regional development; (c) that the Government has: (i) committed to delivering some, but not all, of the RDAF Round 5 projects; and (ii) not yet made clear which RDAF Round 5 projects will and will not proceed; (2) calls on the Government to: (a) report to the Parliament on: (i) what, if any, consultation it had with local governments and Regional Development Australia in choosing the RDAF Round 5 projects it has decided to fund; and (ii) which, if any, of these projects will be funded under the National Stronger Regions Fund; and (b) provide certainty to regional communities by committing to fund each RDAF Round 5 project. Time allotted—40 minutes . Speech time limits— Mr S. P. Jones — 10 minutes. Next Member speaking—10 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 + 4 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 4 MS HENDERSON: To move: That this House: (1) notes that: (a) the Government is delivering on its $25 million election commitment to upgrade the Great Ocean Road; (b) this commitment has been matched by another $25 million from the Victorian Government; and (c) $15 million of federal funding for the Great Ocean Road upgrade was brought forward to this financial year; and (2) recognises that: (a) this iconic road is the centrepiece of the south-west Victorian tourism industry which supports thousands of local jobs; (b) the Great Ocean Road is a key Victorian tourist route which is used by high volumes of local and tourist traffic all year round; (c) approximately 1.7 million tourists drive on this road every year, and this number is expected to climb as the road continues to attract tourists from all over the world; and (d) the Great Ocean Road is also an important route for local industry. (Notice given 11December 2013.) Time allotted—remaining private Members' business time prior to 12 noon. Speech time limits— Ms Henderson—10 minutes. Next Member speaking—10 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 + 5 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day. Items for Federation Chamber (11 am to 1.30 pm) PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS Notices 1 MR WYATT: To move: That this House: (1) notes that diabetes is a serious health concern with an estimated 382 million people worldwide living with diabetes; (2) recognises that: (a) 8 per cent of Australians are living with diabetes; (b) by 2035, 14 per cent of Australians will be living with diabetes; and (c) incidences of diabetes are three to four times higher in Indigenous communities; (3) acknowledges that the World Diabetes Congress was: (a) held in Melbourne, from 2 to 6 December 2013; (b) attended by 50 international parliamentarians; and (c) successful in passing the Melbourne Declaration and appointing International Parliamentary Champions for Diabetes; (4) recognises that the International Parliamentary Champions for Diabetes will: (a) exchange policy views and practical ideas for prevention and management of diabetes; (b) encourage all governments to acknowledge that diabetes is a national health priority that requires a comprehensive action plan leading to action; and (c) aim to improve health outcomes for people with diabetes, stop discrimination towards people with diabetes and prevent development of Type 2 diabetes; (5) calls on the Government, individuals, families, communities, health care services and industry, to take urgent action to: (a) ensure prevention of diabetes; (b) improve early diagnosis of diabetes; (c) support ongoing research into treatment and medications for diabetes; and (d) effectively manage and treat diabetes; and (6) acknowledges the Government's contribution: (a) with an expert Advisory Group to consider available evidence and consult with a wide range of stakeholders to inform the development of the National Diabetes Strategy; (b) to ongoing research into a cure for Type 1 diabetes with a $35 million contribution into the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Clinical Research Network; and (c) in providing an additional $1.4 million for the Diabetes Insulin Pump Programme. (Notice given 5December 2013.) Time allotted—40 minutes . Mr Wyatt — 10 minutes. Next Member speaking—10 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 4 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 2 MS PLIBERSEK: To move: That this House: (1) notes the: (a) ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon; (b) former Labor Government's contribution of $100.8 million to humanitarian assistance; and (c) Government's contribution of $12 million; and (2) calls on the Government to immediately increase its humanitarian aid commitment to people affected by the Syrian conflict. Time allotted—30 minutes . Ms Plibersek — 10 minutes. Next Member speaking—10 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 2 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 3 Mr Coleman: To move: That this House: (1) notes that Defence is a critical responsibility of the Australian Government, which: (a) requires substantial investment in order to ensure Australia's military preparedness; and (b) suffered from material budget cuts under the former Government in recent years; (2) recognises the plans of the Government to make no further cuts to Defence expenditure, and to increase Defence expenditure to 2 per cent of GDP within a decade; and (3) commends the Government on this approach to Defence expenditure planning. (Notice given 11December 2013.) Time allotted—40 minutes . Mr Coleman — 10 minutes. Next Member speaking—10 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 10 mins + 4 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 4 Ms Ryan: To move: That this House: (1) notes: (a) the importance of investing in education and ensuring that Australia remains competitive by providing quality education to all Australian children regardless of their postcode; and (b) with concern that the gap between the most well off and disadvantaged students in Australia is on average 2.5 years, which is a much wider gap than the OECD average; (2) acknowledges that the: (a) well respected and qualified 'Gonski panel' identified six loadings and the importance of school reform as the key to improvement; and (b) New South Wales, Victorian, South Australian, Tasmanian and Australian Capital Territory governments along with the national Catholic and independent school authorities signed up to this funding model; (3) recognises that under the new four year funding arrangements for education, that it is impossible for the Government to guarantee that no school across Australia will be worse off; and (4) calls on the Government not to return to the inequitable Socioeconomic Status scheme funding model of the past, but to commit to its promise of honouring the education funding agreements already entered into and provide equity by making it a truly national system. (Notice given 11December 2013.) {DPS, "PFStart", "n"} Time allotted—30 minutes . Ms Ryan — 5 minutes. Other Members—5 minutes each. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 6 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration of this should continue on a future day. 5 Mr Ferguson: To move: That this House notes that: (1) March 2013 marked the 25th anniversary of the genocidal chemical attack by the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Halabja in the Kurdish region of Iraq that took at least 4,000 lives within a few minutes and displaced many thousands more, and was part of Saddam's brutal Anfal Campaign of the 1980s, targeting Kurdish and other minorities in Iraq; (2) some 4,000 villages, 2,000 schools and 300 hospitals were destroyed, including through the use of chemical weapons across dozens of Kurdish villages; (3) the Saddam regime was also responsible for the: (a) deportation or forced relocation of tens of thousands of Faili Kurds on the basis that they were not considered Iraqi; (b) abduction and execution of an estimated 8,000 Barzani Kurds who were subsequently buried in mass graves in southern Iraq; and (c) arrest, execution and subsequent burial of up to 100,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988, including women and children; and (4) the former dictator Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al‑Majid, known as Chemical Ali, were subsequently prosecuted and convicted for these and other crimes. (Notice given 13November 2013.) Time allotted—remaining private Members' business time prior to 1.30 pm. Mr Ferguson—5 minutes . Next Member speaking—5 minutes. [Minimum number of proposed Members speaking = 2 x 5 mins] The Committee determined that consideration of this s hould continue on a future day. Standing Committee on Economics 237 Membership 237 15:26 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt by leave—I move: That Dr Leigh be appointed a supplementary member of the Standing Committee on Economics for the purpose of the committee's inquiry into the Reserve Bank annual report 2013. Question agreed to. COMMITTEES 238 COMMITTEES Membership 238 15:27 The SPEAKER SE4 I have received a message from the Senate informing the House of the change of membership of certain joint committees. As the list is a lengthy one, I do not propose to read the list to the House. Details will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings. DOCUMENTS 238 DOCUMENTS Presentation 238 15:27 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt Documents are presented as listed in the schedule circulated to honourable members earlier in the day. Details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings. Derby Industries 238 Presentation 238 15:28 Mr HUNT 00AMV Flinders I table the document denied leave for tabling earlier from Derby Industries, Talloman— Honourable members interjecting— Mr HUNT 00AMV No? I table the document showing an electricity bill of $19,000 a month, plus GST, for a grand total of $250,000. You denied the right. You do not seem to be doing this in the fact. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 238 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Employment 238 15:28 The SPEAKER SE4 I have received a letter from the honourable member for Lingiari proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The recent failure of the government to take action to prevent imminent job losses across Australia, including at the Gove alumina refinery. I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places. More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places— 15:28 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I move: That the business of the day be called on. The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the motion be agreed to.

The House divided. [15:33]
(The Speaker—Hon. Bronwyn Bishop)

86 AYES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Tudge, AE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 52 NOES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Shorten, WR Snowdon, WE Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

MOTIONS 240 MOTIONS Leader of the House 240 Attempted Censure 240 15:40 Mr BURKE DYW Watson Madam Speaker, I seek leave to move the following motion. Leave not granted. 15:40 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the member for Watson moving immediately— That this House condemns the Leader of the House for shutting down debate on the MPI submitted today about jobs at Gove, and that the House notes that there is no government legislation before the House. What we have seen from the Leader of the House— 15:41 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I move: That the member be no longer heard. The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the member be no longer heard.

The House divided. [15:45]
(The Speaker—Hon. Bronwyn Bishop)

83 AYES Alexander, JG Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 54 NOES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Shorten, WR Snowdon, WE Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

15:50 The SPEAKER SE4 Is the motion seconded? 15:50 Mr SNOWDON IJ4 Lingiari I second the motion. I ask the government: why is it that they show such contempt— The SPEAKER SE4 The member will resume his seat. The Leader of the House? Mr Pyne 9V5 You have not given him the call, Madam Speaker. The SPEAKER SE4 I call the member for Lingiari. Mr SNOWDON IJ4 You did call me— The SPEAKER SE4 I did call him. Mr SNOWDON IJ4 but the microphone was not turned on. Why is it that you show such contempt for the people of north-east Arnhem Land and the community of Gove? Why do you hate them so much? Why won't you let us have a debate? The SPEAKER: Will the member resume his seat. I call the Leader of the House. 15:50 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt You were very generous, Madam Speaker. I move: That the member be no longer heard. The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the member be no longer heard.

The House divided. [15:55]
(The Speaker—Hon. Bronwyn Bishop)

Question agreed to.

15:59 The SPEAKER SE4 The question now is that the motion be agreed to. 15:59 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt The opposition needs to understand that the government decides the daily program. We take the address-in-reply seriously, unlike the opposition. 16:00 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That the question be now put. Question agreed to. The SPEAKER SE4 The question is that the motion for the suspension of standing and sessional orders be agreed to.

The House divided. [16:04]
(The Speaker—Hon. Bronwyn Bishop)

54 AYES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Shorten, WR Snowdon, WE Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 84 NOES Alexander, JG Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH 246 GOVERNOR-GENERAL'S SPEECH Address-in-Reply 246 16:10 The SPEAKER SE4 I call the member for Lingiari. Mr Snowdon IJ4 Thank you, Madam Speaker. What a wasted hour we have just had. The SPEAKER SE4 I am sorry, Member for Lingiari. You stood to get the call, but in fact the call is to go to the government side. People were still taking their places. I give the call to the Assistant Minister for Education. 16:10 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer I am pleased to speak this afternoon in the address-in-reply debate, and in doing so I take this opportunity to update the parliament and the nation about the circumstances of my electorate of Farrer. Farrer is approximately one-third of the state of New South Wales, and it might interest members to know that my colleague the member for Parkes represents another one-third of the state of New South Wales—his electorate adjoins mine to the east—and 46 other members, including the minister at the table, the member for Wentworth, represent the remainder of New South Wales. This illustrates very neatly the city-country divide, which is something that defines my electorate—it always has, and I suspect it always will as we see increasing regionalisation of populations moving to the coast. But at the moment it is a sad time for my constituents, particularly in the far west, because of the increasing and ever-creeping drought. I think it is fair to say it started in western Queensland and is moving south. Towards the end of January I spent a week driving, not flying—Deputy Speaker Scott, as you take the chair, I acknowledge that your electorate of Maranoa is also experiencing some very tough times—around my electorate. I wanted to take to the roads because as local members we need to see how bad our roads are, and I also wanted to talk face-to-face to as many people on as many properties as I could along the way. So from Wentworth to Broken Hill, to Packsaddle, to Tibooburra, back not quite to Wanaaring, down to White Cliffs and Menindee and back again through Ivanhoe, Booligal and Hay I was confronted with the very sad situations of so many rural properties. I represented most of these areas throughout most of the last long drought. They have probably had three good seasons and now they are slipping back into a similar situation—although, as I said, there is no reason to think that, because it is not raining today, it will not rain next week, next month or next year. I very much want to give a message of hope and optimism, even though that is difficult. One thing you have to say when you meet the people of this part of Australia is: their resilience is striking and notable and remarkable. But even tough people who are used to tough situations come to the end of the line, and I did see that in many instances. I stood on the bank of a dam in the north-west of my electorate, near Cameron Corner which borders New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland, and I heard from the property owner that there were 22 dams on the property and none of them had ever been dry, but now they were. Then I went into town and heard similar stories from so many people. And while people are preparing themselves for a drought—they are doing their best to look for groundwater, to put down bores, to prepare with poly pipe, storing fodder and everything that we are expected to do when this happens—they also called for support from government; they called for support from both state and federal governments, and I have brought that message back to the agriculture minister. I have spoken in depth with him about that, and I appreciate his understanding; as a person from the land, of course he does understand. I also sent the message to the New South Wales agriculture minister, and she, as a woman from the land, understands the situation we are facing. I was delighted today that support that had previously been available in the Bourke, Brewarrina and Walgett shires has now been extended to the central Darling and unincorporated areas of western New South Wales. That will help with fodder subsidies, transport subsidies and emergency water grants. So there is hope. I want to say to the people that I represent in that part of my electorate: we are with you. We are unable to wave a magic wand and take away the pain that you are experiencing, but we understand it. We have many rural members in this place, and we are hurting for you. I want to touch on some of the coalition's commitments and the circumstances, again, that our people are facing. In keeping with the remoteness of much of my electorate, mobile black spots are a key issue for the length and breadth of Farrer. So I am delighted that the coalition's $100 million regional Mobile Coverage Program is underway. There is $80 million to improve mobile coverage along major transport routes in small communities and in areas that are prone to experiencing natural disasters. A further $20 million, through the Mobile Black Spots Project, will improve coverage in locations with unique coverage issues and a higher demand for services. The process includes not only a discussion paper but on-the-ground, face-to-face talks with local communities about the impact poor mobile signals are having on their lives and businesses. I am delighted that the parliamentary secretary responsible for delivering the program has accepted my invitation to come to Farrer. I can assure the member for Bradfield that we will be keeping him busy when he arrives in May, with a 600-kilometre round trip in store. I want to list the mobile phone black spots because it is important. It is not a complete list but I have been, obviously, to all of these places and spoken to the people involved. They are located: between Savernake and Rennie on the Riverina Highway; west of The Rock; on the rural outskirts of Jindera; in Booroobanilly and Moonbria near Jerilderie; in Bunnaloo and areas in the Deniliquin-Mathoura-Barham triangle; in Willow Vale, near Balranald; in the Clare-Hatfield region and areas north of Balranald; in Coomealla, on the run between Wentworth and Dareton; in Topar, east of Broken Hill; in Packsaddle, north of Broken Hill; south of the Coombah Roadhouse at Bunnerungie; west of Tibooburra; north of Ivanhoe; on sections of the Adelaide Road, in the Thackaringa Hills; and in Silverton, just north-west of Broken Hill, where, it might interest you to know, the Mad Max car is located, because Mad Max was filmed in Broken Hill. (Quorum formed) I want to touch on a couple of other key issues for my electorate. One is natural gas. There is currently no provision for natural gas in the townships of Deniliquin, Moama, Mathoura, Jerilderie and Berrigan. With the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and the subsequent pressures on traditional, agricultural based industries, the importance of economic diversification in these towns is high. To illustrate this point, the New South Wales Department of Planning forecasts that the LGAs of Deniliquin and Jerilderie will experience negative population growth of 21.9 per cent and 18.8 per cent respectively between now and 2031. It is the joint responsibility of all levels of government to arrest this decline. The Commonwealth government will release $32.5 million to the New South Wales government following a signed agreement on the Basin Plan under the regional economic diversification program. It is my firm belief that this money should be used to assist in the rollout of natural gas infrastructure to these townships, all of which have been significantly impacted by the implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. There is unanimous agreement amongst residents, local government, local business and industry that the supply of natural gas to these towns should be a key priority for all of us. We are all working together. The Deniliquin Shire has already begun some preliminary investigations. Engineering consultancy firm GHD recently provided a quote for a feasibility study into extending the natural gas network to Deniliquin. This would be a logical first step in the process. I have written to the New South Wales Treasurer and I very much hope he will fund the feasibility study as the first step in this very important process. I cannot mention Deniliquin in my electorate without commenting on the severe impact that my constituents who are involved in irrigated agriculture and the associated value-add, particularly the rice industry, are experiencing as a result of Labor's flawed policies and its complete disregard for the contribution that irrigated farming makes to the region and to the nation as a whole. I am delighted that we are turning the ship around. It is actually a bit of a juggernaut when you look at the amount of environmental water bought by the previous government and parked up in dams high in the headwaters of the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers in the Snowy Mountains, where it is unable to really achieve a single credible outcome. I always say that, regardless of whether your philosophical position is that you support more of the environmental watering of wetlands and not of agriculture, the previous government's policy did not even achieve that. It was not able to demonstrate that it was improving environmental assets in the basin—not one little bit. That is the huge disappointment. So I was delighted to see that the Environmental Water Holder is commencing trading in the Gwydir Valley, and that is a first step. I would encourage that to continue in all of the valleys, but particularly in those in my electorate—and I understand that the member for Riverina is similarly placed—where we have people who are desperate for this water if it is not being used for an environmental outcome. We understand that that is what the act says: that it actually be put back into productive agriculture. It is unconscionable that the water holder should hang on to this water and not use it for the purpose that the Snowy Mountains scheme was originally created for. I have had some talks with the Environmental Water Holder and I am very encouraged. I believe that within the parameters of the legislation under which he operates he can actually do some good things, and I will certainly be at the forefront of advocating necessary changes to the Water Act to make sure that we recognise that irrigated agriculture is an industry that we all do support, that we want to survive and that we believe in for the future. I should note that about one-third of the population of my electorate lives in the big rural city of Albury. Albury, unlike some of the smaller towns around, is doing very well, which I am delighted to report. It does not face the significant growth challenges that the rest of the electorate does. It is part of the patchwork economy—it is the good part, as opposed to the part that we have concerns about where we have worries about areas not growing. Albury is growing and it is thriving. In fact, it was noted, in the latest hot-spotting report on Australia's top 10 suburbs to buy in for future capital growth, that the outer suburbs and regional areas are where investment money is to be made. I am not suggesting that people come to Albury to make money on their houses, but I am suggesting that it is a great time if you do want to move away from the crowded cities on the New South Wales coast. The typical house price is $260,000 and the typical unit price is less than $165,000 according to this report. Albury-Wodonga is one of the winners in that regard. I also want to note something that has come out of Albury because of the sad news we have heard about the car industry this week. The local Australian Industry Group has put together manufacturer activation plans, recognising that in our area some of the original equipment manufacturers in auto need to transition out of that and into something else. They have come up with a scheme that will enable this transition to manufacture motorcycle after-market parts as opposed to car after-market parts. I think this is really smart. If you look at the facts, the popularity of motorcycles continues to grow—6½ per cent globally—and the four largest motorcycle markets in the world are all in Asia: China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. We want this pilot project because it will actually help four to five local manufacturers transition to new opportunities, and it could indeed extend the project nationally. I have had some conversations with the industry minister and he is interested. We have, as members will know, a $100-million fund to facilitate the transition into different industries, and I will be knocking on his door as soon as I possibly can to make sure that we are able to access that fund if we can to get this pilot project underway. I should note that the circumstances the government faces in terms of the national accounts and the economy generally are not good. As I speak to people and travel over my electorate, which has so many needs and represents so many diverse interests—whether those be resurfacing of the netball courts; building community infrastructure; more places for child care, which is of course my portfolio responsibility in the ministry; or just finding the right niche for a person who has recently lost an income and is looking for a job—there are so many demands on government. Unfortunately, against the backdrop of our increasing debt we are unable to say, 'Yes, we have money for this and we can assist you.' I know the Treasurer has talked about this today, and it is a message that we just have to repeat: we cannot turn the ship around on a 10-cent coin. The trajectory of government spending that the previous government left us with is enormous, and if left unchecked the deficit would balloon out to $667 billion from just over $300 billion at the moment. So we have no choice, as we have said, but to get our house in order, and that does involve some pain and that does involve some difficulty. But for members of the opposition somehow to attribute the current level of spending to us I think is disingenuous and most unfair, because people need warning. In terms of winding back spending programs and moving money back to pay off our debt, it does take time. When people come to see me with wonderful requests and good ideas in the childcare area I say, 'When our Productivity Commission inquiry reports'—and we have asked the PC to get its skates on and have a draft report in July and a final report in October—'that will reshape policy in terms of child care and early learning for the next couple of decades.' We have exciting things that we can do, and that is not about adding more money, because at the moment, patently, the government cannot do that. But it is about making better use of the money we have, and there is a lot of opportunity for that. So some people may interpret that as a gloomy message; I do not—I see great optimism. Since we have come to government, confidence in business has picked up; people are feeling happier, and if confidence picks up investment picks up. And investment is desperately needed, certainly across regional Australia. So there are good signs on the horizon, and I think a government that manages the economy responsibly—and it is recognised that the Liberal and National parties are doing that—will engender that further confidence. So, when it rains I will be much happier. Until then, I will look forward to further support from both state and federal governments in terms of the drought that is affecting my electorate and which at the moment worries me the most. I thank the House. 16:30 Mr SNOWDON IJ4 Lingiari It pains me to say that my purpose in getting up this afternoon is one that causes me a great deal of discomfort—not the address-in-reply but what I am going to be talking about. It was not my intention in this address to comment on question time today, and the abysmal performance of the Prime Minister and the absolute disdain shown by the opposition towards the community of Gove and the surrounding region. That was not my intention. My intention was to be here at the address-in-reply and do what others have done in this place: thank my community for their support, thank all those hardworking volunteers who worked on my campaign, and thank my wonderful family—my partner, Elizabeth, and our wonderful children—for their contribution and great support; without our families, as we all know, politicians are nothing. And frankly, I am disappointed that I cannot spend the time I wanted to on that rather than having to talk about this other matter. What we have seen this afternoon is an absolute disrespect for the people of Gove and the surrounding communities—one that has been perpetuated by the behaviour of this government since the announcement was made on 29 November by Rio Tinto that they were going to curtail their operations at the Gove refinery as of February this year, with that curtailment to last until the end of July, at which time it would be finished and effectively the plant would go into mothballs: care and maintenance. They were given eight months from go to whoa. This afternoon I asked the Prime Minister—as did the Leader of the Opposition—a question. The question was based on the simple fact that at the gathering at Garma last year the Prime Minister made this undertaking: Why shouldn't I—if you will permit me—spend my first week as prime minister—should that happen—on your Country?' That is a very clear statement. Yet, from listening to the Prime Minister this afternoon, he would have you believe it was something entirely different—which of course it was not. He was no doubt seeking to ingratiate himself. That is fine. But he did say this thing. And we heard at the Close the Gap ceremony this morning of his intention to spend a week in north-east Arnhem Land—he said 'eastern Arnhem Land', but I am assuming it will be north-east Arnhem Land—sometime during the course of this year. And I think that is terrific. Good on him. But don't come in here and show your complete disdain for people who heard what you said by trying to tell them you said something different, because it is clear that you did not. Also this afternoon, something I found really intriguing: not only did the Prime Minister say that he had spoken to Rio Tinto on a number of occasions, but he simply has not bothered to talk to the people of Gove. There was no conversation with the Gove community action committee, elected representatives out of the Gove community, who came together after the announcement on 29 November to try to cause some reaction from government around the issues—which are immediate to them and obvious to them—of the impact of this proposal to eventually put this plant into mothballs. I know personally people who have written to the Prime Minister seeking a response from this government about this particular thing. They are deafened by the silence. Now, I certainly do not blame the government for the decision by Rio Tinto to curtail its operations; I certainly do not blame the government for that. I do blame the Northern Territory government for that. That decision rests squarely at the feet of the current chief minister, Adam Giles. Why does it sit at his feet? Almost 18 months ago an agreement was reached between the Commonwealth, the Northern Territory and Rio Tinto to supply gas to Gove so that the Gove alumina refinery could generate its electricity from gas rather than the fuel oil they were using. This would have an immediate long-term impact on reducing their production costs and making it more competitive. This agreement was reached in full knowledge by the Northern Territory government through its then chief minister, Terry Mills. It was done also as a result of a negotiation and agreement by the Commonwealth through the avenue of the then resources minister, Martin Ferguson, that the Commonwealth would underwrite the cost of the pipeline to Gove. We did not expect to have to pay anything; this was just insurance against the investment. Sadly, in February of last year Terry Mills was on a trade mission to Japan, and while he was out of the country there was a coup. Adam Giles brought together the small number of members of the CLP, the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory, and they decided they were going to replace Terry Mills as the chief minister. Once they had made that decision, the die was cast, because clearly Adam Giles had no interest in living up to the deal that was agreed to by the former chief minister, Terry Mills. So, over a period of time, despite the current minister for industry going to Gove after the election and guaranteeing the supply of gas to Gove as a result of the agreement reached between the Commonwealth under Labor, through Martin Ferguson's good offices, and Rio Tinto and the Northern Territory government, the Northern Territory's now chief minister, Adam Giles, said he was not going to live up to the deal. He welshed on the deal. Rio Tinto had made it very clear that if they could not get this deal to get the gas cheaply to Gove it would have a tremendous impact on their current and future operations at the refinery and they may have to curtail refinery operations. Through subsequent events we know that discussions had taken place with Commonwealth agencies around possibilities should the curtailment take place. These discussions took place up to 12 or so months ago. It was clearly on the cards then, and on 29 November this year Rio Tinto dropped the axe. They told the community and the world at large that this operation would no longer be. Sadly, and to the disgrace of Rio Tinto, they did not—as Toyota have done—give notice of a number of years so that people could find another job. They gave them eight months. The Prime Minister has said he has spoken to Rio Tinto on a number of occasions. Has he asked them why they are in such a rush to close down the plant? Has he asked them why they are not prepared to spend a longer period in transition, say two years, to give the workers and the community time to adjust and look for new opportunities on the Gove Peninsula? You would think he would ask that, but I do not think he has done so and I am sure that the Northern Territory government has not done so. Again today the Prime Minister said he had spoken to Rio Tinto and they had guaranteed the jobs of Yolngu people on the mining operation in north-east Arnhem Land. The mining operation will continue. Rio Tinto have cast-iron agreements with the traditional owners, principally through the Gumatj and the Rirratjingu. The company will live up to these agreements, because the mining operation will continue. But instead of employing 1,400 people at Gove, 350 people will be employed. We are losing more than 1,100 jobs, and that is not including the indirect jobs that will go from small businesses needing to relocate, close down or go bankrupt. This is an immediate thing. It is not prospective, not happening in 2016 or 2017. It is today, but we have not heard one positive message from the Prime Minister or any minister. They have not deigned to visit the place. The Northern Territory CLP senator, Nigel Scullion, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, was all over the place like a damn rat before the election. I was there during the election period and he was always there seeking people's support. He will know as a result of the election that he did not get that support. The bottom line is: he is a senior cabinet minister in this government, but since that announcement was made on 29 November he has been nowhere near the place. The Prime Minister talks about preserving the jobs of Aboriginal people, Yolngu people, on the mining operation in north-east Arnhem Land, and we understand why. It is because agreements are in place. I took from what the Prime Minister said today that he has received a guarantee from Rio Tinto that they would guarantee jobs for those Yolngu people who work at the refinery. Rio Tinto's performance in employing Yolngu people at the refinery has been poor, so there will not be many of those jobs. As a direct result of these decisions, it is as if an economic cyclone has hit Gove and ripped the guts out of the community. It is happening today—as we speak, it is happening. I said they are losing more than 1,100 jobs in the town of Nhulunbuy. It is estimated by the company—the only ones to have done a socioeconomic impact assessment, because the Northern Territory government certainly has not and neither has the Commonwealth government—according to the Northern Territory Chief Minister, that as a result of these decisions the population of Gove will go from 4,000 to 1,200. Gove is not a bad size for a small town supporting infrastructure, services and small businesses. I say to the Prime Minister: you are proudly advocating your intention to visit north-east Arnhem Land, but you will be visiting a ghost town at Gove. The communities you are going to visit, the Yolngu communities, rely as much as non-Aboriginal people do on the services provided by the Gove community. Small businesses currently provide them with supplies and transport connections to Darwin and elsewhere. They rely on these services as much as the people of Gove do. They rely on the volunteers who work at the tennis club and the football club. They rely on having access to the tackle shop—we met the tackle shop owners last week. As a direct result of the decisions taken by Rio Tinto and this government's lack of support, the tackle shop, which is a little family business paying rent of $11,000 a month, now has a turnover of $300 a day. This business is sliding rapidly towards bankruptcy, as are other community based small businesses that are not directly employed as subcontractors by Rio Tinto. Rio Tinto have a social licence to operate. The community and I expect them to give a longer transition period and invest a lot more money into the transition. We do not know what job opportunities exist, because the Commonwealth has not deigned to provide any resources. There is—this is for the edification of members and those who might be listening to this—a task force which has been set up. There are three members from the Gove Community Advisory Committee, including one Yolngu representative, one federal government representative, one Northern Territory government representative and one NLC representative. There have been three meetings. At the first, a senior public servant from the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development was requested to seek a Commonwealth structural adjustment package. We have not heard anything. At the second, he joined by video link and said he had requested a structural adjustment package. At the third meeting he did not attend. Someone else attending in his place by video conference and said, 'I'm sorry I'm late. I haven't read any of the papers.' And, of course, there was no structural adjustment package. That person indicated that there was no inclination or enthusiasm by the federal government to provide any federal support. That is where we left it—just a referral to Centrelink. We know what needs to happen here is that the Commonwealth government, through the Prime Minister and the other senior ministers who have a relationship, through their portfolios, to this issue, ought to be up at Gove. They should have been there in the first week of December. They have not been near the place. At the last meeting of this task force the Yolngu representative, Timmy Djawa Barrawanga—a person I know—said to the Commonwealth representative on a phone, 'Come here and help us. I am crying here. We plead with the Commonwealth government to send someone here to see that we need help. This is happening to us now.' There was no positive response from the Commonwealth. I am disgusted by this behaviour. What is it, if it is not the right of a member of parliament to stand up and talk about what concerns their community? This afternoon we tried to move an MPI which would have given me the opportunity to debate with the government the issues to do with Gove and the lack of jobs around this country—jobs which are being lost as a result of closures. We were refused the opportunity to have that debate. They do not even want to talk about it. What an indictment that is! How sad it is that this government cannot even be bothered to talk about these issues in the parliament. They cannot be bothered to debate these issues. What does it say about people on that side of the House who come from regional electorates? We know what the member for Murray has said. She has been dealt a really low card by this government in terms of the treatment of her community—likewise, myself—but the changes at Shepparton are prospective. The changes in Gove are immediate. Why is it that there has been no structural adjustment package? Why is it that there has not been any attempt by this government or by the Northern Territory government to look after the jobs of those workers or the prospective jobs that may have been there in the longer term had the refinery stayed open a little longer? There are many young people in that community who want jobs. But those jobs are shifting. They will not be there. We have third generation non-Indigenous people—balanda people—living in North East Arnhem Land, who have been in Gove for the last 40 years. They are being forced to uproot themselves and move. It is a national disaster but, listening to this government, you find that they have no regard for it at all. I can tell you that the people of Gove are insulted. They are grossly insulted by this behaviour. One of the business representatives said to me recently that people invested on the advice of Rio Tinto in February and late May last year that there were decades of prosperity ahead. They are finished—gone—despite the positive words from Rio Tinto and the then Northern Territory government. The region will suffer as services diminish. 'We hear about closing the gap,' this person says. 'Well, in East Arnhem Land the gap is widening as their commercial sector is destroyed.' That is the truth of it. There will be a small number of jobs in the mining operation, but once that refinery closes down, and the contractors to that organisation no longer have jobs, the contractors will go and small businesses will close. The multiplier effect is immediate and long term. I want this government to do something reasonable for the people of Gove and the surrounding community. I want the Prime Minister to get onto the phone to those communities and say, 'We are prepared to help you.' I first got elected to this place 26 years ago. I have never, ever seen such disdain by a government for a people in this country. (Time expired) MOTIONS 254 MOTIONS Abbott Government 254 Attempted Censure 254 16:50 Mr SNOWDON IJ4 Lingiari I seek leave to move a motion against the Abbott government. Leave not granted. 16:50 Mr SNOWDON IJ4 Lingiari I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Lingiari moving immediately—That this House condemn the Abbott Government for its failure to take any action to protect jobs at Gove and note the callous disregard for the local community has been reinforced by the Prime Minister’s broken promise to visit in his first week as Prime Minister. It is very clear; the disregard that this Prime Minister has shown for this community is palpable. We know—this community understands—the failure of this government to recognise its hour of need, the failure of this government to do something reasonable to address their needs, the failure of this government to understand the loss of jobs in this community and the surrounding region, and what this will mean. The government fail to realise what this will mean not only for the community of Gove but for the surrounding region. I said in an earlier contribution that the population of Nhulunbuy was 4,000 people. The regional population—in an area probably the size of Victoria—is 14,000 people. We know that, as direct result of— Mr Broadbent MT4 Mr Deputy Speaker, I raise a point of order. The member for Lingiari should be making the argument as to why standing orders should be suspended. He is not making that argument at all; he is just arguing the same points as those he argued in the previous address. Is he going to draw himself to the attention of the standing orders? The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The member for Lingiari must state why standing orders should be suspended. Mr SNOWDON IJ4 It is clear. This House has an obligation to debate and discuss the concerns of the people of Nhulunbuy and the surrounding region. That is why the standing orders need to be suspended. Why did the Leader of the House not allow us to have a matter of public importance debate? We would not have been through this, but he has prevented us from debating the issue. It is extremely important that the House understand the implications of the closure of this refinery for the community of Gove and the surrounding region. We need to suspend standing orders to allow us to debate it properly, to allow the government to respond, to allow us to hear from the government why it is that they do not care about the community of Gove and the surrounding region, to hear from the government why it is that not one of their ministers has bothered to show his or her face in the community of Gove or the region since the announcement was made. This is why we need to suspend standing orders. Why is it that there is no understanding shown by this government of what the impact will be on services to the community around Nhulunbuy and in Gove itself? We need to understand this. I met some young people at the Nhulunbuy High School last week. We sat and spoke, along with others—with the Leader of the Opposition, with Senator Nova Peris and the local member Lynne Walker. We spoke to years 11 and 12 students about what their prospects are as a result of this closure. They did not know. No-one has been to talk to them. We know that, as a direct result of the closure, the school population will fall from 972 to something like 240. What does that mean for them? They have been given a blatant guarantee by the Northern Territory government that year 12 will go until the end of the year and year 11 likewise, but the teachers have been told that their jobs are guaranteed only until the end of the first semester. What does that tell you? That is why standing orders need to be suspended. We need to know what this government is thinking. We need to know what answers this government has for the people of Gove and the surrounding communities. We need to know what answers this government has for the kids of Gove—those people, who are our nation's future in that region, are being told by this government that they just do not bloody well care. Well I care, my friends in the Labor Party care, the community cares and I know the people of Australia care. We cannot have this. We cannot have the Prime Minister or anyone else coming into this place and treating the community with such disrespect. It is just not on. As the Prime Minister said— Mr Pyne 9V5 Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The member for Lingiari, needs to make the terms of the motion known to the government. He needs to present them to the government. Mr Burke DYW They are in the hands of the Clerk. Mr Pyne 9V5 They are now after 5½ minutes of debate. The member stood there and tried to stop us from seeing the terms of the motion. If the terms of the motion are in the same terms as the motion moved earlier, that is out of order because the motion cannot be asking for the same thing to occur. I will observe them and meanwhile I move: That the member be no longer heard. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The question is that the member be no longer heard.

The House divided. [17:01]
(The Deputy Speaker—Mr Craig Kelly)

81 AYES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 54 NOES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to

17:08 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway I second the motion. What a disgraceful government. What an utter disgrace on all— 17:09 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I move: That the member no longer be heard. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The question is that the member no longer be heard. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The question now is that the motion be agreed to.

The House divided. [17:10]
(The Deputy Speaker—Mr Kelly)

81 AYES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, JI Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP 54 NOES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to

The House divided. [17:18]
(The Deputy Speaker—Mr Craig Kelly)

54 AYES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD McGowan, C Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 80 NOES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Cobb, JK Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

17:23 Mr BROADBENT MT4 McMillan Never mind the children. For most children in Australia an eighth birthday is a milestone worth celebrating—a day of gifts, cakes, ice cream and laughter, a day when you are special; a day when all the bright prospects of life are still before you. But, sadly, there is a legion of children in this country for whom the eighth birthday is something quite different—a day of misery, a day when dreams are put on hold, a day when the poverty slide becomes even steeper. The youngest children of sole parents forced onto Newstart allowance know that Mum or Dad will have to fight even harder to survive. They know that when the youngest turns eight the family will lose up to $110 a week despite the daily grind that poverty brings. Mum and Dad are under further pressure for every moment of every day for every decision, even for the most minor, because there is no margin for error. Every financial decision becomes a major financial decision because there is no flexibility in your ability to have a choice in your spend. You may think a child would be unlikely to know so much about her parent's or parents' finances. But the children of the poor are always acutely aware of how much they do not have compared to other children. The children of the poor are acutely aware of the social stigma of poverty. They are acutely aware of what it means to wear the wrong clothes, to miss out on meals, to shrink their dreams to fit their circumstances, to hope for less than other kids. These children are equally our future, yet we seem to continually say to them, 'Never mind the children.' Whilst the terrible scourge of domestic violence tears at the fabric of communities and families, and we all in this House stand united against it, we do our best to stamp it out because we know how insidious and destructive it is. While we fight against that terrible cancer we not only turn our backs on sole parents and their children but enshrine their poverty in legislation, giving their misery and discrimination the nation's and this parliament's stamp of approval. There are 15,610 sole parent households in the electorate of McMillan, my electorate, with many at risk of or already living in poverty. It is often a hand-to-mouth existence, an existence that sees children getting on with meagre rations of food and lots of hope. Textbooks are hard enough, let alone breakfast. In McMillan households, the financial picture is often bleak, with 29.3 per cent scrounging together a gross weekly income of $600. Often it is much less and too often there are children ensnared in this poverty trap. The previous Rudd-Gillard government said to struggling sole parents: when your youngest child turns eight, we are going to plunge you into even deeper poverty. Never mind the children, they told the nation. If you are lucky enough to have the love and financial support of a partner, your worries are fewer. You have the support of the welfare system too. A single mother raising children on Newstart begs for help from the Salvos. A woman with the emotional and financial support of a husband and partner has fewer concerns. If she has two children under 12 she will only lose family tax benefit part A when her family's wages are close to $113,000. She will only lose family tax benefit part B when her partner's wage or their combined income is $150,000. The same rules apply to our sole parents but such astronomical wages can only be dreamed of by a Newstart sole parent—and never mind the children, we say. We continue to support one group while attacking the other. Last year 600,000 children were living in poverty, 300,000 from sole parent families. I made a solemn promise to the people of my electorate to work in their best interests. I made a solemn promise to myself that I would call out injustice against children and fight to ensure that none are forced to live in poverty because of decisions made in this House. I will not say, 'Never mind the children.' In my home town of Pakenham, 135 eviction notices were served in the past three years. Sole parents tied to an existing lease and then pushed onto the Newstart allowance were the most vulnerable in becoming homeless along of course with their children—never mind the children. One local mother of five who was studying full-time, searching for a way out of the poverty trap lost so much money when her youngest child turned eight that she now has been forced to work the whole weekend to pay the bills, just to survive—never mind the children or who is looking after them when mum is at work. Leongatha Salvation Army captain Martyn Scrimshaw said that many desperate sole parents had knocked on his door, with one woman spending 70 per cent of her Newstart allowance on the basic household expenses of rent and power. 'Thirty per cent of Newstart doesn't leave much for anything else, especially if you're raising children,' Martyn told me. In fact, it leaves about $160 more or less. A former government minister once famously said she could survive on $35 a day—and changed her mind later—but why force families to take this mean-hearted challenge? It is too easy to say, 'Never mind the children,' for the sake of the budget or the bottom line. But what lessons are we teaching the children about their worth? 'You're not worthy of our support'? 'You're being punished because you don't have a father or a mother'? 'Life's tough, kid; good luck'? Some may say, 'Never mind these children,' but I will not. If you are a family with mum and dad and three kids and you get family tax benefit part A and part B and you are on, say, $63,000 a year, you do not get a health card to support you at all. But, if you are an older person, retired, with an $80,000 income, you are able to access a health card, which means you can get your prescriptions at the concession rate. But the family with three kids and a mortgage and one income cannot get a health card. They have got to pay the full tick if their kid has got asthma. There are a lot of anomalies that are facing this parliament—and that faced the previous parliament and the parliament before it—that have grown up and that are detrimental to children's health and wellbeing across this nation, especially the children of sole-parent families. It is totally inappropriate for us. I have lived in relative wealth all of my life. Bron and I have had our tough times, but I have lived in relative wealth. My children have never gone without a feed and my grandchildren will not go without a feed. But there are many families in my electorate and across this nation, up and down the east coast of Australia and around every part, that do go without. Kids go without breakfast sometimes. You might wonder why I am up on this issue. It is because, when I came here in 1990 for the first time—after missing out on two elections before that and finally getting to this place—I said in my maiden speech that I would look after families. And yet here I am all these years later, from 1990 till now—and I know I have been out a few times—and I stand here today knowing that there are children in our community that are discriminated against for one reason and one reason only: by no fault of their own, they happen to live in a single-parent household. I am not going to judge why it is a single-parent household. I do not know. But what I do know in regard to women single-parent households is that, in 40 per cent of these households, the women are in part-time work. They are already trying to eke out a living. And we come along when their child turns eight. If you are in a nuclear family and your child turns eight, guess what—you do not lose a penny. You do not lose a cent. You continue on. And I am very happy that they continue on—we want to support families. But I want to make this point before a quorum is called. It is unfair, and every member of parliament in this place should look at the responsibility that they have to single-parent families and especially to the children within those families. (Quorum formed) I turn now to the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and I offer a warning to this parliament and to the people of Australia. There are those, as we work through the process of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, who believe today that they will be a part of that scheme. I am saying today that the criteria for the National Disability Insurance Scheme will not include all those people today who think they are going to be included. I have warned previously in this parliament that the leaders of the day when this scheme is introduced are going to face the ire and wrath of people who believe that their politicians have told them that they will be supported into the future through the National Disability Support Scheme. Today we have a disability support pension. Those with manifest disabilities will clearly be part of the new scheme and have that disability support pension as well. There are those on the disability support pension who believe that they will be part of the services provided by the National Disability Insurance Scheme that will not be part of it. There will be those that have minor disabilities who think they will fit the criteria for the National Disability Insurance Scheme who will not. It is not a panacea for everybody with a disability in this country, and the previous government, with our support, have possibly lined the nation up for an expectation that can ever be met. It cannot be met financially and cannot be met in the spirit of the scheme. I do not want to be the one that puts a damper on the expectations of people with children with disabilities. I say this because I have a background in disability services and have been at the coalface of disability service. I say every day of my life that I cannot enter into the life of a parent of a child with a disability, because I do not have that experience. I can empathise, I can help them support their family and children, but I can never live it because you can never understand what a parent goes through in those situations. On the National Disability Insurance Scheme, I want to say that this scheme has to be worked through. It is going to take a lot of effort by state governments, federal government and, particularly, the providers, and a lot of issues are going to arise out of the trials that we are currently going through. I say again: it is not going to be what the expectation of the current Australian community is. In the past, I have spoken in similar terms about what were the 'Gonski reforms'. I want more money poured into my public schools, into my public secondary colleges, into my public primary schools and into my low-fee Catholic schools, because that is a major base. We have had some great benefit from the Howard government previously in the area of low-fee Catholic schools. They have new facilities, and I am proud of the facilities that my primary schools have received. But, again, we are raising expectations of funds to be poured out of the federal government, which, to my view of looking to the immediate and greater future, we may not have. We have prime ministers come and go who say, 'This is my dream,' while laying into the Australian community an expectation, but then they are not the Prime Minister that has to deal with the issues of the day, as the Prime Minister of this day, Mr Abbott, his cabinet and the next cabinet do. I think we have got good people working in the areas of disability, education and health, and I think that with proper financial management of this nation in areas we can deliver better outcomes for our community, but they may not fulfil the great expectation, ambition and hopes that have been laid out for the Australian people in these specific areas. I notice members have taken the opportunity to thank all the people that re-elected them to this House. Having come to the House and been thrown out several times, I have had the great generosity of many people over a long period of time who have had to suffer Russell Broadbent. Mr Wood E0F They still do. Mr BROADBENT MT4 They have suffered me to come back to this place, and I have come back to this place each time. The last time I came back, I was honoured to go from a Labor seat to a marginal seat to a seat that is held by nearly 12 per cent in a country area, where the demographics are basically a Labor seat. That is not down to anything I have done; it is down to the generosity of people who live in my electorate. If your child is disabled, if your family is going through a tough time and if you do not have people who will speak for you, there are people in this House on both sides of the parliament who are keen and desirous to explore the options as best we can to support you and your family and their values and opportunities. After all, our great desire, whether you have disability or not, is that each child in this country reaches their full and great potential. We are not asking them to be heroes, we are just giving them the opportunity to reach their individual full potential as Australians. 17:43 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway It is a great pleasure to be able to rise in this place in the Address in Reply as the re-elected member for Greenway. I am very humbled, honoured and grateful to the voters of Greenway for choosing to re-elect me to occupy this very esteemed place in our nation's parliament. I am also very honoured to be representing not only my constituents but also a wide variety of interest groups in my respective shadow portfolio responsibilities. They reflect ongoing interests that I have had for many years, and I will continue to prosecute very important issues and those portfolios in this term. In my first speech I touched on a number of issues, and it is quite startling how some of those are very relevant to the context of some of the debates we have been having in the last few days. I talked about the fact that we live in a globalised economy with a mobile labour market. When you see what is happening in an economy in transition in Australia in terms of manufacturing and when you see what is happening in terms of the need to invest in infrastructure, particularly in broadband infrastructure, these things become very relevant. I also spent a lot of time discussing the issue of diversity of people and place that make up the great electorate of Greenway. Further to that, I want to mention in these short remarks some of the challenges that are facing residents in Greenway and also across Australia. I gave an undertaking to work hard for the full term for the residents of Greenway, and I hope that it was recognised that I did that to the best of my ability. I will draw on my first speech, which I used as my compass over the first term. Some of the things that I mentioned were that I committed to being a passionate advocate for the best educational infrastructure and resources for all our schools. Education is an area that remains paramount as a policy objective and a key policy area for the people of Greenway. As Greenway is such a young electorate—in fact, one of the youngest electorates in Australia—there is a special responsibility to ensure investments in education. That is why, over the first term that I served here, I really had a focus on making sure not only that we had the right capital infrastructure but that I supported sound policy for reforming education so that we really did have a needs based model. So I was very prepared to debate and advocate on these issues in the wake of the Gonski recommendations. Equally, when, prior to its endorsement of those Gonski recommendations, the New South Wales government pulled funding from education, that was an enormous issue for people in my electorate—for a state government to go back on its promises of making education paramount. I talked about the transformational power of education, and that remains as true as ever. I also talked about the importance of Labor's National Broadband Network and its transformational power in how we communicate and work and the enhancement of living standards. I will touch on this later on, but I want to mention something in particular because I think it is very relevant to quote this. I said: In 10 or 20 years our children will look back on the current debate about the NBN and will be shocked by the short-sightedness of some of the views expressed about the NBN today, particularly the commentary that is fixated on the download path: the false assumption that the NBN is merely a matter of faster emails or web-surfing. The reality is the NBN is not about the download. It is all about the upload. And that, I believe, is a point that remains absent from the current policy debate which is occurring in this parliament. Finally, I mentioned the importance of health and the disparity which unfortunately exists: the prevalence of preventable diseases in Western Sydney and some of the survival rates from terminal illnesses. I made a particular commitment to address the disparity between geographic outcomes. I would like to turn first to looking at some of the things that we, along with the community—and this was very much a first term based on not only listening to but responding to the needs of the community in Greenway—were able to achieve. We were able to achieve great things together that really did make positive differences to people's lives. There was the rollout of the National Broadband Network in Riverstone and Blacktown, which I will go into more detail about. There were upgrades to every local school in the area, valued at over $118 million. Some schools in my electorate, including the public school down the road from where I grew up, had not had any capital investment for 50 years—50 years!—until the Building the Education Revolution program. We secured over $50 million for a new clinical school and additional beds at Blacktown hospital; a $15 million GP superclinic in Blacktown to take pressure off our hospitals' emergency departments; and a $1.28 million refurbishment of Blacktown TAFE. We had primary healthcare infrastructure grants for many GP services, one of which I would like to discuss; a quarter of a million dollars for an upgrade at the International Peace Park for Seven Hills junior rugby league; new playgrounds at local parks as part of the community infrastructure program; an upgrade of the Riverstone museum; $400,000 for emergency relief services, including the Riverstone Neighbourhood Centre; $5.8 million for the Western Sydney Institute GreenSkills Hub at the Nirimba Education Precinct; and a $50,000 upgrade for the Riverstone Girl Guides hall. While it might sound like a drop in the bucket in the big scheme of things, I cannot tell you how pleased that group was and how pleased that local community was to be getting an upgrade to that hall. And there was the installation of a new $20,000 long-jump pit at Morgan Power Reserve for the Kings Langley Little Athletics. Again, sometimes it is those things which may seem monetarily small which make such an enormous difference to organisations and to people's lives. I would like to touch on the issue of health in Greenway. As I said, residents and policymakers in western and north-western Sydney, because we have such a fast-growing and young population and at the same time we are all living longer, are confronted with a range of complex and unique health related challenges. It is these challenges that require concerted effort from governments at the state and federal levels to properly address them. Since 2010 I have fought hard to improve health services in the electorate of Greenway. I am very pleased with the investments that we have been able to make, including the ones that I have mentioned. I want to talk in particular about some of the primary care infrastructure grants, including half a million dollars which was granted to the Bridgeview Medical Practice, in the suburb of Toongabbie. This grant helped Bridgeview expand the services they offer to the Toongabbie community and allowed them to construct six new consulting rooms, a mini auditorium and a resource centre. The practice was also able to provide additional hours of operations each week. I am very pleased to announce that, late last year, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners announced Bridgeview Medical Practice as the worthy recipient of the 2013 New South Wales General Practice of the Year Award. This is a tremendous achievement and I want to congratulate the whole team at Bridgeview Medical Practice. It highlights how funding in this place can play an active role in improving primary care in our communities. As well as this, the Western Sydney Medicare Local, WentWest, has been a success story in our region and an excellent example of how we can work together to tackle preventative health issues and keep people out of hospitals. The funding included half a million dollars to WentWest to roll out the Western Sydney Diabetes Prevention Program—a crucial piece of investment for Western Sydney. One of the great achievements has been the bulk-billing rates in Western Sydney. In Greenway alone 97 per cent of GP visits are now bulk-billed compared to 87 per cent bulk-billed nationally. It is no wonder that residents are so concerned about any proposal to have a $6 tax on GP visits when we have people who rely so much on bulk-billing in the electorate of Greenway. I want to turn to the issue of the National Broadband Network. As I mentioned, the inability to access real high-speed, quality broadband services was a huge area of complaint from residents. As this is a growth area, there have been a number of residents who complain that they are unable to access broadband which they consider sufficiently fast. But I even have whole suburbs where people literally need to wait for people to move out before a port becomes available in their local exchange. I want to use the example of the suburb of Riverstone, which was the site of the first Sydney metro rollout. It really is a microcosm of how our local economies are changing. Riverstone used to be a purely rural area, then changing to industrial and now becoming something of a technological hub as it expands. I cite the example of a local business which has been able to capitalise on the availability of the NBN. I am looking at an article from the Blacktown Sun where it says that the Good Egg Studio in Riverstone has welcomed a technology boost from the National Broadband Network. The Good Egg Studio specifically moved to Riverstone. It offers a 12 by 17 metre studio for photographers and videographers to produce high-tech film for brochures, advertisements and possibly even movies. The co-owner, Warren Kirby, is a photographer and multimedia specialist. He said that the future availability of the NBN—and now he has actually got it, so he is able to utilise it—was the motivating factor for the decision to locate to Riverstone. He went on to say how it would save their clients hundreds of thousands of dollars in time and effort. I think that this demonstrates how powerful the NBN can be not only in a transformational economy but also for small businesses to assist them to grow. I think it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the misnomers that continue to be perpetuated thanks to the Minister for Communications. Firstly, the minister claims that there is no need for a fibre to the premises NBN rollout in Blacktown because Blacktown is already serviced by existing Optus and Telstra HFC infrastructure, and that speeds of 100 megabits per second are already available to end users from services currently provided over that infrastructure. That is a complete nonsense. The reality is that the end user services provided over cable technology are heavily user dependent, so the more users at any given time the slower the speeds available. You can read Optus's own submissions on this point. Its HFC infrastructure is not dimensioned for a significant number of users. Also, though claims are made of 100 megabits per second already being available under existing infrastructure, such speeds are not available to all end users. That is why service providers are required to use terminology of 'speeds up to'. We have already had a broken promise which we are all aware of from this government where it gave an undertaking to have a minimum 25 megabits per second to all residents by 2016. Within only a few months the government has decidedly walked away from that commitment. In the limited time available to me I want to touch on two further things. The first is the diversity of our local community. In particular I want to mention the growing, vibrant subcontinent populations that make up the electorate of Greenway. I was fortunate to be involved in the ministerial consultative committee on subcontinent issues which then minister Bowen initiated. This was an excellent project. Although I thought there would be some typical needs that would be raised by the local subcontinent communities, it was interesting to note that their primary concern was issues of unemployment and underemployment. It was a case of some of the most overqualified people in often some of the most menial positions, which is an issue which has been looked at by various governments but one which we can no longer sustain. We really need as a country to address it in the long term and start doing it properly now. Finally, I want to thank a couple of people. Most of all I want to thank my little girl Octavia, who has come home from child care today. She has had her bath and she is watching. For poor Octavia all she ever knew from conception to birth and the first bit of her life was mummy trying to get re-elected. Mummy did it, and thank you so much for your support. You and your dad were absolute troopers. I think no-one could realise how hard my family worked and the amount of sacrifice that they made for me to be in parliament, in my first term in particular. I want to especially thank my in-laws, who were absolutely amazing, especially my sister-in-law Sandra, who looks after Octavia when I am not around, and my fantastic mother-in-law and father-in-law Sue and Sam Chaaya. People will not understand the logistics that they had to go through, especially when I was breastfeeding, for Octavia to be in Canberra. They would load up a car on a Saturday afternoon, bring it down to Canberra, unpack everything that goes with having a small baby, look after her all week while I was in here, and then do the reverse when it was time to go home. I cannot begin to explain the logistics that went into it, but I can try to express my untold gratitude to my in-laws, especially, for everything they did for me. Also, the fact is that Michael, my husband, is a very senior partner in a law firm. For someone to have to put their life on hold to support their partner's career is something you can only say thank you for and something you can only hope that they can continue to do. There were nights when I would get home and Michael had been looking after Octavia for most of the day, and then I would get up during the night to do a feed and he would be up at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning doing his work. So, he was literally doing two or three different roles—wife, worker, husband—driving the whole bus, as I like to say. I want to also thank all the Labor Party branch members in my area who assisted, including all those wonderful people who came out of nowhere, whom I had never met and who volunteered their time. And when I say 'during the campaign', this was three years of effort; this was not a couple of weeks of campaigning. It was three years of solid effort, because, let's face it: I had had a baby and I was in a hung parliament in the most marginal Labor seat in New South Wales in one of the most contentious periods in Australian politics. I do not know anyone in this chamber who put money on me to come back here, but, if they did, I am pleased for their wealth! There are too many branch members for me to name, and I will be forgiven for singling out one person. I did highlight in my first speech my tremendous thanks to my campaign director, Brian Thomas, a retired professional truck driver who was the driving force in my first campaign. Brian, unfortunately, died on Remembrance Day in 2012, and it was terrible for me to hear the news. I want to thank his widow, Judy, who made herself so available for the campaign and, I think, did the job of two people. I want to also thank my parliamentary colleagues from the Labor Party for all their support over the first term, particularly those MPs who came to this place and also had small children. They were always willing to give me a hand and help out. Because it was such an effort to make it back here by the good grace of the people of Greenway, I want to reassure you of how determined I am to continue to work hard and make a difference and that my priorities will continue to be the things that are important to you, including health and education, issues of innovation in a changing economy, jobs and job insecurity, and the importance of recognising and making sure we respond appropriately to diversity in our community. In conclusion, I want to reassure the people of Greenway that I will continue to be a strong local advocate for everyone in our community. I recognise what an important obligation it is to represent one of the youngest and fastest-growing areas of Australia. I am completely up to that task, and I look forward to continuing it with gusto. I made a commitment that I would be absolutely accessible in the first term of my tenure here—that I would not be someone you would see just at election time. I would like to reiterate that for my second term, and I thank the people of Greenway, again, for putting their trust in me. 18:03 Mr TEHAN 210911 Wannon It is once again an honour to rise in this place to talk and to support the wonderful speeches that have come before mine as we have welcomed the new members to this place and also as we have heard those members who are in their second, third or fourth terms—and for some a lot longer--and to hear what they have to say as we start this parliament. For me, the 2013 election was really about two things. It was about the future direction of the nation, and it was about what I could achieve with the local community in my electorate of Wannon. I am thrilled to be able to say that on both those points we have been successful. We have a new government—and, oh boy, did we need that new government. We have started the process of heading this country in the right direction again, and that means very good things also for my local electorate. I will pause for a moment just to concentrate on the specific things it will mean for my electorate, because the Abbott government made some important commitments to the electorate of Wannon if it was successful in winning government, and I would like to detail them. The first was a commitment, which will be honoured—and I was pleased that the Minister for Health, in his first answer to a question in question time, reassured my local community of this—that $10 million would be delivered for an integrated cancer care centre for western Victoria. Now, this has been a community-driven campaign. It has been driven by some of the most wonderful community minded people you would come across. (Quorum formed) It is befitting that Labor have had to call a quorum, because I know what I was saying was dicing them up, cutting them to pieces. I must say that they have felt the need to try and interrupt a speech on behalf of my electorate and on behalf of the nation. That they have had to resort to this tactic says a lot. I see the former minister for health is in the chamber. I was talking about Peter's Project and the $10 million— Mr Burke DYW There is a standing order against tedious repetition, and the member should be brought to order. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D There is no point of order. Mr TEHAN 210911 On the subject of tedious repetition, the person who interjected could learn a lot from listening to his own words because he does it a lot during question time. 18:11 Mr BURKE DYW Watson In the spirit of the Leader of the House, I move: That the member be no longer heard. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D The question is that the member be no longer heard. Mr Pyne 9V5 I move: That Mr Tehan be granted an extension of time of 10 minutes. Question agreed to. Mr TEHAN 210911 I thank the Minister for Education for his kindness. He has shown what a dignified human being he is. I will not make a comparison with his opposite number on the other side because he showed some rather tardy form. I was talking about Peter's Project, a very important project for my electorate worth $10 million. That is the commitment given by the Abbott government to Peter's Project, to build an integrated cancer care centre for the south-west of Victoria. The south-east of South Australia will also benefit from this integrated cancer care centre. It will save the trip to either Geelong or Melbourne for people in the south-west, a round trip which can sometimes take six to eight hours for people who are suffering from that dreaded disease—cancer. We also gave significant road funding to the electorate of Wannon. Roads are the lifeblood of all country communities and none so much as my electorate of Wannon. The member for Corangamite was in here a little earlier. Between our two electorates we got $25 million, matched by $25 million from the Victorian state government, to improve and upgrade the Great Ocean Road. The Great Ocean Road is a significant tourist attraction. People come from all over the world to tour this road and the fact that we are prepared to commit $50 million, in combination with the Victorian state government, is a great win for my communities and also a great win for the Victoria. We also committed funding for the Condah-Hotspur Road, a key linkage road for our timber industry. This will bring productivity gains for that important industry because the route travelled by timber trucks in my electorate will be reduced by this significant investment. We made some commitments around crime. Maryborough in my electorate has had an issue with street crime. So we have given $100,000 for 23 CCTV cameras which will make a significant difference for that community, ensuring especially that local businesses feel a lot more secure if crimes are committed. The police will be able to use those CCTV cameras to find and arrest those responsible. There is $125,000 for lights at Melville Oval. This will enable games of football and cricket to be played at night. Not only will the lights improve training; they will also enable key matches to be played. The aim of the Hamilton Football Club is to play an Anzac Day match against Portland, under lights, in 2015. If the lights are ready, that will be a wonderful community event, a wonderful way to commemorate Anzac Day along with the traditional service. We saw $4.4 million for the Cobden Technical School and Timboon P-12 School trade training centre, another $1 million for a trade training centre at the Maryborough Education Centre. (Quorum formed) There are also Green Army projects, which are incredibly important. We also have an announcement that Portland will be on our national whale trail, which is significant for that community. So there are these election commitments we will deliver, but there are also the election commitments that we will deliver for the nation. We will deliver those for the nation because they are vital for our children's future. At the moment everything that we are doing as a government is trying to repair the damage which has been done to this nation—thanks to the previous government—which, ultimately, if it is not repaired, will cost our children dearly. As law-makers of this nation, we have a responsibility to those who will come after us, and it is a significant responsibility. That is why we will bring debt and deficit under control in this nation. It is why we will grow the economy. It is why we will deliver jobs to our local communities across the nation. We will do this to start with by ridding this nation of two of the most insidious taxes that have ever been introduced: firstly, the carbon tax. What an impact we are seeing this tax have—whether it be on our local dairy processes and on our local dairy farmers; whether it be on our aluminium smelters; whether it be on our small businesses; whether it be on our households, who are having to pay increased electricity bills. The carbon tax has to go. We took that commitment to the last election and we will deliver on it. The mining tax also needs to go. We do not believe in cutting down industries which are significant wealth and job creators for this nation. We actually want those industries to thrive. At the moment we are going through some difficulties as our economy transitions from a 20th century protected economy to a 21st century global economy, and we have to make sure that we have the fundamentals right, so that our businesses, large and small, can capitalise on that transition. We are no longer a local economy. Everything that we do here, as a government and as a nation, has implications across the globe, and we have to understand that. If you look at the recent HSBC report into what is happening with emerging economies and the paths that they are taking—in 2050 we will not use the term 'emerging economy' anymore; they will be First World economies like ours. We have to understand that. We have to understand the fundamental challenge that as a nation we must be competitive, and as a government we have to do things as efficiently and as leniently as possible. We have to make sure that as a government we are enablers, because that is the only way we will secure the long-term future of our nation and the long-term future of my electorate, the wonderful electorate of Wannon. (Time expired)

House divided. [18:16]
(The Deputy Speaker—Mr Vasta)

52 AYES Albanese, AN Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Varvaris, N Watts, TG Zappia, A 83 NOES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Bandt, AP Billson, BF Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McGowan, C McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Wilkie, AD Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

18:34 Ms PLIBERSEK 83M Sydney I want to start by thanking the voters in the electorate of Sydney for once again allowing me to represent them in this place. It is an honour that I am conscious of every day and a responsibility that I take very seriously. Each of us, no matter what office we hold, is here only at the will and with the permission of the people who send us here. I aim every day to do my very best for the constituents that I represent. There is no more important work in the Labor movement, our political wing, than making policy that keeps people in work. On our watch, we created a million jobs and kept unemployment at historic lows, against the prevailing trend in other major economies. Our stimulus packages in response to the global financial crisis, which those opposite voted against and still deride, meant Australia was alone among OECD countries in avoiding recession. It is a big deal, and we should not forget it. A generation of Australians were spared the ravages of recession and joblessness because of the political courage of the world's best Treasurer, the member for Lilley, and the previous government. We began building the NBN. Prime Minister Gillard and her state counterparts landed the Murray-Darling agreement. Against a mountain of opposition we put a limit on pollution and a price on carbon. The Liberals say that they believe the global warming science, but they are not prepared to do a single thing really to reduce the threat of climate change. Bizarrely, the two parts of our policies that they most oppose are the market signals of carbon pricing and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which would actually make money for the government. We delivered health reform and made the most significant investment in health and hospital infrastructure in living memory. In my electorate I attended the opening of the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse Cancer Centre, and in the neighbouring electorate the Kinghorn Cancer Centre. Both of these were made possible by the hard work of fundraising committees, but there was also nearly $170 million in Commonwealth investment for Lifehouse, and around $70 million for Kinghorn. On 1 January the kids dental program Grow Up Smiling began, although I note that the government has been very careful not to publicise it. We now have the best five-year cancer survivor rate in the world and we will improve those numbers even more with better screening, plain packaging of tobacco and Gardasil vaccination extended to boys as well as girls. We designed and began the rollout of DisabilityCare—and I want to pay tribute to my friend the member for Jagajaga for the extraordinary amount of detailed policy development and the supervision of the beginning of that that she is responsible for—a progressive reform that goes to the very core of what Labor is about, making people's live a little bit easier. We delivered better school reforms so that every child, no matter where they live or how much their parents earn, can get a great education. We built new infrastructure in every primary school in Australia and many, many high schools, and I am proud of this record. We are proud of this record, and it is why everyone on this side of the House will fight this government's efforts to dismantle it. What lies at the centre of the Labor record is the idea of equality of opportunity. Government cannot fix your life if things are going badly, but the decisions that governments make can make life harder or just a little bit easier. Labor exists in our national life—at least in part—to soften the harsher edges of our society. Our work is to make sure that: no matter where you are born or who your parents are, you have a fair shot at life. Labor also exists to look to the future and to prepare for the opportunities and challenges of a changing world. Labor has been very successful in eliminating many of the inherent material inequalities in Australian society over the past 100 years. Because of Labor we have got an age pension, and it was Labor in our last term in government—again, under the stewardship of the member for Jagajaga—which delivered the biggest ever increase in the age pension. Because of Labor we have a universal health system. Because of Labor we have a fairer and higher quality education system and because of Labor people now have more adequate retirement savings. But we should not kid ourselves that the only inequality that exists in Australia is material. Late last year for a few days marriage equality was a reality in the Australian Capital Territory, and I would like to recognise the hard work of ACT Chief Minister Katy Gallagher for seeing the legislation through but of course also the thousands of committed and idealistic marriage equality campaigners who have worked to make marriage equality a reality—if only for a week. But, as we all know, the High Court has ruled that marriage laws are for this parliament to decide, and so we must. But our project for a fairer society goes hand in hand with a strong economy. I mentioned earlier the priority that Labor puts on jobs: all of our actions during the GFC were designed to prevent the devastation of widespread unemployment. That is why it is particularly shocking that, as the global economy begins to recover, the Liberal government is presiding over the destruction of full-time jobs—the worst destruction of jobs since the recession of 1991-92; more job losses than during the height of the GFC, and what is worse they do not seem to have any plan to stop these jobs washing offshore. Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard had articulated plans to grow Australian jobs at least in part through our economic engagement with the growing economies in our region. They looked ahead to the opportunities and challenges that we face as a nation. It is humbling to be selected as Labor's foreign affairs spokesperson. I am following in very giant footsteps: HV Evatt; Bill Hayden; my friend Gareth Evans; Kevin Rudd, who has been so generous with his time; and Bob Carr, of course. I also should not forget Gough Whitlam, who was foreign affairs minister when Australia recognised China at the end of 1972. Labor has a proud history when it comes to shaping Australia's foreign policy. It was John Curtin who, when the country faced its greatest threat, made it clear that Australia looked to our new ally, the United States, rather than our old friend, Britain. He put Australian interests above all else. It was Ben Chifley's government which led Australia's pioneering work with the United Nations in the aftermath of the Second World War, with Australia becoming one of the first signatories to the UN Charter. Chifley's external affairs minister, 'Doc' Evatt, became one of the first presidents of the UN's General Assembly, and oversaw the UN's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—such an incredible example of an opportunity to put into action and put into international law the values that we all share. I would also like to just take a minute to mention Labor's Jessie Street, who was a founding member of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and before that attended the League of Nations assemblies throughout the 1930s making a marvellous contribution to the establishment of a human rights framework that included the human rights of women. It was Gough Whitlam's government which led the world when Australia established its diplomatic relationship with China in 1972. It was Bob Hawke and Paul Keating who began to grasp Australia's future as part of Asia, and establish APEC, which set up Australia as a significant player in our region. Under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard's governments, Australia's role as a significant middle power was cemented when Australia won a seat at the UN Security Council, won the right to host the 2014 G20—really established the G20 as the predominant economic body for deciding global economic and financial matters, replacing the G8—strengthened our relationship with China, turned our relationship with Indonesia from one that public surveys in Indonesia graded as lukewarm to warm, and began planning for the Asian Century and how Australians could benefit from the growth of our neighbours. We have long sought to articulate a foreign policy which is in the interests of Australia, first and foremost, and consistent with our values as a progressive party. Labor is the party of the fair go. But we do not believe that the fair go should stop at our borders. Australia is a middle power with regional and global interests, the 12th largest economy in the world, a member of the G20 and a founding member of the United Nations. We are a significant player in our region and a constructive player globally. That is why it is so disappointing to see how this government has already reduced our international development program in the short time they have been in government. This government likes to couch their $4.5 billion cut to foreign aid in the language of thrift: that Australia needs to get its budget in order before we can afford such largesse. But our international development program isn't largesse. It is not a conceit we allow ourselves when the budget bottom line may be better than usual; it is a necessary and vital part of both our foreign policy, our relations with our neighbours and our responsibility as a good global citizen. There are many arguments in favour of international development aid for what it can do to help us develop stronger trading partners, lift countries that have previously been aid recipients out of poverty to become strong trading partners of Australia and alleviate security risks and health threats in our region. All of these reasons are no doubt true, but there is another reason that goes alongside these. There is the simple idea that we should, where possible, work to eliminate some of the most dire forms of inequality that exist in our world. This speaks to something larger than a mere policy difference. We see a role for government in tackling inequality, whether it be at home or abroad. Those opposite have never really bought into this. It is not too long a bow to draw to link what the government is doing in foreign aid to what is already taking shape in other policy areas. It is already clear, less than five months since the election, that this government is not the government they said they would be before the election. The Prime Minister said his government would be one of no excuses and no surprises. The Prime Minister said he was on a unity ticket with Labor when it came to education. The Prime Minister said there would not be any cuts to healthcare. The Prime Minister said Work Choices was dead, buried and cremated. The Prime Minister said DisabilityCare was safe. Yet the country was treated to the spectacle last November of the education minister announcing three or four different education policies in a week, without really ever committing to the previous government's Gonski funding model, and threatening billions of dollars in promised funding. At its heart, the Gonski model is about ensuring that no child in Australia will have their education jeopardised because of where they live or how much their parents earn. Who would have voted for this government if they knew their true plans for education? In January, we heard the government was considering a $6 fee for a visit to the doctor. While, on its own, to many people $6 may appear not much, what if you have got four kids, you are on a limited income and the kids all get sick at once? More insidiously, however, the threatened charge tears at the very concept of Medicare—that our system is universal and that, if you are sick, you can see a doctor. That is what makes Medicare such a loved part of the Australian social fabric—it covers all of us equally. I was proud to be health minister when bulk-billing rates reached 82 per cent. Who would have voted for this government if they knew their true plans to destroy Medicare? Just recently, in the last few days, we have been hearing about the government's view on the award system and the awards that many workers are entitled to. We have been hearing the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and other members of the government blaming the workers of SPC Ardmona and the workers of Toyota for demanding conditions that the government believe are too generous. Who would have voted for this government if they knew their true plans for the Australian workplace—to ship jobs offshore and attack the pay and conditions of factory workers and others who rely on fair awards? Just over a month ago it was revealed the government's 'commission of cuts' is looking into privatising the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and that they have changed the 'launch' sites for the NDIS to 'test' sites. Of course, that makes those of us who follow this very nervous indeed. Who would have voted for this government if they knew that, just five months in, Australia's first national disability insurance scheme would already be in jeopardy? There are already other examples, of course, but these four speak volumes about the difference between us and the government—under threat, less than five months into the new government's term, are longstanding and newer policies that are aimed at taking some of the hard edges off some of life's challenges for Australians. What we are seeing here, as the Liberals shed their pre-election claims of unity tickets and revert to type, is that the old differences between Labor and the conservatives remain. We are the party which aims to make this country a fairer place. Yet the first moves by this government have been to attack our health and education systems, undermine disability support and attack the pay and conditions of factory workers. It has been a very poor start indeed. 18:49 Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Solomon In 2010 when I was elected to represent the people of Solomon in this parliament as the first female member for Solomon I was humbled by the support that I had received from the local community and honoured by the enormous responsibility that had been vested in me to serve the Top End cities of Darwin and Palmerston. The 2010 election and its aftermath was a tumultuous time in Australia's political and social history which came at an enormous cost to the Australian people. The Labor government held power on the back of a damaging partnership with the Greens. The result of the partnership was legislation such as the carbon tax that hurt the national interest and stifled economic growth. The Labor-Greens alliance imposed a burden on small businesses in Darwin and Palmerston in a way that no serving government should ever be allowed to do again. The carbon tax was imposed on thousands of businesses and tens of thousands of households across the country to keep the Gillard-Rudd Labor government in office. This disgraceful use of executive powers ignored the high cost under which many Territorians' businesses already operate. In a competitive economic environment like Solomon, this was a telling blow to businesses that already operated around the margins. The cost of electricity in the Territory increased by nearly 10 per cent in my electorate of Solomon, all because of the carbon tax—10 per cent! Small businesses have been the mainstay of the Territory private economy for decades. (Quorum formed) As I was saying, the cost of electricity increased by nearly 10 per cent in my electorate of Solomon, all because of the carbon tax. Small businesses have been the mainstay of the Territory's private economy for decades and have provided jobs and security for families around Darwin and Palmerston. In an election environment where both the major political groupings promised to develop northern Australia, only one has shown it really is prepared to put its money where its mouth is by removing the carbon tax on businesses and households in Solomon. That is why I am so proud as a Liberal member of the coalition government to be able to help to implement the policies that swept us to power on 7 September. My first three years as a member of the Solomon were rewarding and it was hard work being in opposition. It was the first time that the member for Solomon had been in opposition. My re-election was an enormous privilege, and one that I intend to use for the benefit of all the residents Solomon. The electorate of Solomon was created in 2001 and covers an area of approximately 337 square kilometres. It was named after Vaiben Solomon. Vaiben Solomon was the most amazing man. He took every opportunity the Northern Territory had. He became— 18:56 Mr HAYES ECV Fowler I move: That the member be no longer heard. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The question is that the member for Solomon no longer be heard.

The House divided. [19:00]
(The Deputy Speaker—Mr Craig Kelly)

50 AYES Albanese, AN Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Snowdon, WE Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Zappia, A 80 NOES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

19:06 Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Solomon In some quarters Darwin has a reputation of being— 19:06 Mr ROBERT HWT Fadden I move: That Mrs Griggs be granted an extension of time not exceeding seven and a half minutes. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The question is that the motion be agreed to.

The House divided. [19:08]
(The Deputy Speaker—Hon. Bruce Scott)

80 AYES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, BC Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP 50 NOES Albanese, AN Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Fitzgibbon, JA Giles, AJ Gray, G Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Snowdon, WE Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to

19:13 Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Solomon As I was saying, in some quarters Darwin has a reputation for being a public service town, but this is only a fraction of the story. There is a small but vibrant manufacturing sector, which produces everything from ute trays to water tanks to plumbing pipes to besser blocks, and, as Darwin goes, so do the opportunities for businesses to set up in Solomon. As an example, back in 2009, Perth based business Slumbercorp Australia wanted to expand its operations outside Western Australia— Honourable members interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 Order! Would those members who are still making conversation in the corridor please leave or resume their seats. The member for Solomon has the call. Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Can you reset my time, Mr Deputy Speaker, because this is very important. I have got lots to say. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The timer has been reset. Mrs GRIGGS 220370 As an example, back in 2009, Perth based business Slumbercorp Australia wanted to expand its operations outside of Western Australia and chose Darwin ahead of all the other cities on the back of its growing population and bright economic prospects. At its plant in the East Arm, Slumbercorp employs about a dozen workers and produces about 50 mattresses a day for both the local and the national markets, and, according to its Darwin management team, the Territory provided long-term opportunities that were not available down south. And I am pleased to say that the business is here for the long haul. I urge other manufacturers who are looking to set up in a greenfields market free from the hustle and bustle that goes with larger capital cities to follow Slumbercorp's lead. I also urge those affected by the devastating decisions by Ford, General Motors Holden and Toyota to end vehicle manufacturing in Australia to look at relocating up north when considering all your options. Tourism, while suffering from the impacts of the high Australian dollar, still employs thousands in Solomon, particularly during the dry season, with cruise ships an expanding section of the market. There is no shortage of innovation in Solomon. A business which I have had a long association with, SRA Information Technology, shows what can be done if you are prepared to think outside the square. SRA Information Technology was recently named Territory exporter of the year with its multiaward-winning product EnviroSys, a product being used by BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. SRA now has offices in Singapore and Texas as well as development teams in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Singapore. Not bad for a small local IT company based in Darwin! As I said, there is no shortage of innovation in Solomon. We well and truly punch above our weight. The development of the $34 billion Ichthys project in Darwin brings with it the prospect of sustained, long-term economic growth in the Top End over a number of years. The Japanese multinational INPEX, along with Total, from France, and other energy based companies, has formed a partnership to build an LNG plant at Blaydin Point, on Darwin Harbour, that will process gas extracted off the Western Australian coast for at least another 30 years. This project is a game changer for Solomon both in terms of its capacity to create direct and indirect jobs and during its construction phase, which is beginning to ratchet up now. When I made my first speech in this place, I talked about the impact that the housing crisis was having on ordinary workers and families in Solomon. Darwin still has the highest median capital city rents in the country, a brutal and expensive reality for the thousands of people in my electorate living in rented accommodation. According to Australian Property Monitors, the median rental price for a house in Darwin was $700—that is right: $700 a week—at the end of 2013. That is an incredible $200 a week more than Sydney, the most expensive capital. Similarly, the median rental for units in Darwin was $570 at the end of last year, $85 a week more than Sydney. Four years on, I have maintained my rage at the member for Lingiari, the previous minister responsible—that got your attention!—for Defence housing. He had the opportunity to save the RAAF base houses in Eaton in the middle of a housing crisis—400 houses. He comes in here and makes out— The DEPUTY SPEAKER YT4 Order! The member for Solomon will resume her seat. I will hear the Manager of Opposition Business in the House. 19:18 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That the debate be adjourned. The DEPUTY SPEAKER YT4 The question is that the debate be adjourned.

The House divided. [19:23]
(The Deputy Speaker—Hon. Bruce Scott)

46 AYES Albanese, AN Bird, SL Bowen, CE Brodtmann, G Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Ellis, KM Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Giles, AJ Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Husic, EN Jones, SP King, CF Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Plibersek, TJ Ripoll, BF Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Snowdon, WE Thistlethwaite, MJ Thomson, KJ Watts, TG Zappia, A 81 NOES Alexander, JG Andrews, KJ Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Bandt, AP Billson, BF Briggs, JE Broad, AJ Broadbent, RE Brough, MT Buchholz, S (teller) Chester, D Christensen, GR Ciobo, SM Coleman, DB Coulton, M (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Fletcher, PW Frydenberg, JA Gambaro, T Gillespie, DA Griggs, NL Hartsuyker, L Hawke, AG Henderson, SM Hendy, PW Hogan, KJ Howarth, LR Hunt, GA Hutchinson, ER Irons, SJ Jensen, DG Jones, ET Joyce, BT Keenan, M Kelly, C Laming, A Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA O'Dowd, KD O'Dwyer, KM Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Randall, DJ Robb, AJ Robert, SR Roy, WB Ruddock, PM Scott, FM Simpkins, LXL Smith, ADH Southcott, AJ Stone, SN Sudmalis, AE Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Truss, WE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

ADJOURNMENT 284 ADJOURNMENT Trade Unions 284 19:33 Mr BUCHHOLZ 230531 Wright Since the election there has been an abundance of credible claims by none other than senior union officials claiming unlawful activity, corruption, organised crime, and involvement in standover tactics, kickbacks and so on. As a result of the government's recent announcement, we will be recommending to Her Excellency an appointment of a royal commission into union governance and corruption to be headed by High Court Justice Dyson Heydon. When we have a look at the allegations that surround union corruption, they have not come from our side of the House; they have come from within the internal ranks. If you have been following the Hansard here this afternoon, you will have witnessed the intimidation, the standover tactics in this parliament to try to intimidate speakers, to shut them down so that they cannot make their speech for the first time in this House in this term. The connection is that every Labor member in this House is a servant to a union movement in some capacity. They cannot hold a seat unless they are aligned to some union. I will stand corrected if that is not the case. Is there a Labor member in this House who is not a member of a union? A government member: Maybe Canberra? Mr BUCHHOLZ 230531 Maybe Canberra. So, this is a government that is unconditionally committed to democracy. We are committed to democracy and the role that the laws play in shaping our society for the better. This royal commission is designed to bring to the surface the bottom feeders that are bringing honest workers and honest businesses into disrepute—honest members of the union movement who have been ripped off by corrupt officials and are experiencing unsavoury behaviour in the workplace as a result of the toxic culture that has begun to fester in particular, it would appear, within the construction sector. Prime Minister Abbott's objective is simple: ensuring that honest, decent, ordinary Australians are being protected from those who think they are above the law. There are too many cases of corruption and unlawfulness that go unreported. Workers and members of trade unions in this country are now entitled to know whether their money, their pay—in union fees—is being invested in their best interests or is being used for the primary purpose of union slush funds. They should not have their hard-earned money put towards funding corrupt officials who spend their time running scams on the side, organisations on the side, or worse, in their self-interest and in some cases criminal activity. The union movement was built on the worker's rights. I fear that the union movement has become more about the self-appointed rights of officials rather than the rights of the worker. Australia is a country that should be proud of its trade union history. Trade unions have a predominant place in our history and have improved the lives of many of the Australians who fought hard for better wage conditions and workplace accident compensation. However, this history is becoming increasingly tarnished from scandal upon scandal, corruption claim upon corruption claim. Paul Howse, the national secretary of the AWU, recently conceded that the union movement in Australia has lost sight of itself. For Paul Howse, a senior union leader and secretary of the AWU, those were incredible words. He conceded that as a union leader he has to deal with his fair share of bad eggs. He acknowledged that a culture of thuggery and criminal associations exists within their organisations. It is outrageous that this behaviour happens openly and blatantly, as acknowledged by senior union members. If he is willing to admit that at the National Press Club, are there other secrets or issues that he is not willing to reveal and that will only come out on the back of a royal commission? Is the truth too defamatory to admit? Who would know? What is the actual state of the union movement in Australia? To get these questions answered is why a royal commission is needed. That is why the union movement needs to be held to account and why this government is putting the law first. (Time expired) Homelessness 285 19:38 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor I rise to discuss an issue I have spoken about a number of times in this chamber—that is, housing stress and homelessness. I do this because it is an issue that is not going away and that is profound in its impact. As I have mentioned before, my local community is particularly affected by this issue. With the recent Toyota announcement, the so-called 'end of the age of entitlement' and the Abbott government's cuts to social services, it can only get worse. We already have the highest rate of tenancy eviction in the state, with 684 homes ripped apart between 2010 and 2013. But this figure does not include those who are homeless or those who are desperately waiting for public housing, those who are relying on the support of family, friends and neighbours to ensure a roof over their heads or those who have to choose between paying the rent or for the groceries. This is not only happening in Lalor, it is happening everywhere. The Productivity Commission's recent report on government services provided some revealing statistics on this issue. For example, 244,176 people received support from homelessness services agencies in 2012-13. As always, it is affecting those who are already the most marginalised in our communities: young people, Indigenous people, those facing situations of domestic or family violence. While that figure shows that more than 244,000 people are at risk of homelessness, that figure also means that 244,000 are accessing the support they need. These housing services can make all the difference. For example, 93 per cent of people accessing homelessness services had achieved some or all of their case management goals at the end of their support period. Of the clients who needed assistance with obtaining independent housing, 61.2 per cent were successful. This was up from 58 per cent in 2011-12. With integrated employment and training support, as well as a guaranteed bed at the end of the day, an additional 4½ per cent were employed full time, and an additional 8.1 per cent part time. While that may not sound like much, the lives of these people have been profoundly transformed. These changes, these profound transformations, are the result of good Labor government policy that undertook significant reforms in housing. This Labor government established the National Rental Affordability Scheme and delivered record investment in social housing. It established the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness in 2009, a $1.1 billion partnership between state, territory and federal governments to support more than180 initiatives providing support services for people who would otherwise have been homeless. It was Labor who extended this partnership agreement in 2013 and invested an additional $159 million to ensure service delivery was maintained and a long-term solution to homelessness was reached. We also established the Prime Minister's Council on Homelessness to provide advice to the government on progress and emerging issues affecting homelessness and housing support. Labor took the time to understand the needs of the most vulnerable and took action. But what did Prime Minister Abbott do as one of his first acts? He axed the council, just as he axed the National Housing Supply Council, the SchoolKids Bonus and the Low Income Support Bonus. He abandoned the council, just as he abandoned our automotive industry and just as he abandoned Australian jobs. I could go on forever because, after all, this government do not care about the vulnerable. Instead they have decided to turn their backs on the hundreds of thousands of Australians who need housing support and add to the potential numbers of those who may face critical mortgage or rent stress due to unemployment. But this is not a luxury they can afford; the clock is ticking. The government needs to affirm its commitment to addressing this issue as part of COAG, because while Labor's changes have improved the lives of many, the work is not yet done. The Productivity Commission reported that across Australia clients with unmet needs accounted for 22.1 per cent of demand in 2012-13. In my home state of Victoria, this was over 30 per cent. I know from speaking to local community housing agencies that within my community more is always needed. Despite the challenges they face, local agencies do an amazing job and are passionately committed to doing what they can for the people who need it most. But they cannot do it alone. I call on the Abbott government to step up on housing stress and homelessness, to open their eyes and ears to the most vulnerable Australians and to commit to continuing Labor's proud legacy of reform in this area. Mallee Electorate: Fires 286 19:42 Mr BROAD 30379 Mallee Once again, I am not here to throw aspersions on those opposite but to report on the fires that occurred in my electorate between 15 and 18 January. Adam Lindsay Gordon once said most of life is froth and bubble but two things stand as stone: kindness in another's trouble and courage in your own. During the fires I saw proud, strong, courageous Australians. It is quite a testament to those involved to see Australia's best character revealed when we are tested. On 18 January, I flew over the fire scene where 51,000 hectares were burnt around the Grampians complex and 40,000 hectares were burnt around the Wyperfeld National Park. We were fortunate the wind was coming from west. The wind change came at 2 o'clock, but had it come at 4 o'clock quite possibly the township of Halls Gap would have been burnt out. Sadly we had one fatality in that fire and lost 32 premises, with 3,500 sheep burnt or put down. The farmers are now in the recovery stage of rebuilding and regrouping. The Grampians area is a wonderful place to visit. There are kangaroos and koalas, and Halls Gap is still open for business. I encourage every Australian to go there and spend some money as this would be the best way of getting people back on their feet and showing that Australians stand by those in need. One thing that became very clear throughout the fire was the lack of mobile phone coverage. We even had a situation where the police could not communicate with other police. At one of the kitchen tables I sat around, a guy said to me that had he not been able to get on the ute, put his leg at the right angle and his tongue at the right angle, to try and get reception, he would not have been able to alert his neighbour that the fire was coming. That alert enabled the neighbour to save his wife, his children and his own life. Mobile phone coverage in our area must improve. Our government has made a commitment to spend some dollars on it, and it will be my ambition as the local member to make sure that we can get enough dollars into the electorate of Mallee to address the issue of mobile coverage. The world has changed. We run First World businesses across my electorate. We run tourism businesses. We run agricultural businesses. The capacity to make phone calls and to have access to appropriate broadband speeds has to improve. I argue, very firmly, that, as a government, we need to focus on the low-hanging fruit to drive productivity. We have a challenge to get our productivity back on track, and to create jobs. We are going to address that challenge. The low-hanging fruit in telecommunications is phone coverage and broadband speeds in our regional areas. There are many options in our cities to access affordable and reasonably fast broadband, but in some country areas we cannot even make a phone call. The Grampians is an area where lots of tourists come. During the fire we saw that people have grown accustomed to getting an SMS when there is a major emergency to alert them to the need to evacuate. People come from Melbourne, where they have always had phone coverage. They go hiking in the Grampians where they have no phone coverage. So it becomes an issue of safety. I want to put on the record that we must address this. It will be my ambition to address this. I will bring the minister responsible down to the electorate. We must make sure that this part of Australia receives its fair share when it comes to telecommunications. As I said at the start, sometimes the tough things bring out the best in people. The way the people of the community quickly rallied, provided food and accommodation, and helped out the CFA where they could is testimony to what great Australians can do. Our country is proud of the people who have dealt with such difficult times. As a local member I am very proud to be able to speak on their behalf in this House. Ipswich Grammar School Sesquicentenary 287 19:47 Mr NEUMANN HVO Blair The year 2013 marked the sesquicentenary celebrations for Ipswich Grammar School. IGS, as it is known locally, is not only the oldest secondary school in Ipswich, it is the oldest secondary school in Queensland. Officially opened on 25 September 1863 by Sir George Ferguson Bowen, Governor of Queensland, Ipswich Grammar School opened with 16 students, four staff and the inaugural headmaster, Mr Stuart Hawthorne, a graduate of the University of Sydney. Imagine, if you will, the Ipswich of 1863 with the Governor of Queensland about to arrive. Every shop and business closed its doors and the residents donned their finery and lined the streets to welcome the Governor and Lady Bowen. The Governor and Lady Bowen were welcomed by a 50-strong body of the Ipswich Infantry Rifle Corps—which I might add was noted by the Courier as 'more than Brisbane was able to muster for the opening of parliament'. The Governor gave a 'brief but eloquent and impressive address', according to the Courier. Sir George encouraged students to work hard and be diligent in their studies and the teachers to add to their stores of knowledge so that, in the words of the late Dr Arnold, one of the greatest teachers of any age, their pupils 'may drink not from a stagnant pond, but from a fresh running stream'. I had the pleasure of attending one of the school's sesquicentenary functions at which the present Governor of Queensland, Penelope Wensley, spoke. The year 2013 was a remarkable year for the school, starting with a red-carpet special assembly on 11 February, at which members—including past school captains from the class of 1963—participated in a vintage car rally. About a month later the school launched The Story of Ipswich Grammar School, an impressive-looking commemorative book, beautifully written and meticulously researched by Sophie Church, former IGS teacher and historian. The book was officially launched to a crowd of about 150 people by the former state member for Ipswich, Sir Llew Edwards. We learn in the book of the institution's 15 headmasters and the notable successes of many students, including famous engineer, Dr John Bradfield and former High Court Chief Justice Sir Harry Gibbs. We learn of the controversial 1950s period, when there was a rapid succession of headmasters who had apparently fallen out with the board. At the event, the current school headmaster, Robert Henderson, spoke of the pride and excitement felt by the students, past and present, at the institution's 150-year milestone, and at the launch of the commemorative book. Ipswich Grammar School has a reputation for academic success and sporting excellence. A common misconception in the community is that private schools are the domain of the elite and wealthy. They are not. In Ipswich's history the sons of railway workers, coalminers and tradesmen could be found at a private school. Boys from all different walks of life attend, and have attended, Ipswich Grammar School. In fact, this is reflected in the school's motto, 'Every boy, every chance, every day,' which was adopted by the school in 2007. During her research Sophie Church discovered a common theme amongst old boys. She says: Ask an Old Boy from any generation, and they will invariably tell you that what they valued most about their school days is that they were given a realistic introduction to life. Along with the school's record for academic and sporting achievements, these words are high praise indeed. I take this opportunity to extend my sincere congratulations to the principal and CEO, Robert Henderson; John Kent, chair of the board of trustees; the board itself; teachers; staff; students; and the whole school community of Ipswich Grammar School. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to share with them the joy, pride and celebrations they have experienced throughout this momentous year. I was pleased to be there at the induction of their school leaders last week. I am sure that the pride and sense of achievement will be with the whole school community for many years to come. Reid, Professor Janice 289 19:51 Ms SCOTT 165476 Lindsay It gives me great pleasure to rise this evening to honour the work and achievements of Professor Janice Reid, Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Western Sydney. Having retired in December 2013, she will be sorely missed by the university, her staff, the students and the people of Greater Western Sydney. The University of Western Sydney is a major urban university spread across six campuses. In completing my bachelor degree in business, I attended three of these campuses at Penrith, Blacktown and Parramatta. Campuses also reside in Bankstown, Campbelltown and the Hawkesbury, with the chancellery residing in my electorate of Lindsay in the suburb of Penrith. The university is a diverse and innovative institution which is proud to provide great opportunities to the people of Western Sydney, the university's 2,500 staff and 40,000 students. Professor Reid has been a critical pillar in the success of the University of Western Sydney and in realising its vision: Bringing knowledge to life in Greater Western Sydney through community and business engagement with our learning and our research. As an alumna, I think we should add 'government' to that vision. Professor Reid will be most remembered for her unfailing commitment to making higher education more accessible to the people of Greater Western Sydney. Her leadership has transformed UWS into one of Australia's most progressive and innovative universities, providing opportunities for hundreds of thousands of diverse students in a region that has traditionally been known for social disadvantage and low levels of educational opportunity and participation. In the words of Professor Peter Shergold, Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney: UWS has for many years enjoyed the leadership of one of Australia's great Vice Chancellors, Janice Reid, one of incredible commitment to providing the most engaging university experiences to students. Janice has been a tremendous asset to the university with her remarkable experience from serving on the boards of public agencies and non-profit organisations at both state and federal levels in the areas of health, welfare, schools, higher education, energy, pension fund, international relations, arts and heritage funds. You can see why we will miss her. Her services to so many boards and committees are too many to mention, but I am sure it has been this experience that has so greatly helped in her role as vice-chancellor of the University of Western Sydney. Janice Reid's own research has been in the field of Aboriginal and refugee societies, health and health care, occupational health and mental health. Her authored publications and edited or co-edited volumes include Body, land and spirit: Aboriginal health and healing; Sorcerers and healing spirits: continuity and change in the medical system of an Aboriginal society;Anthropology and primary health care in developing countries, special issue of social science and medicine; The health of immigrant Australia; and, The health of Aboriginal Australia. In January 1998, Professor Reid was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to cross-cultural public health research and the development of health services for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups in the community. In 1984 she received the Wellcome Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland for research in anthropology as applied to medical problems. In 2003, she was awarded the Centenary Medal for services to Australian society in health and university administration. The university has been greatly enriched by Janice's intelligence, commitment and vision. She leaves behind a legacy of an education community, nestled in one of the most diverse and dynamic regions of our nation, which is ready to educate the students of the future. Penalty Rates 290 19:56 Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR 00AN3 Gorton I rise to explain to the House the concerns the opposition have with respect to the government's intentions to undermine penalty rates for workers in this country. The government's alarming submission to Fair Work Australia's review of workplace awards has revealed the extent of the Prime Minister's desire to diminish or remove penalty rates. A reasonable person would expect that such a submission would be independently considered by Fair Work Australia against other views and therefore temper any radical notions coming from the government, but this government is far from reasonable. What if the independent body is tampered with? The Minister for Employment has talked about imposing an appellate jurisdiction on the fair work system, as proposed to him by Mr Steve Knott, CEO of AMMA. The details are murky; however, the intent is clear. I am reliably informed that the government intends to appoint Work Choices friendly members to this appellate court to review any decisions made by the full bench of the Fair Work Commission. Further, I am also reliably informed that the employment minister is seriously considering the current Fair Work Commission vice-president, Mr Graeme Watson, to head this appellate body. That is an interesting trio of people—Senator Abetz, Mr Steve Knott and Mr Graeme Watson—to be mentioned in the same story about fundamentally altering the composition of Fair Work Australia. This is, I would suggest, a brazen scheme, coupled with such a predictable set of appointments that would undermine, if they were allowed to happen, the integrity of this 110-year-old institution. This government may think that, when it comes to attacking workers' rights and entitlements, it is best to appoint a third party, seemingly at arm's length, to carry out its dirty work. If this is true, an assault on such an august institution would undermine the integrity of the independent umpire which fair employers, fair unions and fair employees rely upon. Labor will oppose this too-clever-by-half proposition. We know that this government has some very significant challenges and has been derelict in response to job losses since it was elected in September. The fact that it is focusing on royal commissions to go after its political opponents and has a proposition by the employment minister to consider changing the arrangements of Fair Work Australia in order to undermine its integrity and its independence should be a concern to all in this country—the judiciary, registered organisations that go before that body and all reasonable-minded Australians who want to see an independent umpire be forever involved in reconciling any differences we have in workplaces. Minister Abetz must come clean on his proposition. He certainly must come clean on the notion that he would be considering the appointment of Vice-President Graeme Watson on an idea put to him by Mr Steve Knott from AMMA and he should do that as soon as possible. Question agreed to. House adjourned at 20 : 00 NOTICES 291 NOTICES

Wednesday, 12 February 2014

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Porter ) took the chair at 10:45.

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS 292 CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS Gorton Electorate: Australia Day 292 10:45 Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR 00AN3 Gorton I would like to remark upon some wonderful festivities that were recently held in my electorate of Gorton for Australia Day. I had the privilege of joining the Mayor of Melton, Councillor Bob Turner, and others such as the Member for Melton, Don Nardella, and the Australia Day Ambassador, Sally Nolan, in welcoming some of our newest citizens to the electorate. One hundred and eighty new Australian citizens from 48 different countries attended the ceremony at Willows Historical Park in Melton. It was a truly diverse and rich affair, with our newest citizens hailing from right across the globe: from Albania to Chile; from Jordan to Malaysia; from New Zealand to Zimbabwe; and from Germany to Burma. They have now joined one of the fastest growing and dynamic municipalities in the country. Indeed, during the years 2011 and 2012 the City of Melton experienced the fifth largest growth across our nation. I strongly believe Australia is a country that has flourished because of the hard work of new Australians. We welcome the talents, diversity and vitality that these new Australians bring to our great country. I have every confidence in their ability to make this country even better. I warmly wish everyone involved in the celebrations all the very best for the years to come but, in particular, our newest residents who have chosen to make our great community their home. As has been the case in previous years, Melton City Council's Australia Day celebrations were hugely successful. I want to acknowledge and extend my congratulations to the council staff and everyone who played a hand in making it happen. Bushfires 292 10:46 Mr ANDREWS HK5 Menzies Over recent days my home state of Victoria has once again found itself inflicted by the scourge of bushfires. While, thankfully, no lives so far have been lost, the level of property damage has been quite substantial—at least 34 homes destroyed and possibly another 20, once inspections are made. The situation is still in flux, with a number fires—some 18 or so—still raging as we speak. Close to 200,000 hectares of Victoria has been burnt and a score of homes destroyed, several of them in my electorate of Menzies. Earlier this week I had the opportunity to visit a number of bushfire locations. I had the opportunity to witness firsthand the magnificent response to the crisis by the Country Fire Authority, the Victoria Police, the State Emergency Service and Ambulance Victoria. However, that response has not come without human cost. So far five firefighters have been injured in the line of duty, one of them seriously. Regardless of danger, the courageous men and women of our emergency services have not hesitated to place life and limb at risk in defence of others. Their actions have been a testament to their courage and character. It is due to the efficiency of these agencies that lives have not been lost and more property damage has not occurred. While we are yet to see the end of this current crisis, it is fair to say that the lessons learnt from the Black Saturday bushfires have been well and truly learnt. It would be remiss if I neglected to mention the non-for-profit organisations that have stepped up to provide succour and support for the victims of this natural disaster. The Australian Red Cross has been particularly noteworthy in this regard. Quick off the mark, the Red Cross has dispatched over 220 staff and volunteers to bushfire-stricken regions of Victoria to provide up-close and personal aid for those afflicted. The English essayist Samuel Johnson once wrote: Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself. What is true of individuals is also true of societies and communities writ large. We can all be proud of the way in which Victoria's people have responded to the adversity of these bushfires. Bushfires 293 10:49 Ms McGOWAN 123674 Indi On Friday, 7 February, I travelled to Kinglake to join the community at the Kinglake oval for memorial services to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2009 fires. The 2009 fires are recorded as Australia's most deadly bushfires. Some 173 people lost their lives, hundreds more were injured, over 2,000 homes were destroyed, and 350,000 hectares of land was burnt. I could continue to list the numbers but it does not due justice to the drama, the damage and the trauma that the people in my community of Indi have suffered as a result of these fires, and still suffer. A number of incredible community groups formed in the aftermath. I had the opportunity on Friday to talk with members of the Firefoxes—these women meet each other at the local relief centre. Their credo was 'what women want', which has now become their guiding principle. The group allows the women to get together and have a few laughs, learn a new skill or hobby, listen to a guest speaker who may educate and inspire them, and work out ways to best help children in their area suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The Firefoxes do all these things and much more. They continue to support one another and many other fire-affected communities. On Friday, in Kinglake, a minute's silence was observed at 7 pm. As is common during silences such as these, only the sound of young children—confused as to why everyone was silent—could be heard. Their sounds acted as a gentle reminder to me that these communities do have a future—people are rebuilding and choosing to bring up families in these communities. We know that fires will continue to affect Australia. For the information of those members whose electorates have been affected by these fires and the current fires in Victoria, I am pleased to document two DVDs that may be useful: When the fire comes was made by the Kinglake Ranges Neighbourhood House; and Creating a new normal—a journey of recovery from disaster and trauma was produced by the Firefoxes. I want to thank the people of Kinglake for their warm welcome, particularly Rodney Monk, who welcomed me to his country; Sarah Matthews, executive officer of the Kinglake Ranges Foundation and the coordinator of the memorial service; Michelle Dunscombe, a small business owner and community worker; Gaye Chatfield and Lee McGill from Kinglake Arts Alliance for facilitating the beautiful mandala; musicians Bernard Kennedy and Simon Sutton; and local historian Deidre Hawkins. Finally, I want to thank Kath Stewart, the MC of the memorial service. I will conclude by reading a small part of a poem, Remembrance, that Kath shared with me. It gave me great comfort. Remember those who have gone, and who have left us a great heritage of remembered joy. They still live in our hearts, in the happiness we knew, in the dreams we shared. Their memory is warm in our hearts, a comfort in our sorrow. They are not apart from us, they are a part of us. We can shed tears because they have gone, or we can smile because they have lived. For love is eternal and those we love are with us Always. Hume Electorate: Scholarships 294 10:52 Mr TAYLOR 231027 Hume Last week, I was privileged to attend presentations and events in my electorate in Goulburn and Yass at which local school leavers were granted scholarships to support their studies beyond school. The recipients are the beneficiaries of the work of their local education foundations. In 1993, a group of Boorowa locals got together to support and encourage their local school leavers to pursue their tertiary studies. The Boorowa Education Foundation started raising funds and, in their first year, they raised $5,000 for scholarships for five students. The idea soon spread to the nearby communities of Yass, Cowra and Harden, all towns in the Hume electorate. In 2003, the Country Education Foundation went national and CEFA has since grown to a network of more than 40 local education foundations across Australia. I am grateful that there are a disproportionate number in my electorate. From little things big things grow. This year, CEFA has given out over 400 grants to disadvantaged regional youth across Australia. The grants totalled nearly half a million dollars and the number of grants given out is on the increase. Based on a simple decentralised model, CEFA helps regional communities to establish their own local education foundation. It is funded by the private sector and receives no government funding. Communities raise funds in the best way they see fit. For example, on one occasion in Yass, the Great Rat Race was held. Every two years, the Goulburn community conducts an art exhibition and an auction in their historic woolshed, raising tens of thousands of dollars. I cannot think of a better example of a community organisation designed by regional people for regional people and addressing, in most practical and hands-on way, the needs of regional people—in this case our young people. In many rural areas, there are very serious barriers to youth both commencing and completing tertiary education. For young rural people, the transition from school into the next stage of life is often more significant and more fragile than for their city cousins. For these young people, community and family support can be just as important as financial assistance. Mr Nick Burton Taylor, the inaugural president of the Boorowa Education Foundation and now national chairman of CEFA, says the real aim was to show the local young people that their community believed in them. I commend CEFA and the local education foundation for recognising the value of education and for helping to ameliorate the significant barriers to young regional people at this make or break point in their lives. Automotive Industry 295 10:55 Ms VAMVAKINOU 00AMT Calwell I want to place on record my very heartfelt sadness for those Australian workers in the car manufacturing sector who have lost and will lose their livelihoods as a result of the end of the car-making industry in Australia. The final curtain comes with Toyota's decision to shut down its operations, following similar announces by Ford and Holden last year. It was only a short while ago that I stood in this place lamenting the closure of the Ford manufacturing plant in my electorate. While lamenting the loss of thousands of jobs, I spoke about the repercussions of losing such an iconic employer in Calwell and I raised my concerns about the long-term impact and the devastating effect it would have on our local community, both directly and indirectly. With Toyota now going, it is estimated that some 30,000 jobs will be lost in Victoria alone because of the much wider and far-reaching repercussions and effects on the automotive industry, therefore putting tens of thousands of other related jobs at risk. Ford workers in Broadmeadows are now being offered earlier than initially expected voluntary redundancies as the car giant moves to accelerate its shutdown of manufacturing in Victoria. The company intends to shed 300 positions by June this year and hopes workers will take up redundancy offers rather than be forced out of employment. Various excuses and justifications can be attributed to the closure of Australia's car-making industry and there is much debate and counter debate about the value of having preserved car-making jobs in this country. That debate is yet to run its course, but the immediate and urgent question that should concern us all is: what now for thousands of Australian workers who lose their jobs and livelihoods and, more importantly, where are the new jobs they are supposedly going to able to apply for and are hoping for going to come from? After Toyota's announcement, the Prime Minister said: The important thing to remember is, while some businesses close, other businesses open; while some jobs end, other jobs start. These pronouncements offer no consolation or any tangible hope to workers, especially workers in my electorate who have lost their jobs. They certainly offer no consolation or any hope to the thousands of workers who stand to lose their jobs in my home state of Victoria, not to mention across the country. For the sake of these workers, I hope the government is aware of something we are not aware of. I also believe that the government and this parliament need to take a dose of good old-fashioned patriotism. Then it might find the courage and the passion to fight for Australian jobs because fighting for Australian jobs today means we are fighting to secure jobs for young Australians in the future. Men's Sheds 296 10:58 Ms LANDRY 249764 Capricornia The federal electorate of Capricornia expands 91,049 square kilometres and takes in the coastal community of Sarina on the Central Coast of Queensland. On a recent road trip, I visited the Sarina Men's Shed to learn more about their program. From the moment I walked through the door, I was overwhelmed by the warm welcome and the generous spirit of the blokes who greeted me, including their president, Jon Eaton. As I shared a cuppa and a cake, I was moved by their stories of how the men's shed philosophy of mateship had changed their lives and in some cases had in fact saved their lives. Some blokes just wanted mates to do woodwork with, some had lost their wives and had difficulty talking about it and some were recovering from mental health issues. Others had suffered strokes, while some had simply retired and felt isolated by not having something meaningful to fill their time. What is incredible is that the Sarina Men's Shed and other sheds like it give extraordinary psychological support to blokes, echoing the words of an old John Williamson song, 'All Australian boys need a shed.' The Australian Men's Shed Association advocates that being a member of a men's shed leads to improved health. According to this association, becoming a member gives a man a safe and busy environment where he can find a non-judgemental atmosphere of old-fashioned mateship. Sarina's men's shed needs bigger premises. They are currently using a borrowed shed that is far too small for the 50 or more members they have. This group of inspiring blokes have already raised $70,000 of the $100,000 they need to get the project off the ground. They are a mere $30,000 short, and they have asked for help to see what assistance may be available to bring their plan to reality. The Australian government already supports the men's shed movement through small grants for tools. We really need to get behind them in a greater capacity to help them improve their infrastructure in Sarina and other places. It could be argued that nothing has had a more positive impact on the long-term psychological well-being of blokes in our community than membership of their local men's shed. Immediately, what the Sarina men's shed needs is a generous benefactor they can provide the final piece in their puzzle. If any big corporation or benefactor out there is moved by the men's shed concept, as I am, I urge you to make a generous donation to the Sarina group. Men's sheds are Australian initiatives and I would hope that there would be opportunities in the coming year to find some future funding. Scullin Electorate: Lunar New Year 296 11:01 Mr GILES 243609 Scullin On Saturday I had the very great pleasure of attending the Whittlesea Chinese association and the Hoi Phu Nu Trung Vuong Vung Whittlesea Vietnamese women's group celebration at the lunar new year, the year of the horse, at the Thomastown recreation and aquatic centre, along with my friend Lily D'Ambrosio, the member for Mill Park in the state parliament, and councillors Mary Lalios and Kris Pavlidis. I give particular thanks for the chief organiser of that event, Albert Yu, president of the Whittlesea Chinese Association, for inviting me on behalf of that association, and for his generosity of spirit. In Scullin the Whittlesea Chinese Association organises various social and cultural activities, including dances, birthday celebrations, Chinese cultural activities, arts and craft and singing, and makes a great contribution to the wider community. Similarly, the Vietnamese women's group, and the senior citizens group as well, play important roles in building up social and cultural connections in a large and vibrant Vietnamese community in Scullin. I acknowledge the work of Trihn Nguyen, Regina Leung-Hining and the president of the Vietnamese women's group, Nhan Phan, as well as Thomas Lim, in bringing together this important celebration of the lunar new year. The multiculturalism in Melbourne's north is a great source of pride to our community and to me. Saturday's event showed this at its best, and it is very significant the two communities that both mark the lunar new year were able to come together to celebrate this important occasion, bringing together their traditions. They in turn involved others, from Bollywood to line dancing, in celebrating this event. The event was well managed by Flora Yeh and Vivian Wong, and I would like to thank the many performers for their evocative renditions of Chinese and Vietnamese classics to bring in the new year in a colourful and friendly manner. I also wish to pay tribute to someone who was not there; Arthur Yong, an indefatigable fighter for social justice and an announcer on Plenty Valley FM, with his own show, where he discusses issues of interest to Chinese Australians. Arthur has been unwell lately so I wish him a speedy recovery, and I look forward to appearing on his radio show again soon. Scullin has a growing Chinese and Vietnamese community who make a valuable contribution to our society, and I want to do all that I can to represent them effectively in this place. The organisers of the new years event note in their program that horses pursue their freedom, passion and leadership, and that the Chinese would not let the horse work in the farm. Instead, farmland jobs go to the ox, because the Chinese have higher expectations of horses. In the interests of full disclosure, I point out that I was born in the year of the ox. Despite this, I will try to make the best in the farmyard of politics, and have higher expectations of the horses and the oxen amongst us. I continue to be struck by the commitment to community on show at this and other events I have attended as a member of parliament, and I celebrate the tireless efforts of the many volunteers who brought this wonderful effort and these great communities together. Forde Electorate: Schools 297 11:04 Mr VAN MANEN 188315 Forde I would like to open the 2014 year with a bit of a celebration of some of the achievements of the schools in Forde during 2013. I would like to begin by recognising the efforts of Kimberley College, who for the second year running claimed the title of the highest fundraising school in Australia for World Vision. The students involved in last year's fundraising efforts raised $44,000. This is a very impressive effort and a credit to the school, Principal Paul Thompson, the students, the staff, and all their parents. Before the end of the school year, Mount Warren Park State School encouraged students to dress in colours representing special positive behaviours under their school wide Positive Behaviour Support Framework. This is a fantastic initiative aimed at creating a positive learning environment, and I commend the principal, Mr Colin Torr, and the school community for their efforts. Our schools also recognise the importance of building positive cultures, not only from within the school but within the wider community. For the past four years, Eagleby State School has been partnering with the seniors of the nearby Palm Lake Resort through a volunteer program. From volunteering on Anzac Day, in reading projects, at the homework club and in many other classroom activities, our local seniors have been assisting students at Eagleby State School. One of these activities includes students working together with teachers and senior volunteers in creating a vegetable and herb garden for the school's use each week. The kids are being encouraged to eat fresh foods and to prepare a weekly healthy lunch, which they all sit down and enjoy together. The now retired principal, Suzanne Jolley, also arranged for seniors to volunteer at the school's annual grandparent day, filling the gaps in children's lives where there is no grandparent around. This has been a fantastic arrangement, and I congratulate the school and the volunteers from Palm Lake in Eagleby for their support. I also wish to acknowledge the efforts of Suzanne Jolley and wish her all the best in her retirement. I know that she will be dearly missed by the teachers, staff, parents and students. I have always been a fan of football, or soccer as it is known here. A few weeks before Christmas I had the pleasure of meeting a young dynamo football player, who at the age of 10 has been drafted into a training camp for West Ham United. I wish young Joshua Moreland all the best for his adventure in 2014. He is the youngest sportsman who I have met in Forde to reach an international level. I am sure that he will do very well at West Ham and also in the United States. John, Ms Laura 298 11:11 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs I rise to congratulate my constituent Laura John on her appointment as the Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations for 2014. Laura was appointed to this position on 12 December 2013 after a competitive selection process undertaken by UN Youth and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Laura's commitment to the community started during her school years at Kilbreda College, where she actively promoted multicultural and multifaith activities, as well as raising money for schools in Timor-Leste. After completing school Laura continue her service to the community while studying arts and law at Monash University. In 2013 she was awarded the City of Kingston Young Citizen of the Year Award for her contribution to a range of youth and multicultural committees and networks. Laura has volunteered as a paralegal with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and has completed an internship with United Nations High Commission for Refugees. She has also completed a placement in New York with the human rights organisation Human Rights First in their refugee protection program. The people of our community have also benefited from Laura's work as a volunteer and, later, as a part-time employee in my electorate office. Laura's parents, Bala and Loretta, emigrated to Australia from Sri Lanka in 1988 with Laura's older sister Liza. Laura was born the following year, and, like so many children of migrants, she takes pride in Australia and in her parents' culture and heritage. Laura has shown through her community activities her values of service and compassion, as well as her international perspective and social conscience. It is appropriate that Laura takes her advocacy for social justice and youth issues to the international stage. In September this year Laura will represent Australian youth when she addresses the United Nations Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Affairs Committee at the United Nations New York headquarters. Before this, Laura will travel across Australia for five months consulting with young Australians from our capital cities and our regional and rural towns about issues that are of most concern to them. The lives of young Australians will be influenced by the decisions made by our current and future governments, and by deliberations between governments undertaken at the United Nations. It is right that the voice of youth be heard, and that we support such initiatives promoted by groups like UN Youth. I congratulate Laura on her outstanding achievement, and wish her every success in her role as the 2014 Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations. Without doubt, the contribution made to the community by young people like Laura will help build a better Australia and a more harmonious and just world. GST on Moveable Home Estates 299 11:15 Mrs WICKS 241590 Robertson Today I rise to express my thanks to the Australian Taxation Office for their sensible decision to withdraw the draft ruling released on 30 October last year regarding GST on moveable home estates. This draft ruling, were it to have been adopted, would have required operators of these estates to pay GST when a land site was leased to a resident. While many residents own their own home, they actually pay weekly land leasing costs to the park operator. In my electorate of Robertson, more than 2,000 people live in moveable home estates, and the overwhelming majority of them are on the Age Pension or Disability Support Pension. I understand from conversations with owners and residents that the average weekly leasing cost is about $120 to $150 per week on the Central Coast. Many park owners I spoke with advised me they would reluctantly need to pass on to residents any GST costs associated with the leasing of such sites, and this would have added an additional $12 to $20 per week to the cost of living for 2,000 residents in my electorate, hitting hardest those who can least afford it. After public discussion, including extensive opposition from residents and park owners across the Central Coast, the ATO quite rightly announced it was withdrawing the ruling, on 20 December last year. I thank the hundreds of local residents who joined me in lending their voice to oppose this draft ruling. I acknowledge the hard work done by a number of people who worked tirelessly to raise awareness in the local community about our shared concerns, including Shirley Dalton, Irene Broadhead, Vanya Neus, Graham and Shirley Byrne, William and Maureen Howard, Robyn and Barry Luxford, Maureen Green, Malcolm May and Paul Craig. Dozens of petitions were sent to me containing many hundreds of signatures. Public meetings were held in various locations around my electorate, and I was pleased to attend and listen to the concerns expressed by the dozens of people who came to every one. In the many hours I spent listening and chatting to residents over the past few months, the number one issue we discussed was their concern about the costs of living. That is why I am pleased with the decision of the ATO, and I am grateful because it means there is one less area of pressure on so many people in their everyday struggle to make ends meet, not only in Robertson but indeed around Australia. It is a timely reminder that the cost of living is a significant concern, and it is also why I again place on record my opposition to the carbon tax. The carbon tax, which the coalition government is committed to abolishing, is costing the average family in my electorate around $550 a year, and we are determined to put that money back in their pockets. It is why the people in Robertson voted for us, and we will deliver on our commitment to them. The best possible support we can give to people in Robertson, and indeed across Australia—people who are dealing with cost of living pressures every single day—is to repeal the carbon tax. Representing my community, the community in which I grew up, the community in which I am now raising my own two children, is a great honour. It is an enormous privilege and responsibility, and I am humbled to have stood alongside so many hundreds of my fellow community members in support of their fight to see the ATO's draft ruling repealed. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 208884 Order! In accordance with standing order 193 the time for constituency statements has concluded. CONDOLENCES 300 CONDOLENCES Gietzelt, Hon. Arthur Thomas, AO 300 11:13 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler It was my great honour to be asked by the Gietzelt family last Thursday to speak at the state memorial service for the late the Honourable Arthur Thomas Gietzelt AO. It was a remarkable send-off, chaired by Arthur's great friend former Senator Bruce Childs. I was also honoured to be in the presence of those who spoke about Arthur's contribution to this nation: the former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who described Arthur as the best Minister for Veterans' Affairs that Australia has had; Senator John Faulkner; Rear Admiral Ken Doolan, the National President of the RSL; Dennis McHugh, the President of Sutherland District Trade Union Club; Mark Buttigieg, a former Sutherland Shire councillor; members of Arthur's own family; along with John Schumann and others from Redgum, who gave Arthur's memorial service a lighter touch but also a very important one indeed. When it comes to politics, history tells no lies. At the end of a long career, once you strip away the rhetoric, the greatest legacy of a parliamentarian lies in what he or she achieved for average Australians and whether the world is left a better place for their political contribution. The world is indeed a better place for Arthur Gietzelt's contribution. Arthur Gietzelt achieved a great deal for his community and for the Labor Party in the cause of progressive politics and this nation. His story is one of passionate and principled conviction; of standing up for what he believed was right and refusing to back down when the going got tough. While his work improved life for his contemporaries, much of his activism was way ahead of his time. Arthur was a trailblazer who had the courage to pursue positions that, in his own era, were not always fashionable, but Arthur was usually on the right side of history. I was reminded of this just a fortnight ago when I went to see the new film about the life of Nelson Mandela—perhaps the greatest political figure of my lifetime. If you asked the young people who were there that night, I am sure many of them would think that support for the cause of the African National Congress was a consensus position in the 1970s—that it was a given. The fact is it was not. Many political figures were indifferent or even hostile to sanctions against the apartheid regime and indeed were strident critics of Nelson Mandela and his comrades. They were opposed to sanctions. They argued that this would have an impact on commerce or international sporting fixtures, which were seen by some as being more important than the dignity of the human race. Not Arthur. As mayor of the Sutherland Shire, he led his colleagues to ban the involvement of racially selected competitors in surf lifesaving contests on the shire's beautiful beaches. This was years before sporting sanctions became widespread. Faced with the battle for racial justice and human rights, Arthur did not flinch, even after the bombing of his family home, where 17 sticks of gelignite were placed just metres from where Arthur and his wife slept on that evening. This was one of the few terrorist acts that have taken place on Australian soil. But Arthur Gietzelt had the courage to stand up and not flinch, as did all of his family. His wonderful wife and closest adviser, Dawn, and his children, Lee, Dale and Adam, always stood up to be counted. Arthur brought the same passion to issues like gender equality, gay rights and protection of the environment. During these summer holidays, thousands of visitors flocked to Queensland's Fraser Island, a fishing and holiday nirvana that is a critical part of that state's tourism industry. Most would have been aware of Arthur's link to this wonderful environmental asset. In 1975, the federal Labor cabinet agreed to allow sandmining on the island. Arthur did not cop that. He was backed by the trade union movement including the ACTU's then leader, Bob Hawke, and Arthur led a backbench revolt. This was successful. Mining was banned, a lasting legacy as a result of political activism—in this case being prepared to stand up to those within his own political party who, I think everyone in the parliament now would agree, got it wrong. Arthur Gietzelt would certainly agree with Mahatma Gandhi, who once said: A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. Arthur saw a bit of trouble in his three decades at the helm of the left faction of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Labor Party. If you spend a career in the New South Wales left of the ALP, I have noticed, from time to time you find yourself in the minority, even if at a later time people forget what their position was in the past, given that history has proven it wrong. Arthur was always prepared to stand up for the democratic values of the Australian Labor Party and the participation of members and their rights within the party. I know from speaking to Dawn last week that Arthur was very supportive of the change that we made to give rank-and-file members a vote in the leadership of the federal branch of the Australian Labor Party. He would want those rights extended. Arthur did not worry about where his political position stood in terms of whether it was a majority opinion or a minority opinion. He argued his case, he put it forward and he was always optimistic at the prospect of change. He was a great advocate of the art of persuasion. His objective was nothing less than the advancement of the human condition. He embraced economic prosperity but could not abide growth without fairness and sustainability. I have often thought that you can tell a lot about the success of a parliamentarian's career by examining their maiden speech. If you compare it to their lived experience in politics, you can get a good idea about their priorities, their ticker and the depth of their conviction. Arthur's maiden speech, which came after he moved to the Senate after his time of 16 years in local government, was partly about urban development. He warned that the gross national product had become 'the new God' and said development was becoming more important than people. Arthur told the Senate: Every country aims at greater production, greater development, greater profitability—and in so many cases human values are forgotten. We have to recognise that the world is in the midst of its second major ecological upheaval. The whole of humanity, in one way or another, is switching from an agrarian to a highly urbanised society. … … … Urbanisation is the new phenomenon. Arthur went on to warn that governments had to craft policies that dealt with this shift, while retaining the nurturing of community and human relationships. That was right then and it is now. Arthur Gietzelt and his colleagues, such as Tom Uren and Bruce Childs, ensured that these issues remained core to the Labor agenda. Arthur would say that is the thing about the Labor Party: we think ahead. We do not just seek office to occupy power; we do something with it. We do not just talk about justice; we craft the policies that make it real. Arthur embodied this reformist spirit, always looking for progress with fairness. When Bob Hawke appointed him as Minister for Veterans' Affairs in 1983 he wasted no time taking advantage of his opportunity. The tribute last Thursday, not just from former Prime Minister Hawke but also from the president of the RSL, was a great tribute to Arthur's contribution as veterans affairs minister. Informed by his own three-year service in Papua New Guinea, Arthur reformed entitlements and achieved formal recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders' unofficial work patrolling Australia's northern coastline in World War II. All these years later, people such as Jack Ah Kit, the former parliamentarian in the Northern Territory, contacted me before the memorial service to make sure that the gratitude of the first Australians, who had made such a contribution to the defence of our nation, not just in World War II but in each of the struggles where Australian sovereignty has been challenged, is acknowledged. Arthur also established the Evatt royal commission into Agent Orange in Vietnam. There were messages of support at the memorial service from the Vietnam veterans. This is significant, given that Arthur was a strong opponent of Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War and very active in the moratoriums. Arthur, though, understood that it was vital that you could be an opponent of a foreign policy and defence decision of the Australian government of the time but still be supportive of our troops who were participating in that conflict, at great risk to themselves. Arthur was, of course, a formidable political organiser, but, for him, this was just the means to achieve political objectives. As he told the National Times in 1976: My opponents try to paint me as a sinister backroom boy, just a numbers man rather than someone with beliefs. In fact my beliefs are what make me want to muster the numbers. It was this perspective that drew many young activists to Arthur. He was a mentor who would take the time to sit down and go through historical analysis with Young Labor activists as they formed their own views. Labor has a strong culture of oral history as well as written history. It is how we pass our values from one generation to the next. It is how we learnt about the Vietnam moratoriums and the struggles of those who led the way. Arthur set up his Senate office in Caringbah, rather than the CBD of Sydney, because he was dedicated to community engagement and believed that social change had to be driven from the bottom up by the community. Arthur knew that progress was unstoppable, but he told younger party members that achieving progress required community support which they could develop if they showed the courage of their own convictions. One of the lasting memories that I will have of Arthur is his position as an optimist. Throughout a period when, in my view, so much of the progressive left was often captured by both a negative analysis of the present and a romanticism about the past, without acknowledging the progress that has been made, Arthur’s ideological foundation allowed him to retain that faith in human progress. There was no ballot that was not winnable. Progressives should not simply defer to those with more conservative views. He also understood the importance of remaining engaged with those who disagreed with his views, accepting that people of good conscience could hold differing opinions. So he respected his opponents, even though he never tired of attempting to convince them of his position. This month it is 25 years since Arthur left the Senate, to be replaced ably by Senator John Faulkner. His passing, mourned by even his most strident political opponents, is a great loss for his family, his friends, the Labor Party and the entire community—particularly those of the Sutherland shire. I would like to think, though, that Arthur would still be very proud that his activism over decades provided a great example for others on the progressive side of politics. As could only have happened to a character like Arthur—and he would have been pleased—the wake at the Sutherland District Trade Union Club after the memorial service was also the launch of his book, the first volume of his autobiography, detailing his struggles particularly in local government and in the earlier period of his political life. Generations of Labor people have been influenced by Arthur to continue to fight what he called 'the good fight'. Today, a new generation is taking up that good fight against some of the reactionary policies and the impact they are having on the community of the current government. Sir Arthur would be very pleased that the battle for prosperity with progress continues with a new generation of Labor activists. 11:30 Ms PLIBERSEK 83M Sydney I want to support the comments made by my colleague the member for Grayndler in his very moving tribute today, and also the words that he spoke at the Sutherland Entertainment Centre at the memorial service for Arthur Gietzelt. It was a very moving memorial service, and I am certainly sorry that I missed the wake at the Tradies, because I know that they always put on a very good function there. I want to start my remarks today by giving my condolences to Arthur's wife, Dawn, and to his children Lee, Dale and Adam, and their families. Dawn and Arthur were a couple who loved each other very much and raised a family together in the Sutherland shire. They supported one another in every possible way. I know that Dawn and Arthur's family will feel his loss very keenly as a husband and a father; as we feel his loss as a political stalwart. Dawn was always Arthur's greatest partner in politics. She was the first person he consulted, his closest confidant and a formidable political force in her own right. I truly want to extend my deepest sympathies to her. Arthur spent his whole life in service of his country: in military service, in service to his local community in the Sutherland shire, and later on the federal stage as a senator from New South Wales. In all of his involvement in public life, he demonstrated a deeply principled position, and he demonstrated foresight and the ability to think long term about what would be the best for the community that he represented. Arthur was a councillor on Sutherland Shire Council for 15 years, from 1956 to 1971. He spent nine of these years as shire president, effectively the mayor. I grew up in the Sutherland Shire and—as my husband occasionally says—you can take the girl out of the Shire but you can't take the Shire out of the girl. The place that I grew up in was deeply impacted by the decisions that Arthur Gietzelt made when he led the council. When my parents first bought a block of land in Carvers Road in Oyster Bay, there was an open dump at the bottom of the hill. There was no kerbing, no guttering. There were few public facilities. My dad used to carry his toolbox to the railway station every morning. On the weekends, they were blessed to be able to go to the beach and visit the National Park and so on; but the public amenity of the area was not great in those days. Arthur saw that investment by local government could make the Sutherland Shire a place where ordinary people could enjoy the beauty that surrounded them for free in a way that contributed every day to their quality of life. The investments that he made in those local facilities—the beach facilities that made it possible to go for a swim, and to sit and have a picnic and enjoy the natural surroundings; the sporting fields that meant that the young families who moved to the Sutherland Shire had a place to recreate on the weekends; paved roads; sewerage; street lighting; all of those things that we absolutely take for granted now—were delivered because of the foresight of Arthur. At the same time, there was always the idea that development should be sensitive and long term and for the benefit of all the residents of the Sutherland Shire, that development should not be just for the short-term profit of local developers. Senator Faulkner spoke at Arthur Gietzelt's memorial about Arthur's time on council and the contribution that his foresight made to the quality of life that residents still enjoy today, a quality of life that has made the Sutherland Shire a very sought-after place to live. As someone who grew up in the shire, I will always be grateful for the vision that he had. In many ways Arthur Gietzelt was a man ahead of his time. We saw last December an outpouring internationally of grief for Nelson Mandela, who I think is now universally acknowledged as a great man and a great leader and a great champion of peace. But people forget that support for an end to the apartheid regime in South Africa was not always bipartisan and that at one time it was very controversial. Indeed, support for Nelson Mandela was very controversial. Arthur Gietzelt always knew the right side of the argument to be on when it came to ending apartheid. After Nelson Mandela's death people spoke about the way the international community engaged in sanctions against South Africa and the impact that had had on bringing an end to the apartheid regime. But the decision to engage in the sanctions against South Africa was extremely controversial at the time. I am proud to point out that it was in fact Sutherland Shire, with Arthur as councillor, which became the first Australian government body to ban competitors from apartheid South Africa that were selected on a racial basis from a national sporting event, in this case the Cronulla Surf Lifesaving Carnival. He suffered greatly for that principled decision at the time. Indeed, I should mention at this stage that in the mists of history we forget about how pitched some of these battles were. Arthur's home was bombed and he was a target of a great deal of threat and animosity. Before his time as a councillor and as a parliamentarian, a senator, Arthur served his country with distinction between 1941 and 1945 in the Second World War. He served in New Guinea for nearly two years. Alongside his brother, Ray, his company helped build a track over the Owen Stanley Range. I think that it is very important for people to remember Arthur's war service because it was a defining part of his character, as it was defining part of the character of a generation of men who fought at that time and went on to play a role in public life, people like Tom Uren, and others. Bruce Childs also did war service. I think that those people who have seen fit to question Arthur's loyalty in some way really need to think very hard about the things they are saying about a man who spent years working in the mud in malaria-infested forests, and with the sweat of his body built a road through a most inhospitable landscape to create a secure supply line to the front, a track which was all that separated Australia from invasion at that time. As I say, there have been people who have questioned Arthur's politics and I think that, taking into account not just his war service but the fact that he has been on the right side of many of the great historic battles of the 20th century, might be instructive for those people. Arthur was a staunch opponent of the fascist takeover of Spain, of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, of the appeasement of Hitler and of the sale of pig iron to Japan. In all of these positions and in his early opposition to apartheid, I think that people can see that despite the criticism of Arthur at the time, history has proved him right in each of these conflicts. As someone who had seen the difficulties and horrors of war firsthand, he went on to become a vehement opponent of the Vietnam War and an effective organiser of the moratorium marches. His opposition to the Vietnam War meant that when he became veterans' affairs minister in the Hawke government some of the veterans groups—including, in particular, the Vietnam veterans—were worried that they would not have a strong advocate in Arthur. They very quickly changed their minds. As the member for Grayndler said, the fact that Arthur opposed the war did not mean that he opposed the soldiers who were sent there by their government and who responded to the call from their government. Arthur became a notable Minister for Veterans' Affairs. Bob Hawke pointed out that Arthur was such a committed advocate for veterans that, when there was talk of a ministerial reshuffle, it was the veterans groups that contacted him, saying, 'Whatever you do, don't move Arthur Gietzelt; we love him.' Indeed, it was the veterans groups that lobbied Prime Minister Hawke to keep Arthur in the portfolio. In his time as minister, Arthur Gietzelt introduced a number of key reforms that Minister Ronaldson very generously spoke about in his statement after Arthur's death: he extended pensions and medical entitlements to veterans and their dependents; he played an integral role in the implementation of a major construction and re-equipment program in repatriation hospitals; and he introduced an in-home care scheme for veterans so that they could spend longer in their own homes as they got older. The member for Grayndler also mentioned the investigation into Agent Orange. When we went to Arthur's memorial service last week, John Schumann was there and played that notable song I was only 19. John Schumann spoke about the continuing affection that Vietnam veterans have for Arthur Gietzelt. As I have said, Arthur has been on the right side of many of the great battles of history. There were many times that he was ahead of the pack and he suffered for it. In 1976, he served on the Tribunal on Homosexuals and Discrimination. Over his decades of public life, he has consistently raised issues about quality of life for women and protection of our natural environment. For this service to the nation, in 1992 he was awarded an Order of Australia. Arthur's life was long and his life was rich. He was a loyal Australian and a generous and committed Labor man, and at every time in his political career he sought to make this country a better place. He was deeply honourable, he was hardworking, he was decent and he was serious-minded. We will miss him and I know that his family and in particular his wife, Dawn, will miss him a great deal too. 11:43 Mr CONROY 249127 Charlton I am very proud to join my parliamentary colleagues in paying tribute to a true giant of Australian politics, the labour movement and the Labor Party—Arthur Gietzelt AO. Firstly, may I associate myself with the fine remarks of the members for Grayndler and Sydney, who covered every important point of Arthur's tremendous contribution. I was particularly taken by the member of Grayndler's contribution about Arthur fighting the good fight and never letting go and also winning those good fights, which is very important. I think the member for Sydney's point about Arthur being on the right side of history should also never be forgotten in this place. Arthur's service to Australia and the Labor Party has been acknowledged since his passing. He served in the Army in New Guinea during World War II, he served in local government on the Sutherland Shire Council for 15 years and he served in the Australian Senate for nearly two decades—during this period, he was Minister for Veterans' Affairs in the Hawke government. Arthur, like many of his generation, was shaped by the Great Depression. He was a fine example of a policymaker who fought for an economy which served the needs of the people rather than one where the people served the needs of the economy. I think that this is a lesson that we all need to hold on to. Arthur was a leading activist in the Australian Labor Party at a time of great internal upheaval, during the 1950s and 1960s. I think it is very important to note that, without his important contribution to the ALP's Combined Branches' and Unions' Steering Committee, the Labor Party would be a very different party today. Arthur was instrumental in defeating the industrial groups led by BA Santamaria, and the steering committee was crucial to ensuring that the trade union movement and the Labor Party remained progressive forces for good rather than puppets for groups with very different agendas. He was definitely on the right side of history in that debate. It was during his time on the Sutherland Shire Council that Arthur demonstrated his passion for equality and sustainability. The members for Grayndler and Sydney have illustrated this point very, very deeply. We were debating a condolence motion for Nelson Mandela late last year in this place. The member for Sydney made the point that Arthur led the response to apartheid. His council was the first government body to impose sanctions to fight the practice of racially selecting competitors in surf-lifesaving. It was tremendously controversial. Arthur was called many names and suffered one of the few acts of political terrorism in this country, when his house was blown up. We should never forget the fact that Arthur kept fighting after this gross act of intimidation. As shire president, Arthur successfully protected the Towra Point wetlands from development. This is one of the many examples of his deep commitment to sustainability. Arthur also developed some very innovative methods for financing council development. The member for Sydney commented on enjoying those amenities growing up in the shire. It is incredible to think that Arthur pioneered developments such as when the council established a land projects committee to develop land and then sell it. The projects gained revenue to develop the wonderful amenities the shire enjoys today such as pools, sporting fields, libraries and childcare centres. It is true to say that Arthur's legacy in the Sutherland shire is there for all people to see in bricks and mortar and open playing fields. When Arthur entered the Senate, he joined with another champion of the left and World War II veteran, Tom Uren, to pursue a very progressive agenda. They were joined by another in Bruce Childs. They represented a very formidable trio within the Labor caucus of progressive voices—voices that lived through the Depression and through World War II, which gave them such power and legitimacy. After the election of the Hawke government, Arthur became Minister for Veterans' Affairs. I want to acknowledge Arthur's service on behalf of the many wonderful veterans groups in the electorate of Charlton, particularly the very strong Vietnam veterans community, who have talked to me about their gratitude for Arthur's contribution as Minister for Veterans' Affairs. Among his many achievements that have been recognised include introducing home care for veterans, formally recognising the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders' work in patrolling northern Australia's coast during World War II, and establishing the Evatt royal commission into Agent Orange during Vietnam. As the members for Grayndler and Sydney commented, you can be opposed to a war but be very committed to honouring the sacrifice of those who fought in that war and ensuring that the returning veterans are looked after. There is no greater example of this than Arthur Gietzelt. Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke described Arthur as the best veterans affairs minister in Australian history. I think that is a view that a lot of us share. Arthur was a leader of the left in the Australian Labor Party over a significant period of time. Those of us who share his values and beliefs pay tribute to his legacy and pledge to continue to be a voice for social justice, equity and fairness in the Labor Party, the Australian parliament and beyond. Arthur's legacy truly is one of being on the right side of history, of fighting the good fight and of being a great mentor for activists. His passing is, indeed, a great and sad occasion for the parliament of Australia. 11:49 Mr LAURIE FERGUSON 8T4 Werriwa The Gietzelt family—Arthur, Ray and the broader family—represent the great success of migration in this country. He was born in San Francisco in 1920, the family having earlier been to Australia. Ironically, this is one year before another great Czechoslovakian was born. Alexander Dubcek was born in 1921, his family having fled to America earlier for political reasons. Their histories in a sense were fated to cross. Arthur played a very significant role in the broader left in this country by strongly denouncing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which overthrew Dubceck. Arthur was very much a product of his upbringing. Whilst his family might not have been as deprived as many others, their small business collapsed and in the Depression he was to see the huge unemployment lines in this country, people being given very minimal amounts of money and actually having to collect food on a weekly basis, depending on public works whenever they were available. He was also very much a person of the period of the Spanish Civil War at a time when BA Santamaria, the lodestone, the philosophical inspiration of some people in this House, was supporting the Franco overthrow of the Spanish Republican government and Franco's complicity with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the lead-up to the Second World War. That was when the Germans tried out their aerial bombardments on urban areas and utilised tank strategies that were later used against Australia and other allies during the Second World War. Arthur was formed by that need to take on the international advent of fascism. Arthur, of course, became very involved in Labor Party affairs and the series of Labor parties that stood up against Lang in the late 30s and early 40s. As many speakers have mentioned, he was later in alliance with the Australian Workers Union and other elements who at first cooperated with the infiltration of the Labor Party by extremist elements around the industrial groups but who then found themselves the next victims. From there, he went on to form the broad left steering committee grouping. I became involved in the Labor Party in 1967 with a group of people in the early 70s who took over Young Labor and became involved in the steering committee. It is very gender biased in a way, but I think of Rodney Cavalier, John Faulkner, John Overall, Jeff Shaw, Peter Crawford, Peter Baldwin, Sandra Nori, John Whitehouse and Pam Allan. Those people were very much welcomed by Arthur. It was not characteristic of those generations to actually welcome younger people, involve them, give them responsibility and listen to their point of view. It was typical of Arthur's influence, and I guess the era that we were dealing with, that three people I can think of—Greg Barder, Peter Crawford and John Overall—gave up university et cetera and went into the workforce to work in the shop industry to try to take over the union. It was at Arthur's instigation. That was the kind of influence he had. It was our belief that the shop assistants union was too compliant and too controlled by employers. I do not want to go through the areas that other speakers have traversed. Obviously there was Arthur's massive contribution to the veterans' affairs in this country. But if you look at the broad range of issues that he was involved with, he was very much before his time. He was involved in women's issues long before many others in the Labor movement were. He has been mentioned with regard to homosexual reform. I want to particularly stress the anti-war movement and Indochina. People forget that the New South Wales branch of the Labor Party supported the war and tried to prescribe the Association for International Co-operation and Disarmament which eventually became the moratorium. They tried to expel from the party anybody remotely part of that organisation. It was a massive struggle to overcome that and eventually change the policies of the Labor Party under the leadership of Cairns and to change Australian public opinion. Arthur played a big role in that. On the question of urban development, we talk about Gough Whitlam, but at a local level Arthur was providing the same delivery mechanisms in Sutherland. On anti-apartheid, we forget that many people on the other side of politics were not quite as good as Malcolm Fraser on these issues. There were huge fights in the coalition about resistance to apartheid. They agreed with Margaret Thatcher, 'Let's be nice to them and they will change.' Arthur played a legendary role in that issue. In the Labor Party, he was an unremitting campaigner for democratisation of the party and played a seminal role in the 1970s intervention in the Labor Party, which did accomplish a few things in regard to democratisation. He always wanted the rank and file to have control of the selection of candidates. He was unrelenting in those efforts. I also note comments, particularly by Senator John Faulkner, that Arthur was boundlessly optimistic. No matter how defeated the left were, no matter how poor the vote was, he would see these possibilities—somebody was seen talking to somebody in the Transport Workers Union; somebody was not talking to somebody at head office. Whatever the dire situation in the New South Wales Left, we were basically going to go ahead and win through. Arthur was endless in his optimism. It was quite surprising. When you connect that, as Senator Faulkner did, with the kind of degree of wariness about talking on the phone, it is quite strange that he was so optimistic at the same time as thinking his phone was being tapped all the time! One of the things people referred to at the funeral was the bombing of his house. I did not appreciate at the time just how close that was to causing the death of the family. If you see the photographs from the time, it was a very serious attempt to kill him. As people have said, at some stages he played a very major role in progressive politics in New South Wales and the accession of Neville Wran. People have tried to rewrite history and say that John Ducker and the New South Wales Right were the geniuses who put Neville Wran in power. In actual fact it was the New South Wales Left and a few mavericks such as Breretonwho actually got the numbers for Neville Wran. It was against the New South Wales Right that Neville Wran became Premier and brought in that period of both electoral success and progressive politics in New South Wales. And, of course, as we have heard on many occasions, his brother, Ray, played a decisive role in the elevation of Bob Hawke both to the ACTU and thereby to the prime ministership of this country. I want to also note his family—Dawn, Lee, Dale and Adam. Dawn herself was very politically active. I happened to walk into the Sydney Museum of Crime and Justice, down near Circular Quay, and on the wall was an interview with Dawn and Arthur Gietzelt. The display was about the Depression and policing of public dissent and protest. I saw Dawn being interviewed and she talked about herself as a child at Parramatta after the council banned all public meetings—any public meeting whatsoever was banned in Parramatta. She talked of being a child and watching this person run around on top of a building at Parramatta. There is a statue of a horse there—no-one ever notices it—and the person was chained to the statue and then was eventually chased around the top of the building by the police. I knew that that was my grandfather and I rang her up to ask her to clarify whether that was my grandfather, Jock, who was in the Communist Party at that time—my father used to say, in his usual cynical fashion, that he was into the Communist Party because it was the best racket going at the time. But that was a symbol of Dawn: she was there as a child. Her family were involved in politics et cetera. I want to mention one thing that was very moving. The last time I met Arthur was at a social event we just happened to be at, at his comrade and friend Bruce Child's home. I had not agreed with Arthur on everything over the last decade or so, but he actually physically ran from the function to grab me as I left. I had endured a rather bizarre redistribution—people should actually look at this—where the seat of Reid was abolished in name and then magically, after I was not able to contest three preselections, restored after that. There was conjecture about needing a seat. Arthur rushed to say, 'Look, Laurie, I know you won't believe this but I really hope you get a seat out there at Werriwa.' So I want to put on record Arthur's leadership role in the New South Wales Left but also his more broad struggle on behalf of so many people, on so many broad and national issues, and in regards to domestic policies. Finally, because a particular person was thwarted in his rather delusional ambitions to be a councillor in Sutherland, we have seen Arthur attacked by a journalist in the Australianover the last few months because of the alleged reports of some paid informer. I want to say that my memories of Arthur are his trenchant opposition to both to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, but also the invasion of Afghanistan when he had to drag some Neanderthals in the New South Wales Left to taking that position against the war. Arthur Gietzelt had a fine parliamentary career—and, more importantly to me, a fine tradition inside the Labor Party in fighting for rank-and-file democracy. As a mark of respect to the memory of the deceased all Members present stood, in silence. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 208884 I thank the Federation Chamber. Mr Sukkar 242515 by leave—I move: That further proceedings be conducted in the House. Question agreed to. STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE 310 STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE Sharon, Mr Ariel 310 12:00 Mr SUKKAR 242515 Deakin On indulgence,. I rise to speak in relation to the condolence motion on the death of Mr Ariel Sharon. We heard yesterday from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who had the honour of representing the Australian government at a memorial service for Mr Sharon at the Knesset on 13 January and at his burial service at the Sharon family farm in Negev. The foreign minister reflected on Mr Sharon's deep commitment to safeguarding Israel's security and prosperity. This lifelong dedication to the state of Israel deserves recognition and will forever be remembered, not only by the people of Israel but also by the people of Australia who counted Mr Sharon as a friend. Mr Sharon fought for the survival of the state of Israel as a soldier in Israel's major wars, including the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, as a brigadier general in the 1967 Six-Day War, and as a commander in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He distinguished himself on the battlefield, gaining recognition as one of the country's most skilled and courageous commanders, before turning to politics to continue his service to the Israeli people. Mr Sharon was as courageous off the field as he had been on it, as he rose through the ranks to become the prime minister. A strong-willed figure, he made a significant mark on the global political landscape. At times he attracted controversy, but inevitably he commanded respect from friends and foes alike for his determination and commitment to the state of Israel. I salute this commitment. Towards the end of his service as prime minister, Mr Sharon's determination to secure Israel's future saw him bravely shift towards a two-state solution, recognising this as the only pathway to realising that outcome. The work to realise this vision endures today as countries, including Australia, support Israel's right to live in peace within internationally recognised borders and the resumption of final status negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Australia values its longstanding relationship with Israel, which is based on shared values, common interests and strong political, economic, cultural and social ties. This is a relationship that was fostered during Mr Sharon's prime ministership and that continues to flourish under the Australian government today. We recognise that the loss of Mr Sharon is deeply felt by the Israeli people, and we extend our sympathies to his family and to the nation as they mourn his passing. 12:03 Mr FRYDENBERG FKL Kooyong On indulgence, I would like to endorse the very fine words of my friend and colleague the member for Deakin on this condolence motion for Ariel Sharon. As was mentioned, he was a great Israeli soldier, politician, and prime minister for the years between 2001 and 2006, who died of a stroke at the beginning of this year, in 2014. Ariel Sharon was the son of Russian migrants. He grew up on a farm; he joined the Haganah, which was the pre-state Zionist fighting brigade; he was a member of the elite fighting forces; and he played key roles in some of Israel's defining battles, namely the war of independence in 1948, the 1956 Sinai campaign, the 1967 Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and also the 1982 Lebanon war. He held a number of portfolios before rising to be Prime Minister, including Minister of Energy and Water Resources, Minister of Housing and Construction, Minister of Industry and Trade, Minister of Defense, of course, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was, in the words of President Shimon Peres, a man upon whose shoulder Israel's security rested. At his funeral, which was attended by dignitaries from across the world, including former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, our own Minister for Foreign Affairs, Julie Bishop, and Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden. Vice President Biden said: … like all historic leaders, all real leaders, he had a north star that guided him … His north star was the survival of the state of Israel and the Jewish people wherever they resided. Australia is an enduring and important friend of the state of Israel. It is so because the relationship is based on shared values—the values of democracy—and also the commitment to seeing Israel have its own security within internationally recognised borders. Currently, Israel is suffering at the hands of a pincer movement at both its north and its south. On its north, groups like Hezbollah, supported by the Iranian government, are involved in the Syrian conflict, which has seen a tragic loss of civilian life and creates great instability on Israel's northern border; in the south, we have seen the troubles in Egypt after the fall of the Morsi regime and the Muslim Brotherhood—a group that is not a friend of Israel—as well as the work of Hamas and others that seek to put an obstacle in the path of peace. This delicate security position that Israel finds itself in is compounded by an international movement to undermine Israel's legitimacy in the minds of fair-thinking people across the world, namely the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which seeks to undermine relationships with Israeli researchers, academics, artists and civilians, merely because they are from the state of Israel. Australia will not tolerate a world in which that sort of behaviour goes on and will always be there to support Israel as it faces difficult security challenges. I am sure Ariel Sharon, if he were alive today, would acknowledge the courageous leadership and support that both the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and the foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, extend to Israel. Also, he would have been pleased to see the kind words that have been extended to him by world leaders, at the time of his passing, acknowledging his deep commitment to the state of Israel, to the security and prosperity of its people and, by extension, to the betterment of the broader community in the Middle East. 12:08 Dr SOUTHCOTT TK6 Boothby I would like to make a few brief remarks on the passing of Ariel Sharon. Certainly, Ariel Sharon has been at the centre of key events in the life of Israel. He is one of the most influential figures in Israel's history, both as a military commander and as a political leader. He was born in Palestine in 1928 into a family of intellectuals. The need to fight for the new country of Israel determined his career. He joined a Zionist militia at the age of 14; eventually he commanded a special forces unit and was well known for his military career. He fought during each of Israel's five wars. For many Israelis, he was the hero of the Yom Kippur War of 1973—the man who led his troops across the Suez Canal and thus saved Israel from defeat by Egypt. He was called a warhorse. He was known as the bulldozer, a larger-than-life, blustering figure who came to dominate the domestic political scene as much by his sheer physical presence as by his rhetoric. He very much supported the Jewish settler movement. After his military career, he moved into politics. He served as a defence adviser to Yitzhak Rabin before being appointed minister of agriculture by Rabin's successor, Prime Minister Begin, in 1977. He was elected to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, as a Likud member in December 1973. While he was someone who fought in all of Israel's five wars, he was very concerned about having peace and security for Israel. I was fortunate enough to witness a meeting between Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister John Howard in September 2005, shortly before he had his stroke. One of the things I remember from that meeting is that Ariel Sharon spoke very warmly about Australia and about his boyhood memories of the Australian horses that he remembered. These were horses that were left behind in Palestine by the Australian Light Horse from the First World War. As members will remember, quarantine regulations meant that the horses were not able to return to Australia. Many of the light-horsemen had very painful separations from their horses. He remembered these horses, which were known as walers, and spoke of how his first memories of Australia were actually through our horses left in Palestine from the First World War. It was, as I remember, a very warm meeting between Prime Minister Sharon and Prime Minister Howard. Prime Minister Howard spoke about his times, also as a young man, travelling throughout the Middle East and of his stay in Jerusalem, made when he was a young man on his way to London. Ariel Sharon has been a key figure in Israel's history and has been very important for that state, for the survival of that state, for the security of that state and, ultimately, for a peaceful future for that state. 12:12 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield If you visit Israel—as I have been fortunate enough to do on three occasions, most recently in 2012—you cannot but be struck by the small size of the country, by the challenge involved in defending that tiny land and by the extraordinary history of the modern nation of Israel, founded shortly after World War II. When you visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, you gain some tiny measure of understanding of the urgency with which the founding generation of Israelis fought to establish the modern state of Israel. When you learn of the feats of the ragtag band of citizen fighters, some of them exhausted survivors of the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe, in defending their new nation in the face of active hostility from many nations around them in the war of independence and in the face of what might be called studied indifference from many in the West, who might have been expected to come to their assistance, you cannot but be astounded. Ariel Sharon was one of the founding generation of the modern state of Israel. We know him now, of course, on the basis of his extraordinary career and achievements and presence throughout Israeli politics over many, many years. We know him as an Israeli general of the first rank, a former commander in the Israeli army, a former Israeli Minister of Defense and somebody with a very distinguished political career who was Prime Minister of Israel on several occasions. Of course, he was a man who did a number of unexpected and surprising things in his career. In 2004 and 2005 he orchestrated Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Facing stiff opposition to this policy within his own party, the Likud, in November 2005 he left Likud to form a new party, Kadima. The title that Ariel Sharon choose for his biography, Warrior, perhaps captures one of the most well-known facets of this complex man, but his appreciation of the strategic challenges and the moral obligations facing the modern Israel was more complex and nuanced. I will quote the remarks of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had this to say: He had the toughness of mind to despise all illusions about the threats facing Israel. But he had the imagination to know that genuine peace, if attainable with honour and dignity both for Arabs and Israelis, is the anchor ultimately for Israel's security. The success and the presence of the modern state of Israel, achieved in the face of repeated military attacks and almost never-ending terrorist threats over a period of nearly 70 years, is quite an extraordinary achievement. Israel today is a vigorous, successful, multiparty democracy. Amongst other things, it is a high-tech superpower with a presence in the fields of communications, radio-communications, satellite and many other high-tech industries, as well as in water use, desert agriculture and many other industries. Israel and its people have established a remarkable track record of success and achievement and a contribution to the world's technology which is quite extraordinary for a country with a population which is only just under eight million. The success of the state of Israel is tied up very much with the life of Ariel Sharon. He was one of the founding figures of that nation. He was a lion of Israeli politics. He was a man very much to be admired. I join with many other parliamentarians in expressing my condolences to the people of Israel at the loss of a great leader of their nation. 12:17 Mr HUTCHINSON 212585 Lyons Some saw former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a butcher, some saw him as a saint but history could well judge him as his country's saviour. Those are not my words, but I echo those of former Israeli newspaper editor-in-chief David Landau, who wrote a definitive biography of Sharon, published, interestingly, in the United States the day before the former Israeli leader died, on January 11 this year, after spending eight years in a coma and just short of his 86th birthday. Landau also said that Sharon's reputation was tarnished over the years by claims of self-interest but, despite the knee-jerk negative reaction to the man in many liberal and literary circles, Sharon regarded the land of Israel as his responsibility and worked all his military and political life to take care of it and its people. Sharon was one of Israel's most controversial figures but holds a special place in the country's history. He was a commander in the Israeli army from its creation in 1948 and was considered the greatest field commander in the country's history and one of Israel's greatest military strategists. As a politician he became known as the Bulldozer because of his contempt for his critics and his ruthless drive to get things done. Yet, against the wishes of the country's hard Right, he orchestrated Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. He was effective because he was firstly a pragmatist. He lost the confidence of his party over this, formed a new party and was expected to win the next election, as he planned to clear Israel out of the West Bank. But he suffered a massive stroke on 4 January 2006 that left him in a permanent vegetative state until his death this year. Sharon loved his country, he loved his people and he was a man of his time, both in war and in peace. In his political life as well as his military career he was indeed courageous. Decisions like the one to pull out of the West Bank were based on a love of the Jewish state and of its people. He was a man who made many contributions, both military and diplomatic, such as the establishment of a free trade agreement between the US and Israel, and he showed an ability to get things done, sometimes at a great personal cost. I note also the recognition that was given to the work that he did bilaterally with his former adversary Egypt in developing agriculture and agricultural research between those two countries. Given the eight years that were lost to him while he lay in a coma, we might well have been commending him today as Israel's political saviour. Of the things that I have read about his life, perhaps what struck me most were the words of his long-time personal secretary, Marit Danon, who described him as 'a lonely, gently flirtatious, highly verbal widower with a lust for food'—something that I could recognise—'and, though he understood that leadership was synonymous with lonesomeness, a constant and endearing tug toward the company of others'. May he rest in peace. 12:22 Ms O'DWYER LKU Higgins I rise today to speak about one of the most provocative and imposing figures in modern Middle Eastern history. No-one can deny that Ariel Sharon left his mark on the region. Equally, no-one can deny his passion for his country. Born in 1928 in what was then the British mandate of Palestine, Sharon made his career in the Israel Defense Forces. By the time of Israel's modern-day inception in 1948, Sharon had risen to the ranks of commander. Sharon was later described as one of the greatest commanders in Israel's history after successes in the 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Suez War, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. During the War of Independence he survived being shot in the groin, stomach and foot. He left the IDF a highly decorated soldier. Shortly after retiring from the army he embarked upon a political career. He was instrumental in helping to establish the Likud Party, a party he would later lead. His political career was not without controversy. In 1981, after helping lead Likud to election victory, he was rewarded by being named the Minister for Defense. It was during his time as the defense minister that he launched Operation Peace for Galilee, which later evolved into the 1982 Lebanon war. The purpose of the operation was to rid Lebanon of the PLO after the shooting of the Israeli ambassador in London. However, the war is remembered more for the Shatila massacre, a massacre conducted by the Phalangist militia upon civilians in the Shatila refugee camp. The massacre outraged many in Israel, and in a show of democratic force the Israeli government formed the Kahan commission. The inquiry concluded that, despite the massacre being conducted by the Lebanese militia, the IDF were indirectly responsible and, as defense minister, Sharon was ultimately answerable. Sharon would later relinquish his role as defense minister but remain in the cabinet. Many thought that this was the end of his political career, but those critics were wrong. Sharon's appetite to serve his country never wavered, and in 2000 he campaigned to be prime minister. It was during this campaign that Sharon performed his second controversial political act. Surrounded by hundreds of guards he visited the Dome of the Rock Al-Aqsa Mosque, the holiest place to Jews and the third holiest place in Islam. This action was used by terrorists as a trigger for the second intifada and a wave of suicide bombs that followed. However, it was clear that the planning for this intifada was well underway before the visit. Sharon won that election. Many in Israel are very grateful that he did as a strong leader was needed in a very dark time in Israel's history. Prime Minister Sharon surprised many with his tact and international diplomacy. He was the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit India and he had open dialogue with Russia—a country that had often supported Israel's enemies. However, it was his willingness to reach out to the Palestinian Authority that confounded his critics and supporters alike. After previously supporting the expansion of settlements, it was under Sharon's leadership that Israel disengaged from Gaza, handing over control to the Palestinian Authority. This angered many hardliners in Israel including many in his own party. However, this demonstrated to those at home and in the international community his willingness to reach over the fence for the sake of peace. In 2005 Sharon resigned as the leader of Likud after internal dissent over his disengagement in Gaza and he created a new party called Kadima. Tragically, Sharon suffered a stroke in the lead-up to the 2006 election—an election he was favoured to win. No-one will ever know what path Israel would have taken had he won that election. The stroke left Sharon in a coma for eight years and, after eight years of lying motionless, Sharon ultimately passed away. He was a colossal figure that left an indelible mark on the region. No matter what your views of Ariel Sharon, no-one can deny his passion for his country and his people. He was a powerful leader who only ever wanted what he thought was best for the safety and security of his nation, Israel. Not without controversy, he managed to reach out to his one-time enemy, putting history behind him in the pursuit of peace, and for this he must be admired. Ariel Sharon, rest in peace. 12:26 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina I commend the member for Higgins for her fine words and eloquent speech. This is an important condolence motion. Ariel Sharon was the giant of Israel and Israeli, and indeed global, political life. As a soldier and a statesman, Sharon was a warrior to the end. Born on 27 February 1928 in Kfar Malal in what was then Palestine but is now part of Israel, Ariel Sharon was a leading figure in Israeli military operations for decades, most notably in the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He also demonstrated that it is possible for a soldier in wartime to become a champion of peace. A founding member of the Likud party and later the Kadima party, he served as defense minister, industry minister and ultimately in 2001 as Prime Minister, over a period spanning more than 20 years, 1981 to 2006. His decision to pull out of the Gaza Strip in 2005 showed a great capacity to take unpopular decisions in pursuit of peace. The stroke he suffered in 2006 was a reminder that even the great amongst us are only human. After eight years in a coma, Sharon died on 11 January 2014 at the age of 85. Over the course of his life Ariel Sharon saw the establishment of the modern Jewish state and fought for its survival as a soldier and as a politician. It is now up to a new generation of leaders to resolve the tensions which continue to threaten the peace and the stability of that region. I hope that in my lifetime we finally see the two-state solution come to fruition to allow Israelis and Palestinians to coexist in peace and prosperity, sharing an area of the world that has special significance to them both. As the foreign minister noted in her comment to the House yesterday, the Australian government supports the resumed negotiations between Israel and Palestine and we welcome the leadership being shown by the United States of America in those negotiations, particularly the role of the Secretary of State, John Kerry. As the Deputy Prime Minister remarked on the day of Ariel Sharon's passing: He was a controversial figure but undeniably a leader of conviction. Vale, Ariel Sharon. 12:29 The DEPUTY SPEAKER 207800 Could I take this opportunity to add my condolences to the family of Ariel Sharon and to the people of Israel, whom Mr Sharon led not only as a military commander but as a political leader. I refer honourable members to a very poignant article in theAustralian Jewish News on the 15th which pretty well sums up the thoughts of members today. So I thank members today for their contribution. 12:30 Ms MacTIERNAN L6P Perth I just want to acknowledge that whilst certainly Mr Sharon has been over his career a very controversial character, there is no doubt that his actions as Prime Minister in withdrawing from Gaza, and from entering into a genuine dialogue with the PLO, were indeed acts of great strength and insight. He recognised that for Israel to continue to prosper, and to experience the peace that the Jewish people have striven for, for millennia, there did need to be a resolution of the conflict between the communities in the area. No doubt it was his record in the military arena as a defender of Israel that gave him the political capital and the capacity to make what was a fiercely contested decision in Israel at the time. In that political role I think he has been a great role model for Israeli leaders. I would just hope that more people will draw inspiration from the attitude and the stance that he adopted. Drummond, Mr Peter Hertford 316 12:31 Ms MARINO HWP Forrest Peter Drummond was the member for Forrest in this parliament from 1972 to 1987, and well and worthily represented the south-west of Western Australia for those 15 years. He came to the role by beating a one-term Labor member, to reclaim the traditionally conservative seat. Sir Gordon Freeth had held Forrest for the Liberal Party from 1949, and in 1969 was the foreign minister in the John Gorton government. However, there was a swing in the air in the 1969 campaign. Across the nation the swing was seven per cent to the Labor opposition, but in Forrest the swing spread to 11.6 per cent. History shows that although the swing was large the Gorton Liberal government was returned, the even greater swing in Forrest saw Labor's Frank Kirwin pick up the seat. However, leaving Forrest in Labor hands was not something that the local Liberals, as you could understand, could endure for long, and Frank Kirwin was destined to be kept to a single term in parliament. At the 1972 election the ALP garnered a swing of 2.5 per cent, on top of the seven per cent they gained three years earlier, and Gough Whitlam took Labor into government. However, in 1972 there was a correction for the new Liberal candidate, Peter Drummond. Peter Drummond was at that time a Mount Barker farmer. I am interested to see the member for Riverina in the chamber, because before entering parliament Peter Drummond had moved from Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales, where he was born. He was a farmer before entering politics, and he managed a 4.7 per cent swing to the Liberal Party in the same election that swept Gough Whitlam into power, and he regained the seat of Forrest for the Liberal Party. He not only regained that seat, he went on to retain the seat in the elections of 1974, 1975, 1977, 1980, 1983 and 1984. During his time in the House, he served as deputy chairman of committees and held a range of parliamentary positions. He was on the House of Representatives standing committees on aboriginal affairs, environment and conservation. Also he was on the House of Representatives Select Committee on Tourism, and Joint Statutory Committees on Public Works, and also the Joint Select Committee on Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory. Peter retired in 1987 after losing preselection. I would like this parliament to remember Peter as a kind and considerate man; that is how he was known. I pass on my sincere condolences to his wife and family. 12:35 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina I endorse the remarks made by my great friend the member for Forrest about one of her predecessors, Peter Hertford Drummond, who was a Liberal member of the House of Representatives for the Western Australian division of Forrest between 1972 and 1987. As the member for Forrest pointed out, he was in fact born in the city of Wagga Wagga, now in the Riverina electorate. He was born in that fine place on 21 August 1931. As the member for Forrest also pointed out, Peter Drummond was a farmer before entering politics, and I was interested to hear the member for Forrest point out that, during his parliamentary career, Peter Drummond was very heavily involved in committees concerning conservation. Certainly farmers are the best environmentalists, make no mistake; I am sure the member for Forrest would agree. Ms Marino interjecting— Mr McCORMACK 219646 'No question,' she says. Farmers are the best conservationists, and Peter Drummond continued that fine advocacy on behalf of farmers in the federal parliament. He was also heavily involved in and deeply moved by Aboriginal affairs. He would have picked that up in his early childhood, in the Riverina and certainly when he moved to the west. Aboriginal affairs are something that we should all be very involved with. On this day, when we have the Closing the Gap statements, it does strike a chord with all members of parliament how important Indigenous issues are. Peter Drummond was also heavily involved in tourism, and, again, as we are regional members, tourism is very important to our areas. We have some of the best kept secrets in our areas, both in Forrest and in the Riverina. I know that the bright lights of Perth—and I can see the member for Perth here—are very beckoning and appealing for many overseas tourists, but Peter was, and Nola and others from regional areas are, always keen to demonstrate and exemplify the great tourism opportunities that their areas have. On indulgence, I might talk about those members from Wagga Wagga, because there are not too many. I was talking to Wal Fife only the other day—another great Liberal Party member of this House, just like Nola. Wal Fife and I were talking about the fact that there were so few members of the lower house from Wagga Wagga. He said, 'We should have a little club, and you can be the president and I can be the secretary of this little club of the members who hail from Wagga Wagga!' Indeed, I got the Parliamentary Library to look it up, given the fact that Mr Drummond came from my great city, and I learnt that there have in fact been 5 members of the House of Representatives and five senators who have had Wagga Wagga as their birthplace. I might, on indulgence, just talk about them, for the sake of Hansard and for the interest of members. The first was James Howard Catts, born in 1877, who was the member for Cook, New South Wales, from 1906 to 1922, for the ALP. We then had Arthur Gibson Manning, born in 1872, who was the member for Macquarie, New South Wales, from 1922 to 1928, from the Nationalist Party. Wal Fife—Wallace Clyde Fife—was the member for Farrer, New South Wales, from 1975 to 1984, and then for Hume from 1984 to 1993, having already spent 18 years in the New South Wales parliament. What a fine parliamentary career. What a fine public life he gave to Wagga Wagga for 36 years. He was born in Wagga Wagga in 1929. Then, of course, we had Peter Drummond, who we mourn today. He was the member for Forrest in WA from 1972 to 1987 and, as I say, a Liberal, and he was born in Wagga Wagga in 1931. I was born in Wagga Wagga in 1964. Then we have the senators. Charles William Oakes, a senator for New South Wales from 1913 to 1914, who was a Liberal—albeit prior to the great party that Bob Menzies founded; it was the earlier edition of the Liberal Party—and was born in 1861. We had Charles Hardy, a senator for New South Wales from 1932 to 1938 for the Country Party; he was born in 1898. Thomas Louis Bull was a senator for New South Wales from 1965 to 1971 for the Country Party; he was born in 1905 and was the father of a great friend of mine, Rick Bull, who continued with that family's representation in the New South Wales Legislative Council. George Conrad Hannan, Senator for Victoria from 1956 to 1965, and from 1970 to 1974—a Liberal and a National Liberal—born in Wagga Wagga in 1910. And finally Helen Lloyd Coonan, a senator for New South Wales from 1996 to 2011—a Liberal born in Wagga Wagga in 1947. I know the member for Forrest, Nola Marino, would know the former senator well, and would appreciate the service she gave to the upper house. So very few members have been born in Wagga Wagga. We have had 1,133 members since 1901 and 559 senators since Federation, and only 10 of those were born in Wagga Wagga, so Peter Drummond was certainly part of a special group. And he was a special man—he bucked the trend which culminated in the election of the Whitlam government in 1972 by defeating the one-term ALP member for Forrest, Frank Kirwan—then he held that seat for the following 15 years. What a great political warrior. And what a great input and contribution he made, not just to public life in his own patch but also to the national Parliament. Mr Drummond's parliamentary colleague during some of that time was the Country Party—and subsequently the National Country Party—member for Riverina from 1974 to 1977, retired Colonel John Sullivan of Narrandera. When hearing of Mr Drummond's death, Councillor Sullivan praised his colleague as an outstanding member for Forrest and as someone for whom he had the greatest respect. He described him as a fighter for his electorate and as an advocate for farmers and producers across the nation. This is in much the same vein as the current member for Forrest, I might add. I read Mr Drummond's maiden speech to this place, and Councillor Sullivan's comments certainly ring true. Mr Drummond spoke about the exciting period the wool industry was entering into at the beginning of 1973, as well as the contributions the timber, softwood and tin-mining industries make to his electorate. He served this place with distinction, and I join his successor—my friend Nola Marino, the member for Forrest—in conveying my deepest sympathies and those of his home town of Wagga Wagga to Mr Drummond's family and his many friends. Federation Chamber adjourned at 12:42 .