2015-05-28 44 1 6 House of Reps 0 1

Thursday, 28 May 2015

The SPEAKER ( Hon. Bronwyn Bishop ) took the chair at 09:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.

 

BILLS 1 BILLS Social Services Legislation Amendment (No. 2) Bill 2015 1

Social Services Legislation Amendment (No. 2) Bill 2015

First Reading 1 Second Reading 1 09:02 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill will introduce three measures in the Social Services portfolio. Firstly, the bill will amend the social security law to streamline the current income management program under a two-year continuation. Income management and the BasicsCard will continue for two additional years to maintain support for the existing income management participants. The streamlining amendments made by this bill will enable more effective operation of the income management program. In particular, the bill provides for the abolition of certain incentive payments relating to income management, amends the operation of the vulnerable measure of income management, and makes minor streamlining amendments to remove ambiguities and improve the program's effectiveness. The bill also makes amendments to reflect two measures relating to aged care, which were included in the 2014-15 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook announcement. From 1 July 2015, the bill will cease payment of residential care subsidy to residential aged-care providers for holding a place for up to seven days before a care recipient enters care. This will ensure the subsidy is appropriately targeted to people actually receiving care. Currently, this subsidy is paid to providers at a reduced rate of 30 per cent of the full residential care subsidy that will be payable once the care recipient enters care. When the subsidy is ceased under this measure, the provider will not be able to recoup any lost residential care subsidy from the care recipient. However, the provider will still be able to charge the care recipient the standard resident contribution for the pre-entry period. Lastly, the bill will reflect the government’s decision to abolish the Aged Care Planning Advisory Committees as part of the Smaller Government initiative. The Smaller Government reforms are reducing the size and complexity of government. They are eliminating duplication and waste, streamlining services and reducing the cost of government administration. The Aged Care Planning Advisory Committees’ role was to provide advice in relation to the distribution of aged-care places. However, the last of these committees expired in September 2014. These amendments repeal the now-redundant relevant provisions in the Aged Care Act 1997. Debate adjourned. Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015 1

Social Services Legislation Amendment (Youth Employment and Other Measures) Bill 2015

First Reading 1 Second Reading 1 09:05 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill will introduce four 2015 budget measures in the Social Services portfolio, along with certain other measures from the 2014 budget and earlier fiscal decisions. The 2015 budget measures incorporate the reintroduction (with modifications), or the replacement, of three 2014 budget measures previously introduced in the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 4) Bill 2014—referred to here as 'the No. 4 bill'. Specifically: Widow Allowance claimants will be excluded from the application of the one‑week ordinary waiting period for working age payments (schedule 3 to the No. 4 bill referring), which is to be implemented from 1 July 2015; the measure increasing the age of eligibility for Newstart Allowance and Sickness Allowance (schedule 6 to the No. 4 bill referring) will be delayed to 1 July 2016; and a revised four-week waiting period for youth income support, applying from 1 July 2016, will replace the previous measure requiring young people with full capacity to serve a six-month waiting period for income support, with access to payment for six months and rolling six-month non‑payment periods thereafter (schedule 7 to the No. 4 bill referring). From 1 July 2015, the one-week ordinary waiting period currently applying to Newstart Allowance and Sickness Allowance will be extended to Youth Allowance (other) and Parenting Payment. The measure will also tighten the existing severe financial hardship waiver and change the current rules so the ordinary waiting period is served after any other waiting periods. This bill is amending last year's budget measure so that Widow Allowance claimants will not be affected by the measure. From the delayed start-up date of 1 July 2016, the age of eligibility for Newstart Allowance and Sickness Allowance will be increased from 22 to 25. Young people between the ages of 22 and 25 may apply for Youth Allowance (other) instead. Young people aged 22 to 24 in receipt of income support before or on 30 June 2016 will not be affected and will remain on the higher Newstart rate. The maximum age of eligibility for the Youth Disability Supplement will also be increased to 24 for recipients of Youth Allowance (other). This change in age requirements will align payments for young unemployed people with those for students, reducing the disincentive to continue study. There is greater flexibility to earn while on Youth Allowance, so this change will strengthen the incentive for unemployed 22- to 24-year-olds to seek part-time work. The 2014 budget measure, Stronger Participation Incentives for Job Seekers under30, which sought to introduce a six-month waiting period for under-30s applying for Newstart Allowance, Youth Allowance or Special Benefit, will no longer be implemented. Instead, this bill introduces a four-week waiting period for under-25s applying for Youth Allowance or Special Benefit. This measure will start from 1 July 2016, and will only apply to job seekers assessed as job ready. Job seekers affected by this measure will also participate in rapid activation pre-benefit activities to ensure they are looking for work. Around $8.1 million in emergency relief funding will be made available to provide assistance to job seekers, affected by the measure, who are experiencing hardship. This measure encourages young people to make every effort to look for work and maximises their chances of finding work. The fourth 2015 budget measure in the bill will cease the Low Income Supplement from 1 July 2017. The bill also takes the opportunity to reintroduce some amendments relating to indexation that are currently before the parliament in the No. 4 bill. The first of these indexation amendments will maintain at level for three years the income free areas for all working age allowances (other than student payments) and for Parenting Payment Single—from the existing start date of 1 July 2015. The second will maintain at level for three years the income free areas and other means test thresholds for student payments, including the student income bank limits—with a new start date of 1 January 2016. These are important measures to support the sustainability of the social security system and the nation's budget. This government believes that the best form of welfare is a job. We do not want to see young Australians seeking out welfare as a career choice. We do not want to see a shuttle run from the school gate to the Centrelink front door. This bill is about changing that culture. We cannot write off a generation of young Australians by saying to them, 'Welfare is a career of choice.' Not in this country, not under this government. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Amendment Bill 2015 3

Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Amendment Bill 2015

First Reading 3 09:10 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley Thank you Madam Speaker and commiserations on last night. Those Melbourne Storm players give Queensland a real edge, don't they? But that is not the reason for my standing here. The SPEAKER 10000 The Minister for Small Business is in grave danger of having the call withdrawn. Do not add insult to injury. Mr BILLSON 1K6 I may seek a point of order The SPEAKER 10000 I will reconsider that call. You can have the call. Bill and explanatory memorandum presented by Mr Billson. Bill read a first time. Second Reading 3 09:11 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Today I introduce the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Amendment Bill 2015 to amend the Superannuation Guarantee Administration Act 1992 to simplify when a standard choice form—which allows an employee to nominate their chosen superannuation fund—has to be offered by an employer to an employee. The government's commitment to cut $1 billion a year in red and green tape will result in a more efficient government and more productive businesses. To date this commitment has seen us remove $2.45 billion. But our conviction is to go further and tackle overreaching excessive and unnecessary compliance burdens. This bill is part of a package of measures that will further contribute to extending our progress by reducing the superannuation compliance costs for employers. These changes play an important role in further delivering on this conviction of reducing red tape, particularly for small businesses. Small businesses play a very important role in our economy. Around 97 per cent of businesses are small. However, as they are small, often these businesses lack economies of scale. While a big business may have an overall higher compliance cost, we need to remember that small businesses have fewer staff than big businesses and often have less expertise and capacity in dealing with complex regulation. For example, a big business may have a number of expert staff performing specialised functions, whereas small business owners may be responsible for not only the core business of the enterprise but all of the general administrative tasks that go along with running a business, such as managing the accounts, the payroll and superannuation. These tasks are important but the time a small business has to spend managing these tasks can take enterprising men and women away from the key task of running their business and become a barrier to employing more staff. Reducing red tape and making life easier for these businesses to comply with the superannuation guarantee regime is a vital step in encouraging these businesses to grow. Businesses that do not meet their superannuation guarantee obligations risk harsh penalties so it is important that we make it as easy as possible for all employers to pay their workers' superannuation on time. In January 2014, we made a public commitment to the Australian people that this government would make life easier for small business by reducing their superannuation compliance burden. Part of this commitment was to move the government operated small business superannuation clearing house to the Australian Taxation Office. The clearing house is a free online service that helps small businesses meet their superannuation guarantee obligations by allowing employers to pay superannuation contributions in one transaction to a single location to reduce red tape and compliance costs. By moving the clearing house to the ATO we ensured this free service is within the agency that knows who is eligible for this free service. This means the ATO can help increase awareness of the benefits of the service to eligible businesses, and this will in turn increase the take up rate of the clearing house. We have already seen an increase in the number of small businesses registered to use the service since we moved it into the ATO. Between 1 April 2014 and 30 April 2015, around an additional 42,500 employers registered with the superannuation clearing house service. This brings the total number of employers registered to use the service to just over 100,000. By increasing the use of the superannuation clearing house, we are also helping small businesses comply with SuperStream. Under the new SuperStream arrangements all superannuation contributions from employers must be made electronically from 1 July 2016. Businesses who are registered with the superannuation clearing house will automatically meet their SuperStream obligations. In January 2014, we also made a commitment to consult extensively on the drivers of superannuation compliance costs and develop options to reduce this burden on small businesses. To help us meet this commitment, in 2014, the Treasury undertook two rounds of public consultation. This consultation explored these compliance costs and canvassed options to reduce the regulatory compliance burden. The changes in this bill were developed during this consultation process. One of the changes this bill brings about is that employers will no longer have to provide a standard choice form to temporary residents. A standard choice form allows employees to nominate their superannuation fund. Generally employers have to give this form to employees within 28 days of the employee starting their job. I would like to emphasise that the government is not taking away the right of a temporary resident to choose a superannuation fund. What we are doing is simplifying the paperwork requirements for businesses that employ temporary residents such as those on a working holiday visa. Under these changes, employers will no longer have to supply a standard choice form to temporary resident employees. It also means time-poor small businesses will no longer have to spend time explaining how to complete the form. This change will also make it easier for employers to pay their workers' superannuation on time. As I have already mentioned, temporary residents will still be able to choose their superannuation fund if they wish to do so. This change may be especially beneficial in industries that are reliant on large numbers of working holiday-makers to meet peak workloads, such as in the hospitality and agricultural sector. The majority of businesses in these sectors are small businesses. Around 92 per cent of businesses in hospitality and 99 per cent of businesses in agriculture are small businesses. This means that although these changes will benefit all businesses, they will be particularly beneficial to the many small businesses in those sectors that often employ people on working holiday visas for short-term and intermittent work. By removing these requirements employers will no longer risk incurring a choice shortfall penalty if they do not supply a standard choice form to temporary residents. To make this change streamlined across all visa classes, we have also included New Zealand residents in the definition of a temporary resident even though these workers can generally stay indefinitely in Australia as Australia has a special relationship with New Zealand. We made the decision to include New Zealand residents in the measure as exempting New Zealand residents would have added complexity for time-poor small businesses. By including New Zealand residents in this measure, employers will not have to keep track of whether or not an employee is from New Zealand when relying on this exemption to provide a standard choice form. This bill also introduces a second change to the superannuation choice regime. Currently, when a superannuation fund merges with another superannuation fund, there is an obligation on employers to re-offer a standard choice form to employees. This obligation is an unreasonable burden on employers. It is also an obligation that many employers may not be aware of. Currently, employers may incur the choice shortfall penalty if they do not comply with this requirement. This bill removes this requirement on employers. An employee whose superannuation fund has merged with another fund will continue to be notified of their new fund. This is a requirement under the corporations law. We are not limiting an employee's right to choose their fund. An employee whose fund has merged with another fund will still be able to choose a different superannuation fund and roll over their money if they are dissatisfied with the new fund. This bill balances the need to protect choice for employees while at the same time reducing red tape and making the superannuation guarantee regime easier to comply with. Both of these changes to the superannuation guarantee regime will commence from 1 July 2015. As I have mentioned before, this bill reduces the compliance costs on businesses, especially small businesses. These changes will result in around $45 million in annual compliance costs savings for business, which will help the government further progress well beyond its red and green tape targets. These changes also complement other measures the government is implementing to reduce the compliance costs on small business. The government will expand the eligibility of the government's superannuation clearing house service. From 1 July 2015, small businesses with a turnover under the small business entity threshold, which is currently $2 million, or that have fewer than 20 employees will be able to use this free online service to pay their workers' superannuation. Currently only businesses with fewer than 20 employees can use the service. This change means around an additional 27,500 small businesses will be able to access to the clearing house from 1 July 2015. Expanding the clearing house also means businesses that exceed the current employee threshold by hiring temporary or casual staff to cover peak work periods, such as seasonal work, will still be able to access this service if their turnover is under $2 million. Simplifying when a standard choice form has to be provided by an employer and expanding the clearing house is another part of a package of reforms that the government has announced to reduce superannuation compliance costs. This second phase of the reforms will be changes to reduce the harshness and simplify the superannuation guarantee charge. The changes to the superannuation guarantee charge will commence from 1 July 2106. The full details of the amendments are contained in the explanatory memorandum. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business Measures No. 1) Bill 2015 5

Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business Measures No. 1) Bill 2015

First Reading 5 Second Reading 5 09:21 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This is a historic, unprecedented and game-changing moment for the small businesses of Australia. This bill amends the tax law to lower the company tax rate by 1.5 percentage points to 28.5 per cent for incorporated small business. This is the lowest small business company tax rate in almost half a century. Many would agree that small businesses make an important contribution to the Australian economy. Around 96 per cent of all Australia's businesses are small businesses. Small businesses produce over $330 billion of Australia's economic output and there is no doubt small businesses are at the forefront of Australia's jobs and growth. They employ over 4.5 million people, which accounts for almost 43per cent of non-financial private sector jobs in our country. But this would have been more, if it were not for six years of the previous government, where 519,000 jobs were lost under Labor in the small business community. While small businesses have a significant role in the Australian economy, they face a unique set of operational challenges, and as a consequence typically have higher failure rates than larger companies. These unique characteristics make small businesses more vulnerable to shocks and changes in economic conditions than larger businesses. We know from the Intergenerational report that there will be a significant challenge to maintain Australia's current rate of income growth. Future growth in living standards must be driven by higher levels of Australian productivity. It will require productivity growth to increase to around three per cent a year. This is well in excess of what Australia achieved in the past 50 years, and more than doubles that of the past decade. Put simply, growth in productivity will require more or better quality goods and services to be generated from the resources available. Australians are well known for their enterprising spirit and their willingness to have a go. The hardworking women and men of Australian small businesses are the engine room of our economy. In 2013-14, Australians started over 280,000 small businesses. Small businesses are often the entities that test and pioneer innovative ideas and business practices, which are critical to future economic growth, job prospects and improved living standards. This makes it particularly important to get the policy settings right to support small business growth and innovation. As elected members of this parliament, we need to understand—and this side of parliament does—and recognise where the impediments and headwinds are in every square of our economic landscape and do our very best to address them, so that those enterprising people with an idea, an aspiration, a sparkle in their eye and a fire in their belly can turn their ambition into economic activity that benefits themselves, their community and our nation. For a long period, we have been blessed by nature with resources that give us a competitive advantage, and we see that we have benefited from that. However, as we look at the over the economic horizon, we cannot bank on that to sustain our living standards and our quality of life. The Australian economy is in the midst of a major economic transformation, moving from growth led by investment in resources projects to broader based drivers of activity in non-resource sectors. We need entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, drive and risk-taking to find new markets, develop new products, establish new businesses and delight new customers here and abroad. To achieve that, we need the ambition of enterprising women and men. This government sees energising Australian enterprises as its priority. The government's $5.5 billion jobs and small business package in the 2015-16 budget will create the right conditions for Australian small businesses to thrive and grow. It will help employers to create new jobs and assist Australia's unemployed to access these jobs. The budget delivers the biggest small business package in Australia's history. It is about putting in place improved incentives for entrepreneurial behaviour. Since the 2015-16 budget announcement, I have had so much positive feedback on the jobs and small business package. That is not just from small businesses, who have delighted at our interest and commitment to their success, but also from the commentators who are quick to offer a view. CommSec said: The measures in the federal Budget to support small business would have been a key driver of the lift in confidence. COSBOA's chief executive, Peter Strong, has said: … this is a fundamental and positive change that sends the right message to people looking to start a business. Australian Newsagents' Federation has said: This will definitely create further impetus and incentive for our members to invest in their businesses. This bill reduces the corporate tax rate from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent for small businesses with annual turnover under $2 million. This change is one of the key centrepiece initiatives of the small business package, because on this side of the House we are the best friends that small business has ever had. Small business companies will pay less tax for income years that commence on or after 1 July 2015. This change delivers on our election commitment to small business. Providing incorporated small businesses with a reduced rate of company tax will enable them to retain more earnings and improve their cash flow—a critical issue for small businesses' survival and success. It is estimated that up to 780,000 small business companies could potentially benefit from this measure. New company registrations in the last financial year were the highest on record. This measure will help all new and existing small companies grow, thrive, prosper and compete. Helping more small businesses become more profitable will give them greater capacity to invest and innovate by adopting new and improved ways of doing business, improving our nation's productivity and resulting in more jobs and higher wages for Australian workers. That means better living standards for us all. That is why energising enterprise is everybody's business. We understand that not all small businesses are incorporated, so we will bring forward legislation to provide tax relief for unincorporated small businesses. In addition, later today I will introduce legislation to deliver assistance for all small businesses, including accelerated depreciation arrangements. This bill will also ensure that the maximum amount of franking credits a small incorporated business can attach to its dividends in a year will not be reduced along with the tax rate. This additional benefit will allow small companies to distribute surplus franking credits accumulated in previous years, reducing the tax their owners pay when they receive dividends. This will benefit owners of small business and effectively reduce the shareholders' overall tax paid regardless of their marginal tax rate. Full details of the measure, please have a look at the explanatory memorandum, where those details are contained. As I said, this government is a genuine friend of small business, and in 2015-16 our budget is where we demonstrate our bona fides for that claim. This bill is the first of several that will improve and implement the small business environment through measures announced in the budget. This measure is appropriate and it is affordable, and I call on all in this parliament to give it their early and certain support. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business Measures No. 2) Bill 2015 7

Tax Laws Amendment (Small Business Measures No. 2) Bill 2015

First Reading 7 Second Reading 7 09:30 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill amends the tax law to help small businesses and primary producers to invest, grow and innovate. It provides accelerated depreciation arrangements as outlined in the Growing Jobs and Small Business package and the new framework for drought preparedness, both of which were announced in the 2015-16 budget. It was a budget that has been widely welcomed. ACCI CEO Kate Carnell said, 'Small business is the engine room of the Australian economy, so support for these businesses will boost overall jobs and investment. The government's measures will help to restore confidence among small businesses.' New South Wales Business Chamber CEO Stephen Cartwright said, 'These measures will be particularly well received in regional Australia, where unemployment is at its highest and job opportunities are limited.' Small businesses play a significant role in the Australian economy, particularly as a major employer and contributor to our economy. Small businesses make an important contribution. Ninety-six per cent of all Australia's businesses are small businesses. They employ over 4.5 million people. They are adaptable and able to respond profitably to changing circumstances and where opportunities are identified. Small businesses are often the entities that test and pioneer innovative ideas and business practices which are critical to future economic growth, job prospects and living standards of our country. Small businesses produce over $330 billion of Australia's economic output. While this is a very significant role in the Australian economy, small businesses face a unique set of operational challenges, and, as a consequence, face typically higher failure rates than larger companies. This makes it particularly important that the right policy settings be in place to support small business growth and innovation. This is why the government announced in the budget the biggest jobs and small business package in the nation's history, and it was the centrepiece of the 2015-16 budget. The package includes a tax cut for incorporated small businesses, tax relief for unincorporated small businesses and accelerated depreciation arrangements. These measures were designed to help small businesses grow, compete and employ more Australians. Farmers too play a pivotal role in the Australian economy; they are at the heart of our national identity and provide vital livelihoods right across our continent. 115,000 businesses report that they are in an agricultural industry and that is the main focus of their business activity. A further 13,900 report agriculture as a secondary activity to their enterprise. Farmers are a significant employer, particularly in regional areas. These businesses make up 52 per cent of Australia's land mass. Ninety-nine per cent of agricultural businesses are Australian owned. The value of agricultural production was worth over $50 billion in 2013-14, contributing to around two per centof Australia's gross domestic product and 15 per cent of total Australian merchandise exports. In 2013-14, agriculture exports were worth around $40 billion, with over 60 per cent of production exported to more than 100 countries. The agricultural industry plays an important role in the social fabric of Australia, being recognised by the government as one of the five pillars of our economy; the industry has a prime place in our nation's history, current economic good fortune and future. Agriculture is one of the sectors on which the prosperity of our nation is increasingly reliant. The government has laid the foundations for a stronger agricultural sector. We have reduced regulation, removed the carbon tax, increased export market access, invested in infrastructure, refined the settings for foreign investment and secured FTAs with China, Korea and Japan. Stronger farmers mean a stronger economy, and we are focused on strengthening the competitiveness of the sector. Boosting the competitiveness of the agriculture sector will contribute to our nation's broader economic growth, jobs, trade, innovation and productivity. However, farmers have to cope with significant challenges, including severe weather events. Currently, some parts of the country are subject to unprecedented drought and large parts of the North have experienced a third failed wet season. This affects the financial position and wellbeing of farmers, their families and the surrounding rural communities, and the economies that depend upon them. Helping farmers through times of drought is in our national interest. Considering the significant role farmers play in our economy, it is important they are provided with support and encouragement to better manage their risks and prepare for extreme weather events. The government is committed to providing the necessary support to Australian farmers to help them prepare for drought, and to provide them with a better tax system. In addition to providing farmers with a simplified accelerated depreciation regime, the government is providing more money to: continue the Drought Concessional Loan Scheme and the Drought Recovery Concessional Loan Scheme for an additional year; assist farmers to reduce the impact of pest animals in drought affected areas; fund civil and civic infrastructure projects in drought affected areas through grants; and extend existing social and community support services for farmers to 70 local government areas that are experiencing a severe and prolonged rainfall deficiency. Schedule 1 to this bill amends the small business simplified depreciation rules in the tax law, to increase the threshold for immediately deductibility for capital assets. The schedule will significantly increase this threshold from the current level of $1,000 to $20,000. This will mean that any small business buying an asset costing less than $20,000 will be able to immediately deduct the full cost of the asset. This measure is available for any business asset purchased and installed, ready for use, between 7.30 pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time) on 12 May 2015 and 30 June 2017. This is a massive increase in the threshold and a massive gain to cash flow for small businesses. CPA Australia CEO Alex Malley said, 'By allowing small businesses to immediately deduct assets costing less than $20,000 is a positive move which will support vital and much needed business investment.' Currently, small businesses purchasing assets above $1,000 have to depreciate these assets over multiple income years. In some cases this imposes complex record-keeping requirements on small business, and it also reduces their cash flow. This government is returning small business's profits to its owners and allowing them to make the decision which best suit them, the decisions that allow them to grow their business and employ more Australians. As part of the increased threshold, any assets that individually cost $20,000 or more can be pooled together in the general small business pool and depreciated at 15 per cent in the first year and 30 per cent each year thereafter. Once an asset is placed in the pool, there is no requirement to track that item. This reduces paperwork and frees small business to get on with what they do best, and that is to deliver jobs and economic opportunity through their enterprise and private endeavour. The pool itself may also be deducted entirely if its value is below the $20,000 threshold at the end of any financial year between 7.30 pm 12 May 2015 and 30 June 2017. The law currently includes 'lock-out rules' that stop small businesses that elect out of the simplified depreciation scheme from re-entering for five years. To ensure fairness and the broadest availability of this measure, this schedule relaxes those rules so that the higher threshold is available. This will allow all small business entities to access this measure. Consider an electrical business that purchases tools and other equipment for their small business. These tools can be expensive and the rules around depreciating them can be time consuming to understand. Under the expanded accelerated depreciation measure, this business can write off each and every item under $20,000 that is purchased and brought into operation before 30 June 2017. Schedule 2 of this bill amends the tax laws to provide a more simplified accelerated depreciation regime for all farmers, in three ways. Firstly, the schedule will allow all primary producers to immediately deduct capital expenditure on fencing. The current depreciation for fencing is complex, and can vary depending upon the type of fencing asset. For example, currently, a general farm fence may be depreciated over 30 years. An electric fence, on the other hand, may be depreciated over 20 years. An energiser for this electric fence is depreciated over a different period again. If the fence is used for landcare operations—for example, to segregate a section of land which may be affected by land degradation—its cost is immediately deductible. If a farmer makes a repair to an existing fence, the repair costs are immediately deductible. From 7.30 pm( Australian Eastern Standard Time) on 12 May 2015—that great budget night for small business, family and farming enterprises— rather than repairing an existing fence, which can be costly and time consuming, farmers can instead immediately deduct the cost of installing a new fence. This will reduce red tape and complexity. Farmers will no longer need to keep track of expenditure over extended periods of time. Farmers will have more cash in their pockets to spend, to invest and to pay off debt. New investment may also boost farm productivity. Consider our friend Jake the farmer. If he installs 25 kilometres of new fencing, at a cost of $25,000, on his cattle farm, under the current system he is able to depreciate his fencing costs over a period of 30 years. Jake can claim a depreciation deduction of $833 each year. Now, Jake will be able to deduct the full cost of $25,000 immediately. These additional deductions mean Jake will pay less tax if he makes a profit. Assuming Jake's marginal tax rate is 39 per cent, including the Medicare levy, his tax liability will be reduced by $14,742. This means Jake will have more to spend, to invest and to use to retire debt. The second and third amendments under this schedule will encourage primary producers to prepare for and manage drought risks. Extreme weather events, such as drought, are an unavoidable reality for many farmers. Farm preparedness, such as having available sufficient feed and water, is vital to surviving extended periods of drought. Under this schedule, capital expenditure on water facilities—such as dams, tanks, bores, irrigation channels, pumps, water towers and windmills—will be immediately deductible. Currently, water facilities are depreciated in three equal amounts, over three years. Farmers will now be able to invest in new irrigation systems, build a new dam, install a new pump and be able to immediately deduct that cost for tax purposes. The schedule will also allow capital expenditure on fodder storage assets—such as silos to store animal feed, tanks to store liquid feed supplements and hay and grain storage sheds—to be depreciated over three years. Having fodder on hand is important for farmers during drought periods. Currently, a farmer wishing to prepare for drought who invests in a steel silo would need to depreciate and track the expenditure of that asset over a period of up to 30 years. Under the amendments, this is reduced to three years. Consider Robyn, a farmer who purchases a steel silo, at a cost of $21,000, for the storing of animal feed on her farm. Currently, Robyn is able to depreciate the steel silo over 30 years and claim a depreciation deduction of $700 per year. Now, Robyn will be able to depreciate the silo cost of $21,000 over three years, giving her $6,300 more in deductions in each of the first three years. These additional deductions mean that Robyn will pay less tax if she is making a profit. Assuming Robyn's marginal tax rate is 34.5 per cent, including the Medicare levy, her tax liability would be reduced by $4,127 in each of the first three years, meaning that she will have additional funds to invest, to pay off debt or to spend. Accelerating the depreciation on water facilities and fodder storage assets will mean more money in farmers' pockets for investment in drought preparedness, a simplified depreciation system and an increase in farm productivity. Full details of the measures are contained in the explanatory memorandum. The government is the best friend of small business and farmers. The 2015 budget is where we demonstrate our bona fides to that claim. I particularly want to recognise and respect the great work of the 'shy and retiring' Minister for Agriculture, Barnaby Joyce. He has been an outstanding advocate and has crafted the primary production measures that are part of this budget. The bill is one of several that will implement the small business and primary producers measures announced in the budget, therefore putting in place further significant acknowledgment and recognition in the tax law of the importance of small business, and of farmers, to our economy and our communities. The measures are appropriate and they are affordable. I call on all members to give their early and full support to this bill. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Water Amendment Bill 2015 10

Water Amendment Bill 2015

First Reading 10 Second Reading 10 09:45 Mr BALDWIN LL6 Paterson I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Water Amendment Bill continues and strengthens the Abbott government's commitment to Murray-Darling Basin communities, businesses and the environment. The coalition has always understood that sound water management, and the required water reforms, are critical in the Australian climate and they continue to be a high priority today, as the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting a drier El Nino period ahead. The Howard government developed and drove the implementation of the National Water Initiative from 2004. A decade on, under the Abbott government, we continue these endeavours and we seek to enshrine these reforms well into the future. Our vision for water reform in Australia is very clearly founded in a triple bottom line outcome. We understand that the focus must be on the social, economic and environmental benefits equally. We will not achieve optimal outcomes through the Basin Plan without this triple bottom line focus. Our government has committed, since 2012, to support and implement the Basin Plan in full and on time, recovering water for the environment to maintain a healthy river system, while enabling our agricultural sectors to be robust and productive, helping to develop and maintain viable rural communities. As I have travelled through the basin, the issue that has been raised most often is the need for greater certainty for communities and farmers, certainty for their businesses and certainty for the environment. Our investment in the future of a sustainable agricultural sector underpins our commitment to the Basin Plan environmental outcomes and to farming communities. The Abbott government is committed to delivering the Basin Plan. We are delivering on the environmental needs and, as I have said in this place before, our government is investing over $2.5 million per day to 2019 in the future sustainability of irrigated agriculture. This is our commitment to our environment and communities in the basin. I go on about this point at length because the biggest issue we face in implementing the Basin Plan is to ensure that it achieves win-win outcomes—all members in this place have an obligation to get this right. The Basin Plan represents the culmination of more than two decades of water reform, two decades of bipartisanship. To ensure the prosperous future of our communities we need to ensure that the health of the environment is sustainable for the long term and we need to provide certainty to all community sectors in the basin, for generations to come. To achieve this aim, we have made a commitment to cap water purchases to 'bridge the gap' under the Basin Plan to 1,500 gigalitres across the Murray-Darling Basin. Our focus for the remaining water recovery task is focused on infrastructure upgrades, efficiency projects and environmental works and measures. This will ensure enduring benefits for both the environment and our rural and irrigation communities. It is the hard-working men and women and their families and businesses in the basin that we have listened to and consulted with when coming to this decision. The basin itself is a precious resource, as are the many who live and work in it. I have spent the past five months travelling almost the full length of the basin, meeting a wide range of people, who all hold a wide range of views on how we best manage the needs of the basin. However, it does not matter whether they are farmers, environmentalists, Indigenous elders, fishermen, the local car dealer, bank manager or cafe owner or tourism operators, the common message is that they want to live in a healthy environment and they also want certainty for their community. While the Basin Plan deals with the high level environmental targets, each individual and each community is doing what they can to improve the health of the environment that they live in. There are environmental groups who continue to advocate for an improved environment and who I have seen working with catchment management organisations to improve riverine and wetland vegetation, which in turn provides important habitats for fish and wildlife. There are committed and engaged Indigenous groups that want to see outcomes for their communities that deliver on their responsibilities as traditional land managers. They continue to work with the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder to achieve better environmental outcomes that align with their cultural heritage. And in many in cases it is the farmers and irrigators themselves who are undertaking revegetation works on their farms as part of the on-farm modernisation project. In most part, what we see are community-based organisations who have come together to deliver local outcomes for the environment, who have pride in their native flora and fauna. However, we must remember that these communities have emerged over the past 100 years on the back of a strong agricultural sector; they understand the need for a change in agricultural water management, but ask that we support them in this transition to improved overall management of our basin resources. I have visited dairy farmers in Shepparton and rice farmers in Deniliquin and Leeton. I have seen cotton growers in Dirranbandi, Goondiwindi and Griffith, citrus growers in Renmark and grape growers in Mildura, all the way down to the Lower Lakes, where I met a local fisherman. In all of these places there is a common message—they want certainty for their community and their environment. What I have seen in the places I have visited in the basin is how our investment in water infrastructure projects is having positive long-term outcomes for rural communities and their businesses. Through improved irrigation delivery infrastructure, we are seeing more opportunities for basin farmers to get water to their farms with fewer losses along the way. Once water gets to the farm gate, the benefits of Commonwealth investment in on-farm efficiency programs have changed the nature of irrigation farming substantially, to a precise and highly technical business. Farmers are not using the same practices they employed in the 1950s. The technological advances and improvements that are now commonplace are innovative and outstanding, and a credit to the adaptability and ingenuity of the Australian farmer. Increased efficiency for water delivery and a strong understanding of the best way to apply water to a crop at the optimal time is reducing the water required per hectare, while continuing to increase productivity. As a nation we should be proud of our achievements. During my discussions with local farmers in southern New South Wales, I saw how investment in laser levelling of land has increased crop yield and resulted in the more efficient use of water. Farmers are able to control their watering systems by remote control, rather than getting up throughout the night to turn the water on and off. This is a huge benefit for families and for overall community health. It is the perfect example of a triple-bottom-line outcome. In line with community support for infrastructure programs we know that completed projects have demonstrated improved productivity benefits such as increased crop rotation and diversification, water use efficiencies, reduced maintenance and improved soil and weed control management. Some projects have achieved greater than anticipated water savings, with these benefits retained by irrigators to improve their farm productivity even further. Not only is farm productivity and wellbeing improved from these projects, but with the increased efficiency, water savings are able to be recovered for the environment to deliver water to wetlands and environmental assets throughout the basin. We are also focusing our infrastructure investment to our environmental assets and applying the principles of efficient water use to maximise environmental outcomes, and our environmental water managers are achieving real benefits for environmental health. Additionally, the broader community is also benefitting from these projects, as much of the construction work is involving local contractors and regional business, spreading the benefits of the investment throughout the basin. The bill also has provisions for expanding the range of efficiency programs available under the Water for the Environment Special Account, which provides for an additional 450 gigalitres of water for the environment, to include investment in upgrading irrigation delivery networks and other off-farm infrastructure, enabling the Commonwealth to deliver future, strategic investment in the basin and additional environmental water and improved environmental outcomes. The certainty this 1,500-gigalitre cap will provide will work in harmony with our investments in infrastructure. We have already seen very good results from both off-farm and on-farm infrastructure projects. More than 10,000 individual irrigators across the basin are benefiting from infrastructure renewal and upgrades and the returns have already exceeded the expected savings of 600 gigalitres towards the task of bridging the gap. Since its release in June last year, this government's Water Recovery Strategy for the Murray-Darling Basin has provided a framework for water recovery to bridge the gap to the Sustainable Diversion Limits set out in the Basin Plan. It provides an overview of the Murray-Darling Basin reform process and the key steps to be undertaken to reach major milestones for Basin Plan implementation between 2014 and 2024. It has been 2½ years since the Basin Plan became law and the Australian governments have secured over 1,961 gigalitres in long-term average annual yield of surface water in the basin. This represents more than two-thirds of the 2,750 gigalitres of the surface water recovery target set out in the Basin Plan to bridge the gap to the sustainable diversion limits, or SDLs. To bridge the remaining gap, however, will not be a simple task and we understand the challenges in recovering the remaining water. With our focus on infrastructure investment programs, water purchases will progress at a significantly slower pace than in the past, and the focus on strategic water purchase opportunities will help bridge the gap to surface water SDLs to 2019. Through the water recovery strategy, we have outlined our focus on infrastructure and efficiency projects, but we also continue to pursue strategic and targeted purchase opportunities. We know that to achieve the full implementation of the Basin Plan a number of water recovery methods will be required. I want to state on the record that this bill in no way diminishes the Abbott government's commitment to implementing the Basin Plan. I have heard some concerns that this cap will impede water recovery efforts and prevent the achievement of the maximum environmental outcomes. Our commitment to the 1,500-gigalitre cap was first announced in 2012 when the Basin Plan was made, a commitment we made to the communities of the basin; our continued support of the 1,500-gigalitre cap was given effect in the Water Recovery Strategy for the Murray-Darling Basin, released in June 2014. I was pleased to announce with my ministerial colleagues Ministers Hunt and Joyce on 16 March this year that we would move to legislate the cap and deliver the commitment we had made to achieve a triple-bottom-line outcome for the Basin Plan. The introduction of this bill is the culmination of this journey, which enshrines the 1,500-gigalitre limit on surface water purchases by the Commonwealth in legislation, through an amendment to the Water Act. The state governments in the Murray-Darling Basin also play an important role in delivering the Basin Plan and we will continue to work with them to deliver water recovery projects, environmental works and measures and the outcomes of the sustainable diversion limit adjustment mechanism. We have a good history of working together in the basin to deliver environmental water reforms; the Living Murray program is a substantial group of projects that are evidence of a shared commitment to delivering environmental outcomes. We will continue to work with all parties to ensure that the triple bottom line continues to address all three aspects—social, economic and environmental. The cap on water purchases complements the focus on water recovery for the environment through on-farm and off-farm infrastructure investment and efficiency projects. The coalition government is investing $2.5 million per day through to 2019 into the future sustainability of irrigated agriculture, while delivering on the important outcomes for the environment and the Murray-Darling Basin communities, and we will continue to work with the states to achieve this. Our commitment is to bridge the gap in a careful and measured way, ensuring practical steps are taken to deliver a sustainable outcome for the economy, for basin communities and for the environment. We believe that healthy rivers and healthy communities should be complementary, not contradictory. I will now turn to the details of the bill. Put simply, the bill will establish a new part in the Water Act to give effect to the 1,500 gigalitre limit on all surface water purchases within the Murray-Darling Basin that contribute to bridging the gap. The intent is to capture water purchased directly by the Commonwealth, which occurs predominately through open tender purchase rounds, and not water recovered through irrigation infrastructure efficiency upgrades, water sales by states or those programs which are the result of irrigation network rationalisation and reconfiguration projects funded or partly funded, by the Commonwealth. In addition, it does not include purchases made by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, or those made using funds from the Water for the Environment Special Account, as these purchases are different from the intent of the water purchasing program. This 1,500 gigalitre limit on water purchasing is aligned with the recovery of water to bridge the gap in line with the implementation of the Basin Plan and will remain in place until the Basin Plan is next reviewed. This will provide confidence to the basin irrigation industry and communities that the cap will be in place for the term of the Basin Plan, delivering the certainty that is very much needed by the communities of the basin and also ensures that the benefits from ongoing investment in infrastructure based water recovery are continued and realised. The department will ensure that all water recovery is very clearly, publicly and regularly reported, providing transparency on the purchases contributing to the 1,500 gigalitre limit. The bill also amends the Murray-Darling Basin Plan 2012 (the Basin Plan) to provide increased flexibility and opportunities to deliver the recovery of 450 gigalitres of water through efficiency measures funded under the Water for the Environment Special Account. Efficiency measures improve the environmental outcomes under the Basin Plan by enabling the recovery of additional water for the environment, in line with the requirement to achieve neutral or improved social and economic outcomes. This amendment provides for the participation of consumptive water users in projects that recover water through works to improve water use efficiency off-farm. There is strong support within industry for further investment is such measures. This amendment also delivers on the government's commitment to deliver the Basin Plan to the full extent, with a predominate focus on infrastructure investment. This legislation delivers a triple bottom line outcomes for basin communities. The Abbott government is listening to all stakeholders and there is now an opportunity for the opposition to work with us and support this bill to ensure our basin communities get the win-win outcomes to ensure environmental and community sustainability. We will continue to work with all states to deliver the outcomes of the Basin Plan to the fullest extent possible. The Abbott government is strongly committed to the Basin Plan and the substantial water reform agenda and we will implement the plan in a manner that ensures we can have healthy communities and productive farms working alongside a healthy river system. The bill delivers on our commitment to deliver a Basin Plan that addresses the social, economic and environmental needs of the basin. I want to thank the opposition, in particular shadow minister for the environment Mark Butler, for the good faith in which they have entered into discussion on this bill. This bill is being introduced today to provide certainty to our communities but, as a sign of this good faith, we will allow this bill to remain in this place to allow for further discussion and consultation with the opposition, with the states, with the stakeholders and, indeed, all members of this parliament. I commend this bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 13

Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

Second Reading 13 10:04 Ms MACKLIN PG6 Jagajaga I am speaking today on the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. This bill will take income support payments away from people in psychiatric confinement who are charged with a serious offence and who are undergoing a course of rehabilitation. Since 1986, legislation has provided that a person undergoing psychiatric confinement who is undertaking a course of rehabilitation can receive income support payments. They are people who have been found to be suffering very serious mental health issues like schizophrenia; bipolar disorder; intellectual disabilities; acquired brain injuries from a car, sporting accident or a stroke; and other conditions that impair mental functioning. The people impacted by this measure will have been charged with serious offences, which is why any change to the arrangements for people in psychiatric confinement needs to be properly considered. Any change should be based on extensive consultation and debated sensitively. Unfortunately, the government has not consulted on the changes in this bill prior to its announcement. The government did not speak to the patients who may be impacted by these measures, to their families or to their carers. They did not speak to the mental health advocacy organisations or to state and territory governments. They did not speak to the psychiatric institutions that provide the care. Little has changed since the announcement. No genuine effort has been made to communicate this decision to make sure that those impacted by the measure are aware of the change and can prepare accordingly. The government has left mental health services to communicate with patients, families and carers. This is just not good enough. A proper process of consultation is needed for such a complex, sensitive and serious matter. Today's consideration of the bill pre-empts the findings of a Senate inquiry. A public hearing as part of that inquiry was held only last week. There have been 26 written submissions to the inquiry, and not one of these submissions is in support for this bill. Minister Morrison's own department's submission provides no justification for the bill, no evidence to suggest that these measures will assist in the rehabilitation of people in psychiatric confinement. The Victorian government has written expressing their opposition and concern about the bill. The Queensland government provided a submission opposing this bill. The Queensland Office of the Public Advocate opposes the bill. The New South Wales Mental Health Review Tribunal opposes the bill. Given the seriousness of the measure and given the government's lack of consultation on the bill, Labor wants to see the Senate inquiry properly consider this measure and its potential impacts before determining a way forward and any amendments that may be needed. On the face of it, this bill is another attempt to pass costs on to the states and to the most vulnerable. In last year's budget, the government announced a cut of $80 billion to school and hospital funding for state and territory governments. We understand that patients in psychiatric confinement use their income support payments to pay for their clothing, toiletries and other personal items. The removal of all income support for these patients will leave this very vulnerable group with no means to meet basic living needs not provided by a psychiatric institution. In some cases, patients may use their income support payment to contribute to other costs of their care and accommodation. In Queensland, for example, a fee of $40 per day is applied to patients in psychiatric confinement. The fee helps the Queensland government meet the costs of a patient's accommodation and care. This fee also helps the patient learn budgeting skills as part of their rehabilitation. The Queensland government estimates around $850 will be lost per patient per fortnight. Queensland estimates an increased cost of $150,000 a week in meeting this payment for patients who may lose income support payments as a result of this bill. This is yet another example of how the bill shifts the cost burden of care to patients' families and carers, and state and territory governments. It is yet another example of cost shifting by this government. Submissions to the Senate inquiry suggest the bill will undermine the rehabilitation efforts of people in psychiatric confinement. The discharge process is often very gradual. Training, employment and other community links are put in place whilst a patient is in psychiatric confinement to help ensure a successful transition at the time of discharge. Access to income support is crucial to establishing these links. Patients self-fund their external rehabilitation activities, transport to attend these activities and any supplies required to carry them out. Patients fund these activities from their income support payments. The cost of accessing general health care and purchasing medications in the community is met by the patient, with concessions from their health care card. Access to income support is also essential for patients to secure and maintain the community accommodation they need in order to be granted leave and eventually be discharged. The proposals in the bill suggest income support payments will not be made available to a patient charged with a serious offence until they have been granted three nights per week of overnight leave. In Victoria, that is the maximum amount of leave that is able to be granted by a psychiatric institution. The rehabilitation and leave system relies on gradual progress to make sure that recovery and risk are safely managed for the person and the community, increasing the amount of leave granted as it is safe and appropriate to do so. Without income, patients will not be able to access the accommodation necessary to commence overnight leave as part of their rehabilitation program. The Chair of the National Mental Health Commission, Professor Allan Fels, sums up these issues in the commission's submission to the Senate inquiry. He says: The practical effect of removing access to social security payments would be detrimental to rehabilitation and recovery for people with a mental illness, especially without close consultation with the States and Territories … Once again, this is why further and comprehensive consultation on this measure is so important. This bill will see people in psychiatric confinement charged with a serious crime treated the same way as a person in jail who has been charged with or convicted of an offence. It is right that social security payments may not be paid to a person detained in prison. However, there is a significant difference between people in psychiatric confinement charged with an offence who, because of a mental impairment, are not found criminally responsible for their actions and people in prison who are responsible for their actions. There needs to be further consideration of and consultation on this bill. Labor will look very closely at the recommendations of the Senate inquiry and the submissions that have been made. We call on the government to consult in detail with the people who will be affected by this bill, advocates representing people with mental illness, families and carers, and state and territory governments before this measure proceeds any further. 10:13 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack I rise to speak on the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. I am pleased to participate in this debate. In essence, the proposed measures will cease social security payments to people who have been charged with a serious offence, are confined to a psychiatric institution due to mental impairment and have not yet been convicted or have been deemed not fit to stand trial. For these members of the community to receive payment from the government is not a valuable use of taxpayers' money. The amendments define a serious offence as murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape or attempted rape and other violent offences that are punishable by imprisonment for life or for a period of at least seven years. I can find no reason or justification to explain why these people should receive social service payments. I am not uncaring, but this is welfare. Such taxpayer funded payments are intended to cover the costs of living. These particular individuals are already being cared for by the government in psychiatric institutions while they await trial or because they are unfit for trial. I say unequivocally that I do not believe these payments are right and should be continued. I think there is value in reflecting on the background of this issue. Between 1986 and 2002, people who were charged with a serious offence were determined to be ineligible for social service payments while they were in psychiatric confinement. This was as a consequence of their criminal charges. However, in 2002, a Federal Court decision determined that most people confined to a psychiatric institution would be undertaking some form of rehabilitation. It is because of the fact that they were enrolled in a rehabilitation course that they then became eligible for social security payments. In general terms that will continue to stand. I wish to be clear about the measures we are talking about here today. They will only impact a small number of people in such circumstances and only those who have been charged with the most serious offences such as rape, murder and various other violent crimes. It is noteworthy that, at the same time, it is expected that the bill will produce a savings of over $30 million over the forward estimates. This is money that I believe can be better spent on those Australians who need it rather than on those charged—and I do underline the word 'charged'—with serious and violent crimes and who are also already being cared for by the government. It is my view that the funding has been unwisely given in the past, albeit as a consequence of a court decision, to these allegedly violent criminals and that we should cease social security payments to this group as soon as possible. As a society and as a government, we should not be providing social security payments to people charged with violent and serious offences and confined to a psychiatric institution at the grace of the government. The amendments contained in this bill simply represent a return to the original or pre-2002 policy intent for people who have been charged with a serious offence. The intent was and is straightforward that a person cannot access social security payments while in psychiatric confinement as a result of criminal charges. It is worth bearing in mind that people who are imprisoned and in psychiatric confinement are provided with accommodation, food and all their other essentials by the state or territory. After being charged with an offence, a person becomes the responsibility of the state or territory government. It is then the responsible entity for taking care of the individual's needs, including funding their treatment and rehabilitation. I understand that some state and territory governments are currently using people's income support to help fund their confinement. For example, the Queensland government takes up to 85 per cent of a person's pension while they are in psychiatric confinement. The Victorian forensic confinement centres can charge up to 85 per cent of a person's income support payment. However, people confined in prison who have been convicted of a criminal offence or who are on remand are not eligible for social security payments. The measures in this bill will even out the playing field, as they rightly should. But let's keep in mind this legislation is not intended to punish people or negatively impact their rehabilitation, especially as the people we are referring to have only been charged—and, once again, I underline that word—with an offence; they have not been convicted. It is estimated that these measures will affect approximately 350 people on implementation and 50 people per year thereafter—a small number, which, as I said, will save the government $30 million over the forward estimates. However, people do need social security payments to help them transition back into the community, which, of course, is only fair and reasonable and which is why there are provisions in the bill for social security payments to be payable to a person who is not taken to be undergoing psychiatric confinement. This means that a social security payment will be payable during a period of integration back into the community. There is no argument with me on that point. Before closing, I think it is important to repeat that this measure takes effect as a consequence of serious crime only. A social security payment will continue to be payable where a person is undergoing psychiatric confinement because they have been charged with a non-serious offence, as long as they are undertaking a course of rehabilitation; or where a person is undergoing psychiatric confinement for reasons unrelated to an offence. This measure will only apply to people who have been charged with a serious offence that is punishable by imprisonment for life or for a period of at least seven years and who are held in psychiatric confinement due to their inability to plead or who have been found not guilty by reason of mental impairment. It is worth noting that there are provisions for social security payments to be made if these individuals are undertaking a course of rehabilitation. I commend this bill to the House. 10:20 Ms HALL 83N Shortland The Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 before us today is not quite as simple as has been portrayed. This legislation seeks to amend the Social Security Act 1991 to cease social security payments to people who are in psychiatric confinement because they have been charged with a serious offence. The reason they are there is that they have been found unfit to stand trial and so have been found not guilty of the charge because of their mental impairment. The new arrangements in this legislation will take place from July 2015. Currently, social security payments may not be paid to people in prison. However, payments are still paid to people who are in psychiatric confinement as a result of their being charged with a serious criminal offence and who are undertaking a course of rehabilitation. This bill seeks to have people who are in psychiatric confinement and who have been charged with a serious crime treated in the same way as a person in jail who has been convicted of a crime. There are many in the community who would say people who have committed an offence such as murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape or attempted rape should not receive any benefits. However, the difference between a person in psychiatric confinement and a person in jail is that, in the former case, that person has been found unfit because of their mental illness. The important issue here is that these people are undertaking rehabilitation. These people, we hope, can be rehabilitated to the extent that, one day, they may be able to be charged or to re-enter our society. It is imperative that they undertake this rehabilitation. But rehabilitation comes with some associated costs. It involves working with people who are in psychiatric facilities to try and connect them to community—and that entails going out into the community in a way that somebody in a prison does not. The government is probably rushing this legislation through a bit quickly. They did not consult adequately with stakeholders before this bill was introduced into the House. The bill is currently being looked at by a Senate committee. I would like to see the report from the Senate committee. In addition, I do not think the government has looked at the issue of people who are in confinement in a psychiatric institution. It is not like jail. It can be compared to a hospital setting. People there are required to buy their own toothpaste, their own toiletries and their own clothes; unlike prisoners, they are not provided with clothes. They need to attend to many of their own personal needs. As previous speakers have mentioned, some states levy an accommodation charge. This will have an impact on the states because it will shift costs of about $50 million to the states. This is one of those pieces of legislation that could get popular support. The question that we as members of parliament need to ask is: are there going to be any perverse implications from the introduction of this bill? Is our society going to be in a worse position because of this legislation, or in a better position? It will save money. It will remove the disability support pension from people with severe psychiatric illness. It could lead to a situation that will exacerbate their condition and, in effect, stop them from ever re-entering our society—or, if they do, they will not have gone through a rehabilitation program that is as strong as it currently is. I urge the government to wait until they get the report from the Senate committee and then talk a bit more with the stakeholders, the people who are in this space. After they have done that, they should think very carefully about this legislation. 10:27 Mrs McNAMARA 241589 Dobell I rise to support the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015. The Intergenerational report demonstrates how Australia's population will change over time and highlights the need to create jobs, growth and opportunity to improve our living standards in the future. Importantly, the government recognises that we must be able to pay for our future. As part of this, we are obliged to ensure that the government lives within our means and delivers a welfare system that assists those who are genuinely in need. Currently, we are living beyond our means. It is alarming when we hear that eight out of 10 taxpayers are footing the welfare bill. Put simply: the government is spending over $100 million more per day than it receives and is borrowing to meet the shortfall. The government is totally committed to repairing the budget. This is why we are undertaking a comprehensive review of our social security system and identifying fair measures to ensure that we are best targeting government spending for those in need who require support. This is why legislation such as this is essential in ensuring we have a sustainable budget and a social welfare system that has the means and capacity to assist the most vulnerable in our community. This bill provides that a person who is undergoing psychiatric confinement as a result of being charged with a serious offence will be deemed to be in psychiatric confinement for the purpose of social security law. This will be applied irrespective of whether the person is undertaking a course of rehabilitation. This measure will be implemented from 1 July 2015 and will ensure that social security payments will not be payable to an individual while they are undergoing psychiatric confinement. These changes will contribute to the government's budget repair job and will save approximately $29.6 million over the forward estimates. It is estimated that this proposed measure will affect approximately 350 people upon implementation and 50 people each year thereafter. The government has introduced this legislation in response to the 2002 Federal Court decision in Franks and Secretary, Department of Family and Community Services, where it was held that people who are confined in a psychiatric institution would be considered to be undertaking a course of rehabilitation and therefore eligible to receive social security payments. Prior to this decision many people in psychiatric confinement as a result of serious criminal charges could not receive social security payments. Passage of this bill will deliver a return to the original policy intent whereby those undertaking psychiatric confinement as a result of being charged with a serious offence will be denied social security payments. It is important to note that while an individual is undergoing psychiatric confinement the relevant state or territory government is responsible for taking care of their needs, including funding their treatment and rehabilitation. We are not stopping people in rehabilitation. This ensures that all individuals within psychiatric confinement are provided with a level of care. This bill refers to those who are charged with a serious offence. For the purpose of this legislation the measure will focus on violent offences such as murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape, attempted rape, and certain other offences involving loss of, or serious risk to, life, wellbeing or safety. This is an important element to highlight. Social security payments will not be payable to a person who is undergoing psychiatric confinement because the person has been charged with a serious offence. It is also important to highlight that a person may be undergoing psychiatric confinement because they are having their fitness to stand trial assessed, have been found unfit to stand trial because of the person's mental impairment, or have been found not guilty of the charge because of a mental impairment. This legislation ensures that there must be a connection between a serious criminal charge and the psychiatric confinement before a person would be denied social welfare benefits. It is important to note that a social security payment will continue to be payable to a person who is undergoing psychiatric confinement for reasons unrelated to the commission of a serious offence. This will allay concerns that this legislation will unfairly impact upon individuals suffering from mental illness. This is not the case; this legislation is addressing those who have betrayed the trust of the community and committed a serious offence. It is likely that a person who is found guilty of an offence, but who is remanded in a psychiatric institution following the guilty finding, would be taken to be in jail for the purpose of social security law. It is also important to note that that relevant social security payments are not currently payable to people in jail. This bill has no impact on arrangements for those who are currently incarcerated. From time to time a person who has been charged with a serious offence may be granted leave from a psychiatric institution. If this leave is taken for the purpose of integration back into the community, the individual will be eligible to receive a social security payment for this time. However, a social security payment will not be payable if this leave is not related to integration back into the community. This is an important element to this legislation as often treatment in a psychiatric confinement can occur at a range of locations, including outside the institution. These new arrangements will only apply to individuals who have been charged with a serious offence. For the purpose of this legislation a serious offence includes murder or attempted murder, manslaughter, and rape or attempted rape. Moreover, this legislation provides that an offence will be considered serious if it is against the law of the Commonwealth or a state or territory, punishable by imprisonment for life, or for a period or maximum period of at least seven years. Such crimes include those resulting in loss of life or serious risk of loss of life, serious personal injury or serious risk of serious personal injury, or serious damage to property and circumstances endangering the safety of a person. It is intended that this broad description of offences will capture crime where the conduct involves serious harm or risk of harm to an individual. I conclude by confirming that these measures will only apply to individuals who have been charged with a serious offence. This is a fair measure that enhances the integrity of our social security system and it also contributes to the budget repair job. The Australian people expect this direction from their government. We must continue to deliver a fair social security system that supports our nation's most vulnerable. This legislation contributes to this objective. I commend the bill to the House. 10:35 Mr VARVARIS 250077 Barton I thank the House for the opportunity to speak on this bill today. The Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 makes changes to the way welfare is provided after an individual is psychiatrically confined after being charged with a serious criminal offence. The Social Security Act of 1991 stipulates that certain social security payments are not payable to a person who is undergoing psychiatric confinement after being charged with an offence. Only those who have been rehabilitated or undertaken a course of rehabilitation will have their benefits paid. If the person is in psychiatric confinement for the purposes of rehabilitation, then the person is seen to be rehabilitating rather than being confined. If the person is undertaking rehabilitation, then under the Social Security Act social payments will not cease. However, because the full Federal Court previously held that a course of rehabilitation was to be interpreted broadly as a definition of psychiatric confinement, then it meant that as long as one could prove that rehabilitation had commenced—this would have been easily done under the broad case law definition—payment would continue regardless of how long the person was institutionalised. Under the same Social Security Act an individual incarcerated in prison is ineligible for social security benefits of any kind. One could argue though that imprisonment was designed for the purposes of both punishment and rehabilitation. Changes under today's bill will see social security benefits affected from 1 July of this year regardless of whether a person is undergoing rehabilitation or not. This means that social security payments in the form of pensions, benefits, parenting payment, carer allowance, mobility allowance or pensioner education supplement will cease to be provided for those in psychiatric confinement, just like it is denied to those in prison. The purpose of today's bill seeks to streamline the social security arrangements pertaining to those who are psychiatrically confined with those imprisoned. In effect, the changes under the social security legislation will mean that there would be no monetary incentive to plead mentally unfit or insane. Broadly, the bill will also clarify what it means under the new schedule of 'psychiatric confinement', who determines the period of integration, and the repercussions of being charged with a serious offence for those in a psychiatric institution, as opposed to just an offence. There are key differences in the term psychiatrically confined and imprisoned or lawfully detained. The former is reserved for those who may have committed a crime but are mentally impaired or awaiting for confirmation of mental fitness to stand trial. They have no conviction recorded. The latter refers to those who are guilty with a conviction recorded and not on parole. The amendments in today's bill represent a return to the original policy intended for people charged with a serious offence so that people cannot access payments whilst in psychiatric confinement. This condition currently exists for those held in jail but not for those in a psychiatric institution undertaking a course of rehabilitation. The coalition would like to see the provision restored so that neither those incarcerated nor those psychiatrically confined can receive social welfare payments. We believe this is fair, given that states which administer the correctional facilities and services provide food, shelter and clothing to such people. As per the legislation, those who are freed or complete their course on integration back into the community will have their payments resumed. Just to clarify, the bill before us today contains a provision in which social security will be paid depending on the circumstances of the individual. The moment psychiatric confinement ceases, social security will resume as long as the individual does not go into jail. Likewise, if an individual is in a period of integration back into the community, then social security will be paid to the person as it is not considered psychiatric confinement. Furthermore, amendments in today's bill will allow the minister to decide when the period of integration begins, in accordance with legislative instrument made by the minister. I want to take this opportunity to clarify that, when a person is undergoing psychiatric confinement as a result of criminal charges, the relevant state or territory automatically takes care of their needs, compatible with human rights, with regard to food, shelter, funding of treatment and rehabilitation. This is imbedded into our legal and justice system. As such, further taxpayer funding during their period of incarceration is unnecessary. If the person held in confinement has a partner, that partner should notify Centrelink of the changes in circumstances and payments will be adjusted accordingly. Should the person be released from psychiatric confinement, then their welfare will resume once the person enters into a course of rehabilitation. The period of confinement should not automatically result in an accumulation of welfare benefits given the individual has their needs provided by the state. Asking the taxpayer to pay for benefits during psychiatric confinement makes no sense, just as the taxpayer does not provide for social welfare for those in jail. I am aware that there are arguments stating the two forms of incarceration should not be treated the same. I agree that there is a difference between being found to be not guilty due to mental impairment or unfit to stand trial due to mental impairment, compared to a guilty verdict based on intent. However, it does not diminish the end result and impact of the crime. Similarly, both end results mean the person is held in one form of institution, either as a forensic patient or as an inmate, which means the state looks after their rights to food, shelter, treatment and rehabilitation. Both are entitled to resumption of social security payments upon completion of their incarceration. The bill today also allows for a clause by which a person is no longer considered to be in psychiatric confinement during a period of integration back into the community. The period of integration will be decided in accordance with a legislative instrument determined by the minister. Since the course of rehabilitation entails various forms of leave from the psychiatric institution prior to unconditional release, the person would naturally require funds to assist with the transition of living independently and provide autonomy. The legislative instrument will also help determine the full amount of benefits the individual is entitled to, even if the person spends X amount of days in the institution and the rest outside of it. Limiting the payment of social benefits to the person in a psychiatric confinement would not be detrimental to their rehabilitation efforts because, even under a slow transitional period of a few hours or days outside of the institution, practising living skills or undertaking training courses still renders the individual to be under the control the state. As I mentioned previously, any person deemed to be the state's responsibility has their human rights and recovery efforts met by the state. I want to reiterate that there is no explicit obligation to provide social security benefits in the form of payments or cash other than perhaps a misguided notion of equality. People in psychiatric confinement are receiving benefits, just not those in monetary form. Individuals in psychiatric confinement have their food, clothing and housing all provided by the state or territory psychiatric institution and therefore have their basic needs provided for, which falls under human rights obligations. When such benefits are being provided, the need for social security in the form of cash payment is unwarranted. I want to just rehash a few points I mentioned earlier. Specifically, this bill pertains to the psychiatric confinement of those who have committed a serious offence. The definition of 'serious offence' also includes offence against the law of the Commonwealth or a state or territory punishable by imprisonment for life or for a period or a maximum period of at least seven years, involving murder, rape, attempted murder, manslaughter, serious injury or risk of injury to a person or serious damage to property endangering the safety of a person. In essence, the Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill ensures consistent and equal treatment of people in jail and in psychiatric institutions. As I have said previously, today's bill will streamline the social security arrangements pertaining to those who are psychiatrically confined with those imprisoned. It also allows for the minister to determine the period of integration back into society and thus allow appropriate social security payments to resume during this time. Finally, limiting the payment of social benefits to the person in a psychiatric confinement is not detrimental to their rehabilitation efforts since practising living skills or undertaking training courses would be under the responsibility of the state. There is no obligation for social security payments to be made in forms of monetary payments when requirements are being provided for by the state. In light of this, I recommend this bill to the House. 10:44 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I thank members for their contribution to the debate. The Social Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 will cease social security payments to certain people who are in psychiatric confinement because they have been charged with a serious offence, and in many cases the most serious offences you can imagine. As announced in the 2014-15 MYEFO, the measure will apply to people who have been charged with a serious offence and who, due to a mental impairment, are in psychiatric confinement. This includes people who have not been convicted or are considered not fit to stand trial. The original policy intention will essentially be restored for people in these circumstances, which is that a person cannot access social security payments while in psychiatric confinement as a result of criminal charges. The exclusion of those who have not been accused of a serious crime is a beneficial measure. The present arrangements under which most people confined to a psychiatric institution may be considered to be participating in a course of rehabilitation and therefore attract social security payments are based on a 2002 Federal Court decision which broadened the definition of 'a course of rehabilitation' beyond the original intent. Social Security payments are provided as a safety net for those in need to help meet daily living needs in the community. The person's needs while in psychiatric confinement, including funding of their treatment and rehabilitation, are in fact the responsibility of the relevant state or territory government during that time. This measure is to stop the cost-shifting from the state to the Commonwealth. The state charges up to 85 per cent of someone's income support payment to go to their accommodation and living costs. There is no reason why the Commonwealth has responsibility for an individual's needs at any time while they are in state care. There are measures in the bill to make sure that someone will be able to seek income support payments when their rehabilitation gets to a stage that they are getting integrated back into the community. This measure will apply if the serious offence with which the person has been charged is a violent one. That includes murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, rape or attempted rape. In certain circumstances where people are integrated back into the community, social security payments may resume. The measure applies from 1 July 2015. I commend the bill to the House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER M3E The question is that the bill be now read a second time.   Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

The House divided. [10:51]
(The Deputy Speaker—Mr Mitchell)

79 AYES Alexander, JG Andrews, KL Baldwin, RC Billson, BF Bishop, BK 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 Entsch, WG 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 Jones, ET Joyce, BT Kelly, C Landry, ML Laundy, C Ley, SP Macfarlane, IE Marino, NB Markus, LE Matheson, RG McCormack, MF McNamara, KJ Morrison, SJ Nikolic, AA Pasin, A Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Prentice, J Price, ML Pyne, CM Ramsey, RE Randall, DJ 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 Tudge, AE Turnbull, MB Van Manen, AJ Varvaris, N Vasta, RX Whiteley, BD Wicks, LE Williams, MP Wilson, RJ Wood, JP Wyatt, KG 44 NOES Albanese, AN Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Burke, AE Burke, AS Butler, MC Butler, TM Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Champion, ND Chesters, LM Clare, JD Collins, JM Conroy, PM Danby, M Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Feeney, D Ferguson, LDT Giles, AJ Griffin, AP Hall, JG (teller) Hayes, CP Leigh, AK Macklin, JL MacTiernan, AJGC Marles, RD Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, J Parke, M Perrett, GD Ripoll, BF Rowland, MA Ryan, JC Snowdon, WE Swan, WM Thistlethwaite, MJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Zappia, A 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

 Third Reading 21 10:58 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. Judiciary Amendment Bill 2015 21

Judiciary Amendment Bill 2015

Second Reading 21 10:59 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Judiciary Amendment Bill 2015 will support the consolidation of the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) into the Attorney-General's Department. The decision to consolidate AGS into the department The decision to consolidate AGS into the department was announced in the 2014-15 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook as part of the government's smaller government reform agenda. This is a comprehensive package of reforms designed to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and focus of the Commonwealth public service. When fully implemented, they will reduce the number of government bodies by 251 since the last election. Our efforts to deliver a smaller and more rational government footprint will ensure a more flexible and unified public sector which is better able to respond to emerging pressures and ensure that services are best aligned to the evolving policy priorities of the government. The consolidation of AGS into the Attorney-General's Department will create opportunities for greater efficiency in the operation of the consolidated department. But the government wants to make clear that AGS will maintain its own distinct functional identity within the department, including the AGS name and its well-regarded independent brand. Its well-deserved professional reputation will be maintained. This will allow AGS to continue to operate effectively on a business-as-usual basis for its staff and its clients, and with the necessary level of professional independence within the department. Consolidation draws on the best aspects of both AGS and the Attorney-General's Department It is of critical importance that the government has a strong and expert government solicitor. The decision the government has made is to consolidate the AGS within the Attorney-General's Department, not to abolish it. AGS will continue to be the nation's leading provider of legal services to the federal government and its agencies. In fact, AGS and the department have operated as one organisation in all but 15 of AGS's 110 years of operation AGS lawyers have a special understanding of the context in which the Commonwealth operates—and that the government needs tailored advice and practical solutions. These can be a legal solution, a policy solution or some combination of both. They consider issues from a whole-of-government perspective and take into account broader public policy goals. The Attorney-General's Department will continue to carry out the central policy and coordinating functions of the Attorney-General's portfolio, with one of its key roles being to provide legal and legal policy advice to the Attorney-General as first law officer of the Commonwealth and chief legal adviser to cabinet. It draws on highly-qualified legal policy experts and legal practitioners with experience in dealing with a range of high priority, sensitive and time critical matters. Consolidating the AGS into the department will strengthen their respective capacities to support the Attorney-General as first law officer and chief legal adviser to cabinet by providing a comprehensive source of authoritative advice on key Commonwealth legal and legal policy issues. It will also ensure that the department and AGS are well-placed to deliver high quality legal services and legal policy advice on legal issues of importance to the Commonwealth and the most critical matters of state. Secretary's review Following consolidation, the secretary of the department will conduct a review of legal services to identify efficiencies that can be gained in government legal costs. The review will encompass the role of in-house legal practices in Commonwealth departments and agencies, including how in-house advice is organised, to ensure more coordinated and aligned advice to the government in the future. The review will look to the Commonwealth legal services market as a whole and ultimately seek to deliver the best outcomes for the government from the full array of legal services available. The terms of reference for this review are yet to be developed, and both government and private sector stakeholders will be invited to participate in the consultation process for the review. Any savings from the consolidation will also be quantified following this review. Key features of the bill Schedule 1 to the bill will amend the Judiciary Act to support consolidation. Schedule 1 repeals references to AGS being a statutory corporation and its responsibilities as a separate corporate entity. Instead, the Australian Government Solicitor will be a senior public servant within the Attorney-General's Department and will oversee a separate legal practice group and report to the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department. The definition of AGS lawyers is updated to reflect that they will be employed under the Public Service Act 1999 framework working under the direction and supervision of the Australian Government Solicitor. Consistent with ensuring business as usual and providing minimal change to existing operations, amendments have been made to enable the AGS to continue providing the same legal services to the same range of clients, and to continue to operate on a commercial and competitive basis for the great majority of its work. Schedule 2 to the bill makes the necessary consequential amendments to existing Commonwealth legislation with references to the AGS. This includes amendments to the Director of Public Prosecutions Act 1983 to ensure that the AGS can continue to perform and exercise the director's functions when requested pursuant to the existing DPP legislation. Amendments to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 will ensure that AGS continues to be exempt from its operation. This ensures the confidentiality of AGS's legal advice and its relationship with its clients continues to be protected. Schedule 3 provides transitional arrangements regarding the consolidation. The purpose of Schedule 3 is to ensure certainty and efficiency for existing AGS staff, clients and third parties that regularly engage with AGS. Transitional matters addressed by the bill include: assets and liabilities of the former AGS references in instruments to the former AGS legal proceedings of the AGS contracts which were entered into by the AGS exemption from state and territory taxation reporting requirements of the AGS, and employee arrangements of the AGS. The schedule includes a general deeming provision to ensure that references in existing Commonwealth laws to AGS are taken to be references to the AGS under its new structure. Finally, there is also a time limited transitional rule-making power to enable a legislative instrument to be made to address unforeseen circumstances or unintended consequences arising from the consolidation within the year following commencement of the bill. Conclusion AGS and the Attorney-General's Department enjoy a very close, productive and professional working relationship and have done so for many years. As I observed earlier, AGS and the department have operated as one organisation in all but 15 of AGS's 110 years of operation. It has also been said that AGS is the custodian of the Commonwealth's legal corporate memory. This continuity is critical to providing trusted and relevant advice to the Commonwealth on critical issues for the Commonwealth. Consolidation will only enhance this relationship—a relationship exemplified by the cooperation between AGS and the department on significant matters such as Operation Sovereign Borders, the royal commissions and high priority, sensitive and time critical matters in constitutional law, national security law and public international law. The Judiciary Amendment Bill will further improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a consolidated AGS in the department, while at the same time bringing together some of the brightest legal minds in this country, improving the provision of Commonwealth legal services and streamlining the administration of law in Australia. I commend the bill to the House. 11:07 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs As my colleague Senator Jacinta Collins indicated in the other place, Labor will support this bill. The bill implements a change to the management of the Australian Government Solicitor. It effects some minor amendments to the Judiciary Act 1903 to achieve the consolidation of the AGS into the Attorney-General's Department. The act currently provides for the AGS to operate as a government owned business, as it has since 1999. The technicalities of the Judiciary Act do not often attract much controversy in this place or, indeed, outside of it. But I do want to reflect for a second on the importance of the AGS and of government lawyers more broadly. Justice Barker, of the Federal Court, delivered a speech in 2010 titled 'What makes a good government lawyer?' The judge noted that government lawyers sometimes feel misunderstood, even underappreciated. The judge said: If to tell a citizen that you are 'from the government' isn't always the best opening line, I expect saying you are a 'lawyer from the government' is even less so. I can sympathise with government lawyers in this regard. This bill once again houses the AGS within the Attorney-General's Department, where it sat between Federation and 1999, although it will continue to operate on a commercial basis within a contestable market for government legal services. Leslie Zines, one of this country's greatest public lawyers, once wrote about the incredible tasks that the first federal government lawyer, Sir Robert Garran, faced at Federation. Garran had to advise on the conduct of the first federal election, with no Commonwealth Electoral Act or regulations. Once parliament had been elected, he set about developing the Commonwealth statute book more or less from scratch. For a couple of years he advised the Commonwealth government on the interpretation of the Constitution without any guidance from the High Court, which was not established until 1903. Admittedly, he had the advantage of having drafted much of the document himself. It is no accident that Garran, a government lawyer, played such a pivotal part in the beginnings of our nation. That tradition of public service is upheld today by lawyers at the AGS, the Attorney-General's Department and across government. In modern times the government's legal services are provided by a mixture of providers at the AGS, in house at government departments and in private practice. Since the 1980s, successive governments have made a series of changes to these arrangements to try to ensure that the Commonwealth gets the best possible value from its legal advisers. This is important and worthwhile work. Significant progress was made under the last Labor government. However, we never lost sight of the vital role played by the dedicated, expert government lawyers at the AGS. Government should certainly source its legal services from a mixture of providers. Contestability is important. Private law firms undoubtedly have a substantial part to play. However, it is clear to me that the AGS occupies a special position. The AGS is known for its specialist expertise, long experience and sensitivity to the particular needs of government clients. As such, I am happy to see the government bring forward this bill rather than proceed with the recommendation produced by their Commission of Audit in May last year. I know that the government does not like to talk much about the Commission of Audit these days—they do not like to talk much about the 2014 budget which followed it either—but it is worth remembering that the Commission of Audit actually recommended that the AGS simply be abolished. It wanted the firm sold off to the private sector. That was a foolish recommendation. The commission's analysis was lazy and superficial. It gave no serious thought to the realities of government legal work and it ignored the special role of the AGS. The commission never moved beyond its own uncritical ideological reflexes. Happily, this bill does not implement that recommendation of the Commission of Audit in any sense. The government has instead incorporated the whole of the AGS into a central government agency. This is, in some senses, a minor machinery change—the actual operations of the AGS will continue as usual. However, I do take this consolidation of the AGS into the department as an acknowledgment of just how important the government considers the AGS to be and just how central its work is to the smooth functioning of the Commonwealth government and to the national interest. The government has indicated that, once the bill is in effect, it will review the operation of the broader Commonwealth legal services landscape. I trust that this review will continue the thoughtful and serious work of the last Labor government in this area. I commend the bill to the House. 11:13 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley I would like to sum up the debate and thank the member for Isaacs for his contribution. It is a great pleasure to conclude this debate on the Judiciary Amendment Bill 2015. The bill supports the consolidation of the Australian Government Solicitor into the Attorney-General's Department. It will create a more unified and effective department that will become the comprehensive source of authoritative advice on key Commonwealth legal and legal policy issues. In recognising the contribution from the member for Isaacs, let me just briefly touch on a matter he raised in his contribution. I want to reiterate and make absolutely clear that the AGS is not being abolished—as the member for Isaacs observed. This government acknowledges the importance of the AGS as a viable and ongoing source of trusted and knowledgeable advice. Consolidating this knowledge and experience with the legal and policy expertise contained within the AGD will create a stronger department that is better able to provide high quality, coordinated and strategic legal advice to the Attorney-General, as Australia's first law officer, and in turn to the cabinet and the government as a whole. Consolidation will provide enhanced opportunities for the government's best legal minds—however they might be greeted in public circles!—in the AGS, the AGD and other agencies to work closer together to deliver tailored advice, practical solutions and excellent client focused results. Consolidation will further enhance an already close relationship between the AGS and the Attorney-General's Department while allowing the AGS to maintain its respected name and brand and its independent functional identity. I thank the AGS and the Attorney-General's Department for their constructive and collaborative approach in implementing this consolidation and commend the bill to the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 24 11:15 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015 24

Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015

Second Reading 24 11:16 Mr FEENEY I0O Batman The opposition supports the measures contained in the Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015. The bill is the result of the Australian Crime Commission and the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity seeking legislative changes on the basis of their practical experience in working with the existing legislative regime, particularly with post-charge examinations. This bill provides clarification around powers while keeping faith with the original intent of the ACC and the ACLEI. The bill contains safeguards that apply to hearings to ensure they do not affect the fair trial of the witness. The bill does not change the fact that every Australian enjoys the right to a fair trial and a fair hearing. The purpose of the bill is to amend the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 to clarify the powers of ACC examiners to conduct examinations; to similarly amend the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act 2006 to clarify the powers of the Integrity Commissioner, supported by the ACLEI, to conduct hearings; and to make consequential amendments to the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 to ensure that the definition of 'designated publication restriction' refers to the amended provision in the ACC Act. The bill is divided into two schedules. Schedule 1 is divided into two parts, introducing amendments to the ACC Act and the PID Act. Schedule 2 introduces amendments to the LEIC Act. As the relevant provisions of the ACC Act and the LEIC Act are similar, schedules 1 and 2 make similar amendments. The ACC and the ACLEI conduct examinations and hearings which may involve compelling a person to answer questions, or to produce documents or things, about matters relating to an ACC special operation or special investigation into serious and organised criminal activity—or relating to an investigation into law enforcement corruption. These examinations and hearings enable the ACC and the ACLEI to obtain information that would not otherwise be available or which might only be obtained after long and complex investigations. Examination material, for example, plays an important role in assisting the ACC to develop an understanding of how serious and organised crime operates, to analyse this information with other relevant information and to disseminate to the Commonwealth, state and partner agencies as part of an intelligence product. A person cannot refuse to answer a question, or to produce a document or thing, in an examination or hearing on the basis that it might incriminate them or expose them to a penalty. However, there are limitations on the circumstances in which answers can be used in evidence against the person in criminal proceedings or in proceedings for the imposition of a penalty. The powers of the ACC and the ACLEI to conduct examinations have been considered in a number of recent cases, which I will discuss. These include R v Seller and McCarthy(2013) 273 FLR 155; X7 v Australian Crime Commission(2013) 248 CLR 92; Lee v NSW Crime Commission(2013) 251 CLR 196; and Lee v R(2014) 88 ALJR 656. These cases have placed limits on the use of the examination powers in certain circumstances in which they have previously been utilised. The bill is intended to address these issues—to clarify the ability of the agencies to exercise their powers as before in circumstances which, the government has stated, are in accordance with the original policy intent. I will give now a brief summary of the current operation of ACC examinations. An ACC examiner may conduct examinations as part of a special ACC operation or investigation. The examiner may conduct the proceedings as they see fit, allow legal practitioners to be present, and determine when it is appropriate for a witness to be examined or cross-examined. While proceedings must be held in private, a witness must be informed of any others who are present. The Evidence Act of 1995 does not apply to such an examination, so common law rules of evidence apply, subject to the ACC Act provisions. The examiner may make such arrangements as are necessary to avoid prejudice to the safety of the person summoned, to protect them from intimidation or harassment. The examiner has the same protection and immunity in exercising their functions as a justice of the High Court of Australia. The examiner is exempt from serving a written reason for decisions to issue a summons under the ACC Act. Any report that sets out findings that an offence has been committed or makes a recommendation to institute a prosecution must not be made available to the public unless it is based on evidence that would be admissible in prosecution of a person for that offence. Examiners have power to summon or compel witnesses to attend examinations and to give evidence on oath or affirmation when the board has made determination of a special operation or special investigation. A person and their lawyer, if legal professional privilege does not apply, must not—under penalty of fines and/or imprisonment—fail to attend or answer questions where it is proven that a valid summons was issued. The person may challenge the validity of the summons when it is an element of the offence or as an abuse of process. The person and their lawyer may also be held in contempt of the ACC for similar conduct towards the examiner, but the examiner must inform the person of their application, stating grounds and evidence in support, for it to be dealt with by the Federal Court or the state or territory supreme court. It is an offence to obstruct or hinder the ACC or an examiner in the performance of their functions or to disrupt an examination or threaten any person present in an examination before an examiner. Double jeopardy does apply to offences under the ACC legislation and state, territory and Commonwealth offences. A person appearing before an ACC examiner as a witness may not refuse to answer a question or produce a document or thing on the grounds of self-incrimination—that is, the privilege is abrogated. Section 35 provides a use immunity for a person who, before answering a question or producing a document or thing, claims that it might tend to incriminate them or make them liable to a penalty. This type of immunity prevents self-incriminating information from being used directly as evidence against the person who provided it. A use immunity applies to criminal proceedings and proceedings for the imposition of a penalty other than confiscation proceedings or proceedings relating to giving false evidence. Derivative use immunity is not provided. This means that self-incriminatory material may be used to obtain other evidence that would be admissible against the person. The ability to use derivative material from an examination does not automatically compromise a fair trial. The ACC Act does not include any special provisions relating to questioning of a person facing a current or imminent charge or proceeding. It does not exclude the ACC from questioning a person in such circumstances, nor does it explicitly allow it. As outlined separately in the committee consideration section of this digest, a parliamentary committee recommended amendments in 2005 to prevent the ACC from examining a person subject to criminal or confiscation proceedings on matters relevant to those proceedings. The coercive powers may be considered to interfere with a person accessing a fair trial when the matter they are summonsed to is a compulsory inquisitorial process of examination instigated by the executive government. This made thus provide a real risk to the administration of justice. The prosecution does not gain an unfair advantage by the mere fact that the examination occurs or does not occur, primarily due to the power of the examiner to prevent disclosure and ensure a fair trial to the accused. In other words, there is no real risk in the administration of justice due to the safeguards on the examination, even in the face of a person facing pending criminal charges regarding their answers, when the examiner can utilise safeguards against disclosure to prosecuting authorities under section 25A of the ACC Act. The mere dissemination of evidence to a prosecuting authority is not enough for a trial to be compromised, as it can only apply if it might prejudice a fair trial, and is not enough for a trial to be stayed. To force the accused to confess their guilt or give away information that they provide for their defence or to explain their conduct that allegedly supports the charges may, depending on the nature of the proceedings, prejudice a fair trial. Any relief would depend on the breach of where a direction should have been given and the steps taken to cure its effect. A judicial officer could also use their discretion to exclude evidence under sections 90 and/or 138 of the Evidence Act 1995. However, recent cases regarding the use immunity of examination material have had their decisions reserved in the High Court of Australia, and this has led judges in other cases to issue temporary stays of prosecutions. Any dissemination is subject to and overridden by the examiner's non-publication directions, consistent with the decision in Australian Crime Commission v OK 2010, where a majority of the Federal Court upheld the legislation. The examiner determines whether confidentiality applies to evidence that is given or the fact that a person is going to give evidence, and whether a non-publication direction should be given. The examiner is required to do this when a disclosure might prejudice the safety or reputation of a person, or prejudice the fair trial of a person who has been or may be charged with an offence. A court may seek that evidence directed to be confidential or not published be made available to a person charged with an offence before a federal, state or territory court, if it is desirable in the interests of justice. The 'interests of justice' have no definition, and they can encompass a wide range of factors. When an examination is finished, the examiner must give a record of proceedings and any documents or things given to an examiner in connection with the examination to the head of the special ACC operation or investigation. These confidentiality directions apply also to disclosing the notice for summons to obtain documents. The person themselves may be prevented from disclosing the notice other than to their lawyer or a permitted person or body. As outlined in the bill's explanatory memorandum, several recent cases could affect the ACC's use of its examination powers. In Seller and McCarthy, the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal found that the use of evidence derived from examination material in criminal proceedings against the examinee could in some circumstances be unfair. In X7 v the Australian Crime Commission, a three-to-two majority of the High Court found that the ACC Act did not authorise the ACC to examine a person who had been charged with an offence without the subject matter of the charge—referred to here as the post-charge examination. The majority noted that such an examination would affect the fairness of the examinee's trial and could only be authorised if there were clear words indicating parliament's intention. In Lee No. 1, a four-three majority of the High Court found that the Criminal Assets Recovery Act 1990 authorised the post-charge examination of a person. The majority distinguished the decision in X7 on the basis that the relevant examination occurred as a result of a court order. In Lee No. 2, the High Court unanimously found that the New South Wales Crime Commission's unlawful disclosure of the accused's examination transcript to the prosecution rendered the trial fundamentally unfair and ordered a retrial. The examination occurred before the accused was charged with an offence. According to the explanatory memorandum, these cases have had an impact on ACC operations. Following the decision in X7, for example, the ACC has stated that it no longer examines persons already charged with an offence if the questioning could touch on related matters. The decision in X7 touches on both the motivations for the current amendments and the balancing of rights and public interest in this area of criminal law. X7 v the Australian Crime Commission in 2013 was one of the more important of recent cases which not only affected the examination powers of the ACC and the ACLEI but clearly identified the principle of legality, which requires that a statutory intention to abrogate or restrict a fundamental freedom or principle, or to depart from the general system of law must be expressed with 'irresistible clearness'. It is based on this principle and the stated requirement for statutory intent that the bill has been brought forward. It clarifies the operation of the agency's examinations with the requested 'irresistible clearness' and makes plain the intention of the parliament. The amendments proposed in the bill will clarify the application of the compulsory examination powers of the ACC and the ACLEI. They will provide the express words and clear intent which recent decisions have indicated would be required to permit persons who have been charged with an offence to be examined on matters relating to that offence. The proposed amendments will also introduce measures intended to protect the processes of justice and the right to a fair trial by limiting the uses for which examination and derived material may be used. However, the amendments would unavoidably alter the process of a trial by limiting an examinee's defence options. Despite the limitations which would be placed on an examinee's rights, the proposed amendments are stated by the government to be a proportionate response to the public policy requirement for combating serious and organised crime and law enforcement corruption. Labor supports a secure and fair Australia with law enforcement agencies that have the appropriate tools, ensuring as best we can that one does not hinder the other. On that basis I commend the bill to the House. 11:30 Mrs McNAMARA 241589 Dobell I rise to support the Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015. This is an important piece of legislation designed to enhance and improve the ability of our law enforcement agencies to combat emerging national security and criminal threats. Importantly, this bill contains measures to clarify the questioning powers of the Australian Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner. This government is committed to ensuring our law enforcement agencies are equipped to combat the ongoing security threat currently facing our nation. In the lead-up to this year's Anzac Day, when Australians commemorated the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli, counterterrorism police foiled an Islamic State inspired terrorist attack on an Anzac Day ceremony. The operation to capture the alleged offenders involved 200 police officers and was the culmination of Operation Rising. Operation Rising resulted in the execution of seven search warrants in Melbourne's south-east western metropolitan area. As stated by the Australian Federal Police, in the aftermath of this event, the Melbourne Joint Counter Terrorism Team maintains strong links with federal intelligence agencies. This plot highlights the importance of providing our law enforcement agencies with the powers they need to combat crime here in Australia. We face an ongoing threat embedded within our communities, particularly from extremists hidden within Australian suburbia. We have seen over recent years the powers of law enforcement agencies reduced through court rulings, advancement in technologies and an increased global terrorism threat. This bill will help to ensure that the Crime Commission, Integrity Commissioner and the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity have access to necessary and appropriate powers so they can play their part in the fight against serious and organised crime, foreign fighters and law enforcement corruption. As with all our deliberations when considering national security, this bill will strengthen the checks and safeguards on examinations and hearings. This will strike an appropriate balance between providing law enforcement and integrity agencies the powers to keep our community safe and preserving the fundamental right to a fair trial. As outlined by the Hon. Michael Keenan MP, Minister for Justice, in his second reading contribution, examinations and hearings are crucial to the operations of the Crime Commission and Integrity Commissioner and, as a result of amendments within this bill, an individual questioned in an examination or hearing will be unable to hide behind the privilege against self-incrimination. Importantly, they will be required to answer all questions put to them. This is a crucial change which will enable the Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner to obtain information that would not otherwise be available through the traditional policing and investigative tools. These powers are essential when combating serious and organised crime along with systemic corruption. Individuals and groups involved in these activities are often well funded and are well equipped to dodge investigative techniques. Moreover, they often employ methods to avoid detection by law enforcement agencies. The Crime Commission, the Integrity Commissioner and the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity all use the information obtained through questioning powers for a range of important law enforcement purposes. This includes progressing investigations; the development, analysis and dissemination of intelligence to partner agencies; addressing systemic vulnerabilities in organisations; and disrupting the operations of organised criminal groups, including outlaw motorcycle gangs. The government acknowledges that these are significant powers that override the right to silence. They are vital to law enforcement's ability to investigate, prevent and disrupt Australia's most serious criminal activity. We must remember that examinations and hearings are already subject to a number of checks and safeguards. As Minister Keenan outlined, this bill will strengthen checks and safeguards and strike an appropriate balance between giving law enforcement agencies the powers they need to keep us safe and the need to preserve the fundamental right to a fair trial. A number of recent court cases have adversely affected the way in which our law enforcement and intelligence agencies can use their existing powers of questioning. Importantly, these decisions have had a significant negative impact on the operations of the Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner. For example, in response to the High Court decision of X7 v. Australian Crime Commission and Anor, the Crime Commission has ceased examining anyone who had been charged with an offence where the questioning might touch on the subject matter of the charges. The High Court's finding in X7 related to an individual who was arrested and subsequently charged with three indictable Commonwealth offences in relation to alleged conspiracies to import and traffic a commercial quantity of a controlled drug and to deal with money that was the proceeds of crime. A majority of the High Court held that the examination provisions of the Australian Crime Commission Act did not permit an examiner of the Australian Crime Commission to require a person charged with but not yet tried for an indictable Commonwealth offence to answer questions about the subject matter of the charged offence. As a result of this ruling, the Crime Commission has already been prevented from obtaining valuable intelligence about the methodologies and activities of those engaged in serious criminal activities. Alarmingly, this includes recruiters and facilitators of foreign fights and their links with other individuals. Measures within this bill will directly address and correct the erosion of powers as a consequence of the High Court's ruling. This bill will amend the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 and the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act 2006 to restore and strengthen the powers of the Crime Commission and Integrity Commissioner. This bill will expressly authorise the Crime Commission and Integrity Commissioner to question a person who has been charged with an offence, which was the original intention behind those acts. In the past, this power has enabled the questioning of arrested paedophiles and child pornographers about the identities and locations of their victims. It has also allowed law enforcement agencies to obtain a detailed understanding of contemporary drug-trafficking techniques and to identify the individuals involved in those illicit activities. Furthermore, this power has been used to identify and eliminate the influence of corruption within Australia's law enforcement agencies. I would suggest that law-abiding citizens would rightfully expect our law enforcement agencies to be equipped with such powers. This bill will also authorise the use of derivative material obtained from an examination hearing and define the circumstances in which examination hearing material and derivative material may be provided to a prosecutor. The term 'derivative material' is used in relation to examination material and is intended to be a broad definition to capture all evidence, information, documents or things that have been obtained from examination material. It includes: firstly, information obtained directly from examination material, such as an individual or object whose existence was revealed during an examination; secondly, information obtained from a combination of examination material and other material, such as a hoard of illicit drugs uncovered once evidence directly derived from examination material is considered with other relevant information; and, thirdly, information obtained indirectly from examination material, such as child pornography material uncovered from a laptop after an examinee reveals the location of a storage facility and said storage facility contains a document recording the password to the laptop. These examples demonstrate the importance of this amendment and the necessity to ensure that the Crime Commission, the Integrity Commissioner and their partnering agencies have the clear authority to take action based upon material obtained by examination hearings. This bill delivers on the government's election commitment to implement the outstanding recommendations of the inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement into unexplained wealth. This bill will clearly authorise the Crime Commission to conduct examinations in the context of ongoing confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and establish when such material may be used in proceedings. This bill also makes the same changes to the Integrity Commissioner's powers in order to bolster the ability of Australia's law enforcement and integrity agencies to target a criminal's illicit wealth. As previously highlighted, the government will ensure there are a number of important safeguards to complement and support these changes. The government will ensure that any use or disclosure of examination hearing material or derivative material will not prejudice a person's safety or their right to a fair trial. This is consistent with Australia' criminal justice system. The amendments to both the Australian Crime Commission Act and the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act will clearly set out the circumstances in which examination hearing material can and cannot be disclosed. It is worth noting that Australian Crime Commission examinations are only used to support investigations and operations into serious and organised crime in which ordinary police methods of collecting intelligence or investigating offences have been unsuccessful. These investigations and operations cover a range of extremely serious criminal activity, including terrorism, drug trafficking, child sex offences, cybercrime, superannuation fraud and other financial crime. It is well established that these activities cause significant harm to members of the Australian community and to Australian society and ultimately undermine our national security. This bill will introduce an additional requirement before a person or body, such as the Crime Commission, may disclose certain types of derivative material to the prosecutor of the examinee. It will be necessary to first obtain a court order, which will only be granted if the court is satisfied that the disclosure is in the interests of justice. This provision is intended to ensure that the court controls the circumstances in which material derived from examinations can be provided to a prosecutor. These amendments will protect the right to a fair trial of a person questioned by the Crime Commission or Integrity Commissioner. Conversely, these amendments will ensure that law enforcement agencies can carry out their important role of fighting organised crime and corrupt elements within our law enforcement agencies without unfairly impacting upon the fundamental rights of the accused. The amendments also confirm that coercive questioning powers of the Australian Crime Commission and Integrity Commissioner can only be used for the purpose of special intelligence operations or special investigations. Again, the government acknowledges that the primary purpose of an examination is not to bolster a case against the person being examined but rather to gather information for the purpose of understanding, disrupting or preventing serious and organised crime. As I said at the start of my contribution, this government is committed to ensuring that our law enforcement agencies are equipped to combat the ongoing security threat currently facing our nation. The government acknowledge that the powers of the Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner are significant. However, there is no doubt that they are necessary. The challenges posed by serious and organised crime present a significant threat to our national security and the wellbeing of every Australian. The government must ensure that we can combat and disrupt serious crime. This bill achieves this by ensuring that the relevant agencies possess the questioning powers they need to protect our community. Importantly, we are reaching this outcome while upholding the fundamental principles of our criminal justice system and the right to a fair trial. Without the amendments contained within this bill, the Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner would be unable to combat he real and serious threat present in our community. As Minister Keenan stated, this bill is 'vital to law enforcement's ability to understand, disrupt and prevent some of the most serious criminal activity'. I commend this bill to the House and call on all members to support these necessary provisions. 11:44 Mr HAYES ECV Fowler I rise to speak on the Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015. This bill makes amendments to the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002, the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act 2006 and the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2014. Primarily, this bill sets out to clarify the powers of the Australian Crime Commission when conducting examinations and the powers of the Integrity Commissioner to conduct his or her hearings, putting beyond doubt the intention of the parliament. Currently, the Australian Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner examinations of serious and organised crime or cases of corruption within the law enforcement system involve questioning persons, compelling them to produce a document or to answer questions—failing to do so is a crime. We refer to that as coercive powers. Ordinarily, our police services and other law enforcement agencies do not have these powers. These powers were very rarely allocated to other law enforcement bodies and, as a consequence, there was a need for the Crime Commission and its predecessor, the National Crime Authority, to be invested with these powers. A specific parliamentary joint committee was established to oversee the Australian Crime Commission on the basis that it holds these coercive powers. There has been no apology from parties of either side of this House for why this came about in the first instance. It was clearly seen as a necessary mechanism to fight contemporary serious and organised crime. However, more recently, as demonstrated in a number of cases, statutory interpretation of the legislation has had the impact of limiting the scope of these powers in circumstances where answers given in evidence under coercive powers can be restricted in criminal proceedings. This bill tries to rectify that. These powers have been read down by various judicial and appellate bodies to the effect of reducing what was, I would contend, the original intention of the legislation when it passed this House initially. For example, the case of Seller and McCarthy in the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal was dealing not with the Australian Crime Commission but with the evidence that was given under coercive powers. The appellate court found that some of the evidence from the examination material could be unfair and therefore should not be considered in subsequent criminal proceedings. The previous speaker referred to a case in the High Court: X7 v Australian Crime Commission. In this case the High Court found by a majority that the Australian Crime Commission was not authorised under the ACC Act to examine a person who was already charged with a specific offence. I believe that this was not the intention of the legislation when it was initially passed by the parliament. However, with respect to their honours, their decision impacts the legislation by reading down the powers of the ACC. What we intend to do with this legislation, which is supported by both sides, I am happy to say, is to ensure that we clarify the intention of the parliament by bringing the legislation back to what it was originally meant to do when it was first passed by this parliament. We are very fortunate in having an organisation such as the Australian Crime Commission. It has now developed to be the country's premier criminal intelligence agency. It is probably not widely understood that this organisation works very much hand in glove not only with the Australian Federal Police but with the law enforcement agencies that apply in each of our state and territory jurisdictions. The evidence that it is able to elicit by using its very special powers is instrumental in attacking serious and organised crime. It is something which I think we should be proud of in this place. Efforts in this regard have always been subject to bipartisan support. Clearly, Labor will always support measures that improve the work of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies and ensure that they have the tools to do their very important job. It is important that we give the people whom we invest with the responsibility of protecting our communities the powers that they need, particularly when it is a fight against serious and organised crime. As a long-serving member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, and chair of it for many years, I have certainly been kept informed of the work of the Australian Crime Commission, particularly in the area of tackling serious and organised crime. Over the years, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, which has conducted many inquiries into serious and organised crime, has made many recommendations to governments of both political persuasions. I cannot recall that there has ever been a dissenting report by that committee. Happily, governments of either side have, by and large, accepted the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement. The committee is certainly of the view that there is an increasing risk to our community from serious and organised crime, including transnational crime. At the moment, the estimated cost of such crimes to our community is in the vicinity of $15 billion each year. Given the substantial harm to our communities and to economic activity, the committee initiated an inquiry into legislative arrangements designed to thwart serious and organised crime. As part of that, the parliament charged a joint committee with conducting an international review of laws that were applicable in jurisdictions such as North America, Europe and the United Kingdom and to look at the contemporary legislative mechanisms for combating serious and organised crime. It was through that exercise and through the recommendations of that committee that the initial unexplained wealth legislation was introduced into, and passed by, this House. The significance of that was that, along with contemporary efforts in law enforcement, there was a realisation that organised crime is not just a criminal venture, it is a business—and, like every business, it is profit driven and it will look for windows of opportunity to exploit its enterprise. Criminals will exploit issues of state and territory boundaries and constitutionality, where difficulties arise in terms of powers. This brings us back to this bill, which is about this parliament trying to close that window of opportunity in the application of those coercive powers. As the name implies, the unexplained wealth legislation is designed to attack criminals where they feel it most, in the hip pocket, to undermine the business model of the criminal enterprise and also to make it easier for law enforcement to track the kingpins that underpin that business relationship. As I said earlier, the ACC has developed into the nation's premier criminal intelligence agency and plays a crucial role in combating crime. Over the last 12 months alone the ACC has seized more than $23 million in cash and more than $150 million in assets; shared more than 2,000 intelligence reports with over 254 different agencies; produced 60 reports on outlaw motorcycle gangs; seized more than $386 million worth of drugs; engaged in the disruption of 39 different criminal entities; and conducted 263 coercive examinations. The powers I have outlined are necessary if we are to be serious about fighting serious and organised crime in this country. You cannot expect our law enforcement agencies to simply wait for the commissioning of a crime, hoping to effect an arrest after the event. For every crime that is committed, there is already a victim of a crime. We expect our criminal intelligence agencies to work together to ensure that crime and criminal enterprise are disrupted. This bill seeks to give greater clarification of the intentions of this parliament in respect of the activities of the Australian Crime Commission and its powers with respect to coercive examinations to make it less likely that they will be struck down in future proceedings before the courts. I support the bill. I would also like to commend the efforts of all those brave men and women who serve this country in the range of law enforcement agencies. They do a job that, thankfully, makes a difference for our communities. They experience various activities. They see the best and the worst of our communities. If it were not for these people who are brave enough to put on a police uniform, we would be very much a society of the worst. 11:57 Mr IRONS HYM Swan I too rise to speak on the Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015. Before the member for Fowler leaves the chamber, I would like to acknowledge his contribution. I know about his long-term interest and commitment to law enforcement agencies in Australia and the work that he has done on committees within the parliament. I thank him for his commitment and his support for this bill as well. Crime in any form is not something that governments of any level or our law enforcement agencies or the community can afford to be complacent about. Our government and law enforcement agencies are responsible for working together and sharing intelligence information to combat crime, which, by extension, protects each and every one of us as individuals and the community as a whole. As members know, petty crimes take place each and every day—a stolen wallet, trespassing or shoplifting to name a few. But there are also organised crime syndicates which seek to destroy our way of life by encouraging violence, drug use, fraud and even more heinous crimes such as murder, sexual assault, child abuse and acts of terrorism. It is these types of crimes that the bill before the House aims to combat. This is a bill that every member in this place should commend for its active response to strengthen our agencies' investigative powers to ensure high-risk criminal targets are removed from our streets. As members would be aware, organised crime in Australia is estimated to cost our society $15 billion every year and was listed as one of the seven key national security risks by Australia's National Security Strategy. We cannot afford to brush this aside or ignore what it would mean to our society if we do not work now to target these serious criminals. The Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015 focuses specifically on the powers of Australian Crime Commission examiners to conduct examinations and the power of the Integrity Commissioner, who is supported by the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity, to conduct hearings. For members' reference, the ACC is Australia's national criminal intelligence agency responsible for investigating organised crime on a national level and further intelligence gathering to disrupt criminal activity. The Integrity Commissioner's role is similar in nature to that of ACC examiners, which is why the bill makes a number of changes to strengthen each of their powers in terms of intelligence gathering and investigation, while also strengthening relevant safeguards to ensure any person being examined retains their judicial and fundamental right to a fair trial. So, while the ACC examiners focus on investigating organised crime, the Integrity Commissioner is similarly responsible for preventing, detecting and investigating corruption within our Commonwealth law enforcement agencies. I am sure members on both sides of this House would agree that the idea of corruption within our law enforcement agencies is, to say the least, something that we all want to avoid. As dire as this is we also understand that, as legislators, we must recognise the old saying that 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely', and ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to investigate alleged instances. The aim of this bill is, therefore, not to boost ACC examiners' or the Integrity Commissioner's powers, but instead to bring their respective powers back into line with their original intent when the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002, the ACC Act, and the Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act 2006, the LEIC Act, were passed in this place. This is necessary because a number of recent court cases have impeded these powers and, as a result, have reduced ACC examiners' and the Integrity's Commissioner's ability to conduct examinations and hearings. This has had operational consequences for these agencies as it has restricted their ability to use information obtained during these hearings and examinations to follow up on alleged cases of organised crime and corruption. Cases that this bill responds to, for the House's reference, include: R v Seller and McCarthy; X7 v Australian Crime Commission; Lee v New South Wales Crime Commission; and Lee v R. The recent determination in case X7 has particularly caused great concern to our law enforcement agencies and to this government as the case found that the ACC Act did not specifically authorise the examination of a person who had been charged with an offence on the subject matter of the charge. I will highlight that, although this authorisation is not specifically stated in the respective acts, it was the intent of these acts that such questioning be permitted. As members know, as a result of this decision, both the ACC and the Integrity Commissioner have ceased conducting examinations of people after they have been charged with an offence, which has caused serious operational consequences in our law enforcement agencies overall ability to disrupt organised crime and investigate cases of corruption. This is because a person would now have to be called to a hearing or examination prior to being charged with an offence, which could potentially tip off other people involved in these criminal activities, while also providing this person with the opportunity to destroy potential evidence or hide proceeds of crime. Alternatively, the person would not be able to be questioned by the ACC or the Integrity Commissioner until charges against them had been finalised, which could potentially prevent information relating to organised crime, or even potential acts of terrorism, being thwarted by our law enforcement agencies. For those members who are not aware, the key reason examinations and hearings by the ACC and Integrity Commission are so vital to combatting these high level crimes is that, unlike normal questioning by police in an investigation, a person cannot refuse to answer a question in an examination or hearing on the basis that the answer would incriminate them. The bill before the House, therefore, seeks to address the operational consequences of the X7 decision by specifically allowing a number of provisions. The first of these is allowing the ACC and Integrity Commissioner to summon a person who has been charged with an offence to attend an examination or hearing and for that person to be questioned about the subject matter of that charge or charges. As the Minister for Justice outlined in his speech,—and I see that he is in the chamber and congratulate him on this bill—this important power has been used in the past to question people who have been arrested on such charges as paedophilia and child pornography to investigate the identities and locations of victims. Since the case of X7, this investigative power has, however, been frustrated as the ACC has no longer been able to examine the individual and obtain such information, which, as I stated earlier, the individual would have previously been compelled to provide. Similar frustrations have also been evident in the case of counterterrorism, which should be a concern to every member in this place and every individual outside it. Since X7, a person has been charged with criminal offences as part of an ongoing terrorism investigation but the ACC has been unable to use their examination powers to elicit further information about these activities which may have assisted in identifying terrorists and preventing an act of terrorism on our home soil or abroad. By strengthening the ACC and Integrity Commissioner's powers in this regard the government will ensure our national law enforcement agencies are able to protect our Australian communities to the best of their ability, and the investigations are able to progress rather than be stopped in their tracks once a person is charged as is currently the case. It is, however, important to highlight to the House that there are limits on the circumstances in which an ACC examiner or the Integrity Commissioner may use these post-charge powers. For example, they can only be used for the purposes of a special operation or special investigation for the ACC, or for the purposes of investigating a law enforcement corruption issue in the case of a hearing conducted by the Integrity Commissioner. To put this more simply, an investigation can only be deemed special in those cases where normal police-gathering methods have not been effective, and these powers cannot be exercised for the purposes of bolstering a prosecution against an examinee or witness. A second safeguard is that, before a person is summoned to attend an examination or hearing who has been charged with an offence, the examiner or Integrity Commissioner must be satisfied that issuing the summons is reasonably necessary for the purposes of that special investigation. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the provisions outlined in this bill will also require that examination and hearing material must not be disclosed in a way that would prejudice the examinee or witness's fair trial. This is a very important safeguard when discussing post-charge examinations or hearings as a fundamental principle of our judicial system is the right to a fair trial. To ensure this provision is appropriately understood and administered, two additional subsections will be added to the ACC Act and LEIC Act to, firstly, require an examiner to issue a direction preventing the disclosure of examination material if it would prejudice his or her fair trial, while the second provision will make it a criminal offence punishable by two years' imprisonment, a fine of 120 penalty units or both, to use or disclose examination material contrary to this direction. Following these new subsections, additional protections to limit the circumstances in which material can be provided to a prosecutor of the examinee or witness have also been included. Under this provision, examination or hearing material could only be provided with an order from the court hearing the charges, and this could only be disclosed if it would be in the interests of justice. Given that ACC examinations are used in investigative cases that deal with some of our most serious criminal activities such as child sex offences, cybercrime and superannuation fraud, while hearings by the Integrity Commissioner deal with corruption in law enforcement agencies, these examiners must have the necessary powers to disrupt and prevent these serious and organised criminal offences. Similar to allowing examinations and hearings to be conducted post-charge, the bill before the House will also allow examinations and hearings to be conducted in the context of ongoing confiscation proceedings. This will specifically authorise post-confiscation application examinations to allow ACC examiners and the Integrity Commissioner to ask questions about confiscation proceedings as recommended by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement's 2012 inquiry into unexplained wealth. For those members who are not aware, this government made an election commitment to implement the outstanding recommendations of the committee's report. The implementation of this provision will deliver on those recommendations. In the case of post-confiscation application examinations, the same safeguards as I previously discussed in relation to post-charge examinations or hearings will apply. This will ensure an examinee's or a witness's right to a fair trial is not jeopardised, while ensuring the ACC and Integrity Commissioner are not forced to question the person before confiscation proceedings commence or after they are completed. This is because, similar to the reasons mentioned earlier as to why post-charge examinations and hearings are necessary, premature indication of law enforcement interest in a person could give them time to frustrate operations or to hide criminal proceeds and unexplained wealth. New provisions in the bill before the House also outline those circumstances where hearing material can be used in criminal proceedings under the LEIC Act and when derivative material obtained in an examination or hearing can be used in criminal proceedings against the examinee or witness under both the ACC Act and the LEIC Act. In each case, immunity over answers given or documents or things produced in an examination or hearing post-charge or post-hearing will now be admissible on a limited basis. Such limited uses include documents pertaining to an examinee or witness obstructing or hindering the Integrity Commissioner in a hearing, disrupting a hearing or threatening a person at the hearing, as well as in contempt proceedings. In the case of derivative material, this will also now be able to be used in the prosecution of the examinee or witness on a limited basis. For members' reference, derivative material is 'any information, document or thing that is identified, understood or created because of, or based on, examination or hearing material'. To ensure the impact of the derivative material is minimised in terms of a person's ability to claim the privilege against self-incrimination, it is important to note that a number of safeguards have again been outlined in the bill before the House. This includes derivative material only being disclosed to a prosecutor of the examinee or witness with an order from the court hearing the charges and by specifically preserving a court's power to make any orders necessary to ensure that the person's right to a fair trial is not prejudiced. It is necessary for derivative material to be admissible in these limited circumstances to ensure this information or documentation can be used to find additional evidence against an examinee or witness for the purposes of prosecuting them and preventing further harm to the community from their criminal actions. In the bill before the House, new provisions relating to confiscation proceedings have also been outlined to further strengthen our national law enforcement agencies investigative powers. This will bring the use of self-incriminatory examination material obtained pre-confiscation application in line with that of the use of pre-charge or pre-hearing material. Under this provision, amendments will allow pre-confiscation application, self-incriminatory examination and hearing material to be used in evidence in confiscation proceedings. However, unlike the limited use of post-charge or post-hearing material I have outlined, material obtained post-confiscation application will not be admissible. Overall, each of the amendments I have outlined are vital to ensuring the operational powers of the ACC Act and the LEIC Act are restored to their original intent prior to the decision in X7 and other recent court cases. This is necessary because, as a result of these cases, both ACC examiners and the Integrity Commissioner are now being forced to try to combat organised crime and corruption with one hand tied behind their back, and, when it comes to our national security and the protection of our communities, we cannot as legislators, as representatives, and as members of the public allow this to continue. To do so would breach our oath of protection as members, and it would breach the oath that every member of our law enforcements agencies have taken. It would also frustrate the work that this government and our law enforcement agencies are doing to combat organised crime, including, to name a few: fast-tracking the $74 million National Anti-Gangs Squad; investing $88 million in the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service to boost its ability to screen mail, air and sea cargo; and establishing a national ice taskforce. With this in mind, I encourage all members in this place to support this bill. I thank the members for Dobell and Batman for also speaking in support of this bill. I commend the bill to the House. 12:13 Mr KEENAN E0J Stirling The Law Enforcement Legislation Amendment (Powers) Bill 2015 will ensure that the Australian Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner have the powers they need to combat serious and organised crime, foreign fighters and law enforcement corruption. The bill will place the existing powers and practices of the Australian Crime Commission and Integrity Commissioner on a stronger legislative footing. It will also clarify that the Australian Crime Commission Act allows the Crime Commission to examine people who have been charged with an offence. The bill will also improve the safeguards in the Australian Crime Commission Act and Law Enforcement Integrity Commissioner Act to protect the fair trial of any person questioned, making them clearer and stronger. The member for Batman and the member for Fowler provided a very useful summary of the bill and the issues it seeks to address. The measures in the bill are critical to support the efforts of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies to combat serious and organised crime, terrorism and corruption. I thank those members and the opposition for their support for this important piece of legislation. I would particularly like to thank the members for Dobell and Swan for their useful contribution and support of the bill. This bill confirms the powers of the Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner. It does not expand them. While these are significant powers, they are necessary to counter the growing threat of organised crime, terrorism and law enforcement corruption. The individuals and groups involved in these activities are increasingly sophisticated, they adapt very quickly and they are expanding their operations into new markets. Traditional policing methods are an important part of disrupting and dismantling organised crime syndicates. They are also important in catching the corrupt law enforcement officers that enable organised crime to gain a foothold. However, these methods are not enough on their own. To catch the cartel kingpins and to root out corruption, our police must be supported by information obtained from the questioning powers—the extraordinary powers—of the Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner. This bill will make those powers clearer. It will put the collaboration of the Crime Commission and the Integrity Commissioner with their partners on a stronger footing, and it does so in a way that strengthens the mechanisms that protect the fundamental principles of our criminal justice system about the right to a fair trial. The amendments made by this bill are important in ensuring that law enforcement agencies can obtain timely and relevant information and that they can act on it to protect the Australian community. With that, I thank the House for its support of this very important legislative measure and I commend the bill to the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 34 12:16 Mr KEENAN E0J Stirling by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Defence Legislation (Enhancement of Military Justice) Bill 2015 34

Defence Legislation (Enhancement of Military Justice) Bill 2015

Second Reading 34 12:17 Ms BRODTMANN 30540 Canberra It is a great honour to speak on the Defence Legislation (Enhancement of Military Justice) Bill 2015 this afternoon because it makes amendments to the Defence Act 1903, Defence Force Discipline Act 1982 and Schedule 3 of the Military Justice (Interim Measures) Act (No. 1) 2009. The bill contains a number of important military justice and military discipline related amendments to the Defence Force Discipline Act 1982 (DFDA) and the Defence Act 1903 that implement certain recommendations from Defence reviews and reports, reactivate outstanding legislative proposals and deal with other issues identified in the routine use of these acts. It will make military justice enhancements to the existing military discipline system and extend the appointments of the current CJA and full-time judge advocate, who contribute to the effective operation of the military justice system and the dispensation of military discipline. In summary, these measures will: clarify the character and status of service convictions for Commonwealth purposes; remove the provisions in respect of the trial of old system offences, or offences under the law prior to the Defence Force Discipline Act; create a service offence of 'assault occasioning actual bodily harm'; create a service offence of 'unauthorised use of a Commonwealth credit card'; clarify the elements of the service offence of 'commanding or ordering a service offence to be committed' under section 62 of the DFDA; enable the fixing of non-parole periods by service tribunals to overcome the problems associated with recognisance release orders; correct a technical error in the charge referral process; correct a technical error in the discipline officer scheme; replace dollar amounts as maximum fines in the DFDA with the more contemporary penalty units system; recognise the Director of Defence Counsel Services; and, finally, extend the period of appointment of the current CJA and full-time judge advocate. Essentially, this bill is part of a range of measures to improve the military justice system. Labor supports this bill. Labor supports any measure that will enhance the military justice system and ultimately improve the valued and unique culture within the ADF. I commend this bill to the House. Just before I conclude, I would like to use this opportunity to thank the former Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, for 36 years of exceptional service to Army and to our nation. In his farewell speech, David Morrison said: I am an Australian soldier—always. Duty first, good soldiering. Goodbye. I know that the focus in recent years has been on the former Chief of Army's extraordinary achievements and leadership on cultural change, particularly that famous YouTube video that went viral around the world where he called for those who cannot be part of an acceptable behaviour in Army to essentially get out. It was an incredibly powerful message. It was a strong message, a message that showed great courage and leadership, and we are all incredibly in awe of David Morrison for delivering that message at a really important time of cultural change in Army, and in the ADF more broadly. Many would have seen the interviews that David Morrison has done not only on the eve of his retirement but also since then saying that he was an Army man first and foremost. He was deeply committed to good soldiering, as he said in his farewell speech, and deeply committed to ensuring that an Army was prepared for the challenges of coming decades. He delivered on all that and more. Not only did he create a better Army, a better equipped Army, a better trained Army, an Army that experienced unprecedented levels of operations and deployments, he also created the right capability environment for Army to succeed in the future, the right training environment for Army to succeed in the future and, most importantly, the right cultural environment for Army to succeed in the future. Again, I just want to use this opportunity to thank David Morrison for his exceptional service over 36 years. As he said in one of the interviews: No one loves the Army more than me … We do believe this, particularly from his commitment to change, in so many different ways, and his ensuring that Army was secured for the future. In farewelling Lt Gen. David Morrison I would also like to wish all the best to the new Chief of Army, again an exceptional man with exceptional service to date and what promises to be an exceptionally bright future in advancing all the work that David Morrison has done over his nearly four decades of service to Army and to our nation. I look forward to working with the new Chief of Army to achieve those results. I again farewell very fondly former Chief of Army Lt Gen. David Morrison. The DEPUTY SPEAKER MT4 I thank the member for Canberra. I know the member for Gippsland would like to join with me, as member for McMillan, to identify with the words and expressions you have just spoken. 12:23 Mr NIKOLIC 137174 Bass I also associate myself with the remarks of the member for Canberra, not just in relation to the outstanding service by Lt Gen. David Morrison but, of course, the new Chief of Army, Lt Gen. Angus Campbell. It is good to put his name on the record. He is a product of the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, a member of our Special Forces, and a man who has not only served our country honourably in uniform but also within the interagency of the Australian bureaucracy. I am sure he will make a magnificent contribution as the incoming Chief of Army. I appreciate this opportunity to address the House on the matter of the Defence Legislation (Enhanced Military Justice) Bill 2015. This bill is important to both Defence and to the wider democracy it serves, in addressing a range of matters, particularly the crossover of the military and the law. As someone who spent over three decades as a member of the Australian Regular Army, it is an issue that is certainly close to my heart, and it is something I will continue to maintain an abiding interest in. However, before I focus on the specifics of the bill itself, I would like to make some general comments about the quintessential relationship between the dual professions of the military and the law. In many ways, Australia is a most fortunate country. Foremost amongst the reasons for this is the long-acknowledged and widely-accepted role of our modem military. In essence, unlike in some other nations, it sits ever ready, both vigilant and prepared, but always quietly in the background. In Marine Corps parlance it is semper fidelis, or 'always faithful'. Our Army's generals, and their service counterparts, are focused wholly on their military roles, not on supplanting civilian politicians or the bureaucracy that supports them. Around the globe, this acknowledged and 'set in stone' relationship between a civilian freely-elected government and a subordinate professional military is an increasing rarity. While Australians take defence and national security very seriously, including appropriately honouring our war dead and their sacrifice, we are in no way a military or even a militant nation. While the Australian Defence Force is relatively small in size, it is very professional and is committed to the nation it quietly and reliably serves. This bill affords me the chance to highlight important elements of our military, the evolving military legal system, and also to curtail some myths and/or misimpressions of it and about it. The first such myth is that the military and the law have not very much to do with one another, or, in the very least, are strange or mismatched bedfellows. This, of course, is a fallacy. A professional military, rightly governed and directed by its civil masters, is rigorously, even punctiliously, attentive to both the rule of law and to the rules of war. Longstanding and diverse concepts such as the law of armed conflict, courts martial and rules of engagement all attest to this close and overlapping relationship. Indeed, a professional military and the law are very much connected, both externally—that is, the way a defence force functions as part of society—and internally, in the way it operates legally unto itself. The law is therefore ever present and in lockstep with the military. The parliament, of course, wields the elements of our national power, which can be distilled to four things: the economic element of our national power—things like our fiscal, monetary and trade policies, security assistance, foreign aid, embargoes and so on; the diplomatic element of our power, resident most notably in the Department of Foreign Affairs and agencies like Defence; the informational element of our national power; and, in extremis, the military element of our national power. I speak of not just times of conflict, but also of its role to deter, compel, care for the homeland, or engage in peace support operations. When it comes to the military dimension of our national power, the law determines how force can and should be applied. At the other end of the spectrum, it is woven throughout all the rules and regulations that underpin and dictate the lives of our service personnel. This bill focuses on the latter of these two dimensions: reform and amendment to internal legal arrangements. However, just as important as what is contained in this bill is what its existence both connotes and demonstrates. This is the government's continuing commitment to the ADF and to the men and women who serve it, and, through it, all their fellow Australians. As the last decade has shown, the nation needs the Australian Defence Force today more than ever. And the tempo of their efforts is unlikely to abate in the near- to mid-term. The spectrum of tasks we expect our troops to undertake is broad and complex. For example, our troops help to build bilateral and multilateral relationships, through joint training and exchanges. They provide domestic support to the civil power following floods and bushfires. They are always called upon to be a first responder when there is a humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief contingency in our region, and there are many examples of that: Pakistan Assist; the Banda Aceh tsunami; the crisis at Fukushima; the flooding in Oro province; Tonga, and other regional areas. They have even been helping to stop Patagonian toothfish poachers and the exploitation of regional exclusive economic zones. In one of my last jobs before coming into the parliament, I was a first assistant secretary in the International Policy Division in Defence, where we looked after our Defence Cooperation Program encompassing the 23 Pacific patrol boats that we have given to regional countries to help ensure that they can effectively police their exclusive economic zones with those Pacific patrol boats. We have seen the Defence department support the government of Timor-Leste in their time of need, further the cause of good governance in Solomon Islands, help stop people smugglers in our near region and rescue thousands of people at risk of drowning, and work on UN and multinational force operations and counter-piracy—everything through to high-intensity combat operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. So the point of all this is: our expectation of our troops is great, which imposes an obligation on this parliament to continually support improvements to both the Australian Defence Force and our wider national security apparatus, whenever and wherever the circumstances warrant. So let me now highlight what is necessary and what lies at the heart of this bill, to explain how Defence might be improved by it and to touch briefly on the circumstances that lead to its consideration today. This bill amends legislation relating to the military justice and discipline system and the overarching military justice system. The bill contains a number of modest, but no less important, amendments and reforms to the Defence Act 1903, the Defence Force Discipline Act 1982, and the Military Justice (Interim Measures) Act (No. 1) 2009. As the previous speaker highlighted, there are 11 key amendments and reforms, which together improve the overall quality and functioning of the current defence justice system, and I will just touch on those briefly. The reforms clarify the legal character and status of service convictions by providing that a service offence is an offence against the law of the Commonwealth. The bill identifies the situations in which convictions for service offences may be disclosed under the Defence Force Discipline Act. It creates two new service offences from existing criminal offences, those being 'assault occasioning actual bodily harm' and 'unauthorised use of a Commonwealth credit card'. It clarifies the elements of the existing service offence of 'commanding or ordering a service offence to be committed'. It replaces the system of recognisance release orders with a system of fixing non-parole periods, which is relevant to the punishment regime. It replaces the system of fines for persons who are not a member of the Defence Force with a penalty units system in keeping with the criminal law system. It corrects several technical errors in expression that have impacted on discipline and which arose through previous amendments to the Defence Force Discipline Act. It removes from the DFDA obsolete provisions that refer to the discipline system operating prior to 1985. It provides for statutory recognition of the Director of Defence Counsel Services, their role and functions, and machinery provisions to support their administrative duties. It updates some terminology used in the Defence Act and applies the meaning of some words introduced in the act with their meaning in the Defence Force Discipline Act. It also extends the appointment of the current Chief Judge Advocate and full-time Judge Advocate for a further two years under the Military Justice (Interim Measures) Act (No. 1). Importantly, none of these measures are apt to prove controversial in nature, either in or outside the defence environment. Instead, they might reasonably be considered as important but minor adjustments which in unison will support the further modernising of a current longstanding and already functioning military justice system. This bill has reached its legislative destination after a long journey. The nature of this journey also reflects both careful consideration and wide consultation by not less than three governments, in one way or another, with the genesis of this activity taking place a decade ago. Indeed, a 2005 Senate report into the effectiveness of the military justice system recommended the creation of a military court under chapter III of the Constitution to deal with serious service offences in the Defence Force. In response to the report, the Howard government created a military court. For various reasons, a non-chapter-III court was created in 2007 and operated until 2009, when the High Court declared the court to be unconstitutional. In response to the High Court's decision, the Rudd government reintroduced the previous superior tribunal system by the Military Justice (Interim Measures) Act (No. 1) 2009 as an interim measure until a military court could be established. Military court bills were introduced into the parliament in 2010 and 2012, but the bills lapsed on each occasion when parliament was prorogued. The interim system has continued to operate since. It is working satisfactorily and the fundamental basis for its continued operation is sound. But, because the system has remained 'interim', the statutory appointments of the Chief Judge Advocate and the full-time Judge Advocate have remained ad hoc and it has been necessary to legislate every two years to extend them. These appointments are due to expire on 21 September 2015, which means that further legislation is now required to extend them to around 30 September 2017. The roles of the Chief Judge Advocate and the full-time Judge Advocate are essential for the day-to-day functioning of the superior tribunal system, which would be compromised by any lack of continuity. While the legislative journey to these reforms has been somewhat protracted, the important thing is that this bill is now in a position to make a raft of positive incremental improvements to the current defence justice system. The benefit of this bill is that it will act to make an existing defence justice system better still. No-one stands to lose by its passage and implementation. Rather, the reverse is true, with the direct and immediate beneficiaries being the members of the ADF themselves, through the enhanced clarity and certainty provided by this additional regulation and reform. In addition, I ask that the House note that passage of this bill will impose no financial burden on the Commonwealth. It therefore constitutes a much-sought-after rarity: benefit without cost or anticipated controversy, either now or in the future. I conclude by noting that the Army elements of the ADF are as old as Australian Federation itself, with both Navy and Air Force just a little older still. Over the course of a century and more, our Defence Force, in all its forms and incarnations, has been continually refined, adapted and improved and, partly as a consequence of this, has never once let our nation down. Today's legislation is therefore but the last in a long series of bills, each designed in its own way to improve the professional performance of Australia's military, and the lives of the men and women who serve it and, through it, us so very well. I have much pleasure in commending this bill to the House. 12:37 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton I rise to speak on the Defence Legislation (Enhancement of Military Justice) Bill 2015, and thank the member for Bass for his contribution. Without wanting to start a fight, I do note that there is a member of the Navy here. My understanding is that the Navy is the oldest service—but I will leave that for the Army and the Navy to sort out! All I can say is that, irrespective of age, the RAAF is the top-quality service of the three! But I do thank the member for Bass for his contribution and also the member for Canberra. I echo her kind words about Lieutenant General David Morrison, which I will come to in more detail later in my speech. When it comes to discipline in the military, obviously it is important to get the balance right. Discipline and the military must go hand in hand. Without a system to maintain and enforce service discipline, commanding officers would be in trouble. They would be unable to maintain command. That could be in flying low through the valleys of Afghanistan in a C-17; or out in the Southern Ocean in years to come—perhaps in one of our Air Warfare Destroyers; or as a member of a Combat Engineers Regiment involved in the reconstruction task force in Afghanistan outside Tarin Kot; or even, perhaps, fighting for a parking spot early in the morning over at Russell!. Wherever they may be it is important that a commanding officer can maintain command. The military justice system is, by necessity, quite separate and distinct from the ordinary justice system. It serves a very important role and is crucial to the ongoing strength of our valued Defence Force. If the military justice system fails the consequences can be quite catastrophic. It can result in a loss of morale and, critically, may eventually result in damage to operational effectiveness. This bill amends the Defence Force Discipline Act 1982—the DFDA—and the Defence Act 1903. The amendments implement measures recommended by the Defence Force reviews. As detailed by the previous speaker, these have been going on for over a decade. In fact there have been more than 17 reviews into aspects of the culture of the Australian Defence Force since 1994, and the justice system has been part of that. So this bill is a result of the recommendations from those reviews and is a small part of the slow and progressive changes being made to the ADF. That is why I wanted to return to the Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, who is retiring this month. He has been a big part of that changing culture, obviously progressed by Air Chief Marshall Mark Binskin, the current CDF, and also by David Hurley, Angus Houston, Peter Cosgrove and many before him. But, like the member for Canberra, I particularly want to mention that fantastic speech by Lieutenant General David Morrison. It was a speech that went around the world—a riveting speech. When I post this speech on my web page I will put a link to that speech, because it is such a compelling speech for all Australians. Obviously, it was directed at people under his command, but it speaks to all Australians. That line, 'the standard that you walk past is the standard you accept,' is a good guide for all Australians in what we accept, whether you are in the military or outside it. Although the military justice regime is quite separate from our system of civilian justice, Defence Force personnel are part of the wider community and it is important that the military justice system recognises where the systems overlap and that the fundamentals in terms of fairness, right to representation, natural justice and all those other values that we take for granted in Australia are maintained. This bill amends the Defence Force Discipline Act to characterise some service offences as offences against the laws of the Commonwealth. Where required under legislation to disclose convictions of Commonwealth offences, service personnel will now have to disclose convictions for service offences by a court martial or Defence Force magistrate. They will be required to disclose that the convictions are a service offence. Convictions of service offences by a summary authority will continue to be for service purposes only. Convictions by way of court martial or Defence Force magistrate will also be able to be disclosed by a service chief or authorised officer. The fact of the conviction and information surrounding the conviction will be able to be communicated to a Commonwealth, state or territory authority for the purposes of investigating, prosecuting or keeping of records in relation to Commonwealth, state or territory offences. The bill creates some new service offences. A new offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm will be created. Existing provisions of assault under the service offences do not contemplate assault in an aggravated form although, obviously, once people drive out of their base that would be the reality. A common practice had developed in situations where the assault was aggravated that required a complex use of both the DFDA and the Crimes Act 1900. Different criminal responsibility applied to the Commonwealth and territory offences, leading to confusion and complexity in the prosecution of the offence—good work for legal officers but not necessarily the best thing for the military. The additional provision of one offence under the DFDA will simplify this procedure. The offence of aggravated assault recognises the serious harm that has been visited upon somebody and, as such, will attach a maximum five-year prison term. The other new offence under the DFDA created by this bill is the offence of unauthorised use of a Commonwealth credit card. The offence was previously contained in the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997 and included Defence related credit cards. That act has been repealed. The new offence will replicate the old section 60 of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997, but with allowances for the military context and consistency with the DFDA. Consequential amendments will be made to continue the prescribed offence regime that enables a summary authority to try minor instances of the offence. I know many legal officers, especially from the Reserve, who have had to deal with these offences where the first thing young recruits, from the Army at Kapooka or the Navy at Cerberus or the Air Force at Wagga, are issued with is a credit card, which is a good tool if used correctly, but then they might get a little excited and end up misusing that credit card. Rather than have the full force of the nation down on the shoulders of a young 17- or 18-year-old person making a poor decision, we are able to deal with it in more of a management way rather than end their military life forever. The more serious charges will still be tried by way of court-martial or Defence Force magistrate, and this offence will also carry a maximum five-year term of imprisonment, but the bill recognises the silly mistakes that young people can sometimes make. The bill also amends other provisions to create more certainty, such as clarifying the fault elements of the offence of commanding or ordering a service offence to be committed. In that offence, a prosecution can be successful even if the ordered service offence was never committed. This amendment was based on the incitement offence under section 11.4 of the Criminal Code Act 1995. Another amendment, required due to the intersection of the military justice system and the criminal justice system, is to remove the power to issue recognisance release orders and instead make provision for a service tribunal to impose a non-parole period in respect of a term of imprisonment that is imposed. The difficulty with recognisance release orders arose because, once a Defence member is sentenced to imprisonment, they are automatically discharged from the Defence Force. Imposing a non-parole period at the time of sentencing will overcome this problem. A practical amendment will introduce to the DFDA the system of penalty units currently used in the criminal justice system. This will ensure that later amendments will not be required to accommodate changes to the consumer price index. The position of Director of Defence Counsel Services is not presently statutorily recognised. This bill will amend the Defence Act 1903 to provide for that statutory recognition. The functions and responsibilities of the office will be outlined in the provision, which will include the provision of legal representation and advice to persons charged with a service offence and the maintenance of a list of legal officers available to assist persons in custody for an alleged service offence. I know many of the people on the panel in South-East Queensland who provide those services. I commend them on their great service. This is a particularly important amendment as it will promote the fairness and impartiality of the Defence Force disciplinary system by enhancing the actual and perceived independence of the Director of Defence Counsel Services. So, rather than a commanding officer also being in command of the legal officer, reporting back and sometimes perhaps taking other things into consideration than the rights of the person they are defending, this parallel system will provide much more independence. A historically problematic issue in the military justice system was the establishment of the Australian Military Court. It was established by the Defence Legislation Amendment Act 2006. That amendment act passed through parliament after a lengthy inquiry by the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee into the effectiveness of the Australian military justice system. That Senate inquiry recommended a permanent military court be created in accordance with chapter III of the Constitution to ensure independence and impartiality. The government response at the time was to agree to a permanent military court, but it did not support the creation of such a court under chapter III. So the Howard government in 2006 introduced the amendment bill that gave effect to the government's response. There was subsequently a High Court challenge to the validity of the Australian Military Court and it was found to be unconstitutional—that is, a court not in accordance with chapter III of the Constitution. In a High Court case, as referred to by the Australian Institute of Administrative Law, a sailor, sadly, got into a bit of trouble out at Roma—so it is good to see that the Navy are present in the chamber as we bring this legislation through. Sailor Lane was charged with the offences of one count of an act of indecency without consent—this was certainly the first time I had ever heard of tea-bagging—which was contrary to section 61(3) of the DFDA as applying to section 62 of the Crimes Act 1900, and also one count of assaulting a superior officer contrary to section 25 of the DFDA. Assaulting a superior officer is the crucial thing here because, obviously, this is something that we do not have outside of military bases. It is military in nature, but it goes to the core aspect of command relationships, something touched on by the member for Bass in his speech. It is worth considering as we look back for the 100-year commemoration of World War I. I am always reminded of that scene from Gallipoli, which was based on the real events that happened 100 years ago—in August, I think—at The Nek at Gallipoli, where the Light Horse were sent over in four waves of 150 Victorians and Western Australians. They were all but wiped out. I think the 8th Light Horse had 234 of 300 killed in a matter of minutes. That is an extreme example and the modern military would obviously never contemplate such behaviour again, but it goes to the core of how important command relationships are. I mention the example of Gallipoli because all of those people who went over the top into the Turkish guns, with virtually no ground captured and no enemy killed, were volunteers. None were conscripted at all; all were volunteers. With the modern military, 100 years on, we still have that—they are all volunteers—but it is still important to have that strong command relationship. Ms MacTiernan L6P And intelligent command, I would say. Mr PERRETT HVP Intelligent command is definitely the modern Australian ADF way—very, very focused on looking after their troops in every way possible. That command relationship is fundamentally based on respect, but obviously you do need the military process as well. The High Court said in that case of Lane and Morrison: … what the AMC is to do is to exercise the judicial power of the Commonwealth otherwise than in accordance with Ch III. The AMC cannot validly exercise the judicial power of the Commonwealth. Consequent to the High Court decision, an interim superior tribunal was reintroduced in 2009. The Chief Judge Advocate and the full-time judge advocate appointments have been further extended in 2011 and 2013. It is necessary to again extend those appointments, and this bill extends them for a further two-year period. In order to continue the effective operation of the superior tribunal system, the appointment arrangements need to be preserved. The amendments contained in this bill are necessary to ensure the continued effective operation of the military justice system, a system which is vital to the maintaining of an effective Defence Force. As the world recognises, our Defence Force is easily one of the most respected defence forces around the planet. Australia is proud of its Defence Force, both Defence Force personnel who are currently serving and those whom we are commemorating in the Anzac Day events, but I particularly note those who have previously served and taken off the uniform more recently. It is important that we ensure that the systems we have in place to protect and support our Defence Force service personnel are adequately empowered. I commend this bill to the House. 12:53 Mr CHESTER ( IPZ Gippsland — ) ( ): I do not wish to delay the House greatly, but in summing up can I commend the member for Moreton for his contribution and also the members for Canberra and Bass for their thoughtful contributions to the Defence Legislation (Enhancement of Military Justice) Bill 2015, which will amend the legislation relating to the military justice system. The bill contains a number of modest but important amendments and reforms to several Defence acts. This bill clarifies the legal character and status of service convictions while providing that a service offence is an offence against the law of the Commonwealth. It also makes other minor amendments to modernise the military justice system. Importantly the bill provides for the extension for another two years of the appointment of the current Chief Judge Advocate and the full-time Judge Advocate. Judge advocates are essential to the proper operation of the superior tribunals. The extension of these appointments will allow the superior tribunals to continue operating while consideration is given to further reforms to the military discipline system. The amendments and reforms contained in this bill demonstrate once again this government's commitment to the security and the defence of Australia and its interests. Moreover, these amendments signal this government's commitment to modernising the military discipline system. I commend the bill to the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Third Reading 40 12:54 Mr CHESTER IPZ Gippsland by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. MOTIONS 40 MOTIONS Centenary of Anzac 40 12:55 Mr LAURIE FERGUSON 8T4 Werriwa At the outset of my contribution with regard to the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli I would like to touch on a few local facets. I have heard many speakers previously talk about the large crowds that gathered this year as compared to previous years. I would be dishonest if I said that was the case in my electorate. Ingleburn always attracts thousands of people, that is a reality of having a significant number of army bases in the electorate, or close to it, and the related settlement of people after they left the services. But again this year there were thousands and I want to put on the record my appreciation of the efforts of Ray James, Patrick O'Grady, John Bow, secretary John Lees and John Beer. In a few weeks they will celebrate the move of their club 40 years ago to Chester Road. I thought the one good aspect this year compared to previous years was the way in which they involved young people from local schools in the actual major speech on the day and in other important aspects. Speaking of the locals, we each had a committee in our electorate to distribute funds and I want to commend David Beddie from the Historical Society, Learna Caypa, Ken Foster, who looks after Vietnam veterans, local councillor and veteran Wal Glynn, Ray James, Vicki Meadows, from my office, and George Sachse for their work. The funded projects connected with the Ingleburn RSL are the wall of remembrance, an ode on the black granite, and a gala day. Casula High School's memorial garden was also funded. We also gave some money to the overall Kangaroo March, which will go through many electorates, and, finally, to the Liverpool City Council for what turned out to be a very valuable effort at the Casula Powerhouse, the Home Front Exhibition. As I indicated there have been bases in the electorate for quite some time. I guess the most infamous event connected with Werriwa in the First World War was the Liverpool Riot, where a large number of soldiers drank Liverpool dry, seized a train in metropolitan Sydney and went to the city, where one of them was killed by police. The state government held a cabinet meeting that night to change the liquor laws of New South Wales. That is an infamous aspect of First World War activity in Werriwa. However, it is typical of the area that, from Queen Street in Campbelltown alone, 15 men volunteered to join the fight in Europe in 1914. Overall, Campbelltown, then a country town—and one of the oldest towns in New South Wales—was still very much a rural area, yet 40 diggers joined up in 1914 at the outbreak. I have heard many people talk about the involvement of their families in World War One. I will not dwell on mine. My Scottish grandfather, John Ferguson, served with Britain in the First World War and Australia in the Second World War. On my mother's side Donald Betts, a wheat and sheep farmer from Junee Reefs who had migrated to this country at 14 years of age, enlisted in the 1st Light Horse and was involved in the Middle East. I guess it was symptomatic of how much that meant to him that he called his farm Romani. My mother did not know why the farm was called that, and nor did I until the time about 10 years ago that I walked through the National War Memorial. He had chosen to name his farm after a battle in Palestine in the First World War. I do not want to dwell on them, but I do want dwell on my wife's grandfather, Denis Walsh, who was of Indigenous extraction. In 1917, a shortage of manpower and the reality of a volunteer force meant that for the first time Indigenous people could join the armed forces. Up until that time they had to pretend they were, in many cases, Italian, and, what is remarkable, Maoris. I do not know why Maoris were accepted in the Australian armed forces, as opposed to Indigenous Australians, but that was the case. I think it is worth putting on the record that he enlisted before 1917, so he obviously did pretend he was something else. He died in 1923 from the effects of a gassing. A number of aspects of this are very interesting as they concern our history and where we have come from. The local paper commented of this Indigenous serviceman: 'He had no property or money, was uninsured, belonged to no benefit society and had no sort of pension.' The paper went on to say, '… it is extraordinary that the man's request for a pension should have been rejected. He leaves a widow and a family of young children, utterly without support, and the case is one which might very well engage the attention of the Military Department.' He clearly died from war related injuries as a result of gassing. That was the determination of the local doctor. That was the negative aspect. I guess the positive aspect was that the town of Singleton in Northern New South Wales then launched a major appeal to support the family, started by the Singleton RS&SIL, which is the predecessor of the RSL. They kicked it off with 15 pounds. There were many contributions to that appeal. My understanding of the family history is that, while Legacy did not exist at that time, the children were eventually adopted by Anglican ministers and other people in Sydney, and that is how they were looked after. It is worth putting on record the reality that Indigenous servicemen were not recognised and were discriminated against. There are various estimates, because it is such a difficult thing to calculate, but it is estimated that between 400 and 1,000 Indigenous Australians fought for the country in the First World War. I now want to turn to some very timely comments by Bernard Porter in an article in this week's edition of the London Review of Books. A review of four books on Gallipoli gives an appraisal of some of the realities. The article states: The conditions that both armies were faced with at Gallipoli were among the worst on any front in the Great War. Nearly all the men had diarrhoea or dysentery most of the time … 'Sanitary arrangements were non-existent,' … damnable Suvla Bay flies, and the lice with which every officer and man swarmed' … searing heat in summer, followed by winter temperatures that froze some men to death … the awful food … the utter exhaustion of men who often had to go several days without sleep, stomachs churning and skins crawling with insects, without any proper rest or leave. The article contains quotes from both side of this conflict which really drive home the intense suffering and loss of life: A British petty officer 'watched in wordless horror' as a boat floated by his ship containing 'a mass of corpses huddled together … everywhere crimson mingling with the brown, and here and there a waxen-white face with draggled hair staring up into the smiling heavens … Such was our introduction to the glories of war.' … ' The carnage it caused is awful,' a Turkish lieutenant wrote after one engagement. 'Dismembered parts of bodies are intermingled. Blood has drained out of bodies, and chests and arms look like wax. Shins and legs, seared by the explosion, are purple. Some bones have been stripped of flesh.' We know that the proportion of Australians killed in the First World War was significant, particularly Western Australians, whose death and maim rate was extreme. Those quotes from both the Turkish and the allied sides give some indication of the losses and the suffering of people. In the few moments remaining to me I would like to talk about the Granville Historical Society, which is in my former electorate. It is one of the most efficient and recognised historical groups in Sydney. Once again with the First World War they have put out a major work covering the 157 people—quite a significant number—from the suburb of Granville who died. They speak of the early gaiety of people going to war. A wristwatch was given to each of the volunteers. The municipal brass band went up the main street of the town, sending people off. Amongst the stories they cover is that of the mayor's brother, Sergeant Henry Charlton, who was at Gallipoli. Walter Armitage never recovered, due to exposure to Turkish gunfire. He was a migrant and, believe it or not, a member of the Granville Yorkshire Association. Lance Corporal David Shiels was an apprentice at the Everleigh workshop and a graduate of Granville TAFE. Bombardier Stanley Chippendale was the son of the local postman. Trooper George Nobbs trained to do country teaching at Hereford House in Glebe, which apparently trained all country teachers at that stage. Alfred Osborne was a child who was adopted two days after his mother died. This major work by the Granville Historical Society is a good effort. I think the society has produced about 10 full-scale books of local history over the years. It has certainly been involved again this year. At the end of these recognition activities, I can say that Ingleburn RSL and the community in the Werriwa electorate played a major role. There was remembrance of the families affected and keen interest in the broader contribution made by people to the war. 13:05 Mr CHESTER IPZ Gippsland It gives me great pleasure to speak on behalf of Gippslanders on the Prime Minister's motion on the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli. One month ago I was in Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East in my role as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Defence, participating in the Australian Defence Force Parliamentary Program. There are walls at the Australian headquarters in Kabul and also at other bases in the Middle East which carry the photographs of the 43 Australians who have died on deployment to the region over the past decade. They join the 102,000 other Australian service men and women who have paid the ultimate sacrifice throughout our nation's history. Even today, as the parliament commemorates the Centenary of Anzac, Australian and New Zealand forces are standing side by side in Baghdad, in Kabul and in the skies above the Middle East working together again, this time to train and support local forces in the fight against Daesh and the Taliban. As we pause to remember the original Anzacs on this occasion, I urge everyone listening today throughout Australia to also remember our modern-day warriors and peacekeepers—the young men and women who have been drawn together from all corners of Australia and New Zealand once again to serve our nations. As we tuck ourselves into bed at night, safe in the knowledge that no harm will come to our families, spare a thought and a prayer, if you are so inclined, for the almost 2,000 Australians currently serving on deployments throughout the world in places like Kabul, Kandahar and Baghdad. In places where the summer temperature is about to scorch past 45 degrees and winter temperatures will plummet below freezing, some will be sleeping in tents and others in prefabricated huts or dormitories with bunks and precious little privacy. Regardless of where they sleep, they will be away from their families and their loved ones. So pray for their safety, pray for the people they are trying to protect and pray that their missions are completed successfully and that they return as soon as possible to the arms of those they love. When I was in Kabul, I thanked the troops on behalf the government and on behalf the people of Gippsland and told them that we were proud of them, that we supported them and that we wished them well in their mission.   I recall the comments from the former member for Bradfield and former leader of the Liberal Party in this place, who is now the chairman of the Australian War Memorial, Brendan Nelson. He said in this place several years ago that there was no greater service that anyone could give to Australia than to put on the uniform of the nation they love and then place themselves in harm's way to help those who cannot help themselves. That was true in 1915 and it is true in 2015. We do not seek to glorify war as we commemorate the sacrifice and extraordinary service of so many young Australian men and women, along with our New Zealand allies. I wrote this speech on board an Australian C-130, high above the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan where many of those 43 young Australian men lost their lives. I used a fair bit of its content in my Anzac Day address at the Sale Memorial Hall on Anzac Day this year. There was a huge crowd, as others have reflected. There was a huge crowd to commemorate Anzac Day this year at events right throughout Australia. In my electorate in Traralgon, the dawn service had several thousand people attending. In Sale itself, there was a couple of thousand people. In Tyers, a small community, more than 500 people attended. When I was flying above Afghanistan, I looked around at the young faces on that plane and I could not help but think about those other young faces on the walls in their headquarters in Kabul. They were all someone's son, someone's father, someone's brother, someone's husband or someone's boyfriend. We can ever bring them back, but I believe that we can honour them and make sure that they are never forgotten. I told the gathering in my electorate on that day that we cannot fulfil the promise of their young lives cut short, the we can honour them in the way we choose to live our lives. I think we need to regularly think about that: what others have given us and have allowed us to do in enjoying the freedoms and safety we enjoy today. I think our tribute to the fallen, to the original Anzacs and to the 102,000 people killed in countless conflicts, is the manner in which we live today. Our world is being challenged by people who would seek to do us harm. There are enduring values that the Anzacs demonstrated and fought to protect are as important today as they ever before. It is our commitment to peace, freedom and fairness; our determination to protect the innocent; the courage and the adventurous spirit to travel to far-off lands and help others; the bonds of mateship and comradery and to stand together in hard times; and perhaps most importantly the resilience, perseverance and dedication to duty. These are all eternal values and personal attributes that our nation need from us today. That is what Anzac Day means to me. I take it as a personal challenge to ask myself, 'Am I worthy of that sacrifice that others have made? Am honouring the people who have given so much and still serve our nation's defence force today?' I think they have shown us the way. It is up to us. We must commit ourselves to respecting their enduring legacy. I also want to take this opportunity to reflect for a moment on the manner in which the Turkish people and their government honour and respect the Australian soldiers killed and injured in the Gallipoli campaign. Recently, I had the great pleasure and privilege to visit Turkey to represent the Minister for Defence at a defence industry fair in Istanbul. At the conclusion of the official duties, we travelled with the defence attache for Turkey, Colonel Jim Burns, to Gallipoli—or Canakkale, as it is known in Turkey. As Australians, we understand that Gallipoli remains at the heart of our own national story; but we perhaps often do not reflect on how this pivotal event is critical to Turkey's struggles, particularly in the early part of the 20th century. At Gallipoli, the immortal words of Mustafa Ataturk are recorded. He said in 1934: You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well. That is a remarkable statement from the leader of the Turkish government at the time: 'They have become our sons as well.' Is an extraordinary statement. It is respectful, it is insightful, it is empathetic and it is dignified. I think it is a sign of great leadership. It helps to explain the relationship we enjoy today with our friends in Turkey. We do have an active friendship and engagement which culminates for most Australians each year, and perhaps most visibly, with the Anzac Day service at Anzac Cove. But the generosity of spirit and the respect shown by Turkey to allow such commemorative events on their homeland and to support such activities speaks volumes about the relationship today but also throughout history. I could not help but wonder, as I walked the battlefield, whether we would be equally as generous ourselves if we had been on the other side of the invasion. I just simply thank and congratulate the Turkish people for the honour they bestow upon us each year. I thank the Turkish people for extending such remarkable courtesies to Australians, New Zealanders and people of other countries who visit what is sacred site for Australian people, given particularly the enormous losses suffered by the Turks in that conflict. On our visit to Anzac Cove, like many before and many more to come, I was struck by the beauty of the peninsular, the magnitude of the battles which occurred, the severity of the losses on both sides and the hopeless futility of it all. Under Colonel Burns' expert guidance, we paid our respects at places I had only ever read about, like a North Beach; Ari Burnu; Anzac Cove; Hell Spit; Shrapnel Gully; Brighton Beach, so named because it looks just like the Mornington Peninsula; Artillery Road; Johnston's Jolly; Quinn's Post; Walker's Ridge; Lone Pine and the Nek. We were walking the ground were so many lives were lost. It is such a sombre and sobering moment for any visitor. I extend my appreciation and thanks to Colonel Burns, our guide, for the education and lessons he provided as he took us amongst the trenches and explained to us just the extent of tunnelling that occurred. That is something that I had not really understood, as to how much tunnelling activity occurred during this conflict. He gave us some insights into what it must been like 100 years ago. The Commonwealth war graves that are maintained on the peninsula are in quite beautiful locations in many respects. We were very fortunate. We were there on a quiet day. It was well after the centenary events had occurred. At most the grave sites we attended, we were the only people there. You could hear the birds. On some of the waterfront gravesites, you could hear the gentle lapping of waves. It was a peaceful resting place. I can report to the House that the Australians who lost their lives lie on hallowed ground and are respected by the Turks, just as we respect our foes. As we gather here to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli, we must be forever thankful for their service and remember all of those who were killed or injured in this conflict. We should also remember all of those who have been killed in battles since that day. Most of all, I plead with the Australian people and members of this place to remember those who continue to serve today. They have all earned the respect and the enduring gratitude of this island nation. Lest we forget. 13:14 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler The Centenary of the Anzac landing at Gallipolli on 25 April provided an opportunity for our nation to reflect upon war, patriotism and the nature of sacrifice. From older Australians whose fathers or grandfathers were veterans of Gallipolli or other conflicts in World War I, to younger Australians who enjoy the freedoms that have been preserved by their sacrifice, our nation stopped to remember. The crowds were huge, not just at the dawn service on the beaches of Gallipolli, and not just at the huge Canberra service, but in cities and towns right across the nation, including in my electorate of Grayndler. They were recognising not just the diggers themselves but the women who served in support roles like nursing, as well as those who toiled on the home front, and the thousands of widows and orphans left after the conflict. On 25 April, Australians reflected on the terrible toll of war. The statistics tell us just how terrible it was. At Gallipoli there were 26,111 Australian casualties, including 8,141 deaths. Across World War I, out of a population of less than five million, 61,522 Australians lost their lives. The historical facts surrounding the Gallipoli landings are well-known. Australians landed Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915 and established a foothold on the steep slopes above the beach. Concerted but unsuccessful allied attempts to break through in August included the Australian attacks at Lone Pine and the Nek. All attempts ended in failure for both sides, and there was a stalemate for the remainder of 1915. The most successful operation of the campaign was the evacuation of the troops on 19 and 20 December under cover of a comprehensive deception operation. It is often said that the Gallipoli campaign established Australia's sense of identity. It certainly is the case that the diggers showed extraordinary mateship and loyalty towards each other. Through their egalitarianism, the diggers exemplified the values of equality and the fair go that underpin contemporary Australian values. One thing about getting older is that it gives you the opportunity to observe changes in social patterns and values over time. When I was young, the annual Anzac Day marches were always led by Gallipoli and First World War veterans. First they were marching; later they were in jeeps because they were too frail to march. But, as I grew older, there were fewer diggers each year. I often wondered during that period what would happen when all the World War I diggers were gone. I wondered how future generations would view these veterans when they were no longer alive to lead the parade. Decades later, the level to which successive generations have embraced the Anzac legend is extraordinary. Indeed, Anzac Day continues to thrive. Parents pass the legend down through the generations. Schools give our youngsters the facts of about what happened a century ago. People engage with the Australian War Memorial to learn more about relatives who served. People do not forget. They will not forget. It was a terrible war, but there is something very positive about the way in which our nation continues to remember the sacrifice of earlier generations. These commemorations are not about flag-waving or jingoism. They are about people honouring sacrifice of others and thinking hard about the necessity to promote peace. Gallipoli and World War I had an impact on every community in his nation—from the biggest cities to the smallest country towns. In my own community, the roll of honour at Marrickville includes the names of 26 people who died at Gallipoli. About 6,500 people from the Marrickville area alone served in the war. I am pleased that this year saw the re-establishment of the Winged Victory statue, a 31-foot tall statue of Nike, the Greek goddess of victory. The original statue was unveiled in 1919 in front of 15,000 people, to commemorate the sacrifice of 450 Marrickville residents who died in World War I. It was designed by sculptor Gilbert Doble. But the statue was taken down in 2008 due to concerns about its condition and threats to public safety. A new version, by artists Peter Corlett and Darien Pullen, was unveiled on Sunday, 19 April, 2015, outside Marrickville Town Hall. In the original statue, the goddess's sword was raised, though her eyes were cast downward in a pose that spoke of a mix of sorrow and pride in victory. In the new version, Nike's sword is at rest, while the original statue is proudly on display at the Australian War Memorial here in Canberra. Across my electorate of Grayndler, large crowds turned out for the Marrickville Remembers march, which included 25 schools, seven bands and no less than seven military and emergency services groups. Local councils and, of course, the Marrickville, Canterbury-Hurlstone Park, Petersham and Campsie RSL clubs also observed the centenary. As part of the Centenary of Anzac year, the Commonwealth offered grants to organisations to preserve the Anzac heritage under the Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program. Recipients in Grayndler included: Kegworth Public School, which received a grant to create a memorial garden there in Leichardt, and Dulwich High School of Visual Arts and Design, which received a grant for production of artworks commemorating Anzac. The Marrickville Council received a grant to help meet the cost of the plinth for the new Winged Victory statue. The Ashfield Council received a grant to restore an honour board at Haberfield. The Leichhardt council received a grant to restore a memorial board at Leichhardt. The Polish Club at Ashfield also received a small grant to fund a World War I exhibition. Finally, the Addison Road Community Centre received a grant of $30,000 to commemorate the role of war horses that served in World War I with the light horse. I was very proud to attend that event paying tribute to the Walers, as the horses were known, who also of course served their nation; unfortunately, they did not get to return back home The centre at Addison Road is located in former Army barracks where, during World War I, many diggers and their horses spent their time as they prepared for departure to the Middle East. Australians did themselves proud in the way they recognised the Centenary of Anzac. At the end of last year I attended an extraordinary function at Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL along with Brendan Nelson, the former minister now in charge of the War Memorial. He gave an extraordinary speech that evening. We did our nation proud in the way we celebrated the Anzacs and also remembered and paid tribute to those whose efforts and sacrifice means that we can enjoy the lifestyle we have in Australia today. I congratulate all those involved around the nation in planning these commemorations. I congratulate the current government and the former government for the way in which they organised the logistics, which must have been extraordinarily difficult—particularly for the widows and veterans travelling to European and Middle Eastern theatres of war. It was an extraordinary effort. I congratulate the government on that. In particular, I congratulate the Department of Veterans' Affairs for the way in which they handled the event. I am confident that, when the 200th anniversary of Gallipoli comes around, Australians will live up to the sentiments of the famous ode: 'We will remember them. Lest we forget.' 13:24 Mrs WICKS 241590 Robertson What an incredible honour we have had to be part of the Centenary of Anzac commemorations this year. We have commemorated the Centenary of Anzac in so many ways and in so many different places this year. The legend of Anzac is much more than an event etched in our nation's history. We have marked the centenary in various ways and in various events right around Australia this year, including in my community of the Central Coast. Anzac Day is more than the symbol of the sacrifice made by too many young Australians whose lives were cut tragically short or irrevocably changed forever by the blood and guts of war. While Anzac Day commemorates a moment in time 100 years ago this year, it is nonetheless a very significant moment in time that helped shape our nation's identity—a moment that captured, albeit brutally, the values of ordinary Austrians, who, for the sake of the freedoms we enjoy today, did such extraordinary things. They carried out extraordinary feats, in the worst of times, that brought out the best in them: extraordinary courage, perseverance against all odds, and selflessness in doing their duty. We lost some 750 Australians on that fateful day of 25 April 1915 and over 61,000 young lives during the Great War itself. I was pleased to hear the member for Grayndler refer to World War I veterans and, in particular, the Light Horsemen who served in Egypt. When I was a girl aged around 13 going to school in Point Clare, I studied the Great War in year 8 history. We were asked to go and interview somebody who had experience in war. I had the incredible privilege, an incredible honour that I remember to this day, of speaking with Sidney James Fox, whose name I have always remembered. He was at the Orana nursing home at the time I spoke to him. He was nearly 90 years old. He gave me three hours of his time—three hours I have never forgotten. His service number was 2469. He left Sydney on 26 April 1915. He was 19 years of age. He served in the Light Horse Regiment in Egypt. I remember being enthralled at hearing his story of how he served. But the memory that will last with me for a lifetime is of him crying when he talked about how they had to shoot the horses before they returned home. I have told that story many times at many Anzac Day services and memorials—because it mattered to him and, therefore, it mattered to me. His memory forms part of our story as a nation and also our story as a community on the Central Coast. I raise this story because it was something that came so vividly to life when I attended the official opening of the Central Coast Interactive War Exhibit in Gosford in January this year. I want to commend Andrew Church, who has put his private collection on display. He is a man with a passion for telling the story of wars that we have fought—telling their story and telling our story. On display there, amidst all the memorabilia of so many wars, was one of the Light Horse saddles from World War I. If anybody has an opportunity to visit that Interactive War Exhibit, I would certainly encourage you to do so. Sid's story, and that light horse saddle, were also brought back to memory during the Troubadour Central Coast concert that I attended in the 10 days leading up to Anzac Day this year. That was an incredible, amazing tribute with music and stories of World War I. They told the stories of the shearers, many of whom went to war in World War I, through the songs that were sung. And then they told the story of World War I not only through the music of World War I but by interspersing the stories and letters of diggers who were actually writing to their loved ones. That music, that poetry and those letters stayed with me the following day when the Gosford RSL, a week before Anzac Day, held an incredible service at Gosford just near the Brisbane Water. They had dozens and dozens of schools and community organisations there. They had the RSL clubs from right around the Central Coast participating in an extraordinary service and it continued with a beautiful and moving memorial service at the Mangrove Mountain RSL on the Sunday before Anzac Day. Anzac Day was significant for the Central Coast because in the week leading up to Anzac Day we encountered the storms that many people saw as the worst in a decade. Despite the ravaging that we saw right around the Central Coast—with trees down, homes destroyed, roads unusable for many days and power out to tens of thousands of homes and businesses—the Poppy Park stayed intact. A moving tribute with 40,000 poppies planted at the Poppy Park in Gosford was sponsored by Gosford City Council. It was the incredible vision of Merril Jackson, who did an extraordinary job. Despite the weather, those 40,000 poppies that were planted remained. It was a beautiful tribute. I was very pleased to attend so many services on Anzac Day itself. The Terrigal Wamberal dawn service, where not only did thousands and thousands of people gather on Terrigal Beach— The DEPUTY SPEAKER YT4 Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate will be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue her remarks. STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 46 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Budget 46 13:30 Dr CHALMERS 37998 Rankin When people in my community ask me to describe the Abbott government's second budget I say it is a lot like the first budget but with a dodgy coat of paint. Nowhere is that more evident than when you look at the substantial cuts to family payments that are at the core of this second budget. The families of my community and right throughout middle Australia saw the government's real intentions in its first budget, and the unfortunate fact is that those intentions have not changed. My own community, Logan City and some of the surrounding Brisbane suburbs, are among the hardest hit by these changes to Family Tax Benefit Part B—15,745 families in my electorate alone will be adversely affected by the government's cuts to family payments and next door, in the electorate of Forde, represented by a Liberal member, 12,867 families will be affected by the cuts to Family Tax Benefit Part B. I make this commitment to the people of Logan City: I will work with the newly preselected Labor candidate for Forde, Des Hardman, a local radiographer who works at Logan hospital. We will stand up together for the almost 30,000 Logan families who are being attacked by an unfair and divisive budget from an unfair and divisive government. Wright Electorate: Emmaus College 46 13:31 Mr BUCHHOLZ 230531 Wright Over the weekend Emmaus College, located in Jimboomba in my electorate, hosted their bi-annual school carnival, complete with camel races. The camel races display quite an entrepreneurial flair, and they have become a huge drawcard for the event. They draw a crowd of around 5,000 people from throughout the electorate who travel to be there. The concept of the camel races is that businessmen buy or sponsor a camel and either ride it themselves or put a jockey on it. I bought a camel, and one of the privileges of buying a camel is that you get to name it. My staff called my camel 'Buchholz's Beast', and it was proudly jockeyed by one of my staffers, Kylie Hart, who came second in her heat. One of the local councillors, Trevina Schwarz, named her camel 'The Schwarzenator'. There were over 50 stalls and the community did a great job putting together the event. All the money raised—it is one of the school's largest fundraisers—goes to purchasing infrastructure for the school as well as new equipment such as laptops and iPads that the kids can use. As I said, it was attended by no less than 5,000 people. I take the opportunity to congratulate P&F president Raelene Lawler, carnival manager Sarah Hirschy and camel race coordinator Selma Schuller, known as the Camel Queen. I also acknowledge the principal, Kevin Schwede, and his deputy principals Steven Adair and Lisa McCormick. Budget 47 13:33 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor I rise on behalf of the 18,000 families in Lalor—the highest number in the country—who will have their incomes reduced if this government's budget goes through. That is 18,000 hardworking, modest income families—not leaners. When I looked at the data today I saw that neighbouring electorate Gorton had nearly 16,000, Gellibrand nearly 9,000 and Corio nearly 10,000 families in the same boat as those families in Lalor. I look across the chamber and I see the member for Corangamite, and I wonder about the 8,000 families in Corangamite who will also suffer because of this cruel budget. Some of these people are in small business. In Lalor, up to $70 million could be taken out of our local economy. What impact will that have on small business, Prime Minister? This budget good for families, Prime Minister? I do not think so. Good for small business? Not so much. Employment 47 13:34 Dr GILLESPIE 72184 Lyne I recently visited the Hope Shop in Port Macquarie with Luke Hartsuyker, the Assistant Minister for Employment, on Friday to announce the work for the dole coordinators for our region. Work for the dole is a very important component of the coalition government's Job Active Employment Service. The work for the dole activities carried out by job seekers are for the benefit of the local community, and they keep people who are receiving benefits on Newstart engaged with the workforce and provide them with new skills. The local firm Tursa Employment & Training has been appointed as the local work for the dole coordinator, and we attended a work for the dole expo a week later at Port Macquarie racecourse. Many community organisations turned up. Another nine community organisations have put forward projects, and we are aiming to get 842 activity placements, of which 258 had been filled before the expo even started. I congratulate Tursa and I also congratulate Paul Skilleter, the welfare officer; John Parer, the manager at Hope Shop; and also the new manager, Roger Munro. They have been doing a great job. They have had 63 work for the dole placements already, over many years, and this rejuvenated work for the dole should see many, many more. It is a great innovation. Dental Care 47 13:36 Ms BRODTMANN 30540 Canberra When she was 14, my mother spent the first six months of her working life paying for her rotten teeth to be pulled out. She was the daughter of a single mother who worked three jobs to keep food on the table, and dental care in such difficult circumstances was a luxury—an option that could not be afforded. That is why I rise today to express my anger at the Abbott government's cruel cuts to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. Nearly half of all Australian children aged between five and six have a history of dental decay. That figure rises to 70 per cent for children from the lower socioeconomic areas. Having good teeth, having a nice smile, is about more than just self-esteem—dental health is critical to our overall physical and mental wellbeing, particularly in our youth. Dental health is a clear indicator of poverty in adulthood, and the effects of poor dental health can haunt people throughout their lives. I support a denture scheme here in the ACT and I have helped fund mothers who do not want to go to parent-teacher nights because of their bad teeth and people who are frightened of going to job interviews because of their bad teeth. The Abbott government's decision to cut $125 million from child dental services is short-sighted and cruel, and will leave thousands of Australian families worse off. Budgets are all about priorities; and, if the physical, economic and social wellbeing of all Australians is not a priority, I do not know what is. I call on the government to reverse this cut immediately. Petition: Retirement Visas 47 13:37 Mr GOODENOUGH 74046 Moore I present a petition calling for category 410 retirement visa holders who have lived continuously in Australia for 10 or more years to be granted permanent residency and a pathway to Australian citizenship. I have previously advocated in this parliament on behalf of a group of individuals who are self-funded retirees, have private health insurance, have passed police clearances and have brought millions of dollars in capital and overseas-sourced pensions into Australia, and who make a valuable contribution to our community through volunteering. At a time when we call into question, due to treasonous conduct, the loyalty of certain individuals who have been recently granted Australian citizenship, on merit I believe that this group of individuals is worthy of favourable consideration for permanent residency and citizenship because they have demonstrated financial independence, the values of good citizenship and civic-mindedness. I inform the House of my intention to move a private member's motion in support of category 410 visa holders being granted a pathway to permanent residency and Australian citizenship. I am pleased to present this petition. The petition read as follows— To the Honourable The Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives This petition of 410 Visa holders residents in Australia draws to the attention of the House: That 3000 self-funded individuals that call Australia home are currently prevented from becoming Australian citizens. A motion proposed by Senator Chris Ellison and agreed by the Senate on 28 June 2008 should be upheld by the government to 'enable temporary resident retirement 410 visa holders to apply for permanent residency'. Also in 2008 Senator Chris Evans then Minister for Immigration, declared that 'if people choose to make their lives in Australia they should have a pathway to citizenship open to them'. Surely 3000 retirement visa holders of whom we estimate no more than 2000 would take up Permanent Residence if offered deserve security in the knowledge that they have certainty, particularly all who: have lived here for at least ten years are home owners are self-funded from overseas-sourced pensions are law abiding contribute significantly and voluntarily to the community are privately health insured have introduced hundreds of millions of dollars into Australia at no cost to taxpayers would, as permanent residents, then pay income tax in Australia on overseas income We therefore ask the House to: Allow all holders of the Temporary Retirement Visa (sub-class 410) who have resided in Australia for a continuous period of 10 years or more the right to become Permanent Residents and Citizens. from 4,522 citizens Petition received. Budget 48 13:39 Ms CHESTERS 249710 Bendigo This budget is hurting families, lots of families in regional areas, including 10,000 families in my own electorate—people who are on the lowest and smallest of household incomes. Included in that figure of 10,000 is Sharon. After the budget, she sent me an email and gave me permission to raise her concerns today with the House. She believes that she will be at least $50 a week worse off if the changes to family tax benefits go through. She is a single mum, raising a daughter, living in Castlemaine, and she lives from day to day. She is already concerned because her credit card is maxed out and she does not know how she is going to pay her next round of bills. She has asked friends for help. She has asked family for help. Now she is asking this government to help by not proceeding with the cuts to family tax benefits that will hit the poorest families hardest. You can tell this government's priorities by their budget. They are supporting the people on the highest incomes. Nine out of 10 people on the highest incomes are better off as a result of this budget, whilst nine out of 10 on the smallest incomes are worse off. That shows the priorities of this government. They are not thinking of Sharon and the 10,000 families in my electorate who will be worse off; they are thinking about their mates. They are not thinking about those they should be thinking about: families. This budget is hurting families. Road Safety 48 13:40 Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Solomon Tomorrow, 29 May, is Fatality Free Friday. Fatality Free Friday is Australia's largest community-based road safety campaign. It focuses on the collective and individual responsibility for road safety of all road users. That includes motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Those taking the pledge promise to remind their family, friends and workmates to take extra care on the roads, by putting their lights on for safety, by not speeding, by wearing their seatbelts and making sure they absolutely do not drink and drive. Fatality Free Friday is a good reminder that, even with the safest of cars, the most advanced roads and the best public education campaigns, road safety is ultimately in the individual's hands. I have taken the pledge and I encourage all residents of the Solomon electorate to help make our roads safer by also taking the pledge. They can do that by going onto the website www.fatalityfreefriday.com. I also urge all my colleagues here to please take the pledge if they have not done so already. Budget 49 13:42 Ms MacTIERNAN L6P Perth The Prime Minister has been pitching an anti-welfare line over the last week, suggesting that those receiving benefits of any type are un-Australian 'leaners'. But many of the 6,692 families in my electorate that are helped by family tax benefit part B are working families. Tax benefit B helps them to provide for their children at a time when they have high mortgage commitments. Now this benefit is to be stripped from them once their children turn six. Yet, at the same time, we see these extraordinarily generous tax concessions to wealthy superannuants being vigorously defended by the Prime Minister. My concern is that Australia is becoming an increasingly unequal society. The statistics bear this out. Over the past generation, the income share of Australia's top one per cent has doubled and that of the top 0.1 per cent has in fact tripled. The percentage spent on wages compared to that diverted to profit has declined, to the disadvantage of those on wages. We need to address this issue of rising inequality, and aspects like family tax benefit part B are part of that. (Time expired) Organ and Tissue Donation 49 13:43 Mr HAWKE HWO Mitchell I rise to follow the leadership of the Gremmo family in my community in talking about organ donation after the unfortunate death of their son, Nathan, at just 13 years of age, on 30 April. The Gremmo family have built many of the houses in my community and are one of the most community minded small businesses and some of the most community minded businesspeople that we have ever encountered in the Hills district. Following the death of their son, both Kylie and Michael Gremmo have asked that our community and, indeed, the whole Australian community consider discussing the difficult topic of organ donation. In such difficult and tragic circumstances, they led by extraordinary example, deciding to donate Nathan's organs—enabling the saving of six other lives. As the parent of a small son myself, this is probably one of the most difficult questions that any parent or family could consider. They have asked families to consider having that discussion, because we do know that families that have discussed people's decisions in relation to organ donation have a much higher likelihood of donating organs, and in any month in Australia there are 1,700 Australians on organ transplant waiting lists. In 2014, 1,117 people were given a second chance because of the generosity of donors. I really want to thank the great leadership of the Gremmo family in the most tragic circumstances and tell them we will do as they ask. Budget 49 13:45 Ms BUTLER 248006 Griffith It is a shame that Liberal and National Party members of this House have gone missing when it comes to protecting working families on single incomes and dual incomes from the worst aspects of the outrageous first two budgets of the Abbott government. Where is the member for Bonner? 7,172 families in his electorate get family tax benefit part B. They will suffer under this government's budget cuts. Where is the member for Brisbane on this issue? 3,408 families will suffer because of this government's budget cuts. In Capricornia 8,638 families will suffer because of the coalition government's budget cuts. In Dawson 8,690 families will suffer because of this Liberal National government's budget cuts. In Flynn 9,629 families will suffer because of this coalition government's budget cuts. In Forde 12,867 families will suffer because of this government's budget cuts. In Leichhardt 11,654 families will suffer because of this Liberal National government's budget cuts. In Petrie 12,502 will suffer because of this coalition government's budget cuts. This government's budgets are aimed at attacking working families whether they are on a dual or single income, and the people on that side of the House in the National Party might want to do a little bit better in sticking up for those single-income families that they sometimes claim to represent. This budget and last year's budget together will hurt working families. Fuel Prices 49 13:46 Ms HENDERSON ZN4 Corangamite I rise to celebrate the achievements which have been made in delivering fairer petrol prices to the people of Colac. As I revealed with Minister for Small Business Bruce Billson when he visited Colac last Friday, ACCC data shows that prices in Colac in December 2014 were on average 18.1c higher than the average price in the five largest cities. I am delighted to advise the House that after a very strong community campaign the average price disparity between Colac and the five metro cities has dropped in April this year to just 3.5c per litre. Through our review of competition law and the Harper review our government is working very hard to shine a light on anticompetitive conduct and deliver fairer prices for consumers and small business operators. I have spoken out strongly against the petrol price rip-off in Colac, as have many others: the Colac Herald, Phil Edge, Bill Brown and those behind Colac's High Fuel Prices Facebook page. There is much work to be done, but we cannot rest; we must keep the pressure on. I am very proud that the people of Colac will not give up on this important issue, and I stand by them all the way. Budget 50 13:48 Mr THISTLETHWAITE 182468 Kingsford Smith The Abbott government budget makes life harder for families in our community. Kingsford Smith in recent years has undergone a baby boom and has one of the highest proportions of women between the ages of 24 and 40—prospective new mums who want to be able to spend the first six months with their newborns to nurture development. But the budget changes make that near impossible for many of them as the government cuts access to the workplace top-up of paid parental leave. How dare the Treasurer and the Minister for Social Services describe women who are trying to do the best by their newborns as rorters and double dippers? How dare they make it harder for those new mums? How dare they make those new mums choose between the recommended six months and returning to work early to continue to pay the bills? This budget cuts family tax benefit B for single mums, making it harder for them to make ends meet with new kids. It cuts $125 million from the child dental health scheme. In our community the local Medicare office at Eastgardens is being closed and moved into the local Centrelink office, which will increase waiting times for many in our community. The one thing we can say for certain about this budget is it makes life harder for families in Kingsford Smith, and that is why we will oppose those measures. Bega Cheese Ltd 50 13:49 Dr HENDY 00BCM Eden-Monaro On Thursday, 21 May, I visited the Bega cheese factory in North Bega to mark the Australian government's $5 million investment in the nationally famous Bega Cheese company. There I joined Bega Cheese Director Max Roberts and site manager Sean Moran along with Bega Valley Shire Council General Manager Leanne Barnes and infrastructure group manager Lucas Scarpin. The manufacturer will be investing in a $21 million project to advance their production capability with the support of the $5 million grant from the Australian government's Manufacturing Transition Program. Bega Cheese will purchase plant and equipment to increase their production of a product called lactoferrin. It will enhance export opportunities in Asia, particularly China and Japan. Lactoferrin is a milk by-product that enhances the nutritional value of infant formula and other medically prescribed food. It is also used in pharmaceuticals. As Bega Cheese Executive Chairman Barry Irvin explains, 'This is all about what people often talk about as "food as medicine".' The Manufacturing Transition Program is part of ensuring a secure future for manufacturing in Australia by focusing on areas of competitive strength. Bega Cheese will be able to invest in more sophisticated and knowledge-intensive manufacturing, creating high-value jobs in areas where the greatest economic opportunities exist. Budget 50 13:51 Mr CHAMPION HW9 Wakefield This is a budget which is full of Orwellian bravado, spin and short-term sugar hits. It is a direct attack on Australian families, nowhere more so than in my electorate. We know that the Prime Minister before the budget claimed, 'We know it will be good for families.' The NATSEM modelling shows that nine out of 10 of the lowest income families lose out under this budget while nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families benefit. So it is a bit of a reverse Robin Hood. This budget makes the Sheriff of Nottingham look good. And we know that this is just the continuation of a lot of bad decisions: a bad budget last year that was manifestly unfair. The government was reeling in the face of electoral opposition to that budget. I know in my electorate you go down and look at some of the decisions that were made on submarines. We had the Minister for Industry and Science on May 26 this week in the Financial Review confirming: 'Ian Macfarlane concedes SA may not build first few submarines'. We will be lucky to build any of them, despite the defence minister's promise before the election. We know that Holden's workers and other car manufacturing workers in this country have suffered a great deal. There was an article on 21 May this year that said: Holden staff have been made forcefully redundant. They are the first forcible redundancies in that factory in quite some time. So we know what this budget is all about. (Time expired) Illicit Drugs 51 13:52 Mr HOGAN 218019 Page Last week I organised a community consultation meeting about the impact of ice in our community. Well over 100 people attended. I thank all the community members who came and also Senator Fiona Nash, who was the joint lead in the Ice Taskforce. Speaker after speaker at the consultation spoke of the horrors of this drug which affects users and their loved ones. I was moved by former users who spoke of how their once-normal active lives quickly spiralled out of control and how their family relationships broke down. Others spoke of the violence it causes. Hospital workers spoke about the ongoing threats to their safety as they try to care for users who have become psychotic and a risk not only to themselves but also to medical staff and other patients. What soon became clear was that, if we do not do whatever is needed to tackle this drug, things will get worse. My community knows this, which is why so many medical and welfare experts came together with business and community leaders, along with former users and general community members. I was heartened to hear of programs in my electorate that are already having some success, such as a school based peer-to-peer program that, through theatre and music, charts a user's downward spiral as a warning to others. There is also an Indigenous support agency that is supporting recovering addicts with accommodation and food so that users can stay within their support networks. But much more needs to be done. We need an all-of-government approach to fight this issue. I would like to thank my colleague Senator Fiona Nash— (Time expired) Budget 51 13:54 Ms OWENS E09 Parramatta Once again, the government demonstrate how little we should take what they say into account. So much for the statement that this time, unlike last year, in this budget they would not attack family budgets in order to balance the federal government's budget. Not only have they doubled the deficit; they have had yet another go at families. NATSEM modelling shows that nine out of 10 families will be worse off under this budget than they are now. In my electorate of Parramatta, there are many, many families—12,709 families—on family tax benefit part B. This government plans to rip that way that family benefit when a family's youngest child turns six. I have 10,152 families receiving the schoolkids bonus, which from the last budget they will lose in July next year, making them significantly worse off. We know that a single-income family of $65,000 a year with two children will be around $6,000 a year worse off because of this budget and that many, many women currently eligible for paid parental leave will lose that right because of this appalling budget. So much for this government being a government for families. That could not be further from the truth. In every way they are doing the wrong thing by families. I urge them to rethink this if they ever get to budget No. 3. Petition: Iraq and Syria 51 13:55 Mr HOWARTH 247742 Petrie I rise today to advise the House that I will be submitting a petition for consideration by the Petitions Committee next week. Signed by more than 7,000 people from around Australia, this petition was presented to me by Mr Colin Johnston from Barnabas Fund Australia. It draws attention to the plight of persecuted Christians throughout the Middle East. We know that Daesh—or IS—are systematically slaughtering and murdering thousands of Christians, including children, in Iraq and Syria at the moment. The Minister for Foreign Affairs recently said in her address at the Sydney Institute that Daesh 'seeks to drag the world back to the Dark Ages in its preferred form of brutality and violence—crucifixions, beheadings, mass executions'. It kills with impunity and glorifies murder in the online world as part of its recruitment efforts. Christians have been executed in Libya. Minorities in Iraq and Syria are brutalised. This includes the appalling abduction of hundreds of Yazidi women and girls. I want to acknowledge the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, who has allocated 4,400 humanitarian spots for these people in need. Australia has joined an international response. We are among 30 nations providing support to eliminate Daesh. I thank the signatories of the petition for their compassion. Budget 52 13:57 Ms COLLINS HWM Franklin This budget will hurt families in my electorate Franklin. It will hurt those families that are receiving FTBA and FTBB—many, many tens of thousands of families in the electorate of Franklin. The families in my electorate are very concerned about this budget. They are concerned about the family tax benefit cut. They are also concerned about unemployment and jobs. They are concerned that this budget has unemployment going up to record highs and that it will be staying there for some time. It has been a long time since unemployment was so high. It has been 14 years since unemployment was at 6.5 per cent. There will be many, many more people unemployed, and the government's own budget papers show that. That will hurt families in my electorate, and so will these family tax benefit cuts. The family tax benefit is very important money for families. I do not think those in government understand what families use this money for. They use it to go and buy their kids clothes. They use it for groceries. They use it to pay the bills. They use it for everyday costs of living in the family budget. It is an important part of family budgets, and I do not think the government understand that an average family will be $6,000 each year worse off if these family tax benefit cuts get through the parliament. (Time expired) Renewable Energy 52 13:59 Mr HUTCHINSON 212585 Lyons Timing in life is everything! It gives me great pleasure not to give advice but to respectfully suggest to the member for Franklin to take note of the broad support that exists in Tasmania for the use of wood waste and biomass to be included within the renewable energy target. I say again that between 2007 and 2011 Labor, in government, supported this policy. In fact, the former member for Lyons's own committee supported it, and then he voted against it within a matter of weeks. Why? Because Labor had done a deal with the Greens. I suggest, Member for Franklin, that you might grab the member for Hunter, because he is a good supporter of forestry, and bypass the member for Port Adelaide, because he has no understanding at all of the importance of forestry in Tasmania. Go straight to the Leader of the Opposition. He knows how to change his mind. Tell him that the most important measure to deal with residues in Tasmania is renewable energy. Tell him that climate science supports this measure. Tell him you do not want to be a Labor Party bolted at the hip to the Greens. (Time expired) The SPEAKER 10000 In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members’ statements has concluded. MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS 52 MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS 14:00 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah I inform the House that the Minister for Defence will be absent from question time today as he participates in the 14th Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection will answer questions on his behalf. Earlier this week, I announced some changes to the ministry as part of measures to strengthen our counterterrorism arrangements in our efforts to counter violent extremism. These changes included the appointment of the Minister for Justice to be minister assisting me on counterterrorism. I am pleased to advise the House that the swearing-in ceremony took place at Government House this morning. For the information of members, I table an updated list of the full ministry. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 52 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Education 52 14:01 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong My question is to the Prime Minister. Yesterday the Prime Minister mocked Labor's idea for children to learn to code from primary school age. Given that the Chief Scientist, the Business Council of Australia and members of his own frontbench think it is a good idea, will the Prime Minister reconsider his backward response from yesterday and support Labor's plan for every child in every primary school to get the chance to learn to code? 14:02 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah The fact is that the Leader of the Opposition has been playing catch-up politics on this. This matter was fully dealt with by the government in the competitiveness and innovation agenda that we brought down last year and, as part of that agenda, coding is now on the curriculum at every level, and it is backed up by money which this government has committed. If the Leader of the Opposition ever did his homework, as opposed to going out there with stunt after stunt, political ploy after political ploy, he would have known that. Small Business 52 14:02 Mr CHRISTENSEN 230485 Dawson My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline the government's plans to help small business to grow and create more jobs. 14:03 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah I do thank the member for Dawson for his question and for his support for the 13,000-plus small businesses in his electorate. Thanks to this budget, small businesses right around our country are investing in their future. When they invest, they invest in the future of their workers and their customers. I have been around much of the country over the last 10 days or so. I can report to the House that, thanks to the instant asset write-off, Steve Geiger Cabinets in Mackay, in the member's electorate, will be upgrading their workshop. Thanks to the instant asset write-off, CIBO Espresso in Glenelg, in Adelaide, will be refurbishing their cafe. Thanks to the instant asset write-off, Dolci Sapori in Clayfield, in Brisbane, will be refrigerating their van. Lonsdale electrics here in Canberra will be investing in diagnostic computers. I can inform the House that small business like the tax cut. They like the extra assistance to employ people. They really like the instant asset write-off. But what they like most of all is finally being singled out and acknowledged, not just with words but with practical measures to help them. We all know—even members opposite know, despite their shouting—that small business is the engine room of the economy. We all know that small business is the locomotive of job creation. We all know—and even members opposite will sometimes concede—that small businesspeople mortgage their houses to invest, to employ and to serve their communities. But this is the first time anyone can remember when small business have been singled out in this way by government, which is giving a fair go to the people who are having a go. This government understands that when you help small business you help everyone, because when small business does well everyone does well. It is worth remembering just how well received this budget has been. I particularly want to quote the head of MYOB—and MYOB certainly know something about small business. They described the budget as: … fantastic … for small business owners who should be celebrating all around the nation. Firstly because of the financial support to assist them to invest in and grow their businesses, and secondly because of the recognition of the critical role they play in our community. The only person who was sour about the budget was Labor's small business spokesman—none other than the Leader of the Opposition—who said it was 'A giveaway to start a fire sale at second-hand car yards and Harvey Norman'. He just doesn't get it. That's his problem. (Time expired) Economy 53 14:06 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon My question is to the Treasurer. I refer to today's poor private capital expenditure results down 11 per cent since the federal election and the worst quarterly results since the global financial crisis. Is this more evidence of the 'instantaneous adrenaline charge to the economy' that the Prime Minister promised before the election, or the real momentum the Treasurer keeps reminding us of? 14:06 Mr HOCKEY DK6 North Sydney I say to the member for McMahon that, whilst the capex figures released today were disappointing, they were, of course, over the March quarter—prior to the cut in interest rates by the Reserve Bank and prior to our budget. In fact, in plant and equipment and machinery in particular, I can say to you that the $20,000 instant asset write-off in our budget is going to make a difference to the procurement of capital by small business in particular. When it comes to capital expenditure by the private sector, as reported by the ABS, and given that there has been a substantial reduction in commodity investment and construction associated with a fall in iron ore prices in particular, the fall in capex was not without expectation. There was no doubt about that. Opposition members interjecting— Mr HOCKEY DK6 Even old buggerlugs over there, the member for Lilley, knows that. He stood at this dispatch box and talked at length about the transition in the Australian economy. He talked about it— Opposition members interjecting— Mr HOCKEY DK6 Just like there has been a transition in the AWU from the right to the left. Mr Conroy interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Charlton will desist! Mr HOCKEY DK6 How does that sit with you, Swanee? Anyway, capital expenditure— Ms Owens E09 Madam Speaker, on a point of order: I ask that you ask the member to refer to members by their correct title. The SPEAKER 10000 The Treasurer will refer to members by their name. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 There is far too much noise from both sides of the House. If the member for Wakefield would like an early mark, it being a Thursday—be it a plane or a bus—we can oblige. Mr HOCKEY DK6 I would say there were two significant events that obviously had an impact on capex expectations in the March quarter. The first event was the defeat of the Newman government in Queensland and the decision by Queensland Labor to turn its back on billions of dollars of infrastructure money associated with asset recycling. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The noise will cease! Mr HOCKEY DK6 The second one, and perhaps the most calamitous infrastructure decision in modern Australian history— Ms MacTiernan interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Perth will cease! The member for Perth will leave under 94(a). Mr HOCKEY DK6 was the decision by the new Victorian government to rip up the contract for the East West Link. In that decision alone the Victorian government immediately ripped up 6,000 jobs and wrote a cheque for $1 billion for a road that was not going to be built. It was a project that would have involved probably around $12 billion of private sector capital expenditure. Mr Bowen interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for McMahon will desist. Or perhaps he might like to join the member for Perth? Mr HOCKEY DK6 If you want to know the main reasons why the capex numbers were less than expected, I say point the finger at Labor—because. Labor is the one in Queensland and Victoria that has ripped the heart out of new capital expenditure. Budget 54 14:10 Mrs SUDMALIS 241586 Gilmore My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer outline to the House how the budget helps build a stronger Australia and a stronger economy? Opposition members interjecting— 14:10 Mr HOCKEY DK6 North Sydney It is your happiest day, isn't it? Opposition members: It is! It is! Mr HOCKEY DK6 It is! Dr Chalmers interjecting— Mr HOCKEY DK6 I know you have very low expectations about yourself, but just keep doing the numbers for old Swanee over there. I am watching you! Mr Burke DYW Madam Speaker, on a point of order— The SPEAKER 10000 The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Treasurer will refer to people by their correct terms. Mr HOCKEY DK6 A bit of Thursday bonhomie! Mr Perrett interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Moreton is warned! Mr HOCKEY DK6 The member for Gilmore is absolutely right. We have to build a stronger economy. When I came back to parliament a couple of days ago for this budget session, the member for Gilmore said to me that she had personally doorknocked as many small businesses as she could and taken around a brochure explaining to them the instant asset write-off in particular but also the 1½ per cent tax cut for those that are incorporated and the five per cent tax discount to those small businesses who are not incorporated. She went around doorknocking those small businesses all over her electorate of Gilmore and explained to them the benefits of the government's budget—and got a fantastic reception. She has 8,600 small businesses in her electorate. I know she was not able to do all of those in a week, but I have high expectations she will finish them off in the next couple of weeks. The reason it is important that we focus on small business is that, as the Prime Minister said, small business is the engine room of the Australian economy. Small businesses are now the big disrupters of the global economy. They are the ones at home on a computer, or perhaps in the garage, working away at some innovative development that is going to get to market in a more substantial way than anything that has ever got to market previously in the history of modern humanity. As such, because of the development of the internet and the breakdown of trade barriers, our small businesses have greater opportunities than ever before to access the global market. We are doing our best as a government to help them along the way. We are not only opening up new trade agreements with China, Korea, Japan and, potentially, India—even as we speak, the Minister for Trade is working away at these sorts of things—but, significantly, we are getting rid of the red tape. We have removed 50,000 pages of regulation in just 18 months. We are opening the doors to a fairer employee share scheme arrangement. Mr Perrett interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Moreton will leave under 94(a). Mr HOCKEY DK6 Unlike Labor, who introduced change after change on employee share schemes, we are saying employees should not have to pay tax on shares when they have not realised any benefit from those shares. Importantly, we are looking at ways we can help small business to fund their growth. Our new initiatives in relation to crowd funding are going to help those public companies to lift with the amount of capital they need to access new markets. Everything we are doing is about growing business, growing opportunity and growing jobs for more Australians. Budget 55 14:14 Ms MACKLIN PG6 Jagajaga My question is to the Prime Minister— Mr Pyne interjecting— Ms MACKLIN PG6 I am the shadow minister! Sorry, I should not respond to interjections. My question is to the Prime Minister. Theresa Sutton is a grandparent carer in the electorate of Swan who is raising her 12- and 14-year-old grandchildren. Theresa will lose around $100 a fortnight because of this government's cuts to family tax benefit part B. Why does the Prime Minister think it is fair to cut $100 a fortnight from grandparent carers like Theresa? 14:14 Mr ABBOTT EZ5 Warringah No-one likes to see anyone worse off; no-one does. No-one likes to see anyone worse off, but it is very important that we prioritise our spending to try to get people into work, and that is exactly what the government have done. Let me be absolutely crystal clear. When the member for Jagajaga was the Minister for Family and Community Services she realised that, sometimes, she had to make savings in the area of family tax benefits. She realised that. When she was the minister Labor cut $15 billion from family tax benefits. I have to say that on the vast majority of occasions we supported it, reluctantly, because no-one wants to see anything cut. Sometimes it is necessary for the long-term best interests of our country to reprioritise spending. In 2013 when the member for Jagajaga was the minister she forced 84,000 single mums onto Newstart as part of a budget cut to save $738 million over four years. These were savings that Labor made in government that were largely supported by us in opposition because this coalition in opposition believed that when the government was doing the right and responsible thing—it did not often happen when members opposite were in government—oppositions should support it. I understand that members opposite do not like the changes that we have made. Well, tell us what changes you would make. Tell us how you would fund the $58.6 billion budget black hole. Tell us exactly how you would fund the $58.6 billion worth of unfunded commitments that you have made. This is exactly what members opposite have to do. If they do not like what we are doing, tell us what they would do. It is just not good enough to support every spend, to oppose every save, to call for more spending up hill and down dale—$58.6 billion of extra spending—without telling us how it is funded. We want to encourage people to move from welfare to work, because that is the best form of welfare. Smart Labor people realise that and so do we. Live Animal Exports 55 14:18 Mr KATTER HX4 Kennedy Minister for Agriculture, discussions resulting in Indonesia reopening the live cattle market centred around reductions in Australia's handling costs. These charges nearly double the cost of purchase and shipping. Thirty small 1,200 hectare irrigation blocks overcome such costs. These are self-financing and need only one per cent of Gulf land and water. Could the minister advise the state authorities of the speedy necessity for such action? 14:18 Mr JOYCE E5D New England I thank the honourable member for his question, and I thank the honourable member for a history of around 20 years that we have been working together. The honourable member knows better than most how important the live cattle trade is. To Indonesia it is about 618,000 head a year. It is about $461 million a year. Last year we increased that by 112 per cent. That is what comes about when you have an effective government with the delivery of these sorts of outcomes that bring the money in, that pay the bills, that keep our economy in shape. Yes, we do believe that we have to start dealing with those transport cost issues. That is why, recently, we put $100 million on the table for beef roads. It is $100 million to make sure that we can start moving these products to port in a more efficient way and in a more affordable way. We are also looking at the possibilities of B-triples and getting bulk numbers of cattle to port so that we can get the money back to the Julia Creeks, back to the Richmonds, back to the Cloncurrys, which is where that money belongs. In relation to water infrastructure, I was very happy, yesterday, to be part of a government that brought about 100 per cent instantaneous write-off on water reticulation deduction expenditure. This is the sort of investment that is needed to give you irrigation blocks. Whilst we are at it, they are claiming the water reticulation write-offs, and they can put new fencing in and there is 100 per cent write-off for that. If they want to bring in a bit of silage or some grain and they need to put it into silos, guess what? They write it off over three years. We did that all yesterday. This is part of the process of an effective government that is delivering back to the people who are putting money on the table for our nation. I know there is more we can do, and I hear the issue in regard to having a close working relationship with the government of Queensland because there is so much more potential. At one place alone, Warren Vale, up near Normanton, they currently put out about 150,000 kilograms of beef a year. With the right water infrastructure, which they are prepared to pay for themselves, that can go up to 4.1 million kilograms a year—from one place, from 150,000 to 4.1 million kilograms a year. They are the sorts of productivity increases, the productivity returns, that our nation can deliver with proper investment in the agricultural portfolio. I thank the honourable member for his question. I look forward to negotiating with the people of Queensland, the Queensland government and yourself. National Security 56 14:21 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the Minister representing the Attorney-General. On 12 September last year, Australia's terror alert level was raised to its highest level in our history. What protocols were changed in ministerial offices, including the Attorney-General's office, as a result of the terror alert level being raised? 14:22 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin I understand where the former Attorney-General is heading with this question. His actions today in questioning the Attorney-General over procedures in the Attorney-General's office is contemptible. For the Attorney-General to seek to make political mileage out of a national tragedy is reprehensible. The former Attorney-General well knows that the procedure related to the handling of a letter received from Mr Monis is exactly the same procedure as occurred under this Attorney-General's time in that office. I find it extraordinary. This former Attorney-General's record on national security was so weak, where we saw our security agencies' resources and our intelligence agencies' resources degraded under the former Labor government. Absolutely appalling. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 There will be silence for this answer. Mr Champion interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Wakefield will leave under 94(a). Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P We have seen the line of questioning in Senate estimates today about protocols in the Attorney-General's Department. What the Attorney-General under the Labor government, the now member for Isaacs, has failed to point out is that letters were received from this gentleman by the former Attorney-General himself, by former Labor ministers, by former Prime Minister Gillard, by the former Attorney-General McLelland. For this former Attorney-General to seek to question protocols in the Attorney-General's Department that he well knows were in place when he was there, and he received a letter from Mr Monis, is beneath contempt. While the member for Isaacs and the Labor Party were very weak on national security, I did not ever expect them to go so low as to attack the Attorney-General for protocols in the Attorney-General's Department that he well knew were in place when the former Labor government was there. Dr Chalmers interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Rankin will leave under 94(a). Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P And an attempt to politicise a national tragedy should never occur in this place, not under the former Attorney-General, and certainly we are deeply concerned with Labor's line of questioning that seeks to question protocols that he well knew existed. Budget 57 14:25 Mr BROUGH 2K6 Fisher My question is to the energetic Minister for Small Business. Will the minister update the House on how the budget will support small businesses to prosper and to create jobs across the Sunshine Coast and particularly in my electorate of Fisher? 14:25 Mr BILLSON 1K6 Dunkley I want to thank the member for Fisher. He has served our nation with great distinction, as a soldier and in the parliament and as a cabinet minister. It is great to get a question from him. Twelve and a half thousand small businesses in the Fisher electorate are really thrilled by the news of this small businesses and jobs package that was announced in this budget. There is $5½ billion of encouragement, respect, incentive and recognition—the largest package of its kind in our nation's history that will energise enterprise in the electorate of Fisher. In travelling through the electorate with the member, people shared with us stories of the difficult times under Labor—how too many of those 519,000 jobs lost under Labor were on the Sunshine Coast and what an impact it had on people's livelihoods and opportunities. The good news is things are changing. We are getting behind those enterprising men and women, and no clearer statement of that support can be found than the largest package for small business announced in this budget. The opportunity to have the lowest company tax rate in almost half a century is something small businesses have welcomed. The immediate tax deductibility for business related asset purchases up to $20,000 has been extremely well received. There are the measures that we have put in place to make sure that the unincorporated small businesses are not forgotten. Who could forget the enthusiastic advocacy of the Minister for Agriculture to make a good case, supported by consultation, to bring forward the improved accelerated asset write-off arrangements for our rural community. It is a great package and the support has been wide and has been loud. I have just come from a briefing from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. They said how encouraging this federal government's actions are in acknowledging that small businesses are the engine room of the economy. They went on to point out how the instant asset write-off measure will help businesses grow and make capital purchases. There is some other good news. Labor has finally settled on a position. To their credit, they have put out an announcement saying that they will back the small business package, and that legislation is in this parliament. You could understand accountants being a little hesitant. They heard the Leader of the Opposition's intemperate remark about the asset write-off being 'a giveaway to start a fire sale at a second-hand car yard and Harvey Norman'. That is what they said. They had heard the member for Oxley bagging the idea of a company tax cut, giving a two-tier rate, advantaging small business. They heard all that and they were confused. So, despite all that politicking, the flip-floppery, the blah blah from Labor, we have finally got a clear statement. The legislation is in this place. Let's get it through this place in a hurry and let's see if Labor is true to its word. It is not about the backswing; it is all about the follow-through. Let's follow through and get these measures enacted. Budget 57 14:28 Ms LANDRY 249764 Capricornia My question is to the Minister for Agriculture. Will the minister update the House on the government's budget measures in response to the drought? How have they and other budget measures been received in rural and regional Australia? 14:28 Mr JOYCE E5D New England I thank the honourable member for her question. In the seat of Capricornia, she more than most knows the problems that come about through hardship. I commend the member for Capricornia on the work that she did during the cyclones and the compassion she showed for the people in her area, along with so many up there, including the member for Flynn, the member for Dawson and the member for Hinkler. There is so much that we are doing to assist people with drought. We are very alive to this issue. We have been since we have been here. We are aware that, in Queensland, about 80 per cent of the state is in drought. It is on the back of that that we came forward with a package to deal with the epicentre of the drought. We have 20 shires that will be receiving $35 million as part of a stimulus package directed to those shires. As well as that we have $25.8 million to assist with pest management, predominantly wild dogs, and this is a real problem in those areas, so that we can get the place populated again with sheep. That is a big employer. Especially people who might have been associated with the AWU would think that would be a good idea, to try and support their members—and their members are supporting other people nowadays. Also, we have $20 million for mental health to try and help there, because we know that is what happens when people get into a position where they are under the pump and they are isolated. They sit in the house and just dwell. We have to make sure that we get them out and get them up and running again. We have put money on the table to fund an extra 10 rural financial counsellors. We extended for one year the concessional loans scheme, which was supposed to finish on 30 June. We have extended that for a further 12 months, with a quarter of a billion dollars—$250 million—at the lowest rate, at 3.21 per cent, with terms as long as 10 years. These are the sorts of things that you do when you take people on the land seriously, when you are truly trying to help. In the forward estimates there is $498 million—nearly half a billion dollars—for farm household allowance, a direct payment to maintain the dignity of people in their lives, to make sure that they can pay for the groceries, pay for the fuel, pay for the chemist. These are the actions of a government that cares. These are the actions of a government that has foresight. I am very proud of the fact that during this drought I believe that the Prime Minister of Australia has been out there three times. That is a sign that we care, right to the very top, about people right out on the very edge. National Security 58 14:31 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs I refer to the previous answer of the Minister representing the Attorney-General. On 12 September last year Australia's terror alert level was raised to its highest level in our history. Is it correct that no protocols were changed in ministerial offices, including the Attorney-General's office, as a result of the terror alert level being raised? 14:32 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin As the member for Isaacs well knows, this government put in a range of measures as a result of the change in the security threat level, including over $600 million in extra funding; and, indeed, as I recall, the Labor opposition were briefed on more than one occasion about the changes that were made to security arrangements in departments and in this place. I have to say that this line of questioning from this former Attorney-General is loathsome, because he is seeking to make political capital out of a national tragedy. We have seen it in Senate estimates. We know what Labor is seeking to do here, and I find it utterly deplorable. What it does give me the opportunity to do, however, is to contrast the Labor Party's inaction on national security compared with the action taken by the coalition. This member for Isaacs, when he was Attorney-General, ignored the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor's first substantive annual report that was handed down in December 2012. He shelved the Council of Australia Government's review of counter-terrorism legislation when it was finalised in March 2013. He did nothing about the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security's inquiry into potential reforms of the national security legislation when it was tabled in June 2013. In contrast, this government has secured passage of four major tranches of legislation to strengthen our agency's ability to investigate and monitor and arrest and prosecute home-grown violent extremists and returning foreign fighters. Of course, when he was aware of the growing terror threat, the member for Isaacs did not pass one single national security law when he was Attorney-General. Indeed, like his Labor predecessors, he ignored urgent requests from our agencies for data retention law and then did his best to frustrate our attempts to pass such legislation. So this line of questioning is utterly contemptible and, as a former Attorney-General, he ought to be ashamed of himself. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 There will be silence on both sides. I call the honourable member for Wright. Budget 58 14:34 Mr BUCHHOLZ 230531 Wright My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister advise the House how the government is supporting families that want to have a go through measures announced in this budget? 14:35 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I thank the member for Wright for his question. He will be pleased to know, as will the electors of Wright, that the budget is giving choices to families who choose and need to work in this country. That is what the budget is doing. We are doing that through our $3½ billion Jobs for Families package, which includes the childcare safety net, which ensures that vulnerable and disadvantaged families all around the country will have access to childcare support and will not be neglected or ignored as a result of previous failures of policy in this area. He will be pleased to know about the universal access funding for preschools that was cut by those opposite when they were in government, in the forward estimates, and that we restored, putting $840 million in this budget to support those families. He will be particularly pleased to know about the youth allowance changes, abolishing the family assets test and the family assets actual means test, and the changes to the treatment of the family pool, which will affect 30,000 rural families in this country, supporting their choices where their children are going into education. If you respect the taxpayer, you really have to know how to pay for your policies. I note that the shadow minister agrees with that, because she was asked by David Speers, and she said this: We certainly can understand that for many families child care is very expensive … David Speers said: That's got to be paid for somehow though. She said: It does have to be paid for somehow … Somehow—how? How do you plan to pay for this? We have a plan to pay for it and it is a plan that those opposite oppose, and that is through changes to family tax benefits and through those measures. But, as the Prime Minister has already said, when those opposite were in government they put through this parliament $15 billion worth of cuts to family tax benefits, and they have the hide to come in here and make criticisms of the savings which will actually give choices to families who want to be in work and stay in work. The most galling of them is the issue of the changes they made to parenting payments. They said when someone's child turned six they should go off the parenting payment and go onto the Newstart allowance. This is what the Leader of the Opposition said about that measure: These reforms will result in fairer and more consistent treatment of income support recipients. So they ripped $700 million in parenting payments from those who had their children turning six and then they come in here and lecture us about savings that are actually going to help more children be in child care and their families be in work. You have got to know how to pay for your policies. You cannot go out announcing policies that you cannot pay for. The Leader of the Opposition is a budget smuggler. That is what he is! He thinks he can announce policies and not have to pay for them. You cannot pay for welfare with magic welfare dust that you just sprinkle around the country. It is a fraud. National Security 59 14:38 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the minister representing the Attorney-General. I refer to the minister's previous answer. Has the protocol for correspondence that contains references to contact with Daesh, Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL, IS or similar terms in the Attorney-General's private office and in his department been revised? If so, when was it revised? Mr Ewen Jones interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Herbert will desist. 14:39 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin What I do know is letters received from Mr Monis that were produced to the coroner's inquiry included letters he sent to former Prime Minister Gillard and former Attorney-General McClelland and copied to the member for Isaacs. For the member for Isaacs to try to make political gain out of correspondence in the Attorney-General's Department at this time is utterly contemptible. He should not pursue this line of questioning given his record in national security was pathetic. National Security 59 14:39 Mr COLEMAN 241067 Banks My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Will the minister update the House on the threat posed by foreign fighters internationally? What steps has the government taken to partner with other countries to counter this threat? 14:40 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin I thank the member for Banks for his question. I know that he has a genuine interest in national security issues that affect all Australians. The government is taking decisive steps to combat the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters at home and abroad. The 100 or so Australians fighting for Daesh and terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq are a lethal part of the estimated 20,000 foreign fighters who are there. Reports from the Munich Security Conference this year estimate that France has around 1200 nationals fighting in Syria and Iraq, Germany has around 600, United Kingdom has around 600 and Russia has well over 1,000. Renowned terrorist expert Sidney Jones estimates that there are around 200 Indonesians and at least 60 people from Malaysia fighting with Danish and other terrorist organisations. The foreign terrorist fighters returning from the Middle East are a real threat to Australia. The risk is that they could carry out mass casualty attack, as other countries have experience. The number of foreign fighters in our own region with hands-on terrorist experience in Syria and Iraqi is now many times greater than it was for Afghanistan in the 1990s. This is a chilling thought, because extremists who fought and trained in Afghanistan were responsible for the Bali bombings, the bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, the sinking of the ferry in the Philippines and bombing of the Jakarta Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels. Attacks around the world claimed by extremists and terrorist groups have risen rapidly over the last 12 months, with more than 1,000 attacks last month alone. This year, there have been terrorist attacks in France, Denmark, the United States, Lebanon, Pakistani, Libya and Saudi Arabia, as well as the daily attacks in Syria and Iraq. There are many more planned terrorist attacks, including in Australia, that have thankfully been thwarted by our law enforcement agencies. The government is determined to combat the threat posed by foreign fighters to Australians and Australian interests overseas. We are strengthening our intelligence exchange with traditional allies, engaging new counter-terrorism partners and building on our network of counter-terrorism agreements with 13 countries in our region, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistani, Thailand and the Philippines. We are contributing to international efforts to combat Daesh in Iraq. At the request of the Iraqi government, there are around 300 Australian Defence Force personnel training the Iraqi army's 76th brigade. We have personnel supporting air strikes. The meeting of the global coalition to defeat Daesh in Paris next week, I will reaffirm Australia's commitment to ongoing international efforts to prevent the flow of fighters and funds from Australia to terrorist networks. This government is committed to combating terrorism in all its forms to keep our people safe. National Security 60 14:43 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the minister representing the Attorney-General. I refer to the letter the Attorney-General received from Man Haron Monis on 9 October, nine weeks before the Sydney siege. Mr Ewen Jones interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Herbert will desist. Mr DREYFUS HWG Why did the use by Man Haron Monis of the honorific title 'Caliph Ibrahim' to describe the leader of Daesh not automatically raise red flags in the Attorney-General's private office or his department? 14:43 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin At least the member for Isaacs is now being honest about the line of questioning that preceded this contemptible question. As this former Attorney-General knows, the procedures that were in place in the Attorney-General's office were in accordance with long established Attorney-General's Department procedures. As the Attorney-General has pointed out in a press release today, which I bring to the attention of the former Attorney-General, Senator Brandis has contacted the Director-General of ASIO. The Director-General of ASIO has examined the letter to which the member for Isaacs refers. The Director-General of ASIO has said that in his view, since the letter was a request for legal advice, it was appropriate that the matter was referred to the Attorney-General's Department for a response. The letter and the Attorney-General's Department reply were both placed before the inquiry into the Martin Place siege, conducted by the secretaries of the Prime Minister's and the New South Wales Premier's departments. That report did not have any criticism at all on the way in which the Monis letter was dealt. I find it extraordinary that this former Attorney-General is seeking to make some political mileage out of this national tragedy. The Director-General of ASIO has confirmed that the procedure was appropriate, and I suggest that the former Attorney-General takes a long hard look at his record of degrading funding and resources for our intelligence agencies when he was in office. National Security 60 14:45 Mr HOGAN 218019 Page My question is to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. Will the minister update the House on action that the government is taking to update citizenship laws to address terrorism threats and keep our community safe? 14:45 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson I thank the member for Page for his question. I have been to his electorate. He is highly respected in his part of the world, and he fights on his electorate's behalf in this place, as all of my colleagues do. Because, on this very important issue, this government is at one to make sure that we can deal with those people who would pose a threat to our country. It is a great privilege to be an Australian citizen, regardless of how that citizenship is gained. If people breach that contract with the Australian people, there is a price to pay. If people are involved in terrorist activities in the Middle East, if they are fighting in the name of Islamic State, if they are doing harm to our national interests in the Middle East or if they are doing harm to our Australian people here at home, if they are fighting in the name of terrorism, there is a price to pay for that terrorism. The criminal law is well established in this country, and if people breach that law—whether it is overseas or here in Australia—they will pay a price and they will pay a heavy penalty for those actions. But the removal of Australian citizenship, which is a very serious move for any government to contemplate, needs to be measured and balanced, and that is exactly what this government is putting forward. We have announced, as the Prime Minister did in his speech on 23 February this year in relation to national security, that we will do whatever it takes to keep the Australian people as safe as we humanly can. So we announced this week that, for dual nationals where we would not render that person stateless—if they had been involved in terrorist activities here or abroad, if they had supported those terrorists, if they had financed those terrorists, if they had trained those terrorists, if they sought to do harm to the Australian public—we, in that circumstance, would take Australian citizenship away from that person. And so we should. We face an unprecedented threat in this country in relation to terrorism. There are 400 investigations being conducted by ASIO at the moment that are classified as high priority. We know that 100 Australians have left our shores to go and fight in the name of ISIL in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, and we know that at least 150 Australians, on our own soil, would seek to do us harm or would seek to support those people in the Middle East. People need to recognise that there will be a consequence; if they are dual nationals and they are involved in these sorts of activities, we take it very seriously, and we will act to strip citizenship. Importantly, as I say, it needs to be balanced, because it is a very important consideration that we undertake. There does need to be this important principle of not rendering somebody stateless, but also, importantly, that there is judicial review in the process. That is what we have put forward, as well as a discussion paper to talk to the Australian public about these matters in coming months, and we will have a serious conversation with the Australian public. National Security 61 14:48 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the Minister representing the Attorney-General. I refer to the statement from the Attorney-General just now quoted by the foreign minister in her previous answer. Why did the Attorney-General wait until today to speak to the Director-General of ASIO about this matter? Mr Nikolic interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Bass! Mr Nikolic interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The member for Bass will remove himself under 94(a). 14:49 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin The letter to which the member for Isaacs refers was placed before the inquiry into the Martin Place siege; the response from the Attorney-General's department likewise. The member for Isaacs might well appreciate that the Attorney-General's chief of staff is a former director-general of ASIO, and the Attorney-General is confident that all appropriate protocols were adopted. If the member for Isaacs continues to wish to make political capital out of a national tragedy, I will feel obliged to remind the member for Isaacs that it was a senior leader of the Labor Party who wrote a reference for this man. It was a senior leader of the Labor Party who wrote a reference for Mr Monis. I would suggest that—given the six separate briefings on terror matters that the opposition have had, as well as the 13 further briefings that the opposition have had on national security matters—they cannot claim to be ignorant of the significant threat that terrorism is posing to this country. After six separate briefings on terrorism matters and 13 separate briefings on national security matters, this opposition ought to know better than to pursue this line of questioning. Workplace Relations 61 14:51 Mr HAWKE HWO Mitchell My question is to the acting Minister for Employment. Will the Minister update the House on the importance of ensuring safe and respectful workplaces? What action is the government taking in this area and what obstacles stand in the way? 14:51 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt I thank the member for Mitchell for his question, because he—like me and I am sure all members of the House—believes that violence against women is something that everybody would deplore, whether that is violence in the home, in the workplace or elsewhere. At the moment, there is a large concentration on domestic violence, which is appropriate. But it is not just violence in the home that should be under the microscope: it is also violence in the workplace. So I was troubled to read on Monday in The Sydney Morning Herald the column by Paul Sheehan outlining the violent and misogynistic behaviour of rogue elements of the CFMEU. I would like to quote from some of the things that he wrote He wrote: The royal commission into union corruption has published evidence of Collier's intimidation of women on worksites. Last year, at the Barangaroo site in Sydney, he called a female inspector from Fair Work … I will not repeat the words that he used to describe the female inspector. The article continues: On July 24 last year, he harassed another female Fair Work inspector, and played the song Who Let The Dogs Out on a loud hailer when she entered a worksite. These are not the only examples of violent and misogynistic behaviour. We have had run-throughs of Melbourne offices where a five-month pregnant woman was being threatened by rogue union leaders. We have had Nigel Hadgkiss, the head of the Fair Work Commission, complaining about his female staff being rung at home at night and abused by members of the CFMEU. In fact, CFMEU official Shaun Reardon made late-night threatening phone calls to a female Fair Work inspector, and a female Fair Work inspector was spat on by a CFMEU member on a construction site at Wooli Creek last year. The examples go on and on. The government is trying to take action to shut down these rogue elements of the union movement. We are trying to bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission. I call on the Leader of the Opposition to support the government in our campaign to bring back the ABCC rather than frustrate it in the Senate. We are also trying to establish the Registered Organisations Commission so that honest, fair union leaders are not smeared by the rogue, dodgy behaviour of the few. Again, I ask the Leader of the Opposition to support the government's measures in trying to bring back the ABCC and create the Registered Organisations Commission. Until he does, he stands condemned because he can be accused of standing behind this kind of appalling behaviour from the CFMEU, the MUA or whatever rogue union is under the microscope at a particular point in time. I call on him to change his position and support the government on both of those measures. National Security 62 14:54 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the minister representing the Attorney-General. I refer to the letter the Attorney-General received from Man Haron Monis on 9 October, nine weeks before the Sydney siege. The Attorney-General said yesterday the letter did not contain 'any statements of support or affiliation for Islamic state'. How can this statement by the Attorney-General be justified given Monis requested information about contacting the person he referred to as 'Caliph Ibrahim, the leader of the Islamic State'? 14:55 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin I am advised that all proper protocols were adopted and proper practices were followed in this case. Carbon Pricing 62 14:55 Mr EWEN JONES 96430 Herbert My question is to the Minister for the Environment. I refer the minister to an article in the TownsvilleBulletin on Tuesday stating that ratepayers in Townsville will receive a $35 refund due to the repeal of the carbon tax. Will the minister update the House on how much families and businesses are saving following the removal of the carbon tax and are there any threats to this approach? 14:55 Mr HUNT 00AMV Flinders I particularly want to thank the member for Herbert for his second question on the environment in two days. Incidentally, that is as many questions as the entire Labor Party have mustered between them in almost two years. The member for Herbert is not just a great champion of the environment. Yesterday as I was completing my answer, and I spoke to him just a little bit afterwards, I could detect just a hint of hurt in his eyes that I had not used the same terms to describe him as I had for the member for Pearce—good looking, charming and intelligent. I just want to affirm to the House that all those terms apply, as well as many other encomiums. The member for Herbert is not just all of those things. He is a great fighter for the reef and for the families of Herbert. He voted to abolish the carbon tax and to deliver a $550 a year benefit for the households of Herbert. That meant a $35 refund, a $35 benefit, for local ratepayers in the city of Townsville. A government member: Electricity bills. Mr HUNT 00AMV Yes, a reduction of up to 9.4 per cent in electricity bills for Queensland families. But that is going to change, isn't it? What we took away, you are about to give back. We reduced electricity prices. We reduced gas prices. For a fishing vessel in Townsville, there was a $16,000 reduction in the cost of re-gassing as they go out to fill up. That is what we saw when we took away the carbon tax. The member for Herbert asked about threats to those savings, and there are some threats. This is the year of Labor's big ideas. That is going swimmingly well, isn't it? A government member: It is a festival! Mr HUNT 00AMV Yes, a festival of big ideas. It might perhaps be better described as a year of old ideas. We heard something from the member for McMahon, just a week ago, at the Press Club. What are they going to do? They are going to bring back the carbon tax. But what we read in the papers today is that they are not just going to bring back the carbon tax, they are going to bring back the architect. Greg Combet is back to redraft the carbon tax. So what are we going to see? A $550 increase for families. There will be increased electricity prices for families, increased electricity prices for small businesses and increased electricity prices for pensioners. So it is not just the carbon tax that is back. The architect is back. The bills are back. Electricity prices are going up. In the year of old ideas, this is a bad one that you should reject. 14:58 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the minister representing the Attorney-General. I refer to the letter the Attorney-General received from Man Haron Monis on 9 October, two months before the Sydney siege. Does the minister agree with the Attorney-General that a letter from a convicted felon known to security agencies and on bail for violent criminal offences requesting advice about contacting the head of what the Prime Minister describes as the 'death cult', received within a month of the threat level being raised to its highest level in Australia's history, can be classified as 'routine correspondence'? 14:59 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin I notice the member for Isaacs is concerned with the use of a particular title in this letter. It is evident that titles can be quite misleading—the member for Isaacs is referred to as 'The Honourable'. I am advised that all proper protocols and appropriate practices were adhered to in this matter. Superannuation 63 15:00 Mr RANDALL PK6 Canning My question is addressed to the Assistant Treasurer. Will the Assistant Treasurer update the House on how the government is delivering stability to Australia's superannuation system and security for Australian retirees? 15:00 Mr FRYDENBERG FKL Kooyong I thank the honourable member for Canning for his question and acknowledge his strong contribution to protecting people's retirement savings. There are 14 million retirement savings accounts in Australia, holding some $2 trillion. We recognise that superannuation is the hard-earned savings of Australians, not a piggy bank to raid as a desperate measure to fix a budget black hole. That is why we on this side of the House have committed to no adverse or unexpected changes to superannuation this term. I am asked am I aware of any challenges to this approach. The greatest challenge comes from the Leader of the Opposition and those opposite and their chaotic policy. Let me replay some of Labor's super greatest hits. In 2007, Kevin Rudd said he would not change superannuation one jot, one tittle—then we had $9 billion of additional taxes on super. In 2013, Labor added a new tax on earnings on super above $100,000, but in 2015 they reduced that threshold to a new tax on super above just $75,000. In 2013 they said they would index those thresholds. In 2015 they said they would not index those thresholds, affecting more Australians. In 2013 they promised that for five years they would not make any changes to super, and in 2015 we now have two additional taxes on super. Superannuation is the Labor Party's budget pinata—there is the Leader of the Opposition, with his big stick, ready to whack superannuation. We have the member for Watson putting the little black mask over the Leader of the Opposition's eyes, we have the member for Fraser waiting to collect the money, and then we have the member for Lilley saying 'What about me, I want to be involved in this, I haven't retired just yet.' The Labor Party just cannot be trusted on super. The Leader of the Opposition said on 22 April this year: … these are the final and only changes Labor will make to the tax treatment of superannuation. But, less than one month later, the shadow Treasurer said at the Press Club: … what we have flagged is that we are still doing work on other aspects of superannuation policy. Do not look at what Labor say, look at what Labor do. They just cannot keep their hands off Australians' hard-earned savings in super. National Security 63 15:03 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the Minister representing the Attorney-General. In light of the answers given today, is it the government's position that the nation's chief law officer was contacted by a known felon who gave notice to the Attorney-General that he would like to contact the leader of a terrorist organisation and the Attorney-General was right to do absolutely nothing about it? 15:04 Ms JULIE BISHOP 83P Curtin The matters to which the member for Isaacs refers were all dealt with by the siege review. There was no criticism of the way the letter was handled within the Attorney-General's department or the reply. The Director-General of ASIO has now examined the matter, and there is no cause for criticism. I question what point the member for Isaacs is trying to make. Does he really believe that this is assisting the families of those killed in that attack? National Security 64 15:04 Mr CRAIG KELLY 99931 Hughes My question is to the Minister for Justice. Will the minister update the House on action the government is taking to counter the threat of violent extremism? 15:04 Mr KEENAN E0J Stirling I thank the member for Hughes for his question—finally today we have a serious question on national security matters. This country is facing a situation where 100 Australians have gone to involve themselves in the conflict in Iraq and Syria; Australia is falling victim to terror being exported in conflicts which are beyond our control; we are facing 155 people supporting these groups from Australia; at least 30 Australians have been killed; there are 400 people of interest to ASIO; six plots have been foiled by the skill of our intelligence and law enforcement community; and there have been two successful terrorist attacks in Australia. In light of those situations, the opposition's stance is that we should have rushed back to our office and had a look at the protocols we have had for dealing with correspondence. That is the serious suggestion that is being put forward by the opposition today. Has there ever been a member in this House whose ego is more out of proportion to their skill and ability than the member for Isaacs? We inherited a degraded national security situation from the previous government—a situation where they had attacked the resourcing and the powers of our agencies, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Crime Commission. They were cut by one-third under the tenure of the former Attorney-General—the most powerful law enforcement agencies in the country cut by fully one third. We have put four tranches of legislation through this parliament to make sure that our intelligence and law enforcement communities have the powers that they need to deal with this threat. We have spent $1.2 billion, in last year's budget and in this budget, making sure that we have the resources to deal with this threat. We have made sure that if you go to an area that we have declared within the conflict zone, and you do not have a legitimate reason for doing so, you could face a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment if you return to Australia. We have made sure that it is easier to list terrorist organisations; so, returning foreign fighters who are linked to them could face 25 years imprisonment. We have a new offence of advocating terrorism, to prohibit intentionally counselling, promoting, encouraging or urging the doing of a terrorist act. We have created control orders so that, if foreign fighters come back to Australia, we can make sure they do not pose a threat to the Australian community. We have lowered the arrest thresholds, which has allowed our agencies to stop those six terrorism plots from going forward. These are the sorts of things that a serious government does when faced with a national security crisis—not the trivial, petty nonsense we have heard from those opposite today. National Security 64 15:07 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs My question is to the Minister representing the Attorney-General. Is it the government's position that, if another known criminal was known to be seeking to make contact with the head of a terrorist organisation, the government would treat this in exactly the same way? A government member: That's a hypothetical question. Government members: Hypothetical. Mr Pyne 9V5 Madam Speaker, on a point of order: one wonders how a minister of any kind could answer such a hypothetical question. Mr Burke DYW On the point of order, Madam Speaker: the questions have gone to the protocols that are adopted by the government. It is a fair question. The SPEAKER 10000 The Leader of the House has made the point that it is hypothetical and therefore in breach of the standing orders. I have listened to the Manager of Opposition Business. I find it is out of order. I call the member for Hinkler. Mr Pitt 148150 My question is the Assistant Minister for Employment— Mr Albanese R36 Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. With respect, I submit to you that the reason why the question is not hypothetical is it is based on the specifics of something that has occurred. The SPEAKER 10000 The member will resume his seat. Mr Albanese R36 and those circumstances— The SPEAKER 10000 The member will resume his seat. Mr Albanese interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 He will resume his seat! The question was clearly hypothetical. Employment 65 15:09 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler My question is to the Assistant Minister for Employment. Will the minister update the House on measures in the budget to support young job seekers, particularly through the national work experience program and the national wage subsidy pool? Are there any alternative views on the value of work experience? 15:09 Mr HARTSUYKER 00AMM Cowper I thank the member for Hinkler for his question. Earlier this week, I informed the House of our national work experience program and the new, more flexible, $1.2 billion wage subsidy program to help young people move from welfare into work—great new measures supported by ACOSS, supported by ACCI and supported by the Brotherhood of St Laurence. In my answer in question time earlier this week, I also informed the House of Labor's lack of policy, regrettably, in relation to youth unemployment—to the point where the Leader of the Opposition, in his budget reply speech, did not even mention the issue of youth unemployment. So we can see that, in the so-called 'year of the big idea', the sum total of their thoughts on youth unemployment is a $20 million pilot program. I further regret having to advise the House that yesterday the opposition leader's puppet-masters, the ACTU, came out against work experience. They came out against work experience. That is despite the fact that young people are saying that their greatest barrier to getting into work is a lack of experience. That is despite the fact that employers are saying that they want to see people with experience presenting at the gates of their businesses. We know that work experience can help young people get into work. In fact, Labor had a limited work experience policy when they were in government. But we have the ACTU opposing this. Unfortunately, the ACTU and Labor are also against Work for the Dole. We know Work for the Dole can give young people the skills to help them on their journey from welfare into work. I know the member for Robertson appreciates the value of Work for the Dole: a constituent in the good member's electorate who was unemployed for 291 weeks got a job after work experience in the Work for the Dole program. The member for Leichhardt understands the importance of Work for the Dole: one of his constituents, unemployed for 395 weeks, moved into paid employment after doing a Work for the Dole placement. That shows the potential that Work for the Dole has to help people into work. We are about getting young people into work. Good-quality work experience through Work for the Dole placements can assist in doing that. We are about solutions to the issues facing young people trying to get into work. The Leader of the Opposition could not even bother to mention it in his budget reply speech. Mr Abbott EZ5 Madam Speaker, after 25 very well answered questions, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS 65 MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS Terendak Cemetery 65 15:12 Mr PYNE 9V5 Sturt by leave—I move: That the House take note of the following document presented on 25 May 2015: Offer of repatriation—Terendak Cemetery—Statement by the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott MP, 25 May 2015. Debate adjourned. BUSINESS 65 BUSINESS Leave of Absence 65 15:13 Mr WILKIE C2T Denison I move: That leave of absence from the determination of this sitting until the end of the current period of sittings be given to the honourable member for Melbourne for parental leave purposes. Question agreed to. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 65 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Health Care 65 15:14 The SPEAKER SE4 I have received a letter from the honourable member for Ballarat proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The Government undermining universal healthcare in Australia. I call upon those 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— 15:14 Ms KING 00AMR Ballarat In 1983, when Labor established Medicare, we were guided by a simple principle: that every Australian should have access to the best quality health care regardless of where they live and regardless of their capacity to pay. Based on the two budgets now delivered by the Abbott government, we now know, sadly, that this is not a principle supported by the other side. We in fact knew that from their history. Given the absolute disaster that occurred with last year's health budget, I could not comprehend how this budget could do more damage. Last year's budget was a budget that was so disastrous for health care and healthcare reform that it led to its minister being voted the worst health minister in 40 years, and by year's end he was gone. Last year's budget ripped $57 billion out of public hospital funding. It gutted preventative health and adult dental programs. It hiked the price of essential medicines and, most notoriously of all, attempted to destroy Medicare by forcing all Australians, even pensioners and children, to pay a tax every time they went to see a GP. Since that time, of course, we have had a $7 GP tax, a $5 GP tax and a $20 GP tax. Now, after being assured that finally the GP tax is dead, that promise is, sadly, about as believable as his original promise that in fact there would be no cuts to health and no new taxes. I can assure you that this budget makes it crystal clear that the GP tax is very much alive and, for many patients, even bigger than the original. Despite more promises that the Prime Minister would make no further changes to Medicare without the support of doctors, the budget makes a very big change that most certainly does not have the support of doctors, patients or anyone who cares about health. That is, of course, the four-year freeze on the indexation of the Medicare benefit schedule. The free rips $1.3 billion out of general practice over the next four years. As TheMedical Journal of Australia revealed earlier this year, that amounts to additional out-of-pocket payments by non-concessional claimants in excess of $8. It means lower bulk billing, bigger gap payments and a continuing attack on Medicare and universal health care. For people accessing specialists or services that are MBS rebateable in public hospitals, it in fact has a significant impact as well. We also have—still within the budget—the hikes to the prices of medicine. Unless the minister can come to the dispatch box and say that is now off the table—not just saying, 'That is something I somehow weirdly inherited from the last minister,' as though he was not a minister of the government and neither is she, that it belongs to somebody else—it is very difficult to believe the government on anything it has to say about the prices of medicine. Of course, these two measures barely scratch the surface of what this government wants to do and has already done to health care in this country. There has literally been no area of health care that is off limits to this budget's razor gang, as was evidenced by the pathetic, small-minded and absurd decision to cut a very modest subsidy going to a very small group of patients who suffer from what is collectively known as inborn errors of metabolism. This cut has saved the budget $3 million. That is right: $3 million a year. And yet for those who receive this payment it means financial and emotional stress for people who already have to carry an enormous burden. Managing these conditions requires a lifetime commitment to a rigid diet of carefully weighed, synthetic, low-protein formulas and foods that are often very expensive to buy: pasta and rice at $10 a packet and cheese that after shipping costs $68 a block. In recognition of this burden, the parliament in 2001 with then Prime Minister John Howard approved a modest subsidy now worth around $250 a month or $3,000 per year which is currently paid to around 900 families. Without any warning or consultation, families across Australia were informed not by the minister or any announcement from the government but in a letter from the Department of Health that the grant would be ceasing. Yesterday I met here with three of the people who will suffer as a result of this cut and heard how it will affect them. One of these people was Kymberley. She is pregnant. Imagine having to cope with the burden of pregnancy and often the concern that that raises for you as you are growing this little person inside you and everything it entails in looking after the health of your baby. Imagine going through that knowing every single piece of food you eat and not getting your diet right could potentially lead to that child having a disability. What a huge burden that young woman is having to deal with and has had to deal with every single day she deals with this disorder. It means you have to check every item and weigh every ingredient of every meal. In the midst of that, with no warning, the government takes away the modest support you receive. Then, when that decision is questioned, the Prime Minister dismisses it by saying you can just use cornflour from the supermarket instead. We now hear that the department is using some different lines to these families: 'Oh, it's an equity issue.' Frankly, again, that is just completely untrue. As well as that cut within the budget, there were dental cuts. Across the two budgets, the government has ripped over half a billion dollars from programs designed to care for the dental health of some of Australia's most vulnerable patients—adults', children's and veterans' dental health programs that have been the subject of much debate through these parliaments. This morning the Leader of the Opposition and visited a dental clinic in Canberra to talk about the $125 million cut from the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. Labor introduced the scheme because it was clear that many children were being denied access to essential dental care. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found 42 per cent of five-year-olds and 61 per cent of nine-year-olds had decay in their baby teeth. It is a national shame. A staggering 58 per cent of 14-year-olds had decay in their permanent teeth. Something needed to be done, so Labor acted. But the Abbott government has just seen an opportunity for another budget cut. And the cuts to children's health, of course, do not stop there. This budget also included a cut of $145 million for the Healthy Kids Check. This means that patients will no longer have access to one-hour appointments with GPs for their checks, which we know have been invaluable in the early detection of asthma, hearing and speech issues as well as other developmental issues. As warned by Sonja Walker, the Director of Kids First Children's Services at Brookvale—in the Prime Minister's own electorate—that decision means families will suffer. Ms Walker told the Manly Daily: "There is an awful lot of kids who have communication difficulties and the opportunity to identify issues early is vital. “Children with a language impairment are six times more likely to have a reading problem.” There is the problem with cutting that program in a nutshell. Fewer health checks mean longer term health problems that deny these kids a decent start in life. This is a short-sighted and callous move from a government that is demonstrating it has no commitment to universal health care. It is a cut to an important children's health program, which goes to demonstrate that this government does not believe in the universal health insurance scheme that is Medicare. It does not believe in Medicare. Another cut that was just as short-sighted was the decision to scrap the after-hours GP helpline. The GP after-hours service offered parents with sick kids and elderly patients a vital back-up service when their GP was not available. It was established by Labor as a 365-day-a-year support service. I want to quote from a letter from one of the GPs who worked in this service. He said: Many times I have helped callers avoid presenting unnecessarily to emergency, and sometimes told the reluctant that they really DID need to go to emergency. I have told people what medications they can use to self treat, or how to get to a medical service. I have helped manage more vomiting adults and crying babies over the phone than I care to remember. Our service was heavily utilised by those without the resources you and I have; the young, poor, refugees, the elderly, the isolated, those with mental health conditions. That was from a GP who had been dedicating his service on that after-hours line. Well, he is not anymore. It was abolished by the Abbott government in a sneaky budget-night hit on families. We see the cuts that are coming to the flexible fund that funds vital programs across public health—programs that are run by Alzheimer's Australia, the Consumer Health Forum and the Public Health Association—and advocacy work to ensure that health reform continues in this country. The cuts to those programs were described by the Public Health Association as a bloodbath, and that is no exaggeration when we see what is happening to prevention. This government should be ashamed of its budget on health. 15:24 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer It is great to be speaking on the MPI this afternoon to defend the government's very strong record on health, to describe the initiatives in our recent budget, so poorly misunderstood by the Labor Party, and to reassure those in the gallery, in the House and listening in the public generally that we have as our No. 1 focus the interests of patients in improving their health, in giving them access to more affordable medicine, in preventing disease and in managing Medicare and the PBS in a sustainable way. I will just go through some of the key points before responding to the member for Ballarat's particular issues. Again, she was demonstrating a very comprehensive misunderstanding of what this government is all about and a misunderstanding of what we in fact did and did not do in our budget. We started with Medicare. We started with the principles of Medicare. It is important that we remind people of what those are: universal in coverage; equitable in distribution of costs; and administratively simple to manage. Those are, indeed, the three principles on which Medicare was built. They are the three principles that will continue to maintain the strong system that we have. It will continue to be universal. It will continue to be equitable. Although we all battle the bureaucracy, we know it will be administratively simple to manage because with administrative complexity comes unnecessary deadweight cost. It is vital that we sustain Medicare. If we look at the spending into the future in the Intergenerational report we see that it is health spending that is the biggest and fastest rising proportion of public spending. While we absolutely have at our core the value of being responsible with our spend, keeping people healthy and giving people access to lifesaving drugs and lifesaving treatments, we have to consider, 'Why is this cost rising so sharply? What can be done to restrain it? How can we do that in a meaningful way that reduces waste and inefficiency?' As I embarked on consultations with members across the medical profession, consumers, patients and everyone with an interest in health generally, they all said to me, 'You talk about waste; we can tell you where it is. We can tell you where there are little pockets and big pockets of inefficiency and where your systems at the federal and state government levels can be improved.' That will be at the heart of the future of health care in this country. Although it is not mentioned very often by the Labor Party, I understand that they could and should be on board with us on this. The reform of the Federation that has been initiated by the Prime Minister gives us a really important opportunity. Reform of the Federation in health is about this: we fund primary care and the states fund the hospital system, but the patient moves seamlessly—we hope—between primary care and hospitals and back out. Sometimes with chronic and complex diseases, they make that journey many times. The artificial nature of the funding in this country has led, we would all agree, to a less than perfect system. That system means that, as you, a patient, get diagnosed by your general practitioner and then admitted to hospital, that two-funding system— Mr Champion interjecting— Ms LEY 00AMN Mr Deputy Speaker, can I ask you to ask the member for Wakefield to shut up? The DEPUTY SPEAKER YT4 Order! The Minister for Health will be heard in silence by both sides. Ms LEY 00AMN The member for Wakefield is not a bad person, but he is a repeat offender in this place when it comes to interruptions. The important point that I am trying to make is that we have to get this right. We have an opportunity to talk constructively to the state governments about how we can do this better. If we keep more people out of hospital, it costs the state hospital system less money. It costs the federal hospital system less money. It costs the federal primary care system less money. Most importantly, it is in the best interests of the patient. It is a win all around. I look forward to the Labor Party working with me on this. When it comes to health in the budget I want to make a few key points. Our investment in health and sport will increase to a total of $69.7 billion, which is an increase of $2.3 billion over the last year. So that is $2.3 billion extra spending in health in just 12 months. Total annual hospital funding, often a subject in this place, also increases by 25 per cent or $3.8 billion over the next four years—despite Labor's repeated scare campaigns. We see the MBS growing to over $21 billion in 2015-16, and we will also spend $10 billion on the PBS. These are record levels of spending in health. We are spending more in health than ever before. That is a good thing but it also means that these challenges confront us. In spite of those challenges, I want to reassure the member for Ballarat, the shadow spokesperson, that on some of the issues that she mentioned as being under fire in this budget she is not correct. I will start with the last thing she mentioned, which was the after-hours primary healthcare arrangements. As many would know, there was in existence a 24-hour phone help service, operated by Healthdirect Australia. This is a triage system, where the nurse answers the phone and decides whether you need to be referred to a doctor. Only 15 per cent of calls to Healthdirect were deemed necessary to be transferred to the GP helpline. So we have made a rephase of the funding. We have not taken the money away. The opportunity to ring the health line will still be there, but instead our primary health networks, which we are setting up on 1 July, will give people a choice, depending on the area in which they operate. Would you prefer to call somebody maybe on the other side of the country—it is always good to have somebody on the end of the phone—or would you prefer to have a local doctor in your own area, available to support you after hours? What we will say to the primary health networks is: you set up the best arrangement for you and we will fund it. No reduced funding in that area. The member for Ballarat mentioned dental health. I need to place some things on the record. Dental health is very important. It is a really vital preventative health area. We are extending the national partnership with the states for a further 12 months, and we are negotiating the content of that national partnership now. This is about the adult public dental services. It will be valued at $155 million and will go for 12 months. As I said in the lead-up to that work on the reform of the federation—the arrangements we make between the Commonwealth and the states—we will incorporate dental health because we are serious about it. In addition, we are continuing access to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. This is important, too, because children are frequently treated in the public system. We are allowing the state governments to access the child dental benefit system for children in the public system and also if they go to their private dentist. Dentists are doing the right thing and effectively bulk-billing children, which means that 96½ per cent of all children who go to see their dentist under this arrangement are not paying any out-of-pocket costs. I wanted to respond to the member for Ballarat on that point. She talked about cheaper medicines. We had some good news about that this week—and I know she was paying close attention. The arrangements that we struck this week—three strategic agreements between the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Medicines Australia and Generic Medicines Industry Association—mean that we will have five years of certainty and five years of clear understanding between us and the manufacturers of medicine about the supply of those medicines to pharmacists. To the general public, these arrangements are somewhat esoteric and behind the scenes, and I understand that; but the point and the purpose of them is that, when patients go to their pharmacy, they continue to get affordable medicines. The reason we need to do this is the numbers of new medicines that are coming onto the PBS, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, that are funded by government. This is the responsible approach we take—and I know that it is shared by the opposition—to listing new medicines. It is something which we are very serious about. It is not done as well in many other countries around the world as it is in Australia. When people are diagnosed with severe life-threatening and life-changing diseases there is the opportunity for them to be able to pay under concession $6.10 per script or, as a general payment for those of us here, $37.70 a script for medicines that may cost $50, $60 or $100,000. In the budget we listed a medicine for third stage late treatment melanoma called Mekinist. The actual value of that medicine is $131,000 a script. I am proud that as a government we can make that available. We need to understand that in order to do that we have to continue to drive down the cost of generic medicines. We have been delighted with the support of the manufacturers of those medicines in understanding that in taking effectively less profits from the system they are enabling the space in the PBS for those listings of medicines. Overall, the many medicines, the commonly used ones, on the PBS are coming down by 50 per cent—a good note on which to end. (Time expired) 15:35 Mr STEPHEN JONES A9B Throsby In September 2013, the electors of Parkes, Page, Lyne and Riverina and, indeed, right throughout regional Queensland voted for National Party members. The fact is that they are still waiting for them to turn up. When they voted for those National Party members, they did it on the basis of the commitments that the National Party members made to their electorate. If ever there has been a land speed record for members of parliament running away from the commitments that they made to the electorate, it has to be granted to the National Party members who were elected to the 44th Parliament. I have in front of me an excellent document, which is an analysis of the some of the promises that were made by National Party members when they went to the 2013 election. I like this one in particular, on page 45 of the Nationals' plan for regional Australia, which states: The Nationals will provide increased financial support for doctors who provide health services in regional and remote communities— wait for it; this is the bit I like— through increased Medicare rebates and scheduled fees loaded on top of regular Medicare billings … The truth could not be further from the promise that they went to the election wit Where are the members for Lyne, Parkes, Page and Riverina and those Queensland country members? Why aren't they up here fighting against the proposal to freeze and cut Medicare rebates? The fact is that those Queensland electors voted for a National Party MP, and they are still waiting for a National Party MP to turn up to this parliament. Like the movie Jaws, the first budget was a shocker and the second is no better—it is still not safe to go back into the water! On top of the $55 billion worth of cuts in the 2014 budget, we have built an additional $2 billion worth of cuts. I have some challenges for those National Party members who purport to represent regional Australia. We have a challenge for them. At a time when it is very difficult to get a dentist at an affordable price in regional Australia, you would expect to see the National Party championing schemes which provide dentists to regional Australia. Instead, in this budget we see cuts to the Dental Relocation and Infrastructure Support Scheme. I expect the National Party to be railing against that with great vigour! At a time when there are shortages in training places in rural and regional Australia, you would expect to see more money going into providing training places for our medical practitioners—not $72.5 million worth of cuts to workforce programs, including the program which is supporting scholarships to people in rural and regional Australia. They are all very good. But the one that really takes the cake is this one. We saw on the Sunday before budget night, with great fanfare, the Assistant Minister for Health, Senator Nash, launch these fantastic new ads, at a cost, we are told, of $20 million, to educate Australians about the danger of ice and methamphetamine use, particularly in rural and regional Australia. We support appropriate evidence based measures which are going to assist people in rural and regional Australia deal with this terrible blight of methamphetamine use. We thought the government were genuine. But not three days later we saw in the budget paper over $500 million worth of cuts to the very funds which are providing resources for drug treatment, rehabilitation and education to prevent and treat and deal with drug addiction, including ice and methamphetamine addiction, throughout the country. Like the movie Jaws and its sequel, it is still not safe to go back into the water. The people of rural and regional Australia are still waiting for their National Party MPs to turn up in this place and defend the health care in their regions and to stick to their promises. 15:40 Dr GILLESPIE 72184 Lyne The National Party is always here defending the interests of our regional and rural constituents. Let us start with our commitment to supporting rural and regional GPs. Just the other day we announced payments under the General Practice Rural Incentives Program. If you are in a very remote or modified Monash 7 region, over five years you will get $60,000 extra. That is much more generous for those general practitioners who turn up in regional towns. That is even better than what we proposed. Opposition members interjecting— Dr GILLESPIE 72184 It is not worse; it is better! Let us turn to the pillars of the universal health care system: the Medicare Benefits Schedule; the pharmaceutical benefits advisory system; and the subsidies on drugs, public hospitals and soon, if we ever salvage it, a personally controlled e-health record. Let us start with the public hospitals. Since the coalition assumed responsibility for the treasury bench, the increases to public hospitals has been six per cent over four years. That is a total of almost 25 per cent more over four years, and $3.8 billion in real terms, for the states for their public hospitals. The member for Maribyrnong made a big song and dance about cuts, but $3.8 billion over four years is not a decrease. In fact all of the arguments about the so-called cuts to the states are based on calling a smaller increase a cut. To me a cut means you get less than you got last year. It is like the guy who gets promised a $100 a week pay rise from his boss and then, two weeks later, the situation changes and the boss comes in and says, 'I can only give you an $80 a week increase.' Members on the other side would call that a $20 cut instead of an $80 increase! They are simple principles. Mr Conroy 249127 Do you hate workers? Dr GILLESPIE 72184 We do not hate workers! We support workers all over the place. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme: 652 approvals versus 331. Do you know who did 652? Was it them? No! It was the Minister for Health, who spoke here earlier. The ministry of health has approved 652 new drugs since the coalition was put in charge of administering the health system—$1.3 billion in the last round and $3 billion over 18 months. We have new drugs for melanoma, cystic fibrosis, pancreatic cancer, eye disease, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, various forms of rare kidney disease and kidney cancer and breast cancer. We have done this because we have managed the budget well. There are over 5½ thousand items on the Medicare Benefits Schedule. We are criticised for damaging that system. But people seem to have very short memories on the other side, including the member for Sydney, the previous health minister. I think most of Australia was not listening and had given up on the Labor Party before the last election. In the last budget that the Labor Party brought down for health—they criticised us for freezing the indexation—the member for Sydney froze it! It was not us. That in itself was $667 billion out of health. The dental scheme has come up for criticism. I just looked at the budget papers before I came in here. The payments for the national partnership on health with the states amounts to $155 million, and the child dental benefit takes it up to over $200 million. Access to drugs involves the community pharmacy agreement, which the minister and the ministry has just completed with the guild. The pharmaceutical industry continues to negotiate and there will be, hopefully, a complete resolution of the funding arrangements. Whether you look at one pillar or all of them, the facts are— (Time expired) 15:45 Mr CHAMPION HW9 Wakefield I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the government's budget, which is just like last year, a triumph of Orwellian bravado. There is no greater proponent of Orwellian bravado in this country than the Prime Minister. We know that every time he gets into trouble he puffs himself up and out he goes for a fight with someone. It does not matter who, it does not matter where, that is his MO. We know that, as part of that Orwellian bravado, we get his outlandish statements. Today we saw some of it on coding. Of course, we have seen it on Medicare as well. On 3 March he said: 'We are determined that this government will be, as the former Howard government was, the best friend that Medicare ever had.' He was not just happy enough to embark on bravado for his own government, he had to do it for the Howard government as well. We know that bravado has a really poisonous effect in the community. Let's have a look at the election platform of the Liberal Party for the last election called Real solutions for all Australians. I just love it because it has the subheading: 'The direction, values and policy priorities in the next coalition government'. It is a wonderful thing. If you go to section 16 'Delivering better health services'— Government members interjecting— Mr CHAMPION HW9 This is what is in it. This is your election platform. It has: 'Improving the performance of public hospitals; improving mental health services; funding diabetes research; improving access to medicines; improving private health insurance; and bringing dental into Medicare.' That is what is in it. There is nothing about doctor co-payments, nothing about hacking into children's benefit schedules and nothing about cuts. There is none of that here. This was your election manifesto. This is what you took to the people at the last election. We know that the Liberal Party has great form, particularly on universal health care, of saying one thing and doing another, because it is what they have been doing for the better part of 40 years. We had the Fraser government tell us that they were going to keep Medibank. In 1976 we had Medibank 2; in 1978 we had Medibank 3; in 1979 we had Medibank 4; and in 1981 they abolished Medibank. So, that tells you about their commitment all those years ago. What do they say in opposition? What did Howard say? He said: 'Medicare was a miserable cruel fraud, a scandal, a total and complete failure, a quagmire, a total disaster, a financial monster, and a human nightmare.' In 1987 he said that he would pull Medicare apart. In 1987 he said that he would restrict bulk billing to pensioners and those on the welfare safety net. Mr Taylor interjecting— Mr CHAMPION HW9 Of course, we know what happened in the intervention, and Angus just asked me what happened? Well, Fightback happened. We know that in a burst of honesty— Mr Stephen Jones interjecting— Mr CHAMPION HW9 'Uncharacteristic honesty' as the member for Throsby says. They said in Fightback that the best way to contain services is to introduce a price signal for health services. Bulk billing will be abolished with the exception of four million pensioners, healthcare card holders and the disabled. In a brief burst of honesty in 1993 they were actually honest and upfront about what they were going to do. What happened? Well, they did not get in. So, they went back to the other plan they have which was to be completely disingenuous about universal health care, completely disingenuous, and to embark, as I said before, on Orwellian bravado. Where are we today. Well, we have had $60 billion in cuts, we know that, and we have $2 billion extra in this year's budget. The President of the AMA, in talking about Medicare rebates said, 'If rebates don't rise, these costs will have to be passed on in out-of-pocket expenses. We'll see less bulk billing and there'll be the possibility of seeing a co-payment by stealth.' So we know where they are going. They are going to charge consumers more, and send out price signals. If you think this budget is any better than the last budget, then you are a mug. All it is is the Prime Minister's Orwellian bravado and his bull dust. 15:50 Mr LAMING E0H Bowman It is nice to wind up the week with a health discussion. Let me just say that all the good people are in here this afternoon; all the people with a heart for the health system. The people at home and in the gallery will be pleased to know that the $120 billion health system has bipartisan passion. You also need a little bit of memory. I think today is probably a good time to do a little shout out to a few Australians—those who were hoping to have their teeth fixed under the CDDS and had it ripped out from under them for the dreadful crime, no less, of having a job. Having a job made them ineligible under the Labor scheme and they ripped out their dental care. Let's do a little shout out to medical graduates. Remember those medical graduates that could not get an internship under the Labor Party? They were left until the last moment. We had privately funded overseas medical students flying home because they could not get an internship. Let's have a little shout out to them as well. How about the lovely pensioner couples who were told they could not get a cataract operation? Let's have a shout out to them. Remember we cut the rebate in half? Nickel and diming the health system. I remember Nicola Roxon: 'Let's just slash the Medicare rebate for cataract operations in half and see how it goes.' At the same time that cuts in half, there is the payment to the private hospital to do a cataract operation. All those Australians have very long memories. These guys may well have their talking points from the Labor Party. Every time there is a desperate week with nothing to talk about in the opposition, there is a little frisson of excitement when they find that there might be someone who missed out on a welfare pavement—'We can make a story about that. We can get that one rolling'—and somehow it just does not get reported again. In health it is pretty complex—multi-jurisdictional economics, private sector, public sector, private operators, highly technological innovations in health. All of it has to be funded, and I will let you know today that Australia is doing very well, thank you very much—not much to do with six years of absent landlord management from the Labor Party. Let's look at that side of the parliament and see how much health experience is over there. I am peering over there. I see a diligent union rep over there. The member for Bendigo is a member of passion for social services. She is here today. I can see the member for Griffith—a massive intellect. I think she would barely know the visiting hours at her local hospital. Do we have anyone else there who even knows their way to an emergency ward or could find their way to ICU? The only thing up there is your argument, Labor Party. Your argument belongs in intensive and critical care. This is a complex area—let's face it; it is health—but you are guilty by omission today of not being clear about your very own cuts. This is a massively exciting moment in health as we have moved towards health performance. There is the National Health Performance Authority—one of the 11 that you guys created or extended and almost forgot for a minute. There are thousands of public servants who say thank you for our jobs in the agencies—'Thank you for creating thousands of jobs and the double-dipping of PPL that we got along with it. Thank you very much for that.' More jobs created, more water bubblers in the public sector, and more places to sit around in the tea room and talk about the health care you should be delivering on the front line but do not, because you are working in an agency that was not making an ounce of difference to health care in Australia. Let's get back to the doctors, to the nurses, to the students who are the doctors, nurses and allied health practitioners of tomorrow. They know we need early intervention, and the best that this side could to was a preschool health check for four-year-olds. That is right—that is when health started, wasn't it? A preschool check at the age of four. They are virtually abandoning children between the age of 18 months and four years. There is no plan for early intervention. That was a government that presided over nothing more than extending and expanding agencies and cutting Medicare rebates in half, and now they have the gall to accuse us of something similar. Far more than that, what is happening now is a rational conversation with general practitioners who, far from what you are saying, are not marching in the street. General practitioners know that we are talking about improving the Medicare system through a review, improving chronic disease management and reducing the 635,000 avoidable hospital admissions. We are in constructive dialogue, but you guys never have been, because you burnt off your connections to the health sector within an hour of being elected. You are a Labor Party that is all talk about entitlements and rights to payments and nothing about self-responsibility—looking after one's own health and one's family's health and making sure we can have the best services possible in our communities. 15:55 Mr GILES 243609 Scullin I am very pleased to join this important debate on a critical issue: the government's undermining of universal health care in Australia. How very interesting to be able to follow the contribution of the member for Bowman. There are probably two things I should say in respect of his contribution. The first is that I am sure it is a great loss to the medical profession and his former patients that he is with us here. I am very disappointed for them and a little bit disappointed for his constituents as well. Can I also say, with respect to the member for Bowman, that he has changed his tune. Not all that long ago he was standing shoulder to shoulder with government members fighting the GP tax, or at least one of its many iterations—standing up for universal health care, a stance that I commend him for, but I think he declared victory a little too early. Maybe you have been reprogrammed, because those comments you made at the end did not seem to me to be terribly consistent with any support for universal health care. It is quite the reverse. It was almost a plea for the Americanisation of our healthcare system, which is very disappointing. The Prime Minister did something interesting today—probably a few things of interest. He called for a national conversation on what it means to be Australian. I think this debate is an opportunity to take the Prime Minister up on that offer, because I think a big part of what it means to be Australian is our egalitarian ethos, our concern for fairness and our concern for all of us. At the core of that is our innate sense that access to health care must be based on need and not wealth. Universal health care is at the core of Australia's social compact and it is a stark dividing line between our political parties. Labor stands for universal health care. The conservative parties—while they mouth some weasel words and dissemble from time to time, as we saw at the end of the member for Bowman's contribution and as we saw throughout the minister's contribution—have no regard for universal health care. They have plenty of form in this regard. It goes right back to the 1970s. Last year I was very pleased in the parliament to celebrate 30 years of Medicare, but, in making that celebration I reflected, as other Labor members did, that it should have been a 40th birthday party. Interestingly, the parallels are quite acute. In 1975, opposition leader Fraser promised to keep Medibank. What did he do after the election? Does anyone remember? He broke his promise and ripped up universal health care. In 2013, we had a very similar approach. We had a Prime Minister who promised no cuts to health and promised to be the best friend of Medicare, but instead, by his actions and the actions of his government under two failed health ministers, proved exactly the opposite—ripping apart bulk-billing through ceaseless attacks on people's capacity to access primary health care without having to pay. There were five attempts at introducing a GP tax through the front door and now, in this budget, we see the back door is the approach—a GP tax by stealth. Members opposite and the government do not resile from their attacks on universal health care and do not resile from their attacks on Medicare, despite weasel words to the contrary. We saw that throughout last year, through the attacks on access to GPs, through attacks on preventative health and through $60 billion in cuts to the health system. This year's budget is really a continuation. We are seeing more of the same. The cuts to dental care will have a shocking impact on children. Anyone in the parliament who was here for the contribution of the shadow minister, the member for Ballarat, could not but feel our sense of responsibility to do more for young children and their teeth. The life consequences are just so drastic. I think about the cuts to workforce. I think about the $1 billion of cuts going to important preventative health projects. Across all this there is one key theme. Whatever words government members mouth, they have no commitment to universal health care. Only the Labor Party stands for Medicare. That was true in the 1970s; it was true in the 1980s, when at least John Howard was honest enough to say what he meant; and it is true in 2015. We will send to the Australian people a real values signal, and that is that we will fight for this critical element of the Australian settlement. 16:00 Mr TEHAN 210911 Wannon I think we need a change in title for this MPI here this afternoon. It should be 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story'. What we have heard from those on the other side is just stories. Calling them stories is being kind to them—it is fairytales. What sort of world do you live in? You come in here making up all these facts and figures which are not true. Let's just have a look at some facts. Then I want to go into some details, because those opposite also mentioned what is happening to health in regional and rural Australia. It is something I know a little bit about. I would like to point out some facts on that. Let's just have a look at the real truth. The Abbott government's investment in health and sport will increase to a total of $69.7 billion in 2015-16, an increase of $2.3 billion over the last year—fact. Spending on Medicare is set to increase again this year to over $21 billion—fact, not fairytale. Dental: this government is providing more than $200 million in the 2015-16 budget for state and territory dental services over the next 12 months to allow for reform work to be undertaken. It is very interesting, because there was a doorstop this morning and the Leader of the Opposition decided that he should play politics with dental services. He said that, even though $200 million has been given to the states, there is a cut occurring. Then he was asked by a journalist, 'So what is your policy on providing increased dental services to the Australian people?' I waited and waited, and he talked and talked. I thought, 'We have heard about all these new ideas.' I waited and I waited. Nothing—not even a commitment to provide one, nothing. Mr Frydenberg FKL Any road will get you there! Mr TEHAN 210911 Exactly—any road will get you there, I suppose. Maybe it will. We had the member for Throsby try to talk in fairytales about what is happening in regional and rural Australia—something I know a little bit about. Under the previous Labor government, fact: Labor cut $1.4 million to South West Healthcare in Warrnambool in my electorate. Western District Health Service lost over $400,000. East Grampians Health Services lost $180,000. Mr Frydenberg FKL Because it's not in one of those Labor electorates. Mr TEHAN 210911 It is not in one of those Labor electorates. So I think the member for Ballarat was maybe focused on directing funding to Labor electorates. The Auditor-General thought so. What happened when we wanted to build an integrated cancer care centre? The state government put in $15 million. The local community put in $5 million. They went to the federal government and said, 'Would you put in $10 million?' Silence—absolute silence. What had to happen? A coalition government had to be elected federally to deliver the $10 million, and that integrated cancer care centre is now being built. It is being constructed. What did we get from the other side when they were asked to provide for that? Nothing, not a brass razoo. They would not know a regional or rural electorate if they fell over one. That is the truth. So let's put an end to these fairytales, to these stories, and get back to the facts. There will be more funding delivered into our health services this year than has ever been delivered in this nation's history. That is the fact. You might not like it over there, but do not come in here making up stories, making up fairytales, when you know them to be untrue. Come in here with the real data and let's have a proper argument. 16:05 Ms HALL 83N Shortland It is a great pleasure to follow the contribution of the member for Wannon. I would like to encourage every person listening to this debate to visit the ABC Fact Check site and have a look at how those facts that the member for Wannon was talking about stand up. If there were a website that looked at fairytales, I think you would find that his contribution would feature very strongly. The member for Wannon talks about the massive increases in health spending. What I would say to the member for Wannon is: why do the budget papers show there are savings in health? How can there be increased spending yet there are savings? Surely savings equate to cuts. Prior to the last election the Prime Minister said 'no cuts to health'. But what we have seen is cut, cut, cut. The one thing that all Australians know is that you cannot trust the Prime Minister, you cannot trust this government—for that matter, you cannot trust any coalition government when it comes to health, particularly when it comes to ensuring the future of Medicare. I have been in this place for a little while. I remember when the Prime Minister was the Minister for Health. He used to stand up in this place and he would have a smile on his face. No, it was not a smile; he had a smirk on his face. I think you would have to say that. He would stand up there, look across the House and say, 'I am the best friend that Medicare ever had,' as he continue to attack it, attack it and attack it. He has never supported Medicare and those on the other side of this parliament have never supported Medicare. They do not believe in it. They do not believe in universal health care. That is what Medicare is: a universal healthcare system, one that is available for all Australians. It is not a safety net. It is not there for only those people who cannot afford to purchase health. Those on the other side of this House want people to pay for their health care with their bank card, not their Medicare card. We do not believe in that. We believe it is the right of every Australian to have decent health care. It should not be dependent on whether or not you can afford it. Despite the rolled gold guarantees that the Prime Minister gave when he was Minister for Health, we see that Medicare is yet again under attack. I might say that it is only the Prime Minister and this government that can get pensioners out onto the streets to protest about its action and its cuts to Medicare. Pensioners and families all revolted against this government. We have had the $125 million cut to the Child Dental Benefits Schedule. Dental care for children is important. It ensures good dental health for life. It is not just something that is $1,000 for a child that comes for a family who cannot afford dental health; it is about saving money into the future. I heard the member for Bowman talking about the cuts to the child health assessments. The reason that there is a health assessment for four-year-olds is that that is one of those milestones in a child's life. It is a time where the health of that child, as to whether they are developing properly, needs to be assessed. This government is attacking Medicare. Liberals always attack bulk-billing. Liberals always cut health spending. Liberals promise they will not and coalition members promised that they will not; but the one thing that all Australians know is that no matter what the coalition says and no matter what they write, you should look at the bottom line and look at what they do, not what they say. 16:10 Mr TAYLOR 231027 Hume In 20 years of working in the private sector before coming into parliament, one of the things I learned very early on is that an effective service has to be a sustainable one. Those opposite promised the Australian people a lot. But the question we have all got to ask ourselves is, 'Is any of it sustainable?' I have learnt over the last little while that they have got a couple of tricks. Trick No. 1 is to make sure you promise lots out beyond the four-year estimates, because no-one makes you accountable for that. Trick No. 2 is to put in place taxes that do not generate any revenue, because you can promise the future without ever actually delivering it. I was interested in particular as to how sustainable their healthcare policies were. I went to the Parliamentary Budget Office, who looked back at the Labor years and the rate of growth of spending under the Labor. I discovered that public hospital spending growth was at six per cent a year. Bear in mind that GDP is significantly lower than that. When we go to the MBS, it is nine per cent a year. The PBS—which was their best performer—was at about GDP growth, which is five per cent a year. The total is much faster than GDP. A simple mathematical fact is that when you spend at a rate faster than GDP, then your debt and deficit grows and it is no longer sustainable. I asked myself, 'What is it about the Labor Party that means that they have this kind of spending growth?' Bear the comparison in mind that our spending growth is about one per cent a year. I thought I would turn to the ANAO, because it is a pretty trusted and independent auditor of government spending. I looked through their reports and I discovered some crackers. The first was on GP super clinics. It turns out that the Labor Party promised 75 GP super clinics over two rounds. Mr Tehan 210911 How many? Mr TAYLOR 231027 Seventy-five over two rounds. In classic bureaucratic understatement, the ANAO said that: The time taken from the execution of funding agreements to the completion of clinics has varied considerably … It turns out that over a third were subject to non-competitive practices. The ANAO made clear that there were very significant risks in this. Even more interesting, it turns out that 66 per cent of the funding promised in the 2007 election went to marginal electorates and there were only 31 per cent of electorates that were marginal. By complete coincidence, it turns out that these GP super clinics—which never actually happened—went to marginal seats. What a program that was! I thought I would turn to another one: the ANAO had a look quite recently the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement. This was negotiated under the last government. It was a $15.4 billion agreement. Again, in characteristic bureaucratic understatement, the ANAO said that overall the administration of the agreement: … has been mixed, and there is a limited basis for assessing the extent to which the 5CPA has met its key objectives … That is because there were none! There were no objectives. When you are Labor, you do not bother with objectives. You might be held to account! In other words, if you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there. According to the ANAO, a number of objectives were only partly realised and there have been shortcomings in key aspects. Labor promised that there would be $1 billion in savings, but the ANAO was disappointed to find that it was closer to $0.4 billion dollars due to shortcomings in estimation methodology. Then I turned to another one: e-health. How did that go? A billion dollars was spent and there were no results. It turns out that for a billion dollars we got 4,000 records. That is $250,000 a record. I wish that I had been paid for creating records; I would be much richer than I am today. Even worse, as University of Western Australia software academic David Glance has told us, even if the government had reached its targets, it would have been a meaningless gesture. Those opposite love meaningless gestures. The vast majority of those who signed up, if they ever get to logging in—and I have to say that I never logged in—will be greeted with an empty record. The thing did not work. Given the lack of active participation on the part of GPs, as well as the lack of public hospital systems to integrate with the system, there is little evidence to suggest that anything is going on. There is nothing going on there. In the MBS the ANAO found similar levels of waste under Labor. Contrast this with our wonderful Minister for Health. She is moving forward in containing spending growth and delivering improving health outcomes, because only we understand what it takes to provide sustainable services. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 99931 The time for the discussion has concluded. MOTIONS 75 MOTIONS Centenary of Anzac 75 16:15 Mrs WICKS 241590 Robertson As I was saying earlier, I was really pleased to attend so many of the services that were held in my community of Robertson on Anzac Day itself, beginning, of course, with the incredible dawn service organised by the Terrigal Wamberal RSL Sub-Branch, which was held on Terrigal Beach itself. Thousands of people were out at dawn, and one of the most memorable and moving parts of this service—in addition to the schoolchildren who laid wreaths, and to the many representatives and returned servicemen and women who laid wreaths—was the sight of 12 surf-lifesaving boats coming to shore, representing and re-enacting the landing at Gallipoli. It was an incredibly moving moment. Of course, there were many other dawn services held around the Central Coast that day, including by the Davistown RSL, by the Gosford RSL and at Woy Woy. There were special commemorations all around the community, including at the Tarragal Glen Retirement Village in Erina, organised by Eric Flood; at Ettalong, a moving morning service organised by the Vietnam Veterans Peacekeepers and Peacemakers Association of Australia on the Central Coast; at Pine Needles retirement village at Erina, and I thank Alan Redding for that; at Woy Woy, a morning service organised by the Woy Woy Ettalong-Hardy's Bay RSL Sub-Branch. There were other services as well, including in Gosford, Hardys Bay and Pearl Beach. One of the most special aspects of Anzac Day in my community is the service that is held at Macmasters Beach at five o'clock as the sun goes down right on the beach there. It reminds you very much of Gallipoli. It is an incredibly moving service, and it is always a memorable occasion. Even if we were seeing thunder and lightning go off as The Ode was read and some other things were happening, it was a very special moment. I do thank Vince Roberts and the organising committee. Of course, there are so many young people who also commemorate Anzac Day, and they want to know more about our history and the legacy of the men and women who have served our country. Time only permits me to mention two such services. One was at Holy Cross Catholic School in Kincumber, where they not only had a very moving service, but they also secured an Anzac Centenary local grant to construct a plinth monument and a memorial garden. I do want to say thank you to the principal, Gerard McGilvray, and to the teacher, Kelvin Maxwell, who helped organise this. The other, of course, was at Chertsey Primary School in Springfield, with another Anzac Centenary local grant. They had a local sculptor and parent, Michael Vaynman, create a beautiful sculpture of poppies and a slouch hat, in the garden at the entrance to the school. It really is a spectacular and memorable sculpture. I thank the principal, Toni Skinner, and Ann Dore as well. Finally, I also acknowledge the work of Peter Rae and the Central Coast Marine Discovery Centre, who received a grant to construct a travelling education World War I exhibition. In closing, I thank the members of the Robertson Electorate Anzac Day Grants Committee, who served us tirelessly and well, including Mal Brian, Greg Mawson, Patsy Edwards, John Green, David Ferry, Peter White, Bob Ilhein, Councillor Gabby Bowles and Bevan Router. I also acknowledge the life of Mick Waddell, a former president of Terrigal Wamberal RSL Sub-Branch, who, sadly, passed away in December of last year. He gave tirelessly and willingly of his time and his friendship to all who knew him, and he is greatly missed. May he rest in peace. These Anzac Day commemorations around our community demonstrate that, together in the electorate of Robertson, we will ensure that the legacy of those who served—and of the men and women who continue to serve our country in Australia and, indeed, right around the world—will not be forgotten. Lest we forget. 16:20 Mr HUSIC 91219 Chifley Every year, early on cold mornings we silently express the words, 'Lest we forget' yet 25 April is always a powerful day of remembrance. We remember on that day, 1915 Australia, with a modest population of five million. Out of that five million, one million were men. Out of that one million, 420,000 enlisted for service, 330,000 left our shores and only 270,000 returned, and of those over 150,000 had been physically wounded—an exacting toll on a young nation. In the parts of Western Sydney that I represent, it had an even greater toll, given the size of the population in our part of Australia. Time is always taken to pay homage to those 60,000 Australians—who fought in the Gallipoli campaign and who fought valiantly alongside our dear friends from New Zealand—and the 9,000 who died, the 20,000 who were wounded, and the countless others who were forced to carry the dark memory of that day from that point on. It was that toll and, importantly, that sacrifice and service that continually draws out more and more people to attend Anzac dawn services. This year it was a privilege for me, as it was for all of us in this House, to attend our respective dawn services. But it was particularly a moving event for me. At Rooty Hill the RSL had brought together people for the dawn service; it had moved the dawn service from Pinegrove at Minchinbury to the actual RSL itself They had estimated 5,000 would attend; in the end, 10,000 attended. It was the single greatest gathering of locals that I have seen—and I grew up in the area. People of all ages, from the very young to the very old, were all there to pay their respects; they may have been families of veterans, but there were many who were not. We were Australians one and all, and there for a singular purpose: to remember the toll exacted on a young nation but also to pay deep respect to the values embodied by those who have served through the years. Wreaths were laid at the foot of a new war memorial at Rooty Hill RSL as decorated war veterans paid their respects. The service ended with the official opening of the club's new war memorial and cenotaph—a fitting and tasteful memorial that will serve the area very well. The memorial echoes and reflects the community's respect for the Anzac tradition. The success of the opening demonstrated how deeply the community cares that our service men and women are properly respected, and honoured the contributions of all those who have served through Australia's various military campaigns. It will be a permanent reminder of those who fought in World War I and other conflicts. The monument traces the history of the club too, and hails the veterans who had the vision to organise the RSL as their second home in the then rural Rooty Hill. Last year Rooty Hill RSL actually celebrated 50 years of existence; there were 124 people, mainly veterans, who joined together to form the club. I want to acknowledge the great work of the sub-branch, the RSL itself, headed by chairman Ray Johns, and its management team, headed by Richard Errington. I have deep regard for the management, the sub-branch and all the members who have made this one of the great RSLs of this country. The fact that they had worked so tirelessly with so many people to put together such an incredibly moving and special event is a great credit to all of them. Our community expresses a deep gratitude for the way in which they conducted that event. In the week leading into Anzac Day we also had the opportunity to recognise a number of organisations that have got together to leverage off the Anzac Centenary Local Grants Program. A number of members have reflected on the success of the program in the local area. In Chifley, there was a $26,000 grant for the Anzac Centenary Walk in Mount Druitt Park's remembrance garden. It was established as a result of some hard work by the Mount Druitt Historical Society, Colyton Public School and the Blacktown City Council. Colyton Public School is over 100 years old and a historical landmark in our area; it also provides quality education today. The new principal, Greg O'Neill, was present at the event that unveiled the actual walk. Blacktown City Council championed the grant and brought everyone together. The Anzac Centenary Walk features five monuments with the stories of local soldiers who fought in Gallipoli back in 1915. Each monument complements the existing World War 1 roll of honour monument that lists the names of Mount Druitt diggers from World War I. One of those soldiers was James Weir, who had not been entirely up-front about his age—enlisting at the age of 11! Three years later, aged 14, he sailed to join the war effort. It was fabled that young James kept falling over when he tried to fire a rifle and was made a bugler in response to this. He survived World War I and, in 1942, his family migrated to Australia as Ten Pound Poms and started a new life in Mount Druitt. His youngest son, Philip, is a Mount Druitt Historical Society patron. Another local remembered was Owen Wallace Baker. The Baker family lived on Chatsworth Road in Rooty Hill. Owen enlisted in the AIF on 8 March 1916. He eventually became a stretcher bearer, but fought alongside the diggers for a strenuous eight months. In July 1917, he was unfortunately killed in action by shellfire. Soldiers like Stephen Shadlow are also commemorated. Shadlow, a former bricklayer, landed in Gallipoli on the first night, 25 April, after serving in previous expeditions. On 29 April, during heavy shelling along the Anzac front line, he was killed by shellfire. His cousin's daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Shadlow, spoke on behalf of the family when the Anzac Centenary Walk was dedicated. She expressed the family's appreciation of the recognition given to him. She said, 'Shadlow has been a long-respected name in the area, and I am proud and honoured he hasn't been forgotten.' His sacrifice is remembered in both the Lone Pine Memorial and Colyton Public School's roll of honour. Another infamous Mount Druitt local I have spoken about previously in this place, John Barney Hines—who had developed a fearsome reputation—was also recognised on the day. He had been recognised for his courage and valour. But he passed away, on his own, in a humpy in Mount Druitt. He was eventually recognised last year by Governor Marie Bashir. His grave had been unmarked, but a tombstone was placed there in November last year in a very moving service. There were many other service men and women who served in WWI from other parts of Chifley. Almost 900 men and women from Blacktown volunteered to participate in World War I, and 136 of them were killed in action or died of wounds, disease or accidents. Finally, I want to recognise the contribution of our nation's first people in World War I. There were so many from our area who served. Despite Army rules designed to prevent Aboriginal Australians from enlisting, many fought for a country that they loved. But they were given very little honour on return. Despite the barrier, a large number of Aboriginal Australians enlisted. The original estimated number of 400 has risen to more than 1,000. It is important to recognise their contribution. All in all, this war took a devastating toll on our nation. We rightly pause to remember. A few years after these terrible events, Sir John Monash wondered aloud whether we would remember. I believe Monash would be proud of a nation that has never forgotten. We will always remember them. Debate interrupted. ADJOURNMENT 77 ADJOURNMENT Climate Change 77 16:30 Ms PARKE HWR Fremantle At the end of this year, 196 countries will converge on Paris in pursuit of an effective global deal on action to cut greenhouse emissions and keep global warming to less than two degrees by the end of the century. The United States has already submitted its target to reduce emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2025. China and the EU have also committed to significant reductions. Meanwhile, the Abbott government remains coy about the commitment it is prepared to make ahead of the Paris conference. In that respect, the story remains the same: while Australia has the highest per capita emissions in the world, this government refuses to take responsibility for our role in the advancing global crisis. So far this year we have seen the first instalment of the government's plan to pay polluters, with the announcement that 43 firms will be handed $660 million dollars to reduce 43 million tonnes of carbon. The Minister for the Environment has claimed that buying emission reductions will allow Australia to easily meet its target of cutting five per cent on 2000-level emissions by 2020—but there has been plenty of analysis to indicate this is more front than fact: the low-hanging fruit is likely now gone so future abatement will come at a higher cost, and on that basis the remaining Direct Action funds will not get us there. This means we will either miss our target or the government will have to pay polluters more to achieve it. What is more, only a small fraction of the recent carbon emission reduction contracts deliver within five years—which of course means the government has agreed to pay for emissions beyond the current target deadline. How much, we simply do not know. What we do know is that the government continues to undermine and obscure the need for action to address global warming. It appointed an out-and-out climate change denier to head the review into the Renewable Energy Target; it has repeatedly insisted that burning and exporting more and more coal is at the heart of our economic future; it scrapped the Climate Commission; and recently it blocked efforts by France, the US and the UK to repeal subsidies of new coal-powered stations in Asia. And in their recent energy white paper the coalition has done something truly exceptional—it has made Howard-era policy on climate look progressive. Where the Howard government included a whole chapter on climate change, this government mentions it just once. What is more, they deny their own economically rationalist nature in stalling climate change action in the name of economic costs, partly through framing, cherry-picking, and misrepresenting a range of analyses that actually show that early, effective action will always cost less. On this subject, Richard Denniss recently wrote: The government has used the IGR, the National Commission of Audit, the budget, the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook, and the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook to scare the public into accepting that we can never afford to tackle climate change or spend more on health, no matter how rich we become. The coalition selectively ignores the economic damage likely to be inflicted by climate change—including loss of agricultural viability, damage to coastal property and the impact on the tourism industry—let alone the likely security and health costs. It also chooses to ignore the opportunities in the clean energy sector and watch passively while other countries steal a march in developing their renewable energy sectors. More and more evidence suggests that decoupling emissions from growth is possible. Building on the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate continues to debunk the myth of a trade-off between growth and climate action; in fact, it emphasises the economic benefits of building a low carbon economy. Considering the fact that the Abbott government regularly features both 'future generations' and 'hard choices' in its rhetoric, they have been deeply hypocritical when it comes to the principal threat to future generations. Breezily dismissive of evidence, the coalition seems to combine wishful thinking, suspicion of the scientific method, a cosy relationship with lobbyists and a profound indifference on matters of climate science. This is a toxic combination of lazy thinking and undue influence. The World Bank has outlined five ways to reduce the drivers of climate change: (1) put a robust price on carbon; (2) remove fossil fuel subsidies; (3) accelerate energy efficiency and renewable energy use; (4) build resilient low-carbon cities; and (5) implement climate-smart agriculture and nurture forest landscapes. At a time when—however briefly—there was bipartisan recognition of the extreme danger, human impact and cost of climate change, the Labor government put Australia well and truly on the path to implementing those kinds of measures. As the Essential poll from Tuesday indicates, support in the Australian community for effective action on climate change remains clear, it remains strong. The stakes at the Paris summit on climate change this December are extremely high and common sense says that Australia should play a leading role in urging nations to join in the necessary effort. We can only do that if we take a leading approach in our own policymaking. We therefore urge the government to put politics aside and start acting with responsibility and leadership before it is too late. Small Business 78 16:34 Mr COLEMAN 241067 Banks I take the opportunity this afternoon to thank the small business community in my electorate of Banks for everything that it does for our community. We have more than 13,000 small businesses in Banks, all the way up from sole traders, and that very strong business base enables us to have one of the strongest local economies anywhere in Australia. The unemployment rate in Banks is just 3.8 per cent, according to the latest statistics, which puts Banks in the top 10 electorates in Australia. I have started small businesses, I have advised small businesses, I have employed people in small businesses and I know that when small business is strong Australia is strong. In the budget, led by the small business minister we have put in place some important and exciting initiatives for small business in my electorate and around the country. The reduction in the company tax rate of 1.5 per cent for small business, or a five per cent reduction for unincorporated businesses, the $20,000 instant asset write-off capacity, the ability to make technical ownership changes without triggering a capital gains tax event, which has historically been a problem for small business, and the fact that you can expense all of your start-up costs immediately have been very well received in my community. I want to explain a bit more about my small business community and how it has benefited. The hub of the small business community in the Banks electorate is the suburb of Hurstville. Hurstville is one of the largest centres anywhere in Sydney—we have literally hundreds of small businesses based in and around Forest Road, our main street. Those small businesses are very well represented by peak bodies like the Hurstville Chamber of Commerce, led by Lou Konjarsky; and the Southern Region Chinese Business Association, which has many active members in my community. Recently, I had the Minister for Small Business in Hurstville, and we held a small business forum. One of the largest sectors in the small business community in Hurstville is education. The community of Banks is a community that highly prizes education, and there are a significant number of tuition businesses based in and around the Hurstville area. They employ numerous people. They serve literally hundreds of families in my region, many of them families that make sacrifices to provide additional educational opportunities for their children. At that forum we were hosted by one of those education businesses, Sigi Learners. The good news from Sigi Learners that day was that they will be using the new instant asset write-off policy to purchase more high-tech equipment to assist in the education of their students. That is good news for Sigi Learners; it is good news for the businesses they are going to buy that high-tech equipment from; and it is indeed good news for the families of the students. Just down the road in Mortdale, we have another important commercial hub. Mortdale has a thriving shopping strip and an industrial area filled with smaller manufacturing and related businesses. The Mortdale shopping area serves numerous suburbs in my electorate, such as Peakhurst, Lugarno, Penshurst and Oatley. One of the best known businesses in Mortdale is BuzzBar Espresso; owner Matt Alderton runs not only the cafe but also a video store and Subway franchise. He is a very busy fellow. Matt recently spoke with the St George Leader about the benefits of the budget for his business. He said: I have been putting off upgrading our dining chairs and tables, and also purchasing several items of equipment for the cafe, so this initiative will help greatly. Given that I am starting a new business this week, I am particularly excited by my ability to immediately deduct my start-up costs as well. So, There has been a really positive response from my community. With low unemployment and an army of 13,000 small businesses, we have a very strong local economy. I am proud to be part of a government which is delivering for small business. The small business community deserves the support of government, and that is something they can absolutely count on with this government. Public Education 79 16:39 Ms KING 00AMR Ballarat Happy Public Education Day to all of those across our communities who are working in public education institutions—some of whom might have to take some responsibility for some of us in here! So, happy Public Education Day. It is an opportunity for our nation to celebrate the immense value of public education and the really significant achievements as a result of public education. Our public education system is a strong and very important part of the social infrastructure of all our communities. In this country we have a long tradition of and we place great value on people's right to access a quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances. That is the foundation of our public education system. It built our social and democratic traditions and, I would argue, it is the key to much of our country's economic success as well. In celebrating Public Education Day today, we pay tribute to those who work in the system—obviously, the teachers for the work that they do day in, day out. As many of us know as parents, wrangling a classroom full of youngsters of any age is not an easy task; but to then also light the fire of a love of learning in them is an enormous achievement. Day in, day out, the teachers across our public education system dedicate themselves to that. We also acknowledge the executives of our schools; we know how important the leadership team in a school is. We also thank all the ancillary and support staff, who are such a critical part of the life of our schools. On a personal level, I extend my own thanks to them, and I have two examples. Like all of us here, I am sure, I retain very strong, fond memories of certain teachers. I enjoyed my primary school days at Mount Warrigal Public School. I particularly remember one teacher, Mrs le Roux. Mrs le Roux had arrived from South Africa; she had moved here with her husband, who was a player for the Springboks. She was a fantastic teacher, but she also encouraged us not only to expand our academic achievements but to look for a creative outlet. I remember making candles, doing macrame—this is going to age me, I know!—and all the other fantastic arts and crafts that were around at the time. It was really a joyous experience every day to go to school. For my high school years, I spent time at both Warilla High School, in Wollongong's southern suburbs, and Airds High School, in the suburbs of Campbelltown. At Airds High School, I had a teacher called Mr Reed. He was a science teacher but he specialised in geology. We were talking about doing science in the senior years—I took geology in years 11 and 12. It was not because I ever intended to go into the science field, to be honest; it was because he was so passionate about his field of study that it was a joy to learn with him. I think it is a great example of how, if you do a subject with someone who loves it—no matter what the subject is—and who can impart the skill of learning, you get great value out of it anyway. So my personal thanks go to all my teachers, with a special acknowledgement of those two. Last Tuesday, I represented the Leader of the Opposition at the Sydney Town Hall, at the Public Education Foundation Awards Night 2015. This was a great night. One of our colleagues from the Senate was there as well, speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister, and the New South Wales minister was there, so it was a great cross-party occasion. There were lots of performances by public school students, and lots of students shining and getting awards. I want to acknowledge some local students. Isabell Thomas, from Corrimal High School; Laura Burling, from Dapto High School; and Masoumeh Yousefi, Fahimeh Azimi, Lena Adeli and Nesa Adeli, from Five Islands Secondary College, all got awards on the night. It was a tremendous occasion that showcased what a great education can be had in our public schools across the country. It is a really good way to finish up the week in this place by saying: happy Public Education Day. Mental Health 80 16:44 Mr COULTON HWN Parkes I would like to acknowledge the contribution of the member for Cunningham. As someone who has a mother, a wife and a daughter working in public education, I too recognise Public Education Week. This evening I would like to speak about the importance of assistance, help and recognising issues around mental health. In April I had the pleasure of officially launching and opening the headspace centre in Dubbo. Headspace is the National Youth Mental Health Foundation, and they help people aged between 12 and 25 years who are experiencing difficult times in their lives. Quite frankly, it is also a drop-in centre and a friendly, safe place for young people to drop in, chat and hang out. The staff at headspace provide an invaluable service for the young people of our communities; they give them someone to chat to when they are going through tough times. When they feel they do not have anyone they can turn to, headspace is there. It is fundamental that we provide our children with the tools they need to recognise their emotions. It is important that we teach our children that it is okay to feel sad sometimes and that this feeling is not permanent—it is not the end of the world. I think that in the overstimulated world that we live in there sometimes is an expectation that everything should be bright and wonderful, and I think it is important that we recognise that we go through a raft of emotions and that it is not the end of the world if you are feeling sad. We need to instil hope in our future generations that they are not alone, that they are valuable members of our communities regardless of their backgrounds and that there are opportunities available for everyone. I am grateful to have headspace operating in my electorate in Dubbo and thank them again for their efforts in supporting the future generations in that area. I also should mention that I know other areas like Moree are keen to have a headspace facility. We might have to look at an innovative way of doing that, as headspace needs to have a certain level of population to operate efficiently, but in some of those western towns the need is just as great, if not greater than elsewhere. As part of speaking of mental health, I am also proud that there is a large component of funding for mental health and activities to help farmers who are battling the most severe drought in history in parts of my electorate and, indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, in large parts of your electorate as well. There have been some innovative programs and activities funded by the federal government in that mental health space. But I would like to say mental health is an issue not just in drought times. I personally know farmers who have ended their lives who were not in financial difficulty. They had grass in the paddocks and mud on their boots but were suffering from depression and other things. So I think it is a little bit dangerous that we just associate mental health issues with tough times, because quite frankly it is more complex than that. Unfortunately, I have been aware of school students in my electorate and, indeed, personal school friends that I have known who have taken their lives for various reasons. So it is important that we have a focus on mental health and that we give people the tools to recognise that they may be in difficulty before it becomes too late. Along the same lines, I am also pleased and proud of the government's attack on the problem of drugs and particularly ice in western New South Wales. I had the pleasure of having Senator Fiona Nash lead a community consultation last week in Dubbo and talk to people who have real experiences in that area. Mental health trauma is a serious side effect of people who are using illicit substances, and this task force will look at some of those issues as well. In closing, I also would like to acknowledge that the government has funded the Moree drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre. Seeing that open after it has been closed—those 18 beds for rehabilitation in the Moree area will be much needed and, when that gets into full swing, will be much rewarded. Fine Defaults 81 16:50 Ms MacTIERNAN L6P Perth In WA the number of fine defaulters going to prison has blown out since stringent new provisions for non-payment of fines were introduced in 2009. In 2008, the number of fine defaulters was just 194. By 2013, this figure had grown to 1,328, 590 of whom were Aboriginal. One in three women entering prison were doing nothing more than paying off a fine. This tragically came to public attention last year when a young Aboriginal woman died in a South Hedland prison cell where she had been sent for not paying a fine of less than $1,000. Fortunately, we have seen some claw-back of the position, but still last year 782 people went to prison in Western Australia for fine default, so clearly it is still a problem. Of course there have to be consequences in relation to the nonpayment of fine. However, the current situation is not sustainable. It is normalising imprisonment for many Aboriginal people, impacting on their sense of identity within the community. I know from personal experience that cutting out fines can be an attractive option if you are on a low income. I recall getting a fine for nonvoting in the daylight saving referendum when I was a student. I had not known about the fine, and it accumulated in size. I seriously considered the possibility of going to Bandyup for a day or two—until I thought about those scenes from Prisoner and decided against it! But this approach is also very costly for the taxpayer. In 2013, it cost the government in WA $2.4 million jailing fine defaulters. This change in policy, it must be pointed out, has not actually seen a decrease in the total number of outstanding fines. Indeed, the amount outstanding in fines continued to increase between 2018 and 2013. There has a better way. We need to consider a plan that would allow fines to be collected in a sustainable way from income or social security, in much the same way that what we have with child support payments and university debts. This policy would apply to the entire community. Earlier this month I was contacted by ANU's Dr Bruce Chapman, who has extensive experience in this area. He is advocating a system similar to HECS, which he helped devise, to help fine defaulters repay their debts and stay out of jail. Dr Chapman's proposal would set a very low threshold for repayments and would take only a small amount of each fine defaulter's weekly pay—as little as $8. There is already a similar voluntary system in place through Centrelink. In 2012-13, 177,000 people used the Centrelink service to pay court fines. The question is whether or not this service could be made compulsory. A set of scheduled payments would provide a consumption smoothing effect for fine defaulters, offering a stable and sustainable way of paying their debts. I want to acknowledge the work of state shadow corrective services minister Paul Papalia, who has written an excellent discussion paper on how poverty drives imprisonment. He proposes, amongst other things, a better supervised program of community service obligation. I agree that that must be part of the solution. However, Dr Chapman's idea of a compulsory deduction through tax and the Centrelink system is important to explore. It would help fines to be paid back early before huge liabilities are accumulated. I point out that the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody of 1987 recommended imprisonment be utilised only as a last resort. It is clear that this recommendation was not heeded, to the detriment of Aboriginal people and the wider community. We have an opportunity here to implement a system that would get people out of jail, get money paid back to the state and help close the gap in incarceration rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Next month we are setting up a roundtable in Perth to explore these options further. We have to move away from the Dickensian days of debtors' prisons. Bowel Cancer Awareness Month 81 16:55 Mr ENTSCH 7K6 Leichhardt    I rise this evening to take the opportunity to highlight that next month is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month. This annual initiative, running through the month of June, aims to raise public awareness of a disease that claims the lives of 77 Australians every week. Bowel cancer is the second most common type of newly diagnosed cancer in Australia, affecting both men and women almost equally. It is Australia's second biggest cancer killer after lung cancer. A highlight of the month is Red Apple Day on Wednesday 17 June, where Australians are encouraged to wear a bowel cancer awareness ribbon and host apple themed fundraisers. Unfortunately, bowel cancer is not a warm and fuzzy cause, but that is no excuse for us not to talk about it. We need to remove any stigma about getting screened. The clinic I visit, Cairns Gastroenterology, is very proactive in this area. I will certainly be helping the clinic to get some media coverage next month as they work to promote the importance of screening. I was also recently contacted by Dr Bernard Chin, a gastroenterologist with the clinic who has taken a keen interest in the issue. He said screening is particularly important as bowel cancer is an increasing problem in our aging population but, most importantly, is highly preventable. He has provided me with some ideas on how the screening of this cancer can be improved upon, and I have sent them through to our Minister for Health, Sussan Ley, to consider. Firstly, Dr Chin recommends that screening be open to all Australians who are at risk. The National Bowel Cancer Screening Program has been in operation for some years now and he says there are a few holes in it. Currently, only a proportion of Australians over the age of 50 are included in the annual mail-out. This, Dr Chin recommends, should be expanded to include all Australians between the ages of 50 and 70. I understand that budget constraints are behind the gradual rollout of the program; however, it is clear that a focus on prevention rather than cure will save money—and lives—in the long term. Secondly, we need to make bowel cancer awareness more sexy—although I am not sure if 'sexy' is the right word! But there are definitely lessons that can be learned through the very effective marketing campaigns which have seen the colour pink become synonymous with breast cancer, the shaved head become synonymous with blood cancer and 'slip, slop, slap' become synonymous with skin cancer. As a health issue, bowel cancer screening needs to be at the same level; otherwise public support, and the participation rates of Australians who get mailed the kit, will continue to fall. Thirdly, Dr Chin says we need to improve the quality of endoscopy reports. He says the management of health information is improving but is still woefully slow compared to other technologies we have available today. He suggests a system where screening reports incorporate images and, in my state, are stored centrally in Brisbane, where they can be accessed from any Queensland Health computer with internet access within the state. As 75 per cent or more of all endoscopies are performed privately, he suggests that it might also be cost-effective for the federal government to partially pay for a system so private practitioners can also access it at a less cost-prohibitive price point. Lastly, Dr Chin says routine colonoscopies will be an increasing way of life for most Australians. Given that public hospitals can struggle to perform high-volume routine procedures, there could be a program to farm out routine public colonoscopies to the private sector. This will reduce the waiting times at public hospitals for more urgent and high-end procedures. I would like to thank Dr Chin for taking the time to provide me with his thoughts. It is obvious that we need to start looking at how the screening program can be improved if we want to reduce the incidence of this killer disease. I certainly urge my colleagues to set an example by getting themselves screened. The message we must support is: 'Be healthy and, if you have any concerns, don't put off that visit to your doctor.' Debate interrupted. House adjourned at 16:59 NOTICES 82 NOTICES

Thursday, 28 May 2015

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Hon. BC Scott ) took the chair at 9:30.

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS 84 CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS Inborn Errors of Metabolism 84 09:30 Ms KING 00AMR Ballarat In this constituency statement I want to highlight again the issue of inborn errors of metabolism, which I have been highlighting through the parliament this week. No decision highlights more highly the cruel and, frankly, pathetic nature of the government than the budget decision to cut what is a tiny subsidy of around $250 per month to help cover the costs of specialist foods for the families of 900 Australians suffering from rare conditions known as inborn errors of metabolism, or IEN. Managing these conditions requires a lifetime commitment to a rigid diet of carefully weighed synthetic, low-protein formulas and foods that are often very expensive to buy. They are not foods that are available in general supermarkets. They are not gluten-free foods. They are specific low-protein to no-protein foods. Pasta and rice at $10 a packet and cheese after shipping costs is included at $68 a block. Without warning or consultation to any of these families or the organisations that represent them, they were informed last week that the grant would cease next month. I now want to read to the House a letter I received from a constituent of mine called Heidi about the impact that decision has had on her. Heidi writes: I can only consume 10g of protein a day as set by my dietitian. As a result, I cannot eat most dairy, nuts, legumes, meat, fish and grains. My diet consists of fruits and vegetables that are low in phenylalanine and specially formulated low protein products. Since 2001 I and many others with IEMs have received an IEM a monthly payment of $256.75 to assist with the cost of special food which has now been cut in the latest budget The reason provided by the Department of Health for ceasing the grant is that more supplements are now available and that low protein foods are now more accessible and lower in cost. Both of these reasons are false. As a teacher's aide on a fairly low income, I feel very anxious at the release of this budget measure as I am certain that I will not be able to afford the low protein products I need to stick to my log protein a day. If I cannot stick to my diet my long term neurological health is at risk which could affect my capacity to work and live as a normal person. I know from letters and emails forwarded to me and my colleagues that Heidi is far from alone in her distress, and I strongly suspect that there is not a member present who has not received similar correspondence since the budget. I wonder how the Treasurer can reconcile this pathetic small-minded measure, which only punishes those reliant on the subsidy to help cover the cost of protecting people with this very rare disease, with the miniscule savings. This is $3 million; this is not a big program. Once again, I want to call on the Abbott government to seriously reconsider the cutting of this program, stop blaming people for their own decisions and actually reverse what is a very pathetic and small-minded decision in this budget. (Time expired) Riverina Electorate: Kurrajong Waratah 84 09:33 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina A few days prior to Christmas last year, Jacqui Meyers of Wagga Wagga in my electorate dropped in to exchange festive season cards with me. Whilst there she asked me to speak in parliament about the work of Kurrajong Waratah, her employer, which is something I am more than happy to do. Jacqui is great. After the centenary of Anzac commemorations concluded in Wagga Wagga, she went up to the wreath-laden cenotaph and saluted. It was a poignant and memorable moment. Kurrajong Waratah's vision is to support people with a disability, such as Jacqui, to lead a life of their choice. It is a marvellous community-run not-for-profit organisation providing services to more than 600 babies, children and adults with disabilities right throughout the Riverina region. In operation for more than half a century, Kurrajong Waratah services are varied and cover early intervention, supported and open employment, vocational training, supported accommodation, independent living, and day and retirement programs. Kurrajong's community education program helps draw public attention to the needs and aspirations of people of all ages who have disabilities, and their families. One of the ways this is achieved is through an annual fundraising race day at the Murrumbidgee Turf Club in Wagga Wagga, which we held this Saturday. This race day has been held for 27 years and is a tremendous family event. The Kurrajong Waratah Race Day committee has funded therapist positions for babies and children, provided equipment and resources, purchased motor vehicles and, more recently, supported the construction of group homes and the development of a lifestyle facility for adults who are ageing.   Kurrajong Waratah is a wonderful organisation, and it does a great job of assisting many local people with disabilities to live the lives they want to and to reach their full potential. Congratulations and good luck with the race day this Saturday. Another fund raising event for Kurrajong is its annual Art Union, which has been going for 35 years, and which provides up to $90,000 to the organisation's many and varied tremendous charitable services. Kurrajong's recycling services and, importantly, the e-recycling facility, are providing jobs and environmental outcomes, not just for Wagga Wagga but for the wider region—so valued and so important. There are some amazing people helping to run Kurrajong Waratah—Steve Jacques, Ray Carroll, Cathie Smith, and many, many more. Cathie's son, Danny, has utilised Kurrajong services. He had a recent setback with some surgery, but thankfully he is back doing what he loves doing—smiling and helping out with the Wagga Tigers Australian Football and Netball Club. Cathie is always quick to praise the remarkable, overwhelming and ongoing support from the community that Kurrajong rightly and justifiably receives. Finally, I very much look forward to the National Disability Insurance Scheme operating right across the country. It is good public policy. That is why I was the first New South Wales federal member of parliament to sign the NDIS Every Australian Counts pledge. Thanks again Jacqui Meyers for your insights and spirit, and for just being you. What an inspiration you truly are. Blair Electorate: The Advocacy and Support Centre 85 09:36 Mr NEUMANN HVO Blair Recently I had the opportunity to attend the seventh anniversary of The Advocacy and Support Centre—TASC—branch in Ipswich. Its origins were in Toowoomba. I was at its opening about seven years ago as a new federal MP. Also present were the Ipswich Mayor, Paul Pisasale, the state MP for Ipswich, Jennifer Howard, and the state MP for Ipswich West, Jim Madden. During the occasion I met with Philippa Whitman, the Chief Executive Officer, and staff and members of the community who benefit from these services. TASC is doing a great job in Ipswich, and it aims to achieve social justice for all. It provides free legal, advocacy and social services. Its services especially focus on helping the vulnerable and marginalised members of the Ipswich and West Moreton community. TASC provides important services through its Ipswich Community Legal Services. It provides free consultation, advice and casework in most matters of civil and family law, and it plays more than its fair share in equalising the power imbalance between litigants in court proceedings in Ipswich and across the region. The service allows clients to have access to lawyers who can explain their legal rights and obligations, and it lets clients make the right step in relation to their legal problems. They put a strong emphasis on mediation and reconciliation. For example, the Ipswich Community Legal Service provides free advice on neighbourhood disputes—fencing and tree disputes, noise and nuisance disputes, debt disputes, parenting issues, consumer disputes and many more. I am very impressed with the work they do. We refer people to TASC from my office on a regular basis. Their work with seniors in the Ipswich region has been tremendous in improving the safety, security and wellbeing of seniors. Some of the areas of the service they undertake include advice on aged care facility entry contracts, counselling and referral, advocacy and legal information advice. I urge all people in the Ipswich and West Moreton region—Ipswich and Somerset—to avail themselves of TASC for the work they do. I commend them for the wonderful initiatives that they have undertaken, particularly the work they do with the Disability Law Project. This project involves a criminal law and advocacy service for people who suffer from intellectual disability or mental illness. We have some wonderful organisations locally who work in this space—ALARA, CATS, Focal Extended and others. TASC works closely with those organisations. I am also impressed with the work they do with the Ipswich Community Justice Group. This program supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the criminal justice system when facing court, and it promotes anti-recidivism measures. The program allocates funding to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services to assist also in finding ways to deal with justice related issues. I commend them for their work, and I urge governments at all levels to support TASC. (Time expired) Queensland Government 85 09:39 Mr CIOBO 00AN0 Moncrieff The question can be asked of the Queensland government: where is the money? It simply comes down to the fact that the Gold Coast, Australia's sixth largest city, and its fastest growing, was promised $146 million to improve a number of key roads and intersections in our city—money that has been scrapped by the new Queensland Labor government. I for one am sick and tired of the excuses this new government has put forward about why they cannot fund vital road infrastructure needed for our city. I would highlight the fact that the federal coalition is doing its part. We have increased funding to Queensland over the next four years—increased—by $6.7 billion. What is more, when it comes to road funding, between 2013-14 and 2018-19 we are providing Queensland with an extra $2.5 billion for road funding. So when people on the Gold Coast ask me what the coalition is doing at a federal level to boost road infrastructure and to provide funding for important public transport, such as the second stage of the light rail, my response is very straightforward: we are providing an extra $2.5 billion, not forecasted by the Queensland state government. It represents a compete windfall for the Queensland state Labor government. We are providing that extra money because of the prudent way in which the Commonwealth government has been managing its finances after the six years of excesses of the previous Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. We are providing an extra $2.5 billion to the Queensland state government and they have walked away from the Gold Coast and walked away from $146 million. That money was promised to our city by the former LNP government. The Queensland state Labor government must deliver this funding for our city. They must deliver it, because it is only fair, equitable and appropriate for the fastest growing city in Australia and second largest regional city in Queensland. This is important money that goes towards, for example, an upgrade to six lanes, and intersection improvements, for the Southport Burleigh Road between Smith Street connection road and Nerang Broadbeach Road. The key road project here is Bundall Road, and in particular the intersection between Bundall Road and Ashmore Road. This is a project that I have called for the state government to fund for quite some time. The state LNP government were going to step up to the plate, but where is state Labor. I say to Annastacia Palaszczuk, I say to Jackie Trad, and I say to all the state Labor MPs: enough excuses and enough prevaricating. You have $2.5 billion extra. Reach into your pockets and provide this much-needed funding for the Gold Coast, in particular to upgrade that crucial intersection, that bottleneck on the Gold Coast, of Ashmore Road and Bundall Road, and do it as soon as possible. Paid Parental Leave 86 09:42 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs Last week I held two child care forums in my electorate: one in Patterson Lakes and one in Edithvale. At these forums I met with dozens of parents who were concerned about the government's changes to paid parental leave and other family payments, as well as uncertainty about the future funding of 15 hours of kindergarten each week. Again and again, parents of young children told me that the government's decision to cut paid parental leave for mothers who received a payment from their workplace would make their lives that little bit harder. One young mother in particular was furious about the rhetoric coming from the government, that she along with tens of thousands of other mothers were 'double-dipping' their paid parental leave. Another young mum, who worked as a teacher, said that cutting government-funded paid parental leave would mean that she and her husband would reconsider whether or not to have another child. For parents who receive employer-sponsored paid parental leave, this benefit is part of their salary package. By removing paid parental leave payments for parents who receive an employer-sponsored payment, the government is cutting the take-home pay and household budget of many of my constituents. With the median annual income of a parent receiving paid parental leave at just over $47,000, the government's slashing of paid parental leave entitlements will prevent almost half of all new mothers from accessing the full paid parental leave scheme. It is offensive the way the government represents the role of the paid parental leave scheme, which was always intended to complement employer-based entitlements. The language used by the Treasurer and the Minister for Social Services, describing new mothers as fraudsters and rorters is disingenuous and dishonest. Young parents are not rorting the system by claiming the government funded paid parental leave scheme. They are using the system as it was designed. The government's misrepresentation of the purpose of the Paid Parental Leave scheme shows just how out of touch they are with the needs and priorities of our community. The other issue frequently raised at these forums is the ongoing funding of 15 hours per week of kindergarten. At present this government has only budgeted for funding 15 hours per week up to 2017. The uncertainty caused by the temporary state of kinder funding makes future planning for parents and early learning educators unnecessarily difficult. I call on the government to commit to permanently funding 15 hours of kinder per week and drop its attack on Australian families by reversing its cuts to family payments and paid parental leave. This needs to be seen as early childhood education. It is not just about workforce participation, as this government persists in saying. It is about early childhood education, and the government should understand it for what it is. Small Business 87 09:45 Mr WILLIAMS 249758 Hindmarsh I rise today to speak about the green shoots that are becoming more and more apparent in the economy and my electorate of Hindmarsh. Philmac are a global leader in the design and manufacture of specialist fittings and valves. Having been established in South Australia in 1929, Philmac employ over 220 people and export to 30 countries. In fact, over 40 per cent of their products are exported. They have recently announced a major expansion worth close to $10 million. The federal government has supported this expansion with a $2.5 million grant. This will result in the expansion of Philmac's award-winning specialist compression fitting and valve product ranges, and ensure cost-efficient manufacturing to underpin expansion of their plumbing, mining and large-scale irrigation markets, both domestically and internationally. I have visited Philmac a number of times, including with the employment minister, who was impressed with what he saw and heard from Philmac. I thank managing director Mark Nykiel and his skilled team for showing us their advanced manufacturing processes. I was speaking earlier this morning with the industry minister. He has visited many companies over his time as industry minister, both in the Howard government first of all and more recently in the Abbott government. He said that Philmac were a good company, so that is high praise from someone who has seen many companies around our nation. Philmac are not the only good news story in Hindmarsh. MIMP have grown significantly recently and have ambitious plans for further growth. MIMP Connecting Solutions are a South Australian owned company that specialises in the supply, installation and support of communications cabling and wireless networks. While they are always looking to expand into other areas and training their staff, they were also successful in gaining a federal government grant that has allowed them to employ an additional 40 people to carry out a project in lieu of employing overseas labour and position their company for future work valued at $8 to $10 million. This training will be recognised in interstate and international markets. I have met with their CEO, Allan Aitchison, a number of times, and he impresses me greatly. The Treasurer recently visited the Hindmarsh electorate and also a local pastry shop in Torrensville, Kalymnos bakery. Those small businesses in Hindmarsh are big winners out of this budget. The Treasurer heard from George, who has run this family business right from the start. Over the years the whole family got in it together, and that is what small business does. We also had the Prime Minister come down to Hindmarsh. We met with Tony and Tania from Cibo at Glenelg. They run a great local business. They, like Kalymnos Pastries, will benefit from the 1.5 per cent tax cut for small businesses and the $20,000 instant asset write-off. This is a great initiative of the government that will help small businesses who are considering an expansion, like Cibo, and will encourage them to buy that extra piece of equipment instead of saving for another year. There was a great turnout to see the Prime Minister, who had a great coffee and enjoyed the visit. George, Tony, Tania and others are all winners, as are the small businesses in Hindmarsh. I look forward to working with all the businesses in my electorate to drive economic growth and create jobs for the future. Family Violence 87 09:48 Ms VAMVAKINOU 00AMT Calwell Last Wednesday I attended a family violence forum in my electorate. The forum was organised by my two state members, the member for Broadmeadows and the member for Yuroke. Its purpose was to facilitate input from our community in the form of a submission to the Royal Commission into Family Violence. The Royal Commission into Family Violence was established by the Victorian government as part of its election commitment to tackle this very dangerous and prevalent form of violence perpetrated against women and children in our community. The forum provided an opportunity for the local community, including survivors of family violence, to be involved in a conversation with service providers, members of the Victoria Police, parliamentarians and other members of the broader Broadmeadows community in order to be able to discuss a range of matters, which included, importantly, the impact of family violence on women and children and the availability and cultural appropriateness of responses and the types of services that are available to the community and, in particular, to those who are victims of family violence. We also discussed the value of education programs for young people as a preventative tool—to re-educate young people and hopefully change the way they behave towards each other, in particular how young men behave towards young women. According to Victoria Police data from the 2012-13 financial year, my local council area of Hume was one of two metropolitan Melbourne council areas to have a rate of more than 1,500 incidents of family violence per 100,000 people, with some 2,909 incidents reported in Hume. The reality is likely much worse—because there is a high level of underreporting. That underreporting of family violence is largely a result of the very high level of non-English-speaking-background residents in my electorate. I therefore welcome this commission and am absolutely certain that the current demands on local resources, which was raised as one of the main issues of concern at the forum, is an issue not only in my electorate but across the board in Victoria—and possibly across Australia. Every second woman who seeks out refuge in a shelter in Australia is turned away. I think that is a very worrying statistic when you think about the large number of women who have to flee violent family situations. One of the issues raised in relation to local resources was the lack of cultural and linguistic resources for women from culturally diverse backgrounds. For my electorate, that is a very important issue and I would like it addressed as soon as possible. St George Football Association 88 09:51 Mr COLEMAN 241067 Banks On Monday, 18 May, I attended the St George Football Association delegates meeting at Mortdale RSL in my electorate of Banks. The St George Football Association represents the football community within my electorate and across the broader St George region—24 clubs ranging from Lugarno in the west right across to the Pacific Ocean in the east. The association has about 10,000 active members. The club continues to grow, with player numbers up seven per cent in 2015, reflecting the popularity of football in my community. There is piece of unfinished business in the football community in the St George region of Sydney, and that is the need for a professional quality synthetic playing field. Most other parts of Sydney have a professional quality synthetic field for finals and representative games to be played on. The St George community does not have such a field and it is time we had one. There is a proposal to create, at Penshurst Park, a new synthetic field with a grandstand, office space for the football association and various other facilities for the broader community. I strongly support this proposal and indeed have lobbied the council to make this happen. We need to have a synthetic football field facility in the St George region. Frankly we should have one already, so it is high time this occurred. In the coming weeks and months, Hurstville City Council will consult with the community and prepare a revised proposal for Penshurst Park—following on from the first draft proposal which was released some weeks ago. It is very important, as our community works through that process, that we keep in mind that the St George Football Association—and indeed the football community of St George—absolutely requires a synthetic football field. I will do everything I can to make that happen. I do congratulate the football association on their great work in the community, and I wish all players and their families a successful and fun 2015. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 88 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 09:55 The DEPUTY SPEAKER YT4 Before I call the member for Hotham, I would just like to welcome to the Federation Chamber the parliamentary staff of the National Assembly of Bahrain. We welcome you here and I trust that your studies here in Australia are both fulfilling and also fruitful. Honourable members: Here, here! STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 88 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Kelly, Mr Thomas Edward 88 09:55 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham I rise to commemorate the life of Thomas Edward Kelly, a dear friend, veteran, Labor stalwart and beloved Clayton icon. Tom was born on 25 February 1925. In 1943 at the age of 18, to the day, Tom joined the Royal Australian Air Force. During his service to the nation he served in many different places and stations, including Shepparton, Deniliquin, Townsville and New Guinea. In 1976 Tom was discharged with the rank of leading aircraftman, having received a number of honours and awards. Like many who have served their country, Tom wore those metals with absolute pride. With his wife, Doris, he later settled in Clayton, where they raised their son. Tom was a proud father of one, grandfather of three and great-grandfather of six. Tom would often visit my office, and he when he was not telling jokes he was talking about his beloved wife, Doris, his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. It was his family, despite all of the other things that he had done with his life, that were his greatest achievement. An ordinary visit to my office would start with Tom pulling out his copy of 'In black and white' from the Herald Sun, and any funnies that he read along the way he would have carefully cut out to show us. I have to admit that they were not always the most humorous parts of the paper, but it was all in the delivery for Tom! He would tell us each and every joke, keeping a completely straight face until the very end, before he would end up with this roaring chuckle. He had a real knack for brightening the day for many of my staff. Tom visited our office and, like many constituents, he would come in for assistance with federal matters. But, for us, it always felt like a friend popping in at home for a cuppa. Mind you, of course the cuppa would go hand in hand with a request for some assistance. One of the things that Tom would often ask us for was help in searching for commemorative coins for his grandchildren. Tom was a lot more than a friend to us in our office. He was also a dedicated member of the Labor Party and he spent many years assisting my predecessor, Simon Crean. I have no doubt that Simon's office enjoyed a joke or two with Tom along the way! Tom was also a member of the RSL, and he became a financial member of the Clayton RSL all the way back in 1950. He proudly laid wreaths on my behalf on Anzac Day and Remembrance Day every year, and did the same for my predecessor. Honestly, I could not think of a better representative; he served his country so proudly, and he was very proud of it. I know how much Tom would have enjoyed the opportunity to lay the wreath on the Centenary of Anzac this year and to have a drink with his mates afterwards. But, sadly, on 24 November, surrounded by his family, Tom passed away. I want to pay my respects to Tom's wife, Doris, and his family. Tom, we thank you for your dedication to our community, for brightening our day and for your service to our country. We miss you. Rest in peace. O'Connor Electorate: School Chaplains 89 09:58 Mr WILSON 198084 O'Connor I stand today to commend the dedicated work of chaplains in public schools in my electorate of O'Connor. It is also very timely to acknowledge the presence of our parliamentary chaplain, Peter Rose, in the chamber here today. He does a magnificent job of supporting our parliamentarians. I recently hosted a chaplains' breakfast in Albany with Senator the Hon. Scott Ryan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education. It was a great opportunity to discuss informally some of the issues and challenges faced by youth in this part of my electorate. The chaplains were united in their gratitude for the ongoing support offered to them by the federal government's commitment of $243 million over the next four years. Schools in my electorate of O'Connor are currently eligible for up to $24,000 to fund a chaplain, depending on their remoteness. Brent Findlay, area chaplain for YouthCare in the Great Southern outlined a chaplain's role as providing nonbiased pastoral care both to students and to teachers, and supporting the school community as a whole. YouthCare chaplain, Phil Goodall, who travels widely to the more remote schools in the Great Southern relayed a heartfelt thank you to the Prime Minister, cabinet, Senator Ryan and me from a young Borden Primary School student for providing the funding to allow Phil to visit her school of 20 to assist her and her classmates. At the breakfast, chaplains recounted the common themes of social alienation, despite the technological interconnectivity of today, and the changing structure of our families and communities as possible reasons for youth disenchantment. A chaplain focuses on supporting the social and emotional wellbeing of students, encouraging positive self-image and their sense of place in their family and community. Supporting teachers and parents was also cited as an integral part of their daily job. Overall the aim is to facilitate positive social, emotional and academic outcomes, driven by the individuals themselves. Senator Ryan and I later joined the students at the Alta-1 College middle school, a pilot program for 12-to-14-year-old students who, for whatever reason, are at risk of being marginalised in the mainstream schooling system. Students at Alta-1 are engaged in an alternative education, focused on personal growth, recovery and life readiness whilst on a modified curriculum centred around an individualised education plan. Low student to staff ratios facilitate this process. I thank Alta-1 team leader Steve Sharp, middle school teacher Kylie Ditchburn, and Chaplains Joel Baty and Josh Hotchkins from Alta-1 for taking the time to introduce me to their students and discuss their innovative approach to education and support for some of our more challenged future citizens. I would also like to take this opportunity to reiterate my support for the National School Chaplaincy Program, and commend the chaplains of O'Connor for their dedicated and ongoing support of our rural and regional students. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 241590 In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded. BILLS 90 BILLS Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 90

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016

Second Reading 90 10:01 The DEPUTY SPEAKER 241590 Before the debate is resumed on this bill, I remind the Federation Chamber that it has been agreed that a general debate be allowed covering this bill and the four related appropriation bills. 10:01 Ms CLAYDON 248181 Newcastle I rise today to speak on the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and cognate bills before the House relating to the 2015-16 budget. This is a budget that is pointing in the wrong direction, just like the government that penned it. It looks backwards when it should be looking forwards. It is a budget without vision. It is a budget about yesterday, not a budget for tomorrow. It is a budget that fails to 'have a go' at solving the problems of today and fails to have a go at the most pressing challenges of the future. As outlined by the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply speech, this budget does, however, 'have a go' at a number of things—many of which the Abbott Liberal government has had a go at in the past. This budget has a go at schools and universities. It has a go at pensioners and the states. It has a go at working women and working families. It has a go at students, veterans, carers and job seekers. It has a go at the sick and the vulnerable. This is a budget that still has a go at the same people as it did last year. It unfairly targets families and low-income earners in particular. It is nothing more than a rehashed version of last year's budget—no less cruel and no less deceitful. The same inequity and unfairness of last year's budget remain in this year's budget, with the $80 billion cut from hospitals and schools, with more than $150 million ripped out of the budget of the Hunter New England area health, which services my community; $100,000 university degrees; cuts to family payments, leaving some 7,000 families in my electorate of Newcastle worse off; the $5 increase to the cost of medicines; the cuts to homelessness and domestic violence programs and many more. In addition to these cruel measures that remain in this year's budget, there are some surprisingly new and nasty aspects that are worth noting. This year we see the deficit doubled in just 12 months. For all of the talk of a 'debt and deficit emergency', this year's budget reports a doubling of the deficit from just 12 months ago, where it was around $17 billion, to $35.1 billion now. Debt is increasing—it is up $40 billion from last year. There are 17 new taxes and charges, with tax as a share of our economy the highest it has been since the Howard and Costello years, and higher than in any year of Labor's recent term in government. Spending is going up and there is more spending than saving, with payments as a percentage of GDP reaching 25.9 per cent. Unemployment reaches a 14-year high and stays there longer than the government was predicting just last year. And there are many new cuts in this budget, including $967.7 million cut from the paid parental leave scheme; $962.7 million cut from rationalising and streamlining health programs; $651.5 million cut from strengthening Australia's foreign investment framework; $262.5 million cut from the Sustainable Research Excellence program; $125.5 million cut from changing indexation for the Child Dental Benefits scheme; $144.6 million cut from the MBS for child health assessments; $69.6 million cut from dental and allied health for veterans; $72.5 million cut from streamlining health workforce scholarships; $27.3 million cut from the Entrepreneurs' Infrastructure Program; $26.8 million cut from the Cooperative Research Centres Program; $20.1 million cut from the Dementia and Aged Care Services Fund; $16 million cut from the Cadbury grant funding; $13.3 million cut from efficiencies of arts and cultural programs; $3.6 million cut from the Regional Development Australia committees and $1 million cut from the Seatbelts on Regional School Buses program. Many organisations and agencies have already conducted their own analysis of this budget, some of which I would like to bring to the attention of the House today. One such organisation is the Hunter Research Foundation. The foundation is an independent world-class organisation dedicated to the growth and success of the Newcastle and Hunter region. Since 1956 the foundation has built on partnerships of trust with many hundreds of organisations and individuals. This confidence in the foundation's ideals has enabled it to maintain its core value—independence. So when the Hunter Research Foundation CEO, Brent Jenkins, says: To say that we were disappointed in this Budget is an understatement, especially in relation to its impact on regional economies. this government should listen. This is not Labor's analysis of the budget, easily dismissed by those opposite as partisan. This is the view of a credible research institution that is deeply connected to its community. In the foundation's analysis Mr Jenkins makes it clear that the broader Hunter region, including Newcastle, is experiencing the worst economic conditions they have faced for a generation, including high unemployment and near-record lows of business confidence. Mr Jenkins rightly suggests: What will define the economic success of regions like the Hunter is the creation of new jobs and in particular high-value jobs. But this budget offers no such jobs. I agree with the foundation and support their call for genuine job creation in regional economies. This government should heed the foundation's advice to build increased capacity for innovation through partnerships with SMEs and research institutions like Newcastle CSIRO Energy Centre and the University of Newcastle to encourage growth in new fields and new economies. Unlike this government, the Hunter Research Foundation is looking forward and is very much focused on the jobs for the future. Independent analysis from NATSEM has also found issues with the budget, including a hidden hit on Australian families. NATSEM, may I remind the House, is another reputable independent agency—an agency that has previously been described by the Prime Minister as 'the most reputable modelling organisation in Australia.' NATSEM's analysis of the budget found that nine out of 10 of the lowest-income families will lose under the Abbott Liberal government's budget, while nine out of 10 of the wealthiest families stand to gain. For all of the claims from the government that this is a fair budget, this single aspect of modelling in itself clearly exhibits that it actually attacks those who need help the most. NATSEM's modelling also shows that families will be slugged thousands of dollars when the new childcare arrangement measures that are proposed not to start until 2017 are factored in. This includes a family with a single income of $65,000 and two children being $6,164 a year worse off by 2018-19; a single mother with an income of $55,000 with two children being $6,107 worse off by 2018-19; and a family with a dual income of $60,000 with two children being $3,843 worse off by 2018-19. This is further proof that the Prime Minister's promise not to hurt families was little more than a desperate attempt to save his own job. The impact of the budget on women again failed to rate a mention in the Treasurer's budget speech and papers, but it is an important analysis that has to be done. Gender responsive budgeting is a government's planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the enhancement of gender equality and the fulfilment of women's rights. It highlights gender gaps in government policies, plans and budgets and analyses that gender differentiated impact of revenue raising policies and the application of domestic resources. Gender responsive budget analysis was in fact pioneered in Australia in 1994, with the federal government assessment of the budget impact on women. It refers to the analysis of actual government expenditure and revenue on women and girls as compared to men and boys. It is with deep regret that I must remind the House of this government's now ongoing failure to produce a women's budget statement as part of the budget papers. I would have thought that understanding how the 2015 budget will or will not contribute to the long-term social and economic health and wellbeing of women in Australia was something that governments would want to know. So much for evidence based thinking from this so-called Prime Minister for women and his government. Given this lack of commitment from the government, I am thankful that Labor remains as committed in opposition as we were in government to a gender responsive budget analysis. As chair of Labor's Status of Women Caucus Committee, I was honoured to launch Labor's Women's Budget Statement with my Labor colleagues in Canberra, alongside community representatives from across the nation. It was, however, distressing to relay the many negative and disproportionate impacts that this government's policies and budget measures will have on women. Of all the new measures in this budget, perhaps the most startling for women was the government's backflip on paid parental leave. First we had paid parental leave 'over my dead body', then the Prime Minister's rolled gold scheme, providing mothers with 26 weeks of paid parental leave at full replacement wage, which he described as his signature policy and indeed took to two elections. Now, however, the government has taken a whole new approach and has gone on the attack, accusing mothers and families lawfully taking part in the government's paid parental leave scheme of being double-dipping, fraudulent rorters. If the Abbott government gets their way, up to 80,000 mothers a year will be left worse off because of these cuts to paid parental leave. Some new mums stand to lose up to $11,500. This includes nurses, midwives, Defence personnel and police. What this means in real life for mothers and their babies is that those new mums affected will have less time to spend with their newborn babies. How can this Prime Minister ever be believed by any family in this country ever again? He has not a shred of credibility when it comes to supporting Australian women and Australian families. The National Foundation for Australian Women also raises serious concerns about the impact that this budget will have on women. They have called for the proposed changes to paid parental leave to be abandoned and have noted that the savings measures from the first budget that remain in this budget disproportionately affect people on low and moderate incomes—a group who are largely women. Likewise, the CEO of the Australian Council of Social Service, Dr Cassandra Goldie, has argued: The retention of most of the 2014 budget cuts and lack of action to strengthen public revenue tips the scale on the negative side of the fairness ledger as it effectively means that the most disadvantaged and struggling individuals and families in our community are being asked to shoulder the responsibility for restoring the Budget. When it comes to measuring the impact of the budget on my electorate, a review of the recent headlines in the Newcastle Herald is instructive, from 'Hockey bypasses the Hunter's big projects' to 'Parents to feel pressure' and 'Surplus gets further away'. The Herald's budget feature summed up the concerns of the region when it noted: At first look, one of the greatest impacts on the Hunter of this budget would appear to be the substantial tightening of welfare, pension and superannuation support instruments, which are destined to hit the less well off and the elderly. And when it comes to direct infrastructure spending in our region, the Herald notes: Mr Hockey's first budget a year ago was light on capital works detail for the Hunter … and this document follows suit. Well, that sums up the mood of my region: no investment in our university, no mention of major community service organisations that are crying out for money. The Newcastle Herald's assessment of the budget matches that of ACOSS, NATSEM and the others. It is all pointing in the wrong direction. As outlined by the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply, the 2015 budget reflects neither the qualities nor the priorities of the Australian people. The priority of the nation has to be to plan for the future—a plan for the decades to come. While this government continues to fail Australia, Labor has a plan for today, and we have a vision for a smart, modern and fair Australia. Our vision is grounded with a focus on the jobs and the economy of the future—a future that is more productive and more sustainable. We have a plan to build a new engine for prosperity in cities and in the regions and to turbocharge it with science skills, innovation, infrastructure and education. Under Labor, every young Australian will have the chance to read, write and work with the global language of the digital age. Under Labor, all major infrastructure will be assessed independently and on merit. And under Labor, innovation will be harnessed, supported and sent in the right direction. Under Labor, Australia will have a better future. 10:16 Mrs PRENTICE 217266 Ryan I rise today on behalf of the people of Ryan to speak about fairness—indeed, the word du jour. In the five years I have been the member for Ryan I have had the opportunity to meet many thousands of residents in our pocket of suburban Brisbane and to communicate with tens of thousands more. Ryan is a hardworking, community-minded constituency. The people of Ryan look out for each other. They are self-reliant, in the sense that they would rather support themselves and help each other than go cap in hand to the government at the first sign of hardship. In return, what they expect from government is that it does not unnecessarily inhibit their lives, that businesses are not drowned in costly red tape, that mothers who wish to return to the workforce are not financially penalised for doing so and that older Australians, who have worked hard all their lives to save for their retirement, are not burdened with extra tax obligations for which they have not had the opportunity to prepare. What they hope for from government is that it works with them, not against them, that it sets a budget framework that encourages them to work hard, build their businesses, raise their families and save for their retirement. In short, the residents of Ryan want a government and a budget that is measured, reasonable and, above all, fair. With this budget the coalition government has demonstrated that it understands the concept of fairness. We have heard loudly and clearly the voice of the electorate. For example, small businesses are already benefiting from economic trade agreements with South Korea and Japan, signed off by this government, and the agreement signed with China is in the process of being implemented. However, small businesses have been telling us that times are still tough and they are struggling to invest in the expansion of their business at a time of potential new markets. For small businesses wanting to invest in much-needed capital equipment to grow their business, the budget offers the ability to claim an immediate tax deduction for each and every asset purchased, up to $20,000. And small businesses can apply this $20,000 rule to as many individual items as they wish until 30 June 2017. In this budget we have lowered the company tax rate for incorporated small businesses with an annual turnover under $2 million, from 30 per cent to 28.5 per cent. As a result of this budget, small businesses will have the lowest company tax rate in almost 50 years. For unincorporated small businesses we have offered a five per cent tax discount, up to $1,000 a year. And to encourage start-up businesses, the budget will allow for professional expenses incurred in the establishment of the business, such as legal expenses, to be immediately deducted rather than being written off over five years. These initiatives are being very well received by the many small businesses in my electorate of Ryan. The coalition government believes it is only fair that small businesses should be given every opportunity to grow, to employ and to succeed. This concept of fairness extends to the family unit. After all, it is reasonable that parents who want to return to paid employment should not face insurmountable cost barriers in so doing. This not only is fair but is also common sense. The Treasurer has recently led public debate about the challenges posed by an ageing population that were so clearly identified in the most recent Intergenerational report. One of these challenges will be the need to grow our workforce to provide a sufficient tax base to support the large increase in the number of Australians over the age of 65 expected in future decades. Thankfully we already have a skilled base of workers, mainly women, who are not currently in the workforce or who are underemployed and want to work more. They have the skills, they want to work but they are prevented from doing so by the lack of access to affordable and suitable child care. The government has listened. From 1 July 2017 the new and simpler childcare subsidy will commence. The net effect of this policy will be that working families with household incomes between $65,000 and $170,000 will be about $30 a week better off. For working families on incomes up to approximately $65,000, the subsidy will cover approximately 85 per cent of their childcare fees. From 1 July 2016 we will end the arrangement whereby parents were able to receive employer-funded paid parental leave and still receive the full Commonwealth paid parental leave. Parents accessing employer schemes will now receive only a partial payment from the Commonwealth, sufficient to bring their overall payments in line with the Commonwealth scheme. While the practice of claiming both payments in full was perfectly legal, it arbitrarily disadvantaged those parents who did not have access to a generous private scheme. The government has restored fairness and equity to these arrangements. The budget also contained measures to provide equity of access to child care. We all know that for many people work is not nine to five, Monday to Friday. Despite this it is difficult to find childcare providers opening outside normal working hours. For doctors, nurses, police, firefighters, cleaners and other shiftworkers this means that they do not currently enjoy the same access to child care as people working standard office hours. To address this issue the government has committed $246 million to a two-year pilot program to extend subsidy support to home care services provided by nannies. The program is designed to extend services to those mothers who are unable to access current services. In addition to shiftworkers, it will also benefit families in some rural and regional areas as well as parents of children with special needs for which mainstream child care services are unable to cater. This policy is about providing choice. The government believes it is important that if mothers choose to return to the workforce then they should be supported. At the same time we respect the decision of many mothers to take time out of the workforce to look after their children. There is certainly no intention to force women into the workforce. This policy merely ensures that women who wish to work but who are required to work outside standard business hours are not disadvantaged in accessing government support. Another group deserving of support are older Australians—those who have worked, raised families and paid taxes all their lives. They rarely ask much of government and they represent generations who have always valued hard work and self-sufficiency rather than going cap in hand to government. Most self-funded retirees are reliant on fixed incomes, having spent a lifetime scraping and saving to fund a decent retirement. Unlike Labor, the coalition government respects those who save for their own retirement and we will not increase taxes on superannuation. Let me repeat that: the coalition government will not increase taxes on superannuation. Pensioners can be assured that the age pension will continue to increase twice a year and continue to increase at the highest available indexation rate. A coalition government will continue to exclude the family home from the pension assets test. In order to ensure that the age pension provides the most benefit to the people who need it most, some changes to the assets test will come into effect from 1 January 2017. For 90 per cent of pensioners this will mean no change in pensions or, in the case of 170,000 pensioners with modest assets, an increase in payments of an average of $30 a fortnight from 1 January 2017. Under the changes proposed in the budget it will no longer be possible for retired couples who own their own home and have additional assets of $1 million or more to claim a part pension. It is reasonable to expect that such couples have the means to fund themselves without needing a pension top-up. The threshold has been reduced to $823,000. Importantly, people who now no longer qualify for the pension, due to the change in threshold, will continue to be eligible for the Commonwealth seniors health card, which enables access to cheaper PBS medicines. I turn my attention now to aid for our near neighbours. Australia remains a generous aid donor by international standards. Australia will continue to provide around $4 billion in total official development assistance in 2015-16. This makes us the 13th largest donor in the OECD, broadly proportionate to the size of our economy. This year's budget continues the transition of the focus of our program to our near neighbours, particularly in the Pacific region. Members will know of my strong interest in the development challenges facing our nearest neighbour, Papua New Guinea, which has become the largest recipient of Australian aid. Australian aid will continue to fund vital programs, assisting in the delivery of services across government, including health, education, law and justice, governance, transport and, importantly, gender equality. Across our foreign-aid program we are continuing our policy of requiring more than 80 per cent of aid to effectively address gender issues. Aid expressed in dollar terms is only part of the story. Aid should really be seen as an investment, and the government is keen to maximise the effectiveness of our aid investments. One particularly effective measure, launched last year—with continuing funding in this budget—is the New Colombo Plan. This is an innovative scholarship scheme that supports and encourages Australian students to undertake study and internships with many of our near neighbours in the Indo-Pacific. Following a successful pilot in 2014, this year it has been expanded from four to 35 locations, expanding from eastern Pacific-island states to Pakistan in the west, with more than 3,100 students participating. I have no doubt they will all gain an enhanced understanding of our near neighbours and forge networks and friendships that will last a lifetime and serve our country in the decades to come. I return to the concept of fairness. The coalition's view of fairness is to provide support to those who need it so that we can all build wealth and prosperity. Labor's idea of fairness is to take from all those people who have worked all their lives to build wealth and prosperity and to tax that wealth into oblivion. That is the difference between the government and the opposition. We see prosperity as a reward for effort. Those opposite see it as a cash cow to target, to boost government coffers. Labor's priorities are all wrong. While the current government must still borrow $96 million a day to pay for Labor's budget blow-outs, the member for Sydney and Labor would have us borrow another $18 billion to send overseas as foreign aid. Even Labor's foreign affairs minister, Bob Carr, said: 'You can't borrow money to spend on aid.' Today's Labor just does not understand responsible financial management. It shirks difficult reform, preferring to block $5 billion of its own savings measures, in the Senate, putting partisan politics ahead of the national interest. I was delighted when the Leader of the Opposition anointed 2015 as Labor's year of ideas—after all, that is what this place is supposed to be about: a genuine contest of ideas about how to make Australia better. In his budget reply speech the Leader of the Opposition had a chance to step forward and announce his platform of great ideas. What did we get, instead?—sadly, more of the same old politics of spite backed up by costings that were not worth the paper they were written on. Take the re-announcement of their previously failed policy—which they tried and scrapped in government—the writing-off of HECS debt for 100,000 STEM students. On budget reply night the Leader of the Opposition claimed his HECS-debt policy would cost $353 million. The next day, Labor said it would cost $45 million. They eventually settled on a figure of $1.4 billion over 10 years. You would think that with no fewer than three different figures in the mix at least one of them might be right or at least close to the mark. Wrong. The Department of Education has estimated the cost to taxpayers, of the policy, will be upwards of $2.25 billion. No-one should be surprised. This is the same Leader of the Opposition who continues to peddle falsehoods about non-existent $30 billion cuts to the education budget when a simple glance at the budget papers would show that the education budget continues to increase year after year. It is this combination of reheated failed policies, financial innumeracy and lazy rhetoric that demonstrates why Labor and the Leader of the Opposition are not ready to govern. Despite Labor's rank opportunism and attempt at cheap populism, the coalition government was elected to lead. We have delivered a budget that is measured, reasonable and fair—a budget that charts a sustainable course to surplus and provides a helping hand to those who need it. I commend the bills to the House. 10:30 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham I really appreciate the chance this morning to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016. Australia faces some very significant economic challenges. I want to start by making the simple point that the budget that was delivered a few weeks ago is not the path to solving them. The government—and I note the comments of the member for Ryan, which are consistent with this—speaks ad nauseam about its economic credentials and the ideas about responsible fiscal management. What I would say about this government—and this is one of the consistent themes Labor has been speaking about—is to look at not what they say but what they do. What do we see when we look at this budget? We see that debt is up, deficit is up, taxes, after all of the rhetoric that goes on, are up. In fact, the tax take as a share of GDP will be higher under the budget that was delivered by Joe Hockey two weeks ago than it has been since John Howard was Prime Minister of this country—higher than any time that Labor was last in government and higher than during the global financial crisis. We see the same thing when we look at unemployment. This is the No. 1 thing Labor is worried about at the moment. We see under this budget that unemployment will continue to rise. This means more Australians who are without jobs. What I see when I look at the budget is that while the rest of the world is seeing some really important signs of recovery from the global financial crisis it seems that Australia is going backwards. We did see some reactions in the budget to the economic circumstances that Australia faces. But what I see when I look at the critical reforms in that budget is that they are largely short-term measures. The big one that the government has been talking about is the small business tax cuts. To the extent that there is some extra assistance going to small businesses around Australia, I am very much in favour of that. I have 5,000 small businesses that are doing innovative, terrific things right around my electorate of Hotham. I am really proud of the work that those people who are running those businesses do. Something that is going to help them survive the next few years, a period which looks to be a little bit rocky for us economically, is of course going to have my full support. But I am a little bit disturbed that it is the central plank that the government has put forward in its response to the economic challenges facing Australia. When I am talking about some of these economic challenges, I want to describe a couple of things I am worried about when I look at where Australia is at the moment—particularly in the medium to long term. Again, I come back to this point: nothing in the budget went to any of these important challenges. One of the first points I will mention is about the declining performance of Australia's education system. We know that while Australia, in looking at its economic history, has had lots of elements of luck that has made us a prosperous country, the critical thing that has driven prosperity in recent years has been the ingenuity of Australia's people. In the past, we have seen Australia's system be amongst the handful of the highest performing education systems in the world. But in recent years the tide is turning. We are seeing Australia's performance on education stagnating. We are seeing year 12 retention rates stagnate. We are seeing the performance across the system as basically the same from year to year—in some instances actually declining slightly. In the context of Australia's stagnation, we see other countries around the world making massive improvements to their education systems. When we look at the PISA scores, which allow us to assess our system compared with others around the world, we see that Australia is going down—and going down quite quickly. When we look at maths and science, for example, the top seven performing systems in the world are Asian education systems. That brings me to my second point about our engagement with Asia and whether we are prepared fully to embrace that enormous opportunity that lies ahead of us in the rising middle class in Asia. We know that a billion people are going to join the middle class in Asia over the forthcoming decades. When you look at the tenor of the debate in Australia about the Asian opportunity over the last, say, 25 years, there has been a real sense that it is a fait accompli for us: 'Surely, since we are very close to Asia and we have a lot of people of Asian background living in our country, we are going to see huge economic benefits from this.' But, when you look at the data on how we are tracking in embracing that opportunity, there is a lot of cause for concern. Sure, we are exporting a lot to Asia, but most of what we are exporting is commodities. Deputy Speaker Henderson, despite you and I being in different political parties, I think we would agree that we want to do more than export commodities. We want to export medical devices, we want to export our great ideas, we want to export more of our education services to Asia's middle class. As another example, only 9 per cent of Australian businesses are reaching out and doing foreign direct investment in Asia. The vast majority of Australian businesses have no interaction with Asia at all. The reason this is concerning is that, when we look at businesses that have done really well in Asia, it is not something that happens quickly. In fact it can take something like 20 years to get a foothold in Asia. The business environment there is so incredibly different. I was in China just a few weeks ago and the economics of business there are just fundamentally different from what we see here in Australia. I am concerned about that and I see it as an economic challenge facing the country. Climate change is another issue I am very worried about, but we saw, essentially, nothing in the budget. We know that our climate is going to warm somewhere between two and four degrees. At four degrees, life in Australia could be incredibly difficult. Even at two degrees there will be radical changes to the way we live, to the economics of life in Australia. The budget said nothing about that. That is a bit of a flavour—three big issues, three big challenges I see facing the country, but nothing serious in the budget about any of them. It is for that reason that I see this as a pretty small budget, small in the sense of having a small vision for Australia and of the things that government can do to help us tackle what is ahead. I will talk a little bit later about the things that Labor is beginning to put into the public arena about how we would deal with some of these issues, but first I want to talk about the details of some of the policies in the budget and how they will affect my constituents in Hotham. The frank reality is that a lot of people in Hotham are going to be quite a lot worse off because of what is in this budget. I want the House to take note of that and to understand it. I represent a wonderful patch of our country in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Many thousands of families have made their home in Hotham. Some are doing very well; others struggle a great deal. It is those families—the families in my community who are struggling the most—who are being asked to do most of the heavy lifting by this budget. I want to reflect a little bit on the policies that will affect them. I will start by running through some of the impacts on families in my electorate. The childcare changes in the budget are the ones we have seen the government spruiking the most. All political parties in Australia today agree on something—this is a seismic thing for the nation—that child care is not delivering what we need it to. It is not delivering what families need, it is not delivering us the workforce participation outcomes we want to see and, very importantly, it is not delivering the early learning that will give Australian children the best possible start in life. Here was an opportunity to take this really important policy area that is so critical to the development of Australia's children and do something really good, make it into a system that really works. But that is not what we saw in the budget. What we saw was some additional funding for families who want to access child care—and that is basically it. Additional funding for families is fantastic, but of course with this government we see that, as they give with one hand, they take with the other. We saw that in changes to two essential programs that support Australian families today, especially Australian families with young children. The first are the changes to the Paid Parental Leave scheme. I was genuinely shocked to see an area where I thought we had finally come to a resolution—government provision of 18 weeks on the minimum wage for Australian parents who are looking after their children during those first critical weeks of their child's life. Labor put that scheme in place and we are incredibly proud of it. The way the scheme was designed was that there was the 18 weeks minimum and employers could top that up if employees were able to bargain for that. For example, employees at Woolworths and Coles supermarkets had around five or six additional weeks that the employer paid for. The changes the government has made will mean half of all new mums will lose funding and lose some essential weeks at home in the first weeks of life of their newborn. There is a policy aspect to this which I think is absolutely appalling; it is so short-sighted. The politics of this are awful. The government provides a scheme. It is intended for use with the 18 weeks minimum and employers top it up. And then the government says women who use the scheme in exactly the way it was intended are double dippers who are committing acts of fraud and rorting. The tenor of that debate was absolutely appalling. The policy outcomes are equally tragic. Most of the developed world provides much longer in paid parental leave than we see in Australia. The United Kingdom provides 39 weeks, Sweden provides 60 weeks and Canada provides 50 weeks. The reason those countries do that is that having a parent at home during the first weeks and months of a child's life is really good for the child's development. That is the reality. The evidence shows us it is very important for infant and maternal health. A longitudinal study of Australian children, one of the only really good longitudinal studies conducted in Australia, shows that mums who spend shorter periods of time at home after the birth of their child are more inclined to experience severe mental distress two years after the birth of their child. So there are long-term impacts and, frankly, long-term costs on the system in restricting the time that mums and, in some cases, dads have at home with their newborns. The government has cut this program claiming that this will save $1 billion. That is very unlikely because the way they have designed the reform fully expects that private employers will scale back on their parental leave, leaving more mums accessing the government scheme. It is bad policy, it was bad politics, and I really do hope the government backtracks and goes back to the old system. The family tax benefits cuts in the last budget remain in this budget. That will see the lowest income families around Australia some $6,000 worse off a year. The net impact of the Abbott government's so-called families budget is that families will lose about $3 billion overall. That is what we see when we put forward the additional funding for child care but take away family tax benefit and paid parental leave support. I guess that is what a 'families budget' looks like under a coalition government. Besides the new measures in this budget, the most unfair aspects of last year's budget remain in this budget. I really do want the Australian people to understand that this is the same budget as last year but with some additional cuts and some additional unfair policies on top. We will still see average families being $6,000 worse off. We will still see $80 billion being cut from schools and health. We will still see Christopher Pyne's mad idea of $100,000 university degrees. We will still see a $5 increase in the cost of medicine. We will still see cuts to the SBS and the ABC. We will still see cuts to community legal services. There are really only two things that have been reversed in this budget, and I think Labor has done a terrific job in tackling some of these issues. The first one is the indexation change to pensions. That would have seen pensioners $80 worse off in a decade than they otherwise would have been. Again, we see a bunch of other nasties for our pensioners. These include a lift in the retirement age to 70; $1.3 billion in cuts to pensioner concessions; $20 million in cuts to dementia initiatives; the axing of the dementia supplement; and the $900 seniors supplement with which a lot of pensioners pay their electricity bills and take care of a lot of other essentials. The second aspect is the GP tax, the $7 co-payment which was so concerning. I think we have gone through three or four iterations of what policy is going to be put in place there. Instead of putting in place an up-front payment the government is doing this via the back door by freezing Medicare benefits for four years unless doctors charge their patients additional funding. The upshot of all this is that it is the lowest income Australian families who are bearing the brunt of the government's proposals. NATSEM modelling has looked at how the two budgets affect Australian families. NATSEM is one of the most widely respected institutions that does modelling in Australia, and it says: The results clearly demonstrate that low income families with children are the main family group to be adversely impacted by policy changes since the last election. This is sad. It is unfair that low-income families are the ones who are bearing the brunt, and a lot of those people will be my constituents in Hotham. I condemn the budget on that basis. 10:45 Mr TAYLOR 231027 Hume It is a great joy to speak on the appropriation bills because I know this budget is the right budget for the constituents of my electorate of Hume, and for all Australians—for small businesses, for farmers, for young families, for pensioners and for those looking to study and contribute. For all those Australians who want to have a go, we should never forget that Australians are aspirational. The only metric the Labor Party can apply to a budget is the metric of redistribution. Yet Australians are aspirational, they want to have a go and they want budgets that support them having a go. That is exactly what we see here. When I get around my electorate I see an outpouring of happiness about this budget—people are delighted that finally, after years of Labor, we have a government that understands aspiration and that understands ambition. Ambition is a good thing—we want to encourage it; we want to encourage Australians to get on, have a go, create jobs, invest and make Australia a better place. This is the right budget for Hume; it is the right budget for Australia. Most importantly, it is about solving real problems. Government is about solving problems. What I am going to do is a little different from what many others have done—I am going to go through the budget and talk about the problems we are solving. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 10:47 to 11:02 Mr TAYLOR 231027 I was just saying that this is a budget that is seeking to solve real problems, and I thought I would describe the problems we are solving in this budget. I hasten to add that the previous speaker, the member for Hotham, identified a number of problems Australia is facing. She failed to identify that these were problems that emerged under the previous, Labor, government, and of course the first of those problems is out-of-control spending growth. This is not well understood. The fundamental problem Labor bequeathed this government is spending growth well above GDP growth. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that if you have spending growth at close to four per cent a year and income growth at below three per cent then you have a growing deficit problem, a growing debt problem, and that is exactly the situation we were left with. In fact, the budget deficit we were left with when we arrived into government was about $48½ billion. But we also know that if it was left untouched—if this spending growth of about 3½ to four per cent a year was allowed to continue—we would within a relatively short period of time be faced with debt levels of well over 100 per cent of GDP. That beats the Greeks, it beats the UK, it beats the US. That is where we were heading. And of course in this budget we see that budget deficits fall each year, despite the rhetoric from those opposite—from the $48½ billion I have described to $41.1 billion, $35.1 billion, $25.8 billion, $14.4 billion and in the final year $6.9 billion. So, this is a reduction in deficit each and every year, addressing the problem of rampant spending growth. What is really underlying those figures is that our spending growth level has been reduced from the 3½ to four per cent that we saw under Labor down to one per cent. So, it is the containing—not cuts—of spending growth that is absolutely fundamental to making this budget work. It is true that we would like less of that to be dependent on bracket creep and more of it to be dependent on other things. But the fact of the matter is that whilst those opposite are reluctant, hesitant—in fact, are avoiding any real discussion about tax reform and spending reform in this country—it is going to be very, very difficult for us to bring the budget down any other way, and that is exactly what we are doing. But the most important point here is that we have contained spending growth to about one per cent a year, which is an extremely credible outcome relative to what those opposite offered. That is problem No. 1 that we are addressing. Problem No. 2 is that we are faced with an economy that is relatively soft, where we have not, under Labor, seen the investment and job creation that we would like to see. We recognise that there is a major change happening in the Australian economy, the first of which is something that I saw in my previous career before coming into politics—the increase in the investment spending in mining, going from something like $20 billion a year back in the 2000s up to about $120 billion at the peak, and it is on its way back down again. That extra $100 billion of investment is a gift from the mining industry we should be very thankful for. It was mostly squandered in the Labor years, but the truth of the matter is that is a big kick to take in the economy. We desperately need to stimulate growth, investment and job creation. At the same time, we are seeing some major transformation in individual sectors across the economy, and nowhere is that clearer—and I see this in my electorate—than in retail, where we are seeing a shift. Retail was only ever a local business. It is now an international business. It is now possible for someone to sell bike parts or clothes or shoes—whatever you like—from the UK, the US or Asia into small country towns. That restructuring of retail is a very major change in the economy that we need to address and that Labor really never got its head around. Our solution to this problem is very clear, in contrast to the Labor solution, which was to run big, cumbersome, expensive government programs. We have taken the view that every small business in Australia can help stimulate the economy. There are no better shovel-ready projects in Australia than the shovel-ready projects contained in every Australian small business. So what we have said is, 'Get your shovels out, small businesses. Have a go. We want you to stimulate the economy. You know more about job creation, you know more about investment, than any government ever will, and we want you to get out there and create those jobs.' I am absolutely delighted that in my electorate of Hume that is exactly what is happening. I am watching business after business investing and creating jobs. This has been happening since we got into government, but it has only increased with free trade agreements, the reduction of red tape and a recognition from this government that it is not school halls and pink batts that are going to stimulate this economy, but the small entrepreneurs, the business people of Australia who will do the work for us. Those entrepreneurs and innovators are the backbone of our economy, they are the backbone of our country, and they will stimulate this economy and get it going. They are not in the public service; they are in the private sector. Ninety-six per cent of all Australian businesses are small businesses. Combined, they produce about $350 billion of economic output and they employ over 4½ million Australians. Nowhere are they more important than in regional Australia and, of course, nowhere is that more important than in an electorate like mine in Hume. Under Labor, we saw the number of small businesses in Australia and the number of people employed actually decline. This was a shocking situation where we saw an erosion of the strength of small business. That is not something we will stand for. We have heard a lot about the tax deductions and the accelerated depreciation that will have huge impacts on the investments that are being made in regional Australia. There will be a very positive impact on the activity of the businesses themselves. But one thing that is easily forgotten is how much they will stimulate the businesses around them. That second-order effect—the Keynesian multiplier, as economists put it—of a small business buying things from another business and in turn that business buying from someone else will have a very significant impact in regional Australia and across Australia more generally. One sector that we know has phenomenal opportunity in the coming years is agriculture. To shore up the strength of our agricultural sector and its robustness to drought and volatility, we are offering immediate tax deductions for new investments in water facilities and a three-year depreciation allowance for all capital expenditure on fodder storage assets. Absolutely fantastic news came yesterday—the government has again listened to rural and regional Australia and has again prioritised rural producers' needs. They told us that they wanted to get on with building fences, dams and fodder storage, and therefore they would like to see this accelerated depreciation come into place immediately. And that is exactly what we have done. In fact, from 7.30 pm on 12 May, that accelerated depreciation for those agricultural investments went into place. We want every farmer in Australia to be out there investing. Now is the time. With the lower dollar and higher margins, what an extraordinary opportunity we face to get these investments in place and to get all the flow-on effects to the rest of the Australian economy that we will undoubtedly see. And that accelerated depreciation applies regardless of the size of the farm. For small business more generally, as I said, whether you are farmers or tradespeople or accountants, lawyers or entrepreneurs, from 7.30 pm on budget night there was an immediate tax deduction for each and every item purchased up to $20,000 if the business has turnover of less than $2 million. This is something that we want to see Australian small businesses making the absolute most of. On budget night I sat there with a bunch of small businesspeople who were immediately on their phones, talking to their accountants and their business partners about how they can get moving. They are out there having a go right now. This is not a gift; this is not a handout. They get the tax deduction if they spend the money, and when they spend the money they create jobs, they create income, they create prosperity and they create exactly what we need in this country to stimulate growth at a time of great transition for our economy. The other part of stimulating the economy is infrastructure investment, and I am absolutely delighted with the infrastructure investment in this budget. We have a $16 million investment under the National Stronger Regions Fund in my electorate, a water treatment plant in Goulburn and a pipeline from Yass to Murrumbateman, which will support the growth of an absolutely extraordinary region. Our time has come in the Hume Corridor from Sydney down to Canberra. This is an amazing part of the world that needs infrastructure investment, because we are seeing thousands of people move out of our capital cities into one of the most wonderful parts of Australia—indeed, one of the most wonderful parts of the world. We need the infrastructure investment to support that, and that is exactly what this government is doing and what the last government consistently failed to do. The third real problem that we are solving in this budget is the relatively low participation rates of women in our workforce. As someone who has four children and a wife who has worked throughout the time that we have had those children, I understand what a battle it is juggling work with kids every day of the week. More and more Australians battle with this every day. My parents did not, but we do; we need to support partners, two-income families, where they want to work. Not everyone is going to choose to—and nor should they have to—but for those who do choose to, it is absolutely critical that we support them. We know that in Australia we have lower participation rates for women than in countries like Canada; we are at about 75 per cent, while Canada is over 80 per cent. The Grattan Institute tells us that if we could match the Canadian record, the GDP of Australia would be about $25 billion higher in a decade, so that is exactly what we are proposing to do with the $3.5 billion Jobs for Families childcare package in the budget. Families using child care who are on family incomes of between $65,000 and $170,000 will be about $30 a week better off, and that is a wonderful thing. On top of that there are a number of initiatives in there to support the more vulnerable families and also to support families that cannot access traditional child care. For those in rural areas where there is not easy access to child care—and I have been in this situation, my family has been in this situation—sometimes the only option is a nanny. The reality is that the support being provided in this budget to those families is absolutely wonderful, and I am looking forward to seeing that pilot working in my electorate. I have no doubt it will be a great success. The fourth real problem we are solving is: finding jobs for unemployed Australians, particularly young Australians, and I commend the jobs package in this budget to everybody. Youth unemployment rose under the previous Labor government from about nine per cent to 13 per cent in its time in government. That is significant underemployment, particularly of younger Australians. What we see in this budget is a $1.2 billion wage-subsidy pool, work experience for up to four weeks and $330 million to focus on new job initiatives aimed at young job seekers. This is a great budget for Australia. This is a great budget for young Australians, for working Australians, for small businesses and I absolutely commend this budget the House. 11:15 Ms CHESTERS 249710 Bendigo I completely disagree with the previous speaker that this budget is about creating jobs. This budget does not. This budget in no way goes to address the critical problem that we have in our community of creating jobs for people who are unemployed. The budget's own papers state that unemployment in this country will rise. In fact, unemployment in this country has not been at these levels since the Prime Minister was the employment minister under the former Howard government. So Tony Abbott, the Prime Minister, has a very good track record when it comes to high unemployment. He has a terrible track record when it comes to creating jobs. The other major problem we have within our community and economy is underemployment. Underemployment in the state of Victoria, where I am from, is up to 19 per cent. Underemployment, for those who do not know, is people who are working in insecure work, people who are getting fewer hours today than they need to help them survive. The increasing number of people working part-time or casual jobs and simply not working enough hours to pay the bills is a big problem in my area of central Victoria and Bendigo. Another problem this budget drastically fails at addressing is: tackling long-term youth unemployment. Long-term youth unemployment in my area of central Victoria is up to 19 per cent—19 per cent of our young people cannot find jobs. That is one in five. We are not just talking about the long-term unemployed kids who have other social barriers to getting work. We are not just talking about the tough cases, where they do not have the skills they need to look for work and hold work. We are talking about young people who have university degrees. We are talking about young people who have TAFE qualifications. We are talking about young people who finished school and decided they wanted work. We literally do not have the entry-level jobs available today that we had a generation ago. This budget fails to tackle those long-term unemployment issues. This budget does not create jobs. Locally, the strength of our economy is its diversity. We still have a very strong manufacturing sector. We have a strong health sector, and with the Bendigo hospital being built it will have an even larger health sector. We are a health hub for central Victoria. We have a strong finance sector with the Bendigo Bank. We are home to the Bendigo Bank. We also have a strong education sector. We are home to the La Trobe Bendigo campus and we have the Bendigo Kangan Batman TAFE. This budget attacks all of those areas. There has been $141 million cut from La Trobe. Those funding cuts will hit Bendigo hard. They will make it harder for the university to run the courses our young people wish to study. When it comes to health, $480 million has been cut from our local hospitals. Whilst it is great that the state Labor government is building the Bendigo hospital, we ask the question: will it have the resources and funding it needs to open its doors? This government—through funding cuts in this budget—will put extra pressure on the states and Bendigo Health. That is how this budget is attacking health in our local region. This budget is also attacking families—nine out of 10 families who are on the lowest incomes will be hit hard as a result of this budget and that will increase the hidden poverty in our communities. In fact, this budget helps nine out of 10 of the highest income earners at the expense of nine out of 10 of the lowest income families. It demonstrates the priority of this government and this budget to help out those on the highest incomes at the expense of those on the lowest incomes. What is it like for these nine out of 10 families? We have a lot of them in Bendigo; in fact, there are a lot of them living in regional Australia and I am quite surprised that there are not more National MPs and rural Liberal MPs standing up and calling on the government to reverse these attacks. The changes to family tax benefits will hit people on the lowest income the hardest. The cuts to schools will hit those with schoolchildren the hardest. The cuts to health will hit not only their children; it will have an impact on their own health and the health of their parents. In Bendigo in the week between budget week and this week, I had a chance to catch up with our Eaglehawk seniors and we had a general chat about what they thought of the budget. They raised with me the concern that they had for their children and their grandchildren. They said that the cost of basics is going up and to raise a family today is a lot more expensive than it was in their time. And by 'basics' they mean not just utility bills, which are going up—water is going up, gas is going up, electricity is going up—but also, for example, the increasing costs of education. One grandmother said to me that her young granddaughter really enjoys art but the school sent home a bill of $1,000 for art supplies and said that if she would like to do an accelerated art program the cost is going to be $1,000. How does a family on a low income, the minimum wage, pay $1,000 for art supplies? This is what is happening in some of our schools right now because of the pressures they are under as result of this government cutting their funding. The Eaglehawk seniors also raised with me other cost pressures like transport—transport is going up, and we are talking not just about public transport but about the cost of putting fuel in the car. This budget still contains an increase in the fuel excise. Let us just take a moment to remember why fuel excise was frozen. When the Howard government introduced the GST one of the trade-offs was that we would not continue to increase the fuel excise—what the government takes from every litre of fuel. Now the government has decided to basically do a double tax on fuel. They will increase the fuel excise at the same time as keeping the GST at the rate it is. Petrol prices will go up and people will pay more for petrol—and we do pay more in the country areas for petrol; the further you are from the metropolitan areas the more you pay for petrol. Another issue that the Eaglehawk seniors raised with me was the cost of health. It is expensive today to get ongoing and continuous health care, and seniors are very worried that they are going to have to pay more to see their local GP. We have high bulk-billing rates in Bendigo as a result of the former Labor government helping to build GP superclinics—and I know those opposite can be quite critical of the GP superclinics but without these clinics being built in Central Victoria we would not have the bulk-billing rates that we have today. The Eaglehawk seniors are really worried to hear that the Medicare rebates for GPs have been frozen—they will not be indexed or increase—and that puts pressure on their local GPs to introduce some kind of payment or tax. Many of these seniors and their family members regularly need to go to the doctor and so they are worried about the hit that that would have on their own budget. I met last week with the Bendigo Salvation Army, who are based at the old Gravel Hill primary school. This week, as we know, we are coming up to the Red Shield Appeal. It is the 50th anniversary of the Red Shield Appeal, and the target for the Bendigo region is to raise about $280,000. All of that money will go back into our local community. What struck me in the meeting I had with the Bendigo Salvos, when we launched the Red Shield Appeal, was that even if we raise $280,000 we will get much more than that from the appeal. The money that comes back into our region is over $1 million because the Salvos work on distribution based upon need, and the level of need in our community is only increasing. The Salvos are out there doorknocking because the need for help in our community is on the increase, but they also raised the fact that, as a result of this government's funding cuts, they have had about 18 per cent of their food relief budget cut. This is the Salvos—these are people who are apolitical, who make sure that people do not go hungry. Whether it be for financial counselling or support, for a food hamper to help you get through until your next pay cheque, for a blanket or for a hot meal for those who are homeless, these people help those who cannot help themselves—yet this government has cut their emergency food relief budget by about 18 per cent. They were successful in getting the grant for local area food relief, but they have a larger area and less funding. That is how mean this government is. When it comes to our local community, we are having a conversation about hidden poverty. Hidden poverty is the poverty that you do not quite see. It is not the people who are homeless; it is not the people who need the blanket or who rattle their own tin from day to day. These people are the single mums. These are the people who simply cannot get by. They are embarrassed to take their kids to children's birthday parties because they cannot afford to buy the present. They are our carers—for their birthday, their kids take them out to the movies, or their neighbours take them out for a cup of coffee. These are the people who are struggling to get by day to day, and there is a lot of that in Central Victoria. What we have seen from this budget is more pressure on them and funding cuts. In one of the areas that I want to touch on briefly the government said, 'Don't worry, we are going to introduce nannies.' This measure, in this budget, is an absolute joke. What they are saying is that they will subsidise nannies—people who are unskilled and unqualified—and pay them by the hour. I have no problem with people using nannies, but it should not be subsidised by this government. It is a silly measure and a waste of money. It is inappropriate expenditure of money to subsidise unskilled people working in people's homes. What is next? Are we going to subsidise cleaners and housekeepers in people's homes? It is simply wrong. If there is any money allocated for early childhood education, it should go towards increasing the wages of skilled professional educators—people who are working with diplomas and certificates in our childcare centres. Yet, rather than funding and properly resourcing our childcare centres, this government is subsidising personal individual decisions to have unskilled people caring for children. It is simply ludicrous and demonstrates how this government is trying to support their mates and not the people who most need it. Another area that has been hit hard by this government in this budget is the arts—$110 million has been cut from the Australia Council for the Arts. That will have a big impact on regional arts. To this day we are waiting on an answer to find out whether the Castlemaine State Festival will continue to be funded. It is a festival that not only is a celebration and collaboration of local art and arts culture but also is a major economic driver in the community of Castlemaine. To lose that festival and that funding would be a disaster. Finally, after this speech I am about to go and meet with some of our hardworking government cleaners. They have had a double hit from this government. Not only are they losing their family tax benefits, not only are they part of the nine out of 10 low-income families that will be worse off as a result of this budget, they are also competing against companies who want to cut their wages. Their current companies which are paying the Clean Start rates of pay, are being undercut by companies which are not. We learnt this week that cleaners who work for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been hit with a $6,000 pay cut. A $6,000 pay cut because their Clean Start company has been undercut by a company which does not pay the Clean Start rates. Those are the priorities of this government: the double hits and the double whammies to some of our hardest-working people. The cuts to cleaners' wages just demonstrates how cruel, mean and tricky this government is. 11:30 Mr SUKKAR 242515 Deakin It is an absolute honour to be able to speak in relation to the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2015-2016 and the related bills. I think that, while she is a friend of mine, the member for Bendigo indicated very clearly in her contribution why the Labor Party will never be able to deliver a surplus and will never be able to show the kind of fiscal responsibility that Australians expect of their mature federal governments. In essence, the Labor Party are now going around the country as a complaint box for every group who would like more money. They are promising lower taxes, higher spending and a better bottom line outcome for the budget. So that is higher spending, lower taxes and bigger surpluses. Now, if the Labor Party think that Australians are so silly as to buy that then I think they are going to be very sadly mistaken. One thing that this budget does is that it meets three very important objectives. Firstly, it gives us a believable, achievable and fair path to surplus. Then, it does so whilst also restraining spending. As an earlier speaker made clear, over the forward estimates spending restraint is capped at about one per cent growth a year, compared to somewhere near three per cent when we inherited government. And the third objective that I think this year's budget does quite successfully is to improve confidence in the economy. In a sense, it is actually quite difficult to traverse those three competing objectives, because they do compete in certain areas. But improving confidence without hitting the bottom line has been one of the great outcomes of this budget. The first area that I would highlight there is, clearly, our small business package. It has been very popular, with accelerated depreciation of up to $20,000 for a piece of capital equipment that you may have had to depreciate over a number of years which can now be depreciated in the year in which you buy it. That means that from budget night until 30 June if a business purchases a piece of capital equipment up to the value of $20,000 they can depreciate it this financial year. That has absolutely reverberated through the small business community and it is delivering confidence in spades. The beauty of the policy, though, is that whilst it does that there is not a huge budget impact. In a sense we are freeing up small businesses to take the chance, to take that next step and to expand their business. The economic benefits that will flow from that, in my view, will be increased tax receipts that outweigh the costs of the accelerated depreciation. So it is quite an extraordinary outcome and I think it is quite instructive for both sides of politics that we can make sensible budgetary changes—changes that improve confidence in the economy—that do not have a huge bottom line impact on the budget. I know that goes against the Labor Party's philosophy, which is that government is just one big spending competition—that we run around the country and have a competition as to who can spend more money. As Liberals, we accept that we can never win that competition. If government in this country becomes a competition as to who can spend more money then, guess what? Labor, you will win every time! In fact, we do not want to win that competition. We want to deliver the kind of responsible economic management of this country that frees up individuals and small businesses to do the things that they do best, and that is to create wealth for themselves. A benefit of that is that they create wealth for the rest of the country that we as a government take from them and redistribute to other people. Let us never forget that. Every dollar that we spend is taken from somebody else. So I think that this budget, in quite an efficient way, manages those three priorities: it has a path to surplus and spending restraint but improves economic confidence. I have spoken about the small business package in very broad strokes. I want to speak about it in a little more detail for the next couple of minutes. Obviously, the 1½ per cent tax cut for incorporated small businesses is good news for those small businesses that are incorporated. But, given the deep small-business background of many of us in this House, the Minister for Small Business, and, indeed, the Prime Minister and the cabinet, have done an extraordinary job in recognising that lots of small businesses are not incorporated. So there is a tax cut also for unincorporated small businesses of five per cent, up to $1,000. That means that every small business, or a very huge proportion—92 per cent—of small businesses will be receiving a tax cut through those mechanisms. Of course, accelerated depreciation has been exceptionally popular. I have seen examples of it in my own electorate. Last week I visited a number of small businesses. I visited Cafe Emjay in Ringwood East; Bill and Mary do a wonderful job there and they are potentially looking to expand their business. I visited Daisy's Garden Supplies; they have significant investments in plant and equipment. Anything we can do to help them make those investments—to help them to actually pull the trigger on making those investments—will reverberate throughout the Australian economy. I also visited Dewar Electronics, a business that is 45 years old; they were very pleased to say that I was the first member of parliament that had ever visited them in 45 years. What an outstanding success story this business is. They are competing on the world stage now—competing against really big global competitors, from China in particular—but they are holding their own. And they are holding their own because they are a small family business where, when times get tough, the wagons circle and they make it work. They get their costs under control. And they have got an exceptionally loyal workforce which provides them with benefits that I think all small businesses need. Let us remember why we want to help small businesses. Often, small businesses treat their employees more like family than employees. Having grown up in a small business family, I can tell you right now: the rent gets paid first, the utilities get paid second, the employees get paid third, and if there is any money left over at the end it goes to the small business operators. And, for many small businesses, there are months and sometimes years when a payment to the small business owner never happens, because they are reinvesting into the business or times are tough and they are trying to build up the business. They pay themselves last. So anything that we can do as a government to assist small businesses to flourish helps not only them but also their employees because it creates opportunities. One of the lamentable aspects of our current economy is that we cannot rely on the top 50 or top 100 ASX-listed companies to provide us with the jobs growth that they have in the last 40 years. Many of them are sitting on very healthy balance sheets. They have been able to repair their balance sheets since the global financial crisis. But those investments, certainly in our human capital—in growing our workforce—are not happening at the rate we would like. So this package recognises that the jobs of the future will be coming more and more from young entrepreneurs and small businesses, and that anything we can do to kick-start their growth is going to be good not only for them but also for the broader economy. In my state of Victoria, we also, in the budget, had a couple of very good infrastructure announcements. I was very pleased to see that $3 billion has been set aside in the budget for the East West Link. This is obviously a very lamentable policy area in my state of Victoria, where we have a state government that has spent up to $1 billion not to build a road. Nonetheless, we think, and certainly my electorate believes, that this piece of infrastructure is absolutely crucial—not only for the liveability of the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and not only so that parents do not spend all their time in their cars on their way home from work but actually get to spend some time with their children, but also for the productivity benefits and the 7,000 jobs that will flow. So $3 billion has been set aside by this federal government for any future state government that is willing to build the East West Link. I think slowly but surely Dan Andrews and the state Labor Party, and hopefully Bill Shorten, will recognise this. The pressure will become too strong and too great for them and they will capitulate and recognise that spending up to $1 billion not to build a road in a city that is growing by hundreds of thousands of people was just the most outrageous decision ever and they will take us up on our offer. They will accept the $3 billion that we are generously putting on the table and they will get the East West Link built. I do not want to get into the politics of this anymore. I just want to improve the lives of my citizens. I want to improve the lives of people living in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and how can you live in a big city if you cannot get around? How can you actively participate in an economy if it takes you hours and hours to get from one meeting to another? So we have big challenges in dealing with transport infrastructure in Victoria, and I think the $3 billion that has been set aside by this federal government in the 2015 budget will be something that Victorians thank us for in the future, because the East West Link will be built. It will be built, and when it is built I think our residents will be very pleased and will hopefully by then be very grateful for the bipartisanship on the issue which we had for many, many years. The support for the East West Link was bipartisan for nearly a decade. In my electorate of Deakin, we also had an outstanding announcement with respect to $3 million from the National Stronger Regions Fund for the Realm project, which is an initiative involving the federal government, the Queensland Investment Corporation and Maroondah City Council. It will build an innovation hub in Ringwood, a hub that dovetails very nicely into our small business package. It will offer support for small businesses. As the Minister for Small Business often says, and to borrow a phrase from him, it will help our 'mumpreneurs'—people like my sister who have set up very successful small businesses from home, people who are looking to innovate, people who are looking to invest in R&D, people who are looking to take advantage of the free trade agreements that this government has successfully negotiated with Japan, Korea and China. It will be an innovation centre that helps them unlock these opportunities, because one thing we know is that 20 years ago a small business had a small catchment in its own area, but nowadays, like my sister's business, a small business has a catchment of customers around the world. So how can we help people like her access those opportunities? The Realm project in Ringwood and the $3 million commitment from this federal government under the National Stronger Regions Fund is going to help them unlock those possibilities. By unlocking those possibilities, we will improve the job prospects for our young people because we will have vibrant small businesses and, hopefully, small businesses growing into medium and large businesses into the future. Other speakers in the debate on this bill have spoken about our support for families package. Obviously I think every member of this parliament, when travelling around their electorates, would hear the lamentable stories from various constituents about how difficult it is, often but not always, for mothers to juggle work and commitments to children—not only the funding of child care but the logistics of getting them to and from child care. So anything we can do to assist with those challenges I think is important, and this is one thing that the package does. There is $3½ billion of additional funding to support families, which will hopefully have a couple of dividends for our society. The first dividend will be increased participation. I know this statistic is reeled off a lot by government members, but I think it is very important. If we had a female participation rate akin to the rate in Canada, an economy comparable in many ways, the dividend for our economy would be in the tens of billions of dollars. So we are hopeful and indeed the research indicates that our jobs and support for families package will have that dividend. Finally, one thing that has not been spoken about a great deal is some of the great work that Sussan Ley, the Minister for Health, has done in this budget, firstly in confirming our support for the Medical Research Future Fund. One of the more depressing aspects of last year's discussion and debate was the negative carping about the Medical Research Future Fund. Why have Australians enjoyed better health outcomes and higher average life expectancy over the past 20 or 30 years? It is due primarily to medical research. And anything we can do to turbocharge medical research, which is an area of absolute competitive advantage for us, is I think important. So, the $400 million for the Medical Research Future Fund, and indeed an ongoing commitment from this government that we will ensure that the Medical Research Future Fund ultimately reaches its capital amount of $20 billion, will then enable it to fund ongoing medical research, particularly in my home state of Victoria. We are the medical research powerhouse of this country. Sure, I have a parochial interest in medical research as well, but I think that was an outstanding and not-so-spoken-about aspect of this budget. I congratulate the Treasurer. I think that here we get to meeting the three competing objectives of returning to surplus, restoring economic confidence and exercising spending restraint. I commend the bill to the House. 11:45 Mr BYRNE 008K0 Holt I rise to speak on the appropriation bills for 2015-16 and to talk in general about the challenges we confront as a local community in my electorate and as a country. I am an optimist when it comes to our country's future, and I actually believe that our best days are yet to come; they lie ahead of us. But we all acknowledge in this place that our country faces some economic and security challenges that we must address. We now live in a globally interconnected world that is changing the way we do business and forcing nations to adapt their economies to the 21st century. We are also seeing a growing world of disorder developing, as evidenced by the growing terrorist threat posed by the Islamic State and other geopolitical challenges, such as the issue we are dealing with in China's activities in the South China Sea. Our nation cannot get left behind economically, because we are looking at nations like Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United States innovating and manufacturing the goods of the 21st century. Our nation also cannot afford to neglect the global threats of terrorism, geopolitical challenges and terrorist threats, as I have said, and the growing world of disorder. Australians are looking for political leadership to address these great economic, geopolitical and national security challenges. Australians are looking for security. They want to know that we collectively in this parliament are working to keep the country safe. Australians are also looking for new opportunities to prosper and to continue to plan their futures with some sense of certainty in the 21st century. In my electorate of Holt, in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, my community is very focused on our jobs in providing the necessary security and opportunities for people in our constituencies. They want to be kept safe, as a starting point. They want to know that there is some degree of economic certainty so that they can have some planning for the jobs of the future. And they want the necessary social infrastructure—because they pay their taxes—to succeed in this 21st century. They want the guarantees of greater opportunities and security for their children as well. I want to touch on something that really is a primary responsibility of government and an issue that I am completely and unequivocally committed to, and that is national security. We cannot have a debate in this place, regardless of what side of the fence we sit on, without both sides being unambiguously committed to keeping our community and our country safe. As people know, I am the deputy chair of the intelligence and security committee, and I work—and Labor works, particularly through the leadership of Bill Shorten—hand in hand with the federal government to keep our community safe. You might ask, Deputy Speaker, why I raise this. Our electorate has been profoundly affected by terrorism events. In my constituency there was an event on 23 September 2014 where an attack was conducted by an assailant on two police officers. They were stabbed and then the assailant was shot. The intent of that particular activity by the assailant was to kill the police officers and, if successful, to proceed to kill others in the police station. The activity was Islamic State-inspired. Associates of that particular assailant have been subsequently charged and there were the Anzac Day arrests, as they are known. I was privy to information concerning the particular activities of those individuals and remain so in my role as deputy chair of the committee and also working with the very brave police officers that service and protect our community, both AFP and Victoria Police, and our intelligence agencies. What transpired in the discourse in the media with respect to these matters was an implied criticism of the police officers, even the police officers on the night of the event, and the government's handling of national security. I just want to make it absolutely and unequivocally clear to those that may have read that media report that the media reporting was irresponsible, it did not take into account the real events of what transpired on that evening and it was not in the national interest. I also want those police officers—AFP and Vic Pol—and our security agencies to know that I support them, our community supports them, our government supports them and the opposition, led by Bill Shorten, supports them 100 per cent. That support is not equivocal support; it is unequivocal support for the job that our security agencies, the Victorian police and our AFP do. There is not any greater challenge for a government, or an opposition, for that matter, than to ensure that we keep our community safe. When reading the media reportage, I was quite surprised by the cavalier way that the lives of those that were involved in that incident were dragged, if you want, through the print press in a very inappropriate way. To some extent, it leads me to ask: in reality, in the reporting of these events, and even to some extent in terms of the broad discussion—and it ties into what I observed during the Lindt cafe siege—what role does the media play? In my discussions—which I will touch on a bit further on—with leaders of the Islamic community, who are working hand in hand with us in my constituency to deal with this threat, and with the AFP officers, the intelligence agencies and the officers of Victoria Police, the question we have is: where is the media's responsibility in terms of reporting this? I would put that to you, Deputy Speaker, to this chamber and to this House, as I did to a meeting that I convened in my constituency on 30 April. I would like to thank the Australian government and the office of the Attorney-General, George Brandis, as well as the Prime Minister's office, for facilitating this meeting. This was a meeting that I convened as a summit between the officers from Victoria Police, the AFP, members of the Attorney-General's Department and our local Muslim community leaders. We collectively sat together to work out how we could deal with this challenge collectively—and I emphasise 'collectively'. Of course, these matters were not reported because they were not raised. The challenge that we have in dealing with this issue is how do we get appropriate reporting because of the very intensive and understandable sensitivities? It occurs to me, in terms of how Muslim community leaders are portrayed, as well as my direct firsthand experience of the inappropriate reporting of our police officers and their activities and what occurred on that particular night, as well as what I observed in the Lindt cafe siege, that the media—and I will be putting this forward to government—need to have a code of conduct. I observed with the Lindt cafe siege—as someone who has experience in counterterrorism operations and has had tactical-response discussions—the media filming counterterrorism officers who were in strategic positions. Had the perpetrator seen that, he would have taken some form of action. It is not just me saying this. This is direct feedback I have received about the feelings of officers on the ground whose lives were put in danger by this media coverage. The media were televising a tactical operation while it was being conducted. It deeply concerned me that the first 60 minutes of that event were taken as a live feed. I will not discuss in graphic detail what could have happened in those 60 minutes, but I say to this chamber: imagine more than one terrorist having had the opportunity to make a point. It would have profoundly impacted on the psychology of the Australian community. Why was that feed allowed to occur? I make no criticism of the TV channel that broadcast it, but I would respectfully submit that this should not have been allowed to occur. While I was watching that live feed and subsequent visual media reportage, of the tactical operation being conducted by our brave officers, people from overseas organisations were contacting me asking what was going on. They asked why this footage was allowed to be shown live and tactically. That, in my mind, had a strong impact on what occurred that day. I do not seek to blame the media for that, but it is the responsibility of legislators, when they see a difficulty, to ask that measures be taken to protect the people we have deployed on the ground—in this case, the special operations group, New South Wales Police and others who were there. I will be putting forward, through the committee and discussions with others, that we do need a code of conduct on how the media report, where they are situated and what media can be sent. Unfortunately, those who want to do us further harm have studied that Lindt cafe footage very carefully and have learnt a lot about how we might respond to a terrorist event. Again, I do not blame the media but it is not in our interests to continue to portray or show events of that type. I respectfully put forward that we need to deal with that. I include the issue of reportage of individuals. I want to emphasise that this meeting was a collective gathering of Victorian police, AFP, members of the Attorney-General's Department and, very importantly, our local Muslim community leaders—it is, in some ways, the way they are portrayed as well. There was agreement across the board that the media should have been very careful about the way they reported the siege. There were pictures of a young man, for example, who was not charged. I thought we had a concept in this country of innocent until proven guilty, so what was the picture of that young man doing there? Do you think that helped the endeavours of our law-enforcement people working collaboratively with security agencies? No it did not. It raises the point of how we deal with this. Words are bullets. In the space where we are trying to engage local Muslim communities, when we are trying to deal with and support our brave men and women who work to keep us safe, in our security services, these things can damage our coordinated efforts in dealing with this type of issue. I seek not to limit press freedom—but the press have to have a responsibility. There must be some responsibility for appropriate and considered reporting of events. It is our country collectively that is dealing with this threat. We did not ask for this threat to visit our shores, but we can deal with it. How we deal with it is: collectively. I believe the solution is with our community coming together. Australians are the best in the world—as an Australian politician, I would say that—in dealing with crises: bushfires, floods, things that happen overseas. There is a spirit that runs through the soul of this country which is unique in all of the world. We come together collectively, for the common good, to deal with these issues. I believe we will do the same thing again with this particular threat, but we need everyone involved in that process. We do not need people to be sitting on the sidelines making inappropriate comments about communities or our law enforcement agencies or our agencies. Words are bullets. So I give a commitment to all of those that were at the summit that I will continue to push for us to solve this dilemma collectively. We will face future challenges—there is no doubt about that—but we can come together for the common good. We can solve this problem collectively. I will do everything within my power to support the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to ensure that that happens. 12:01 Mrs GRIGGS 220370 Solomon It gives me great pride to rise today as a member of this coalition government to speak on the appropriation bills for budget 2015. I want to begin by congratulating the team that put this groundbreaking budget together: Treasurer Joe Hockey, Minister for Finance Senator Cormann and Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. All have done a fantastic job in putting together a budget that will stimulate economic growth, make life easier for families, increase consumer confidence and of course help small businesses grow, hopefully, into big businesses. This achievement is even more incredible when you see what they had to work with. The previous Labor government inherited some $70 billion in the bank, $70 billion in cash. The budget of the Howard government had delivered a $20 billion surplus. Using the sort of economic management that only a Labor Party can, they used every single dollar that they could and they quickly turned the surplus into a $27 billion deficit in just 12 months. And the hits kept coming. They overspent $27 billion in 2008-09, $54 billion in 2009-10, $47 billion in 2010-11 and $43 billion in the 2012-13 financial year. They also slapped another $19 billion on the national credit card in the 2012-13 financial year. In the 2013-14 financial year that blew out to $48 billion. What was Labor's Treasurer doing? He was announcing that they were delivering surpluses. He said: 'Ignore what happened last year when I announced a surplus and instead we overspent by a few tens of billions of dollars. This year there will be a surplus.' That is what the honourable member for Lilley said. If we had a dollar for every time Labor let Australia down with a promise of a surplus, we would not have a deficit. Unfortunately though, it is the numbers on the balance sheet that actually matter. We cannot build roads and rail lines with Labor's empty promises. We cannot pay nurses with the member for Lilley's rhetoric. This is the situation the coalition has been left with. Despite all Labor's chaos, their debt, falling commodity prices and lower tax revenues, the coalition government has faced up to the challenge and delivered a budget that will stimulate economic growth beyond the mining boom and that will build the infrastructure we need. It is a budget that invests in our economy and in education and health for our people. It is a budget that is good for business. As the member for Solomon, this is a budget that is also fantastic for north Australia. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about some of the initiatives that the government and this budget will deliver in my electorate of Solomon, which includes all of Darwin and Palmerston and more broadly in north Australia. I have spoken with some of my fellow MPs from above the Tropic of Capricorn and we are all ecstatic; I think even some of the members from the other side would share in our enthusiasm. There is $5 billion being made available to major infrastructure projects in north Australia—that is $5 billion. For the businesses of my electorate, both large and small, this is going to be a huge boost. Construction of major projects will be a huge employment opportunity. Supplying those major projects with equipment, with materials and with expertise will be a huge business opportunity for people in my electorate. The dividends those projects will deliver will be good for the Top End in the long term by providing better access to markets and better infrastructure for our local businesses. Of course this investment is on top of some of the major works already going on in Solomon with the $110 million on the upgrade of the duplication of the Tiger Brennan Drive and $2 million in road black spot funding that Minister Briggs and I announced a few months ago. With this budget we have taken the talk out of developing the north—talk which has been going on since Federation and that we are now turning into real action. This fund could be the capital which allows us to join the Northern Territory gas network to the national grid; this could be the investment which allows a rail line from Mount Isa to Tennant Creek to become viable, linking the eastern seaboard to Darwin without a train going via Adelaide. I am absolutely honoured to represent one small part of Northern Australia—the electorate of Solomon—in this place. The people of Solomon are genuinely excited about this budget, and why wouldn't they be? The coalition government's Stronger Regions Fund will contribute nearly $4.5 million towards the upgrading of Parap Pool, which will see the much-loved but very ageing facility upgraded to a FINA approved facility with a FINA approved standard 50-metre pool and a 25-metre pool. There are also going to be some other upgrades to the facility, including a shadecloth. I have spoken many times in this place about my good friend, Tahnee Afuhaamango, who at last count held 21 world records in terms of the Down Syndrome International Swimming Organisation. Unfortunately for Tahnee, none of these world records could be set in Darwin, her home town, because there was no FINA standard pool there; the closest FINA-approved pool is 1,500 kilometres away down in Alice Springs. Graeme Stephenson from Swimming Australia said that in terms of the Parat pool development, this grant will be the catalyst to delivering on what is a very exciting project for the Darwin community, and he went on to say that this would create opportunity for young athletes. I have spoken to my good friend, the Lord Mayor of Darwin, Katrina Fong Lim, about this project many times. When I phoned her with the news that we had got the funding she was as excited as I was, and I am so looking forward to working with her and her colleagues and with the City of Darwin to ensure that Darwin finally gets its FINA approved pool and upgraded facilities in the Parap area. While talking about athletes and infrastructure, I have great pleasure in reporting that several young athletes in my electorate are showing incredible potential. My latest round of Solomon Sporting Champions include Liam Mulvahil, who does athletics and was recently at a fun run we had in Palmerston; netballer Sally King, who is madly fundraising for her next trip and is keeping her mum very poor; boxer Reed Halicek; basketballer Henry Callander and of course the little squash legend, Chad Blenkinship. I would like to take a moment here to congratulate all of these up-and-coming athletes and, on their behalf, thank their families who do such great work in support and in making sure that they get to all of their sporting commitments. My electorate is actually full of people doing amazing things. I have mentioned some of the sporting prowess; I would now like to give a nod to the 7,800 entrepreneurs who operate small businesses in and around the Top End. I have had conversations with a lot of small business owners—tradesmen, consultants, professionals. The recurring question is around the budget. They keep asking: 'What's the catch?' It is good news to be able to say to them that there is no catch. Ryan and Lara Fowler, constituents of mine, who own and operate Champagne Plumbing, will benefit from the lowest company tax since the 1960s. Brandit, a company in the Darwin CBD which creates printing and promotional items, will have access to instant tax write-offs on plant and equipment. At Q Framing in Darwin's northern suburbs, they will find they spend less time on paperwork and more time on artwork, with cuts to red tape. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker Prentice, small business is the cornerstone of the economy, just as families are the cornerstone of society. This government, the Abbott government, is helping families right across Australia, but particularly in Solomon. This budget is investing $3½ billion in the Jobs for Families childcare package. This has come as a welcome relief to the people of Darwin and Palmerston. Families with incomes below $65,000 will receive ongoing financial support through the childcare safety net. Families with income between $65,000 and $170,000 a year will be better off on average as they will have an extra $30 a week in their pockets. Families with incomes above those figures will continue to receive the same level of support that they do now. This is a comprehensive suite of measures which is a good for all families. As I said, there are no losers here. For parents who are struggling, there will be increased access to child support and additional support with child care for a parent who wants to re-enter the workforce. For most families on typical incomes, it will mean an additional $30 a week in their pockets—a bit of extra help with the cost of child care. For people in our community who we rely on when things get tough, like doctors, nurses, police, they can now rely on us to help them. There will be $246 million over two years to trial flexible and affordable arrangements such as nannies, where standard child care will not cover the gap. It is another win-win. As you know, this is the recurring theme of the budget: have a go. It is a win-win for everyone. Anyone needing medical treatment in the Northern Territory will also be better off. Some of those in this place have been involved in a whispering campaign trying to spread a bit of mischief about hospital funding in the Northern Territory. It was particularly telling that a lot of the whispering was going on before the budget was released. Perhaps they were trying to get a story out there before the facts got in the way. After reading some of the press releases from those opposite and listening to some of the doorstops, I was very keen to see the relevant parts of the budget on health and hospital funding in the Northern Territory. This is where it gets interesting. Anyone can download the PDF of the budget and look at Budget Paper No. 3: Federal Financial Relations. If you turn to page 11, there is a table titled, 'National Health Reform and public hospitals funding'. I scanned that table pretty closely looking for the doom and gloom that the Labor Party had been talking about. I searched for the cuts and cancellations they had predicted. This is what I found: a 28.8 per cent increase in hospital funding in the Northern Territory over the forward estimates—an increase of nearly a third. That is an increase of $44,500,000 a year. So I get cynical and start thinking like a Labor member and looking for the bad news. Perhaps funding is being restored after a dip. No: funding went up by 17.3 per cent in 2014-15 alone—17 per cent in one year. Then we have the $110 million in federal funding locked in for the Palmerston hospital construction—no change there, despite what they say. Headworks and infrastructure upgrades are already well underway on this site. As I have said, this is a budget that is good for families and good for small businesses and a budget that is fantastic for north Australia. Roads are getting fixed, community facilities are getting upgraded, families are getting access to better and more flexible and affordable child care, fuel prices are dropping, small business tax rates are dropping and small business confidence is soaring. It is an honour as a coalition member from north Australia to commend this bill to the house. 12:15 Mr WILKIE C2T Denison This year's budget is not the horror budget of last year. That was in a league all of its own. It was so bad, indeed, that I, along with one other member of the House of Representatives, felt the need to vote against appropriation bills 1 and 2—in effect in an attempt to block supply— because we thought it was important that the government last year go back to the drawing board and redo last year's budget and make it fairer. Regrettably, that was not to be, because the Labor Party and the Greens voted for supply in that case. That brings me to this year's budget. It is a mixed bag. But, on balance, I am concerned that it is still not fair, that it is not sensibly funded and that it contains very little joy for Tasmania. There is some good news, and I should acknowledge that and applaud the government for that good news. The government's decision not to go ahead with the changes to the indexation of the age pension is a good decision. Mind you, it is a reversal of a bad decision last year. It was always madness to change the indexation of the age pension, which would have resulted in diminished spending power for age pensioners over time. Regrettably, the age pension is inadequate as it is. There was no sense at all in diminishing the buying power over time. This year's budget did contain a very welcome boost for small business, and that has been very well received in Tasmania—not least because small business really is the backbone of the Tasmanian economy. The childcare boost is also welcome. Clearly we should do whatever we can to assist people to get back into the workforce. But we should also do everything we can to improve the education of our youngsters. I am persuaded that early childhood education is, on balance, good for boys and girls. It has certainly been my experience with my own two little daughters that they benefited greatly from early childhood education. I was very pleased to see in the budget funding confirmed for the Hobart airport runway extension and also the remaining money towards the rebuild of the Royal Hobart Hospital, which is now going ahead and is desperately needed. I have given credit where it is due to the government. I will now focus areas of great concern. I think the budget is still unfair. It is very helpful to look at the ACOSS assessment of the report, which also highlights the fact that this year's budget fails the fairness test. In fact, ACOSS identifies that when you combine the 2014 budget savings measures with the 2015 budget savings measures there has effectively been a $15 billion cut over the budget and forward estimates from basic services and support. And that is before you add the $80 billion cut to health and education over the next 10 years. Is that fair? Is it necessary? I do not think so. The fact is that we live in a very rich and lucky country. The federal budget in any one year is in the order of $400,000 million. Surely, with good politicians making good decisions, we can adequately look after the people who need to be looked after. We can look after the very young. We can look after students, the unemployed, the sick, the disabled and the aged. It is all about priorities, and to cut $15 billion out of the coming financial year and the following three years of forward estimates—to cut $80 billion out of health and education over the next 10 years—is not necessary. There is enough money in the federal budget to look after people who need looking after. It is as simple as that. In fact, ACOSS goes on to identify the combined impact of the two budgets to include things such as the $126 million cut from child dental programs, a $1 billion cut in health funding, $6 billion in cuts to family payments, $1 billion in cuts to vital community services, $500 million in cuts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services and programs and $674 million to be cut from affordable housing and homelessness programs. I could go on. Yes, we do need to restructure the budget, because we do need to balance it over the long term. The question is: how do we do it? We do not need to cut in those places. I will offer some comments about how we might afford the budget in the future in a little while. There are a few things that really jump out at me—for example, the government's determination to cut family tax benefit part B. This will hammer low-income families and be very, very problematic for single parents. Why do we go after these people? Why do we go after mainly single mums on low incomes? Their children have just turned six, and they are in school. Why do we go after them for budget savings? Surely single mums with young kids are just the sort of people we should be looking after well in this country. And it is not good enough to say that their kids are six, seven, eight or nine so the single mum can go to work, can rejoin the workforce. When you drop the children off at 9 am and you have to pick them up at 3 pm, and you have travel time as well, to and from work, it is very hard to get a well-paying job and a decent employer who will employ you between 9.30 or 10 o'clock in the morning and 2 o'clock or 2.30 in the afternoon. It is hard for these single mums. I urge the government again to retreat from this determination to cut family tax benefit part B. It is not fair. So, too, the change in the assets for older Australians who are on a part pension is not fair. I believe there need to be changes to make the budget affordable, but by reducing the assets that a part pensioner can have while still receiving a part age pension they have cut too far. The reality is that we live in a very soft economic time. Many age pensioners or partly self-funded retirees have conservative investments. They might be getting only a few per cent interest from the bank on their investment, or from another form of investment. So, they have cut too far, and it will force these people to draw down their savings too fast. And you get these perverse outcomes. I will quote Jennifer Hewett from the Financial Review earlier in the week. She gives an example: Those with $600,000 in savings would get a part pension as well as investment income. The combination of both would be roughly equivalent to just getting the full pension of over $34,000. In contrast, if they had only $375,000 in savings, they could get a full pension plus investment income to add up to close to $45,000 in annual income. So, I think those exact settings have been ill considered. And what about this whole business about double dipping? Let's not forget: there are 80,000 mums out there, or would-be mums, who have forsaken income rises to have workplace paid parental leave arrangements. This is not double dipping; these are people who have negotiated this additional paid parental leave benefit, and the government now wants to take it from them. And overseas aid: John Howard, to his credit—not something I have said too often—15 years ago committed Australia to the millennium goal of 0.7 per cent of gross national income in foreign development aid. At the moment it is under half of that and, with the cuts in this budget, by fiscal year 2016-17 it will be down to 0.22 per cent of gross national income in foreign development aid, less than one-third of what John Howard committed to 15 years ago—a cut that is not ethical and is not in Australia's best interest. Our best interest is served by helping countries in our region to be stable and prosperous and to be developed. That will foster security and open up markets. I have made the point already that I do not think this budget is sensibly funded. The preoccupation of the government in this budget and in last year's budget is all about savings, and there is very little attention to the imperative to increase revenue. So where is the government's interest in superannuation reform? Frankly, rich people do not need a tax break on super. Where is the interest in finally taxing companies who make superprofits? Where is the interest in taxing them effectively? The banks, for example, make superprofits. Why do we not make them pay a bit more tax? These are the sorts of area that this government, or a future government, should be considering to increase revenue, because that is the real problem with our federal budget at the moment—a revenue shortfall. So stop cutting the people that can least afford it and go after the people that can afford to pay a bit more tax. There is little joy for Tasmania in this budget. Of course, everything that hurts Australians broadly hurts Tasmanians more, because we have a relatively disadvantaged community. We have a higher unemployment rate, we have lower average incomes and we have the added cost of Bass Strait. So everything in this budget that hurts mainlanders hurts Tasmanians more. We will be hurt just as much as everyone else by the $80 billion cut in health and education spending. That is going to take about $2 million out of the Tasmanian budget over the next 10 years. But we have a very small tax base. We have less flexibility in our economy. We have less capacity to deal with these cutbacks. If we think the cutbacks last year and this year are bad, wait till we see the effects over the next 10 years of the $80 billion cut in federal funding for health and education, including the $2 billion cut in Tasmania. I am disappointed also to see that only half the money is being provided for Tasmania than was promised for our rail upgrade. We were promised $120 million of federal assistance for our railway upgrade, and this budget contains a little under $60 million. Yes, the state government is recklessly cutting back on its contribution, but I think it would be entirely appropriate for the federal government to deliver on its promise. I would like to see the federal government do more than show interest in the University of Tasmania's $400 million deep restructure. That is the sort of federal assistance that the budget should include because that is exactly the sort of federal assistance that will help Tasmania grow and be less reliant on federal assistance in future. Tasmania receives a disproportionate amount of money from Canberra for welfare. We receive a disproportionate amount of money in special purpose payments from Canberra because of all the disadvantages we have in our community. If this government wants to wean Tasmania off that sort of federal largesse, that federal assistance, then Canberra should be investing in things in Tasmania that will grow the economy, that will help the community and that will genuinely create jobs—things like the $400 million restructure of the University of Tasmania, so it can realise its full potential, and funding in education in Tasmania. We have a very low school retention rate. The state government has just cut pathway planners in the schools which help kids in school. You cannot grow jobs and you cannot grow an economy unless you have a well-educated population. In closing, I have given the government credit for some good initiatives in this budget—for example, the boost to small business, the boost to child care, the assistance with Hobart Airport and other things—but it is still not fair. It cuts $15 billion over the next four years from where it is most needed; helping people most in need. The $80 billion cut to the states over the next 10 years is still in the budget. That is unaffordable. It is not fair. It is not sensibly funded. Tassie does not get a fair deal. We are a rich country. We can afford to do it much, much better. Debate interrupted. ADJOURNMENT 110 ADJOURNMENT Asylum Seekers 110 12:30 Mr WATTS 193430 Gellibrand Recent events in the Andaman Sea have again highlighted the difficulty and complexity of a government response to the large number of people seeking asylum around the world, both from both a moral and a policy perspective. Recent actions by nations in our region to obstruct informal movements of people across the Andaman Sea left around 7,000 stranded at sea. The majority of the people stranded at sea appear to be Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar's Rakhine state, people with good cause to seek asylum in another country. Reports suggest that there are also a not insignificant number of Bangladeshi migrant labourers also stranded—individuals who are not fleeing persecution but searching for economic opportunities. Whatever the true situation is, there are currently thousands of people who are stranded in what has become a genuine humanitarian crisis. They are stranded because no country will take them. The question for us is what the Australian government's response should be to this difficult and complex regional issue. This is not a simple question. While many have jumped immediately to the question of whether Australia should offer to resettle some of the thousands of people at risk in the Andaman Sea, the issue confronting us is much more complex than the immediate crisis. There are over one million Rohingya remaining in Myanmar, and any response will clearly need to address their future as well as the fate of those who have been able to flee. Members of the Rohingya community in Myanmar and abroad are crying out for humanitarian assistance, but at the same time do not want the international community to facilitate the wholesale departure of their community from Myanmar. It is difficult to see how such a solution would not amount to a form of ethnic cleansing in itself. The nations in our region are now saying that they want any agreement on resettlement to occur as part of a coordinated response to this larger issue. Encouragingly, Thailand is hosting a meeting with affected states tomorrow to discuss the current crisis, and Indonesia and Malaysia have agreed to temporarily host many of the people at risk. The Philippines government have made plans with the UNHCR to accommodate 3,000 Rohingya, and the United States have agreed to take Rohingya screened by the UNHCR as refugees. Australia already has a large humanitarian resettlement program—around 1,000 places a year—for those seeking asylum from refugee camps in Malaysia, the home of many of these Rohingya asylum seekers. We should continue this, and any requests for further resettlement should be considered as part of a regional response to the broader problem. In considering these requests, we ought to form a position based on careful consultation with the UNHCR, ASEAN nations and the Rohingya community itself. While the way forward on this issue remains complex and uncertain, Australia should support the efforts that are currently underway to develop a regional solution. One thing that we can say about this issue with great certainty is that our Prime Minister's response has been both foolish, and morally repugnant. When asked whether Australia would offer resettlement to any of the people trapped in this humanitarian crisis, the Prime Minister's response was a simple, 'Nope, nope, nope.' With thousands of lives at risk, the Australian public expects their Prime Minister to at least have the decency to talk about this issue with basic respect for human dignity. We should remind ourselves in this place that, when we are dealing with issues that require complex moral judgements upon which reasonable people can disagree, we need to at least talk about the issue with basic decency and afford them the serious consideration they deserve. However, the bigger problem than the Prime Minister's flippancy in the face of this humanitarian crisis is what his response reveals about this government's attitude to Australia's role in our region. 'Nope, nope, nope' was not just morally repugnant; it was dumb. We will never be able to develop an effective solution for the millions of legitimate asylum seekers in the world today without intense regional cooperation. As the Indonesian foreign minister noted recently, migration is not the problem of one or two nations; this is a regional problem, a global problem. High-handed unilateralism only makes the practical task of responding to this issue more difficult. A Prime Minister who flippantly dismisses our regional partners with slogans designed for domestic audiences cuts off his nose to spite his face. Many MPs, including many government MPs, recently spoke in this place to laud the work of the Fraser government in cooperating with the offshore processing and regional resettlement of Vietnamese asylum seekers in the 1970s. Two-point-five million Indochinese refugees were resettled in Australia, North America, Europe and Asia through this process. Australia alone has resettled 185,000 Indochinese refugees since this time. By engaging with our regional neighbours, we helped transform a regional humanitarian crisis into a shining multicultural success story for our nation—a success story that has changed the face of my own electorate to a great degree. However, this success story would have been impossible if the response from our then Prime Minister was, 'Nope, nope, nope.' Australians demand better from their Prime Minister than what they have seen in response to this humanitarian crisis. Republic of Macedonia 111 12:36 Mr SIMPKINS HWE Cowan I would like to talk about a terrorist incident that took place on 9 May in the Macedonia town of Kumanovo. A 28-hour battle took place in which 44 Kosovar Albanian terrorists had crossed the border before this event, gone to Kumanovo and hired adjoining houses. Basically, they had shipped weapons and explosives across the border. Their plan was to destabilise the Republic of Macedonia. They were going to do this by an attack on shopping centres and other public buildings. It was going to take place in the middle of May. But after this 28-hour battle, in which the Macedonian police that had intervened lost eight of their own numbers, it had inflicted 14 dead. Another 30 terrorists had been arrested as a result of this. Their plan was to attack and destabilise the ethnic Albanian party, which is part of the government of the Republic of Macedonia. I have been pretty critical over time of the terrorists coming out of Kosovo. It is understood that many of those that were part of this terrorist group were actually mujahideen veterans from Syria and Iraq. Once the bodies of the dead terrorists had been returned to Kosovo, they were then given, as I understand it, a state funeral. Also, they were buried in the martyrs' cemetery in Kosovo. It is quite a disturbing series of events. On other matters, I have certainly talked about the attempts by, sometimes, Albanian separatists and others to destabilise the Republic of Macedonia. The Balkans has, unfortunately, a long history of instability. Borders have changed many times over the years. The borders of Greece have moved quite far north as a result of the treaties from 1912-1913. There are many ethnic groups within all countries in the Balkans region. I think what we are seeing here is an attempt by militants and terrorists from Kosovo—Albanian separatists, if you will—that want to see another change of borders. They want to take territory and destabilise the Balkans. I think this is another example of why more needs to be done by NATO and the European Union to include the Republic of Macedonia within their number. It would be a good thing for regional stability of the Balkans. It is a serious matter—there is no doubt about it. On this occasion, it is unfortunate—a tragedy really—that eight police were killed in that 28-hour battle. It was no shame at all that 14 terrorists were killed. That was a very good thing. It just goes to show again that we need to be very careful. We need to foster the circumstances of stability wherever we can, but the lead on this certainly needs to be taken by the European Union and by NATO. As I said, it is important that they do include the Republic of Macedonia amongst their numbers. That will then quiet down these separatists—these people responsible for instability in the region. I would like to conclude by congratulating the police of the Republic of Macedonia for their dedicated work to the stability of their country and to national security. It is a great tragedy that eight of their number lost their lives for this cause. The President of the Republic of Macedonia, Mr Gjorge Ivanov, has convened the state security council, which consists of the leaders of all the major parties. I think Macedonia is on the right track and, with a little bit of help from the EU and NATO, security and stability will be guaranteed. Water 112 12:41 Mr KATTER HX4 Kennedy If Northern Australia, the top third of Australia, were a separate country, it would be the wettest country on Earth. Australia is not a country bereft of water; it is just that all the water is concentrated in the top third of the country, where none of the voting population is. The Country Party governments in Queensland had a massive dam-building program, and they had reached Ayr and Emerald, just getting into North Queensland—Emerald is not in North Queensland but Ayr is. At the completion of that, the coalition government in Canberra lost government for the next 12 years and, in the state at the same time, the Country Party vanished forever with the political assassination of Bjelke-Petersen. So the people who were driving the water development had left the scene. All of that water every year does not just run to the sea. It roars, rushes, tears and rips. We have nine months with no rainfall whatsoever and, at the end of the nine months, the ground protection is gone. All the grass is gone. The land is left bare to torrential, cyclonic, monsoonal rains and massive flooding. At the mouth of the Mitchell River the water is 60 kilometres wide. Any land that is there is just an island. Normanton and Karumba become islands because, similarly, at the mouth of the Gilbert and Flinders rivers we have a similar 60-kilometre phenomenon where the land becomes a mass of freshwater that is lost to the people of Australia forever. We can never stop those floodwaters but we can utilise some, a very small proportion—probably four per cent would be the maximum we could ever harness because of the nature of the topography. But that four per cent can feed 100 million people, and that is not a figure plucked out of the air; that is the actual figure. Outside of Northern Australia there is no real potential for irrigation outside the Murray-Darling—just little short coastal streams. We have 304 million megalitres and the rest of Australia has only 80 million. But of that 80 the only irrigation water that can be used is the 22 million megalitres in the Murray-Darling. Eight million megalitres of irrigation water in the Murray-Darling feeds 20 million people. It provides the entire food requirements of 20 million people. I am not going to go into the details of how that sum is worked out. We could simply allow every cattle station in North Queensland to have 200 hectares of irrigation—I had 250,000 acres, 100,000 hectares, and I was easily the smallest of the stations in my area. If you fly over 200 hectares in an aeroplane, you would not be able to see it. It would be a spot. But, if you give each of those landholders 200 hectares, it will dramatically help them financially because it is a golden handshake of $2 million, but nobody is losing anything. What does it cost the government? It costs the government nothing. What does it cost the environment? Nothing. It enhances it, because what happens is that when the floods occur the floodwaters carry seeds from weeds, and all of these pernicious weeds get away on the banks of our rivers. If we have pasture for cattle on the banks of our rivers then those seeds cannot get away. What are we doing with this great land that God has given us? Some seven million hectares have been totally destroyed by a weed—the Acacia nilotica tree. If we also add 31,000-hectare irrigation blocks, we can then provide the cheapest of cheap routes—a superfast highway for our beef going into Indonesia. We can provide a raw material called cattle to them that they can make $3,000 or $4,000 a head off, we get $1,500 a head and everyone is happy. But at the present moment $1,500 is going to the inefficiencies in the system and a little bit of profiteering by the middlemen as well. So that is a great vista of opportunity—the movement up to three million or four million extra head of cattle in Cape York Peninsula, which is mostly populated by our first Australians, who have no jobs and no income at the present moment. Cape York Peninsula has three times the rainfall of Victoria and only 100,000 head of cattle, whereas Victoria has seven million head of cattle. That is where we want to go. We urge the governments of Australia to take us in that direction. Hughes Electorate: Moorebank Materials Recycling Facility 112 12:46 Mr CRAIG KELLY 99931 Hughes I take this opportunity to rise to speak about a proposal to develop a concrete recycling plant in my electorate. Madam Deputy Speaker, you cannot think of a more inappropriate location than what has been proposed. The proposed location is actually between a beautiful new housing estate on the Georges River called Georges Fair, where many young families have moved in, and an area proposed as a marina—a $200 million development that will open up the Georges River in south-west Sydney. In between, there is a proposal to dump a concrete recycling plant. I have spoken many times in this parliament about particulate matter, and that is one specific issue I would like to raise in relation to this development. Particulate matter is a combination of extremely small solid particles and liquid droplets that are found in the air—things like dust and smoke. Concrete recycling plants are one of the largest emitters of particulate matter in our society. Why should we be concerned about particulate matter? It has already been known for many years that air pollution and particulate matter increase the risk of diseases, especially respiratory and heart diseases, but in 2013 the International Agency for Research on Cancer actually classified particulate matter as a cancer-causing agent. Their evaluation showed that an increasing risk of lung cancer with increasing levels of exposure to outdoor air pollution and particulate matter was absolutely established. In 2005 the World Health Organization issued a global update on particular matter. They noted: … an increasing range of adverse health effects has been linked to air pollution, and at ever-lower concentrations. This is especially true of airborne particulate matter. After undertaking a review of all the accumulated scientific evidence, they published guidelines on thresholds for particulate matter measurements in our cities. For what is called particulate matter 10, which is the largest size of the dust, they said that annual average exposure should not be any more than 20 microns per cubic metre. For the smallest size of particulate matter, 2.5, which is considered a greater risk to health because it is smaller and easily absorbed into your lungs and respiratory system, they set a standard of 10 microns per cubic metre. But they noted that, even though they set these thresholds, there is no level below which adverse effects do not occur. They stressed that even those guideline values could not fully protect human health. Now we come to this development proposal. Using the developer's own numbers, what the developer proposes will substantially increase the particulate-matter exposure to local residents. Using their own numbers for PM10, they will push particulate-matter exposure above those World Health Organization guidelines. For PM2.5, even though there is very little discussion in the developer's proposal, we can assume they will also push particulate-matter exposure above World Health Organization standards. It is completely and utterly unacceptable that residents anywhere should have to put up with a development—in their backyards—that exposes them to an increase in particulate matter that is above the thresholds established by the World Health Organization. How has this proposal got so far? Firstly, the New South Wales Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water has a complete fixation with climate change. They have taken their eye off the ball on particulate matter. This guideline they set for particulate matter is not 20 microns per cubic metre, as an annual average, it is 30. There are simply no assessment standards, whatsoever, to assess PM2.5. Not one. The assessment standards in New South Wales are completely unsatisfactory and completely out of touch. They go back to 1997. They do not take recent scientific discoveries into consideration. We could also ask how this development has got so far. We went through some of the political donations. We found that the proponent of this concrete-recycling plant was, during the time the rezoning occurred, a major donator of the Labor Party. We went through the Australian Electoral Commission. We have cash donations from the developer—of $8,800, $22,000, $15,000 and $8,000—to the New South Wales Labor Party. And we wonder why this is being recycled. We call on the Planning Assessment Commission to reject this development completely. Environment 113 12:52 Ms HENDERSON ZN4 Corangamite I rise today to speak about my very strong support for the environment. Over the last 18 months, since I was elected, I have been a passionate defender of the environment. I represent Corangamite, a beautiful part of Australia with many wonderful environmental assets. So it was with great pride I announce the recipients of the Surf Coast Solar Towns program rolled out in Corangamite. There were $300,000 of community grants, showing our government's very strong commitment to renewable energy and our very strong commitment to communities that are working so hard to deliver clean, green power to their community. I say to the Torquay Surf Lifesaving Club—and to Noel Dubberley—a very warm congratulations. Noel has been a great advocate of this program. The Torquay Surf Lifesaving Club incurs an electricity bill of about $25,000 a year. This $20,000 grant they have received will help drive down their electricity costs by about $5,000 a year. This is a wonderful grant and this saving will occur year after year. It is really wonderful to support surf-lifesaving clubs with these grants. The Anglesey Surf Life Saving Club has also received a grant. There is a list of 20 and I want to read them all out because I know how much they are appreciated right across the Surf Coast. They are the Torquay Early Learning Centre, the Connewarre Gun Club, the Grand Pavilion, Civic Community Precinct—an application made by Surf Coast Shire—and local CFA stations have done really well, putting in some fantastic applications to support the wonderful work of CFA volunteers. CFA stations at Wurdale, Aireys Inlet, Bellbrae, Deans Marsh, Torquay, Winchelsea and Freshwater Creek have all been recipients of our grant under the Surf Coast Solar Towns program. In addition, there is St Luke's Hall, the Saint Aidan's Anglican Church, the Torquay bowls club, the Anglesea Golf Club, the Modewarre's football and cricket club, the Lions Aged Care Village, the Salvation Army in Torquay, and the Mount Moriac Tennis Club. This is wonderful program delivering real results to my electorate of Corangamite. I have spoken often in this place about my strong support for renewable energy. I am very pleased to see that the issue of the Renewable Energy Target has been settled, with an agreement in principle of 33,000 gigawatts per hour, which is well above the true 20 per cent. I am a very strong advocate for certainty in the renewable energy industry. This will deliver certainty. It will give the industry the confidence to invest, and I am looking forward to that investment and those jobs being rolled out in my electorate of Corangamite and across the nation. I will reflect on one fabulous company in Geelong, Backwell IXL, which is now producing solar frames for panels for large solar farms. It is a traditional manufacturer who has moved into this area. I know that the Renewable Energy Target is a very important part of this particular company's capacity to invest in this new venture. I also do want to reference my strong opposition to onshore coal seam gas exploration in Corangamite. It is very disappointing that the Labor candidate in Corangamite has not spoken out strongly on this. I can only assume that she does support some sort of coal seam gas exploration. I have been very strong. I have stood up for the communities that have said, 'We do not want CSG exploration in our part of the world. We need to protect our farming areas. We need to protect our precious environmental areas.' Mount Moriac, Paraparap, Freshwater Creek, Deans Marsh, Bambra, Boonah, Birregurra and Warncoort have all spoken out very strongly against CSG exploration, and I stand firmly by them. I am also calling on the people of my electorate to go onto my website and sign my petition to ban the Geelong Star. This, of course, is not something that is shared by some of my colleagues, but I do feel very strongly about it for the environment. I am strongly standing by the recreational fishing industry, which has very profound concerns about the activities of this particular trawler. So I say to my constituents: please go onto my website and sign my petition. Lyme Disease 114 12:57 Ms HALL 83N Shortland May is Lyme's month, and today I would like to raise in the House the issue of Lyme disease. Lyme disease is an infectious disease caused by bacteria from ticks. This is a disease that is not widely accepted and acknowledged here in Australia, but I have met with people who are living with Lyme disease and I see how difficult it is. The best way to prevent Lyme disease is to prevent being bitten by a tick. Lyme disease is primarily a clinical diagnosis based on the patient's history, symptoms and presentation. Blood tests are relied upon to support the diagnosis, but they are not conclusive. It is one of those diseases that is really hard to pinpoint and hard to diagnose, and it is only after a lot of trial and pain that people are finally diagnosed with it. It is prevalent in Australia, that is true. Testing is not 100 per cent reliable. It is not that rare in Australia, although it is not widely recognised. One course of antibiotics will not cure it, and it can be transported from person to person. It is a chronic disease. I have received correspondence from constituents, and one of the constituents who lives within my electorate has told me about her daughter's ongoing battle with Lyme disease. Alannah had suffered with the disease for some time, and her mother was very supportive of the initiative that I am sure a number of members have received. There has been a mail-out of cards making people aware of just how prevalent it is. Alannah writes: 18 months ago I was diagnosed with Chronic/Neurological Lyme Disease after approximately 15 years … This is 15 years of fighting with symptoms and having incorrect diagnoses of rheumatoid arthritis—and that is a very common diagnosis for people with Lyme disease—and multiple sclerosis, and she has had pain and discomfort for all this time. It is sad that people have to go to such extents and suffer so much before they are finally diagnosed. Then, when they are diagnosed, the treatment is very, very expensive. For the last 18 months, Alannah has been having intensive antibiotic treatment alongside a very strict diet, and this has been the treatment that has been found to be most effective. She has been having 10-plus prescription drugs for 12 months and she has also been receiving IV antibiotics. She is starting to feel better, but she still needs regular testing to monitor the disease. It causes a wide variety of symptoms and that makes it so much more difficult to diagnose. The most frustrating thing about the disease is that it is preventable if it is caught early before it turns into a chronic disease, because Lyme disease, being a chronic disease, has enormous impact on people's lives. There are some amazing organisations that have been working to try and raise awareness of Lyme disease and raise awareness of the need to have a better system in place for diagnosis. If a person believes they have Lyme disease, it is not recognised by the New South Wales health department in Australia and there is really no option for public testing or treatment. It is very expensive and many of the medications are not covered under the PBS. Alannah says she gets through one day at a time. She has a supportive workplace and works in a field she is passionate about. She is very involved in guiding and she gets support from the guiding association. But she now has an accurate diagnosis and, as do all people with Lyme disease, only needs appropriate treatment. Question agreed to. Federation Chamber adjourned at 13:02