2021-02-23 46 1 5 House of Reps 0 1

Tuesday, 23 February 2021

The SPEAKER ( Hon. Tony Smith ) took the chair at 12:00, made an acknowledgement of country and read prayers.

 

RESOLUTIONS OF THE SENATE 1 RESOLUTIONS OF THE SENATE Consideration of Senate Message 1 12:01 The SPEAKER 00APG I have received a message from the Senate informing the House that the Senate has agreed to the following resolution: That the time for the presentation of the final report of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System be extended to 30 June 2021. The Senate requests the concurrence of the House in this resolution. Ordered that the message be considered immediately. 12:02 Mr WYATT M3A Hasluck I move: That the House concur with the resolution of the Senate. Question agreed to. BILLS 1 BILLS Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 1

Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020

Second Reading 1 12:03 Mr DAVID SMITH 276714 Bean Like many Labor members of this House before me, I rise to speak in this debate to place on the record my opposition to the government amendments in the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 and why they're bad for those in the community I represent. I do that off the back of a quarter of a century working in industrial relations policy and practice in the Public Service and labour movement. I've been involved in dozens of collective bargaining negotiations and award simplification processes. I've seen a procession of acts come and go and I can smell a dog. To call the changes amendments, although technically correct, does somewhat understate their impact on those in my community who for too long have faced no wage growth, who have faced a cut in living standards when compared to inflation, who for too long have had to scramble to find secure work, who have had to put up with being paid below the minimum award wage because of their form of employment and who for too long have had to work too many casual and contract jobs to pay the bills. Fundamentally this comes down to whether or not you support the social contract that has been substantially in place since the early years of Federation that valued the dignity of socially just work. You are either a child of HB Higgins or a child of HR Nicholls. This government sits clearly in the family tree of HR Nicholls. Workers and their families in my community deserve a better, fairer deal, and it appears they're not going to get a better deal when it comes to their working conditions from this government or any of those opposite. As I noted in the Federation Chamber last week, before entering this House I worked as the director of Professionals Australia, advocating for and representing science and engineering workers in the private and public sector for more than a decade in both collective and individual negotiations. I've seen firsthand how power imbalances in industrial relations get in the way of genuine productivity, innovation and fairness. Prior to this, I managed industrial relations at the Australian Federal Police Association during the Work Choices era. Back then, a divisive approach to use of individual agreements and undermining of collective bargaining undermined trust in an organisation that requires it as a foundation. My experience across the labour movement tells me that this government's approach to industrial relations change is indeed wrong. This bill is another of HR Nicholls' children. Labor's test for the bill is simple: will it create secure jobs with decent pay? The answer to this question was no in December, when these changes were first floated, and the answer is still no. Despite the colour and movement, the sleight of hand and the faux bargaining, the Minister for Industrial Relations still has on the table a bill that diminishes the rights of workers. Earlier this week the minister had three opportunities to agree that all workers deserve the minimum wage. We didn't need a cock to crow to understand his response. The workers and families most likely to be affected by this bill are those in frontline delivery. These are the very workers who have helped us get through the COVID pandemic—the real heroes, in fact, of the pandemic. These are the people in our community who worked on the logistics lines, worked in our supermarkets, kept our community clean and worked in our health and aged-care system. The pandemic exposed the fact that too many people in this country work in low-paid, insecure employment—casuals, contractors, freelancers, labour hire workers and gig workers. These vulnerable workers, the ones who can least afford it, were the first hit and the hardest hit. Rather than taking this opportunity to learn the lessons from COVID-19 and deal with the twin problems of insecure work and flatlining wages, this government seeks to give a green light to cut wages and conditions. People in the Australian community should know it doesn't have to be this way. They should know that they deserve better. Unfortunately, the bill will still make jobs more insecure and lead to further cuts to pay and conditions. But are we that surprised, really? This is what the government do all the time. As I said earlier, I've been around the industrial relations space for some time. Across that time I've seen time and again the Liberal agenda to drive wages down, to drive casualisation, to drive insecurity under the cover of flexibility, to make it easier to be dismissed and to reduce union engagement and representation—all under the cover of bills with misleading titles: 'more jobs, better pay', 'Work Choices' and now 'supporting Australia's jobs and economic recovery'. These bills never do what they say on the tin—to be the opposite of a model employer in the Public Service, strangling wages growth and accelerating the use of contractors, consultants and labour hire, despite the costs and consequence of webs of commercial conflicts of interest. In the bottom drawer of every coalition member's desk is a copy of Work Choices waiting to be dusted off. To the bill itself: many on this side of the chamber have outlined the components, but let's recap. Despite protestations from those opposite, this bill makes it easier for employers to casualise jobs that would have otherwise been permanent. Under these laws, if a worker agrees to be employed as a casual at the start of their employment they remain as a casual regardless of their actual work pattern, so long as the employer employs them on the basis that they make no firm advance commitment to continuing in indefinite work according to an agreed pattern of work. In other words, any job can be casual so long as workers are desperate enough to accept it. This will foster the further spread of insecure employment without paid leave entitlements. Most importantly, it removes a big potential liability faced by employers as a result of recent court decisions under which they might have owed back pay for holidays and sick leave to employees improperly treated as casual workers. Even if a worker can somehow get their case in front of a court, if it finds that they were in fact permanent then any casual loading they receive will be offset against any permanent entitlements they are owed. As part of the National Employment Standards, employers must make a written offer of conversion to permanent employment to casual employees after 12 months if for the last six months there has been a regular pattern of work. However, under what is proposed the employer does not have to make the offer if there are reasonable grounds not to. This makes the provision essentially meaningless and reinforces insecure work. The bill continues the flexible work directions provision. This is a two-year provision based on the original JobKeeper stand-down directions that were introduced on the basis that they would be temporary and only connected to employers in receipt of JobKeeper. Since then the provision has been extended to so-called legacy employers, employers previously in receipt of JobKeeper. This means that, for the workplaces covered by the identified awards, the special flexibility will be available to every employer, even those who never qualified for JobKeeper, and a worker's right to stop an employer issuing unreasonable directions has been removed by stripping the power of the Fair Work Commission to arbitrate such disputes—a provision which I doubt will be temporary and which in the end, as with much in this bill, moves the power balance too far along to the employer. People deserve certainty in employment, and I cannot see how this provision does this. The bill makes bargaining for better pay and conditions more difficult than it already is. Just look at our own staff bargaining process, stagnating even under the current rules. I will just say very briefly—it's not totally unrelated, given the recent no vote by a strong majority of staff members of parliament—that it's about time that the Minister for Finance sits down with staff and puts a better and more substantive enterprise agreement on the table. If we in this place are going to build a better culture, surely pay and conditions are a foundation for this change. But back to the bill. Taken as a whole, the bill makes changes to enterprise agreements that amount to fewer obligations on employers and less scrutiny of bargaining, beginning with the preapproval requirements and going through to voting, with the reduction in the unions' capacity to participate in the approval process and the way the Fair Work Commission is constrained when considering and approving or not approving an agreement. The government may have put their extreme changes to the better off overall test in the bottom drawer, but the changes to enterprise bargaining will also deliver wage cuts. The changes to enterprise agreement-making amount to less transparency, less scrutiny and no obligation on employers to explain the impact of an agreement to their employees, some of whom may not have English as a first language. Does that sound familiar from this government—less transparency and less scrutiny? It's in their DNA. The bill places restrictions on union intervention in agreement certification, which will see the Fair Work Commission approving agreements without a union that has the knowledge of the award or industry being able to make submissions as to the real impact or burden. We know that benefits from the hard work of union members in securing better pay and conditions go to all workers. We accept that, and we accept that what is good for one worker is good for all. But this is a deliberate measure to try and push unions and their hardworking teams out of the bargaining process, and it is designed to reduce scrutiny, lower pay and undermine conditions. This bill contains a provision for greenfields agreements for medium infrastructure projects to have a nominal expiry date up to eight years away. These agreements will cut workers out of any say over their pay and working conditions, including the capacity to resolve such issues as reasonable rosters. And there's a kick-up: whilst those agreements must include annual increases on the base rate of pay, there's no minimum amount specified. So they could lock pay rises of less than one per cent per annum into the eight-year agreements, representing a real pay cut of unknown quantity for the life of the agreement. It's taken more than a decade to extinguish many of the shameful zombie agreements of the Howard era, and here again the government is looking to lock in unjust pay outcomes for a generation of unlucky workers. Once again, are we that surprised? This is a government who put to the Australian Federal Police, to its own staff and to all Public Service agencies a floating index based on the private sector wage price index as a pay measure that will entrench low wages growth in the public sector. That is how they lead by example. This bill also weakens punishments for wage theft in jurisdictions where it's already deemed a criminal act. Once again, this is an area in need of reform but, as always, there's a catch or two. My consideration on this bill was also about its impact on the economy across Bean and Australia. Working families don't need less employment security. Without measures to create more secure jobs with a prospect of wage rises, workers will have less capacity and confidence to spend, which, in turn, will suppress demand and hurt the domestic economy. We know locally that, when people are in more secure jobs with decent pay, they spend more. More importantly, it recognises the value of their contribution, particularly in so many frontline roles. They deserve certainty. Our local economy doesn't need less job security; it needs more. We don't need less take home pay; we need wages growth. Last year, Labor stated that measures that reflected agreement from the working groups on industrial relations would most likely be supported. We were open to changes arising from genuine consensus, as we have always been, but that is not what has transpired with this bill. The government has ultimately reverted to type and bowed to the demands of extreme employer groups, using the COVID crisis as leverage and as shameful cover. I am unable to support legislation that makes working conditions inferior, reduces security of employment and provides employees with less effective collective representation. Working families in Bean and across the nation have again been betrayed by this government when they needed it to be on their side. It never has been. This bill needs to be booted. 12:17 Mr VASTA E0D Bonner I would like to speak in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 currently before the House. It has been extremely disappointing that those opposite have chosen to lead a misinformation campaign against these meaningful amendments that have been developed with some of the most intense and inclusive consultation in recent times. The Attorney-General's industrial relations working groups brought together business, industry and union representatives to work side by side and in good faith to understand the needs of businesses and workers and to help Australia recover from the global COVID pandemic. In the past, much of our industrial relations system was built on pitting one group against another. However, the working groups aimed to change the status quo to achieve more by working together. These working groups negotiated, debated and delivered these minor but meaningful reforms, which will go before the Senate committee, and it is an absolute betrayal of their good faith to see those opposite not only backtrack on these agreed reforms so heavily but also support an aggressive misinformation campaign by the ACTU. As Australia recovers from this global pandemic, unemployment drops and our economy gets back on track, it is somewhat disappointing to see that Labor is starting 2021 where it left off in 2020, and that is by misleading Australians. The Morrison government's aim is to put the interests of Australian workers ahead of traditional ideological positions. What a shame that those opposite have failed to reciprocate! Labor has had its eyes stuck to a rear-view mirror, claiming to be on the side of workers when clearly it's not. They are not on the side of employees who want to have stronger protections against wage underpayment. They are not on the side of casual workers who want to convert to permanent employment. They are not on the side of part-time retail and hospitality workers who want more hours but can't get them. They are not on the side of employees and employers who want to negotiate higher wages and productivity gains more quickly through a better enterprise bargaining process. The fact is that Labor is not on the side of economic recovery, jobs, lower unemployment or wage growth. After good-faith working groups, it's in bad faith that Labor is not doing what is in the interests of all Australians during COVID, which is working in a bipartisan manner to save lives and livelihoods. As usual, those opposite are more focussed on appeasing unions by running unbelievable unthruths about what are very modest and much-needed reforms. We will not let Labor's misinformation campaign stop us from delivering a commonsense package with one goal: to help protect and create more jobs as we move out of the COVID pandemic. We will not let Labor's misinformation campaign stop us from helping casual workers convert to permanent employment. We will not let it stop us from providing mechanisms to address the decline in enterprise bargaining, which is a key driver of higher wages, and we will not let it stop us from providing part-time workers with the ability to increase their hours. The fact is that the Morrison government's IR reforms will make it easier for businesses to create better pay and more secure jobs for all Australians. It will support people to grow their careers as they get back on their feet and aspire to start a family, buy a house, book a holiday or even start planning for their retirement. 12:21 Mr JOSH WILSON 265970 Fremantle That was a rare contribution by the member for Bonner! I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, which I don't support and Labor doesn't support—and I will make some remarks to that effect—and in support of the second reading amendment moved by the member for Watson. Labor people have come into the chamber over the last day and a half to talk about what is a very significant piece of legislation, because it doesn't create more secure work or fairer wages at a time when we need both of those things. That's what a responsible government would do, and this bill fails. It fails to create more secure work and fairer wages. In fact, it does the reverse. It was interesting to hear the member for Bonner speak on this bill, particularly his final comments about a unicorns-and-rainbows version of life in which this bill would help people to grow their careers and aspire to families, mortgages and various other things. I'll just pick up some of the points mentioned. The member for Bonner talked about enabling people to get more hours. How does this bill enable people to get more hours? It does so by allowing an employer to offer more hours on the basis that the worker isn't paid overtime. That's how it works. An employer could say to somebody, 'You can work more hours if you like, on the basis that you don't receive the overtime that you're currently entitled to.' Of course, the worker may well say, 'I don't want to work those extra hours on that basis,' or the employer may simply look for workers within their organisation who are interested. But what's the effect of that? It means that the overtime people are currently entitled to isn't paid. Is that going to help someone grow their career or receive higher wages? No. It will do exactly the reverse. What about the casual conversion—how does that work? First of all, the employer makes the decision at the outset that you are a casual. They effectively make that decision unilaterally, and that's what you will be for at least 12 months, irrespective of whether or not you work a regular pattern. Then, at the end of that time, there's the opportunity for the employee to seek to be converted to permanent employment. But the employer can deny that request on the basis of reasonable grounds, which are not very well defined. That could simply mean that the employer doesn't think that kind of work will exist in future and therefore denies that request. But what kind of recourse does an insecure worker, a casual worker, who can be terminated relatively easily, have at that point in time? They can't go off to arbitration. They would have to go to the Federal Court. How many casual employees in Australia, having made a request to be converted from casual to permanent employment, have been told: 'No, I'm sorry. I can't go along with that. I have reasonable grounds that I will keep to myself for not allowing you to make that conversion'? How is a casual worker realistically going to trot off to the courts in order to have that remedied? It is just ridiculous. The government, in essence—and people listening to this at home should hold onto this fact—will get away with whatever it can get away with. That's a recurrent theme of the government. They will certainly do that in the IR space when it comes to wages and working conditions. A pandemic ought to be a time in which we look at workplace conditions, employment, pay and all of the other things that make up what has been Australia's approach to working life and recognise some of the shortcomings that exist and recognise some of the new challenges, like people in the gig economy. It's an opportunity to take hold of those things and make changes that are for the broad economic and social benefit of the community. But what the government will do in these circumstances—and they have done it before—is take a time of crisis and instability and use that as the basis to tilt the wheel further away from egalitarianism in this country and return to their old hobbyhorses. We can see that in the way this bill has arrived here. The member for Bonner made quite a show of the consultation process. The government created, or confected, a set of meetings and discussions to make a show of how everyone was being engaged—'We don't want to have the adversarial approach of the past; we want to get employers and unions together in the same room.' But, at the end of the day, when the bill came forward, the substance of the bill, as you would expect from this government, is heavily weighted towards the interests of big corporations and large employers and fails to pick up many of the concerns that the unions put forward. The intention of the government in making work less secure and holding wages down was clear with respect to the better off overall test. They wanted to get rid of the better off overall test. That was clear. They then spent some time pretending that that wasn't what they were trying to do, pretending that that wasn't actually in the text of the bill. When that didn't work any longer, when people were holding the page from the bill up in front of them to say, 'This is the part of your legislation that gets rid of the better off overall test,' they finally decided that they would use that as some kind of sacrificial change that they could make to then claim that the rest of the bill ought to be supported because it didn't do some of those things in other ways, which it of course did. We have to look at these changes in the broader context that we've faced in Australia over the last 10 years and certainly in Australia over the last eight years under this government. The government have sought to undermine workers' pay and conditions at every turn, and they have been successful. They have been successful in undermining pay and conditions at every turn. They have presided over stagnant or falling real wages. That is a fact. Wages in Australia as a share of national income have fallen to a historic low. In fact, as a share of national income, wages have dropped below 50 per cent for the first time since 1959. So, for the first time in 61 years, wages as a share of national income have fallen below 50 per cent as a result of the fact that real wages in the economy have been flat as a tack or falling in real terms under this government. We've seen a complete disconnection of wages from profit and productivity. Profit in parts of the economy has been really strong, and yet wages have not followed profit. Productivity in parts of the economy has been relatively strong, and yet wages have not followed those productivity gains. What we are told by the government is that, when companies do well, workers benefit and, when productivity gains are delivered, workers benefit. That's not what has happened under this government, and yet nobody will come in here and speak to this bill and explain those things. They are not matters of interpretation. You can't look at the fact that wages have fallen below 50 per cent of the economy for the first time in 61 years and say, 'That's a matter of interpretation.' It's a matter of fact that the government should come into this place and account for. Those outcomes—falling real wages—are no accident. How do you create falling real wages? Well, you get rid of penalty rates; that's one thing. You stand by and let penalty rates disappear for some of the lowest-paid workers in Australia. You talk down wage rises; you argue against minimum wage rises at every opportunity. You attack unions; you demonise and attack unions' reputations and you restrict their ability to represent workers at every occasion. All of those things are designed to achieve lower wages for working Australians. So the fact that we've had eight years of stagnant wages and that the wage share of the economy has fallen at a time when there have been productivity and profit rises is no accident. It's as the former finance minister admitted—acknowledged—that it's a design feature of the economic management of this government. We've also seen the growth in insecure work. The government says that their all day every day focus is on creating jobs. We know that through this pandemic 60 per cent of the jobs created since May have been casual jobs. That was described by the Centre for Future Work as by far the biggest expansion of casual employment in Australia's history. And it's another ingredient in this government's recipe for low wages: less secure work and people unable to bargain. Members on that side—not all of them—don't seem to understand that. Perhaps their experience hasn't allowed them to see that. Perhaps their experience has been one in which they are a price maker and not a price taker. Perhaps they've been in the business or corporate world, where they go in and have a conversation with someone about what they would like to get paid—everybody is basically around the table, asking: 'You've done well, do you want to pay rise? You should get a bonus.' That's fine if you're in that sort of circumstance, but the people who we're talking about and who everyone in this place should be concerned about—who the government should be concerned about—are the people at the bottom. They never have those negotiations. They get told what they'll get paid and, if they don't like it, they get moved on. That's the nature of casual employment. It's grown under this government, and nothing that they're doing in this bill addresses that. In fact, as I said already, there's a relatively hollow gesture in terms of casual conversion and there's an extension of the flexible work directions, which will just enable more of that flexibility. 'Flexibility' is the euphemism for insecurity. Flexibility means that workers have fewer rights, less security, less certainty and an inability to assert their own rights and interests. What does that flow through to? Lower wages; stagnant wages at best and falling real wages at worst. That's what's happened over the last eight years. The government said that we needed flexible work directions at the beginning of the pandemic so that JobKeeper could operate. Labor was prepared to be constructive about that because it made a certain amount of sense. Then, as the economy improved to some degree and some entities came off JobKeeper, we were told that we needed to extend those flexible work directions to enable those entities which were transitioning from JobKeeper. We gave that some consideration and there was probably a bit of an argument for that. But what does this bill do? This bill takes those flexible work directions and extends them to every entity, even to entities which never needed JobKeeper—entities like Harvey Norman, which have seen their profits go up 160 per cent. They're now getting the benefit of flexible work directions. What do those flexible work directions enable? They enable employers to treat employees in a high-handed way which undermines their security and undermines their ability to be paid properly. What else does the bill do? The bill undermines the role of unions. Unions will no longer be able to assist the Fair Work Commission in scrutinising non-union agreements that fall short of national standards. Why would you do that unless you have a philosophical and deep-seated antipathy towards unions? It means, in turn, that you don't understand the fundamental power imbalance between an individual employee and an employer. If people on that side of the House can't hold on to that in modern Australia, where have we come to? It's the bedrock of our egalitarian way of life to recognise that an employee, by themselves, is in no position to have their interests respected and the value of their work properly reflected in an agreement that is negotiated between parties of starkly unequal power. That's what collective bargaining is all about, yet this government runs it down at every turn. We can't accept this bill, because it's essentially using the circumstances of the pandemic to turn the wheel further away from those who have the least. That is unconscionable. It is unconscionable, especially at a time when we're trying to recover from a pandemic, that the government does a whole series of things that make life harder for casual employees, for the unions that represent them and for certain part-time employees. All of these things will only exacerbate what has been the record of this government: stagnant wages at a time of rising profits and high productivity. Wages, as a share of the national income, are at a 61-year low. It's not just bad for Australians, particularly disadvantaged Australians and families; it's bad for the economy as a whole. That's the self-defeating part of the let-the-market-rip, law-of-the-jungle, free-market-madness-run-wild approach. Our economy depends on consumption. It depends on people working hard, earning the just rewards of their labour and then having the confidence to participate in the economy. That doesn't happen when people are freaked out about losing their job and about seeing their economic position grow worse day by day, month by month, year by year. That's what this government is delivering for workers, for households and for our economy as a whole. 12:36 Mr BROADBENT MT4 Monash My difficulty is that I lived in the real world for nearly 35 years, really employing people. I'm reminded of one very precious employee who has just passed away. She began with me when she had very young children. She could only work a very few casual hours, which suited her. Then, a number of years later, when her children went to school, she said, 'Can I work from 9.30 till three, so I'll be there when the kids leave and when they get home?' No problem. When the kids were a little bit older, she worked full time, and she was one of the most marvellous employees you could ever have. Then there was the young girl who walked in to see me and said: 'Russell, I don't have a resume, because I haven't had a job. Can I work for you for nothing?' Of course, I put her on. She never worked for me for nothing. We paid not only the award but over the award to every one of our employees. That was an insurance policy. Why is this bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, and everything we do on industrial relations so complicated? Why are there so many people, with so many agendas, who just want to confuse others, especially the general public? My staff at BL & BM Broadbent Drapers—or whatever we were—worked under the federal award. The federal award says, 'This is what you pay a casual employee; it's about 50 per cent higher than what you pay a permanent part-time employee, who gets all the benefits that go with being a full-time employee.' Simple. Then holiday time came, and, under that award, I had to pay all of my staff 17½ per cent more per week than when they were working in the business. It's part of the award; just accept it. It was uncomplicated: 'Here are the rules; this is what a casual is.' To me, a casual employee is someone who wants to work casually or can be called in, and, in my experience, it suited them to be a casual employee and get a higher rate of pay for the hours that they worked, as compared to those that worked full time or permanent part time. I'll say that again. A permanent part-time worker was somebody in your business who worked certain hours every week, and those hours could be varied at any time. They accepted that. More importantly, they knew what their hours would be for the week and what their wage would be for the week, and that suited them and me. On top of that, we had some 20 full-time employees, with all the benefits that accrued to them, including superannuation, sick leave, holiday pay and all the other benefits. Now we've got to spend time putting into legislation matters between employees and employers that I thought would have been so simple. In fact, the previous speaker painted a terrible picture of employers as I know them. The most precious part of a small business is often not their stock or their product or their presentation or the building or the fit-out. It's actually their staff because, if your staff or your employees are not engaging with your customers, you don't have a business. They're the ones who engage, and they're the ones who bring the people back into the business. You can get the product and you can get the people in there, but, if you don't have the precious people to work with you, you don't have a business in small business. Lots of businesses have only two, three or four employees, so they've got to be good. They've got to be engaging with their customers. They've got to have a relationship with their customers. These things that are so important can't be written in a bill. It says here, 'We've got to provide for those people who are doing the wrong thing.' Yet, all the time, we're bagging the thousands of employers in this country who are doing the right thing by looking after their employees and treating them as a very special part of the whole operation. That's how business works. So when we say, 'This bill provides certainty to business and employees by clearly defining what it means to be a casual employee, and giving eligible casual employees a statutory pathway to a permanent full-time job if they wish,' I would have thought that that would be a natural because, when you find a fantastic, terrific, reliable, energetic employee, you want to have them on board and in the business as much as you can. Why does it have to be defined in legislation? I can't find anything in this legislation that the opposition shouldn't be supporting. They're trying to find parts of this legislation that they can have a fight about, and there's not a lot here to have a fight about. As far as our economic circumstances go, the fact that wages have flatlined has been the case throughout the world. We have gone through this economic difficulty and this difficult time. Every nation in the world has seen their labour market flatline. What we've had to cope with in this last 12 months has been devastating for so many small businesses and for many medium-sized businesses that have had to pull back. As a former businessperson, I am concerned about how we will fare as we go into the next six months and the six months after that. These are going to be difficult times for this nation, and, of course, you're going to fall back on and rely on your best employees. You can have as much input yourself as you like, but you still have to rely on the employees who are the face of your business to the world. Whether you're a franchise business—a very large franchise or a small franchise—or an independent operator, you're still seeking good employees all the time. The people I meet that want a job and can't get a job are quite often older. That disappoints me greatly. I notice that some franchise businesses are going out of their way to employ older people because they're reliable, they do the job and they turn up. But too many older Australians are not getting the opportunities. I'm saying 'older Australians', but it starts to get hard at 45. That's why small businesses who know somebody who knows somebody are able to get that sort of person into a job that they wouldn't otherwise get just from a resume. Small businesses are the people that will be affected by this bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020. All the government has done here is go out of its way to put some flexibility into the marketplace to make it easier for people to get a job, to make it simpler for employees to understand what they need to do, and to make sure there's some cooperation in that whole menage that is business, especially small business. I can't talk about big business. I don't know it; I haven't experienced it. But I've experienced some terrible days in small business, because I was in business in 1990, when interest rates were 22½ per cent and business had huge downturns. We survived, but only just. Do you know why we survived? Because we had fantastic people working with us that carried us through, that were there every day, on time, working with each other and not leaving until their job was done. If you're going to do the things that we've done as a government to extend JobKeeper and thrust into business—the decisions were made so quickly, knowing that businesses had to keep going and had to keep their relationships with their employees. That was what the JobKeeper program was all about. This bill comes in to support everything that the government was doing in its approach to COVID recovery. This bill supports that. This bill should be supported by every parliamentarian in the House; instead they're making lame excuses about why they can't possibly support this. This bill is not unreasonable when it comes to employee-employer relations. For me, it complicates things that should be a no-brainer. It complicates things that should be just a cooperative effect on a basic arrangement between employer and employee. I've always been a supporter of far more flexible industrial relations processes. Be they industry based or based on a particular sector, I don't mind, as long as both the employer and the employee are happy. Some of the biggest failures on industrial relations haven't been with small businesses. Who have they been with? Very, very large businesses. But did we scream and go after them? No. We're not painting those huge conglomerates as out of order. Theirs was just a mistake. But, if a small-business person makes a mistake, they're painted into a corner, and that's not fair. There should be some protections built around those too, because it's a huge risk to open a business. It was hard then, and, with all the regulations we've put on business since, it's even harder now—much harder. You risk your family, mortgage your house and have a go. You end up employing people, then more, then more and then more, and when you're reasonably successful these days you pay payroll tax. We have every incentive for people not to do well in business, as far as I'm concerned, especially in our tax regime, because it's harsher on small business than on making sure the large conglomerates, who can pay a fortune, pay the minimal amount of tax. As for the small businesses, like the tyre retailers, what are they doing? They're just selling tyres; they're not in the business of minimising their tax. This bill should be supported by this parliament. This bill should go through with cheers and roars. That's what I think about this bill. This bill is an opportunity for the opposition to show themselves to be a participant in the COVID recovery. This bill will give employees some security and employers confidence to offer secure part-time employment. What more can you want than that? That is delivered to you; it's handed to you on a platter. It's regulating your opportunity for work. Today I'd like to see a new Australia where employer and employee come together to strengthen our economy at every level and where we actually put our families first and put our nation first and put our businesses first so we can all prosper together. That was my philosophy in my business, and we were hugely successful until I came to this position, when I turned a very good business into a very small business. I've got to be honest with you; this lifestyle I chose takes its toll. But I commend every small business out there and all the employees who work with them. I commend this bill to the House. I commend this bill to the House even when I've been in places where I haven't commended bills to the House. But I do commend this one, because I believe that we need more flexibility and more opportunity for people to work in this new time. 12:51 Ms BUTLER 248006 Griffith It's a pleasure to follow the member for Monash. I was listening with great interest when he said that he had been living in the real world and then went on to describe a world in which employers are always magnanimous and reasonable; employees and other workers who are in insecure forms of work are there by choice because it's more suitable for them; and all employment relationships are based on trust, mutual caring and responsible approaches to building their business. I've got to say to the member that that sounds a lot more like la la land than the real world. And I must also say that of course there are wonderful employers and of course there are people who are in insecure forms of work because that does suit them, but that's far from a universal experience. The member talked about the great risk of taking on a business—starting a business, employing people and taking on that risk to your own economic prosperity. It absolutely is a risk. Do you know what else is a risk? Working in a dangerous industry is a risk. I'm thinking about, for example, coalminers in my state. Over the last few days, coalminers were in a situation where the workforce had to be withdrawn from Moranbah North because of fears about work health and safety. This, of course, comes hot on the heels of last year's explosion at Grosvenor that injured five miners. It's a risk for these guys to go to work. It's a risk for people in the construction industry, which can often be very dangerous work and requires good, strong safety protections, as is the case in electricity. We know that, particularly after 2020, it was a risk for a lot of frontline health workers, aged-care workers, childcare workers and teachers to go to work. There is a lot of risk in our lives, and that seems to be becoming more and more the case. Isn't it the case that the people who face those risks deserve a fair go? They deserve secure forms of work. They deserve a government that will not use a pandemic as an opportunity to try to sneak through ideologically driven industrial relations reforms but will use it as an opportunity to realise the value of our workforces and our businesses and to work towards better settings for everyone. Unfortunately, when it comes to the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, we're just seeing the basest instincts of the coalition that are so familiar to us after decades of attempts to undermine industrial relations settings in this country. We're seeing those basest instincts come to the fore. That's exactly the case with this bill. This bill will make jobs more insecure and will lead to pay cuts; that's what this bill will do. Members opposite who've advocated for us to support this bill need to step back and think about what they're asking us to do. We don't stand for greater job insecurity. We stand for more-secure work. We stand for a fair go at work. I mentioned the mining sector. This is a sector that is faced with significant change—obviously workplace health and safety concerns, but also the disruptive impact of automation such that it's very unclear to a lot of workers what their jobs will be in the future. It's an industry that's also facing rampant casualisation and labour hire, forms of work that do not provide the same security that permanent work does. When our leader, Anthony Albanese, gave a speech in Brisbane recently in my electorate of Griffith to talk about security at work, he talked about two coalminers, Ron and Simon. These are guys who work side by side doing the same job, but one is on labour hire and one is permanent, and their pay difference is about 20 per cent. This isn't the Australia that we want to live in, where there's insecurity at work and where people who are doing the same job aren't getting the same pay. That's not the sort of country we should be striving to be. We should be a country where everyone has the opportunity to get secure, well-paid work and where if people are in insecure work then they are in fact there by choice. But that's just not the reality we live in right now, regardless of what the member for Monash said about his experience of the 'real world'. As I said, the same issues of casualisation, of insecurity, of labour hire, of different pay for the same work and of the ongoing instability and uncertainty that that gives rise to for workers is happening in industry after industry, sector after sector. Why should it be the case that we, a modern nation—a nation that has at its very heart the ethos of a fair go—are in a situation where some of our most important frontline workers, people across different sectors and industries, have no choice but to accept casual work? Why should there be people who have been working in the same job for years and who are still supposedly casual workers? Why should those people not be able to get a bank loan? Why should those people not be able to plan their economic futures and the economic future of their family? This bill lays bare the fact that the coalition will always lean towards less security, more casualisation and downward pressure on incomes for working families. That's what the coalition will always do. And they've got form. People will remember the Howard government's attempted industrial relations reforms in 1996. They'll remember, a decade later, the Work Choices so-called reforms that went through this parliament and the attempts at the time to get rid of the no-disadvantage test. And they'll remember this year, 2021, for the attempts to get rid of the better off overall test—the modern version of the no-disadvantage test. They'll remember which side fought to make it easier to cut workers' pay and which side fought against those propositions. Labor has stood up to this government in relation to its plans to undermine the operation of the better off overall test, and we will always stand up for better, more-secure jobs, for better pay and for better working conditions for working families. The government has been embarrassed, has been exposed, in relation to its attempts to make work more insecure and to put downward pressure on wages. It is important to acknowledge that through Labor's advocacy, through the advocacy of the union movement and through the advocacy of many members of our community the government has had to make a concession in relation to this bill. But this bill is still deeply flawed. It will still make jobs more insecure, and it will still lead to pay cuts. We've made our position on this bill very clear. Our test for this bill has always been: will it create secure jobs with decent pay? It's a pretty straightforward question. It's a pretty reasonable question. I think it's pretty regrettable to say that the answer is still no. This bill will make it easier for employers to casualise jobs that would otherwise have been permanent. It makes bargaining for better pay and conditions more difficult than it already is—and it is already very difficult under current settings. It allows wage cuts. It takes rights off blue-collar workers on big projects. It actually weakens wage theft punishments in jurisdictions where that is already deemed a criminal act. That's what this piece of legislation does. That is the legislation that the Morrison government is asking Labor to support. I think it's very clear why we can't support this legislation. As I said, it's really disappointing to see that this government has taken the pandemic and the recession as an opportunity to ram through some of its ideological-driven industrial relations changes that have been at the heart of what this government and its predecessors have wanted to do now for decades. Clearly, the lessons of the failed reforms of the Howard government have not been learned by this government. Clearly, this government has no interest in standing up for working families. This government has no interest in supporting secure work. This government is not listening to the cries of suffering and distress from our community. This is a government that has 1.3 million people relying on JobKeeper. They are relying on the wage subsidy that, by the way, the government didn't want to have in the first place. We had to drag the government kicking and screaming to that wage subsidy. The government knows that those people are relying on this lifeline. It knows that it's coming to an end. It has no plan to make sure that, as the economy shifts forward, all of the people relying on this lifeline are kept in work. It has got absolutely no plan for that. It has got no plan to address insecurity at work. The government have got no plan to address the fact that wages growth has been utterly disappointing and in the doldrums now for a number of years—since well before COVID and well before the recession. Wages growth has been through the floor in this country because of the economic mismanagement of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. They've got no plan to address the downward pressure on wages that has been happening under their watch for eight years now. They've got no plan to address the fact that Australians are terrified about what the future holds, frankly, because of the soft economic conditions that these guys managed to engineer even before we knew about COVID across Australia. The government have no plan for any of that, but they do have time to try to get this bill through the parliament under the cover of COVID. They do have time to try to push through their ideologically-driven intentions to put further downward pressure on wages and to try to build on their previous approach to make it easier to force people into forms of work that they do not want. As I said before, it's just not the case that every person who is in insecure work in this country is there by choice. It's just not the case. In the current settings you've got people in the gig economy, people who are on so-called independent contracts, with very little bargaining power. The Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations throughout question time was dodging, weaving and doing everything he could to avoid being honest about the fact that there are workers in this country who are paid less than the minimum wage and their government has no intention of doing anything about that. Gig economy workers are concerned about safety at work. They have been involved in accidents and don't have the same protections as employees. Think about the fact that people are doing the same job for much less pay and that people in insecure work can't get bank loans. If you think about all of these issues then, like me, you'll just be gobsmacked about the government's approach to industrial relations. Why aren't they coming to grips with the real problems facing households every day, whether those households are in coalmining, health services, frontline services or teaching? I think about my family members—a hospital wards man, a teacher aid and a teacher. In my family I've got people working in resources and the Public Service. They want to go to work, be safe, have some security, have a decent life and have a decent retirement with dignity. That's what people want. Why aren't those the central concerns of your government? 'It's too hard. I don't hold a hose. Sure, the important concerns of households really matter to us. They're someone else's problem though. We need to do this culture war thing. We need to do this ideology thing. That's what our focus is going to be. That's what our priority is going to be'—this is the thinking of those on the other side of this chamber. They need to take some responsibility. They need to get real. They need to stop their own internal nonsense and stop the fighting—all the stuff about people on the backbench who think there's a conspiracy in the Bureau of Meteorology to falsify climate data or a conspiracy about vaccines. To the government: whatever random conspiracy theory people on the backbench are spouting—of course, some of them are now saying they're going to move to the crossbench—stop being distracted by all this nonsense and do something about the conditions facing working families. Working families need you to start being a real government, to stop saying, 'I don't hold a hose, mate' and to start taking responsibility for improving the lot of families and working people across this country, because the fact is you have left them behind. You have abandoned them. You have betrayed them by failing to focus on the material concerns that are affecting them every day. You might be willing to do that, but we're not willing to do that. We will stand up for secure work. We will stand up for well-paid jobs. We will stand up for a fair go. We will stand up for the concerns and the lives of people on the front line, people who are working hard, people who have managed to keep us afloat—the real heroes throughout the pandemic—and people who make our economy work every single day. The reason we will do that is, as Labor, it is our purpose, our reason for being, to stand up for working and ordinary Australians. It's why we don't get distracted by all the nonsense that affects the other side. It's why we take responsibility. It's why we want to be in government—not for our own benefit but to make life better for people across this nation every single day. 13:06 Mr SIMMONDS 282983 Ryan It is my great pleasure to rise in support of the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, this particular package of changes. It is so important. I listened to the member for Griffith's speech just now, and what strikes me is the way that she and all the other Labor MPs speaking on this bill haven't let the detail of what is in the package get in the way of what they're truly about—another good old-fashioned Labor scare campaign. It simply isn't going to work. The fact they have to dust off scare campaigns from previous elections doesn't make it any less so; in fact, it simply shows a lack of imagination on their side of the chamber. We on this side of the House want to provide an industrial relations system that creates jobs and puts upward pressure on wages. If the member for Griffith spent less time on Twitter and more time talking to everyday Australians, she would know that that is what they want too and that, as we move around our electorates, average Australians know that, after all the support this government has provided to keep them in jobs, to keep jobs going, to support them while they find another job, that is what this government is about too. After the year we all went through last year, in 2020, with the sacrifices that every Australian made as we tackled COVID, quite rightly there is a feeling out there in Australia—there certainly is in my electorate—that we must not let this opportunity go to waste. We must take this opportunity. Don't get me wrong; I'd wish COVID away if I could. But having had to go through it, having made the sacrifices that so many Australians have made to adapt their businesses, to adapt their families, to be resilient and to overcome, let's not waste that opportunity. Let's channel that resilience, those changes and that need to adapt into meaningful reform going forward that will benefit all Australians and, most importantly, will create secure jobs going forward. Everything in this bill is designed to allow workers and businesses to collaborate better and to deliver more jobs. It is at the centre of everything we do—not politics or political pointscoring, like the Labor MPs on the other side of the chamber do, but wages and jobs for the people we represent. I have seen, and we have seen it in speech after speech on this bill from the Labor MPs on the other side of the chamber, that Labor are about politics over people. They are about road blocking, not road building. They are about political jibes, to get themselves on TV, over jobs. What they fail to recognise— Mr Perrett interjecting— Mr SIMMONDS 282983 The member for Moreton is interjecting right now about his Facebook page—I'm not sure why that's important to Australians. The point I'm making, Member for Moreton, is just that: if you spent more time off Facebook and spent more time actually reading this legislation, you would find out that what we're trying to do with this legislation is, importantly, to fix Labor's failures. We are fixing the failures in Labor's Fair Work Act, and we're providing some important improvements for working Australians. I just do not understand why they won't support this when, in the same breath, they claim they want to support workers. Clearly their actions don't fit their rhetoric. And not only are we fixing the shortcomings of their Fair Work Act, but we've done it in consultation with industry, with unions, with all stakeholders—that's what good governments do. So, despite all that consultation, it's still surprising that Labor don't support it. I understand why they don't recognise a consultative process when they see it, like we have undertaken. By defining what it means to be a casual employee and giving eligible casual employees a pathway to permanent full-time and part-time work if they wish, we have provided certainty to both the employee and the employer. And, as we know, certainty is so important for the jobs market. Streamlining the enterprise agreement making will drive wage growth and increase productivity as a result of the increase of agreements. And strengthening the compliance and enforcement framework—I want to come back to this point later as it's very, very important; it's something that this government is particularly focused on, the compliance and enforcement framework—in the Fair Work Act, as this bill does, will protect workers from wage underpayments. For Labor to continue this farce, that they are for workers and yet oppose this bill, is totally ridiculous. They have lost all touch with Australian workers. They have been calling for tougher penalties for wage theft, they have been calling for a better pathway from casual to permanent work. We consulted with unions, which are at the core of the Labor Party supporter base. And, with the support of the unions, here it is, enshrined in this bill. They have been calling for it, and here it is, but now they will oppose these changes simply on ideological grounds. They are stranded on this ideological island, unable to save themselves from playing politics—even when the bill in front of them achieves things that they claim they fundamentally want. I want to circle back now, because it's important that Australians understand the consultation that has gone on behind these changes. It is significant. The changes represent hours and hours of extensive consultation with unions, employers and industry. They tackled issues from job growth to underemployment, job security, underpayment of wages and the failure of Labor's enterprise bargaining system to drive wages and productivity growth. The Morrison government said that we wanted to see some good come out of the COVID health and economic crisis, and that we were going to put all these things that I just mentioned on a table populated by the unions and industry groups and we were going to hear everybody out and work with them. A lot of people said it was folly. Labor MPs opposite said it was folly. Yet here we have a collection of improvements that have come out of just that consultation that demonstrate not only how serious we were, not only the opportunity we can now realise out of the COVID crisis, but represent an agreement like we haven't seen before across all of these stakeholders for some time, and we have this opportunity in front of us. We genuinely hoped that 2021 would see the Labor Party adopt a more mature approach to industrial relations than we have seen and that they would recognise this opportunity in front of them and, instead of reaching straight for the old playbook to dust off some scare campaigns from many elections ago, would see and assess these changes on their merits, because they are changes that they have, indeed, called for themselves—to give them their due credit. I want to come back to the enforcement of laws against wage underpayment, because this bill strengthens these provisions and it's something that this government is particularly passionate about. I want to talk about why the changes in this bill are so important, because this is an issue that Australia has to confront. Don't believe everything that the Labor MPs feed you, Mr Deputy Speaker. As a government, we believe that the job market, and creating jobs, is better when employees and employers work together. But we know that not every employer does the right thing and, when they don't do the right thing, they should be held to account with everything that the legislation and the parliament can muster. This is why. In the 2019-20 financial year, the Fair Work Ombudsman recovered a record amount of money for underpaid workers: $123 million, to be precise. That was, I might add, five times the amount of money recovered by the agency under Labor's last full year in office. So we have been stronger on this issue than Labor MPs ever were in government, when they talked a heck a lot more about it. The Fair Work Ombudsman issued 952 compliance notices, recovering $7.8 million in unpaid wages. That was a 250 per cent increase on the number of compliance notices issued from the year before. They filed more than double the number of court cases compared to the year before, close to 10 per cent more than during Labor's last full year in office, and they also secured 163 per cent more court ordered penalties compared with Labor's last full year in office. They issued 603 infringement notices, an increase of seven per cent compared with the 2018-19 financial year, and recovered over $56.8 million in back payments for workers from enforceable undertakings issued. That's under this government. That's under the Morrison government, doing more than the Labor government ever did to hold rogue employers to account and to make sure that workers get the entitlements they deserve for the work they have duly done. We are already stronger on it than the Labor government and the Labor MPs ever were. What we are asking from the Labor members opposite is to go one step further and to allow us to continue to have zero tolerance and to improve the compliance and enforcement when it comes to this. I can't put it any more simply than this: the Morrison government, I and other government MPs, will not stand for the exploitation of workers, and that absolutely includes the underpayment of wages and entitlements by any employer. Our unprecedented action to date simply demonstrates this. The government is continuing to take strong action to protect workers from underpayments, with various reforms to strengthen and enhance the existing compliance and enforcement regime contained in the Fair Work Act changes which we have before us now. What is worse than blocking these improvements is that the Labor Party actively want to reduce protections for workers by scrapping the ABCC, which has returned millions in unpaid entitlements to thousands of workers since being re-established in 2016. So not only are they failing to support the measures in front of them today, which would allow them to stand up and say to workers—just as we are—that they don't stand for the exploitation of workers, but their policies also demonstrate that they want to go further and they want to be even more detrimental. I conclude by saying that, as has been very clear from the remarks I've just made, I very strongly support the bill. It improves so much of what was lacking, missing or undercooked in Labor's Fair Work Act. For that reason, it is so important. It will provide more certainty. It will allow us to be tougher when it comes to the exploitation of workers. It will give workers—and employers, for that matter, which is so important—more certainty when it comes to transitioning from casual to permanent part-time or to permanent employment. In that way, as well as promoting more agreements between employees and employers, it's going to create jobs and it's going to secure more jobs, and that's what this government is all about. Australians can be assured that every day we come into this place as a government we're thinking about one thing and one thing alone, and that is them. We know that when it comes to their priorities the No. 1 priority for their families is work so that they can provide opportunities for their families. I will pick up on one last point from Labor members opposite. I don't accept that flexibility in the workplace is inherently bad. I don't accept it, because flexibility in the workplace means choice for families. Unlike the Labor members opposite, we don't believe in telling people how to run their families. People know the best choices that need to be made for their families, and to make the best choices for their families they need flexibility, choice and options. That's what we're providing in the workplace, to make sure that there are more jobs—that more jobs are created—and that they have certainty when it comes to underpayment and tackling rogue employers. We simply ask for the support of Labor MPs opposite to help us support all Australians, as we do every day. 13:21 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton I speak today on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020. The government's intention when it introduced this bill last year was to allow employers to cut wages and to reduce the rights of their employees. That's in the coalition's DNA; they in fact even tried to do that to their own employees here in this building. It's hard to believe that in the middle of a pandemic, when workers are already struggling to make ends meet, the government would want to encourage employers to cut the pay of workers. Think about that; think about how much compassion that entails and how much economic sense it entails. I know this sounds like an exaggeration, but how or why would a government introduce legislation that would cut the pay of workers during a pandemic? But I can say that it's no exaggeration that the bill was designed to cut wages and to reduce employees' rights at work. How is it going to do that? The bill introduced last year suspended the better off overall test for two years for any business that's been affected by COVID-19. That's likely to be most businesses, given the disruption that occurred last year. The better off overall test is designed to protect workers' conditions. For example, if there's something in an agreement that cuts penalty rates then at some point the employer will need to increase the base rate of pay to compensate for that so the worker won't end up worse off. So for two years from when the legislation would be passed, any agreement that cuts penalty rates would not need to increase the hourly rate. That would leave the worker worse off and that is a pay cut—empirically so. We also know from experience that even though the suspension would be for two years the effects of a suspension can hang around much longer; workers would not automatically have their pay cut reversed after the two-year suspension ends. This is a typical Liberal Party ploy. We saw similar legislation back in 2004, 2005 and 2006 when John Howard was Prime Minister—the Work Choices bill. This was the legislation that actually forced his own electorate to reject him. Under Work Choices, the no-disadvantage test, which served as a similar protection to workers' rights, was suspended. The problem is that there are still agreements in place today—zombie agreements—from that Howard-era suspension. Even though there's a technical expiry date to the suspension, if the employer hasn't agreed to a new agreement after the suspension is removed, the current agreement that leaves the worker worse off will just keep ticking along. The government has made an amendment to this bill to remove the most obvious provision that would cut the pay of workers, the two-year suspension of the BOOT test—I know that's tautological but it's just easier to explain it! But this last-minute, desperate marketing amendment to hide the intentions of the bill still doesn't make it a good reform. The product still stinks! The Morrison government are just retreating for the sake of political expediency. They fundamentally want to cut workers' take-home pay, and they will cut workers' pay the minute they have the chance. It reminds me of the fable that appears in the 1933 Russian novel The German Quarter, by Lev Nitoburg. A scorpion wants to cross the river but can't swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting. The scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion across the river. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and begins to swim away. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion, 'Why did you sting me, knowing the consequences?' to which the scorpion replies, 'I couldn't help it; it's in my nature.' Scorpions aside, the BOOT suspension isn't the only problem with this bill; it's just the most obvious. The only test Labor and I had for this bill is: will it create secure jobs with decent pay? The answer was no in December, when the original bill was introduced, and it is still no. This bill is still a fundamental attack on the rights of workers, an attack on workers the likes of which we haven't seen since John Howard's Work Choices. Even without the extreme BOOT provisions that have been excised, the bill will still make jobs more insecure and lead to pay cuts. All this is in the context of eight years of wage stagnation—flatlining wages that have kept the Reserve Bank governor awake at night. This is what the bill does: it makes it easier for employers to casualise jobs that would otherwise have been transitioned to permanent jobs; it makes bargaining for better pay and conditions more difficult than it already is; it allows wage cuts; it takes rights off blue-collar workers on big projects—for those who don't know the building game, they're often the industry market leaders for setting wages—and it weakens wage theft punishments in jurisdictions where wage theft was already deemed a criminal act, such as Queensland and Victoria. This bill makes work less secure and it cuts pay. It won't help the Australian economy; it will do the opposite. Without more secure jobs and without the prospect of wage rises, workers will not have the capacity or the confidence to spend. The government set up a working group comprised of employers, industry groups, employee representatives and government to come up with a practical reform agenda. This was actually referred to by some of the preceding speakers from the coalition side. The ACTU, which was part of that Morrison government working group process, said this about the bill in front of the House right now: The Bill fails the Government's own test: workers will be worse off. …   …   … The Government's changes will make jobs less secure; they will make it easier for employers to casualise permanent jobs and allow employers to pay workers less than the award safety net. This is the opposite of what the country needs. This is from the ACTU, who were part of the Morrison government's working group. Clearly the government have proceeded with a reform that did not have the consensus of the quoted working group. Labor always said that if measures were proposed that reflected agreement of the working group, we would most likely support the proposals. What the Morrison government has introduced does not reflect a consensus of the working group. This is the Morrison government's own working group that I'm quoting. Sadly the government have reverted to type. They have bowed to the demands of employer groups and disgracefully are using the COVID crisis as leverage. Australian workers said to employers that they'd give them a lift over the river—over the pandemic—and this is how they repay them. The Morrison government still wants to cut workers' take-home pay. The only reason they ditched their plan to scrap the better off overall test is that they can't get it through the parliament, not because they recognise that it's fundamentally unfair. The Minister for Industrial Relations still believes the change is 'sensible and proportionate' despite it removing the safety net for workers and giving employers vastly expanded powers to cut pay and entitlements. Remember, that's in the context of flatlining wages and more money going to the profits for business. This is the reality we're dealing with right now after eight years of coalition government. There is no moral epiphany going on here when it comes to workers; they have only put forward this amendment for the sake of political expediency. It's a green washing, an advertising tactic, rather than something committed to fairness. You can be sure that at the first opportunity the Morrison government will try again. They want to cut the take-home pay of workers who are doing it tough. This legislation before the chamber has a sting in its tail. The change to BOOT was the most egregious attack on job security and workers' pay in this bill, but it's certainly not the only one. As I said before, the Labor Party only had one test for this bill. We would support the legislation if it delivered secure jobs with decent pay. I say again: we would support the legislation if it delivered secure jobs with decent pay. The legislation before the chamber right now fails that test. The change to the BOOT test was only a political tactic. They're still fundamentally committed to cutting workers' pay, and that is why I cannot support this bill. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265991 The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed. STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 14 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Myanmar 14 13:30 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills Today I rise to speak on the ongoing struggle occurring on the streets of Myanmar. We've seen mass demonstrations after the Tatmadaw staged a military coup earlier this month, and arrested the country's elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and members of her party, the NLD. Protesters have described scenes reminiscent of war zones, with police and soldiers using increasingly violent methods in attempting to squash the protests. On Sunday, in the capital, hundreds of people attended the funeral of Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, a young woman who has become a symbol of resistance after being shot in the head while protesting. On Saturday, two more protesters died after police opened fire in the city of Mandalay. The Myanmar military warned teenagers and youths that they would 'suffer loss of life' if they protested. We must not turn a blind eye to the struggle. We must support these young people who are fighting to keep democracy alive. I've already called publicly for Australia's military cooperation with the Tatmadaw to be suspended. We should tighten targeted sanctions on Myanmar's military leadership and their families. We should offer a Hawke-style amnesty to Myanmar students already in Australia. As Labor's shadow foreign minister has said, we need to put Australian values, like respect for human rights, at the centre of our foreign policy. I agree with her—and with brave protesters putting their lives on the line for democracy and freedom in Myanmar. As representatives in a democracy, we must stand side by side with them. Mount Gravatt Show 14 13:31 Mr VASTA E0D Bonner I'm very pleased to share with the House that the much-loved Mount Gravatt Show will be back for 2021, thanks to a $32,000 grant from the Morrison government. Beloved agricultural shows across Australia were cancelled last year as COVID swept across the country, leaving many show societies and field day organisers out of pocket. Thanks to this Morrison government funding, we have secured the future of a beloved Aussie tradition, with grants helping to reimburse cancellation costs and losses. Annual shows bring our families and farmers together, building community spirit and helping to bridge the divide between city and country. Show days are uniquely Australian and provide huge economic benefits to local communities. When I spoke to Mount Gravatt Show Society secretary, Loretta Smith, she was over the moon with this federal funding support. She said that many people in the community—particularly older people who take part in the knitting and cake competitions—were so disappointed that we didn't have a show last year. She said it was a tremendous relief to get this funding so they can get on with the planning of the 2021 Mount Gravatt Show. With the commitment of insurance and other expenses, Loretta said that having to cancel the 2020 show had drained their funds and that this 2021 show would now go ahead as planned. COVID-19: Income Support Payments 15 13:33 Ms CHESTERS 249710 Bendigo I am disappointed again in this government and their announcement today around their plans for JobSeeker. Thousands of people across my electorate are on JobSeeker and the Newstart rate. Before COVID, there were about 5,000 people. Today it is 10,000 because of COVID, and they have just been hit with the hardest news: their JobSeeker payments will drop. They will go back not to $40 a day but to $43.75 a day—yes, it's a slight increase, a very small increase, but that's all they get to live on. The government should be ashamed of themselves at the way they're treating people who are looking for work. Not only are they going to have to survive on poverty wages, but the government is going to say that they have to look for 15 jobs a month, then 20 from 1 July. What jobs, government? Right now, there are eight jobseekers for every job. What jobs are you talking about? A government member interjecting— Ms CHESTERS 249710 An interjection: 'Move out to the bush!' This government is also saying that an employer will now have the ability to dob in people who refuse jobs. People could turn down work, turn down extra shifts, for childcare reasons. We don't have a flexible childcare system in this country. We don't have the ability to support mothers looking for work in this country. There are many reasons why people turn down jobs that aren't suitable. The government has let down Australian jobseekers today. (Time expired) Fisher Electorate: Sunshine Coast 15 13:34 Mr WALLACE 265967 Fisher Like many on the Sunshine Coast, I was disappointed to learn recently that the government will not be able to find funding for the upgrades to the Sunshine Coast Stadium in the coming federal budget. However, this does not mean that the Sunshine Coast is not going to see federal funding for this project moving forward, and I am absolutely committed to trying to get funding for it. Since my election in 2016, the Morrison government has delivered more federal government support for the Sunshine Coast than ever before. This includes more than $3.5 billion in funding for Bruce Highway upgrades between the coast and Brisbane as well as long-awaited upgrades to the North Coast rail line, which are now underway. We've seen millions of dollars for local healthcare projects like the Thompson Institute, Wishlist and the Butterfly Foundation, Australia's first residential eating disorder facility, and millions more for new sporting infrastructure like the Kawana high-performance sporting hub. Now that the federal government has been forced to invest more than $251 billion in support for the economy nationwide because of the economic and health crisis caused by COVID-19, there are unfortunately competing priorities on the budget. However, I do not take no for an answer. To me, 'no' just means 'not now'. I've made it clear to the Deputy Prime Minister that I will advocate strongly with him for funding for the Sunshine Coast Stadium at every opportunity in the months to come. Western Australia: Bushfires 15 13:36 Mr KEOGH 249147 Burt Earlier this month my community commemorated the 10-year anniversary of the Kelmscott-Roleystone bushfires. It was especially poignant this year. The anniversary came just days after the bushfires in Perth's north-eastern suburbs in which some 86 homes were destroyed. In 2011, 71 homes were lost in our hills and 39 more were badly damaged, including my parents' home, where I grew up. Many lives were affected forever and 517 families continue to live with the trauma of being evacuated. Many in our community remember it as a horrific day and are still haunted by the smell of smoke and the sound of helicopters. Many also struggled with claiming insurance, some for years, as they fought to rebuild their lives and homes. Adversity really does bring out the best in us, though. For many locals, that terrible occasion has resulted in some lifelong friendships. For this, we can be proud and thankful. There were lessons learnt, too, and the resulting inquiry has seen changes like mapping bushfire-prone suburbs and changes to building standards, ensuring homes can be better prepared in the future. This experience also gives us great empathy for the other communities affected by fire across our state and nation. So many in our community, including my brother John, were inspired to join a volunteer fire brigade to help prevent what happened to them from happening to anyone else. I know these same individuals who formed the Roleystone bushfire brigade and other volunteer brigades were among the professionals and volunteers fighting the fires in our north suburbs three weeks ago. Thank you to them. Telecommunications 15 13:37 Dr WEBSTER 281688 Mallee I rise today to talk about communication. It's intrinsic to human beings and who we are. We crave it in every way. Communication is part of that connectivity that is essential. Digital connectivity has enhanced the ability for us to connect and to communicate. Today I was very proud to launch, with my co-chair, Sharon Claydon, the member for Newcastle, the Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe. It's an important parliamentary group because it seeks to address and have the conversation around making social media safe. Our children and grandchildren depend on us in this government continuing to work in this space. I have personal experience of how these issues can affect lives. Expensive civil proceedings are one of the only means of recourse currently available to people who have been defamed, bullied and harassed online. I am determine that people in our electorates benefit from the work that we do in this place. Today I want to thank: Reset Australia for contributing to and supporting that event; Minister Fletcher, the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, who spoke at that event; and the shadow minister, Michelle Rowland, who also spoke at that event. We also had the eSafety Commissioner, Ms Julie Inman Grant. Workplace Relations 16 13:39 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor I rise today to put the week in review for community members in Lalor. This week we have seen the Minister for Industrial Relations, yesterday in question time, refuse to say that every worker in Australia should be paid at least the minimum wage. We've got a piece of industrial relations legislation in front of us that seeks to give the heroes of the pandemic a pay cut. We've got a JobMaker scheme that's really a job-taker scheme, where over-35s, who are ineligible, could find themselves unemployed and replaced. Put that into perspective against what we've heard the media reporting today: that the government, after admitting that $40 a day isn't enough for unemployed people on JobSeeker to live on, are now saying they'll raise it by $3.75 a day. Put the two together. They rationalise a tiny increase, which in fact is a cut when you take away what people are currently getting, by saying they don't want to create a disincentive to work. Put that on one hand. Put on the other that they think people should work for less than the minimum wage. Of course, you can't raise this if you're lowering people's incomes. I want to appeal to everyone in my electorate. Don't take this government's bait. Don't pick up a baseball bat and take to the unemployed. Fight for pay and conditions for all Australians. Rotary International 16 13:41 Mr ANDREWS HK5 Menzies Today I rise to speak about Rotary International, which this year, 2021, marks 100 years of service in Australia and New Zealand. In 1921, four Rotary clubs were created in Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington and Sydney. From there, Rotary and Rotaract clubs were created everywhere across Australia and New Zealand, and they continue to flourish. Internationally, Rotary is one of the world's larger service organisations. There are more than 1.2 million Rotarians worldwide, in over 180 countries and more than 35,000 clubs. A new Rotary club is established somewhere in the world about every 12 hours. Rotary advances world understanding, goodwill and peace; promotes integrity; and connects service-driven and passionate people to exchange ideas, forge lifelong friendships and help change the world through their local communities. Rotarians see a world where people unite and take action to create lasting change across the globe, in our local communities and in ourselves. I'm delighted and honoured to have been made an honorary member of Rotary by my clubs in Menzies. In the electorate, I'm privileged to have a number of Rotary clubs, including Manningham; Doncaster; Eltham; Warrandyte and Donvale; and Templestowe. Just recently, on Australia Day, the Templestowe Rotary club held a lunch to celebrate the 100th anniversary. I look forward to attending many more of these events with local Rotarians. Morrison Government 16 13:42 Mr KATTER HX4 Kennedy () (): Saying that two days is a long time in politics is very true. Yesterday the government had a majority; today they don't. I don't want to be interpreted or assumed to be quoting the Leader of the Opposition, but his comment was: 'We ruled in this place with only 72 members of parliament. We had a minority government and we never lost a single vote, because we went to the trouble of explaining to the people on the crossbenches that what we were doing was right.' Well, a lot of times I didn't believe it was right and I didn't go along with it. But he said: 'There is a name for convincing members of parliament that this is the right thing to do. That name is democracy.' Much as I love Anthony Albanese, I don't know that that would be the case if he had a couple of votes up his sleeve in this place. But now the government and the mainstream parties in Australia have to accept that they no longer issue the edicts and make us all jump when they crack the whip. Those days are over. The days when you big boys could walk into this place and smash the dairy industry of Australia to pieces and close down manufacturing are over. (Time expired) COVID-19: Vaccination 16 13:44 Mr STEVENS 176304 Sturt I had the pleasure of attending the Glynde RSL AGM on Friday. It was the first meeting of that group for a good 12 months, and I was lucky enough to be their guest speaker. I took the opportunity to talk with them about the vaccination program and the importance of getting vaccinated and to explain the Commonwealth's schedule for rolling out the vaccine program. This was an older group, as you can imagine. Those of us who attend RSL meetings would know that. They were of course very enthusiastic and eager to participate in the program, and that was very heartening to me. But my other point to them, and I'm sure everyone in this chamber will agree with this, is that we need them to be a part of the process of convincing particularly younger Australians to participate in the vaccination program. I think it's a reasonable concern that we all be vigilant and use every opportunity we can to make sure we are explaining to people, particularly younger people who don't fully see themselves as being at risk from COVID-19, how important it is for them to get vaccination. For younger ones in particular, it's not just about them; it's for their loved ones, particularly their older loved ones who are in the cohort who, if they contract this disease, face more risk of being significantly affected. It was a great pleasure to be there, and I urge everyone to get vaccinated. COVID-19: Vaccines 17 13:45 Ms MURPHY 133646 Dunkley Central to our path to a public health recovery and an economic recovery from the global COVID pandemic is uptake of the vaccine, and we know that the rollout of the vaccine started in Australia this week. As a representative of my community and a member of this parliament, my duty is to do everything I can to promote the public health response. I wouldn't ask anyone to do anything I'm not willing to do myself. So, today I received the vaccine, alongside the Leader of the Opposition, to show people who have underlying health conditions that the COVID vaccines are safe. If you have any concerns, contact your treating practitioner. Don't listen to people like the member for Hughes. It's a disgrace that, at a time when we are trying to promote a vaccine backed by the TGA and expert medical practitioners and bodies, the man the Prime Minister personally intervened to protect and ensure that he stayed in this parliament is now stealing media attention and headlines and undermining public health advice. If you have concerns about taking the vaccine, talk to your GP. Talk to your specialist. I went and got medical advice that said I could take the vaccine, and I'm getting treated for cancer. It's up to all of us to do it. Do it for yourself, do it for your community and do it for Australia. The vaccine is so important. HomeBuilder 17 13:47 Mr RICK WILSON 198084 O'Connor I rise today to highlight the economic boost that HomeBuilder has given Western Australia's south coast, most of which lies in my electorate of O'Connor. Since the federal government launched HomeBuilder in June 2020, about $107 million of residential building work has been approved in the six months to December. That's $50 million, or 86 per cent, more than in the same period in 2019. The city of Albany has seen $62 million of home building approvals, up by 75 per cent. Prior to HomeBuilder, residential approvals had been on the slide since 2016. This positive trend in Albany has been replicated in other O'Connor towns and shires. Manjimup, famous for its majestic Karri Forest, has seen the value of approvals soar by 177 per cent. In the tourist mecca of Denmark, $14.3 million worth of building work has been approved, up 78 per cent. Esperance, whose beaches have been voted the best in Australia, has seen approvals jump by 115 per cent. And the shire of Jerramungup, which includes the coastal tourist town of Bremer Bay, the magnificent Fitzgerald River National Park and the Bremer Canyon whale watching hotspot, has seen approvals up by 66 per cent. Most impressive of all, the remote shire of Dundas, on the WA-South Australian border, has seen an incredible 440 per cent rise in approvals. In closing, I reiterate that this HomeBuilder-driven housing boom is not only supporting regional economies but also creating employment and training opportunities for people in my electorate of O'Connor. Member for Hughes 17 13:48 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton So the member for Hughes has resigned from the Liberal Party. Apparently his views don't accord with Liberal Party policy, despite his spruiking his views for years without any effective sanction by the Prime Minister. The views of the member for Hughes are so dangerous that just last week Facebook banned him from their platform. His posts spread dangerous misinformation such as championing the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID despite reputable global studies finding it ineffective as a treatment; advocating the use of ivermectin, another drug not recommended by the National COVID-19 evidence institute; questioning the effectiveness of face masks and saying that having children wear masks is akin to abuse; and promoting conspiracy theories about the Washington riots. The Prime Minister allowed the member for Hughes to spread dangerous misinformation that could actually kill people. The Prime Minister's response to all this misinformation coming from the member for Hughes when he was in the Liberal Party was: 'He's not my doctor.' The Prime Minister was ineffectual in reigning in the member for Hughes while he was in his government. Now that the member for Hughes has jumped ship he'll be off leash, if I could mix metaphors. But the Prime Minister is still accountable. He's still the Prime Minister, and, when it comes to votes in this House, he'll still be able to have a say in whether he accepts the member for Hughes's vote. A fair dinkum leader would not accept the vote of the member for Hughes. Let's see if this Prime Minister is fair dinkum. Prostate Cancer 18 13:50 Mr YOUNG 201906 Longman Recently I attended a morning tea for the Parliamentary Friends of Prostate Cancer Awareness group here in Canberra. Next month, the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, which is the peak body for men and families impacted by prostate cancer, will commemorate its 25th anniversary. They are launching a new project to raise awareness of the disease, and it is something that I am very passionate about. The more awareness we can raise, the more chance we have of saving lives from this terrible disease. Prostate cancer is the second-most-common cancer diagnosed in men in Australia and the third-most-common cause of cancer death. Across Australia, one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer by the age of 85. In the Moreton Bay North geographic area, which includes my electorate of Longman, there are currently 2,376 men living with prostate cancer. Sadly, there are 225 new cases diagnosed every year. Moreton Bay North has a high incidence of preventable deaths relating to prostate cancer. Even though my community is around the average for instances of prostate cancer, the death rate is higher than average because it is often picked up too late, as many men in my community are slower than average to be tested—the old 'She'll be right, mate' attitude. To the blokes in my electorate, I implore you: please, visit your GP and get your PSA levels tested. It is a simple blood test that could literally save your life. Member for Hughes 18 13:51 Mr DICK 53517 Oxley It's a simple yes or no question: does this government think it's okay for a member of parliament to contradict public health advice? It shouldn't be a hard one to answer, but, for this government, we know it is. We're in the middle of a global pandemic. People's lives depend on our ability, as leaders, to provide them with reliable and true information. But the member for Hughes doesn't care about that. We know that he's happy to pedal misinformation about COVID-19, and this government, up until 11 am, was happy to let him do it. Despite his dangerous views, the member for Hughes was still welcomed in the Liberal Party room this morning. The member for Hughes has decided he's had a gutful of this Prime Minister, but this Prime Minister hasn't had a gutful of him. Let's not forget that he was the Prime Minister's hand-picked candidate for the 2019 election—a protected species by the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. Even Facebook, as we know, has decided that Mr Kelly is too dangerous to have a public voice. A real leader would have taken action and stood up against this harmful rhetoric. Instead the Prime Minister sat by, either willingly or unwillingly, and allowed Mr Kelly to promote his dangerous views. The member for Hughes has run rings around the Prime Minister, and it's typical that the Prime Minister has only now found his voice. Prime Minister, start leading; start acting. Myanmar 18 13:53 Mr ZIMMERMAN 203092 North Sydney Myanmar is an incredible country with resilient people. It's a land of ancient heritage, as places like Bagan and the temples of Mandalay remind us. Yet it is also an incredibly young population. I've had the opportunity to visit Myanmar twice in my life. In 2017 I visited as part of a Save the Children delegation. We saw firsthand many of the huge challenges facing this nation. We also saw a nation making the transition to democracy with the enthusiastic support of its people. That visit stood in stark contrast to my first visit in the 1990s, when Myanmar was ruled by a brutal and inept military regime. The memories of the events of 1988, which saw the military mow down protesting citizens, was still fresh in people's minds. Yet, despite the repression, in so many homes and shops I saw the tiny, often postage-stamp-sized photos of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. She was their beacon of hope, and they risked arrest just by showing her image. Today Myanmar has returned to military rule. The army is again on the streets, killing its citizens at peaceful protests. While the international community has few levers that are likely to deter the military, we must support the millions of Myanmars now fighting for a return to democracy. Suu Kyi and other political prisoners must be released and the results of the recent election honoured, and we must stand shoulder to shoulder with those in Myanmar who want a better, freer and democratic future by whatever means is available to us. The alternative would be a disaster for Myanmar and the bright future it can and should have. Morrison Government 18 13:55 Mr STEPHEN JONES A9B Whitlam There's a truism in Australian politics: if you can't manage yourself, you can't manage the country. This morning we learned that this government could do neither. Clearly this divided government can't unite itself or its own party room. It will rely on the votes of the crossbench from now until the election to get any legislation through the parliament. The Australian people know that loyalty matters and principle matters, and this Prime Minister has very little of either. He refused to intervene to save his frontbench colleague Jane Prentice when she was under threat. He could not convince the former member for Chisholm, Julia Banks, or the former member for Gilmore, Ann Sudmalis, to stay within the toxic culture of his party room, and they all had to leave. These women could not stand a bar of this Prime Minister. But the one person that he would intervene to save was the member for Hughes. It was more important to save this crackpot conservative, Paleo-hugging, climate-change-denying antivaxxer than it was to save any of these three excellent frontbench and backbench women. There may be a few people on the government side who are rejoicing the departure, but the people of Australia will be saying: 'What is the price that he will be paying— (Time expired) COVID-19: Vaccination 19 13:56 Mr ALEXANDER M3M Bennelong In 2020 we lived in hope that things would return to normal, so this week's announcement of the vaccine rollout have been music to our ears. Finally, we can see light at the end of the tunnel. The Prime Minister joined me at AstraZeneca's headquarters in Bennelong to announce our first vaccine back in August. Since then, we've had announcements from Pfizer and more vaccine announcements from CSL that vaccines would be made here, announcements that vaccines had been approved and, finally, this week that vaccines are going into arms. These simple announcements belie the huge amount of effort at all levels to make this possible—from the nurses, who are administering the vaccines, to the TGA, who have approved these vaccines with record speed. And, of course, we must thank the scientists at AstraZeneca, Pfizer and other companies who have worked miracles in making these vaccines viable in such a short time. Bennelong is home to many of the pharmaceutical companies that have been working on these miracles, and many of these incredible scientists are local residents. We're all so grateful for the efforts everyone has put in over the last year, and we thank everyone who has given up so much to keep us safe. Member for Hughes 19 13:58 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon Today the member for Hughes has done what the Prime Minister didn't have the courage to do and sacked himself from the Liberal Party. Let us never forget that when a good local member like Jane Prentice was under challenge for her preselection this Prime Minister sat on his hands, but when the member for Hughes was under challenge it was all hands on deck. When the member for Hughes was engaging in Nazi slurs on the Premier of Victoria, the Prime Minister was silent. When the member for Hughes was insulting the Cambodian community and comparing the World Economic Forum to Pol Pot's genocide, the Prime Minister was silent. When the member for Hughes was accusing our hardworking scientists at the Bureau of Meteorology of doctoring temperatures, the Prime Minister was silent. When the member for Hughes was accusing the chief medical officer and the TGA of crimes against humanity, did the Prime Minister defend them? No, he was silent. The Prime Minister has ignored the member for Hughes until pressure from this side of politics made him recant, but the Prime Minister was prepared to accept this man's vote within the Liberal party room until 11 o'clock today. The Prime Minister still didn't act; it was the member for Hughes who acted. It was the member for Hughes who sacked himself and who had the courage to do what this Prime Minister has declined to do for too long. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and this Prime Minister walks past a hell of a lot. Teal Ribbon Day 19 13:59 Dr ALLEN 282986 Higgins Teal Ribbon Day, which raises ovarian cancer awareness, is on 24 February. Last week I had the great privilege of hearing from Caitlin, a brave young woman who shares her hopes and dreams for beating this deadly disease. Every day four women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Tragically, every day three women will die. We need to make sure we continue to provide support. That is exactly what the Morrison government is doing, with an extra $1 million announced last week. Let's make ovarian cancer history so that Caitlin, and mums like Caitlin, can watch her two gorgeous children become mums themselves. Who knows which one of us might next be affected. The SPEAKER 00APG In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 19 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Member for Hughes 19 14:00 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that today the government has lost its majority on the floor of the House of Representatives? What does it say about this Prime Minister's judgement that he installed this member against the objection of local Liberal Party members in the Sutherland shire? The SPEAKER 00APG The last part of the question is probably out of order, but the first part of the question—certainly the statement—is in order. 14:01 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook The statement by the member for Hughes is well known to the members of this place by now, and the status of the parties in the House is a matter of common knowledge. If the Leader of the Opposition is feeling so confident about the performance of his opposition, perhaps he would like to bring on a motion. COVID-19 20 14:01 Mrs McINTOSH 281513 Lindsay My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister inform the House how the Morrison government's actions to secure an Australian way out of the COVID-19 pandemic are protecting our health and our economy, and how these responses are leading the world? 14:02 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I thank the member for Lindsay for her question. Australia's health and economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic is well known, and it is world leading. Australians know they live in a country today that, unlike so many around the world, is able to point to a response from the Australian people first and foremost, supported by governments across the country, particularly the Commonwealth government, to ensure that Australia is able to progress through one of the most challenging time in our nation's history since the Second World War. It means that today Australia's COVID-19 case rates are amongst the lowest in the world—the second lowest in the OECD, in fact, I'm advised—and our fatality rate is the third lowest in the OECD. There has been $22 billion in specific COVID-19 health support from this government in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes the $6.5 billion in support for the COVID-19 vaccine program and treatments. That health response also includes the significant support provided in partnership with state governments to assist the mental health of Australians. I met with Professor Pat McGorry earlier today, as I know a number of members have. Australia's response to the mental health challenges through this COVID-19 pandemic has also been world leading. It is something that other nations have noticed. I think it says a lot about Australians that it is not just the physical health issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic that we as a government and as a people responded to; we understood the strain, we understood the anxiety, and we provided those mental health supports as well as ensured that the economic supports were in place to assist people through. The vaccination program has begun. It is rolling out, and tens of thousands of Australians in priority areas are receiving those vaccinations. Another 166,000 Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines have touched down, further supporting the vaccination effort. That means we move into a new phase with the vaccination program; we move from those short-term emergency supports into long-term supports. That is what we have done today in making the long-term decision to lift the JobSeeker base rate by $50 a fortnight. We come into a new phase in this vaccination program where we seek to normalise the economic supports as well as the many other arrangements that are in place. That means we are transferring to a new base rate for JobSeeker, which will provide long-term support for people who find themselves in need of that support should they lose their job. But the best form of welfare is a job, and that's why we are backing it up with the mutual obligation requirements. We're doing everything we can to get Australians into work. Members of Parliament: Staff 20 14:05 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to his comments today regarding a staff member employed by the member for Hughes who has been the subject of multiple allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards women and girls since 2014. The Prime Minister said today, 'I have long expressed to Mr Kelly my concerns about that staff member.' Given the Prime Minister's long knowledge, why did the Prime Minister do nothing about it for years? 14:05 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook As you'd know, any employment matter of a member of parliament is a matter— Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 00APG Members on my left! The Prime Minister will pause for a second. I say to members interjecting, like the member for McMahon and the member for Hotham, that I'm not going to be put in a position where members are loudly interjecting when it's my job to listen to the question and to the answer. That's the task I face every day, irrespective of the views of members interjecting. I simply can't do that properly. If interjections keep occurring, like they just did, those members will be ejected. Interjections are disorderly in every form. The Prime Minister has the call. Mr MORRISON E3L The matters that I raised with the member for Hughes when we met several weeks ago related, of course, to the various statements he had made concerning the government's response to the pandemic and the health measures put in place. It's also true that, in the last few weeks, I became aware of some other matters which the Department of Finance— Opposition members interjecting— Mr MORRISON E3L I'm happy to answer the question, Mr Speaker. The SPEAKER 00APG The Prime Minister has the call. Mr MORRISON E3L We have initiated a process that is looking into those precise matters that came to my attention a few weeks ago. Mr Albanese interjecting— Mr MORRISON E3L The interjections of the Leader of the Opposition seem to confuse the fact that I have long held issues regarding a particular staff member and their performance in that office, not related to the issues he referred to in asking that question. That is a matter that I've raised on numerous occasions, but that reached a more serious point in recent weeks. I raised those matters with the member for Hughes. He undertook to take certain actions on behalf of those discussions. Those actions were not taken. The member for Hughes has taken his decision today. Transport, Infrastructure 21 14:08 Mr DRUM 56430 Nicholls My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development. Will the Deputy Prime Minister please inform the House how the Morrison-McCormack government's Australian approach to our transport and infrastructure sectors, including through the use of innovation, is helping to meet the challenge of our recovery from COVID-19? 14:08 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina I listened very closely to the member's question. I know how fiercely he represents the Nicholls electorate. He knows full well the value of innovation in delivering better outcomes, particularly in the area of road safety, which is important to all of us. The government is currently rolling out the $2 billion—$2,000 million—Road Safety Program across every state and territory. I was in Western Australia the other day, and they're very pleased with what's happening there—delivering safer roads that will save lives through the use of lower cost innovation and technology. We've also invested $12 million in the Road Safety Innovation Fund, which is delivering 13 projects for road safety technologies, including testing technologies to warn motorists of oncoming cyclists and school zones. That is so important. Round 2 opens this week. The new National Road Safety Data Hub is going to collect national data to better inform road infrastructure investment under our $110 billion decade-long infrastructure pipeline. Australia has been at the forefront of innovation and ingenuity when it comes to technology, particularly in transport. There was the black box flight recorder, of course, by David Warren in 1953 and Jack Grant with the inflatable aircraft escape chute in 1965. From the member for Groom's electorate, I have to mention the Wagner family with their earth-friendly concrete, which has been adopted worldwide. And just last year we introduced electronic work diaries for our truckies, which will save them considerable time. Instead of having to use those paper logbooks they can do it electronically, and it is such a valuable use of their time to be able to do that. In the member for Nicholls' electorate we are investing heavily in the infrastructure his community needs, wants and deserves. I'll mention the Echuca-Moama Bridge. It's been talked about for 40 years and the member for Nicholls campaigned for it, he delivered it and we're building it! We've committed $200 million to the Shepparton Bypass, and planning for stage 1 is underway. I know how hard the member for Nicholls fought for that particular project. The Shepparton rail line is a $320 million Australian government commitment for better rail connectivity for the Goulburn Valley, Nagambie and Seymour communities to Melbourne. I know how hard the member for Nicholls fought for that particular investment. All of these projects are supporting jobs throughout regional Victoria, supporting local communities and making sure that we take advantage of modern infrastructure construction and ingenuity. More broadly, we know that COVID-19 has presented significant opportunities in terms of doing things differently, placing greater importance on innovation and new technology. We're getting on with the job of doing just that, with contactless delivery of goods and services advancing quickly. These are all the sorts of things that Australians get on and do. As part of our $110 billion pipeline of investment, we're getting on with the job through COVID-19 recovery. Member for Hughes 22 14:11 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is again to the Prime Minister. I refer to his previous answer, when he said that the matter was drawn to his attention weeks ago. Didn't the Prime Minister, at a press conference less than an hour ago, say, 'I have long expressed to Mr Kelly my concerns about that staff member'? How are these two statements consistent? And why didn't he do something about it, given the powerful position that he holds? 14:12 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook The Leader of the Opposition is wilfully conflating two different matters. There is the long-held concerns that I have had about the performance of a staff member in the member for Hughes' office. That is based on the fact that my electorate adjoins that of the member for Hughes and they relate to performance measures that don't relate to the more sensitive issues that have come up more recently— Mr Dreyfus interjecting— Ms Plibersek interjecting— The SPEAKER 00APG The Prime Minister will pause. The member for Isaacs will leave under standing order 94(a) and the member for Sydney will cease interjecting. The Prime Minister has the call. The member for Isaacs then left the chamber. Mr MORRISON E3L When it was drawn to my attention, I drew it to the attention of the member for Hughes when we met together several weeks ago. He undertook to take certain actions in relation to that staff member. That was not followed through on and he took the decision. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 22 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 14:13 The SPEAKER 00APG I'd like to inform the House that we have present in the gallery this afternoon the Hon. Chris Miles, a former member of this House and former parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister. On behalf of the House, a very warm welcome to you. I'd also like to welcome the Hon. Kerry Chikarovski, the former New South Wales minister and leader of the Liberal Party in New South Wales. On behalf of the House, a warm welcome to you again. Honourable members: Hear, hear! QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 22 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Tasmania: Economy 22 14:13 Mr WILKIE C2T Clark My question is to the Prime Minister. Bass Strait remains the biggest brake on the Tasmanian economy. That's no wonder, when the Victorian government imposes an unconstitutional tax on interstate trade with its mandatory charge on the Port of Melbourne. The Tasmanian government is rorting the federally funded 'bring your car for free' promotion by jacking up passenger and cabin fees on the Spirit of Tasmania and now Australia Post has made the absurd decision to ban the carriage of perishable goods from 30 June. Prime Minister, the current freight and passenger vehicle cost equalisation schemes don't address such challenges, so will you intervene, help Tasmanians and their businesses and finally fix the biggest brake on the Tasmanian economy? 14:19 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina Thanks to the Prime Minister for asking me to answer the member for Clark's question. He knows like I do and like we all do that Australia's supply chains are vital. The Australian government is committed to supporting the Tasmanian economy and businesses to ensure that they remain competitive and prosperous through the COVID-19 recovery. As the House would be aware, the member for Clark raised this particular matter on Thursday 4 February in this place. I asked the member to provide evidence of these claims, and he has since done so, and I thank him for that. Upon receipt of this, I arranged for the information to be provided to the Tasmanian government, which manages the TT-Line service. Just this morning, the Tasmanian government advised me that it is still investigating the matters raised and has confirmed that it will provide me with more information once its investigation process is complete. COVID-19: Economy 22 14:15 Mr BROADBENT MT4 Monash My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer remind the house about how the Morrison-McCormack government's Australian approach to economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession is driving world-leading responses so we can continue generating new jobs and economic growth? Treasurer, are there any other views? 14:15 Mr FRYDENBERG FKL Kooyong I thank the member for Monash for his question and acknowledge his decades in small business before coming to this place, his work as a local councillor and his passion for creating jobs for older Australians across the country. The economic recovery is underway. The Australian economy is fighting back. We've seen enormous resilience in the face of the single largest economic shock since the Great Depression. Yesterday I informed the House that Fitch had reaffirmed Australia's AAA credit rating. Australia is one of only nine countries in the world to have a AAA credit rating from the three leading credit rating agencies. They pointed out in their statement that Australia had performed well in response to the pandemic compared to our world peers. We've seen the International Monetary Fund say that the Spanish economy was expected to contract by around 11 per cent, the UK economy by 10 per cent, and the French and Italian economies by nine per cent. The German, the Canadian and the Japanese economies were expected to contract by more than five per cent and the US economy by 3.4 per cent. Yet the Australian economy has been expected to contract by less than three per cent. By any standard, on both the health and economic fronts, Australia is performing strongly. Australia is performing strongly in the face of this pandemic and this economic shock. We know that the labour market has been central to the performance of the Australian economy. Around 94 per cent of the 1. 3 million Australians who either lost their jobs or saw their working hours reduced to zero are now back at work. We saw the unemployment rate fall to 6.4 per cent, beating market expectations. We have seen hundreds of thousands of jobs being created in recent months. We've seen the underemployment rate at its lowest level in years. We've seen business and consumer confidence recover to their pre-pandemic levels. We've seen resilience in the housing market, we've seen resilience in motor vehicle sales and we've seen resilience across the Australian economy, with more than two million Australians graduating off JobKeeper in the December quarter, compared to the previous period. In the face of this economic shock, we're seeing more jobs being created and we're seeing the Australian economy being remarkably resilient. We're seeing our economic plan, which involves putting more money into people's pockets through tax cuts; the JobMaker Hiring Credit, which is helping to get younger people out of the unemployment queues and back into work; the bringing forward of infrastructure projects; and the more than 300,000 new training places. All are designed to do one thing and that is to help create more jobs for Australians. Workplace Relations 23 14:18 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is to the Prime Minister. I again ask a very simple question: does every worker in Australia deserve to be paid no less than the minimum wage? 14:18 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce This is actually an issue that was dealt with at some length by the Fair Work Commission in determining whether or not those people who are not covered by the minimum wage or a relevant award in the gig economy and who are independent contractors are employees. On 21 April last year, the Fair Work Commission—the independent body devised by the Labor Party when they were in government and led by a unanimous decision by the president that Labor appointed, Iain Ross—determined that Uber Eats drivers were not employees. The reason they made that determination was a range of factors, including two very critical things. The first was that Uber Eats exercise no control whatsoever over when or how long a driver performed work, and so, as a matter of legal right and actuality, it was entirely within the driver's control as to when they logged onto the app or how long they remained logged on. There was no obligation to accept any particular delivery request. The second reason why it was determined that that person wasn't an employee is that when they were performing work pursuant to a delivery request, the person could accept the work through other competitive food delivery apps or perform other types of passenger or delivery work. So, as is the case in the platform economy, a person could work across multiple platforms. What the Leader of the Opposition would have people believe is that it would somehow be a simple thing to move a group of people that the Fair Work Commission has determined are truly independent contractors, not employees, into a system of fixed wages and conditions, and then pretend to those people that it would have no other effect on issues like the flexibility of the arrangement, the price of the service to the end users, the commercial viability of the service—indeed, the very existence of the work that provides the income in the first place. Now, if it's so simple, why would it be necessary to ask and answer questions like these? Does the person work two hours or 10 hours or 20 hours? Do they work across one platform or multiple platforms? If they work for two hours across four platforms and you put them on a minimum wage, who pays that wage? These are very complicated issues that simply don't lend themselves to some simple formulation. If you have a situation where one person works across multiple platforms—and, in fact, a recent survey in Victoria found that 35 per cent of people who use the platform economy work across multiple platforms; they sometimes work across four or more platforms—how would you transmute that person onto a fixed wage arrangement? Is it even possible? So, if you were to move— Mr Albanese interjecting— Mr PORTER 208884 The minimum wage is a fixed minimum wage. If you move someone onto an award, that is a fixed wage. This is what happens when you don't think things through, just like you didn't think the $20 billion cost of this through. (Time expired) COVID-19: Vaccination 24 14:22 Ms FLINT 245550 Boothby My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister outline to the House how the Morrison government's Australian approach to the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines is contributing to the next stage of Australia's world-class pandemic containment and capacity strategy? 14:22 Mr HUNT 00AMV Flinders I want to thank the member for Boothby, in particular for her work in helping to advocate for the brain and spinal rehab unit at the repat hospital and also for her work, along with everybody in this House, in helping to bring to bear national support for a containment and a capacity strategy, a containment strategy that today has seen the nation again record zero cases of community transmission of COVID-19. That is six out of the last seven days. That is 26 days of zero cases of community transmission nationwide this year. Across Australia, that's an extraordinary national achievement together. It compares with the agonising situation we see in so much of the world at the same time, with over 367,000 cases and over 7½ thousand lives lost in the last 24 hours. Indeed, the world is approaching 2½ million lives officially lost to COVID-19. All of the things we've done together—borders, over 14 million tests, tracing and the difficult distancing measures—have contributed to this. At the same time, we've been building capacity in our primary care—we're now at 49 million consultations through telehealth—and the work that has been done in our hospitals. The next stage is the vaccine rollout. I was pleased to be able to make the announcement today that the second shipment of vaccines has arrived, 166,000 units, and that will be followed next week by more, which means that over each of the coming weeks we plan to replicate that which is being done this week with the rollout, which we've all seen commence. What that means is 80,000 doses being distributed this week, and we plan on distributing 80,000 doses next week—50,000 to the states and 30,000 to aged care. The following week we're again looking at 80,000 doses—approximately 50,000 to the states and 30,000 to aged care. All of this is part of phase 1a. We'll soon enough move, after approximately six weeks, to phase 1b. That will mean that we'll start with our over-80s, our over-70s and immunocompromised Australians. We'll work with Indigenous Australians over 55 and critical frontline workers. So we are focusing right now on that rollout. That rollout is providing protection, but, above all else, it's the next stage that will provide hope to Australians. Workplace Relations 24 14:25 Mr BURKE DYW Watson My question is to the Minister for Industrial Relations. Igor from Sydney is a student who works for Deliveroo and for DoorDash. Last week he did a four-hour shift on just one of those platforms and earned a total of $41.45—just over $10 an hour and well below the minimum wage. What's complicated about workers like Igor being paid no less than the minimum wage? 14:26 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce The complication is that the thousands of people who work across the platform economy all have completely different working arrangements. No two look precisely the same. As the Fair Work Commission noted, one of the key issues in accessing a platform app to do this type of work is that, when the work is being performed, someone like Igor or anyone working in the platform economy can work for a competitor app and work across multiple platforms. As was noted and has been noted a number of times, the difference with that arrangement, which the Fair Work Commission has said is the arrangement of an independent contractor, is that an employee who is in the middle of a shift of Coles can't go down the road and work another job at a pub or at Woolies or whatever it might be. So the complication that arises is that the thousands of people who work in this part of the Australian economy have absolute flexibility and completely different patterns and arrangements of work. It was noted indeed in the recent Victorian survey that said that 35 per cent of people who work in the platform economy work across multiple platforms that only a tiny number of the individuals that work in the platform economy do so as the sole source of their income. So the idea that you can pretend to Igor or the other thousands of people working in the platform economy that you can overnight shift their arrangements from being truly independent contractors, which is what the independent Fair Work Commission has found their work arrangements to be, onto an employee-employer relationship, where there is a fixed minimum wage, without detracting from the other parts of that working arrangement that many people find advantageous to them, such as the flexibility, would be to pretend something to Igor and the other people who work in the platform economy that simply isn't true. The idea that you can somehow apply traditional employee conditions like hourly remuneration and benefits or conditions to someone who is truly an independent contractor working on a platform or a tradie, subbie, someone in the media or the arts or someone who does local jobs and advertises in the local newspaper but uses Airtasker to supplement the way they approach customers, and the idea that you can promote to those individuals that you can move them directly from one arrangement, which is independent contracting, onto an entirely different form of arrangement, which is employer-employee, and they would not lose something in the process, notably the flexibility, would not be telling those people that work in that economy the truth. So this is something that needs thorough, clear, level-headed thought, not a thought bubble. COVID-19: Vocational Education and Training 25 14:29 Mr WALLACE 265967 Fisher My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government's Australian approach to supporting training and skills development is creating a world-class system that will help build a stronger nation as we chart our way out of the COVID-19 recession? 14:29 Mrs ANDREWS 230886 McPherson I thank the member for his question. I know that he has a great interest in skills training, having been an apprentice and a tradie prior to coming into parliament. Like all of us on this side of the House, he's committed to ensuring that our hardworking businesses have the trained workforce that they need. This government is creating a world-class training system. We want to make sure that businesses have the skilled workforce they need not just now but into the future. This year alone, we are investing over $7 billion to keep apprentices in jobs, to help out-of-work Australians to reskill, to promote vocational training and to fill the skills shortages so Australians have the qualifications that they need to do the job. Our skills investment is clearly a generational change. It's designed to support Australians into secure jobs as we come through this pandemic. Importantly, we're ensuring that our approach is industry focused and that the workers that are coming through the training system have the skills they need to perform the jobs they need to do. That's exactly why we invested $1 billion in the JobTrainer Fund—to make sure that Australians have access to free or low-cost training places in areas of identified skills need. Since coming to government, we have invested in fixing the mess that Labor left behind when it comes to skills training and vocational education. We have been absolutely committed to repairing the reputational damage that those opposite inflicted on vocational education and training in this country. We removed the dodgy providers that were in the system, and we have spent over $2 billion recrediting the victims of Labor's VET FEE-HELP disaster. We invested in the Skilling Australians Fund to make sure that we were directly supporting training. That is in absolute contrast to what those opposite did in their national partnership agreement: $1.75 billion over five years, but only $600 million went to direct training outcomes. Only about a third of taxpayers' money went to train the workers of the future. Those opposite have seriously undermined vocational education, and we are rebuilding it. (Time expired) JobKeeper Payment 25 14:32 Mr MARLES HWQ Corio on indulgence—just before I ask my question, and also on behalf of the member for Nicholls, I would like to acknowledge Tom Harley, the Geelong two-time premiership-winning captain, who's in the gallery. He's currently on loan to the Sydney Swans as their CEO. My question is to the Prime Minister. Next month, 1.3 million Australian will have their JobKeeper payments ripped away by his government. How many of those 1.3 million Australians will lose their jobs? 14:33 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook When we put in place the JobKeeper and JobSeeker arrangements, the great challenge that Australia faced was that we knew that millions of Australians were going to find themselves in a situation where either their hours would be reduced to zero or they would lose their jobs. At the time, we made estimations based on the advice we had as to what the increased demand for the social safety net would be, but they were completely outstripped by what we then saw occur. What we did was put in place an integrated income support system, which was JobKeeper and JobSeeker, working together. We knew the normal social safety net would be insufficient to deal with the scale of a challenge such as we have never seen before. That's why we did it, and that's why those two programs came together. The comeback of the Australian economy has been underway for some time now. The change that we have made in the transition to move away from those emergency supports to longer-term supports is also underway. We've seen 93 per cent of the jobs that were lost during the course of the COVID-19 recession now come back. That is welcome, and we look forward to further improvements. We also know that, in terms of the emergency supports that we put in place through both JobKeeper and the COVID-19 supplement, we now need to move to the next phase. The vaccination program has begun. The Australian economy is in a much stronger position, of course, than it was a year ago. Confidence levels have returned to above prepandemic levels. That means we have great confidence that the social safety net that is in place in this country and is respected by Australians will be there to support those who have lost their employment. It will be there to help them, and also, because of the decision of this government, they will be getting a higher level of base support than we have seen in this country. This is the single largest increase in a year to the JobSeeker payment since 1986. That's been done by a Liberal-National government, and we look forward to the support of the opposition for that historic change. COVID-19: Income Support Payments 26 14:36 Ms BELL 282981 Moncrieff My question is to the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme and Minister for Government Services. Will the minister please advise the House of the Morrison government's changes to working-age payments which were announced today and how those changes will build on Australia's world-class welfare safety net as we continue to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic? 14:36 Mr ROBERT HWT Fadden I thank the member for Moncrieff for her question and acknowledge her hard work in support of almost 20,000 working-age payment recipients in her electorate and all the work she's doing in reviving our tourism sector, especially on the Gold Coast. I think all of us in the House can appreciate that the pandemic has caused a once-in-a-lifetime disruption to the labour market, and we've been able to use the comprehensive welfare system that we have to provide emergency support to Australians who have found themselves in conditions of unemployment. As the Prime Minister has so eloquently said, the comeback in our economy is already underway, and that means we no longer have to rely exclusively on the supports that have sustained our economy and our people during the last 12 months. Importantly, the coronavirus supplement will come to an end on 31 March, and, in its place, in recognition that there are challenges ahead for some, permanent changes will be made to our social security system. As at 1 April, 1.95 million Australians who are currently accessing working-age payments will see a permanent $50 per fortnight increase in their rate of payment. That includes 1.25 million Australians who receive the JobSeeker payment, 334,500 parenting payment recipients, 178,900 students and—I know the industry minister will be pleased to hear this—134,500 apprentices. It also applies to 36,500 Austudy recipients, and that number also includes youth allowance recipients. All of those will get the payment. As the Prime Minister has said, this is the single biggest year-on-year increase in 35 years—a 9.7 per cent increase. In addition, we're also permanently increasing the amount of money that jobseekers can earn before they lose a cent of payment, with an income-free area of up to $150 per fortnight. This is all designed to give Australians greater support and confidence to get out and maintain employment. There are 14,284 Australians who live on the Gold Coast who are single, who have full capacity to work and who have no dependants. The new payment is designed to give those Australians the opportunity and the confidence to get out there and find a job as our comeback roars into life. We believe these payments are fair. We believe they're sustainable. It is a great balance between those who need support in looking for work and, of course, the taxpayers who fund this support. It's about getting the balance right, and we believe this measure does exactly that. We're also extending the waiver for the ordinary waiting period until 30 June this year so that any individuals who find themselves unemployed will be able to access those payments quickly and effectively. I'm looking forward to the House fully embracing these landmark reforms. JobKeeper Payment 26 14:39 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills My question is to the Prime Minister. According to a recent industry survey, 90 per cent of live entertainment companies are currently receiving JobKeeper payments. These businesses say that without JobKeeper beyond the end of March they could be forced to make up to a third of their staff redundant. Prime Minister, many workers in the industry never qualified for JobKeeper. Will your government now abandon those who did? 14:40 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield I thank the member for Wills for his question and thank the Prime Minister for the opportunity to respond to it and to correct some of the grave factual errors in what the member for Wills has said. Once again, we've heard this canard from Labor that in some way JobKeeper has not delivered very significant benefits to the arts and entertainment sector. That is simply factually incorrect. The facts are that among the around 40,000 people who make up the performing and creative arts subsector—to use the language of the Australian Bureau of Statistics—some $800 million has been paid in JobKeeper within that sector alone. Roughly two in three people who fit that description have received JobKeeper. We have heard this statement from Labor repeatedly over the past few months—that JobKeeper is not well designed to support people in the arts and entertainment sector. The facts are completely opposite. Frankly, it is extremely disappointing that Labor would be creating such anxiety amongst the arts and entertainment sector at this critical time. What have we been doing, by contrast? We've been delivering practical support to the arts and entertainment sector. We're moving to the phase where our focus is on getting shows back on the road. We want our arts and entertainment workers onstage. We want them working backstage. We want them working front of house, in the box office, as ushers or as set designers—all the work that is done across the arts and entertainment sector. That's why we committed a $250 million Creative Economy package, including $75 million in RISE grants—Restart Investment to Sustain and Expand—with $60 million of that already put to work; $50 million for our Temporary Interruption Fund to support Australian film and television; $35 million in sustainability assistance, and we've already allocated some of that for systemically important arts companies; and of course $90 million in loans. And we heard consistently from these whingeing negativists on the other side that nobody would be interested in the loans. That was wrong. They were wrong when they said JobKeeper was not going to support people in the arts sector. That was wrong. They've been wrong about most things they've said about our consistent support for the arts and entertainment sector. Our focus is on getting Australian performers back to work, doing what they do so well, and getting those shows back on the road, and we are providing practical support to do that. Agriculture 27 14:43 Mr PASIN 240756 Barker My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency. Will the minister please outline to the House how the Morrison government's world-leading Ag2030 plan, with its key pillars of innovation and human capital, will help Australia's agricultural industry to chart our way out of the COVID-19 recession? 14:43 Mr LITTLEPROUD 265585 Maranoa I thank the member for Barker for his question. The member for Barker knows better than anybody that if we're to support agriculture to reach its ambitious goal of $100 billion by 2030 then we have to invest in our most precious asset: our people. Sadly, there have been generations of young Australians who have left agriculture and left regional Australia. They felt it was all too hard—the drought, the fires, the floods. But we're slowly changing that around. As part of our Ag2030 plan, as part of this year's budget, we made a significant investment in our people—in our young people. Not only did we invest over $250 million in allowing 400 short courses, including agriculture, to upskill young people but also we reduced the price of agricultural courses at university by 59 per cent. That's had an immediate result. This year, for the University of Queensland's bachelor of agricultural science course, enrolment has gone up by 127 per cent. At Longy college in Victoria, enrolment is up by 66 per cent. And at the University of Tasmania it is up by 50 per cent. These are the new jobs of agriculture, the exciting jobs in technology and science that are bringing your young people home. It fits in with our innovation agenda of ensuring that we give our farmers the tools to continue to produce the best food and fibre in the world, with the science and technology to back that. That's why we're reforming our innovation systems. We have 15 research and development corporations across 15 commodities. We are bringing them together and making sure that we get back to first principles: value to the levypayer and value to the taxpayer. We're making sure there is no duplication of research across those 15 research and development corporations. We're making sure there is also commercialisation of the work that we're doing with the best and brightest here in Australia. Above all, we're collaborating. That's why, as part of our efforts around Ag2030, we have invested $86 million in physical platforms, in innovation hubs, across the country to bring together not just drought research but our research and development across commodities, to get them to collaborate, to ensure that we are continuing to grow this as the next pillar of agriculture so that young people of Australia can come back to regional and rural Australia and contribute to ag's vision of $100 billion by 2030. We're going further than that—not just a physical platform. For the first time, in a world first, we're creating a digital platform, growAG. We will be launching it in the next month. It will bring together all the research and development across all the commodities onto a digital platform that the world can see and participate in. This is something that hasn't been done anywhere else in the world. In fact, there are nations around the world that are wanting to sign up to the innovation that we are starting here in Australia around agriculture. This is the exciting thing about the investment that we are making in agriculture. We're not just helping it grow the productivity and profitability of our country; this more than anything is about bringing our young people home. Members of Parliament: Staff 28 14:46 Mr MARLES HWQ Corio My question is to the Prime Minister. Does the Prime Minister owe a duty of care to all ministerial staff? 14:46 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook Both the codes that relate to the management of staff and my ministers and the Ministerial Code of Conduct set out all the obligations I have to my staff, and at all times I seek to abide by those. Environment 28 14:47 Mr SHARMA 274506 Wentworth My question is to the Minister for the Environment. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government's Australian approach to environmental management has positioned us as a global leader, including with respect to oceans and marine ecosystems? 14:47 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer I thank the member for Wentworth for his question and acknowledge his interest and understanding in international engagement around the environment. The ocean gives us life, feeds us, entertains us, connects us, inspires us and powers our success—so say the 14 nations of the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, and that includes Australia. The Prime Minister has committed to sustainably manage 100 per cent of the ocean within our national jurisdiction by 2025. We know that when our ocean is healthy it has the potential to deliver significant economic and social benefits. Ocean industries are projected to contribute around $100 billion each year to our economy by 2025. The government is also working closely with industry and various state fishery managers to support sustainable practices. On any given day, hundreds of gillnets, some as long as 1.5 kilometres, are used to catch the fish we all love to buy and eat. Sadly, these nets can also entrap and kill species of concern, such as dolphins, turtles and whales. We are focused on minimising this harmful bycatch and maximising sustainability. It's incredibly important that when these sustainability conditions are not met the government acts. Indeed, we have no hesitation in revoking permits, including last year revoking export approval for one of our inshore fin fish fisheries when the Queensland government failed to meet the conditions of the export approval given. We also work to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing through international and regional engagement and strong domestic surveillance, penalties and education programs. Indeed, our fishing industry is one of the most sustainable in the world. A shout-out to the level of concern, engagement and sheer demonstrations of goodwill that come from our fishers across Australia. From John Howard creating the world's first oceans policy through to the Morrison government's $1.9 million investment in the Great Barrier Reef, it is the coalition which has consistently worked towards improving the health of our oceans over many decades. Last year's budget included $67 million for an oceans package, which was about international blue carbon and rainforest-reef partnerships and tackling the marine impacts of discarded fishing gear in northern Australia. All in all, our commitment to being a global leader in ocean protection is leading by example at home and by international collaborations which makes a difference. Parliament House: Staff 28 14:50 Ms PLIBERSEK 83M Sydney My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that one member of his staff knew about the reported sexual assault of Brittany Higgins two years ago; a second member of his staff said it would be raised with his chief of staff two years ago; a third member of his staff knew the alleged perpetrator had been dismissed two years ago; a fourth member of his staff checked in with Ms Higgins after Four Corners last year; and his office dealt with journalists on 12 February, and yet the Prime Minister still says he had no idea about anything until the story broke last Monday? 14:50 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I can confirm to the House that I am advised my office became aware of the matter regarding the sexual assault on 12 February 2021. I can confirm that I did not become aware of the allegation of a sexual assault until 15 February 2021. I can also tell you, Mr Speaker, that at the time of these incidents several years ago the issue of sexual assault was not raised with my office. That's what I'm advised. Child Abuse 29 14:51 Mrs WICKS 241590 Robertson My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister please update the House on the Morrison government's Australian approach to child protection and how this approach is implementing world-leading child protection policies? 14:51 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson I thank the honourable member for Robertson for her question and her passion about making sure that we protect children. That is exactly what the Morrison government is about. We have worked continuously over a number of years to be the world leader in the fight against those perpetrators who are online, and also in the real world, who would seek to exploit young people. The government is very proud of the achievement that we are seen as a world leader, particularly in relation to legislation. We've stopped people from getting Australian passports to travel overseas to countries like the Philippines—those who are recognised as sex offenders. We have worked to increase penalties for people who have been charged with the most serious offences. We have worked with our Five Eyes partners in the collection of intelligence and have been working with companies, including Facebook and others who have encrypted messaging apps, where there are paedophiles who use those apps to convey messages, videos et cetera, to make sure that we can deal with that reality as well. We've invested some $70 million into the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. That centre is now recognised as a world leader. It's a collaboration between the states and territories but also with international partners—particularly in South-East Asia—to make sure that we can bring the world's best expertise together. The work that they do has resulted, just last year alone, in 191 people being charged with more than 1,800 federal child sex offences. The work that they do makes sure that we can identify perpetrators online, particularly those who operate on the dark web. The government has been working for a period of time on legislation which will help the Federal Police and help the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission to bring together the expertise that we need to defeat these people online. They gather in the dark places—in the sewer of the internet, the dark web—and we know that they conduct themselves in a way that is offensive to any parent and to any decent and right-thinking Australian. We will continue to invest in the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation and in the Australian Federal Police for the work that they do, because we know that parents want a safe environment for their children to grow up in. We want to protect the innocence of children. We want children to be safe in the real world and we want them to be safe online. The same laws that apply in the real world should also apply online. It's why we need to continue to work with companies like Facebook, who, at the moment, are proposing a change in their encrypted messaging apps which would protect those paedophiles online. It's unconscionable, it cannot continue and we'll continue the pressure on those companies to do the right thing. Members of Parliament: Staff 29 14:55 Ms CLAYDON 248181 Newcastle My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that, a week after announcing his response in question time to the reported sexual assault of Brittany Higgins, he has abandoned one of his four reviews and will no longer review the culture inside the Liberal government, which was to have been conducted by the member for Curtin? 14:55 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I can't confirm that, because that's not what's happened. I asked the member for Curtin to engage with our party room on a process to look at these matters and issues within our party room. I remember, on the same day, saying that perhaps the Labor Party would like to do the same thing in theirs. I also said that I would listen to the member for Curtin, and the member for Curtin has recommended to me that this process would be best conducted by engaging with the broader cross-party process which is now underway and being pulled together. I welcome that, and the leadership of our coalition has welcomed that. I hope to soon be in a position where the Minister for Finance, after he's concluded his consultations with all parties, can deal with this. In this place, if we are seriously going to address this issue, the assertion made that this is a matter that only rests with the coalition side of politics is a false one. I note the report from the ABC today by Louise Milligan, and I note this because it is a thing we all have to deal with. Louise Milligan reports: The handful of Labor women who are also alleging privately to me that they have been victimised are also staying schtum. Their reasons include that they don't want to damage their side's chances at the next election. We need to deal with this issue seriously. I believe the Leader of the Opposition believes that too; I have no doubt about that whatsoever. I believe all of us want to deal with this issue, and I believe the cross-party process, as recommended in this place, as accepted by the government, is the best way for us to do it. I suggest we get on with that job, and that's what I'm looking forward to announcing soon once the Minister for Finance has received all the advice and had the consultations he's having with parties across this place. News Media and Digital Platforms 30 14:57 Dr WEBSTER 281688 Mallee My question is to the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison-McCormack government is implementing an Australian approach to cooperation with multinational social media companies and developing a world-leading news media bargaining code that will support the future of Australian public interest journalism, particularly in rural and regional Australia? 14:58 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield I thank the member for Mallee for her question, and I congratulate her on her strong commitment to appropriate regulation of digital and internet businesses. Just this morning, she organised, together with the member for Newcastle, the inaugural meeting of the Parliamentary Friends of Making Social Media Safe. That is an important commitment in this area, and I congratulate her on that. As the member rightly says, the Morrison government's work on the news media bargaining code is certainly based on a very detailed platform of policy work going back to 2017. But this is a distinctively Australian approach to a policy challenge which is facing governments all around the world. The news media bargaining code, embodying, as it does, a negotiate-arbitrate model, employs what is a tool well recognised in Australian competition law and policy. It's fair to say that as we've engaged with some of the platforms over recent weeks they are perhaps not as familiar with this tool, but it is a distinctively Australian approach and the intention is to encourage commercial deals between digital platforms and Australian news media businesses, recognising, as the ACCC has advised us, that ordinarily these deals would occur in the ordinary course of commercial engagement. The reason they have not is because of an imbalance of bargaining power, and that's why there is a case for regulatory engagement. I want to particularly acknowledge the leadership of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, who have been very focused on this issue. Indeed, the Prime Minister has discussed this matter with his counterparts—with Prime Minister Modi and just today with Prime Minister Trudeau. Indeed, I have had the opportunity to discuss the matter with my counterpart minister in Canada, the minister for heritage, Steven Guilbeault. Of course, the Treasurer has been in discussions with his counterparts. He and the Prime Minister are very committed, as am I and all on this side of the House. I want to acknowledge the engagement and cooperation of the opposition and the cross-parties as well. This is about ensuring that we have a diverse news media sector in Australia. It is so important for our democracy. It is also so important, as the member rightly asked, because we're talking about not just large media businesses but also small and regional publishers. That's why it's important that the code sets out a clear mechanism for the platforms to make a default offer that can be taken up by smaller or regional media businesses. The Treasurer has stated publicly that, before he makes a designation decision, he will have regard to the extent to which there are commercial deals in place. It is a distinctively Australian approach to a policy challenge. We're already seeing tangible outcomes towards a diverse media sector. Members of Parliament: Staff 30 15:01 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to his earlier answer where he said, regarding issues of the member for Hughes's office manager, that he only became aware over the last few weeks. Is the Prime Minister aware that, after police sought an AVO, this was reported in his local paper on 8 July and 16 September, and News Ltd journalist Eliza Barr sought written responses from his office not once but three times—on 3 August last year, on 4 August last year and on 5 August last year? (Time expired) 15:01 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I'm happy to check those dates that the member referred to. Mining Industry 30 15:01 Mr CHRISTENSEN 230485 Dawson My question is to the Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia. Will the minister please outline to the House how the Morrison-McCormack government's Australian approach to mining is further cementing our mining industry as a world leader so it can continue driving our economic recovery and helping us chart a way out of the COVID-19 recession? 15:02 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler I thank the member for Dawson for his question. We know that Australia's approach, combined with the hardworking men and women of the resources sector, has had phenomenal results. In the member's electorate what does that mean? It means 131 million tonnes of high-quality Australian coal left the terminals of Dalrymple Bay, Hay Point and Abbot Point in 2020. What does that mean for the people of Central Queensland and the member for Dawson's electorate? It means jobs, economic support and stronger economies in those local regions. Australia's approach, combined with the sector, has meant an incredible result. In fact, for the Queensland state government it means $3½ billion in royalties—money that goes towards the essential services Australians rely on: schools, hospitals and roads. Central Queensland is the powerhouse of the resources sector. There are a couple of other powerhouses. The member for Dawson is one. Never get between the member for Dawson and support for his community. Another one is the METS sector—the mining equipment, technology and services sector. The METS sector is an absolute powerhouse for innovation, particularly around Mackay. It continues to support not only that local area with increased efficiencies and innovation for the resources sector but exports for our country right around the world. It is incredibly supportive. METS, combined with the mining industry, has 1.1 million jobs—almost 10 per cent of all full-time employment—and 15 per cent of Australia's GDP. We will continue to support them strongly. In fact, I was with the member for Dawson last September when we opened the METS SME export hub at the Resources Centre of Excellence in Mackay. What a great service it is. It is supported by the Commonwealth. We went to a company called Mainetec. Have they got some buckets—big buckets, small buckets and in-between buckets. It makes such a difference. A small change in bucket design means an increase in bottom lines for mines right across the country and, in fact, right across the world. These are some big buckets. The member for Dawson and I stood in them, and you wouldn't even know that we were there. We were a speck in the back, which is quite unusual. Whether it's coal, iron ore, LNG, gas or other resources, this side of the parliament stands with the resources sector and the jobs it provides. We will continue to support the METS sector and the resources sector. We will continue to support the jobs they provide and what they do for our economy. I know there are those who say 'no way' to the resources sector. There are those who are having an each-way bet. They'll say one thing in Melbourne and a different thing in Mackay. But there are others who everyone knows are just straight-out on the nose. We know who they might be. They could well be over there. (Time expired) Members of Parliament: Staff 31 15:05 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to his previous answers. What does it say about his government and his own office that no-one thought the Prime Minister—if he's to be believed—would want to know about the reported sexual assault of a Liberal staffer 50 metres from his own office, and that, in spite of repeated requests from a News Limited journalist about the office manager for the member for Hughes, no-one advised him of that either? 15:05 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook As usual, the Leader of the Opposition makes a range of assertions. Every time he gets up to speak, asserting various things about what the response has been, I think Australians see through it. On the matters that the member has raised, whether it's on the very difficult issue that the parliament has been dealing with over the course of this last week and a half or the multiparty approach to having an inquiry put in place so we can report on it, I've answered these questions. I've answered questions—openly and honestly, each and every day—about when this this matter was raised with me and when it was raised with the office. Australians know that I have been very open about when I knew about these matters and when they were brought to the attention of my office. I've also been very open about my displeasure that I was not advised, over the course of that weekend, until the Monday. I've made it very clear to my office that that was a totally unsatisfactory response. I've been open and plain about that matter. I believe there is an issue to address here regarding the culture of the workplace of this parliament. I believe that is true. I also believe that one of the most important things we have to address is why, whichever side of politics they work on, a staff member may feel inhibited about raising a matter with the police. That is the matter we have to come to terms with, including how we deal with the privacy of staff members in those situations. Where people have sought to provide that support based on the advice they received, then clearly that has not enabled those matters to be raised and a complaint to be lodged. But I do know this: the appropriate way for matters of sexual assault or anything else to be dealt with is by the police and in the courts. That is the proper way investigations should be undertaken, and that is the process that I support. Multiculturalism 31 15:08 Ms LIU 282918 Chisholm My question is to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison government's Australian approach continues to ensure that Australia is a world-leading multicultural society? 15:08 Mr HAWKE HWO Mitchell I want to thank the member for Chisholm for her very important question about Australian multiculturalism. I want to remind the House, as the member reminds me regularly, that the member for Chisholm represents an electorate where over half the constituents speak a language other than English. I want to thank the member for Chisholm for her excellent advice to government over the course of the last year about the Australian Chinese community and the work they did at the beginning of the pandemic to help keep Australia safe. As the member refers to, Australians can be rightly proud of the success story that is Australian multiculturalism. It is a very unique Australian brand of cultural integration. Our commitment to social cohesion has been shown right through this pandemic year, through the difficulties we've seen and faced. When you look at what has happened in the different communities all across this country and at the contribution they've made, I also want to say thank you to them on behalf of the government—groups like the Australian Arab Association, who distributed free surgical masks in Perth during the pandemic. The Australian Chinese Charity Foundation, which I attended with the member for Scullin on Sunday night, raised over $170,000 for bushfire relief and pandemic assistance. We've seen Sikhs making meals for people in distress and the Resourceful Australian Indian Network helping seniors through some very difficult times when the pandemic hit. Really Australians have pulled together as never before in different communities and different groups. That's why, of course, the government remains committed to social cohesion as an important policy as we go through the course of the next year. We know the challenge is ongoing. We are going to see in the coming months a rollout of the vaccination campaign in people's languages, speaking to communities and making sure that people understand every part of the important safety and efficacy message of the vaccination campaign. It will be available in over 63 languages, of course. You'll be able to translate it off the department's websites. It will be on radio, print and social media and in messages in community. We're working with the SBS on over 60 languages which will have short explainer videos on the vaccination rollout, and the Migration Council of Australia, of course, is preparing resources in over 29 languages as well. Of course, I'm working regularly with the Minister for Health and Aged Care on how to make sure we get that very important message about the vaccination rollout to every single corner and community, such as the people in Chisholm. Of course, I'm looking forward to the roundtable tomorrow with faith leaders from across Australia, who will be discussing the vaccine rollout and what they can do to make sure communities participate. I say to all colleagues: if you have culturally and linguistically diverse communities in your electorates, it's open to you to approach me or the department about how we can reach them and speak with them about the issues that they'll face and what we can do better in that regard. I look forward to those conversations. I again say thank you to the multicultural communities of Australia. We look forward to partnering with you. We are going to do the vaccination rollout together. (Time expired) Mr Morrison E3L I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: ADDITIONAL ANSWERS 32 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: ADDITIONAL ANSWERS Members of Parliament: Staff 32 15:11 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook In relation to an issue raised by the member for Melbourne yesterday, I can advise him as a progress report, after seeking advice from the Department of Parliamentary Services, that, at the request of Minister Reynolds's office, DPS cancelled the APS access pass of the male staff member in question on 27 March 2019, and no pass, either staff or sponsored, has been issued to this person since that time. There are other issues that were raised in those questions, and we'll continue to address those as best we are able and respond by the normal method. STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE 32 STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE Member for Hughes 32 15:12 The SPEAKER 00APG The member for Hughes indicated to me earlier today that he wishes to make a brief statement on indulgence. 15:12 Mr CRAIG KELLY 99931 Hughes I wish to advise the House that this morning in the joint Liberal party room, with a heavy heart, I resigned from the Liberal Party, and I will be sitting as an Independent for the duration of the current parliament. I have also resigned from my positions on all parliamentary committees, including the chair of the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement. To honour the commitment to the voters of Hughes, who elected me under the Liberal banner, I will, of course, support the government on matters of supply, confidence and procedure, and I will seek to vote in a manner consistent with all official policies that the coalition took to the 2019 election. The reason for my action is that, over the past several months, I've been subject to a slander and smear campaign when my goal was only to save lives by ensuring that my constituents and, in fact, all Australians were not being denied access to medical treatments if their doctors believed those treatments could save their lives. Therefore I see that, if I'm to continue to act in line with my conscience and my principles and the oath that I took on becoming a member of his parliament and continue to speak fearlessly and faithfully, representing my constituents, I have no alternative other than to take the action that I have. I thank the House. DOCUMENTS 33 DOCUMENTS Presentation 33 15:14 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce Documents are tabled in accordance with the list circulated to honourable members earlier today. Full details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 33 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Broadband 33 15:14 The SPEAKER 00APG I have received a letter from the honourable member for Greenway proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The Government's failures and lack of transparency on the NBN. 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— 15:15 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway There is no greater example of deception, incompetence, short-sightedness and poor economic management by this government than when it comes to the NBN, and it goes to the character and competence of this minister at the table, the Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts. The litany of failures that has plagued the NBN on this government's watch is absolutely obscene. The never-ending cost blowouts—initially promised to be $29 billion, it has now hit $57 billion. Copper is not delivering the minimum speeds as required by law, and they have purchased enough copper to wrap around the planet Earth. Their HFC network, which was supposed to be the great game-changer, is a complete debacle. Their fibre-to-the-curb modems are literally frying in people's homes. And, at the end of all this, this minister performs the copper backflip and admits finally, after all the wasted time and wasted effort, that fibre was better all along. But the piece de resistance came yesterday, with reports exposing the rotten Liberal Party cover-up for over seven years when it comes to their failed multitechnology mix. Spare a thought for the minister today. He'll be a little sensitive about being exposed. The fact is that Australians have always known that the original fibre plan would've been far cheaper and faster to roll out and would perform better than what those opposite always claimed. And we know from these reports that not only did we know that and not only did the Australian people know that, but the Liberal Party knew that in 2013 and they concealed it, wilfully concealed it, from the Australian people. Those opposite have spent seven years falsely claiming their second-rate piece of junk has saved taxpayers $30 billion compared to the original fibre plan. And that $30 billion figure, repeatedly and falsely asserted by Malcolm Turnbull and now by this minister, the member for Bradfield, are derived from the cost differential of two so-called rollout scenarios contained in Malcolm's 2013 NBN strategic review. The first is the review's claim that the multitechnology mix would cost $41 billion. For a start, it now costs $57 billion. And the second is the claim that Labor's original fibre rollout would have cost $72 billion. The reports yesterday have definitively destroyed this claim. Here are some choice quotes from the report from yesterday: Savings worth $850 to $1150 were estimated to be achievable for each existing home attached with fibre … Now here's the rub: If the lowest level of estimated savings was applied to homes in the existing full fibre rollout at the time, peak funding could have been reduced from $73 billion to about $60 billion. Interest rates associated with the debt were estimated at a relatively high 6.9 per cent by 2024. A further $5 billion to $6 billion in savings may then have been achievable due to lower debt overall and with interest rates below 4 per cent. There's a truth bomb if there ever was one! Put another way, Liberal shareholder ministers were explicitly advised that fibre could be deployed for between $2,950 and $3,250 per premise, but they kept this figure secret. This is significant. For starters, even based on the government's own dodgy figures, this adjustment, in conjunction with reduced debt and interest rate adjustments, would take $15 billion to $19 billion off the government's own figure. Where does this leave the minister's $30 billion claim? In the dumpster! I understand the minister's going around today with the NBN chairman, and they're saying: 'Look, we kept these figures secret because they were commercial-in-confidence. They would have undermined NBN Co's commercial negotiations.' Let me get this straight: NBN Co's out there going into the market, trying to negotiate construction prices, and they decide: 'I've got a brilliant strategy. I'm going to put out the highest price possible per premise. I'll put that in the public domain and I'll keep the true cost a state secret.' Now, this minister puts himself out there as some commercial genius, but it's a recipe to get outmanoeuvred by construction companies to put up their prices. I'm actually not surprised, because that's the kind of reverse logic you'd apply if you were going to hypothetically hand Liberal Party donors $30 million of taxpayers' money for a parcel of land in the Leppington Triangle that the ANAO said was worth only $3 million. It's the same minister with form. There's only one reason the cost-per-premises figures were kept secret. It had nothing to do with commercial negotiations. The problem is it would've been a political problem for Malcolm Turnbull had they been in the public domain. This minister is all over the shop. In the second argument, the best bon mot of all, he was going out saying, 'It's no secret; it was all out there.' It was redacted! There were black lines through the document. Normal people don't black things out for fun. I want to think Malcolm Turnbull was walking around with a sharpie and fell across this thing and started drawing lines on it! It was blacked out. The minister might be unfamiliar with what the term 'redact' means, but I will help him out. 'Redact' is a verb—to remove information from a document because you don't want the public to see it. That is exactly what has happened here. On top of all that, to add insult to injury, we have $78 million in corporate bonuses being given out during the depths of the greatest downturn in the economy since the Great Depression. It is offensive. It is obscene. It is unjustified. Let's remember the Prime Minister effectively sacked the CEO of Australia Post on this very floor for $20,000 worth of Cartier watches for Australia Post's highly remunerated executives. Where is the outage for $78 million in corporate bonuses for a project that's four years behind schedule? It's gone from $29 billion to $57 billion. It doesn't work properly. It isn't delivering minimum speeds as required by law. So where does this government stand? Also, I am intrigued. When this came out—and it only came out because we had an answer to a question that was 47 days overdue, thanks to the minister—we again had the minister all over the shop here. Initially, he went on radio in the morning. He was very embarrassed. He got out on the radio and he said, 'It's a matter for the board.' A couple of hours later, the headline was 'Minister unfazed by $77 million in NBN Co bonuses'. Then he came into question time and blamed Labor for the bonuses. Despite the fact that they have been in government for seven years, that's their big defence. By the evening, The Financial Review was reporting that he had taken this wet lettuce to NBN Co and said, 'No more bonuses.' But the level of concealment by this government when it comes to the NBN is absolutely outrageous when it comes to the amount of money that has been wasted, based on a lie, based on concealment, based on pure political games they sought to play at the expense of the Australian people. Australia now ranks 61st in the world for fixed line broadband. We have a multitechnology mix that has at least blown out to more than what they said it would be—from $29 billion to $57 billion. It costs more to operate, it generates less revenue and it's more exposed to 5G competition. We had the minister at the end of last year declare: 'Mission accomplished. The NBN is finished.' Slow clap! This was met with absolute derision right across Australia. When it comes to ensuring that Australians have the best available broadband, when it comes to making sure that we have an economy that is set up for the future, we now know based on the evidence we have today that all of this was based on a lie. Let it not be lost on anyone that in 2013, when we had Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott standing next to that hologram of Sonny Bill Williams, they said their second-rate version of the NBN would be delivered for $29 billion. Let's look at the cost blowouts. It blew out to $41 billion in 2014, $49 billion in 2015 and $51 billion in 2018 and, by 2020, it had surged to $57 billion—a veritable sushi train of cost blowouts. And, as I said, we've got copper failing to deliver minimum speeds. It's 2021—five years on from the designated completion date that these people said they'd have it done by—and these minimum speeds are still not being delivered over the copper NBN network, and that's to some 238,000 premises around Australia. This same party, who are on track to amass $1 trillion in debt, have used taxpayer money to purchase over 49,000 kilometres of new copper for the NBN. It is no surprise that Australians understand—not only as consumers but as small businesses, and not only for themselves—the short-sightedness of this government when it comes to the great cover-up that has put Australia backwards. They know exactly where this concealment lies. 15:25 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield I'm very pleased to have the chance to rise to respond to this matter of public importance, on the subject of the 'government's failures and lack of transparency on the NBN'. This, we're told, is what has excited the attention of the opposition today. Of course, this is all part of a carefully dreamt-up strategy by the shadow minister in which she finds this story, places it in the media and is then interviewed on 2GB, and says, 'As you say, Nine newspapers today are reporting evidence that has been covered up for nearly eight years.' This is apparently the validation—that there's been a cover-up for eight years—and the claim from the shadow minister is that there's a secret report which shows that Labor's plan would have been cheaper. There are only two problems with that: it's not secret, and it wouldn't have been cheaper. In fact, you can look at the strategic review's final report, version dated 12 December 2013, which is on the NBN's website. I went to their public website yesterday and looked at it. On page 17, we've got a range of scenarios. Scenario 1, revised outlook: $73 billion. That would've been a continuation of Labor's original fibre-to-the-premises plan. Scenario 2, radically redesigned fibre to the premises: $64 billion. And this is the font of all of this confected indignation from the shadow minister today: a report publicly available on the NBN's website— Opposition members interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265991 Members on my left! The minister will pause for a moment. I will be giving a general warning: don't interject to the level that you are, or you'll be removed under 94(a). Mr FLETCHER L6B This report has been publicly available on the NBN's website since very shortly after it was prepared in 2013. These figures have been in the public domain for eight years. This is not a secret. There is nothing new. In fact, we went through an extremely public process with the strategic review, and what the strategic review said—it's summarised on page 17—is that the original plan would have cost $73 billion to proceed with. Strike that out. We won't be doing that. Then there are a series of other scenarios, including scenario 6, optimised multitechnology mix, which was the one we did go with. Why did we go with that? Don't listen to me—I know you won't, anyway—listen to Communications Day. Listen to the commentary from respected industry observer Grahame Lynch in Communications Day, who commented on this sensationalist, revelatory story: 'The big problem with this'—namely, the stick-a-Mixmaster-through-it beat-up—'is that there was no such suppression of the publication of this option, nor had the report censored the savings estimates which NBN Co and the federal government supposedly had fought to keep secret.' In other words, an objective observer is saying that the basic premise of this ridiculous Mixmaster exercise from the shadow minister is completely incorrect. Let me go to the point that, again, Grahame Lynch makes very clear in his commentary: we did look at the different scenarios. We looked at scenario 6, we looked at scenario 2 and we looked at all the other scenarios. Why did we choose scenario 6? We chose it because it meant that the network would be rolled out much more quickly, and the peak funding requirement was lower than for all the other options. Fast forward to 2021, and let's ask ourselves: how did the network perform through COVID, when several million Australians moved overnight to working and studying from home? What they found was that you really needed good broadband to do that, and you particularly needed good upload speeds, which the previous generation of broadband could not provide. DSL has poor upload speeds. The NBN's traffic loads during COVID were up by 70 per cent during the day, and the network just kept on performing. A really critical point is this: if we had stuck with Labor's plan, then we would, in 2020, have had five million fewer Australian premises able to connect. So one of the clear reasons we chose to go with the multitechnology mode was that it would allow for a quicker rollout. That's not just theoretical. That's not just hypothetical. That's what happened. Can't we all recognise that Australia was much better placed in 2020 as a result of the fact that the NBN rollout, by the time COVID hit us, meant that 98 per cent of all Australian premises were able to connect to the NBN? Remarkably, the shadow minister says that one of the issues that this matter of public importance debate is about is whether there has been failure with respect to the NBN rollout. We don't have to go all that far back in history to look at a rank instance of failure because, when Labor was responsible for this project, what a complete train wreck it was! Let's look at the actual numbers that were in the plans issued by the NBN Co. In the plan issued by NBN Co, they said that, as at 30 June 2011, the total number of premises to be covered would be 35,000. The actual number was 786. Their own plan said 116,000 premises would be connected by 30 June 2012. The actual number was 13,536. By 30 June 2013, there were supposed to be 419,000 premises connected. The actual number was 51,000. So Labor's record of delivery in relation to the NBN when they were in government was a hopeless catalogue of rank and serial incompetence. We inherited a train wreck of a failed project. Over four years, $6 billion was spent and barely 51,000 premises were able to connect. The task that fell to our Liberal-National government was to get the rollout back on track. Where are we today? Today, eight million premises are connected, and 11.9 million premises are able to connect. In words that have been used in other contexts: compare the pair—51,000 under Labor and eight million under the coalition. And these people are dopey enough to put into the words of an MPI the question of who has shown failure when it comes to rolling out the NBN. What is the position of the NBN now and where do we go from here? With eight million premises connected and 11.9 million premises able to connect, we've just arrived at a point where the NBN has produced its first half year of being EBITDA positive, so we're making the business model work. The Labor Party established this government business enterprise. It was supposedly going to be something that would generate a positive return for taxpayers and shareholders—with the taxpayers as shareholders in the NBN. Of course, they had no idea how to execute that at all. We've turned it around. We've now got it on the path to financial performance as well as operational performance. I'll tell you one other thing that we have done: we've found a sustainable, credible path so that, by 2023, eight million premises will be able to order a speed of up to one gigabit per second if they choose to. But there's one other big difference between Labor's hopeless plan and what we've done: we'll roll the fibre down the centre of the street and, if you want to order a service that needs a fibre connection, we'll then build the fibre lead-in. That's the successful commercial approach that's been used by Chorus in New Zealand. We're doing the same thing. It would never occur to these commercially clueless, illiterate types. They have no idea of business management. The idea of being capital efficient does not compute. They just don't get it. But you will get it if you have serious experience in managing a telecommunications business, and we've made sure that we have a capable board and capable management—people with experience. We're executing the rollout. So, frankly, if I were the Labor Party I would not be asking questions about failure when it comes to NBN, because the words 'Labor Party' and 'failure' will ever be associated when it comes to the National Broadband Network. 15:35 Mr JOSH WILSON 265970 Fremantle What a disaster! What a disaster the National Broadband Network has turned out to be! What a disaster that contribution from the minister was! This is a broadband network that is slow, expensive, uneven and unfair. It is easily the most important infrastructure project in this country in the last 50 years. It ought to be the foundation of our future prosperity, productivity, innovation, new business development and new service delivery. It ought to be the foundation of all of those things in the 21st century. Instead, we get the slow, expensive multitechnology mess from those opposite. The facts speak for themselves, and the Australian people know and smell failure when it's put in front of them. We're the 13th-largest economy in the world. Our broadband speeds place us 62nd in the world. That's the reality of the multitechnology mess delivered by those opposite. New Zealand is the 52nd-largest economy. They have the 27th-highest speeds, just across the ditch. You know why? Because they knew what to do at the outset. They did it once, they did it right and they did it with fibre. That's what all of the experts in the sector tell you. That's what any sensible economist would tell you to do. But, no, those opposite had to come along. They didn't make up this disaster themselves. They actually had the rudiments of a decent plan that the Labor Party introduced. We grasped the NBN nettle and we set out to deliver a fibre-rich network to the people of Australia. They came along and, within the first five minutes of this now eight-year-long government, they put us on the path to an enduring disaster. Everything they've said about the second-rate copper version of the NBN has turned out to be wrong. They said they'd deliver a high-speed broadband network. They've missed all their targets. They've missed the speed targets at the low end. They've missed the speed targets at the high end. We are 62nd in the world. They've put in place now a broadband network that is more or less obsolete at the point of delivery. That's what the geniuses opposite have delivered. They said that they would deliver a cheaper broadband network. That's what you will always get from those opposite. They will always build down to a lowball price rather than building up to a standard when it comes to the most critical piece of infrastructure in this nation—and they couldn't even do that. They couldn't even deliver on that lowball, cut-price, copper-bottom, second-rate piece of rubbish. They said it would be $29 billion. Then they said it would be $41 billion. Now it's already north of $57 billion, and it is obsolete at the point of delivery. Do it once, do it right, do it with fibre. What did they do? They did it once, badly, stupidly, with copper—a slow, second-rate, 62nd-ranked-in-the-world service. Now what are they doing? They're going back and they're doing it again. They're going to pay more money to run fibre down the streets to deliver a fibre-rich network, which was the recipe we left to them from the outset. It's as if you decide to build an airline and you take some train rolling stock and superglue wings on the side and you say, 'There's our new national airline.' People say to you: 'You know, you can hop on those and you'll go somewhere, incredibly slowly and noisily. There's not a lot of altitude, though—just saying.' So you come back later and say, 'Why don't we build the rest of the aeroplane where the train was.' That's what this government has done, and the people of Australia know it. We saw a person this morning at a UNICEF breakfast, a young woman from Orange in New South Wales. She was asked: 'How did you find dealing with the challenges of the pandemic? How did you find it went with your educational needs? How did you find it when it came to accessing telehealth for mental health services and other counselling?' She said, 'Those services aren't too bad, but the problem is that I can't get them through the National Broadband Network, because it is so hopeless.' She had to participate in classes by taking a laptop and sitting at the top of a silo. That's what she had to do. People in rural, regional and remote Australia are driving from one property to another with their laptop to 'borrow the internet' from other people for basic business upgrades and to access basic services. That's what the representatives on that side have delivered for rural and regional Australians. Rather than focusing on this massive disaster and doing something about it, they're now secretly gathering together to try to deliver nuclear power to Australia. That's the kind of responsible conduct and representative action you get from those opposite. Today we've heard about a 'distinctly Australian' approach. We did not get a distinctly Australian approach to the NBN. That was Labor's approach: a sensible, science based, fibre-rich network. What we got from those opposite was absolute economic and technological madness, a deeply stupid idea prosecuted and perpetrated by false claims and cover-ups that have saddled Australians with a lemon. (Time expired) 15:40 Mr LAMING E0H Bowman The NBN debate will always be one of great fascination. One side of this chamber delivered it, and the other side had that opportunity tragically torn away from them in 2013, just as they were getting beyond writing things on napkins and developing a national plan based on two nodal areas in the whole country. At the end of 2013, after six years of opportunity from the other side, we had the equivalent of three streets done in each electorate in Australia. That's right: just a couple of hundred households per electorate would have been where they got to after six years. While I appreciate that the previous speaker has the rhetoric we've heard since 2013, the true reality here is that there simply is no counterfactual. We'll never know how badly Labor would have delivered their 2013 guesswork. We don't know what blowouts they would have had or what speed bumps they would have hit. But we're quite happy to stand by our challenges. In the great steeplechase of rolling out the NBN there were a few hurdles and a few water jumps, but it got delivered. And I'll tell you what: steeplechases are 7½-lap athletic events, and I was prepared to say, by 2025, 'Let's judge the two approaches.' There was the coalition, which obviously has a bit more business nuance and rolled this out as people were economically prepared to pay for it and to have NBN Co reporting EBIT profits by about 2020. And within a few years it will be a highly valuable government owned entity and increasing in value. But no: what we had instead was estimates about where Labor would have got to by 2026. But in that great steeplechase they actually shortened the race by a lap. When COVID hit, that's all that mattered. Where would our great NBN have been under Labor had we let them do their snail-like rollout, house by house, whatever the cost? I don't care what the cost was in 2013. I care about the rolled out cost when it's delivered. There was actually no indication that you understood what it would be like to have millions of Australians relying on two megabits per second through COVID. And this opposition mounts their argument based on 'one person I met at a UNICEF breakfast'. That'll help! One person at a UNICEF breakfast who found it a little hard to connect—well, thanks very much, but I'll go on the Ombudsman's figures of a one per cent complaint rate, which includes servicing, connection, fees and cost structures. One per cent is what most networks around the world experience. The true measure of our network was how it performed during COVID. Labor would never have been there, and Australians would have been left thoroughly exposed. Now of course what we can do, as the market demands it, is move to these better arrangements for the NBN rollout. This is about doing it as it's needed. It's fine to say that New Zealand was rolling a bit of cable down the street five years ago, but what Australia did—with a completely different population density—was to do it with the appropriate speed that users were prepared to pay for. And we now move to that important step, rolling it out for neighbourhoods that are prepared to pay for the extra speed. I suspect that by 2025 Australia will have a new fibre network than one that started degrading in 2013, and we'll have technology rolled out as it is needed. That's the subtle difference between us and those on the other side, because you're trapped with your napkin modelling from 2013 that dilutes each time you go to an election. So you started with fibre to the premises everywhere. Then you slowly jettisoned that and you came back to it when you thought you could afford it, but you've never ever had to roll out anything except a few little trial sites in the most impossible place to try it, and that was Tasmania. So, at the end of your time, you had done a great trial, rolling up and down Tasmania. You didn't care who connected or who didn't. You were just trying to roll out some fibre. What we've done is work on those percentages—those eight million who are connected and the 11.8 who are ready to connect. These are numbers you could never have achieved without dropping a node in the middle of a suburb and, for the investment of $25,000, connecting 200 households to those speeds of five to 25 or better. The reality now is that, if you had any sense on the other side that you didn't like the NBN, you would see the complaints rolling in to the Ombudsman. I ask you: present the report. We've had two speakers from the opposition and not a single reference to the Ombudsman's report. They're the umpire. I know that ALP members aren't happy, but I don't see a lot of Australians in my electorate, his electorate or even your electorate standing up. You're happy to go around and foster the little complaint sessions at ALP NBN forums. You get all your members along, hopping out of one Tarago, and a few unsuspecting people turn up, and I say to them, 'If you've got a problem, take it up with the NBN Co,' and they have nothing to show us. (Time expired) 15:46 Mr WATTS 193430 Gellibrand If there is one thing we have learnt about this government, it's that it always puts itself first. When taxpayer funding is involved, this government's priorities are always its own political interests over the national interest. As a result, we've seen this confluence of rorts—all the ways that taxpayer funding is spent on the political interests of the Liberal and National parties, not in the national interest. So many rorts are swirling around this government that they've formed one giant megarort—a rort tornado or a 'rortnado'—at the heart of this government. That's what this government stands for. We've seen the sports rorts scandal where colour coded spreadsheets were used to allocate money away from electorates like mine, where there were sports projects that were independently rated objectively higher than those in coalition seats. But, no, the political interests of this government said that the money had to be spent in marginal seats, and that's where it went. We had the safer seats rort where the Minister for Home Affairs directed taxpayer grants for security projects, again, away from objectively rated proposals to where his interests and the political interests of the Liberal party land. Of course, the other thing that we have learnt this week is that they put themselves first and you can't believe what they say. You can't take them at face value. Now we find that the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government have been using dodgy figures to justify their dud NBN political strategy. I don't say 'NBN policy'; I say 'NBN political strategy' because that's what it has been since the start. Before the 2013 election, Tony Abbott—remember him?—tasked Malcolm Turnbull with 'demolishing' the National Broadband Network. It was always a political job, not a policy job. It was always about their own perceived political self-interest, not the national interest. Abbott didn't task Malcolm Turnbull with building a national asset to turbocharge productivity growth in Australia, to power economic growth into the future and to build social inclusion throughout our suburbs and regions. He tasked him with a political demolition job, and the core of this political task was the MTM, or the multitechnology mix. The political claim was that the coalition could build a cheaper NBN and roll it out more quickly if they abandoned Labor's fibre-to-the-home rollout, which was already well underway, with a mix, in exchange, of fibre, HFC and copper—oh, so much copper! And that was used to roll out this MTM model of the NBN. They said that continuing Labor's all-out fibre NBN would cost $72 billion, wasting well over $50 billion, and that's why they pursued the dud MTM model. Now we know, thanks to a report from The Sydney Morning Herald, that they knew all along that these figures were dodgy. The Sydney Morning Herald reports, 'Secret figures show full fibre NBN may have cost $10 billion less than claimed'—that is, less than claimed by those opposite The 2013 strategic review blanked this out, as the member for Greenway, the shadow minister for communications, pointed out earlier. Claiming commercial in confidence, it redacted '$10 billion cheaper' because it could 'damage the organisation's ability to negotiate or renegotiate any associated contracts', but we know the real reason. It's because it undermined the political narrative of those opposite. This government is allergic to accountability. It is allergic to alternative views. It will do anything to avoid scrutiny and dodge accountability, including cutting the funding of the ANAO throughout the life of this government. They have never seen a cover-up that they didn't like, going back as far as 2016 when there were attempts to expose just how badly the NBN rollout was managed under those opposite. They tried to keep the real costs identified in the 2013 review a state secret. They went so far as to call the Australian Federal Police to raid the then shadow communications minister's Parliament House office and his office in my electorate in Melbourne's west, all to keep secret the fact that their cost estimates were a hoax and a political cover story, and that they could have built a full fibre network for $10 billion less than they claimed. Using the AFP to conduct raids over leaks that make this government look bad is something they have significant form in—we all remember those raids on ABC journalists in their homes. Labor's plan would have been faster and cheaper, and the government knew it. They didn't want the cost per premises figures to be public because, as they said, it was commercial-in-confidence and would undermine NBN's contract negotiations. But it would have undermined their political argument! The MTM quickly became 'Malcolm Turnbull's mess'. The cost to roll out this dud NBN blew out year after year after year. They should have listened to those of us on this side of the House. They should have listened when we said, 'Do it once, do it right, do it fibre.' We now know that even those opposite knew that doing it once, doing it right and doing it fibre would have cost $10 billion less than what those opposite told the Australian public. 15:51 Mr PASIN 240756 Barker My favourite part of last week was when the Minister for Home Affairs looked across the dispatch box, eyed the Leader of the Opposition, and said, at the end of a question, 'You're in your dying days, brother.' I loved it, because it spoke volumes about the pressure that the Leader of the Opposition was under. I expect that over the course of the weekend—and the Leader of the Opposition has been speaking to all his senior shadow ministers—that he will be saying to them, 'I need you to help; I need to lean in.' Equally, I think that in the lead-up to this term that when the shadow minister for communications was appointed to that position she thought to herself: 'Do you know what? I'm really going to make some mileage here with this NBN. I'm really going to hit the Liberal Party hard in relation to this issue.' Sadly for her and sadly for our nation, we had a global pandemic. It hit this country hard. It saw tens of thousands—nay, hundreds of thousands—of Australians forced to relocate from their businesses to their homes. It saw schoolchildren having to undertake the task of in-home schooling. All of this put intense pressure on the NBN. So you would expect that the projections of those opposite that this was a second-rate scheme and that the rollout had been mismanaged—all of the rhetoric we're hearing from those opposite today—would have meant that the NBN would have come crashing down. It would have been woefully inadequate for the needs of all these extra Australians who had relocated from business premises to their homes, both for work and for school as well. But, Mr Deputy Speaker, I'm here to tell you that it's not the experience of Australians, and it's certainly not the experience that the Joint Standing Committee on the NBN has heard when it's taken evidence on this issue publicly. We heard from a previous speaker about the ombudsman's report and the one per cent of complaints. What we didn't hear about was that the majority of those were not around speed or these sorts of things but rather connections and those kinds of logistical issues. So I suspect that what we have here is a shadow communications minister under pressure. That's why I wasn't surprised to read the shadow minister in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, saying, 'Secret figures show full fibre NBN may have cost $10 billion less than claimed'. Except they weren't secret. Ironically, they were published on a website—in fact the NBN website—and they've been published since 13 December 2013. I expect that what's happened here is that we have a Leader of the Opposition under pressure. In turn, he's asking for support from his shadow ministers. They, in turn, ask their staff to look deeply into these issues—there must be something there! We end up with a search of NBN's own website, which reveals this information which it is suggested is secret. Talk about hiding in plain sight. This is a report about the NBN on the NBN website. Now, when I came to this place in 2013—and it is a great privilege—I had a sum total of zero connections to the NBN in my electorate. I had not one, none, nada, nil, zilch—you can keep going if you like. I'm pleased to say that, because of the multitechnology mix, we now have a full rollout and over 99 per cent of premises eligible for connection. I say it was just in time because, of course, we lived through the pandemic and we continue to live through the pandemic. Those opposite connected 51,000 premises in six years for $6 billion. That is three per cent of Australia's population. In a year more than that we've managed to roll out the NBN in my electorate to 96 per cent more people. If we'd waited for those opposite or adopted their model, we would have had Australians in the dark in the middle of a pandemic. Having the temerity to come into this place and suggest their plan would have been better beggars belief. 15:56 Ms OWENS E09 Parramatta I don't know where the members opposite have been living to get all of this rubbish that somehow, if Labor had been in government for the last seven years, the NBN would have crashed during the pandemic. Let me tell you: in Parramatta it did. It was inadequate and it did come crashing down. I have people working for me and in my electorate who were not able to have two people online at once. Only one could work from home at a time. I have people in my electorate who were 'lucky enough' to get the NBN finally in 2020 after being promised it in 2014, 2016, 2018 and then 2020. They finally got it in 2020, and it is a disaster. I have people on the Great Western Highway and in Dundas Valley, completely different areas of the electorate, that each are more than a kilometre from the node through copper: 1.2 kilometres from the node on the Great Western Highway and one kilometre in Dundas. They get 10 to 15 megabits per second if it works at all, and sometimes it crashes 70 times a day. These are medium-density buildings. The technicians are saying that they're coming out every single day with a complaint for the NBN and they're openly saying that it was never NBN-ready, that the NBN announced it was NBN-ready because the government wanted to deliver it so they could make this fabulous announcement that it was all complete, so they connected homes to the NBN with nodes 1.2 kilometres away. It is outrageous. It did come crashing down and it was inadequate during the pandemic. Of course, in parts of Parramatta we didn't get it in 2020. We're not getting it until 2022—maybe—says the NBN. Maybe. This is Parramatta. This is the geographic heart of Sydney. This is the second Sydney CBD. This is where all of the high-rise development is going on. This is one of the fastest-growing areas in Sydney, and for the CBD itself and the area around it? 2022 maybe. Now we find out that the great excuse that the government gave for rolling out this piece of trash which they jokingly call the NBN was that it was going to be cheaper and faster. Now we find out that it's not cheaper. In fact, by the time they do their overlay, realising now that it should have been fibre all along and paying for the rollout of fibre as well, it's going to be more expensive for this piece of trash. What I want to know from the government is how my constituents in the electorate of Parramatta who are sitting with 10 to 15 megabits per second and get dropouts continuously all day get this great thing that the minister is now talking about: one gigabit download speed if they wish when the new fibre rolls out. Where is it going to go, when is it going to be there, how much is it going to cost and how the hell do you get in the queue? If it's going to be available, who is it available for and under what condition? Are the people that are sitting down the end of a 1.2-kilometre copper wire from the node going to get an upgrade, and how much will it cost them? Where is the information on this? People decide where they live, where they rent, where they build their house, where they send their kids to school—they decide all those things these days—based on how good the internet connection is, because in Australia sometimes it's good and sometimes it's rubbish. People actually care about this, and they need to know, so they can make decisions about their lives, where this is going to roll out and whether they will be able to get it. This is important. This is not the kind of stuff that you keep secret—well, one assumes it will be rorted like everything else. One assumes with this government that if its members are not telling you where they're going to spend the money they're going to spend it in their own electorates, because that's pretty much par for the course with them. But I want to know how my constituents get this. I want to know whether people in red-brick buildings, people who are renting, people who have landlords and people who are in high-rise buildings that didn't get it because they were built before the NBN can get it, and I want to know what it's going to cost. I expect to know that so that people in my electorate can make decisions about their lives based on real information. We know there have been 47 suburbs named. Some of them are in New South Wales; none of them are around me at all. But this is important. This is yet another case of a complete lack of transparency about an incredibly important project, a life-changing project. It should have been a nation-changing project. My constituents need to know. There were 10 to 15 megabits per second during the pandemic. Any member that gets up on that side and says the NBN was fabulous in the pandemic clearly hasn't been out much. Quite frankly, it wasn't adequate and it did crash. 16:01 Mrs ARCHER 282237 Bass The NBN is delivering for my Northern Tasmanian community. In a rural and regional electorate such as the electorate of Bass, the NBN is necessary for ensuring our local businesses, from SMEs to larger companies, can conduct their business. It allows them to compete on a national and international level. Local business leaders have embraced new technologies to foster productivity and growth, with programs such as the Business Fibre Initiative helping businesses innovate and grow through increasing access to and affordability of business-grade fibre. Businesses like Definium Technologies, in Invermay, are benefiting from the NBN's Enterprise Ethernet. Definium Technologies is an Australian ICT and embedded software company located just outside of Launceston's CBD. They specialise in producing custom hardware and software solutions for businesses both in Australia and overseas. Led by CEO Mike Cruse, who grew up in Launceston before moving to Melbourne and then to Silicon Valley, Definium has designed and manufactured a large range of solutions from low-power wireless sensors and communications gateways through to industrial control systems. It is a fantastic company doing innovative things, and it could perhaps not have set up in our community were it not for access to the NBN. It's not just small business, be it tech or otherwise, benefiting from our government's rollout of the NBN. In December last year I was pleased to join the state Minister for Education and Training, Jeremy Rockliff, at our local Kings Meadows High School to celebrate a partnership that's delivering high-speed broadband to schools across the state, including in Northern Tasmania. Through a new cooperative deal signed last year between the Tasmanian state government and TasmaNet, more students across our island state have access to the high-speed NBN services, improving the quality of educational services, particularly in some of our most regional communities. Through improved broadband services, our students can benefit from greater access to online services and more intensive and immersive online interaction, resulting in higher-quality education outcomes. Pleasingly, around 59 schools have now signed up for the Enterprise Ethernet, the NBN's highest-quality business-grade service, with another five to come online next month. I'm somewhat bemused by Labor's attack on the government, given it missed every rollout target it set for itself when in government. As pointed out by the member for Barker, the NBN was a complete disaster under their control, with just 51,000 users connected in six years—an average of just 8,500 users a year over six years. Additionally, under Labor it cost an incredible $6 billion for the NBN to pass just three per cent of Australian premises. Who could forget when contractors downed their tools and stopped construction due to the epic mismanagement of those on the other side? Under the management of this government, today nearly eight million premises are connected, approximately 11.9 million premises are ready to connect and more than 99 per cent of all premises in Australia are able to connect, and 70 per cent of homes and businesses are on plans that are 50 megabits per second or higher. It puts Labor's figures to shame a little bit, doesn't it? In September last year the minister for communications, Paul Fletcher, announced a $4½ billion NBN network investment plan that will give up to 75 per cent of fixed-line premises across regional and metropolitan Australia access to ultra-fast broadband by 2023 via a continuation of the multitechnology model of this government—an investment which will benefit many communities, including mine. Our government has achieved the NBN efficiently and at a fraction of the cost of Labor's gold-plated approach that would have cost billions and left millions of Australians behind during the pandemic. It's the approach of our government that ensured NBN was there for our communities when they needed it. If the NBN had not been rolled out with the speed and purpose it has been under this government, using all available technologies, millions of premises throughout Australia might have languished on ADSL speeds of just eight megabits per second on average or endured lockdown with no internet service at all. When the pandemic hit, it was the efforts of this government that ensured our businesses, our homes and our schools could stay connected when it was needed more than ever. 16:05 Mr GEORGANAS DZY Adelaide I'll just start off by saying that, on this side of the House, for a very long time now—in fact, well over seven years—we've been saying one thing, and we're continuing to say it, and you would have heard it today: do it once, do it right and do it with fibre. That was the correct way that this should have been done. That was the way that we promised in 2013 that we would roll out the NBN, with fibre to the node to every household in Australia. Back in 2013, we remember the then Abbott government, together with Mr Turnbull, and the hoo-ha at their favourite News Corp outlet—Sky channel I think it was—when they did their announcement on NBN. Most of us would remember the holograms and the hoo-ha that went along with it absolutely saying that Labor had it wrong and they had it right. Well, in the last week or so, they have been proven wrong. We know for the last seven years the government have continued to tell the Australian public that their version of substandard NBN was the best deal for Australians. That's just simply not the case. The government have continuously flogged these old technologies for the NBN. As the member for Parramatta said, in places around Australia during COVID this past year, when people have had to work from home, we found out about the inadequacies of the NBN. I too, in my electorate of Adelaide, had constituents ringing me who had to go on shift in their households so the kids could do their homework and the parents could do their work from home because, if you got two people on the computer, it wasn't downloading or it was so slow. It is not right in 2021 to still have these issues taking place. It's been a very costly and unnecessary mistake by this government. Let's take a look at the range of bungles that have taken place. They promised that every Australian would have access to minimum speeds of 25 megabits per second by 2016. Well, we're in 2021 now, five years on. That was their commitment to the Australian people. That was a promise that they made during the election campaign, and people may have voted for them because of that particular commitment and promise. They haven't upheld that promise. We're now, as I said, in 2021, five years on, and these minimum speeds are still not being delivered over the copper NBN network. According to reports, 238,000 households still cannot access minimum speeds. It is unacceptable in a modern country, in a country that wants to pride itself on its IT technology, that we cannot access these minimum speeds. Now we hear that some of the hardware that they have used could actually be dangerous. There have been reports from around the country that fibre-to-the-curb modems on the NBN have been literally getting fried during lightning storms. We have heard that some households have required up to six modem replacements, with technicians having to visit each and every time. If storms can blow up six consecutive NBN modems then something is clearly not right. They may try to blame it on renewables, as they did when South Australia had the most horrendous and worst storms it had ever had. We didn't have electricity for a few days, and they tried to blame it on renewables. Maybe they'll do the same with this. I was expecting it, but they didn't. In another recent debacle, NBN Co has apparently run out of modems for their problem-plagued HFC network. The modem is a pretty essential bit of equipment when you're rolling out a national broadband network, most people would think. But they announced they will halt the activation of the new HFC network for several months because the HFC networks that the government purchased are not fit for purpose. Deputy Speaker, can you see the pattern of behaviour here? They spent $57 billion on a network and ran out of modems. Perhaps the answer is a financial mismanagement on the part of the government. The government announced in 2013 that their second-rate version of the NBN would be delivered for $29.5 billion. The cost then blew out to $41 billion and it continued to go up— (Time expired) 16:10 Mr HAMILTON 291387 Groom I'm very happy to speak about the government's great achievements on the NBN. After all, when this government came to office, we had the task of fixing Labor's NBN mess, and what a mess it was! Labor had a gold plated approach which would have cost billions of dollars more and left millions of Australians behind. That is the standard the opposition sets: to do less with more. This government's approach has ensured that the NBN has been delivered economically, efficiently and in time for the demands of COVID-19, a time when connectivity mattered, particularly in rural and regional Australia. During the pandemic, we saw the expanded demand on the NBN. As a result of the Liberals' and Nationals' efforts in government, the NBN was able to meet that demand. In a time of crisis, good management mattered. Let's compare the records of this government and the former Labor government. We find the contrast is stark. When Labor left office, a little over 67,000 homes in my home state of Queensland were ready for service, and less than 10,000 were actually connected. This was not good enough. As of February this year, the number of premises ready for service has soared under the Liberal-National government to 2,373,301. That is what good management delivers—better and more efficient services. In my electorate of Groom, which was almost completely ignored under Labor's NBN plan, only 1,163 premises were connected to the NBN. Today we have over 56,000 services connected to the NBN and 100 per cent of premises in-ready-to-be-connected areas. That is why I'm more than happy to talk about the NBN and how, under the management of this government, nearly eight million premises are connected and more than 99 per cent of all premises in Australia are able to connect. Our plan is providing services and flexibility, particularly in regions such as mine, with many urbanised areas such as Toowoomba and Highfields and more rural areas such as Pittsworth, Oakey and Goombungee. We're doing this with a varied mix of technologies such as fixed line, fixed wireless and satellite—another example of technology driving Toowoomba's future. I'm more than happy to talk about how, in September 2020, Minister Fletcher announced a $4.5 billion NBN investment plan that will give 75 per cent of fixed-line premises across regional and metropolitan Australia access to ultra-fast broadband by 2023, and how this will occur via continuation of the multitechnology model. It's because of this approach by this government that the NBN was there for Australians when they needed it, when almost overnight we had to adapt the way we worked, learned, accessed vital services and kept in touch with our families. I'm also happy to talk about the NBN under Labor, and how, after six years of Labor mismanagement of the NBN, just 51,000 users were connected. Labor paid $6 billion for the NBN to pass just three per cent of Australian premises. The rollout was so badly managed that contractors downed tools and stopped construction in four states. That is all before I even mention how under Labor the NBN missed every rollout target that it set for itself. It's very easy to set targets; it's quite another thing to hit them. The issue the opposition is seeing to canvass here today has been dealt with at length and has been debunked at length, but let's do it again. The independent assessment of the 2013 strategic review found that the proposed Labor fibre rollout would have taken three years longer to complete than indicated in the Labor plan. This also included a revised and delayed end date of June 2024, with a peak funding requirement of $72.6 billion. That would have left Australian homes, schools and businesses completely unprepared, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor's NBN was going to leave Australians disconnected. According to the last published and, shall we say, very optimistic corporate plan under Labor, in June 2020, in the very midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there would still have been well over 1.2 million homes and businesses that could not order an NBN service. By contrast, this government has delivered the NBN efficiently and economically when Australians needed it most, with over 11.9 million premises ready to connect. Over 99 per cent of Australian premises can now order an NBN service, more than eight million premises have been connected to the NBN, and today 70 per cent of homes and businesses are on plans with speeds of 50 megabits per second or higher. Under Labor, the NBN was a complete mess. This government has got on with fixing that mess, and Australia is grateful. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265991 The discussion has concluded. BILLS 42 BILLS Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 42

Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020

Second Reading 42 16:16 Mr SHARMA 274506 Wentworth It's a pleasure to talk today on this piece of legislation, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, because supporting Australia's jobs and economic recovery is really the focus of the government and this side of the parliament right now. COVID-19 as a crisis has really been like no other that has hit the world, at least in the modern era. It's been a health crisis, of course, but it's also been an economic crisis. It's had elements of a supply shock and also a demand shock, and we've seen this around the world. Just to remind members of the House, the global economic contraction as a result of COVID-19 is estimated by the IMF, the World Bank and other international financial institutions to be in the order of 4.5 per cent over the course of 2020. Four point five per cent is a contraction such as we have not seen in decades. You have to reach back to, potentially, the global oil shocks, although they were shorter in duration, or, more likely, to the Great Depression. The most recent such event, of course, was the global financial crisis. In that period, the global economy contracted by 0.1 per cent. In this crisis, the COVID-19 crisis, the global economy has contracted by 4.5 per cent, so it's orders of magnitude bigger in its severity—almost 45 times as big, in fact. Australia, of course, has not been immune to this. We've seen a large number of people lose their jobs or have their hours reduced to zero. One point three million Australians, at the start of this crisis or shortly thereafter, either had their hours reduced to zero or lost their jobs. We saw unemployment rise as well, of course. But, through the provisions and the support measures that the government has put in place—through programs and support measures like JobKeeper, JobSeeker and HomeBuilder—we have helped support the economy and get Australians back to work. I'm pleased to report that as of last week, of those 1.3 million Australians who had lost their jobs or had their hours reduced to zero, 93 per cent were back at work. We had 29,000 jobs created just in the month of January, and over the last four months we've had 350,000 jobs created. Unemployment now is at 6.4 per cent. So there's still further to go, but we're certainly heading in the right direction. But I think members here would be conscious that this is not going to be a normal or straightforward or even, dare I say it, a linear economic recovery. COVID-19 is going to be with us for some time yet. The vaccine rollout is underway in Australia and also around the world, but it's quite likely that some of the restrictions we've had put in place on our lives—be it social-distancing restrictions, limitations on public gatherings or, most importantly, border restrictions and limitations on travel—will persist with us at least for some considerable time yet, until the vaccine program is rolled out, until we can see more data on how effective the vaccine is at suppressing transmission and until other countries are prepared to resume engagement with the normal world. The purpose and intent of this bill—the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020—is not ideological, at least in my opinion; it's about solutions to problems. How do we get more Australians back into work? How do we support those Australians in jobs and industries that continue to suffer because of the necessary health restrictions that have been put in place because of COVID-19? This bill seeks to do a number of things. It's designed to present practical solutions to the practical problems that have presented themselves through this crisis. The origins of this piece of legislation are when the government brought together unions, employer groups and industrial relations experts through the Industrial Relations Working Group process to identify some of these problems. What are the disincentives to employers hiring more workers? What can we do practically in the legislation to get employers to take on more workers? This bill seeks to address these in a number of ways. The first is with definitions regarding casuals and fixed terms. It's clear that the current state of law in relation to casual employment is confusing and ambiguous and is causing mistakes and confusion for both employers and employees, and that has associated consequences and costs. The statutory definition that we put on casual employment in this bill seeks to incorporate key aspects of the common law as expressed in recent court decisions here and helps to ensure that casual jobs are genuinely casual and the nature of employment, whether it's casual or ongoing, is determined at the outset, as you would expect, rather than relying on periodic assessments of the relationship as it develops over time. Importantly, as well this legislation introduces a new entitlement to be included in the National Employment Standards, the NES, to allow regular casual employees to convert to full-time or part-time employment. It's providing them a pathway. Clearly, employees should be characterised appropriately and receive the entitlements reflecting that characterisation at law. If they are casual employees, they should be paid as such and treated as such. If they are part-time or full-time employees, they should be given and afforded the protections that that status deserves. This legislation seeks to clarify exactly that, to reduce confusion and to give employers the confidence they need when taking on new workers to know what their status is and what they need to pay those workers. If we don't address and clarify this issue, costly and time-intensive court processes would be needed to determine the appropriate rights and obligations of individual workers in potentially every individual case. This bill also addresses award simplification. As we heard through the Industrial Relations Working Group process, award complexity is a significant issue and a significant burden for many businesses, especially small businesses. It's critical in the industries that have been hit the hardest by COVID-19, particularly the hospitality and retail industries, that the government makes it as simple as possible for business to regrow jobs and to hire new workers. This bill adapts specific elements of the successful COVID-19 JobKeeper flexibilities for employers and employees covered by 12 identified awards in distressed industries for a further two years. As members would be aware, these flexibilities have already helped to save literally thousands of jobs during this pandemic, by allowing employers and employees to work together and negotiate details regarding duties and work location to help navigate some of the challenges of working through the pandemic and working in a post-pandemic environment. This bill also addresses enterprise bargaining. Members opposite, of course, would know that it was one of their heroes—Paul Keating—who abolished compulsory arbitration and introduced enterprise bargaining as part of a suite of microeconomic reforms when he was Prime Minister in 1992. This is one of the reforms he's most proud of. Unfortunately, this signature reform by former prime minister Paul Keating— An honourable member interjecting— Mr SHARMA 274506 He's not, in fact, a constituent. I've checked that. He's just outside the boundary. He's a constituent of the member for Sydney. Mr Keating abolished compulsory arbitration and introduced enterprise bargaining—for which he deserves full credit, and I'm happy to give it to him in this House. This system has really declined, particularly since 2010. There are now fewer employees covered by enterprise agreements, and few new enterprise agreements are being made. Over the last 10 years the number of enterprise agreements between employers and employees has been steadily declining. In fact, it has fallen by 57½ per cent, which means that the number of employees being covered by enterprise agreements has decreased from its historical peak of 43½ per cent in 2010 to just 38 per cent in 2019. This bill aims to increase the number of Australians covered by enterprise agreements and help them capture the productivity and wage benefits that these agreements entail. The bill will reduce the level of prescription currently imposed by the Fair Work Act and provide greater flexibility as to the methods by which employees may be provided with a fair and reasonable opportunity to consider whether an enterprise agreement can be made. Enterprise agreements pay, on average, 69 per cent more per week—that's $542 on average weekly earnings—than the award wage. So this is a system that we support to help improve not only choice and flexibility for employers but ultimately wages and take-home income for employees. The bill also addresses greenfield agreements. Members here would be aware that the construction of major projects in Australia—mining and resources projects and things like that—make a significant contribution to jobs and economic growth in Australia. But there has been a risk of agreements that expire during the construction of a major project because of the time lines around these agreements. That creates uncertainty—uncertainty for investors and uncertainty for employers, including over unexpected delays of protracted negotiations and what the overall wage or salary will be for a particular project. This bill will double the maximum nominal expiry date for greenfield agreements that are made in relation to the construction of major projects from four years up to eight years. It also requires longer-term greenfield agreements to include annual wage increases for employees over the nominal life of the agreement. This will support Australia's economic recovery by attracting investment and driving job growth. It will be good for investors, it will be good for employers and it will be good for employees. Finally, on compliance and enforcement, here the bill makes a number of amendments designed to do three things: to help businesses comply with the law, as they always should; to enable employees to recover any underpayments faster when they do occur; and to ensure that the maximum penalties for noncompliance are proportionate and are a meaningful deterrent for employers who might engage in that. Part of this is the establishment of an employer advisory service in the Fair Work Commission, with $12.9 million provided in this legislation to help fund the establishment of that office. That employer advisory service will be able to provide employers with authoritative written advice tailored to their individual circumstances. This will provide businesses with certainty about their obligations and how to apply award and agreement provisions and should help reduce the likelihood of wage underpayments occurring in the first place. The bill will also allow underpaid employees to get repaid faster. Businesses will be encouraged to self-identify and self-report underpayment breaches. The bill will also make it easier and faster for employees to recover unpaid wages by increasing the small claims cap from $20,000 to $50,000, and courts will be able to refer small claims matters to the Fair Work Commission for conciliation. To help respond to exploitation and to better deter noncompliance, the bill introduces a new criminal offence for dishonestly engaging in systematic wage underpayments—as it should—and increases the value and scope of civil penalties and orders that can be imposed for noncompliance. The bill provides further protection to employees by prohibiting businesses from publishing advertisements for jobs with pay rates below the minimum wage and increases the penalties for practices like sham contracting that are used by employers to avoid paying full entitlements. Finally, the bill also provides improvements to the Fair Work Commission process to help enacting amendments that will enable the Fair Work Commission to deal with certain matters more efficiently and more expeditiously than is currently permitted under the act. The bill will give the commission appropriate powers to deal with vexatious applications more effectively, modelled on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal's powers to deal with vexatious applications. The bill will also confer greater discretion on the commission to decide to deal with an appeal on the papers when it considers a hearing to be unnecessary. COVID-19 has challenged many aspects of Australian life, and this bill delivers on the government's commitments to put Australians and Australian jobs first on the road to economic recovery. The bill removes barriers that stifle the job growth of today and limit the job creation of tomorrow. If we want Australians to have access to the prosperous jobs they aspire to, we must remove these barriers today, and this is what this bill does. I've been surprised that those opposite have decided to oppose not just particular elements of the government's bill but all elements of the government's bill. In May last year, we heard the opposition's industrial relations spokesperson saying, in relation to enterprise bargaining: 'Bargaining is much harder at the moment and taking much longer than it should. Policies that get bargaining moving again are going to be really important. And, you know, I don't think that anyone says every rule that's there at the moment should remain unchanged.' I agree. Bargaining is much harder at the moment and is taking much longer than it should, and this is one element that this bill seeks to address. On greenfields agreements, for instance, which those opposite have also decided to oppose, in May 2019, the member for Maribyrnong, then the opposition leader, said: We want to look at the ability for companies to negotiate with unions for extended greenfields agreements, project life, you can go to the global investors who will back it Again, this bill does exactly that; it addresses greenfields agreements. I know those opposite have said over the last several weeks that they're on your side or they're on someone's side. They're taking a slogan from Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the United Kingdom. I read it today in The Australian, and I was a bit shocked to read it. This was taken from Jeremy Corbyn's campaign, and I was reminded that that was actually his phrase. It begs the question: if you're on someone's side, you're always against someone else. This government, through this legislation, is seeking to govern for all Australians and support all Australians to get back to work and recover from COVID. 16:31 Mr CONROY 249127 Shortland What a listless performance from the member for Wentworth! His heart really wasn't in it, nor was logic, reason or an understanding of Australia's industrial relations system. But he's a good fellow, despite those key failings. I'm keen to make a contribution to the so-called Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020. You have to start with the title, which is intentionally misleading by this Orwellian government. I guarantee you that, if a slogan like 'supporting Australia's jobs and economic recovery' is in the title of a bill introduced by this government, it is intending to do the opposite. That is what this bill does; it achieves the opposite. It is about further undermining Australia's industrial relations system and further undermining the ability of workers in this country to bargain collectively to achieve an outcome that's good for workers and their employer, and that should really be at the heart of Australia's industrial relations system. Instead, this package of IR amendments tilts the playing field even further towards employers. It gives the employers unprecedented power to impose what they want in the workplace, rather than providing for equal negotiations. This really is turning the industrial relations system back to Work Choices in many respects. Before I go to the details of the bill, I think it's important to reflect on the economic climate that this bill goes to and the economic context for the debate around this bill. We are in a recession of unprecedented proportions—unprecedented since the Great Depression. We're in economic circumstances where more than two million of our fellow Australians are looking for work or are looking for more hours at work. We are in circumstances where, for example, due to the government's cuts to JobKeeper and JobSeeker, we're seeing huge demand for food banks and shelters. I visited the five largest food banks in my electorate in November last year, and they told me that, when JobKeeper and JobSeeker were cut in late September, they saw a tripling of demand for their service, particularly for food assistance. This is the context. I revisited one of the largest food banks in my electorate only two weeks ago, and, unfortunately, they reported that, when JobKeeper and JobSeeker were cut again in early January, demand again doubled. So food banks on the ground whose job is to provide urgent food assistance to families in danger of starvation and who also provide homelessness assistance are reporting a 600 per cent increase in demand for their services since JobKeeper and JobSeeker were cut. That is the economic context for what we're talking about now. The other context for this legislation is that the biggest cohort on Newstart, or JobSeeker, as it is now called, is unemployed women over the age of 45. They are not new jobseekers. They are people who have lost their jobs and are trying to find new ones. We have a desperate shortage of demand in our economy at the moment. We've got businesses that are crying out for more customers. What's the best way of getting more customers? It's by people having more money in their pockets. The solution from this government is to cut their pay. How do they do that through this bill? This bill makes it easier for employers to casualise jobs that would otherwise have been permanent. It makes bargaining for better pay and conditions more difficult than it already is. It allows wage cuts. It takes rights off workers on big projects. It weakens wage theft punishments in jurisdictions where wage theft is already deemed a criminal act, such as Victoria. That is what this bill seeks to do. It seeks to do this by attacking the conditions of many of the frontline workers who have got us through COVID so far, and I want to pay tribute to those workers—frontline workers such as nurses and support staff in hospitals, aged-care workers, transport workers. These are the people who weren't able to work from home when we had the various lockdowns. These are the people who had to go to work every day and risk their lives to keep our society afloat. I had the privilege of thanking retail workers. I got to walk around and thank retail workers at the large supermarkets and department stores in my electorate, who stocked the shelves and made sure that everyone had all that they needed during the COVID lockdown. They're the workers who are under attack now. Their bargaining rights are under attack. Their employment status is under attack. Their penalty rates are under attack. I'm confident that I speak on behalf of the vast majority of the people of Shortland when I say that we should not accept this attack on the frontline workers who kept us going during the COVID crisis. One of the most pernicious ways that this bill attacks their rights is by allowing the employer to define who is a casual worker. This overturns decades of common law rulings, which have recently been confirmed by the Federal Court in a couple of coalmining cases that I'll turn to in a minute. Giving the employer the ability to define who is a casual worker is a draconian solution. It means that it doesn't matter what the actual circumstances of that worker are. They could be a permanent part-time worker under every common law test, but the employer could define them as a casual with a stroke of a pen. That overturns their rights. It overturns their rights to entitlements such as long service leave, sick pay and annual leave—the things that are really at the heart of our industrial relations system. These are the entitlements that you should receive, as a permanent employee, so you can live a balanced life—time off when you're sick and time off for recreation, and long service leave when you've done enough years at that workplace. Those are the things that are being overturned by this legislation. Other things that are being overturned are the landmark Federal Court cases I alluded to, which really tried to fix up the huge problems we've got in the coalmining industry around false casualisation and false labour hire. These are cases like the WorkPac case, where the Federal Court ruled that if an employee has a predictable schedule—if they're receiving their shifts up to a year in advance, as they were in one case—they're not a casual worker. They're not on call. They don't find out tomorrow what hours they're going to work; they know what shifts they are going to work a year in advance. Because of the cancer of labour hire in the coalmining industry, these workers have all the obligations of permanent workers—for example, they have to turn up in three months time to do a certain shift—but none of the benefits in terms of entitlements like long service leave, annual leave and sick pay. To make matters worse, these workers don't even get higher pay, which some people claim casual workers would get in these circumstances. In the coalmining industry, we've got labour hire workers working on predictable shifts, often a year in advance, next to permanent coalminers employed directly by the coalmining company. They're both doing exactly the same job, but the labour hire workers receive pay which is often half that of the permanent worker and they don't get long service leave, annual leave or sick leave. These workers are hugely discriminated against in the workplace. These workers are really being undermined in their conditions, and it's a cancer that is destroying good-paying jobs in the coalmining industry in my region, the Hunter Valley, and in the Bowen Basin in Queensland. This is what I find most galling about the culture war being engaged in by members of the coalition—people like the member for New England, the member for Dawson and the rest of their ilk—who profess a love for coalminers. They don't love coalminers; they love coalmining companies. If they loved coalminers, they'd be voting against this legislation. If they loved coalminers, they'd be talking about the scourge of black lung returning to the coalmining industry. If they loved coalminers, they'd be with me and my Labor colleagues every year at the miners memorial day at Cessnock, which commemorates the over 1,800 men, women and children—some as young as 11 and some as old as their mid-80s—who have died mining coal in this country. That is how you demonstrate a commitment to coalminers in this country: by fighting to improve their conditions, by commemorating their sacrifice and by fighting to improve safety in the workplace for those workers. Instead, those on the other side—particularly the member for New England, who prides himself on his virtual love affair for coalminers—don't care about that. All the member for New England cares about is maximising the profits for his mates in the coalmining industry: companies like Whitehaven Coal, where Mark Vaile, a former Leader of the National Party, is very prominent, and that of Gina Rinehart, who happened to take the member for New England to a lovely wedding in India on her private jet. Anyway, I digress by talking about the member for New England's love affair with coalmining companies and not coalminers, but that demonstrates the inconsistency and the empty rhetoric of those opposite. Another poor aspect of this bill is what it does to casuals on the right to convert to permanent part-time work. We've got a number of industrial awards, through great efforts by workers and their unions, who have secured rights to convert, where a casual worker might be having regular and predictable shifts for a certain amount of time or have been employed for a length of time, and they are able to convert to permanent part-time work if they would like to. This bill claims to do that, but the only obligation on an employer is that they have to consider it. They might have a casual worker who has done a year as a casual and meets all the other criteria within this bill, and all the employer has to do is consider the request by the casual worker. What happens if the employer decides to turn down that request? Normally, in most other instruments in the industrial relations system, the casual worker, or the union that represents them, would then go to the Fair Work Commission. I've had the privilege of representing workers in that forum in a previous role. The commission is court-like, but it's not run as a court. You can have representatives that aren't admitted to the bar, that aren't solicitors or barristers. It means it's low cost. The barriers to entry and to achieving a good outcome for all sides are low, and that's the way it should be. Instead, in this legislation, if you're a casual worker—if you're a 16-year-old worker at Coles or Woolworths or Kmart—who wants to exercise your right to convert to permanency, you have to go to the Federal Court. You have to hire a barrister and go to the Federal Court. I confess: I was a checkout operator at Coles for five years. I didn't have the resources to hire a barrister to secure permanency, and I would submit that there would be very few checkout operators around this country who have the financial resources to do that. So this claim in this bill to give casuals the right to convert to permanency is just that: a claim. There is no reality to that claim. That, again, is symbolic of this bill: it's all spin; it's all about claiming one thing but actually achieving another. What this bill does, if it passes, is cut workers' wages. What this bill does, if it passes, is take away bargaining rights. What this bill does, if it passes, is mean that employers don't even have to show the text of an enterprise agreement to their workers before demanding that workers vote on it. Just imagine that. One of the tenets of democracy and industrial democracy is the right to know what you're voting on. Some people claim that MPs don't read everything they vote on. We have the right to read it; it's tabled here. The legislation is tabled right here and we can read it, review it and make a decision on it. But if this bill passes we'll see employees forced to vote on enterprise agreements without seeing the text. I can't think of anything more draconian and antidemocratic than that, and that really is the heart of this legislation. This is legislation that is being sought to be enacted by a government that does not care about workers. It does not care about workers; it uses the worst economic recession in almost 100 years as a cover to cut workers' wages and to undermine their conditions. That's because the government sees that as the best way out of a recession. That was completely destroyed as a credible economic argument in the 1929 recession but they're very keen to keep pursuing it. The best way to get out of a recession is to put money in workers' hands; to lift their wages so that they spend that money in the economy so that companies have more customers and more reason to employ more people. This legislation does the opposite. It just reflects a narrow, ideological obsession by a government which is attempting a Work-Choices-like reform. This is a government which is woefully out of touch with what's happening on the ground. It is out of touch with the 600 per cent increase in demand for food banks and housing services. It's a government so out of touch that when it gets into trouble it just reverts to its ideological background and underpinnings of cutting workers' wages. This legislation should be opposed and I'm proud that Labor will oppose it. On behalf of the 150,000 residents of Shortland, I'm proud to oppose this draconian legislation. 16:46 Mr LAMING E0H Bowman I rise to speak on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020—and, gee, for the gazillionth time we find ourselves arguing about industrial relations! It's hard to come up with a new angle. We were hoping that in the midst of COVID there would be a new angle from this opposition, which would be a focus predominantly on job creation and total hours worked. We saw 436 million hours worked in January this year, up by about five per cent on the previous month. The first priority, of course, is more hours worked in the economy and, secondly, that those hours are fairly spread throughout those working-age Australians. Obviously, if we could distribute working hours perfectly then we wouldn't have any unemployment. We know that's not possible, technically, but to make those hours available means flexibility in the system. That's something I guess we've always argued about. It's not that there are ogres on that side or greedy people on this side; fundamentally, it's about how much you believe in flexibility and maximising the number of working hours available to an economy. What we recognise is that the clear and present threat right now is that employers don't feel comfortable with the Fair Work Act as drafted by Labor to create as many working hours as they otherwise would. There is no counterfactual, of course—no-one knows what happens if there is no Fair Work Act or how many bosses would change their behaviour—but if we think about it as a bell distribution there'll always be both employers and employees at the tails who don't bargain or barter in good faith. We absolutely accept those criticisms from the other side that, in many cases, the power imbalance means that it's the employee that we must protect most first. But this legislation says that we can take an even-handed approach to both. It's been consulted incredibly broadly by the Attorney-General. I don't think there has ever been coalition legislation in this area which has been more carefully and assiduously shown to the Labor Party and unions, allowing them to have a say. Let's also not forget one very important point while we're all here: the outrageous attack by overfed and overpaid union lawyers on the principle of casual work, implying that no definition existed, without recognising that it was Labor legislation that failed to do it. This attack on WorkPac, a completely honest and law-abiding company in this country—putting before them up to $2 million in legal fees just for them to fight the good fight and convince Australia that we do need casual workers—is a real shame which the Labor Party will have to carry on their shoulders. That union attack was the most deconstructive way of solving the problem. The problem here was just to define casual workers in a way that was noncontroversial. We could have done that, but Labor and the unions elected not to. That attack, that legal boondoggle, inflicted on an honest Australian company was a great disappointment. I'm so happy that the Commonwealth agreed to join with WorkPac as a related party in this matter. The end result was this amendment. It accepts that there will always be full-time and permanent work, part-time work and casual work. And now we're seeing platform work, which we debated just an hour ago. It's remarkable: again, just like clockwork, in came Labor, trying to regulate the platform economy when they know that simply can't be done without throwing so much grit in the wheels that it would just kill off jobs, hours of work and opportunity. What we need to accept is that platform work is highly mobile and not fully controlled by government. You need to allow platforms to drive as much employment as possible. Sometimes that leads to less-than-certain work and sometimes that leads to precarious work, but it's often that work or no work. But precarious work leads to non-precarious work leads to casual work leads to permanent work, and at the margins there will always be that need to accept that there will always be a need for workers who aren't employed full time and permanently. A flexible work system is what Australia is famous for. You can go and borrow other methods from Europe, but you have to accept that you'll have five per cent, six per cent or eight per cent long-term unemployment rates. We've got to give employers more confidence, because, fundamentally, in that relationship between the employee and the employer—the chicken and the egg—you first need an employer. You start with an unemployed person and you need the employer and you need to give them as much support as possible to create an employee. I think this is what Labor fundamentally don't understand. When Labor come in here, they are taking that unionised, rigid, lignified approach to employment because it pays them. It's their bread and butter, and I accept that. We don't resent that. We understand where they're coming from. But nor do we, on this side, represent employers. We simply want a flexible system that maximises opportunity and a fair work safety net. It's remarkable that the minute they lose government this Labor opposition suddenly don't trust Fair Work or the commissioners—all of whom were initially employed out of the union movement. You had the former IR minister and former opposition leader actually designing the process, but of course the minute they were in opposition, 'There's no safety at all for workers!' And yet it was actually your government that designed the entire system. We need to streamline and improve enterprise arrangements and we need to do it now, in the middle of COVID. We've got to strengthen compliance and enforcement, and we've got to provide a pathway through for statutory full-time work for casuals if they are interested in transitioning to that. Of course Labor come up with these incredibly banal and sometimes puerile oppositions to this by going to the absolute 0.1 per cent case of: 'What happens if this breaks down and that breaks down and this breaks down? How do you guarantee that no-one will be worse off in the entire Australian economy?' You're fundamentally misunderstanding that this is about moving a workforce of over 10 million people to make the most of every employment opportunity when and where it arises. This is a highly dynamic system of matching need and expertise, supply and demand. Jobs are disappearing here; they're reappearing over here. The skill sets of those who live over there don't necessarily match the needs over there. This is a complex system. It's a mobile system. It's very difficult to either compartmentalise or generalise. What we need is an opposition who's prepared to look at some of these simple solutions that are inherent in the legislation. It's almost like the minute we touch IR it has to be a third rail. Labor has to go berserk and go into a meltdown and tell everyone that their income is going to be wiped out. We know that never happens. How many times do we have to have this discussion, where even these tiny sensible improvements can't be agreed upon and you have people like the previous speaker, the member for Scullin—a gent that I highly regard—coming out with the same old, same old, that the world's going to fall apart, and you've got to pay your union membership. So you find your 20 bucks every fortnight, no matter how low your wage is, and as long as they get your union membership of course it's all okay, it's all fine. We can all stop worrying as long the childcare industry is moved into unionised workers. As long as everyone on the platform economy pays a union fee to the STAs, there's actually no problem, right? As long as everyone is unionised. This deconstructive approach is something that will go on long after all of us in this chamber have left the place, but what is going to happen is that 95 per cent of employees and employers are going to get on with it. They're going to do the enterprise bargaining. They're going to do what's right for both parties. And if ever someone's not happy, they're going to wander off to Fair Work, they're all going to burn time and money they probably don't have, and, in general, the employee will be rewarded, because it's designed that way, and the world goes on. Right now, in the middle of COVID, we need a bit of constructive dialogue from the other side. Blocking everything, changing nothing, making these lunatic claims that never actually eventuate once the legislation passes is just increasingly disappointing. It is increasingly saddening to everyone listening to a Chicken Licken party that keeps saying the whole thing is going to go into a meltdown if you change one part of the system. The reality is that, like any garage sale, you've got to be constantly updating your legislation, moving out what doesn't work and bringing in the new ideas, and responding to the new economy. I have to say that, when it comes to IR, back in the old days 10 years ago—Deputy Speaker Vasta, you will remember this—we used to say: 'Don't get the debate onto health or education; we always lose those. Don't get the debate onto IR. If it's an IR election, we always lose those.' Let me tell you what has happened in the time that the Deputy Speaker and I have been here. We continually win education and health debates. On balance, I'd rather be in those and winning them. I have no fear of that debate with a Labor Party that simply can't engage social sector reform anymore. It's so sad that this once-great party can't even engage IR reform anymore. It's all about holding out, getting painted into the corner with your diminishing union membership and fighting blind, bringing nothing to this chamber by way of good ideas. When was the last health reform brought here by Labor? When was the last education reform or employment services reform brought here? You're just living in the age of the CES. This is a party that stopped thinking about social sector reform sometime in the Howard era, when they all just gave up. It's some sort of vestigial organ in the Labor system. It's just sad. There's no constructive discussion. As long as everyone's getting bulk-billed and the spending's going up, it's all okay. In IR, as long as it's all about the industrial relations rights of workers, it's all okay. The ACTING SPEAKER E0D The member for Scullin on a point of order? Mr Giles 243609 I believe the member for Bowman is enjoying himself, but perhaps he could talk about the bill at some stage in the course of his remarks! Mr LAMING E0H I will take up the invitation. I know that it became a somewhat sensitive topic talking about social welfare reform and lack of it. But my point is that the industrial relations reform is also needed. We need a virile, hungry, energetic Labor Party willing to talk about solutions, but they've really given nothing here. I go back to where I started. This debate actually was initiated by blowing up the notion of a casual worker and telling every employer in Australia that they should both pay the casual loaded rate and then all of the additional leave entitlements. It was a patently ridiculous claim that had almost no chance of surviving in court, but of course they were going to go through with it because some employer had to find the $2 million to take on the overpaid union lawyers. That's the essence of this legislation. That's why we're all here today, right? There's that attack on casual workers from the Labor Party and then there's the obvious necessity to retain the JobKeeper flexibility in agreement making while we go through COVID. So I apologise to one or two on the other side who were somewhat sensitive about noting just how lacking in reform zeal this Labor Party is, but I think it's all been exposed today. I must admit that debate about the platform economy just showed a luddite Labor Party that still wants to walk in front of those newly mechanised carts with a flashing light, saying: 'Warning: there's a car coming down the street.' You've got to move with the times. You've got to learn how to download an app. You've got to realise that people are going to work in the platform economy in a way that can't be regulated by unions. Yes, sadly, they won't be paying their membership dues. At the heart of it, this nation would be far better off if we had a left-of-centre party that could engage these debates of IR reform without being driven by trade unions. 16:58 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah So today we debate the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020. To start off, I should say to the people of Warringah that I've had briefings with all sides of the discussion, including the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia, the Labor Party and the coalition. So I don't take this debate lightly. We must be considerate of the downstream effects of these proposals and ensure that the benefits and costs are shared widely amongst all stakeholders. I've also sought feedback, of course, from the Warringah community. I have, however, felt overall that this debate has been vexed by partisan polarisation. Both sides have sought to scare voters with rhetoric, claiming either that small businesses will be slugged or that workers will take massive pay cuts. I didn't find the examples provided in support of claims to be compelling. I believe we should be able to have a reasonable discussion about what a 21st-century industrial relations system looks like as we recover from this pandemic. Australia must not simply recover but also design an economy that is dynamic, is innovative and allows business to pivot and adapt and workers to flourish. That's why I urge that we go further in pursuit of those aims. We must look at every way that we can to unlock productivity, wage gains and efficiencies, whether that is tax reform, industrial relations or energy. Now is the time for boldness, not lethargy. This bill has several schedules which address discrepancies in the classification of casual workers. It simplifies the enterprise bargaining process and combats wage theft. In this speech, I want to focus on the changes to the enterprise bargaining process and provisions addressing part-time and casual workers, as they are very much the changes that affect Warringah constituents. Australia's industrial relations system is needlessly complex and inflexible, to the detriment of employers, particularly small business, and that does ultimately impact workers as well. Warringah is an electorate with many small businesses—just over 20,000 small businesses—so this is an issue that is frequently raised with me. In relation to enterprise bargaining agreements, this bill seeks to make modest changes, but there are some flaws. It is attempting to reboot the enterprise bargaining system to make it more accessible and streamlined. It's vital that we do this, as the number of enterprise bargaining agreements in the last decade has fallen significantly. The number of people employed under an EBA fell from 2.6 million in 2014 to 1.8 million in 2017. So we need the system to work. EBAs are important, as they drive productivity, better wage outcomes and fairness. But clearly those numbers and the reduction in EBAs show the system isn't working as it should. The current system leaves business with little option but to exit and rely on awards, give up on making new agreements or settle for a suboptimal EBA. That's because EBAs can be shot down over technicalities or the negotiations hijacked by third parties. This bill seeks to address this. In some cases, the process is just so complicated and time-consuming that businesses simply give up. EBAs should be pushed through the process a lot faster than currently occurs. Even after the parties have agreed, some take more than 120 days to pass through the Fair Work Commission process. I agree that many provisions in the Fair Work Act relating to EBAs can be streamlined to make them less time-consuming, and I support the parts of the bill which seek to do this. Although this is not covered in this bill, the government should consider provisions for the making of a small business EBA. The constant feedback I get from small to medium-sized businesses is that that is needed, as many have multiple employees and don't fit neatly under one award but need a number. That can make navigating the system an administrative nightmare for small business. The workload attached to the paperwork is simply a deterrent to putting on more staff and takes away from business proactivity. A small business EBA, or better provision for small businesses, could make business owners' and operators' lives easier through simplification, as well as boosting workers' wages. In relation to part-time workers, this bill includes amendments that will vary 12 identified awards in distressed sectors, including retail, hospitality, fast food and related sectors. Many of those are incredibly relevant in Warringah. These changes will allow part-time employees to pick up extra shifts and days. Currently, part-time employees are passed over in certain circumstances in favour of casual employees when it comes to additional shifts. Appropriately, there are protections for a minimum 16-hour week. However, extra shifts will not result in overtime payments to part-time staff under these changes. But it should be clear, despite the scare campaigns that occur, that these additional hours will still qualify for penalty rates on weekends. I believe this flexibility will support businesses and part-time employees. The government should consider the concerns of the business community about the paperwork required to agree to additional hours. We hear a lot in this place, especially from coalition ranks, about cutting red tape. I would argue that there is red tape that could be cut here, and there is actually some being created. The bill as written requires a written agreement every time more hours are sought by or offered to a part-time employee. There should be a standing consent clause whereby an agreement is not needed every time but instead an employee gives their written consent once, which will include details of ongoing availability. This bill will introduce a definition of 'casual employee'. This definition is intended to provide certainty to both employers and employees at the beginning of employment. I would argue that this is helpful, given the legal uncertainty facing small businesses, following the WorkPac Pty Ltd v Rossato litigation, which established that an objectively justified expectation of continual work means workers are eligible for the benefits of a full-time worker, regardless of the casual loading already paid. This leaves wide open the potential of double dipping and workers receiving both full-time entitlements and casual loading. This can't be in the best interests of small business. I recognise that there are instances of large companies doing the wrong thing in underpaying casual loading. Sadly, they do hit the front pages. But I do believe that by and large most business owners, especially in small businesses, set out to do the right thing. There is a relationship between small businesses and their workers. There is a closeness in their intention to prosper and thrive together. These are business owners who have a small number of employees, and they are close to them. They are looking for solutions on how to work together. I do believe it's the complexity of the system which is leading to mistakes. Many are paying the loading, but now they have a situation which is out of their control and they will have to pay damages above the scope of what is reasonable. I do, however, acknowledge that several submissions to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee, including the Law Council of Australia, have made the point that the definition should be rebalanced. The definition of 'casual employee' proposed in the bill may be open to manipulation, since it is affected by how the offer of employment is phrased. Regarding the casual-to-permanent conversion mechanism, it will universally enact the conversion rights that exist under various awards and agreements. I support this measure. Employees should be offered the opportunity to become permanent. However, the government should tighten up the language in the provisions which allow employers to object to the granting of a full-time position to casuals. The clause allowing for reasonable grounds to oppose conversion leaves too much discretion to business owners and could allow any excuse for not granting full-time employment. I am concerned about the lack of right to arbitration, which could disadvantage workers and employers that are seeking a resolution. The rights should be guaranteed where mediation or conciliation through the Fair Work Commission has failed. Finally, the government should remove the requirement to notify employees who do not qualify for conversion. It seems an unnecessary burden for small businesses to have to notify staff of something that does not even apply to them. In conclusion, although the debate has been incredibly polarised, on balance I'm not swayed that the issues with this bill outweigh the benefits. The bill will introduce modest measures to improve the functioning of the industrial relations system. I urge the government to consider sensible amendments in the Senate, proposed by the Law Council of Australia and the Business Council of Australia, that will improve the bill. These changes will benefit many small businesses in Warringah in particular, from my point of view, making the system streamlined and more efficient. However, I do ask that the government also look at further changes. We must design a 21st-century economy. It is time, and I would urge all members in this place to come together to try and do that. 17:08 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi I rise to speak on this bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, for two reasons. First, I want to acknowledge the piecemeal progress that's been made on this bill so far and express my concerns about specific provisions that need a lot more work and compromise before we can call this sensible, consensus-driven reform. Second, I want to express my total disappointment, on behalf of my constituents, in the political opportunity both major parties have wasted here to put swords down and negotiate reasonable, good-faith reforms, as initially intended. Frankly, it's pathetic that this is the best compromise the opposition and the government could come to on this. I believe it highlights the endemic lack of cooperation and humility on both sides to work together for all Australians. To be clear, there is an absolute need for industrial relations reform. I was encouraged to hear the opposition leader and the government talk about the roundtable discussions last year as a consensus driven process, akin to the accords of the 1980s and 1990s, on refining our current system. 'Refinement' is a key word here. According to the most recent independent economic review of the workplace relations system conducted by the Productivity Commission in 2015, the system isn't totally dysfunctional; it needs 'refinement' and 'repair'. Refinement requires total attention to detail. Refinement requires an absolute focus on policy, not politics. Refinement requires deep consultation and inclusion. I'm not convinced we've achieved that here. There are some good features to the bill that I think it's important to acknowledge. First, I believe that the response in this bill to the Rossato decision, which allows employers to offset previous casual loadings against retrospective entitlements, is measured and appropriate and responds to the real concerns of small businesses, who would have struggled to implement the Rossato decision in full in such a difficult economic climate. Those provisions also ensure that those retrospective entitlements do not disappear in their entirety and that those casual workers who have been entitled to minimum benefits can access them. This is a good example of middle ground. Second, I want to welcome the decision to remove the controversial change to the better off overall test, which was ambiguously drafted and could have led to the progressive erosion of baseline employee rights that have been the agreed bedrock of our industrial relations system for generations. One does have to wonder, though, whether such a controversial proposal was deliberately included by the government so that it could be removed at a later date as a signal of good faith bargaining. It would be disappointing, of course, if that were the case. It would be even more disappointing if the government had used the community's political unity around COVID as a smokescreen to bring on partisan reforms. Just this week, a panel of public health experts from the ANU warned that the provisions in this bill which could erode access to sick leave and other entitlements would actually exacerbate risks in our COVID-19 response and recovery. How deeply ironic, dangerous and disappointing if that were true. There are also a number of provisions in this bill as it currently stands which need refinement. First, the wholesale revision of the common law definition of a casual worker is problematic and overemphasises the initial terms of employment. We know that prospective employees are deal-takers as opposed to deal-makers when it comes to initial contract negotiations and that a job can sound very different on paper or in an interview compared to what it's actually like in real life. It's obvious to me, small businesses and casual employees alike that this provision needs more work. Second, more work needs to be done to resolve the arbitration question in the casual conversion provision. I believe casual employees who end up working like permanent employees must be recognised as such. I also believe commercially minded employers who care about business certainly want this too. But, when this pact breaks down and requests for casual conversion are rejected, employees must have somewhere to go that's not burdensome. While the International Labour Organization argues there must be an absolute right to arbitration in these circumstances, it's true that such a right is not an absolute feature of our current industrial relations system, including the dispute resolution provisions of modern awards. There is a way to get this right, but I have not heard either the government or the opposition propose a middle ground here, despite the incessant back and forth during question time for the past week. For example, the unilateral right of an employee to arbitration by the Fair Work Commission could be activated after both parties have participated in a conciliation process led by the Fair Work Commission. This would not require consent from both parties. Third, I believe the extension of the flexible work duties and location provisions for two years needs further justification. It's absolutely true that small businesses need the flexibility to work with their staff to innovate and redeploy resources to keep their businesses alive and thriving through the post-COVID recovery. It's also important that the power to do so is not unfettered. As the bill is currently drafted, any employer would be permitted to redeploy staff in their business if it would reasonably assist in the revival of the employee's business. This has the potential to be far-reaching and we need to be crystal clear about what is and is not captured by this, firstly, to protect employees from exploitation but also as a tool for businesses to ask themselves: is my recovery strategy commercially sensible and viable? I'm not convinced the provisions help businesses to do this. The list of issues in this bill that need further good-faith discussions between the government, the opposition, the unions, employers and so on is infinite. The 15 minutes I'm allotted is nowhere near enough time to cover other issues like changes to the minimum size of greenfield agreements; the workability of new criminal offences for wilful theft and the systemic underpayment of employees; or what employers must do to satisfy themselves that culturally and linguistically diverse employees understand the EBA they're voting on. This tells me loud and clear that this is not a good-faith consensus bill. In fact, the only thing that's loud and clear about the bill is that it is complex, unresolved and being politically weaponised to an unreasonable extent. I've spoken to countless casual workers, small-business owners, local unions, major employers, chambers of commerce and other stakeholders across my electorate of Indi over the past six months about the status of these reforms since the 'swords down' moment of mid last year. It might surprise others in this chamber to learn that these groups which the government and opposition have pitted against each other over this bill in a pseudo-election campaign are actually united by one thing in my electorate: their collective confusion and disappointment about the political hijacking of this issue instead of a focus on constructive conversations. Just this week I spoke to the CEO of Business Wodonga, Neil Aird, who told me that the bill needs more work and that he was concerned that many small businesses have only heard the political headlines in this debate. He was concerned many small businesses and HR advisors alike are still unsure exactly what this bill aims to do and how it does it. That's a total failure in proper political communications, in my view. When I met with small-business owners and casual hospitality and retail workers in the main streets of Alexandra, Yea and Marysville earlier this month, I did not hear the same crude, media savvy lines I hear from the government and opposition over and over again in question time. Not one casual worker I spoke to was jumping up and down shouting, 'This is a cynical ploy from a cynical government,' like the opposition leader did last week. Not one business owner was saying, 'Labor has its head stuck in an ideological rear-vision mirror, selling unbelievable untruths,' like the Attorney-General did earlier this month. Instead, employers were saying constructive things like: 'We're really keen to get new staff in and make sure we can offer them good hours and conditions to keep them around.' Employees were saying things like: 'I'm part time and keen to do extra hours, but I haven't had time to sit down and look at my contract and figure out how to ask for that.' If you want a case study in how political rhetoric gets in the way of reasoned progress in this country, I reckon this bill is it. In his Press Club speech announcing these reforms, the Prime Minister said industrial relations is: … a system that has, to date, retreated to tribalism, conflict, and ideological posturing. Well, I reckon we have it on full display now, don't we? I've not seen one single detailed amendment from the opposition on this bill—not on the Notice Paper, not in the media, not in meetings in this place. Not one. They're called the Labor Party. This is meant to be the opposition's bread and butter. But how on earth are we to achieve the Productivity Commission's recommended refinement and repair without any good-faith proposals from them to make this bill better? I'm going to oppose this bill today, not because I think it's unsalvageable—I don't want to run a scare campaign and kick up dust on a possible political election issue, like others in this place—but because there's so much more work to be done on this bill that has not been done. That's just bad policy and bad politics. I've been working and will continue to work with Senate crossbench colleagues who are thinking about this bill very carefully, and I'll assess it again when it almost inevitably comes back to this House amended. That's because I assess each bill based on policy merit, not on political ammunition. In the meantime, I call on both the government and the opposition to step up and to do better, be better and deliver better on this bill. 17:19 Mr ROB MITCHELL M3E McEwen When this Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 came to parliament—when it was first spoken about and introduced—Labor had a simple test for the government. Will this bill create secure jobs and decent pay? It's a pretty simple test. The answer back in December was no. It was no then and it's no now, whichever way you look at it. There is the way we've heard government MPs fluff things up today—and I heard the member for Griffith's contribution, which was a brilliant contribution, about the la-la land of people on the other side saying, 'Oh, all employers work for the best of their employees.' That's absolute rubbish! The reason we have the Fair Work Commission, the reason that we've had industrial relations commissions and the reason we have courts is because people are treated unfairly by bad employers. Unlike those opposite, I'm not going to say that all employees are good or all employees are brilliant. They're not; there are always bad ones in there. Part of our job as legislators is to make sure that we have laws which protect the good ones and prosecute the bad ones. It's not rocket science; it's what we're about; it's what we should be doing. We see, day in day out, employees who are being ripped off and underpaid. Recently one of the great big franchises—the one with a clown—was even saying, 'Well, maybe we could pay our employees with chippies and cheeseburgers rather than actual cash.' I don't know about you, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta, but I know when I go to pay my electricity bill that Energy Australia isn't going to accept a happy meal to cover my power bill for my property. And nor should they! A government member interjecting— Mr ROB MITCHELL M3E I probably shouldn't eat many happy meals, you're right! When we look at these things we have to look at them holistically; we can't just take little bits and pieces. We have to look at what is going to be the overall test that we set as legislators. The test is that we should always be working for the betterment of employees, to ensure that when they go and work for companies and businesses they have protections in place to keep them safe and to make sure that they get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. What we see in the bill is that it makes it so much easier for employers to casualise jobs which should otherwise be permanent and it makes bargaining for pay and conditions a lot worse than it already is. I'm thinking about the time I worked with large employers. Think of a 15-, 16- or 17-year-old kid, trying to get into employment and expected to negotiate their pay and conditions with a multinational company. They're not sitting and negotiating with the foreman of the workshop. They're sitting with the foreman of the workshop and a heap of papers prepared by teams of lawyers—teams of white-collar workers who are in there and focused on the one focus that a lot of businesses have: focusing on profit. Businesses should make profit, yes, but not at the expense of the people who make those businesses run. It's very hard for kids to be able to do that. I can remember an example myself from when I was younger, working in an automatic transmission place. 'Yes, great, you've got the job, and we're going to pay you a casual rate. But you're working five days a week, eight hours a day and all the benefits.' But they never say: 'Yes, we're paying you a casual rate, but we're putting you on as a casual employee. So when you get injured there's no sick pay. There's no holiday pay. There are a whole range of things that won't happen.' And that still happens today. These are the sorts of things we should be doing something about, making sure that we protect people who apply for jobs and ensuring that we support employees who do the right things. As I said, it's not that hard. But when we come to this bill we hear the rhetoric on the other side about how great employers are and how great this government is. It's a Liberal-National government and it's their true values. Yes, their true values are very clear: in every single industrial relations case—every single one—it has been the Labor Party and the union movement fighting for better pay, better conditions and better, safer workplaces, not those opposite. They side with the big end of town that fight to stop these things happening. It's Labor that always fights. We fought against Work Choices and we will fight against this. Because despite the rhetoric that comes out from those opposite, it's in their DNA that they do not fight for workers' rights and workers in this country. They consider them an expendable part of a business enterprise, and they're not. These are people's lives we're talking about. I've got a letter here that I received—and I have got to thank Minister Sukkar for responding to my letter—about employees getting ripped off at workplaces. I thank him because it's only taken him four months to do that. For four months an employee has lost work, going down from 10 hours a week to three hours a week. At 25 years of age, she's trying to work and save and build herself a life. She's been short-changed. This is what happens with the way this government works. This is not something that's important to them. But it's important to her to get ahead. We see this each and every single day. When you bring a bill into parliament that's going to make work less secure and increase the option for pay cuts, you know it's the wrong thing to do. We're going through a massive pandemic that's delivered the Morrison recession where people in insecure work are working in three, four or five locations, trying to make ends meet. That's not what we should be about. We should be about trying to build better jobs, secure jobs. Let people know when they go to work that they're going to get paid and they're going to get their superannuation. That's another subject that the government's backtracked on. They have lied to the Australian people—flat out lied. They legislated a superannuation rise but now they don't want to do it. Of course, they're quite happy to ensure that they've got good superannuation. This is the wrong thing to do. What does the government do? It blames the workers. It says it's their fault, that the economy is not safe, that we can't do these things. Yes, you can—it's about the choices you make and it's about values you have. Stand up and do the right thing and ensure that people get paid the superannuation that they deserve and are entitled to. As I said, when this bill came out we asked one simple question about whether this is going to make workers better off. It failed that. Each and every day, we've seen that when this gets discussed the government brings out their rhetoric and lines, and blames the victims—something they're getting quite good at. We've seen the better off overall test pulled out. That was one of the most appalling things in this bill, but it's not the only thing. There is a whole range of things here that will make it harder and harder for people to get good, secure work and good pay. When you see bargaining rights and protections for workers whose pay and conditions are covered by agreements being attacked, you've got to sit there and say 'that's not the right thing to do'. It's not what we should be about. We should ensure that we have safety nets. We heard at question time today, time and time again: do people deserve to have a minimum wage? Do they deserve to go to work and be paid on the reasonable expectation that, for the work that they have done, they will get a wage that actually pays the bills? The government says no—they're disposable. Not to worry—if someone goes to work and works eight hours and only gets paid $40, well, so be it. That's bad luck. We've seen this right through in the way that the government values workers. We've seen the attacks on retail workers. The Attorney-General was carrying on over the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal. I tell you what, I don't think any one of you guys on the other side has ever gone to a truck accident in the middle of the night and seen what it causes. If you actually had to go to a motor vehicle accident—where people are working longer and harder to try and make ends meet and being forced by unscrupulous employers to work harder and longer for less money—you would see what happens. The carnage that this causes on the road—let alone actually going in and looking at what it does to families and communities—it's appalling. Yet the government sits there and says: 'Well, it's not the right thing to do. They can get paid whatever they want.' When it comes to a negotiation on these sorts of things, the person who is paying the money wants to pay out the least amount possible. The person who is doing the work wants to get the highest amount possible. That's fair. But when you're in a bargaining situation where you have nothing but your employment to give versus someone who has got millions of dollars and teams of lawyers behind them, you're behind the eight ball. That is a simple thing to think about when you think about values, morals and ethics. The right thing to do is to ensure that we build a stronger and better economy by making sure that people in the workplace get paid properly—make sure that they get the entitlements that they rightly deserve and make sure that we aren't bringing stuff into this place that makes work less secure and cuts pay. Without measures to create more secure jobs, where are we going as a country? Where are we going as a nation? Workers will have less capacity and less confidence to spend. That, in turn, suppresses demand, and it's a snowball effect. If people aren't getting paid, they can't spend money. If they don't spend money, they lose jobs. That's what happens. If the government can't understand that, that explains why we're in the Morrison recession. This is not a recession brought on by COVID; COVID's the cover that the government's been using. The fact is that deficit and debt is higher under this government than under any other government in the history of this nation. One person has been in control of that for the entire time, whether as the social services minister, bringing in robodebt; whether as the Treasurer, making cuts for Australian working families; or whether as Prime Minister. And what does he do there? He delivers the biggest recession, debt and deficit we have ever seen. When it comes to these sorts of things, you have to ask, 'Who are the people who are most going to stand up and deliver the better results?' It's not going to be the government. It's those in the labour movement—the Labor Party and the union movement—who have worked consistently for decades to support workers and workers' rights. It's not a government that has spent every opportunity attacking those working rights, attacking the safety nets that we have and attacking people who find themselves in positions from which they can't defend themselves against multinational companies. I implore those opposite: look into your morals and values. Just sit there and ask: is the right thing to do to make it harder for people to get paid a fair wage for a fair day's work, or can you turn around and see inside yourselves that what you should be doing is trying to strengthen employment opportunities for working Australians, to give them jobs that pay bills and give them the opportunity to build a life? That's the simple test that needs to be done. As I said at the start, the test of the bill was: will it create more secure jobs and decent pay? It didn't then, and it doesn't now. The government should not be supporting measures that make it harder for people to get ahead. 17:32 Ms OWENS E09 Parramatta In many ways, this bill, the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020, sums up this government. It's a government governing for last century, governing for the wrong time. It's a government that believes that you can cut people's wages and grow the economy. Those opposite have always believed that. They do it every time they get into government, and they're doing it again through this bill. It's a strategy which simply won't work. You do not grow an economy and create jobs by cutting the wages of a business's customers. I have never, ever heard a business argue for cutting the wages of their customers, yet that's what this bill does. It allows any employee on an award to have their wages and conditions cut by their employer, without, really, any opportunity for that employee to go to arbitration unless they go to court and pay for it. Let's have a look at what this bill does, before I talk about some of the issues in the context in which this bill will do exactly the opposite of what the government wants. Labor's test for the bill, as it is with industrial relations, is that if unions and employers—through the government's consultation program, which they claimed would be extensive; it turned out not to be—reached an agreement, we would support it. That was our test. It was also our test that workers not be worse off, but we were pretty confident that, in a proper negotiation process, that would not occur. But that's not what we've got here. This bill will not create secure jobs and decent pay. In fact, it will do exactly the opposite. The most extreme part of the bill—the suspension for two years of what's known as the BOOT test, the better off overall test—has now been withdrawn. The government knew full well that they were on a hiding to nothing with that, so they have withdrawn it. But this bill still allows workers' wages to be cut, and most of the workers who will have their wages cut are the heroes of the pandemic. They're the people who turned up to retail outlets every day. They're the cleaners. They're the people who actually took the risks for the rest of us and held this country together. But this bill is bad for them. It makes it easier for employers to casualise jobs that would otherwise have been permanent, it makes bargaining for better pay and conditions more difficult than it already is, it allows wage cuts, it takes rights off blue-collar workers on big projects and it weakens wage theft punishments in jurisdictions where it already is deemed a criminal act. Some states already have strong wage theft laws. This law, weaker than some of those, overrides those. So while in some states there will be an improvement in wage theft legislation, in others it will be worse. It makes work less secure and it cuts pay. It also does something which is really quite interesting. The permanent addition of flexible work directions in this bill is absolute proof that changes to the Fair Work Act introduced as temporary by the Liberal-National government are never that. This measure was originally introduced as part of the JobKeeper program and limited to employers receiving the wage subsidy; however, since then it has continued and expanded its application well beyond its original intent. This part deems the modern awards, of which there are 12, to include terms that allow an employer to give a direction to an employee about their duties and location of work. Again, it was a two-year provision based on the original JobKeeper stand-down directions. In other words, during the pandemic, rules were changed a little so it allowed workers to keep their relationship with their employer through JobKeeper. Since then, the provision has been extended to legacy employers—that means for workplaces covered by the identified awards, the special flexibility will be available to every employer; even those that never qualified for JobKeeper. It also allows part-time work to be reduced to 16 hours, with workers being asked to work hours after that effectively on the same rate, without the casual loading. Again, it makes it incredibly flexible for the employer to change the hours of work for an employee, but it doesn't give the employee the kind of certainty that they need in the contemporary world. I just want to talk about the context in which the government is introducing this bill because they claim that this bill will grow jobs. Again, I have never heard a business argue to cut the wages of its customers. I can't see how cutting the wages of its customers does grow jobs; in fact, it decreases spending. Most of the workers on these rather low incomes relative to the national average would spend every dollar that they get, so it's hard to understand. But I do understand why small business in particular would ask for this greater flexibility in bargaining with their staff. What they tell me is that because of the imbalance in bargaining with the large businesses with which they do business, this is kind of the last remaining place where they feel they can actually negotiate and cut costs at all. We have the highest retail rents in the world—perhaps the government could look at doing something about that. We have incredibly high retail rents. We know that. Talk to any business and they will tell you that. We have seen through COVID just how unreasonable some of those relationships are. There is unequal bargaining with the really large businesses with which they do business every day. They have very little control over their electricity and gas bills. Because of the increasing casualisation in the workforce and the changing nature of work in the workforce, small businesses have less ballast in their market. By 'ballast' I mean customers that have regular income—it used to be public servants or people who worked full time in factories. People who had regular work and didn't respond with fear at the first indication that the economy might be getting a bit rocky or something might be happening overseas—they were like the ballast. They had customers that were there, but this is changing. It's another reason why this is the wrong time for this bill. It really is the wrong time for this bill. One of the reasons why we have less ballast is that workers are in a far more casualised world. In fact, we've had higher growth in casual employment in the last year than we have ever had before. We know from talking to people around us that there are literally millions of Australians now in casual work, many of whom would like more permanent and consistent work. If you look at the nature of working people now, you're quite often talking about single parents. You're talking about parents with children—of course parents have children! You're talking about working couples with children. They need to be able to organise their working life around their work hours. So just imagine what this bill does to a working couple who are organising their child care around what was permanent part-time work, and now it's 16 hours fixed, with casual hours after that determined by your employer—take it or leave it. How does a working person do that when they have to organise around school drop-off and school pick-up? Again, it's the wrong bill for the wrong time. It doesn't recognise what has actually been happening in our community and the changing nature of work. It really doesn't work at all. We also have wage stagnation. In fact, we're approaching the second decade of wage stagnation, so we already had workers thousands of dollars worse off over the last 10 years. Again, wages are going down. Workers are relatively worse off every year. It is increasingly difficult for parents to juggle working life and family life, and we have a government that's making it worse with this bill and is actually taking away the level of stability and certainty that workers need in order to juggle their family life and their working life. That, by the way, is perhaps one of the biggest issues that couples with children face at the moment, and single parents, of course, face it even more. I tell this story quite regularly, but we'll see more of this. I was doorknocking in an area in the south of my electorate where there are more single parents than in any other area in Western Sydney, and I found a six-year-old child at home alone. This little kid answered the door—and opened the door too, which was kind of worse. So I phoned that parent to find out what was going on. That was a parent who found out at 6 am every morning whether she was working that day. If she was, she had to be there by 7 am. If those are the working conditions that this government thinks people should have in order to create jobs, it doesn't understand the nature of modern Australian society. There's another aspect to this for me too. As a businessperson, I'm saying that cutting wages doesn't grow a business, because it cuts the wages of your customers, but I know that there are some circumstances in which cutting wages does actually grow a business: if the business employs low-wage workers and sells to high-wage customers, it's going to be better off. I'll put it this way: I doubt that the food delivery drivers are finishing their shift on a Saturday night and then becoming customers of other food delivery drivers, because they're just not paid enough. I doubt that fruit pickers, who are being paid appallingly in some areas, are then heading out and buying the high-cost fruit that they've picked. Henry Ford knew about this. Henry Ford knew that there's a relationship between the wages you pay your staff and their ability to buy your products. Are we really moving to a world where we have people on low wages, with very poor conditions and casualised work, working in a business and selling those services to a higher-wage customer? That is the only way that this bill will create jobs. That is the only way that it will do that. Again, there are a lot of things that a government could be doing at the moment to grow the economy. They could be looking at the nature of work now. They should be looking at the number of people who don't have stable income or stable working hours and trying to find ways to regulate so that we have that ballast in the economy that holds our economy relatively steady when we're faced with headwinds, because I can tell you—we know this well, and any economist or anybody who studies sociology will tell you this—that people who are insecure in their work and have irregular income will be the first ones to stop spending if they fear a shock to the economy, and they'll be the last ones to start spending again. This bill is at the wrong time and it attacks the wrong people. It really does. It should be strengthening workers. It should be encouraging workers to have the capacity to spend to support local businesses, and it does exactly the opposite. It will not achieve what the government wants to achieve. In fact, I suspect it will achieve exactly the opposite. We will see customers of businesses with less money to spend. Anyone who has been in business knows that you do not compete by cutting your price and you do not compete by cutting your wages, because everybody else can do exactly the same thing. It is a race to the bottom. If everybody can do it, it doesn't give any business an advantage. It simply cuts the amount of money that people spend in the business next door. It makes no sense. This is the wrong bill for the wrong time and it will backfire badly on a bad government. 17:45 Mr BRENDAN O'CONNOR 00AN3 Gorton I rise to speak against the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020 and speak in favour of the second reading amendment moved by the Manager of Opposition Business. This bill has very significant flaws. Even if one were to argue that there were some potential benefits, from what I can see the construction of the provisions of the bill would not provide any real benefits. There are concerns—and Labor has for some time now expressed those concerns—in relation to a whole range of issues that are contained within this bill. We're aware that the suspension of the better off overall test has been withdrawn, but I think that that provision before its withdrawal by the government underlined and, if you like, exposed the motives of the government to leave unprotected tens of thousands of workers potentially in many sectors of our economy. There was not sufficient protection to ensure that they would not be worse off after entering into a new agreement. That reminds me that in 2005 the then victorious John Howard came to this chamber and, as Prime Minister no less, made a ministerial statement that explained in detail his intentions to change the industrial relations laws of this country and introduce what was then entitled Work Choices. In that speech he talked about removing the no disadvantage test, which was of course the comparable provision to the better off overall test. As soon as I and others heard that we knew that, if that proposed legislation were enacted, many workers would be potentially worse off and, in some cases, far worse off as a result. That came to pass. Work Choices was legislated. The government held both houses of the parliament and they enacted that legislation. That led to many workers losing penalty rates, overtime provisions and many entitlements and seeing their wages fall considerably. As a result, in part at least, we saw the end of that government and we saw at the election in 2007 a Prime Minister for only the second time in our history lose his seat. Whilst the breadth and depth of Work Choices are not contained in this bill, I contend that the motives behind the bill in part go to those same issues of deregulating protections for working people in this country and providing greater powers to the employer and lesser powers to the employee or the organised employees—namely, the unions. I say that because some of the provisions here clearly are either seeking to codify the law and legislate over common law decisions in the case of the 'casual' definition or looking to provide capacity for employers to subjectively deem somebody to be casual—and if they so deem them to be casual then they will be seen as such, again reducing the likelihood of a potential challenge by a worker to suggest on the facts of their employment that they are indeed permanent employees. Of course, that provision was in response to the Federal Court decision in the Rossato case, which found a worker, who was employed by a labour hire company, who had a fixed full-time roster and who was being paid for some years, to be permanent, notwithstanding the contention by the employer that the employee was casual. There has been a lot of commentary on what that decision has meant, but it did not mean—and I would like to correct or contradict, if you like, the minister in relation to this matter—that all people in this country who are casual would somehow be in receipt of back payments. It did not mean that at all. In fact, whilst the construction of the registered agreement that applied to that worker and the facts of the case meant that there would certainly be claims by some casuals in this country, quite rightly, to be afforded the definition of permanent, it wouldn't have meant that in all circumstances. Therefore, the estimate of the costs to businesses were very much exaggerated. I just make that point. But what is really concerning and disturbing about the construction of that provision is that this provision would allow an employer to say, 'You are casual,' and you would be deemed as such, whereas what should happen, if we are going to have a statutory definition of 'casual' in legislation, is an objective test to delineate the difference between permanent and casual work. Casual employment is a legitimate form of employment. There are workers who also choose to be casual, and they should be able to choose to be casual. It is an important part of the mix in the labour market in order to provide sufficient flexibility for workers and businesses. However, it has been misused and abused on occasion and, indeed, there are now way too many people who are not afforded the right of permanent employment and they need greater levels of certainty in the workplace. They need certainty of employment. They need certainty of income. Because they have permanent families, they need permanent jobs. They have full-time families; they want full-time jobs. They have long-term mortgages; they, therefore, want long-term jobs wherever possible. But this legislation is not actually supporting that endeavour wherever possible. In fact, it is acting contrary to the need to make certain and to provide more opportunities for permanent work in our labour market. The minister has argued that, for example, some of the provisions of the current Fair Work Act were legislated by the previous Labor government. That may well be true, but it is also true that there are changes to the labour market that have occurred in the last decade that make it necessary for this parliament to consider protecting those workers who have become vulnerable as a result of those changes to the labour market. For example, the idea that you can buy and sell labour over an app was not something that was conceived of 15 years ago, 12 years ago or a decade ago in the way it is now. Whilst the work is traditional, the way the service applies has changed. It should not mean that workers are paid less than what is afforded to them under comparable awards. I think it's fair to say it's not just unions or the Labor Party that say that. I meet with many businesses who are bound to awards and they have to give their workforce a certain set of conditions and certain rates of pay. They are somewhat disturbed by the fact that they have competitors who are able to pay people $6, $7, $8 or $9 an hour to do the same work as their employees, who are being paid at least $20 an hour or above. So it's not just unfair to those workers who are not being afforded permanent employment status and provided at least the minimum wage in this country. It is unfair to those employers who are bound to the same awards and who find themselves now in a very uncompetitive position against their competitors that have been able to have arrangements in place that allow them to pay workers, so-called independent contractors, well below minimum wages. There are mechanisms we can use. In fact, the New South Wales Industrial Relations Commission had a deeming provision in it to deem contractors to be employees if the circumstances were right and if the facts of the matter of the job involved were sufficient to show that that relationship was an employment relationship and not a contractual relationship—that is, that person was not a customer but, indeed, their employer. The New South Wales state commission could deem those workers to be employees. That deeming provision is something that we could take up in the federal jurisdiction. That's why I refute the arguments made by the Attorney-General that it's not possible. In fact, it has been a part of our industrial relations system in other jurisdictions for decades, and it could certainly be determined to be such in the federal jurisdiction. I do believe that if there were a genuine attempt to provide opportunities of permanent employment for workers in this country there would be more effort made by this government to do that. But I'm afraid to say that doesn't appear to be the case. We have a definition of 'casual' which is really an attempt to remove any common law rights that might flow from the Rossato case. We have a definition of 'casual' which allows the employer to deem people to be casual as a subjective test, whereas what we need, if we're going to have a definition in the federal statutes, is an objective test to delineate between casual and permanent. That doesn't exist in this legislation, and that's why we can't support the bill as it stands. As I say, 16 years ago we saw the then Prime Minister John Howard come in here and introduce his dream for the future of industrial relations in this country, and it was entitled Work Choices. That went deeper and broader in relation to changing the provisions of the current law at the time, but some of the elements of this bill, under the cloak of the pandemic, will deregulate protections for working people, will not make it more likely that exploited workers get even the minimum rate of pay in this country, and will actually be unfair to employers who are paying award wages and competing against employers who are not. For those reasons alone, this bill should be rejected. But there is more to be done. Above and beyond this bill—and I speak to the amendment moved by the Manager of Opposition Business—we need to see greater protections. We've seen the fissuring of our labour market. We've seen technological change, which can be very good for productivity but can also be disruptive to the employment conditions of working people in the labour market. We should be providing greater protection where the changes that have taken place have led to people losing wages and people's incomes falling. Think about it: the Uber driver or rider is performing traditional forms of work. The fact they're doing it over an app doesn't make it fundamentally different, and yet they're not paid pursuant to an award, which would pay a minimum wage and provide a classification structure of the comparable levels of responsibility and skills required. That, ultimately, is why this bill cannot be accepted by federal Labor. Again, we are concerned that the government, addicted as it is to deregulating protections for workers in this country, has chosen to seek to enact this legislation, and in some ways this is all the more insulting because the government uses the excuse of a pandemic to do so. For that reason and for the many other reasons outlined by the many Labor members of parliament who have spoken on this legislation, we cannot support the bill, but I do support the amendment moved by Labor. 17:58 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce I would like to thank all of the members for their contributions to the debate on the Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia's Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020. The government obviously takes the view that this bill is a sensible and balanced package that lays the foundations for a fair and efficient industrial relations framework for all Australians. The government recognises that, to rebuild jobs in the economy in a way that best supports everyone's recovery, we need to give businesses the confidence to hire and invest. We need to step out of the way of employees agreeing to higher wages and agreeing to more hours, and we need to ensure the integrity of this system and help businesses to pay their employees correctly. Above all, we need to continue with the co-operative spirit that has been exhibited by employers and employees across the country throughout the pandemic, not the divisive us-versus-them mentality that has been a feature of the industrial relations debate in the past. After approximately 120 hours of meetings with unions, employer associations, experts, employees and businesses, this bill represents a sensible, composite package of changes aimed at achieving these goals. Still, these are modest changes, and even in their modest form they've been derided and subjected to an abundance of falsehoods during the second reading debate and, unfortunately, elsewhere, and I think it's important to take the time just to clarify some of these issues. It has been said—I think the shadow minister for industrial relations put this point, which we would not agree with, last week—that the proposed statutory definition of a casual employee would let an employer engage workers on a permanent basis just by saying that they are casual on the first day of their employment. That is not correct. Under our changes, a casual employee must not have a firm advance commitment to continuing in indefinite work according to an agreed pattern of work. Whether this firm advance commitment is present or not is assessed against the key features specified in the statutory definition and canvassed by the courts: such an ability to elect to accept and reject work, whether the person will work only as required, what the parties agreed to in the employment contract and any entitlement to casual loading that is provided for. To say that the definition gives an employer some unbridled right to simply call an employee a casual is very misleading and totally incorrect. And of course the casual definition is best assessed together with the proposal to give all casual employees a statutory pathway to casual conversion. The shadow minister last criticised that new casual conversion mechanism on the grounds that employers have the right to not offer permanent employment if there are reasonable grounds. These provisions, however, are based on the Fair Work Commission's own casual conversion model clause. The Fair Work Commission spent four years hearing parties' views to develop that clause. What the shadow minister did not mention is that we are proposing a universal and even stronger casual conversion entitlement to be included in the National Employment Standards in the Fair Work Act. Unlike before, all casual employees will have access to this right, rather than only those under certain awards. And, importantly, our casual conversion mechanism contained within this bill will place an obligation on employers to offer employees casual conversion. Under the Fair Work Commission's model clause, employees only have the ability to ask their employer to convert. Our proposed mechanism is clearly an improvement to the present system. It has also been claimed that our proposed changes to allow part-time flexibility in distressed industries is somehow an attack on job security. This is also, if I might say so respectfully, incorrect. It is a fact that over 100,000 part-time employees in the retail and hospitality sectors would prefer to work more hours and are available to work more hours but are not getting those hours. Under the current system, those additional hours are likely to be going to casual employees or, indeed, not going to anyone, and our proposed part-time flexibility provisions make permanent employment more attractive for employers and employees alike by allowing those part-time employees to work more hours—being, of course, hours that they want but are not getting under the current settings. How these reforms to address underemployment and encourage permanent employment can somehow be characterised as an attack on job security is very puzzling. In relation to enterprise bargaining, we are proposing pragmatic and procedural changes to make bargaining faster, simpler and easier. As it stands, the making of enterprise agreements has been in freefall, due mainly to drawn-out approval processes and risks of agreements failing on narrow and technical grounds. Contrary to what some in this chamber have said, the bill makes no changes to existing employee rights to be represented by a union in bargaining. Unions continue, as they should, as the default bargaining representative for employees who are union members, and unions can still apply to be covered by an agreement for which they were a bargaining representative. The bill also does not change the fact that employees must genuinely agree to an agreement. The changes simplify procedural requirements to ensure that genuine agreement requirements continue to be met and also avoid unnecessary delays and complexity in delivering pay rises. The government has listened to the concerns of the crossbench and agreed to remove the temporary changes that would have adapted Labor's existing public interest exception that allows for the Fair Work Commission to approve an agreement that did not meet the better off overall test. Instead, Labor's existing good exception will remain. Enterprise agreements encourage job creation, wage increases and productivity growth. Those opposite have admitted that the current system is simply not working. So it is astounding that there is still opposition to sensible changes to encourage agreement making designed to drive jobs growth, higher wages and higher productivity. There have also been claims that the changes to greenfield agreements will mandate eight-year agreements that do not allow for minimum pay rises. Again, this is completely false. The reforms do not mandate an eight-year nominal expiry date for greenfield agreements. The changes simply give employers and unions the capacity to agree to a term of up to that length of time where construction of the major project covered by the agreement will last that long. Under the changes, a greenfield agreement with a nominal expiry date of more than four years must contain a term providing for annual increases for the nominal life of the agreement—that is to say, wage increases. The bill does not affect an employee's rights to raise issues during the nominal life of the agreement, particularly work health and safety matters. What these changes will do is provide certainty about greenfield agreements to attract global investment, with the potential to secure thousands of Australian jobs. Finally, there have been some claims that our reforms designed to protect workers from the underpayment of wages will make it easier for people to underpay their employees in Victoria and Queensland. Again, this is false. For one thing, the laws in place in Victoria and Queensland are already inoperative to the extent they are inconsistent with the existing Fair Work Act, which establishes the national system both these states voluntarily entered into. Through this bill, the government is introducing tough laws that will protect all underpaid employees covered by the Fair Work Act, not just those in Victoria and Queensland. The proposed criminal offence in the bill, the first ever Commonwealth criminal offence for serious wage underpayments, has been drafted to ensure that unintentional mistakes will not be captured. However, serious consequences will attach to a criminal conviction under this new offence, including automatic disqualification from managing corporations, under the Corporations Law, and the possibility of imprisonment. We are also introducing further reforms to strengthen the compliance and enforcement system, including changes to increase civil penalties to deter underpayments and changes to make it easier for workers to recover unpaid wages. The majority of Australians want an industrial relations system that simply works for them—one that is simple to use, creates opportunities and supports employers and employees working together in the same cooperative and constructive manner that has characterised our entire nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are delivering on our commitment to industrial relations reform and we are making the necessary changes to ensure our economy recovers from the pandemic. This bill supports Australians having access to more jobs, to better jobs, to higher-paying jobs and to more productive jobs. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 203092 The original question was that this bill be read a second time. To this the honourable member for Watson has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The immediate question is that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question. Question agreed to. The SPEAKER 00APG The question is that this bill be now read a second time.

The House divided. [18:12]
(The Speaker—Hon. Tony Smith)

 65 AYES Alexander, JG Allen, K Andrews, KL Archer, BK Bell, AM Broadbent, RE Chester, D Christensen, GR Conaghan, PJ Connelly, V Coulton, M Drum, DK (teller) Dutton, PC Entsch, WG Falinski, JG Fletcher, PW Flint, NJ Frydenberg, JA Gee, AR Gillespie, DA Goodenough, IR Hamilton, GR Hammond, CM Hawke, AG Hunt, GA Irons, SJ Joyce, BT Kelly, C Laming, A Leeser, J Ley, SP Littleproud, D Liu, G Martin, FB McCormack, MF McIntosh, MI Morrison, SJ O'Brien, T O'Dowd, KD Pasin, A Pearce, GB Pitt, KJ Porter, CC Price, ML Ramsey, RE (teller) Robert, SR Sharma, DN Simmonds, J Steggall, Z Stevens, J Sukkar, MS Taylor, AJ Tehan, DT Thompson, P Tudge, AE van Manen, AJ Vasta, RX Wallace, AB Webster, AE Wicks, LE Wilson, RJ Wilson, TR Wyatt, KG Young, T Zimmerman, T 61 NOES Albanese, AN Aly, A Bandt, AP Bird, SL Bowen, CE Burke, AS Burney, LJ Burns, J Butler, MC Butler, TM Byrne, AM Chalmers, JE Chesters, LM Clare, JD Claydon, SC Coker, EA Collins, JM Conroy, PM Dick, MD Dreyfus, MA Elliot, MJ Fitzgibbon, JA Georganas, S Giles, AJ Gosling, LJ Haines, H Hayes, CP Hill, JC Husic, EN Jones, SP Katter, RC Kearney, G Keogh, MJ Khalil, P King, MMH Marles, RD McBain, KL McBride, EM Mulino, D Murphy, PJ Neumann, SK O'Connor, BPJ O'Neil, CE Owens, JA Phillips, FE Plibersek, TJ Rishworth, AL Rowland, MA Ryan, JC (teller) Sharkie, RCC Shorten, WR Smith, DPB Snowdon, WE Stanley, AM (teller) Swanson, MJ Thistlethwaite, MJ Vamvakinou, M Watts, TG Wilkie, AD Wilson, JH Zappia, A 12 PAIRS Andrews, KJ Wells, AS Buchholz, S Champion, ND Coleman, DB Freelander, MR Evans, TM Gorman, P Hastie, AW Mitchell, BK Hogan, KJ King, CF Howarth, LR Leigh, AK Landry, ML Mitchell, RG Marino, NB Payne, AE Morton, B Perrett, GD O'Brien, LS Templeman, SR Wood, JP Thwaites, K

Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.

 Consideration in Detail 62 18:17 Mr BANDT M3C Melbourne by leave—I move Greens amendments (1) to (3) together: (1) Clause 2, pages 2 to 3 (table items 1 to 19), omit the table items, substitute: (2) Schedules 1 to 7, page 5 (line 1) to page 105 (line 16), omit the Schedules, substitute: Schedule 1— Tackling job insecurity Fair Work Act 2009 1 After paragraph 5(8 ) ( a) Insert: (ab) provided by a secure employment order (see Part 2‑7A); and 2 Section 12 Insert: rolling contract basis: see section 21A. 3 Section 12 Insert: rolling contract employee: see section 21A. 4 Section 12 Insert: secure employment arrangement means ongoing employment on a part‑time or full‑time basis. 5 Section 12 Insert: secure employment order: see subsection 306F(1). 6 Section 12 Insert: small business exempt casual: a casual employee is a small business exempt casual if: (a) the employer is a small business employer; and (b) the employee has been employed by the employer for a period of less than 3 months; and (c) the employee had not been employed by the employer at any time in the 3 months prior to the period of employment referred to in paragraph (b) commencing. 7 After section 21 Insert: 21A Meaning of rolling contract employee and rolling contract basis (1) An employee who is employed on a rolling contract basis is a rolling contract employee. (2) An employee is employed by an employer on a rolling contract basis if: (a) the contract of employment ends on a specified date or at the end of a specified period; and (b) the employee has previously been employed by the employer under such a contract; and (c) the current and previous contracts relate to the same kind of work. (3) For the purposes of paragraph (2) (a), a contract may end on a specified date or at the end of a specified period even if a term of the contract has the effect that the contract might be terminated before that date or before the end of that period. 8 After paragraph 43(2 ) ( a) Insert: (ab) those terms and conditions arising from a secure employment order (see Part 2‑7A); and 9 After paragraph 172(1 ) ( c) Insert: (ca) matters pertaining to secure employment arrangements, including moving from casual employment, or from employment on a rolling contract basis, to secure employment arrangements; 10 After Part 2 - 7 Insert: Part 2 - 7A—Secure employment arrangements Division 1—Introduction 306A Guide to this Part This Part provides for transition to, and maintenance of, secure employment arrangements (i.e. ongoing employment on a part‑time or full‑time basis). Division 1 deals with preliminary matters. Division 2 provides that offers of employment must usually be on the basis of secure employment arrangements. Division 3 deals with requests for secure employment arrangements by existing employees. These include the following: (a) requests to change from casual employment to secure employment arrangements; (b) requests to change from employment on a rolling contract basis to secure employment arrangements. Division 4 provides for the making of secure employment orders by the FWC for employees or prospective employees. 306B Meanings of employee and employer In this Part, employee means a national system employee, and employer means a national system employer. Division 2—Employment must usually be offered on an ongoing basis only 306C Employment must usually be offered on an ongoing basis only (1) An employer must not make an offer of employment if the employment is not a secure employment arrangement, unless, at the time the offer is made, serious business reasons relating to the specific needs of the employer's business justify the employment not being a secure employment arrangement. Note: This section is a civil remedy provision (see Part 4‑1). (2) This section does not apply in relation to an offer of employment as a small business exempt casual. Division 3—Requests for secure employment arrangements 306D Requests to change from casual employment to secure employment arrangements (1) A casual employee may request the employer, in writing, for a secure employment arrangement. (2) An employee organisation that is entitled to represent casual employees may, if asked to do so by one or more of the employees, request the employer, in writing, for a secure employment arrangement for that employee or those employees. (3) The employer must give the employee or organisation a written response to the request within 21 days, stating whether the employer grants or refuses the request. (4) If the employer refuses the request, the employer's written response must include details of the reasons for the refusal. (5) This section does not apply in relation to a small business exempt casual. 306E Requests to change from employment on rolling contract basis to secure employment arrangements (1) A rolling contract employee may request the employer, in writing, for a secure employment arrangement. (2) An employee organisation that is entitled to represent rolling contract employees may, if asked to do so by one or more of the employees, request the employer, in writing, for a secure employment arrangement for that employee or those employees. (3) The employer must give the employee or organisation a written response to the request within 21 days, stating whether the employer grants or refuses the request. (4) If the employer refuses the request, the employer's written response must include details of the reasons for the refusal. Division 4—Secure employment orders 306F FWC may make secure employment order (1) The FWC may, on application in accordance with section 306G, make any order (a secure employment order) it considers appropriate to provide, or to maintain, secure employment arrangements for the person or persons to whom the order will apply. (2) A secure employment order may apply to: (a) any one of the following persons (a relevant person): (i) a casual employee; (ii) a rolling contract employee; (iii) a prospective employee who, if employed at the time the application for the order was made, would be a casual employee or rolling contract employee; (iv) an employee who already has a secure employment arrangement; (v) a prospective employee who, if employed at the time the application for the order was made, would have a secure employment arrangement; or (b) two or more relevant persons; or (c) a class of relevant persons. (3) Without limiting paragraph (2) (c), the class may be described by reference to one or more of the following: (a) a particular industry or part of an industry; (b) a particular kind of work; (c) a particular type of employment; (d) a particular employer. (4) A secure employment order must specify the employer or employers who are required to comply with the order, being the employer or employers of the relevant person, relevant persons or class of relevant persons to whom the order applies. (5) Despite subsection (2), a secure employment order cannot apply to a small business exempt casual. However, if the FWC is satisfied that a small business is continuously engaging employees as small business exempt casuals for a purpose other than the genuine operational needs of the business, a secure employment order may apply to those small business exempt casuals. 306G Application for secure employment order (1) Application for a secure employment order in relation to a request refused under section 306D or 306E may be made by: (a) if the employee made the request—any of the following: (i) the employee; (ii) an organisation that is entitled to represent the interests of the employee, if asked by the employee to make the application; (iii) the Age Discrimination Commissioner, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner or the Sex Discrimination Commissioner; or (b) if an organisation made the request—the organisation. (2) Application for a secure employment order otherwise than in relation to a request refused under section 306D or 306E may be made by an organisation that is (or, for prospective employees, that would be) entitled to represent the interests of the relevant person, relevant persons or class of relevant persons to whom the order will apply. 306H Matters for FWC to consider In deciding whether, or the terms on which, to make a secure employment order, the FWC must have regard to the following: (a) that all employees should be entitled to be ongoing employees, unless there are serious countervailing business reasons relating to the specific needs of an employer's business; (b) if the application was made under subsection 306G(2)—whether the order should apply to the same employees and prospective employees, and require the same employers to comply with it, as are covered by a relevant modern award; (c) any other matter the FWC considers relevant. 306J Content of orders affecting more than one person (1) Orders providing or maintaining secure employment arrangements for more than one relevant person may include one or more of the following: (a) an order requiring that all the relevant persons who are casual employees or rolling contract employees be offered or be subject to a secure employment arrangement; (b) an order providing for a process by which all the relevant persons who have been employed by the employer for a certain period of time can elect to or be subject to a secure employment arrangement; (c) an order specifying the terms of secure employment arrangements under which casual loadings would be phased out over a period of time so as to avoid a drop in employee remuneration; (d) an order implementing secure employment arrangements in such stages (as provided in the order) as the FWC thinks appropriate; (e) an order requiring the employer to provide information to the FWC for the purposes of monitoring the staged implementation of secure employment arrangements; (f) an order regulating the engagement of prospective employees on a casual basis, a rolling contract basis or a secure employment basis; (g) an order regulating the engagement of employees currently employed on a fixed‑term contract basis, where such employees may in the future becoming rolling contract employees; (h) an order regulating the employer's use of arrangements that are not secure work arrangements in circumstances in which secure work arrangements could be used. (2) Subsection (1) does not limit the orders that the FWC may make under this section. 306K Implementation of secure employment order in stages A secure employment order may implement secure employment arrangements in such stages (as provided in the order) as the FWC thinks appropriate. 306L Contravening a secure employment order An employer must not contravene a secure employment order. Note: This section is a civil remedy provision (see Part 4‑1). 306M Inconsistency with modern awards and enterprise agreements A term of a modern award or an enterprise agreement has no effect in relation to an employee to the extent that it is less beneficial to the employee than a term of a secure employment order that applies to the employee. 11 Subsection 539(2) (after table item 9) Insert: 12 After paragraph 557(2 ) ( f) Insert: (fa) section 306C (which deals with offers of non‑secure employment); (fb) section 306L (which deals with contraventions of secure employment orders); 13 After paragraph 557C(3 ) ( f) Insert: (fa) section 306C (which deals with offers of non‑secure employment); (fb) section 306L (which deals with contraventions of secure employment orders); 14 After paragraph 558B(7 ) ( f) Insert: (fa) section 306C (which deals with offers of non‑secure employment); (fb) section 306L (which deals with contraventions of secure employment orders); 15 After paragraph 576(1 ) ( f) Insert: (fa) secure employment arrangements (Part 2‑7A); 16 After paragraph 653(1 ) ( c) Insert: (ca) conduct research into the operation of Part 2‑7A in relation to requests for secure employment arrangements; and 17 Subparagraph 653(1 ) ( d ) ( i) Repeal the subparagraph, substitute: (i) the circumstances in which such requests are made; and 18 After paragraph 675(2 ) ( e) Insert: (ea) a secure employment order; 19 At the end of subsection 716(1) Add: ; (g) section 306C (which deals with offers of non‑secure employment); (h) a term of a secure employment order. (3) Schedules 1 to 7, page 5 (line 1) to page 105 (line 16), omit the Schedules, substitute: Schedule 2— Rights for all workers Fair Work Act 2009 1 Subsection 9(5B) Repeal the subsection, substitute: (5B) Part 6‑4B contains special provisions about workers. It allows the FWC to make minimum entitlements orders that extend provisions of this Act, modern awards or enterprise agreements to workers. It also allows a worker who has been bullied at work to apply for the FWC for an order to stop the bullying. 2 Section 12 (at the end of the definition of employee ) Add: Note 4: See also Division 1A of Part 6‑4B (minimum entitlements orders). 3 Section 12 (at the end of the definition of employer ) Add: Note 4: See also Division 1A of Part 6‑4B (minimum entitlements orders). 4 Section 12 Insert: minimum entitlements order: see subsection 789FBA(1). 5 Section 12 (at the end of the definition of national system employee ) Add: Note 3: See also Division 1A of Part 6‑4B (minimum entitlements orders). 6 Section 12 (at the end of the definition of national system employer ) Add: Note 3: See also Division 1A of Part 6‑4B (minimum entitlements orders). 7 Paragraph 576(1 ) ( q) Repeal the paragraph, substitute: (q) workers (Part 6-4B). 8 Paragraph 675(2 ) ( j) Before "Part 6-4B", insert "Division 2 of". 9 Part 6 ‑4B (heading) Repeal the heading, substitute: Part 6 - 4B—Workers 10 Section 789FA Repeal the section, substitute: 789FA Guide to this Part This Part contains special provisions about workers. Division 1A provides for the making of minimum entitlements orders by FWC that extend provisions of this Act, or modern awards or enterprise agreements, to workers. Division 2 allows a worker who has been bullied at work to apply to the FWC for an order to stop the bullying. 11 Before Division 2 of Part 6 ‑4B Insert: Division 1A—Minimum entitlements orders 789FBA Minimum entitlements orders (1) The FWC may make an order (a minimum entitlements order) that: (a) the provisions of this Act specified in the order; or (b) a modern award specified in the order; or (c) an enterprise agreement specified in the order; apply to work performed by the workers to whom the order applies for the constitutionally‑covered businesses required to comply with the order. Workers to whom the order may apply (2) A minimum entitlements order may apply (subject to subsections (4) and (5)) to: (a) a worker; or (b) two or more workers; or (c) a class of workers. (3) Without limiting paragraph (2) (c), the class may be described by reference to one or more of the following: (a) a particular industry or part of an industry; (b) a particular kind of work; (c) workers who perform work for a particular constitutionally‑covered business. (4) A minimum entitlements order must not apply to a worker unless the FWC is satisfied that the worker's terms and conditions as affected by the order will, considered on an overall basis, be no less favourable than the worker's terms and conditions before the order is made. (5) A minimum entitlements order must not apply to a worker who carries out work as: (a) a student gaining work experience; or (b) a volunteer (within the meaning of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011). Order must specify businesses required to comply with order (6) A minimum entitlements order must specify, for each worker to whom the order applies: (a) the constitutionally‑covered business or businesses; or (b) the class of constitutionally‑covered businesses; required to comply with the order in relation to any work performed for the constitutionally‑covered business by the worker. (7) Without limiting subsection (6) a class of constitutionally‑covered businesses may be described by reference to either or both of the following: (a) a particular industry or part of an industry; (b) a particular kind of work. 789FBB When does a worker perform work for a constitutionally ‑covered business? (1) A worker performs work for a constitutionally‑covered business for the purposes of a minimum entitlements order, if: (a) the worker performs work directly or indirectly for the constitutionally‑covered business; or (b) the worker performs work directly for another entity, and the constitutionally‑covered business carries on a business of arranging for workers, including the worker, to perform work for that other entity. (2) Without limiting paragraph (1) (a), a worker indirectly performs work for a constitutionally‑covered business if the work benefits the constitutionally‑covered business, irrespective of the legal relationship (contractual or otherwise) between the worker and the constitutionally‑covered business. (3) If, because of the operation of subsection (1), a worker performs the same work for 2 or more constitutionally‑covered businesses, the FWC may specify any or all of those constitutionally‑covered businesses for the worker in a minimum entitlements order that applies to the worker. 789FBC Effect of a minimum entitlements order (1) If the FWC makes a minimum entitlements order, the provisions, modern award or enterprise agreement specified in the order apply to work performed by a worker to whom the order applies for a constitutionally‑covered business required to comply with the order in relation to that work, as if: (a) any reference to an employee (within the ordinary meaning of that expression), or a national system employee, also included a reference to the worker; and (b) any reference to an employer (within the ordinary meaning of that expression), or a national system employer, also included a reference to the constitutionally‑covered business. Example: If a minimum entitlements order specifies a modern award, the award applies to the worker, in relation to work performed for the constitutionally‑covered business, as if the worker were an employee. The obligation to comply with the modern award is in section 45 (in Part 2‑1). (2) The provisions, modern award or enterprise agreement specified in the order apply as referred to in subsection (1): (a) from the time or times specified in the order (which must not be earlier than the time the order is made); and (b) with such other modifications (if any) as are specified in the order. 789FBD Application for a minimum entitlements order The FWC may make a minimum entitlements order only on application by: (a) a worker to whom the order will apply; or (b) an organisation that is entitled to represent the industrial interests of the worker, workers or class of workers to whom the order will apply; or (c) an organisation that would, if a worker to whom the order will apply were instead an employee, be entitled to represent the industrial interests of the worker. 789FBE Matters for FWC to consider In deciding whether, or the terms on which, to make a minimum entitlements order, the FWC must as far as practicable give effect to the principle that all workers should be entitled to minimum terms and conditions that are no less favourable than those of employees performing the same work. This bill should be opposed. This bill should be opposed outright because it's a bill that will let job insecurity spread like wildfire across the country. That's why I and the Greens voted against it for the second reading and will vote against it in the Senate as well. This bill just needs to be stopped If we are going to pass an IR bill in this place then what we should do is pass an IR bill that outlaws insecure work. That what these amendments would do. These amendments would not just outlaw insecure work but they would put in place a framework that means we can give equal rights to all workers in this country. I especially want to draw attention to those parts of the amendments which are found in amendment (3). There has been, rightly, across this country, attention focused on the fact that because some people are called contractors and some people work in different work arrangements they get paid less than the minimum wage and they get no sick pay or annual leave. It's been said by some on the government side that this is too difficult to fix because it's too complex an issue. Instead of moving the bill which the government proposes, which would entrench inequality in the workplace, these amendments will get rid of it by putting all workers on an equal footing. I want to speak about this, because it shows that it can be done. It is not too complicated to do; it can be done. These amendments introduce a legislative presumption that all workers, whether or not they're classified as employees, should get the minimum conditions as if they were employees. That's the presumption. Under these amendments, it is then left up to the Fair Work Commission to decide, sector by sector, employer by employer, how to extend those employee-like entitlements to the workers without changing their employment status. That way, for anyone who's an Uber driver, a contract worker or in any other form of employment, if the Fair Work Commission says you should be entitled to at least the minimum conditions as though you were an employee, then you get them. This should be unobjectionable, and it deals with one of the government's fundamental points that it has raised at every question time so far—that is, it's too difficult to impose a blanket rule. Well, let's do what has been in the Greens bill, which was presented in this place several years ago and which today I'm moving as an amendment to completely replace the government's bill—not add to it, because the government's bill is unsalvageable, but replace it. Let's put in place a system that says everyone is entitled to get at least minimum conditions, and it is up to the Fair Work Commission to decide how that operates for individual employers or in individual industries. This will allow the Fair Work Commission to say, for example, 'Uber, Deliveroo, or whatever service you're working for, have got to pay you the equivalent of the minimum wage as though you are an employee, so you're no worse off.' It's effectively a no-worse-off test if the commission chooses to implement it. The point of moving these amendments is to say, firstly, the government's bill should be rejected; secondly, we should be tackling insecure work and the fact that so many people work for less than the minimum wage and don't get wages and conditions; and, thirdly, it's not too complicated. There is a fix. Change the law, introduce a new presumption and then ask the Fair Work Commission to roll it out on an industry-by-industry or sector-by-sector basis. If the government continues to maintain that it is too tough to give workers in this country the minimum wage and minimum conditions, well there's an answer. It has been before the parliament for several years in the form of the Greens bill, and I'm moving it here as a replacement for the government's bill. Because, instead of entrenching insecure work and allowing it to spread like wildfire, we should be outlawing insecure work and we should be putting all workers on an equal footing with regard to the minimum. If this amendment passes and replaces the government's bill, then what we could say is that no-one will fall below the basic minimums in this country. No-one will get less if they're an employee, and it will be up to the Fair Work Commission to work out how that is applied on an industry-by-industry or a sector-by-sector basis. I say to the government: there is an answer. The answer is the Greens bill. Get rid of your own bill, replace it with this, and we will start to stamp out insecure work and put all workers on an equal footing. In one final matter, this is just to indicate that the member for Clark has asked me to note, for the record, that he also supports these amendments. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 203092 The question is that the amendments moved by the member for Melbourne be disagreed to. Question agreed to. 18:23 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce I present a supplementary explanatory memorandum to the bill and—by leave—I move government amendments (1) to (5) together: (1) Clause 2, page 2 (table items 5 to 9), omit the table items, substitute: (2) Schedule 3, heading to Division 1, page 43 (line 2), omit the heading. (3) Schedule 3, items 17 to 23, page 43 (line 4) to page 44 (line 10), omit the items. (4) Schedule 3, Division 2, page 46 (lines 5 to 20), omit the Division. (5) Schedule 7, item 1, page 102 (lines 19 to 22), omit subclause 50(4). These amendments will remove measures in the bill that were to effect a change to section 189 of the Fair Work Act 2009. That section is the existing exceptional circumstances provision, which was included in the Fair Work Act by Labor in 2009. It already enables the Fair Work Commission to approve enterprise agreements that do not pass the better off overall test in exceptional circumstances. The bill before the parliament today originally adapted this existing provision to take account of the exceptional circumstances that some businesses have suffered because of COVID-19. It provided that the Fair Work Commission might approve enterprise agreements that did not pass the BOOT where it was satisfied that it was appropriate to do so, taking into account all of the circumstances, including the extent of employee support for the agreement, the impact on the business of the COVID-19 pandemic, and safeguards, which were not explicitly mentioned in the current law under Labor's existing exemption. The removal of that exemption is based on the fact that, having gone through rounds of consultation with the crossbench, the government considers, having listened to the crossbench—particularly to statements made by One Nation senators to us—that the best prospect for the pragmatic, sensible reforms in the overwhelming part of this bill to be moved through the Senate was to remove this modest exemption to section 189, which is what these amendments achieve. 18:25 Mr BURKE DYW Watson We support the amendments that are being moved by the government, but it does need to be noted that the government is now moving an amendment to a section of the bill that the government has spent two months claiming wasn't there. When the bill was introduced—that day—we made clear that this section constituted a pay cut. That day, and in every question time that followed, we made clear that the impact of removing the better off overall test was that workers would no longer be guaranteed to be better off. It's not complex—it's a little bit obvious—but, every time we raised this, we had two responses from the government. The first was to say, 'That's not true.' If it's not true, it does beg the question of why we're now having an amendment to remove that section. And the second thing that was raised was to say, 'Well, that clause is already in the bill.' If it's already in the bill, then why is there an amendment? An amendment, by definition, does something different. If you're not doing something different, it's not an amendment. You can't stand up and move that the legislation remain as it is and introduce a bill that does that. That's not an amendment to a bill. Yet we have spent two months in the strangest of arguments, where there's a real issue out there for Australian workers, where we had legislation before the parliament that, if implemented, was going to allow a situation where their base rate of pay could not be changed but where every single penalty rate, every shift allowance and every overtime rate could be gone, and the normal protection to prevent that from happening would already have been taken away from them. That's what we had for the whole of summer. I would remind the government that, the day after they introduced this bill, we moved a suspension of standing orders to have the bill removed because of this provision, and the government voted against that. The government voted that they needed to keep this clause here, and they moved between the two arguments that I've referred to. But there was a third argument that came up from time to time, and it was advanced not by the Leader of the House but by the Prime Minister. When he got caught in the corner from time to time by the fact that this is clearly what the legislation was designed to do, he then defended it on the basis that that's the way to create jobs. At its core, I think this is the debate that we're in. We're about to find ourselves, in the coming months, in a period—we don't know how fast—of some form of recovery. That's where we all want to be. All the indicators are that that's where the economy will be heading, and that is good. But, on the pathway of that recovery, there are two different views as to how you get there. One view is that you give business as much money as possible, and that means they will simply invest across the economy and all will be well. The other view is that you need to give workers the capacity to spend. The economy is going to be more dependent on domestic demand than it has been at any other time in our lifetimes. If people don't have the confidence to spend, the next few years, on the other side of this pandemic, are not going to look nearly as good as they should. This bill in the form it's in right now, where the amendment has not yet been carried, creates a real danger that people won't have that confidence, because you don't have the confidence to spend if you don't have the confidence that your take-home pay will be retained. It's not simply keeping your take-home pay at the current rate or better; it's knowing that you're not going to be subject to future cuts that gives you the confidence to spend rather than to hoard and save because you're in fear of what might be coming next. So, in this debate, we've been at the core not simply of the old-style debate of trying to get a better deal for Labor versus capital; we've actually been in something very specific to the other side of this pandemic. If people have the confidence to spend, the recovery is going to be that much better. But, if the approach is to attack wages, to attack superannuation and to attack the payment system, that won't only hit the recipients of those payments— (Time expired) The DEPUTY SPEAKER 203092 The question is that the amendments be agreed to. I call the Manager of Opposition Business. Mr BURKE DYW The impact of that won't only be to the recipient of the wages or the entitlements; the hit will be to the Australian economy across the board. I would urge the government: it's a really silly debate to be in. This is not the only element of the bill that depresses wages. There are a series of elements of this bill that weaken bargaining power or provide for circumstances where people who currently, as part-timers, receive overtime will no longer be able to receive it or where very modest pay rises, such as $1 a year, can be locked into agreements for a period of eight years. These sorts of challenges are still in the bill. So I simply say to the government: you're a bit late getting there, in that we offered to get to this point the day after the bill was introduced, but we're there. But, if the government's intention is to have a bill that no longer cuts wages, they're not there yet. We support this amendment, but this bill still needs a tremendous amount of work, and it is not yet a bill that we could support. Question agreed to. Bill, as amended, agreed to. Third Reading 70 18:32 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. COMMITTEES 71 COMMITTEES Membership 71 18:33 The DEPUTY SPEAKER 74046 Mr Speaker has received advice from the Chief Government Whip nominating members to be members of certain committees. 18:33 Mr HOWARTH 247742 Petrie by leave—I move: That: (1) Mr C. Kelly be discharged from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, the Standing Committee on Economics and the Standing Committee on Industry, Innovation, Science and Resources; (2) Mr Simmonds and Mr Hamilton be appointed as members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement; (3) Mr Ted O'Brien be appointed a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties; (4) Mr Irons be appointed a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade; (5) Mr Hamilton be appointed a member of the Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training; (6) Mr L. S. O'Brien and Mr Pasin be appointed as members of the Select Committee on Mental Health and Suicide Prevention. Question agreed to. BILLS 71 BILLS Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 71

Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020

Second Reading 71 18:34 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton I speak this evening on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020 and I move: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House notes that the Government has damaged the quality of Australia's world-class post-secondary education system by: (1) cutting billions from universities and slashing research funding; (2) making it harder and more expensive for Australian students to get a university education; and (3) failing to develop a long-term policy for the Australian post-secondary education system." This bill before the chamber amends the Higher Education Support Act to insert a definition of academic freedom and freedom of speech, as recommended by the French review. In November 2018, the Minister for Education announced an independent review into freedom of speech in higher education. The well-respected Hon. Robert French, AC, former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, was tasked with undertaking that review. He did a very thorough job on the review. The review actually found that 'claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated'. That was from the former Chief Justice of the High Court, Robert French. He went on to say that there is no evidence of a free speech crisis on campus. The review did note that the rules, codes and policies in universities would benefit from some clarification. The principal recommendation from the review was that protection of freedoms be strengthened within the university sector on a voluntary basis. It noted that amending the act was not essential. So, despite the Henny Pennies—all of those people running around; especially a few on the coalition backbench, or someone who recently departed the coalition backbench—all of the universities have agreed to voluntarily adopt the French model code. Yet here we are with legislation to amend the act—why? Not because it is necessary. The French report made that very, very clear. The government's report—the French report—made it clear. It is not because freedom of speech in universities is under threat and not because universities are calling for this legislation or crying out for this legislation. Legislation to amend the act is before the House today because of a deal done with those champions of academic rigour, the One Nation political party. In order to ram through the coalition's job-ready university reforms in the Senate with the essential support of One Nation, the government agreed to introduce this unnecessary legislation to protect freedom of speech—that is not actually under threat—in universities. Remember the job-ready university reforms? They're the ones that right now are making it harder and more expensive for the class of 2020 to go university. As if they haven't had it tough enough already! Overall, the class of 2020 will pay seven per cent more out of their own pockets to go to university, and they're the class that graduated during a pandemic. Reportedly late last year, the then education minister said he was going to tie university funding to each university's progress in defending academic freedom. Apparently, the coalition government is very concerned about freedom of speech, but, let's be honest—it's not everyone's speech. I remind you of Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a young Australian Muslim woman. She was born in Sudan and her parents came to Brisbane way back in 1992 as skilled migrants making a great contribution to the country. They still live in my electorate of Moreton. Yassmin, even though she was born in Sudan, is a product of Brisbane's Southside. Yassmin was 18 months old when she came to Australia with her parents, so she is Australian to the bootstraps. She attended the Islamic College of Brisbane—in the electorate of Rankin, just on the border—and John Paul College for high school. She went on to study mechanical engineering at the University of Queensland and graduated with first-class honours in 2011. Yassmin, if you meet her or read her books, is one bright cookie and a great asset to Australia. Yassmin was extremely active in the Southside community. As a high school student, with two of her friends, she founded a group called Youth Without Borders. She was named Young Queenslander of the Year in 2010 and Queensland's Young Australian of the Year in 2015. In late 2016, then foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop appointed her to the Council for Australian-Arab Relations. Everyone saw the quality of Yassmin. I am very proud of Yassmin. I know how proud her family are of her as well. Sadly, Yassmin left Australia in 2017, driven out of this country after posting a simple comment on social media. As with all posts on social media, not everyone will agree with Yassmin's post. Her post was not a threat to anyone. It did not attack anyone's race, religion or beliefs. It certainly was not dangerous misinformation like that recently posted by a former coalition backbencher, who at the time the Prime Minister said was doing a great job. Yet the then minister for immigration, now the Minister for Home Affairs, criticised Yassmin's post on social media. Yassmin actually apologised for the post, saying on social media: It was brought to my attention that my last post was disrespectful, and for that I apologise unreservedly. A fair-minded person might say that would be the end of it. But for the member for Hughes and others, who don't seem to know how to do an apology for a post that misleads or potentially could harm someone, that apology by Yassmin made no difference. Yassmin was mercilessly trolled. She was subjected to daily death threats. She was sent videos of beheadings. She was sent videos of rapes, with some suggestions that the same could happen to her. Yassmin Abdel-Magied was the topic of commentators on national media platforms. A new phrase has even been coined: 'getting Yassmin-ed'. I have some questions for the coalition government, who are intent on protecting freedom of speech in this legislation: Was Yassmin accorded freedom of speech? Was Yassmin allowed the freedom to express her speech on social media? I have seen some supposed freedom-of-speech champions opposite, but, sadly, they were silent when it came to Yassmin. No-one would say that she was afforded freedom to express her speech; she definitely wasn't. Yassmin is a strong young woman who was doing great things in her community, in Australia and around the world. She was shut down and thrown out. I wish Yassmin well and hope to see her back on the south side of Brisbane soon, making a great contribution to Australia. We know that hate speech is rampant on social media, and I commend the members of parliament that have today taken some steps towards clamping down on that. Hate speech has a sinister motive and, sometimes, catastrophic outcomes. We know that right-wing extremism in Australia is real. The threat is growing. It is a risk to public safety and to our multicultural society. Mr Howarth interjecting— Mr PERRETT HVP To the minister at the table: if you would like to make a contribution, I'm happy to take your interjections. I am not condemning the Liberal Party; I said 'right-wing extremism in Australia is real'. If you're supporting that, I'm happy to get that on the Hansard record. We know that right-wing extremism needs attention from the Morrison government. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has just had referred to it an inquiry into extremism, including far-Right extremism. This referral was not an initiative of the Morrison government, despite warnings from security heads; it was Labor who wrote to the Morrison government late last year proposing an inquiry into extremism. I am pleased that the Minister for Home Affairs joined the shadow minister for home affairs to finalise the terms of reference for that referral. The committee will consider: changes that could be made to Australia's Counter Terrorism Strategy in relation to preventing radicalisation to extremist views; further steps that the Commonwealth could take to disrupt and deter hate speech; and the role of social media, encrypted communications platforms and the dark web in allowing extremists to communicate and organise. I know that is a difficult patch, and I know the government is stepping up in some of those areas. So that is freedom-of-speech reform that is needed. The amendments this bill makes to the Higher Education Support Act are not needed. The French review made it clear that claims of a freedom-of-speech crisis on Australian campuses are fake news; they are not substantiated. This bill is the government's payoff for a vote from the One Nation political party to support their cruel policy that has made it harder and more expensive for kids to go to university this year. The policy has increased the student fee load and cut funding from the Commonwealth. Treasurer Frydenberg gets the savings while young Australians pay more. How is that fair in these COVID times on university campuses? Basically, overall our universities will receive less funding to teach students. Universities are facing a $16 billion projected revenue drop from international students being locked out. Our universities are important, but this Morrison government has neglected them during this pandemic and with the consequence of overseas students being locked out. The Prime Minister changed the rules three times to stop universities having access to JobKeeper, and, very predictably, university workers have lost their jobs. Some 17,000 university workers have gone, and counting—not just our brilliant researchers and academics but cafeteria workers, librarians, administrative staff, groundkeepers and cleaners—in city universities, sandstone universities, regional universities and bush universities, where they're a significant part of the culture and the economy. I know that it's particularly bad for the bush. The Morrison government have turned their back on 17,000 Australian workers. The effect of the government's Job-ready Graduates policy—and remember that I'm talking on this bill today because this bill is a pay-off for the One Nation vote on the Job-ready Graduates bill—along with the refusal of the government to assist universities by giving them access to JobKeeper, has hit universities very hard and it's making struggling students pay more for their courses. Late last year I, with the shadow minister for education, met with some of the class of 2020 from my electorate. Sadly, these young people were well aware of the costs of their courses going up and up. It was worrying some of them. Some had their dreams readjusted and some had their dreams crushed. Sadly, one student who had considered pursuing a particular course of study actually changed her allocation to a different course because she was worried about how she would pay the higher course fees. These cruel Morrison government policies have real-life consequences. I have put a second reading amendment forward. As I said, the bill before the House today is unnecessary. There is no freedom-of-speech crisis in Australian universities, but there is a crisis. I urge the minister for education to turn his attention to positive reforms that will encourage students into university and assist universities through this pandemic so that job losses can be stemmed. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 74046 Is the amendment seconded? Mr Burns 278522 I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak. 18:47 Ms HAMMOND 80072 Curtin I'm pleased to speak in support of the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. The bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 by implementing recommendations arising from the Report of the independent review of freedom of speech in Australian higher education providers undertaken by the Hon. Robert French AC, former chief justice of the High Court of Australia, and published in March 2019. The proposed amendments insert a new definition of 'academic freedom' into the HESA and replace the existing term 'free intellectual inquiry' in relevant provisions with the allied concepts of 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom'. These conceptual and definitional changes align the language of relevant provisions in the HESA with those reflected in the model code recommended by the French review, which universities have agreed to adopt. The French review was initiated in November 2018 by then education minister, Dan Tehan, to review freedom of speech and freedom of intellectual inquiry in higher education. The term 'academic freedom' was not referred to in the terms of reference by virtue of the fact that this phrase is not used in any of the legislative instruments in Australia at the moment, including the higher education standards act and the Higher Education Standards Framework. The language which is currently used is 'free intellectual inquiry'. This term, undefined in legislation, was found by the French review to be a term of uncertain meaning and, because of this uncertainty, its interpretation and effectiveness was made difficult, particularly with respect to its relationship to freedom of expression generally, freedom of expression as an aspect of academic freedom and academic freedom generally. The French review noted that the uncertainty in language has led to a diversity of policies and practices at higher education providers. While the French review held that there was no free speech crisis on university campuses, it found that the diversity in language of a range of policies and rules gives rise to unnecessary risks to freedom of speech and to academic freedom, and that even a small number of high-profile incidents can have adverse reputation effects on the sector as a whole. It is because of this uncertainty and diversity that the French review made two interrelated recommendations. The first was that freedom of speech and academic freedom in the sector could be protected more effectively by the adoption of a statement of principles, preferably operationalised by an overarching code. Such a code would be pitched at a level sufficient to allow for reasonable flexibility in its application but providing greater guidance to decision-makers and others than presently exists. It also recommended that minor amendments be made to the HES Act and the Higher Education Standards Framework to remove the reference to free intellectual inquiry, to distinguish freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to define academic freedom by reference to generally accepted elements. Universities are in the process of implementing the model code and this bill enacts the second of the recommendations coming from the French review. In designing the model code and putting forward a definition of academic freedom, the French review noted that the ideal of academic freedom can be traced back to Socrates defence in Plato's The Apology of Socrates. While it doesn't contain a detailed analysis of the history, the French review does make the observation that debate and discussion about how it should be defined, its meaning and application have been present for some time, including within our very own history of higher education in Australia. Drawing all of these strands together and identifying the generally accepted elements, the French review made a recommendation that the definition of academic freedom contained the following elements: • the freedom of academic staff to teach, discuss, and research and to disseminate and publish the results of their research; • the freedom of academic staff and students to engage in intellectual inquiry, to express their opinions and beliefs, and to contribute to public debate, in relation to their subjects of study and research; • the freedom of academic staff and students to express their opinions in relation to the higher education provider in which they work or are enrolled; • the freedom of academic staff, without constraint imposed by reason of their employment by the university, to make lawful public comment on any issue in their personal capacities; • the freedom of academic staff to participate in professional or representative academic bodies; • the freedom of students to participate in student societies and associations. • the autonomy of the higher education provider in relation to the choice of academic courses and offerings, the ways in which they are taught and the choices of research activities and the ways in which they are conducted. The French review did include an additional clause about the freedom of academic staff: • the freedom of academic staff, without constraint imposed by reason of their employment by the university, to make lawful public comment on any issue in their personal capacities; But following a recommendation by the University Chancellors Council, in consultation with the Hon. Robert French, this element of the definition was considered to fit more appropriately within the ambit of a broader societal freedom, referred to in the model code as freedom of speech rather than within the narrower concept of academic freedom. As such, this element has been retained, but as part of the applied concept of freedom of expression within the definition. I would like to conclude with a number of observations. The first is that I agree with Justice French's conclusions that there is not currently a free speech crisis on campus. Secondly, the fact that issues and challenges have arisen over the last couple of years is nothing new. They have waxed and waned for decades—if not centuries. As beautifully stated by French: There was no golden age when the scope of freedom of speech and academic freedom in the higher education sector was settled under a common consensus. There are a lot of different pressures on the modern Australian university: pressures on academics, pressures on professional staff, pressures on students and pressures on management governance. From the perspective of a university as an institution, reputation and standing are paramount to what they do. But, given that they are not simple organisations servicing a singular community, they need to balance the complexity of different interests and different viewpoints, and differing needs and demands. For example, universities are increasingly required to provide a level of pastoral support and care for students, which I fully support. This sits alongside one of their overriding goals, which is to provide an education where students are supposed to be—or, at the very least, become over the course of their studies—independent learners who are self-directed and fully responsible for themselves, their lives and their studies. The practical consequence of the increasing demands to provide pastoral support for students is that universities face the challenge of balancing the allowances, flexibility and exceptions that some students may need with the university's duty and responsibility to ensure that the person who ultimately graduates is a fully independent learner who has mastered the required level of knowledge and skills attached to the particular qualification they are awarded. Likewise, all universities must, at law, provide an environment which is safe from harm—harm being both physical and psychological harm. Again, I support this in its entirety. I also note that this sits alongside a key plank of universities and university education, which is that they are places where people are supposed to be challenged and tested, where they may come across ideas or information that confronts them. Criminal law students will come across cases, the facts of which can be very disturbing—likewise, history students and literature students. The practical consequence is again that universities face the challenges of ensuring that staff and students are safe whilst simultaneously ensuring that the requisite information is conveyed so as to ensure that students develop the knowledge and understanding that is required of them. If the universities do not get the balance right—that is, not providing a good education or not providing a safe and supportive environment—they can be subject to criticism, reputational damage and potential legal action on both fronts. The same goes for academic freedom. When an academic publishes or says something that attracts derision, criticism or attack, it is not simply the academic who comes under attack; it can often lead to an attack on the institution itself. Statements made by university management at these times—frequently, 'This is not the university position, but it is the view of the particular academic'—are often misunderstood or derided, either as not being supportive enough of the academic or being too weak and not strong enough to stand up for what is right. The institution's management have an obligation to protect the reputation and standing of the institution, but this can be extremely difficult when there is a lack of understanding about what academic freedom means. Likewise, the institutional autonomy of a university, which is part of academic freedom, can come into conflict with the academic freedom of an individual academic. Both clauses are within the definition, but they can come into conflict. An institution can choose what it will teach, how it will teach it, what research it does and how that is done, notwithstanding that under the definition an academic has freedom to teach, discuss, research and disseminate. The fact is that universities are challenging places. They always have been and, quite frankly and hopefully, they always will be. Unless they are challenging, unless there are tensions, unless there are internal disputation about issues, universities face a stagnancy. This amendment to the law will not solve all problems. There will inevitably still be disputes about whether something is or is not an exercise of academic freedom. There will be tensions with employment law and antidiscrimination law. As a right, which academic freedom is and which these amendments legislate for, academic freedom sits beside other rights and may at times come into apparent conflict with them. That is the nature of our rights. That is the nature of our universities. The greater clarity in providing this definition will not stop issues arising, but it will provide a greater context in which to address them, a better context for pre-emption and therefore resolution. I finish with a quote from Justice French which I think sums up the best way to approach these issues at universities: Far more important than rules will be a culture which embraces the inevitability of dissent on the one hand and the importance of compromise to the effective functioning of the institution. I am happy to support this bill. 18:59 Mr BANDT M3C Melbourne Academic freedom is essential to our universities, for both academic and general staff, and university staff must be free to conduct their teaching and their research and to critique their own institutions without fear of reprisals. The Greens support efforts to protect academic freedom and so do not oppose the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. But it is incredibly rich for this government to come in here and say it is concerned about academic freedom when, in my time in this chamber, it has become almost a yearly occurrence for a government backbencher or even a minister to get up and read out a list of grant applications that they think, according to their own personal predilections, are objectionable, and in some cases they then get defunded. The government come in here with a bill that says they're going to implement and entrench freedom of speech, in the context that the French review said that there is not a freedom of speech crisis at universities. But this very same government gets up time after time and finds and picks on particular academics or particular proposals, to the point where sometimes their funding is cut. Some of us would have heard various members of the backbench get up and do that routinely—with an anti-academic, anti-intellectual bent—reading one line, which is a title, and from that thinking they can deduce what someone's whole thesis or grant application is about and saying that it should be defunded. But it wasn't that long ago—in fact, only 2018—when that kind of attack on academic freedom coming from the government side in fact came from the ministerial level. In 2018 the then education minister, Simon Birmingham, tweeted: I'm pretty sure most Australian taxpayers preferred their funding to be used for research other than spending $223,000 on projects like "Post orientalist arts of the Strait of Gibraltar." He'd gone through these defenders of academic freedom on the government side and they had trawled through all the lists of the grant applications and picked out one title that they thought might get them a good headline and then stood up and said: 'Oh, isn't this outrageous? No-one should be funding this.' I don't know about 'post orientalist arts'. That is not my field of expertise. But, for all I know, we might have the world's leading expert in the field here in Australia. We might have someone who is called on from around the world and asked, 'Tell us about this important matter.' We might have someone who is publishing book after book after book and doing their institution and our country proud. That's why we have a system of independent review of what grant applications should get funded and what ones shouldn't. Key to academic freedom is that process of peer review, where someone puts in an application in their own field of expertise. It may well be very narrow and something that is very foreign to all of us here in this place. Nonetheless, the peers, the best people working in that area, look at it all in a highly competitive environment and say, 'Yes, that is worthy of funding, because it may well be world-class research'—and it's certainly best-in-Australia-class research, which is why it's being recommended for funding. The then minister—not a backbencher anymore, but the minister—then went on to veto 11 Australian Research Council grants in the humanities, as part of the government's waging of a culture war on academic freedom. Someone wanted to do a research project on the history of men's dress, and they said, 'No, we're not going to fund that; we'll get up in parliament and we'll ridicule it'—again. And who knows? Maybe that particular area was part of a broader piece of research that was going to contribute to the stock of human knowledge in ways that we might not be aware of. I bet that, if I, as someone who's not trained as a scientist, sat down and read the title of a physicist's grant application, I wouldn't understand it. The chances are that I wouldn't understand it. But the fact that I, sitting here as a politician, don't understand what someone in the Australian Research Council and the peer reviewer have said—and they are saying, 'Actually, this field of research is important'—is not the point. The point, if we are serious about defending academic freedom, is not to come in here and find research pieces that we think might somehow make for a good headline or might be a bit of red meat to throw at the conservative backbench, and then get up and ridicule that research in parliament. The point of us here in parliament and our job, if the experts in the field and the independent peer reviews say something's important and provided it's not something that offends some other thing—perhaps there's a national security implication or something like that that the minister might want to take into account—is to say, 'If the experts want to grant it and support it then we should support that.' Legal secularism in Australia—what's objectionable about that? But the minister decided, 'I'm going to make a big point about it and I'm going to reject that grant, even though it's been recommended by the experts.' Then, more recently, we have seen the university sector deliberately decimated by this government. This government has used the COVID crisis to attack the ability of universities, academics and other staff at universities to do their work and engage in academic freedom. You can't talk about academic freedom in the abstract and say, 'We support academic freedom,' on the one hand, while on the other hand sacking people and removing their funding. And that is what this government has done. This government has taken the approach to universities of waging ideological war on them during a crisis. It is said, 'Never waste a crisis,' and the government has denied JobKeeper to universities. At a time when two million people are either unemployed or haven't got enough hours of work, governments in a pandemic should be maintaining or increasing the size of the public sector because that's one area that we know we can expand work in. But, instead, this government took a deliberate decision to slash universities and to oversee the slashing of university staff. That is an attack on the ability to exercise your academic freedom, if you're fighting every day just to keep your job, which is what has happened on this government's watch. Not only that but the government then deliberately said, 'We don't like people studying the arts and so we are going to make young people pay twice as much as they had to before to go to university.' The very same people who include a bunch of backbenchers and ministers who enjoyed free education are now saying, 'Because of our own ideological bent, we're going to make people pay twice as much to go and study the arts.' It's at the point now in this country where, thanks to this government, you can graduate with a debt the size of a small mortgage just because you happen to have chosen to enrol in a course that the Prime Minister doesn't like. It's not that students should be able to exercise freedom of choice and go and choose what they want to study anymore under the government. No, they want to remove students' freedom to choose and engage in their own form of social engineering by saying, 'We're going to make you pay twice as much as we as politicians paid.' In fact, it's more than twice as much if they are one of those politicians who had a free education. They're saying, 'We're going to make you go into debt more than you otherwise would have had to because you're studying the kind of course that we don't like.' So for students at the moment, and for academic and general staff of universities, life has got a lot tougher under this government, and the ability to exercise their freedom, as the government bleats on about, has been attacked and savaged. There's an answer to this. The answer is to recognise that education and universities are a public good. The answer is to say that Australia, as we deal with the long-term problems that we face and try and emerge from the COVID recession stronger, should be investing in education, including higher education. That is one of the advantages that we could have in the world. We could also bring down unemployment and underemployment by expanding our higher education sector and not allowing it to be cut in the way the government has. We could relieve the debt burden that is going to face students who are studying now and hang around their neck for years by making education free again, like it used to be. Like for so many of the politicians here who got a free education, we can make it free again. That is how you get out of a crisis. You invest. You invest to recover. You invest in free education, you give people who work in universities secure employment and you expand the sector. Some will say, 'How can we afford this?' I say to them: you've just spent over $300 billion on a tax cut package for millionaires, which is going to see millionaires and billionaires, like Gina Rinehart, walk away with extra cash in their pockets and extra handouts—thanks to the government. You could stop giving big tax cuts to the very wealthy. But you could go even further. One in three big corporations in this country pay no tax. While everyone else gets tax taken out of their pay before it even hits their bank account, one in three of the biggest corporations in this country pay no tax. If we make the big corporations and the billionaires pay their fair share of tax, we can fund free education and expand our university sector to help us recover from the economic crisis and bring down unemployment. The question is: if you've got a fixed amount of money, what's the best thing to do with it? Is it to give Gina Rinehart more handouts, which is what the government did, with Labor support, when they passed their tax-cuts-for-millionaires package, or is to ask those big corporations and billionaires to stop dodging tax and pay their fair share so that we can get dental into Medicare, put a roof over everybody's head and make education free again? That is how we give our young people real freedom. That is how we give them the opportunity to grow and come out of this pandemic with a secure job and a good education. At the moment the future for young people looks pretty bleak. They're facing a climate crisis, which this government is intent on making worse. They can't get into the housing market, because this government is giving billions of dollars in tax breaks to people who already own two or three houses, and that's pushing up prices. If you're a young person at the moment, you graduate into a world of insecure work and unaffordable housing, with a bigger debt around your neck because the government has made it more extensive to go to university. If you're a young person at the moment, you try to do what the government tells you is the right thing and you come out into a very harsh world of insecure work, unaffordable housing, a climate crisis and high debt from going to university. We could fix all of that if we just had the guts to stand up to the big corporations who pay no tax and make them pay their fair share, to stand up to the billionaires and say, 'It's time you paid your fair share of tax as well.' While two million people now find themselves without a job or without enough hours of work, the billionaires in this country actually increased their wealth during the course of this pandemic. Not only did one in three big corporations continue to pay no tax, but the government actually gave many of them handouts. The big corporations got handouts in the form of JobKeeper, and they're going to get them with the JobMaker hiring credits as well. During this pandemic, inequality has increased. That has been the deliberate design of the government. Part of that design has been the attack on higher education. We've got to reverse it, and we can reverse it. Stand up. Make the big corporations and the billionaires pay their free share of tax. Let's have free education, put a roof over everybody's head and make sure that no-one in this country lives in poverty. 19:14 Dr ALLEN 282986 Higgins The Morrison government is firmly committed to ensuring all Australians who are seeking higher education receive the full benefits of such an undertaking. An essential aspect of that is the development of critical, evaluative and independent thinking. I know this through my experience as a university professor who has supervised dozens of PhD, masters and honours students and taught hundreds of advanced medical trainees. It's not just important but essential to the maturation of a student to be a curious and critical thinker. It is important to be able to inquire and discover new ideas, without limitations on that free exchange of ideas. We need to ensure that our universities are free and engaging places where freedom of speech is not limited but celebrated, as it is within the broader Australian community. Universities are important institutions where ideas are debated and challenged. We must ensure our universities are places that protect free speech, even when what is being said may be unpopular or challenging. The best university education is one where students are taught to think for themselves, and protecting freedom of speech is how to guarantee that. This bill will provide stronger protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australia. It builds on the recommendations from the Report of the Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Australian Higher Education Providers, conducted by former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia the Hon. Robert French AC. Professor Sally Walker AM, former Vice-Chancellor of Deakin University and former Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne, was recently asked to report on adoption of the model code. Her report found that only nine of Australia's 45 universities are fully aligned with French's code. Eighteen are mostly or partly aligned, six have policies that fail entirely to meet the model code and another eight may or may not be working to meet the code. One simply didn't respond. Noting her disappointment, Professor Walker highlighted that we need to create a culture of freedom of expression in universities, not just tell them about the policy. She put it well when she said in her report to government in December: Everyone knows that sometimes they're going to write something that is controversial, and sounds like a heresy, although we know that today's heresies are tomorrow's orthodoxy—at least sometimes. Professor Walker also said: Some universities' leaders think that academic freedom and freedom of speech are so axiomatic in their institutions that there's no need to have a policy … they probably think that it's a problem for other universities, not theirs. As a former university CEO, Professor Walker believes that a code or policy on freedom of expression is important and gives confidence to both staff and students. The code is a first step, but, of course, the institutions responsible for delivering the code themselves need to embrace its values. Places of higher education need to understand that, in order to educate our students about academic freedom and freedom of expression, they need to do more than just have a policy. They need to provide a culture of freedom of expression. Professor Walker agrees with French's findings that freedom of expression on Australian campuses is a matter of public concern. I repeat that: it's a matter of public concern. That is why the Morrison government is endeavouring to create, as a first and necessary step, this bill. A robust education that provides resilient learners is the best way to create opportunity. Our education system needs to continue to respond to the increased challenges of the 21st century. Work is rapidly being automated and digitised; it's changing faster than ever. Graduating students will need to be able to continue lifelong, self-directed learning. That is why free and independent thinking is so critical to a higher education. This bill is built on a long and engaged consultative process undertaken by the Hon. Robert French, who led the review on a cooperative and consultative basis, respecting the long-held and valued institutional autonomy of Australia's universities. The focus of the review was to assess the effectiveness of university policies and practices to address the requirements of the Higher Education Standards Framework to promote and protect freedom of expression and intellectual inquiry on Australian campuses. Between November 2018 and March 2019, Mr French undertook a two-stage stakeholder consultation process seeking stakeholder views on the review terms of reference and a draft model code. These stakeholders included all universities, student representative groups, higher education provider peak bodies and the national higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, or TEQSA. The French model code sets out a framework for universities that protects freedom of speech and academic freedom as paramount values of Australian universities. The amendments contained in this legislation are one of three key elements in the government's commitment to strengthening protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australian higher education. This bill will provide a new definition of 'academic freedom' that enshrines in law principles of freedom of expression that are an essential part of the life of our universities, both for academic staff and students. Firstly, the bill will substitute the existing term 'free intellectual inquiry' in relevant provisions with the terms 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom', to align the language with Mr French's proposed model code. The second element involves working with and supporting universities to align their policy frameworks with Mr French's model code. All universities have undertaken to adopt the model code—even though some have not yet—in a way that is consistent with their individual legislative frameworks. Professor Walker's findings demonstrate why this cannot be a voluntary adoption. A third element is focused on supporting the work of institutions and TEQSA to monitor compliance with relevant quality standards. Work to implement this model needs to continue across our university sector. These amendments are necessary to ensure consistency between the legislation and university statutes, and to support regulators and universities alike in promoting academic freedom and freedom of speech in higher education campuses across Australia. In my first speech, I said the following: But learning doesn't stop when you finish school, or TAFE or university, and we need to support a system of continuous learning. As our third-highest export, our higher education system needs support and investment to capitalise on its excellence. I will fight to defend academic freedoms. Empowering individuals through education and ensuring our health ensures our society itself is healthy and prosperous. More than that, the health of our institutions is essential to the health of a good society. The Morrison government considers that adoption of the French model code is the first and most effective means to ensure Australia's higher education providers are supported to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom, protecting Australia's reputation for quality higher education. We need the higher education sector to lean into these concepts. We are respected internationally as honest brokers, whether academically or diplomatically. This authenticity is part of brand Australia. Academic freedom provides an essential yet almost indefinable quality of brand Australia. The Morrison government wants to ensure that, while Australia's higher education providers are supported to uphold freedom of speech and academic freedom and to protect Australia's reputation for quality higher education, we are also backing them financially to deliver support to ensure we have job-ready Australians. Funding to universities is at a record high, with over $18 billion invested in 2020, increasing to around $20 billion in 2024 under our Job-ready Graduates Package. This is big business. The Job-ready Graduates Package will create up to 30,000 new Commonwealth supported places in 2021 and 100,000 by 2030. This is necessary, because, as we know, when there is an economic crisis there's a countercyclical response in the education sector. This is particularly important to our economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, so we're ensuring that Australians are ready for 21st century jobs of the future, where, essentially, critical thinking and independent thinking will be valued in the work sector. We know, for instance, that modern manufacturing will rely more and more on different ways of doing things, more innovative ways of doing things and smarter way of doing things, and we need our job-ready graduates to be ready to embrace the work of the future. Every Australian has a right to a great education. It should be acknowledged it is a collective as well as an individual undertaking which is underpinned by open discussion and critical debate. This bill expressly recognises that academic staff need freedom to teach, test and challenge the body of knowledge and to promulgate ideas. That is what academic expression is about. Academic freedom is a necessary corollary of the exercise of the right to education by facilitating the free flow of information, ensuring academics can exchange ideas to challenge, provoke and interrogate accepted positions. That is what science has always been about. That is what academic endeavour has always been about. It's about challenging, pushing forward and questioning. As many of us know in this House, debate is vital. It is sometimes heated, but ultimately discussion generally leads to better outcomes and more insightful findings. As a scientist, I've always championed scientific solutions to the challenges we face, and never has that been more clear than in the COVID-19 pandemic. Australians and, indeed, people around the world recognise the way challenging the orthodoxies, challenging to push into the future, has come up with solutions such as the COVID vaccine which just yesterday commenced its rollout here in Australia. These ideas and the willingness of scientists to challenge, question and seek to do the impossible have delivered the most amazing outcomes for humans and for humanity. Science is a contest of ideas, just like politics, and in both cases we are the servants of the taxpayer. Disagreement is part of being a scientist, as is it for politics. As our Prime Minister is apt to say, we don't need to disagree less as a parliament; we just need to disagree better. So too, in the universities, people need to be able to disagree respectfully. Limiting freedom of speech is essentially limiting debate, and if we limit debate we limit progress. I commend this bill to the House. 19:26 Dr ALY 13050 Cowan I rise to speak on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020. I understand I have limited time, so I'll try to get through as much as I can, although I doubt that I will. First of all, I say that Labor will not oppose this bill. What the bill does is insert a new definition of 'academic freedom' into the Higher Education Support Act, replacing the existing term, 'free intellectual inquiry', with allied concepts of 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom' in relevant provisions. To date, my understanding is that all universities have agreed to voluntarily adopt the French model code and that agreement is now included in their mission based compacts. So it really shouldn't be a controversial bill, which is why Labor won't oppose it. But I do want to speak to the substantive issue here. In the first instance, I'm not quite sure why the government has called this a freedom of speech bill. To my mind, it is about the freedom and rigour of academic inquiry and the freedom of thought. I say this as somebody who has worked at universities in various capacities for a number of years. I've been a lecturer, a tutor, a researcher and a professor. I've worked on four ARC grants and I was the lead investigator on two. I led a research program and established a research centre looking at global issues. I've supervised PhDs, I've taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses, I've written courses in counterterrorism and I've taught postgraduate units, all in the humanities. As somebody with that background and that experience, I have to say that the biggest and greatest threat to academic freedom in this country is this government and its protracted and sustained attacks on the humanities and on universities. That is the biggest threat to academic freedom. As I said, while we support this bill and it should be uncontroversial to insert a new definition of 'academic freedom', if you want to talk about freedom of speech at universities you cannot go past some of the actions that this government has taken that go against the very principles of freedom of speech, academic inquiry and academic freedom. I'm really quite aware of the limited time that I have in which to list all of those but I'm quite happy to take up this discussion again and list those, and I will take that opportunity. Suffice it to say that, in my extensive experience over a decade working at universities, as I said, in various capacities, my greatest fear about academic and intellectual freedom has come from the Liberal-National government and their attacks on universities and on the freedom of academics in the humanities—it's not right across the board; it's only in the humanities—to pursue academic knowledge. Debate interrupted. ADJOURNMENT 80 ADJOURNMENT Griffith Electorate: Griffith Australia Day Awards 80 19:30 Ms BUTLER 248006 Griffith On Australia Day, I announced the recipients of this year's Griffith Australia Day Awards. This is a tradition which was started by my predecessor as the member for Griffith, former Prime Minister Hon. Kevin Rudd, AC. Each of the wonderful recipients for the Griffith Australia Day Awards this year has made an enduring contribution to our community as a volunteer, seeking neither financial reward nor recognition. I'd like to acknowledge these award recipients and their contributions to our community. Candi Kelly, Julie and Barny Barnhill, Andrew Grace, Noel Murray, Carl McAlevey, Rodger Graf and Bernard Goodwin have all held various volunteer roles within Community Friends. That's a wonderful organisation which collects and delivers food to our most vulnerable community members. The dedicated Easts Tigers Committee has tirelessly run a junior rugby league club every year, especially in 2020, when they navigated the global pandemic and kept the juniors playing. I'd like to thank the committee for being nominated. Chris Dawson and Tracey Olivieri from the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery have an extensive record. For over 15 years they have worked to improve and promote the cemetery, including organising 23 community cleaning bees and over 100 other events. The Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery is now the largest cemetery related community organisation in Australia, and Chris and Tracey dedicate over 40 hours of their own time each week to the cemetery. Luanne Carter has made a tremendous contribution to the Royals Netball Club, managing registrations, encouraging participation and making everyone feel welcome and supported, all with a smile on her face. Nicole Carey has dedicated her time to the Camp Hill P&C Association through various roles over the years. Nicole spends an enormous amount of time supporting the school. Her calm, happy and inclusive demeanour is why she is often described as a superwoman. Bill Dahl is the president of the Lions Club of Brisbane Camp Hill-Carindale and is an outstanding community leader who volunteers his time to people of all ages by assisting school students in our electorate to develop their public-speaking and leadership skills. He also helps elderly people develop their IT skills and welcomes new citizens each Australia Day. Jeff Croll has been a proactive and valued member of the Brisbane Holland Park Lions Club since 2006. He has held roles such as the secretary and president. Jeff has been integral to the success of the club and has coordinated events, fundraisers and a food drive for those experiencing hardship during the pandemic. He has even procured and arranged installation of an at-home chairlift for an elderly gentleman. Stephanie Ford is the well-known president of the Norman Creek Catchment Coordinating Committee, which cares for our southside environment daily. In addition to her role on the committee, she runs a community nursery and a Bushcare group and provides support and encouragement to other Bushcare groups in the area. Angela Christodoulou has put in countless hours rescuing koalas—personally rescuing them—in South-East Queensland. She also spends her time educating others on the risks that koalas are facing and about how they can help. Bailey Newbold from Meals on Wheels Holland Park & District gives back to the community. He was in the youth category of the awards. He gives back to the community by volunteering in the kitchen and sharing the skills he has learned as an apprentice chef. He has a contagious enthusiasm and a can-do attitude. Cate Vickers is an outstanding community contributor through her work for the Bulimba Community Centre. Cate and her committee have repositioned the centre, turning it from a senior citizens centre to a community hub, preparing the centre for its future while honouring its history. Ali Kadri is an outstanding advocate for the Muslim community and antidiscrimination, including at the Holland Park Mosque which serves part of my electorate. Ali has been the Queensland coordinator of Charity Australia for almost a decade and is a member of various advisory councils which work to build community understanding and cohesion. Of course, his impact extends well beyond the part of the mosque's patch which falls within my electorate. Elizabeth Cowie from House Conspiracy and Kurilpa Futures nurtures and empowers local artists and creative directors by offering affordable art studios for emerging artists in the West End community. Linda Francis has been secretary of the Bulimba Hockey Club for over five years and a club member for over 20. She has worked tirelessly to make sure the club has a home. She has even welcomed Brisbane hockey newcomers into her own home for several years. I also want to thank this year's Griffith Australia Day Awards committee for advising me: Craig Bowen, OAM, our chair; former councillor Faith Hopkins; and former deputy premier the Hon. Paul Lucas. I really look forward to seeing all of the recipients and their supporters at this year's awards ceremony, which will be held very shortly. And I want to congratulate all of the recipients again for a job well done throughout this year and for many, many years before. Lindsay Electorate: Manufacturing Industry 81 19:35 Mrs McINTOSH 281513 Lindsay The space industry is ready to launch thanks to the Morrison government's backing of Australian manufacturers. As part of our $1.3 billion Modern Manufacturing Initiative, we are delivering grants to priority sectors where we have an advantage or that are of strategic importance. These include resources technology and critical minerals processing, food and beverage, medical products, recycling and clean energy, defence and space—which is the first priority sector now open for grants under our plan to support manufacturers to scale up and to create more jobs. Space is not only more than the eye can see; it is more than what we might expect. From technology helping emergency workers plan bushfire recovery and farmers managing their crops to advances in automation, robotics, engineering and satellite technology, the Morrison government's investment in the space industry will result in new applications that will improve our lives here on earth. In my electorate of Lindsay, we have over 600 manufacturers, and they are proud manufacturers employing over 6,000 people in fields including fabricated metal products, equipment and machinery manufacturing—areas that are crucial to the development of our national space sector. We're also working closely with businesses to develop our long-term strategy in this sector because they have the hands-on experience. They know what they need and we will deliver the support so that they can grow, expand, take on pressing challenges and ultimately create more local jobs. This is why manufacturing is so important. As we embark on our economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, we are getting behind the industries with the ability to create more local jobs. I recently launched a survey across Western Sydney, and particularly in my electorate of Lindsay, to see what matters most to our community when it comes to backing Australian manufacturing. The first priority among respondents for our national manufacturing priorities was the resources technology and critical minerals processing sector. The resources sector represents half of Australia's exports and directly employs over 260,000 people in Australia while supporting more than one million other jobs across the economy. Between February and November last year, employment in this sector grew by 8.5 per cent, creating over 20,000 new jobs, and this growth trajectory is expected to continue. To unlock new resource potential and productivity and maintain our status as a world-leading supplier of resources and energy, we must educate and train our kids with the skills they need to take the jobs of the future. That's why I established the Lindsay Jobs of the Future Forum and the Advancing Manufacturing Taskforce, bringing leaders in education together with industry so that we can create local jobs for local people in these emerging industries. Skills in STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—will be vital in developing a strong local workforce in fields such as space and advanced manufacturing. This is a journey that begins with encouraging kids to get involved with STEM at an early age, showcasing the possibilities open to a career in STEM fields in high school and even starting before that, in primary school, so they are equipped with the skills they need to get through either TAFE or university—whatever they choose to do. I have seen this firsthand, and I would like to acknowledge the great work that gets done across our local schools, including at Samuel Terry Public School, where I have seen STEM in action with the kids there, and also at Jamison High School. The $5.3 billion investment into Western Sydney international airport, the Aerotropolis and the Sydney Science Park, which is in my electorate of Lindsay, will bring more manufacturing, science, engineering, IT, agriculture and business opportunities to Western Sydney. In the heart of Western Sydney, we will be home to a world-class science city that clusters and integrates leaders in innovation and industry, that brings researchers and education providers together from right across our community. This is why I am fighting so hard to ensure that our kids now are getting trained in the jobs of the future, so they can take all the opportunities that are coming with the airport. This is very much our priority in Lindsay, and our manufacturing strategy is our priority right across Australia. Sexual Harassment 82 19:40 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah 'Sexual harassment is not a women's issue: it is a societal issue, which every Australian, and every Australian workplace, can contribute to addressing. Workplace sexual harassment is not inevitable. It is not acceptable. It is preventable'—these words were written by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins in January last year in her foreword to the report on the National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces. That report, labelled Respect@Work, was subsequently provided to the Attorney-General and tabled in parliament on 5 March 2020. Sadly, very little has happened since. This important inquiry was tasked with examining the nature and prevalence of sexual harassment in Australian workplaces and to look at measures to address and prevent it. The key finding of the inquiry was that workplace sexual harassment is prevalent and pervasive. It occurs in every industry, in every location and at every level in Australian workplaces. Australians across the country are suffering the financial, social, emotional, physical and psychological harm associated with sexual harassment. This is particularly so for women. As we've seen this week, last week and in too many instances prior to this last fortnight, Australian Parliament House is, sadly, not immune to this scourge. Now is the time for action and for change. I politely suggest to the government that an appropriate starting point is to implement the full list of 55 recommendations from the Respect@Work report at this time. Those recommendations cover a large range of topics. The key ones, though, are education and prevention strategies, proposed amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act and broadening the powers of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Respect@Work revealed an urgent need to shift from Australia's current active-complaints-based approach to one that requires positive action from employers and which focuses on prevention. To quote Kate Jenkins again, 'There is an urgency and demand for change across all corners of society.' Unfortunately, that urgency and demand for change was not heard by the Morrison government. Of the 55 recommendations made in the report, only three have been actioned. There has been minimal action on the report by the government, and no formal response has yet been provided. The events of the last week or so have highlighted the need for urgent change to employment and workplace practices here in parliament. This is indeed a unique workplace, but it is offensive to suggest this in some way excuses the behaviour that has taken place here. In fact, the unique nature of this workplace should only increase the duty of care that we owe to our staff. They are in a stressful environment, with long hours and high intensity. They are often younger in age and a long way from home, without the normal support of friends and family. Their job doesn't end at 5 pm. There is a constant blurring of the lines between professional and personal lives. Combine that with the significant mix of power arrangements in force here and it is a toxic mix. It is our duty as their employers to provide a high standard of care in that context. It is a shameful reality that this place, the Australian parliament—a place that should be holding up the highest standards of the land—has become for many employees a workplace of fear, anxiety and trauma. By implementing the full recommendations of the Respect@Work report, the government would improve the working lives of not just those employed here but all Australians across all workplaces. I urge the Prime Minister in the strongest terms to act on those recommendations. Unfortunately, given the government's and the Attorney-General's clear reluctance to act, I will be formally introducing a private member's bill on Monday 15 March to amend the Sex Discrimination Act, as proposed by the Law Council of Australia and supported by a number of the recommendations in the Respect@Work report, to reflect on those allegations that have rocked this parliament. I'm more resolved than ever to ensure those changes occur. Finally, I want to thank the many brave women and men who have come forward to tell their stories, not just in the last week or two but across all workplaces. They've been made to feel powerless and worthless, but they've stepped forward and they've grabbed that power back. We hear you, we believe you and we will make changes for you. Olympic and Paralympic Games 82 19:45 Mr TED O'BRIEN 138932 Fairfax When the Prime Minister asked me to be his representative for Queensland's candidature for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, I suspect he didn't do so because of my cut physique or my wonderful background in sports elitism. It might surprise you, Deputy Speaker Rob Mitchell, but, unfortunately, my love of sport has actually never converted into prowess in the pool, on the track or on the field. Nevertheless, I'm happy to report that our pursuit of 2032 is progressing and progressing well; however, in true Australian style, we take absolutely nothing for granted. It is nevertheless timely to reflect on why pursuing a games in 2032 is in our national interest. No matter the magical extravaganza that a games might be and no matter the great human feats of athleticism, a 2032 games does not represent two weeks of a sporting spectacular so much as it represents two decades of legacy—a legacy in the lead-up to a games and a legacy after the games. That's why we need to continue to pursue a 2032 bid. I don't intend tonight to cover off all the aspects of such a legacy, but, if I may, to whet your appetite as to how a 2032 games in South-East Queensland might at least be in our economic interests, I will start with this year, 2021. If we are successful, if the International Olympic Committee, the IOC, were to decide that Brisbane and South-East Queensland should host the 2032 Games, can you just imagine the interest that would garner around the world? It would do wonders for our economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Vaccines, as we know, are rolling out not just here but around the world. If we were to secure the opportunity to host the games and secure that opportunity in this very year, it would put us centre stage at a critical time in our economic recovery, allowing us to showcase to the world our track record of managing the pandemic, which reinforces our existing reputation for strength and the natural beauty of our country—a clean and green, stable, secure, safe and healthy sport-loving country down under. More materially, it would provide a platform to show the progress we're making across a range of economic and social fronts, underpinned by a persistent AAA credit rating. The day will come when foreign direct investment will again begin to flow more freely across the globe, and there's an opportunity for Australia to position itself as a safe haven for investment and a place for doing business. As for the Australian tourism sector, can you imagine the shot in the arm it would be for our tourism operators if, as international borders began to open, we were to be announced as the host of the 2032 Games? Could there be any better investment than having such news beamed across the news wires internationally, as people start to dream about starting up their travel internationally again? There is, of course, the opportunity to be accelerating the delivery of infrastructure. Under the new norms of the IOC, the days of the white elephants are gone; the IOC encourages the use of existing assets. But South-East Queensland is growing at such a pace that we do need infrastructure, and there's nothing better than a deadline to get it going. So, as time goes on, the broader legacy will be laid out, but this is certainly worth continuing to progress. Fuel: Security 83 19:50 Mr BYRNE 008K0 Holt I rise tonight to talk about the dire situation of Australia's fuel security. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about our fuel security had been steadily growing. I had raised it, as had the member for Canning, the member for Solomon and Senator Jim Molan. Our concerns were about a lack of liquid fuel reserves, insufficient fuel storage capacity and our diminishing fuel refining capabilities. What we've seen during this pandemic has brought these concerns to a crisis point. COVID-19 has exposed the weaknesses in Australian supply chains. Our reliance on these supply chains has been severely disrupted by the closing down of economies and borders, which has left us exposed and vulnerable. Shortages in critical medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and testing kits, as well as personal protective equipment and clothing for health professionals and frontline workers, impacted our initial pandemic response. At the same time, heightened international tensions, particularly around major trade routes, are forcing us to realise that we run the risk of further supply chain disruption. Current measures to address this issue are falling a long way short of what is needed. The federal government's $211 million fuel security package announced in September was meant to address the enormous shortfalls in Australia's fuel security. So far, it has failed. Since the announcement, Australia has lost two of its four remaining oil refineries. Kwinana in Western Australia has closed, and it has just been announced that the ExxonMobil oil refinery in Altona will close. That leaves us with an energy refinery in Geelong and a refinery in Lytton in Queensland. Twenty years ago we had eight refineries, which virtually took care of all of our domestic fuel requirements. At present, Indonesia has eight refineries. The UK has six major refineries and one smaller one. Japan has 23 oil refineries. The United States has 137 refineries. We have two. What does that mean? It means that we will have continually reduced refinery capacity, with enormous implications for our liquid fuel security. These two existing refineries are relatively small and old. They have been competing against larger and more efficient refineries in the Asian region, according to a parliamentary research paper. We're aware of the mega-refineries in Asia. They do provide large economies of scale. But you've got to have sovereign fuel security capabilities in Australia. The government's statistics show, in terms of existing reserves, that we've been non-compliant with the International Energy Agency's 90-day fuel stock holding obligation since March 2012. I've seen several reports which indicate how far we have fallen as to that obligation. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the PJCIS, of which I am deputy chair, has also noted that. The other issue, though, is that even getting fuel supplies to our country through tankers is compromised because, according to the Maritime Union of Australia, there are no Australian-crewed tankers supplying fuel to our nation. In 2000, we had 12 tankers that were Australian-crewed. What that means is a substantial loss of maritime job and training opportunities. But it undermines our petroleum supply chain—it really does. It means that we're going to have to rely on foreign fuel coming on foreign ships to our shores in the case of an emergency, which is obviously of great concern. Given our loss of refining capability and the fact that we don't have strategic fuel supplies to the levels we need, what does that mean? How does the government keep our country going in the case of heightened international tensions? If someone says that's not going to happen, who predicted that we would have a global pandemic that would paralyse the world for the period of time in which it has? What happens to our Australian Defence Force, who will be required to defend us, if they don't have the fuel that is required to put jets in the air, to put tanks on the ground and to put ships at sea? This is a major strategic problem. We are starting to address COVID. We have to do it with fuel security. Our country, our nation's security, can't afford for this problem to continue. New England Electorate: Infrastructure 84 19:55 Mr JOYCE E5D New England I would like to say a big good evening to the people of Tamworth and especially the people around Dungowan. I give a big shout-out to Kevin Smith at the Dungowan Hotel. This morning in the newspaper—I also heard it on Prime last night—there was a report on the replacement of the Fishers Bridge. This is totally correct: it is going to be replaced. But the thing they missed was that the Commonwealth is putting funding towards it. I think it's incumbent upon me to make sure that the Australian taxpayer knows that we went into bat for, fought for and achieved $582,500 which is part of the payment to construct that vital piece of infrastructure. While we're talking about bridges, I want to go through a few others that we're also supporting. There's the Paddy's Flat Road bridge north. There's about $365,000 there. That's a replacement of the existing timber bridge with a new concrete structure. There's the Martin's Gully and Shambrook Avenue bridge. There's the Paddy's Flat Road bridge south and a replacement of the existing timber bridge with a new concrete structure. There's the Benama Bridge over Goonoo Goonoo Creek. There's the Retreat Bridge. This is the big one. It is in excess of a million dollars. That is between Bendemeer and Kingston, just to help people, on the most direct route from Tamworth to Inverell, a place I'll be going to in the next couple of days. There's the Yarrow Creek Bridge replacement on Mount Mitchell Road. A nation is the things that make it—bridges, dams, roads, rail and power. It is my part for the people of New England, which is the centre of my job down here, to look after them so we can deliver bridges, dams, roads, rail and power. We all know about the dams such as Dungowan Dam, but it is beyond that too. There is Quipolly Dam, which we worked on, and also Mole River Dam in the north of the electorate. There's rail. When I had the position, I fought for and achieved in excess of $10 billion for the Inland Rail and now they are building it. There is also the upgrade of our other sections of rail which are vitally important to create a conduit of commerce which will come from that infrastructure into Tamworth. You might think: what's it got to do with Tamworth? The culverts and the concrete parts of the Inland Rail are being constructed in Taminda, in Tamworth. That money is coming back into our great city so that we can employ people and also drive the economy of New England forward. Power is part of the debate that's going to happen down here. I know that we've had a lot of conjecture on issues of power in New England. We're starting to now see a bit of pushback on renewables by landholders. I think that is something that people have to be aware of in how we manage that. All things in moderation. That's not saying that all renewables are bad or that we shouldn't be making some movement towards renewables, but we have to acknowledge those people who are starting to say, 'You have to listen to the other side of the discussion on this.' That is why I think our nation has to take the big step towards nuclear. Why should we do that? Because small modular reactors are now becoming part of the future of the globe. Small modular reactors are going to give us capacity for a vastly safer form of nuclear energy to replace especially decommissioned coal-fired power plants. We must have dispatchable power. We must have the capacity to flick the switch and have power going along the lines. It has to work like that. We have to make this nation strong if we are going to survive in a world where China is a superpower and we might be having a slide in the comparable effect of the United States of America. So we have to make the move to nuclear. We have to build HELE coal-fired power plants. We have to make sure that, first and foremost, as we go forward, we make our nation a stronger place. If we are making our nation a stronger place then we really are handing over to our sons, daughters and grandchildren the legacy that they require. An opposition member interjecting— Mr JOYCE E5D I don't know whether to take the interjection from the Labor member, but it's not something to be laughed at. Trying to make sure our nation remains a strong place is not something to be laughed at. So how are we going to do that? We're going to do it by building bridges, dams, roads and rail and by constructing new baseload power for our nation. If we do that, which includes things such as Fishers Bridge, we'll make our nation a stronger place. House adjourned at 20:00 NOTICES 85 NOTICES

Tuesday, 23 February 2021

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Goodenough) took the chair at 16:01.

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS 87 CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS City of Greater Geelong: Northern Aquatic and Community Hub 87 16:01 Mr MARLES HWQ Corio I rise to support the City of Greater Geelong's application for funding of the Northern Aquatic and Community Hub under round 5 of the Building Better Regions Fund, where a grant of $10 million is being sought, and through a special circumstances extension for the funding that the City of Greater Geelong has already received under phase 2 of the Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Fund, where it has received a grant of just north of $8 million. This is a very meritorious project which would make a huge difference to the people of the northern suburbs of Geelong, and it's a project which very much enjoys my support. It has been estimated that the preventative health savings alone of this project would be worth about $111 million in the first decade of its operation, which makes sense in the context of the chronic diseases which exist at a greater rate in the northern suburbs of Geelong, such as diabetes, than in other parts of Geelong. It's a project that enjoys my support but also enjoys the support of the local state member for Lara, John Eren, along with other stakeholders in the Geelong region, including the Barwon Regional Partnership, G21, the Committee for Geelong and the Geelong COVID Recovery Cooperative. At the heart of the Northern Aquatic and Community Hub is the Norlane swimming pool. It is a pool which has a very fond place in my heart. It's where I learnt to swim under the tutelage of the legendary Herb Jeffrey and where I swam competitively for the Norlane Amateur Swimming Club. This was back in the 1970s—a long time ago. In those days, this was the premier swimming pool in Geelong. It was the home of many regional championships, including the Victorian country championships, and I have lots of fond memories of warm Saturday evenings where there were hundreds of people gathered at the Norlane swimming pool for these carnivals. I make two points about this debate, which has been a significant one, within the Geelong region. The first of those is that swimming pools are principally the responsibility of municipal government. The second is that, since the 1970s, when this was the premier pool in Geelong, we've seen a second 50-metre pool installed at Kardinia Park; we've seen the building of the facility at Waurn Ponds; the building of Splashdown, a fantastic facility at Ocean Grove; and the upgrading of Lara. In that period of time, under successive local governments, we have seen the Norlane pool run down. That is where this debate starts. The second point to make is that the city put in place a master plan in June 2015, which was the beginnings of this project. Since then, the coalition have been in government federally and, despite repeated asks for the federal government to provide assistance, there has been no direct assistance provided to this project whatsoever. It deserves it. It is now time for the federal government to commit to it and it's time for this facility to be built. North Sydney Electorate: The Weekly Times 87 16:04 Mr ZIMMERMAN 203092 North Sydney The backbone of a strong community is often the role played by our local newspapers. They bring us together, keep us informed about local issues and events and showcase those making a contribution to our communities. At a time when we have seen many of those local newspapers close or move entirely online, I want to speak today about one in my electorate that has endured: The Weekly Times, or TWT, as it is known as. This year, TWT marks its centenary, a milestone that very few local papers have reached. While many local papers have faltered, TWT goes from strength to strength. Founded in Gladesville in 1921, The Weekly Times has served four generations of local readers and kept them in touch with their local communities. It has fought and won so many battles for our community, which we perhaps take for granted. It has consistently been at the forefront of local community issues and those things that matter most to local residents. It has also fought for individuals in our community and has given a voice to thousands of local people who would have no voice without it. The work done by The Weekly Times to support our local charities, churches, schools and medical services, as well as the police and other emergency services, has been vital to their success. Like many in my electorate, I am an avid reader of TWT, and I get a well-informed insight into community views through it, especially through its regular columns. Every year, this award-winning publication gets better, but some things don't change—none more so than the one-eyed support for the Balmain Tigers and all our local sports teams and competitors that it always represents. Its support for volunteering also hasn't changed. This newspaper has assisted almost every local resident who has given their time to serve the community, for example, the Scouts, RSLs, the Red Cross and Rotary, to name but a few. Perhaps the most profound change we've seen in 100 years is the impact of Australia's diverse migration program. TWT is now very much a multicultural newspaper that embraces all cultures while upholding and preserving the legacy passed on to us by previous generations of readers. TWT has a proud heritage, and its success is truly founded on the role of its incredible staff, from the advertising section to the journalists and, of course, the legendary editor, John Booth, or JB, as he has become known, who is so integral to TWT, it's impossible to think of the paper without him. JB—I won't mention his age, other than to say it's closer to 90 than to 80—has the work ethic of a bright-eyed journalism cadet, despite his years of experience. He's become such a fixture that he has become a local identity himself, with his trademark press hat and his love for crowding as many people into a photo as possible, social-distancing rules or otherwise. I want to personally thank TWT for so many wonderful memories and great achievements. May TWT continue serving our community for another 100 years. Weapons Systems 88 16:08 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner In 1997 the anti-personnel mine ban treaty was opened for signature by the UN General Assembly and it came into force in 1999. When it was initially proposed, the Australian Army argued in favour of the tactical utility of landmines. But, as Hugh White recalls, the debate within Defence swung against mines as a result of people's recollection of the experience of de-mining in Cambodia and also the casualties caused in Vietnam, where landmines laid by Australians were dug up and used against our troops. As Stephanie Koorey noted in an article about the landmine treaty for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, it has saved lives as a result of changing the norms around landmines. These days, the modern equivalent of landmines are lethal autonomous weapon systems, which delegate life-and-death decisions to machines. These so-called killer robots are able to make a life-and-death decision without human intervention. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has stated: For me there is a message that is very clear — machines that have the power and the discretion to take human lives are politically unacceptable, are morally repugnant, and should be banned by international law. Thirty countries, along with the non-aligned movement, have explicitly called for such a ban. Australia, however, has taken a somewhat opaque approach to lethal autonomous weapons, despite working on autonomous weapon systems such as the Loyal Wingman project and a range of projects identified in the 2020 Defence Strategic Update. Australia has not acknowledged the ethical challenges that these technologies present. It is tempting to think that new technologies can just be used by the forces of light but, as past experience has shown, we need to regulate based on the assumption that the most nefarious actors and the most dubiously moral states will use such weapons. Those are the grounds for bans on poison gas and torture, and that's the principle which Australia should approach lethal autonomous weapon systems. I acknowledge the important work of Matilda Byrne on the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots and call on the government to engage more fully with the Australian people and the international community on the critical debate over the regulation of lethal autonomous weapon systems. Nicholls Electorate: Infrastructure 88 16:11 Mr DRUM 56430 Nicholls One of the high points of a redistribution is when you get an area in your electorate like the town of Seymour and its 6,000 people. I'm proud to represent the people of Seymour in this place and I had the privilege to meet so many of community groups and their leaders who are inspiring future growth with their ideas and projects. Seymour is a regional rail hub at the junction of the Shepparton and the north-east rail lines. The Morrison-McCormack government is providing critical funding for rail upgrades with $235 million for the north-east line and $320 million for stage 3 of the Shepparton line. This will enable VLocity services to provide a huge boost to the connectivity of the region. Also with rail in that area, I recently met with the Seymour Railway Heritage Centre, an incredible group of people who are brilliant when it comes to rebuilding some of the most amazing heritage train carriages that you could ever imagine—carriages that were built in the early 1900s that have been brought back to life and put into use. They do amazing projects. Seymour also recently received $487,000 from the Building Better Regions Fund for Kings Park for a new pavilion that is going to assist with the show, field days and riding for the disabled at Kings Park. I look forward to opening that in the near future. Seymour has a strong association with the Australian Defence Force with the Puckapunyal Army base just east of the town. They also have an incredible connection with the Vietnam veterans with their commemorative walk in Seymour. It's the only one of its kind in Australia and it gives so much joy to visiting veterans as they go past and look at their names on the walkway. The Puckapunyal Army base is also home to the tank museum, and there is a push from locals to have that tank museum rebuilt closer to the entrance. The Australian government has just announced $96 million for a school of armour which is going to facilitate with the training in these new armoured vehicles and create high-fidelity training simulators and make our armed corps more battle ready into the future. There is so much going on at Seymour, but there's also a very strong need for better health services. We're going to be working very, very hard for an integrated health community and business centre into the future. Thank you. Western Australia: Bushfires, Western Australia: Floods, COVID-19 89 16:14 Ms MADELEINE KING 102376 Brand The opening weeks of 2021 have been really tough for many Western Australians. During one week at the beginning of February, 81 houses were lost and hundreds of people had to be evacuated because of a devastating bushfire in Perth's north-eastern suburbs. My thoughts are with all the people of Wooroloo and surrounding areas who lost their homes, their livestock and their animals. As that bushfire raged the residents of Perth, Peel and the south-west region were in lockdown after a worker in the hotel quarantine system contracted COVID-19 while doing his job. Towards the end of that same week, heavy storms flooded the Gascoyne in the mid-west with dozens of people needing to be rescued. My electorate of Brand, in the southern metropolitan area, has also been affected by two bushfires this summer. In early January, a large fire in Kwinana, fanned by the strong easterly breeze and the hot weather, spread to a rubbish trip, jumped Thomas Road and went close to the Kwinana industrial strip. Thomas Road, Patterson Road, Rockingham Road and Anketell Road are major transport corridors that enable thousands of workers to get to work every day at the Kwinana industrial strip and also allow bulk freight, like grain, to get through to the Cooperative Bulk Handling silos. The fire was intense, the smoke was so thick and the fumes from the tip fire was so toxic that these roads were closed and traffic was limited for many days. The Kwinana industrial strip was very much under threat from this fire. It was the commitment, dedication, time, effort and hard work of the firefighters that ensured the Kwinana strip, at the heart of WA's economy, remained safe. Later in the month, more than 300 hectares of land was burnt in the Oakford fire. Thanks to the magnificent effort of the firefighters, no lives were lost and there was no significant property damage from either of those fires. I was able to visit the area of the Oakford bushfire with the Mandogalup Volunteer Bushfire Brigade recently. It was startling to see the devastation wrought by the blaze. I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the dangerous work of all firefighters, including volunteer firefighters, and emergency services personnel who put themselves in harm's way to protect us and our industry day in, day out. Fire services across Brand fought the Kwinana and Oakford fires and spent many hours at the Wooroloo fire in the north. I'd like to quickly acknowledge the Rockingham, Secret Harbour, Kwinana, Baldivis and Kwinana South volunteer bushfire brigades; the Singleton Ward Volunteer Bushfire Brigade; the Rockingham-Kwinana State Emergency Service unit; and Marine Rescue Rockingham. I'd also like to acknowledge the frontline workers, who continued to do their jobs, and the rest of the community behind closed doors in the safety of their homes. Your contribution to the community is greatly appreciated and the community thanks you. To the wider community of WA, and in particular my constituents in Brand, I'd also like to thank you. You observed the restrictions put in place during the COVID lockdown and continued to practice social distancing and other measures that kept us all safe. Thank you. COVID-19: Vaccination 89 16:17 Mr CONNELLY 282984 Stirling Coronavirus has challenged every person, every family and every business here in Australia and right round the world. We can all be proud in Australia of the way that we have demonstrated our true Australian spirit in fighting and in continuing to fight this virus. We have remained cool and calm under pressure throughout this crisis. That has enabled us to make sensible forward-looking decisions. Importantly, early in the piece we declared this a pandemic, even before the World Health Organization. We were able to institute sensible, targeted and time framed economic supports to keep Australian businesses in business and keep Australians in jobs. One of the critical investments that has been made by the Morrison government has been in vaccines. We have now secured more than 150 million doses of vaccines and this will help enable us to return to our new normal. In fact, every day from here forward, as the PM commented this morning, will become more normal. Phase 1a of the rollout of the vaccines will see workers in health care and aged care, those caring for people with disability, and frontline workers in health, at our borders and in quarantine becoming vaccinated. Subsequent phases will see the elderly and those working in other higher risk professions, like police, defence, fire, emergency services and meat processing, being vaccinated. The final phase will see vaccination of the remaining adult population here in Australia. It's also a great outcome that 50 million doses of AstraZeneca will be produced right here in Australia. Of course, during this we look, as we always do, to our Pacific neighbours. We will be providing assistance in the form of vaccination doses to our Pacific island neighbours. That's because we understand that Australia can only succeed where we exist in a safe, stable and secure environment along with our regional partners. Indeed, yesterday, 22 February, the start of the rollout of vaccination, saw us embarking on one of the biggest logistical exercises in our nation's history. I'm sure we will all remember these days, including that vision of the very first doses of the Pfizer vaccine touching down at Sydney airport. So, as we embark on this phase of recovery and as we roll out the vaccines across the nation, there's one important overriding message that I want to send to my constituents in Stirling and that everyone in this place wants to send right across the country, and that is: let's keep up that great Australian spirit of mateship; let's get this vaccine and look after each other. Petition: Sebastopol Post Office 90 16:20 Ms CATHERINE KING 00AMR Ballarat Late last year, the Sebastopol community was given the news that their post office would be closing and its services relocated to the next suburb over, denying accessible postal services to those who don't drive, who are older or who just have a bit of trouble getting around. Instead of standing by and accepting this, the proud community of Sebas stood up and got organised and began to make their voices heard. The redoubtable Joan Brown, who is in her 80s, along with Ian Rowe, Gail Locke and many other engaged community members, began a community campaign; they staged protests, wrote letters, made phone calls and circulated a petition over the summer. Today, the petition has been mostly accepted by the petitions committee. I'll be presenting that petition. The petition has roughly 1,080 signatures, ranging from those who've just moved into the community to those who've lived there all of their lives. As you'd expect, many of the petitioners are older residents who rely on the post office and its services, particularly those who live in the Rosebank Retirement Village. Unfortunately, the minister and the CEO of Australia Post are yet to heed the calls of the community, pushing ahead earlier this month with the plan to close the post office. Despite this setback, the campaign is not over. The post office building is still there. The facilities are ready. All that is needed is a new licence and a new operator and the Sebastopol Post Office can quickly be up and running again. Australia Post exists to provide a service to the community. By closing this post office, essential services are being denied to the people of Sebastopol. Sebastopol has over 10,000 residents, with almost 20 per cent of those aged over 65. That's more than enough of a population to support a local post office. At the same time, the population of Delacombe has the highest annual growth rate in the state and is projected to reach almost 20,000 by 2036. Yes, Delacombe needs a post office, but so does Sebastopol. These two communities should not be played off against one another in their need for services. I once more join with the Sebastopol community in urging the Morrison government and Australia Post to save the Sebastopol Post Office. It's not too late. All it needs is for the government to take action and for Australia Post to hear the calls of our community. This post office has been providing services, particularly banking services, in this local community for some time, and I can assure the House in the strongest possible terms that the residents of Sebastopol are not going to be quiet about this issue. I know Australia Post has been seeking to try and ensure that that does occur, but we won't be silent. I seek leave to present the petition but also to table, alongside the petition, the additional signatures of 1,080 concerned residents of the Sebastopol community. Leave granted. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 241590 The document will be forwarded to the petitions committee for consideration and will be accepted subject to confirmation by the committee that it conforms with standing orders. Cowper Electorate: Bularri Muurlay Nyanggan Aboriginal Corporation 90 16:23 Mr CONAGHAN 279991 Cowper Earlier this month, I had the great pleasure of meeting with Clark Webb, Kaleesha Morris and Christian Lugnan of the Bularri Muurlay Nyanggan Aboriginal Corporation to discuss not only their achievements but also their goals of ensuring that our First Nations youth and community are both strong in culture and education. The BMNAC was established in 2010 and developed, immediately, two after-school Goori Learning Centres, and, since then, they've built an organisation including three learning centres and a cultural revitalisation program. In 2016, they opened two social enterprises. The first one was the Giingan Gumbaynggirr Cultural Experience, which was set up to create a long-term, sustainable financial income stream. The second one was the Nyanggan Gapi Cafe, which offers guests the opportunity to sample and see traditional ingredients with a new-age twist. Their biggest role is yet to come. Language acquisition is one of the BMNAC's most important goals, including their goal to train and retain 50 fluent Gumbaynggirr teachers by the end of the year and launch a combined immersion school in 2022. This project is so important to all people, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to protect the language and create cohesion, and I look forward to working with them to achieve their goals. And that's not all that's happening in my electorate. I'm also pleased to announce that a project manager will now be appointed to develop a detailed plan for the Port Macquarie tidal pool. This coincides with the first project payment to the Port Macquarie Tidal Pool Committee, which is one of the first major milestones. This has been a 50-year project. In the 1970s, the Port Macquarie community stood together to drive this movement, and it was through the coalition government that a $4.5 million investment was made to see this dream come true. This is something the Port Macquarie community clearly wanted, as there was a petition with over 18,000 signatures. This is not just a pool; it's great for tourism, it's great for rehabilitation and it will serve our ageing community well. The current design, I'm pleased to say, was done in consultation with the Birpai lands council board, and I'm proud to work with them and engage with them and take on board their experience and culture. I continue to applaud the tidal pool committee and others involved, including the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council. This is a great project, and I look forward to the next important steps of planning proposal and simultaneous approval applications. I look forward to being one of the first to jump in the pool—I promise I'll wear board shorts and a rashie! We look forward to getting on with it. JobKeeper Payment 91 16:26 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills I rise to speak on behalf of people in my electorate of Wills who are relying on JobKeeper to keep their businesses afloat. Although it feels like we're moving back to something close to normal in most parts of the Australia, this is not the case yet for many people, many local businesses and many industries. I will give you a couple of examples. Kristie lives in Glenroy in my electorate. She's a self-employed personal travel manager. Kristie told me that she has kept her business alive thanks to JobKeeper, which is great. Even though it has not fully covered her wage or business costs, she has still admirably kept going to keep it afloat. Kristie's business did not qualify for the COVID-19 Consumer Travel Support Program. Many travel businesses missed out on this support. Despite this, Kristie has worked diligently to make sure that her clients were looked after as they pursued refunds for cancelled overseas trips. We don't know when international travel will resume, and Kristie is well aware of the challenges ahead for her industry. But Kristie is doing the right thing. She's doing everything she can to work for her clients so she's in the best possible position to get back to work when travel does reopen. But Kristie tells me that, when JobKeeper ends on 28 March, she will most likely have to close her business. She will then be looking for a job and might end up on JobSeeker. Treasurer, I ask you: Is this what you want? Do you want someone on JobSeeker, instead of running a business that they have built up for years and years? I call on the Treasurer to extend JobKeeper support for all the travel industry workers still not able to get back to work. Another example is Sam. Sam has a family business. Sam and his family own and run cafes and restaurants on university campuses—RMIT City Campus, Brunswick and Bundoora campuses at the University of Melbourne, and campus living Victoria in Carlton. Sam and his family have been in hospitality all of their working lives. They've run these businesses successfully for 22 years. But nothing could have prepared them for the impact of COVID-19 on university campuses. There just aren't enough customers, students on campus, to enjoy a coffee, a burger or a smoothie right now. They are relying on JobKeeper, and, with it ending in March, Sam told me, 'The writing is on the wall for closure.' He said, 'We're hanging by a thread.' If they have to shut up shop, this will be felt not just by Sam but by all of their employees and all of their suppliers. I ask the Treasurer: Will you step in? Will you act to extend support to Sam's business, to hospitality businesses and workers who still can't get back to work? Treasurer, will you save these local jobs? The government's plan to end JobKeeper on 28 March will hurt so many people. It will hurt family businesses. It will hurt entire sectors—travel, the arts, entertainment, hospitality. I call on the Treasurer to extend JobKeeper in a tailored manner to support those who need it. New South Wales State Emergency Service 91 16:29 Mr GEE 261393 Calare Today I rise to pay tribute to true community heroes. I speak, of course, of the members of the New South Wales State Emergency Service, or SES. I pay attribute to those members across the Calare electorate. The New South Wales SES never takes a break. It's always there on the ground, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, keeping our community safe. On 30 January this year I attended a special awards ceremony in Orange to recognise the invaluable contribution and long service of many SES units and volunteers from across the region. Ceremonies were also held in Mudgee and Bathurst. On behalf of the communities of Calare, I would like to acknowledge those who were honoured at those recent ceremonies. From the Panorama and Chifley clusters, there was David Chemello, Deirdre Cummins, Michael Oxford, Chris Abbott, Benjamin Cox, Craig Gibbons, Megan McMahon, Alan Sheehan, James Young, Cheryle Booth, Matthew McMahon, Janine Sharpe, Rebecca Cole, David Tomlinson, Gavan Ellis, David Walther, Marina Gray, Shane Bennett, Claire Bell, Wayne Bowden, Terrence Christian, Phillip Dean, Paul Dusselaar, Melinda Longmuir and Charles Stapleton. From the Mitchell and Talbragar clusters, there was: Raymond Allen, Suzanne Graham, Nancy Pemble, Darren White, Graham Potbury, James Abel, Lloyd Graham, Peter Lang, Paul O'Connor, David Smith, Trevor Barker, David Kendall, Allan Stoddart, Darren White, Kurt Andrew, Paul Allen, Felicity Cresswell, Melanie Hancock, Michelle Lyons, David Hodgen, Jorge Ramirez, Feroz Wani, Benjamin Waters, Jennifer Winsper and Wendy White. From the Canobolas cluster, there was Mareea Agustin, Jeanette Bowd, Grant Hill, James Maclean, William Rollo, Alfred Dukes, Letitia Neville, Robert Stevens, Gregory Agustin, Anne-Marie Stevens, Peter Barnes, Henry Hoswell, Robert O'Neill, John Agustin, Desmond Cassidy, Dallas Pearce and Douglas Watson. Today this Chamber recognises the selflessness and the dedication to community to ensure that we are safe and can get through these emergencies. We say congratulations to all of those award recipients and to all members of the SES for all of the wonderful work that they do in our communities in keeping our communities safe all year round. It's not just the emergencies when they're out on calls; it's training all year round, supporting community events and supporting our communities. They are part of the very fabric of our country communities. We thank the SES for everything that they have done for us. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E09 In accordance with standing order 193 the time for members' constituency statements has concluded. GRIEVANCE DEBATE 92 GRIEVANCE DEBATE Aged Care, Dunkley Electorate: Sport Infrastructure 92 16:33 Ms MURPHY 133646 Dunkley Imagine for a moment what it would have been like for my constituents who have loved ones in the aged-care facility in Ranelagh Gardens when they woke up to this headline in TheAge on 14 February this year: 'Bankrupt chicken farmers banned for cruelty running aged care homes'. Here's what the story says: Two brothers banned from the poultry industry for a total of 17 years after starving more than a million chickens were involved in the acquisition of two aged care homes in Melbourne, despite being bankrupt at the time and having no experience. What are those two aged care homes? Epping Gardens, which many people remember as a place where 38 people died of COVID and, in my electorate, Ranelagh Gardens in Mount Eliza. According to the story in the newspaper: Gerry and Chris Apostolatos used aliases, dummy directors and a family trust to conceal their roles with Chronos Care, which owns aged care facilities … and has received millions of dollars in Commonwealth funding. I can do nothing but agree with the authors of this article, Cameron Houston and Chris Vedelago, when they say: The involvement of the Apostolatos brothers over the past six years raises serious concerns about the regulation and oversight of Victoria's aged care sector, where 655 elderly residents died from COVID-19 in 2020. This pair were facing serious animal cruelty charges in court, which they pleaded guilty to in March 2015, five months after they purchased the Mount Eliza aged-care home in my electorate. The journalist at The Age contacted the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner, Janet Anderson, for comment, but she refused to answer, saying, 'Information about the affairs of an approved provider is protected under the Aged Care Act and cannot be released unless authorised by the approved provider.' If we needed another warning sign about this government's failure to regulate the aged-care system properly, two people who can't breed chickens because they were cruel to them have been running an aged-care facility in my electorate and in the electorate of Scullin. Residents in my electorate and in Scullin, their families and all of our local community deserve answers. The neglect of our aged-care system and residents in aged care is a national disgrace. Every Australian wants their family member to be safe and well cared for. It doesn't matter how many times they try to run away from responsibility, the Prime Minister and his government are responsible for the regulation of the aged-care system, including in my state of Victoria and in my electorate. Why would any family have confidence in this Prime Minister and his government to fix the aged-care system when these are the things that have been happening under their noses? Is it any wonder that I've had constituents contact me? Do you know what they're worried about? 'Why wasn't there any proper accountability or vetting from the government? How was it allowed to happen?' they've asked me. They perhaps now have some insight in relation to their concerns that this facility has been understaffed and that the staff who work there are overworked and undervalued. As constituents have said when they've contacted my office, they are so concerned that this is a yet another example of profit over care that has been allowed to happen under this government. How do my constituents know that the bonds that they put up for this aged-care facility, so that their families are looked after, are even safe? Michael can see that the quality of the food that his mother has been given has deteriorated and that shortcuts are being taken. He knows that it's reflective of the broader aged-care system and not just what's happening to his mother. And it's happening in this facility under this government's watch. Is it any surprise that Michael has told me that he would like to see mandatory staff-to-patient ratios? Both of Edgard's parents are in this facility. Edgard pays for someone else to go into the facility to help care for his mother who's got dementia—and he had to spend two years getting her off chemical constraints, which were there because of the understaffing at the facility—even though he paid $750,000 as a bond. He's also raised the issue of the lack of staff. He's also noted the high turnover of staff. The staff aren't valued. They're under immense pressure. Edgard wants to know—and he wanted me to raise it in this parliament—where the federal government's money is being spent? The facility says that they aren't receiving any, but we know that they are. Where is the accountability, Prime Minister? This cannot be allowed to continue to happen. The recommendations from the aged-care royal commission are due to be handed down within days. You have to act, Prime Minister. No words. No empty promises. Fix this, and fix it now. There are three great projects in my electorate that I've been pushing this government to fund for over a year now. I'm pleased that the Deputy Prime Minister and minister for infrastructure met with me to hear about why the Emil Madsen sporting reserve in Mount Eliza needs to be funded. It has the support of the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council and the whole wider Mornington Mount Eliza community. About 2,000 players across 91 football, cricket and soccer teams use Emil Madsen Reserve on a regular basis. They really need their pavilions upgraded. It's going to benefit thousands of people and boost economic activity, which is really important as we come out of COVID-19. The Deputy Prime Minister advised me to go to the Minister for Sport about this project. Unfortunately, I received a letter back saying there's no more money left for sports infrastructure. I'm not sure whether that's because it all went in the sports rorts, but the letter in black and white said, 'no more money'. So I went back to the Deputy Prime Minister, and he helpfully suggested that in Dunkley we apply for the Building Better Regions Fund to seek funding. Sadly, the entire electorate of Dunkley is outside of the eligible boundaries for that fund. So I've now written again to the Deputy Prime Minister saying—given how hard my community has been pushing for this, given that I have gone through every avenue that he's asked me to go through to get funding for this great community project—could he please look at funding it through the Community Development Grants Program, because we know there's money there and this is an opportunity for the Deputy Prime Minister and this government to show that that money doesn't just go to Liberal and National seats, that the people of Dunkley can get funding and not be left behind by this government. The exact same goes for the Mornington Peninsula Bay Trail cycling project. Same thing: minister not interested. Deputy Prime Minister says go to the Building Better Regions Fund. Not eligible because of the boundaries this government has drawn. Please, Deputy Prime Minister, look at the Community Development Grants Program. The Mornington Peninsula Shire Council wants support for this. There are 11 missing links and this is stage 1. I know that the Minister for Health, the member for Flinders, has spoken to the stakeholders about his support for this project. We talk about healthy living; this is a great project to support healthy living. The other project that will bring such dividends to the cultural richness of my community's life and the greater region, that will bring greater tourism dollars, and that will bring employment for local artists and event managers is the expansion of the McClelland Sculpture Park and Gallery. I've provided the master plans to the Deputy Prime Minister and to the Minister for the Arts, who couldn't even raise himself to reply to my letters for funding. McClelland have great plans for a bush kindergarten and for community places. We have also helped them put in an application for funding from the RISE program. Again, I'm calling on the Deputy Prime Minister and the relevant minister to look at this program, to look at these projects for my community and to fund them. They are good for health, for culture, for employment, for tourism and for COVID recovery, and my electorate deserves this support. Biomedicine 94 16:43 Mr STEVENS 176304 Sturt This afternoon I would like to talk about the opportunities for biomedical research in my home city of Adelaide. But perhaps starting a little more broadly than that, I'm very proud to be part of a government that understands where the future job opportunities are in this country, particularly in the manufacturing sector. South Australia has had a very significant heritage in manufacturing, particularly dating back to the Playford era. It was Thomas Playford who, amongst many other things, established the combination of abundant housing and cheap electricity generation in South Australia, which led so much industry, particularly the car industry but many others as well, to establish in the post World War II period in Australia. That has been an underpinning of our economy for many, many decades. Sadly, the car industry is no longer in South Australia. But this is a government that's making sure that it understands and is identifying and investing in the future opportunities for South Australia's economy. One of those is clearly naval shipbuilding, and it's well known in this chamber that I regularly talk about the submarine and the frigate programs that are going to bring thousands and thousands of jobs into South Australia. The Space Agency and announcements around cybersecurity and smart satellite investments are also very significant in South Australia. These are jobs for the future. They are jobs in their thousands—in fact, they are jobs in their tens of thousands. Those investments are very important. In the recent budget we announced our modern manufacturing fund, the $1.4 billion, and we identified six priority areas. I mentioned defence and space, but another one is medical and biomedical capability in this country—developing that sovereign manufacturing capability in the medical and biomedical sector. In South Australia we have on North Terrace what is now a thriving biomedical precinct which has been developed around the new Royal Adelaide Hospital. I will give a little bit of context here. In 2009 the state government in South Australia decided that the Royal Adelaide Hospital would move from one end of the city, on North Terrace, to the other. They made that commitment and, in 2017, eight years later—it was about September 2017, from memory—the new Royal Adelaide Hospital was opened. That's the major tertiary hospital for the state of South Australia. When it was opened, it was certainly the most expensive hospital ever built—one of the most expensive buildings ever built on the planet, at $2.3 billion. That, of course, has spurned other developments co-located with the Royal Adelaide Hospital. The state government recently announced that the Women's and Children's Hospital that is in North Adelaide is going to be relocated to be adjacent to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, which will be a very good thing that I'm supportive of. One of the major catalysts for biomedical research on the precinct was the investment into the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute. The Rudd government made the commitment to that. That was opened in late 2013. It's an excellent facility, and we are very, very proud and grateful to have it in South Australia. They do some very, very significant and valuable research. They have got a cyclotron in their basement. So, in fact, we have the ability to contribute to the domestic nuclear medicine needs for patients in South Australia and in the Northern Territory, and we are a fail safe for Western Australia as well. So we have that sovereign capability in the City of Adelaide to produce those inputs, which is excellent. The next major milestone here is what was called SAHMRI 2, now to be called the Bragg Cancer Centre, which is a building to be built next door to SAHMRI 1—or what we can now just call SAHMRI. That is going to house the proton therapy unit, which will be the first ever built in Australia. This is going to be a fantastic asset for the entire nation. Proton therapy is a very sophisticated cancer treatment and it's particularly helpful in dealing with small tumours, say spinal tumours, where you might want to undertake radiation therapy but you clearly want to damage as little cell tissue around the tumour that you are targeting as possible. Proton therapy allows for a very concentrated radio therapy beam at that tumour, hopefully hitting only the tumour and as little as possible around that. It's excellent for spinal cord tumours, for example, and lots of tumours in young children, of course. By the very nature of the type of cancer that they can have, the more acute the treatment that is causing as little damage more broadly, the better. At the moment, those that need proton therapy treatment have to go overseas. It's quite common to go to the United States, Japan and Western Europe, if needs be. It isn't right that that capability hasn't been available in this country—and thankfully it will be. I'm hopeful that, within the next two years, the building will be finished, the machine will be commissioned and certified and that they will be able to commence treatment. A little over $60 million to buy the actual machine is coming from the Commonwealth government. The building is being built by a consortium led by Commercial & General. The state government are putting a significant amount of money, around $40 million, into the actual building. It's being done as a commercial proposition, so other parts of the building will be leased out to other appropriate biomedical tenants. So we are going to have in Adelaide the capability to provide that proton therapy treatment to any Australian that needs it and also, frankly, to a lot of people in the broader Asia-Pacific region who currently have to travel further than Australia to get that treatment. The unit itself is a very modern third-generation proton therapy unit. There's only one made by the manufacturer operating at the moment in the world and that's at the Massachusetts General Hospital, which is one of the most celebrated institutions for nuclear medicine and modern medicine, and we're getting the second one of that generation installed in Adelaide. I was there two weeks ago and was lucky enough to have a site tour by the management at SAHMRI and the team there. They're obviously very excited. It is next to the old rail yards. They're still digging the hole for the site. A proton therapy unit needs to be held in a very purpose-built building, with very specific concrete specifications around the bunker that the actual unit is held in, which obviously is understandable, given what is being produced in the process of developing the proton ray. They're digging the site out as we speak. They have been going for about 12 months, right through COVID. Despite the pressures of COVID, they haven't missed a beat. Thankfully, the state and federal governments have worked very well together to make sure that the deal, from a commercial point of view, held together so we didn't have delays because some of the financing parties and the contracted builder had uncertainties with COVID. We made sure that guarantees were in place so they could continue on schedule for construction. On the tour, the advice was that, later this year, probably around September or October, the excavation works will have finished. They have had a few surprises along the way, given the site was the old railway signal station, dating back to the 19th century. There were some contamination issues with things like kerosene and other things that existed in the 19th century era railways that they have been able to gently and safely dispose of. They'll start coming out of the ground in October-November. There will be cranes on the skyline again in that precinct. When the building is completed, hopefully in mid-2023, and the proton therapy facility is commissioned and run by the state government's SA Health, it will be such a proud day for all Australians to have that nuclear medicine capability here in this country. There have been some examples in local media in South Australia. In fact, a little girl living in Adelaide had to travel to Texas for proton therapy treatment because it wasn't available in Australia. It's a great relief to see that won't be the case for patients who might need this treatment into the future. It's obviously stressful and painful enough to need that treatment, but to have to travel to another country to get it is just not right for a First World country like Australia. I'm very proud of the government's commitment to that and I look forward to the centre opening in the next few years. Blair Electorate: Infrastructure 95 16:53 Mr NEUMANN HVO Blair I want to talk about a number of projects that are listed on the Infrastructure Australia Priority List, with high-priority initiatives listed. It's really important to understand that one in seven people in this country live in South-East Queensland. It generates about one in six of the dollars that go to what we call economic development in the country. The growth in South-East Queensland cannot be underestimated. My home city of Ipswich has about 240,000 people. By 2050, there will be about 550,000, and most of that growth will be in the southern corridor from around Ripley, Deebing Heights and Springfield, so road infrastructure and rail infrastructure is really critical in terms of catering for jobs and helping with the livelihoods and lifestyle of people in that area. I want to talk about a number of initiatives about which I feel that governments, at both levels but particularly the government at the federal level, have let us down on. The first is the Ipswich Motorway between Ipswich and Brisbane, which is a very important motorway, not just for Ipswich but for the Lockyer Valley, the Scenic Rim, Toowoomba, the Somerset Region and beyond. It's a great driver of transport and logistics as well as commuters. The Labor government has always strongly supported the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway, from Dinmore through to Darra and beyond to Rocklea. The coalition opposed the upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway for election after election. They eventually had a Damascus road conversion experience in 2016. To their credit they finally agreed and have agreed with the Queensland Labor government. We've seen an upgrade of the Ipswich Motorway from Suscatand Street towards the Oxley roundabout. It's made a huge difference—100,000 vehicles a day go through there. But there's a final stage that needs to be done on the Oxley roundabout back to what we used to call the Centenary Interchange—bottlenecks from the three lanes back to the two lanes. At the last election the federal Labor opposition made a commitment of $500 million to work with the Queensland government to start that process. It's really critical. It's the final the stage of the Ipswich Motorway, and I'd urge the Morrison government to work with the Palaszczuk Labor government to get that project underway and adopt a bipartisan approach to that infrastructure. It's really, really important for my constituents. It's actually located, almost always, in the member for Moreton's electorate, and it's located in the member for Oxley's electorate as well. It's a very important project, and I call on the Morrison government to work with the Palaszczuk government and to fund that particular project. The next initiative is the Cunningham Highway, which is about 4.7 kilometres of road, from Yamanto to Ebenezer Creek. This road is critical to the RAAF base at Amberley. The Queensland Times has recorded that on a number of occasions, and I've spoken about this particular road many times. To the credit of both sides of politics at a federal level, we put $170 million in commitments towards upgrading that particular road. But, at both sides of politics at a federal level, we've spent $1.3 billion on the RAAF base at Amberley but haven't fixed the road outside. So we need a commitment there. The current government has done some work in relation to this at a proportion of 80-20 in terms of maintenance on that part of the Cunningham Highway and beyond, west towards Willowbank. It's so important for the Willowbank motorsport precinct as well. But 8½ thousand people work on the RAAF base at Amberley every day, and it clogs from about 6 am to 9 am and from about 4 pm to 7 pm. It really does clog, so they stage the departure and the entry of workers working in that area because of the congestion on the road. We're talking about 2½ thousand heavy vehicles a day and 17,000 vehicles experiencing heavy congestion. That was in 2018. It's beyond that now. I really call on the Palaszczuk Labor government as well as the Morrison government to get together to come to a commitment in relation to that. That road was last costed at about $345 million. A business case needs to be lodged by the Palaszczuk Labor government. I wrote to them and now Minister Mark Bailey, Minister for Transport and Main Roads in the Palaszczuk government. I wrote to Minister Bailey and the Deputy Prime Minister in June 2019, calling on them to work together to come to an agreement in relation to this. It's such an important project. If they ever went to the Willowbank area group meeting, as I do on a regular basis, they would see the frustration of the residents who live in that area. It's so critical for our economic development. It's an appalling situation, when you think about it, that we could spend well over $1 billion on the RAAF base at Amberley but not fix the road outside. If you've ever been to the Winternationals at Willowbank Raceway, you would see how the road gets congested. It's absolutely critical that governments at both levels work together. So I call on both levels of government to work together to get this project done. The next project I want to talk about is a project which really causes a lot of problems for people on the north side of Ipswich, and it is what's commonly called in Ipswich the Mount Crosby interchange. From Dinmore through to Helidon Spa along the Warrego Highway is a priority initiative according to Infrastructure Australia. The worst intersection there used to be the at the Blacksoil interchange, but we made a commitment and funded it. The state government came to the party when we were in government, and it's been fixed. It's saved lives and improved the economic development of the people in the Somerset, in the Lockyer Valley and in Ipswich, but this particular interchange is shocking. Every time you drive out there, the road is banked back in the afternoon on the 100-kilometre stretch. It's such an unsafe situation, on both sides—west on the Warrego Highway, trying to get to Karalee, and trying to get to Tivoli, coming from the east from Brisbane, heading west. It's so unsafe. There have been accidents there. The current proposal is simply inadequate, as I've said in local newspapers. The Morrison government has come to an agreement with the Palaszczuk government for a $22 million upgrade. Both governments put in $400 million over the forward estimates—$320 million from this government and $80 million from the Palaszczuk government. They've come up with an inadequate solution. The consultation process has finished, and the feedback I've got as a local federal member is that the current proposal, which doesn't fix the off-ramps, cuts off Cole street and doesn't touch the one-lane-each-way bridge, is simply not good enough. I've made my views very clear to Main Roads in Queensland, to the people who are doing the project as well as the ones doing the Warrego Highway—they are two separate groups, believe it or not, in Main Roads, Queensland—that it's simply not good enough and that the federal government and the state government need to get together. I've made my views very clear in the local newspapers. I call on Jim Madden, the state member for Ipswich West, I call on Minister Bailey and I call on people who represent the area—Christian Rowan, the member for Moggill, and other members—to work together in a bipartisan way to come up with a better solution. We've seen the Blacksoil interchange and how that's been a great solution for the part where the Brisbane Valley Highway meets the Warrego Highway. Let's get a Brisbane Valley-Warrego highway solution like the Blacksoil interchange. That would solve the problem. We need something like that. It's not good enough at the moment. I call on governments at both levels to put aside partisan differences and work together to fix this problem. There's $400 million on the table—$80 million from the state and $320 million from the federal government. How about you spend $50 million or $60 million extra of that at the worst intersection along the highway and fix the bridge and the off-ramps? That would make a big difference. I did a three-hour mobile opposite Karalee shopping centre at Chapters bookshop and cafe—it wasn't three hours; it was actually four in the end—and nearly every person I spoke to talked to me about the current proposal on the Mount Crosby interchange and said that it's not good enough. You need to go back to TMR and come back with a better solution to finally fix the problem. I also mentioned to the Deputy Prime Minister that he should work with the Ipswich City Council to provide money for the business case for the rail link from Ipswich to Springfield. I call on him formally to do so. I've spoken to him a couple of times about it. This is not a partisan issue either. This is a bipartisan proposal. It's being done by the Ipswich City Council, with money from the Queensland Labor government. We really need to work together. I call on the Deputy Prime Minister to put money in the budget towards this and give it to the Ipswich City Council so a business case can be developed. Forde Electorate: Infrastructure 97 17:03 Mr VAN MANEN 188315 Forde I know the area that the member for Blair was referring to and I can relate to some of those issues in my electorate. I am pleased to say—probably much to the member for Blair's frustration—that TMR is doing some upgrades on interchanges in my patch. They're substantially better than what he's been alluding to, so maybe he can have a look at some of the designs in my part of the world. But I can relate to his concerns in that space. It's interesting because that's the topic of my contribution tonight. I recently convened a community forum in Beenleigh as I wanted to hear from members of the community in Beenleigh about issues that matter to them. We had a very constructive Q&A session that lasted a couple of hours. At that time, around 130 constituents told us about the things that matter to them. Of the issues they raised, nearly half were about roads and the concerns they have with traffic problems. At the outset, I want to thank the state member for Macalister, the local councillor for Division 12, Karen Murphy, the deputy mayor, Jon Raven, and officers from Queensland Police, who were also at that forum, for their positive and constructive contribution to that evening. One of the concerns was shared by Janet who lives at a retirement village in my electorate and who can't get out of her driveway each day because there is so much traffic backed up on Martens Street. The impact this has on Janet and others like her is much more than a vague irritation. It causes much stress and anxiety. The New York Times has reported on the toll that this stress and anxiety can bring to us, stemming from this sense of helplessness when we experience traffic and its unpredictability. One study found that, to save a minute of time spent in traffic, people would trade away five minutes of other leisure activity. This survey shows that we hate sitting in traffic so much that we'd rather trade five minutes of leisure time just to spend one less minute sitting in traffic. In Brisbane, according to the McCrindle research, the average commuter spends 67 minutes sitting in traffic every day. This works out at 5½ hours per week, with average peak speeds of around 43 kilometres an hour, lower than the speed limit in non-peak-hour times. Smart cities specialist Daniel Antonello said: Traffic congestion impacts people's happiness, where they choose to live, how productive we are as a society and the success of our economy.— much of what the member for Blair was just speaking about as well. That's why I'm so pleased to share with the House that this government, the Morrison government, is delivering on road upgrades and improvements across the electorate of Forde. In May last year, the government announced a new $500 million Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. This program supports local councils to deliver priority road and community infrastructure projects across Australia. It supports jobs and local economies and helps communities bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic. It's also making it easier for people like Janet to go about their daily activities with less stress and fewer dangerous road intersections. This program attracted strong community and local government support, and, through the 2020-21 budget, the government announced a $1 billion extension to it. We also have the government's Infrastructure Investment Program, with a record $110 billion over 10 years, from 2021-31. This important program supports land transport projects, which will strengthen the national economy, bust congestion out of cities and make regional roads safer and more efficient. When completed, these projects will significantly improve the efficiency and safety of the land transport network across the country. I'm pleased to say that my electorate of Forde is benefiting from some of these projects. A couple of weeks ago, we visited some of these locations that have benefited from this funding. At Noya Park at Windaroo, there is a section there on the side of the road that is used as a car park and that was particularly dangerous, given the drop-offs from the main road to this dirt car park. This has been reconstructed and sealed, so it's now safe for people to park, use the park facilities and access Windaroo Cottage across the road. It'll make it a much better space and a much friendlier space for our local community to use. There will also be signalisation and traffic safety improvements at the Albert Street, Station Road and Logan River Road off-ramp in Bethania. Anybody that lives in this area knows how dangerous this intersection is. When I visited there, there were obvious signs of damage to fences at various points around the intersection, where cars and trucks appear to have had accidents. The project at this location involves installation of traffic signals, pedestrian crossings and on-road cycle lanes at the intersection to improve the safety and capacity of road users. I also recently visited the M1 Pacific Motorway upgrades at Exit 41 and 49. The Morrison government has committed $96.3 million to this project, and I'm pleased to note that the Gold Coast city council is also contributing to adjacent projects to these. These two important intersections, together with Exit 45, which we're also putting $10 million into, serve the growing area of the northern Gold Coast. One side of the highway is mine; the other side of the highway is our colleague the member for Fadden's, and I know that he, equally, is very supportive of these projects. What these projects will do will massively upgrade these interchanges from a single-lane bridge to two dual-lane bridges, get rid of roundabouts that clog up traffic, put traffic signals in and vastly extend the off-ramp so that the issue of traffic in the morning peak hour tailing back onto the M1 and into a 100-kilometre-per-hour zone are removed. The community is very appreciative of these upgrades. I would say that it's good to see work at exit 41 progressing, but I'm sad to say that work on exit 49 is yet to commence. I call on the state Palaszczuk government to get on with the work on exit 49 as well. We've got the money. There is no reason why that work shouldn't have commenced and be underway today. The government has also committed $15 million to the Coomera Park'n'Ride. This project will increase the capacity of the park'n'ride facilities at Coomera train station and improve accessibility and the incentive for people to catch the train into Brisbane or down to the Gold Coast rather than driving. I'm also very pleased to share with the House some of the other road projects this government is delivering for Forde, which include the following: $8 million for the upgrade of Tamborine Oxenford Rd at Howard Creek, a very dangerous little creek crossing because it is a large dip and a very busy road. This will significantly lift the height of the road, reduce flooding and significantly improve safety. Some $60 million in safety improvements to the Mount Lindesay Highway at North McLean have been delivered and have made an enormous difference with the installation of traffic lights at Greenbank Road and the construction of a dedicated service road. There is $75 million in conjunction with the Queensland government for upgrades to the Mount Lindesay Highway between Stoney Camp Road and Chambers Flat Road. This will deliver safety improvements, duplication and the construction of a new northbound bridge over Norris Creek. There is also $15.6 million for Beenleigh Redland Bay Road between California Creek Road and Serpentine Creek which will provide targeted safety road improvements, including wider centre lines, audio tactile line marking, shoulder widening and removing of roadside hazards and safety barriers as appropriate in conjunction with a state government project of installation of traffic lights near a number of our schools. There is a $14.4 million project to improve the Beaudesert Beenleigh Road between Beaudesert and Wollfdene in addition to our $5 million project to upgrade Beaudesert Beenleigh Road between Milne Street and Tallagandra Road. These road projects are very important to the lives of the people in the electorate of Forde. When I came to this place I made a commitment to the people of Forde that we would focus on fixing roads and building infrastructure and creating economic opportunity. I'm pleased to say that these projects are focused on exactly that. We don't want people spending time in their cars sitting in traffic. We don't want them experiencing the stress of trying to get out of their driveways and turning into dangerous intersections. I'm very pleased that these are another range of examples of the Morrison government delivering for my community in Forde. JobKeeper Payment 98 17:13 Mr KEOGH 249147 Burt The Labor Party was founded by the union movement on the need to protect workers and to ensure those working had good pay, stable jobs and good working conditions. We know that this requires a prosperous small-business sector to support these jobs and we support them too. We acknowledge that owners of small businesses, be they tradies, mum-and-dad franchisees or the owners of local cafes, are all workers too. Small-business owners are usually not multimillionaire property moguls. In fact, many small-business owners take home at the end of the day less than the salary that they pay to their valued staff. Small businesses are often at the mercy of their larger suppliers, landlords or customers. They accept contracts, take jobs and rarely get to set their own prices. We know, as the Labor Party, we must support small businesses and make sure that their interests are looked after and well represented for them, their families and employees. That's why Labor proposed a scheme through the COVID-19 pandemic that would ensure that not only could workers continue to be paid during the economic crisis to ensure that they could put food on their tables but they would also keep working, stay connected to their employers to keep businesses afloat and be able to survive the pandemic. But today there are 33 days until that lifeline, JobKeeper, is unplugged by the Morrison government. The Morrison government needs to provide small businesses across Australia with certainty about what is going to happen from 28 March and what supports, if any, the government is going to provide after that date. At the moment, the only thing we know for sure is that the COVID induced economic crisis is not going to come to a shuddering halt come 28 March. As things stand, after 28 March the sun won't come out for small business, we won't have pink fluffy bunnies bouncing around everywhere, and it's not going to be all rainbows and lollipops. It's going to be bad. It's going to be bad for the 1.3 million people who are currently relying on JobKeeper and the businesses they work for. This is going to be bad for the 100,000 people who, though they have jobs today thanks to JobKeeper, this government's own Treasury department says will lose their job when JobKeeper runs out at the end of March. Today we've seen reports that almost 70 per cent of South Australian businesses want targeted support measures to continue beyond 28 March. Until things go back to normal properly, there needs to be a safety net for small businesses. The economic impact of COVID-19 will not magically end on 28 March. In South Australia, two out of three tourism, accommodation and food service businesses, as well as the education sector, continue to experience revenue decline of 50 per cent or more. In Tasmania, the tourism industry fears 9,000 jobs are at risk. Meanwhile Queensland's most iconic tourism operators are preparing for a wipe-out, predicting up to a quarter of Queensland's 40,000 tourism businesses may go broke. Even in Western Australia, where our state has largely been normal for quite some time, tourism has been struggling with the lack of international visitors. Around a third of tourism businesses in WA are still relying on JobKeeper. We've now also got reports that the cinema industry has seen an 80 per cent decline in its revenues, and they are suffering hugely. I recently met with the team from Grand Cinemas Armadale to see how they've been coping as a Western Australian independent cinema company. I won't sugar coat it. Independent cinemas in Australia have been hit by the perfect storm—a drop in audience confidence due to COVID-19, prolonged cinema closures and capacity restrictions and the withholding of new release films by distributors. Now they are faced with the imminent withdrawal of JobKeeper. Meanwhile 90 per cent of live entertainment companies are still relying on JobKeeper to stay afloat. Whether it's hospitality, accommodation, aviation, small businesses—mum and dad businesses—across the country are potentially going to slam into a wall at the end of March. The government has given small business no certainty. Businesses right now, with 33 days until the end of JobKeeper, are having to prepare to let staff go, having to prepare to potentially wind up the small business that they've worked so hard to build. This is a truly shocking situation for small and medium size businesses. With that in mind, there are also many small businesses just assuming that it will all be okay, that there has to be some sort of support on the way, that they will end up being covered by it and that it will be due to be introduced at the last moment. It's an optimistic view, but I'm not sure that will be what occurs. Reports today from in The Canberra Times reveal that the ATO is already winding down its JobKeeper team and they'll begin shedding staff back down to pre-pandemic levels. It doesn't look like they've received any notification of potential continuation of support measures for small business. This government has no understanding of the needs of small business. For the people who operate small and medium businesses, JobKeeper, even in a reduced form, has been a lifeline—a bridge to enable them to continue to navigate the turbulence we've all experienced with COVID-19. Now they're being left high and dry. It's clear that the Morrison government just doesn't get it. During the COVID-19 crisis, creating employment was simply not a priority for small business. It was just to maintain production and labour levels to keep their heads just above water. Until small businesses are confident that their businesses won't be interrupted by lockdowns and other restrictions, they're not going racing off to employ even more staff. So in this regard the JobMaker scheme is a complete farce. We know, through Treasury's own examples obtained by the ABC this week, that bosses could sack a full-time employee, replace them with three part-time staff and remain financially ahead, because of the way this scheme works. This scheme will just enable businesses to create more insecure work. Companies might be manipulated or even encouraged to transition employees out of a job only to be replaced under the JobMaker scheme. JobMaker was intended to create new jobs, but frankly small businesses don't want to be putting on good employees into a position of uncertain work. Despite growing anxiety and uncertainty about JobKeeper being cut, we're running out of hope that a plan for good, secure, well-paid jobs to replace it will be announced. We've said all along that JobKeeper and other supports should be tailored to the economic conditions. Of course, it can't last forever, but some supports need to continue while these businesses are still suffering the impacts of COVID-19. Many workers, small businesses and communities are continuing to hurt. Labor is on the side of these working families. Only we understand that small business needs a level playing field as we continue going through this crisis. After COVID-19, Labor will deliver national reconstruction that is squarely focused on jobs, good secure jobs. We know that this also requires working with and supporting small businesses that provide these jobs. If you want good, secure jobs with fair pay and conditions, Labor is on your side. If you want an Australia that makes things and supports local jobs, Labor is on your side. Only Labor is truly on the side of small business. North Queensland: Insurance 100 17:21 Mr THOMPSON 281826 Herbert North Queensland has market failure of an essential service, and that essential service is insurance. In North Queensland insurance is as essential as water and power. If you own a business, you have to have insurance. If you own a house, you have to have insurance. If you buy a house and need a mortgage, the bank requires you to have insurance. If you own strata title, it is legislated that you must have insurance. Insurance is essential, not just because of Townsville's high crime rate but also because of the high frequency of natural disasters that we experience. The reason I say it's market failure of an essential service is that there are an increasing number of people who are simply going without insurance because they can't afford it. Premiums have continued to go up and up, but insurance companies aren't prepared to take the risk. There are many companies that just simply won't insure in North Queensland. In fact, it has gotten to the point for some types of insurance that there are no Australian insurers who will provide this essential service in Townsville. How has this happened? How has this been going on? It has been subject to a three-year investigation by the ACCC into insurance in northern Australia. So what are the solutions? I believe the key is for all levels of government to work together, to take responsibility and to not point the finger at each other. We all have our part to play in fixing this insurance issue, this market failure. For local governments, their role to play is through mitigation. We've seen through different funding grants that these projects can put downward pressure on premiums because risks are reduced. The state can play a role today by abolishing stamp duty—and I am under no illusion that the federal government has a role to pay here and we must intervene. In late 2019 the member for Dawson, the Assistant Treasurer, and I met with all CEOs of the major insurers in Townsville. They all nodded and said that they wanted to get on board and make sure that our premiums in North Queensland would go down. Well, they haven't done anything, except renege on their promise. The Assistant Treasurer and I were talking about the government doing a light touch to let insurers and these companies get on with what they should be doing. Well, a light touch hasn't worked. Maybe a heavy hand is the next thing that they need. If that means giving a few of them a bloody nose to make sure they fall into line and do what is required, insuring the whole of Australia not just cherrypicking, then I think that is what we must do. There are a number of options being considered. In North Queensland colleagues of mine have been speaking with the minister, and Chambers of Commerce and other peak bodies have also been coming up with ideas. A part of that is making sure that insurance companies aren't cherrypicking where they want to do business and putting Townsville in the too hard basket—which only results in no competition, no choice and market failure. The other thing I believe we need in order to have a sufficient positive impact and create that downward pressure that we so desperately need is a government reinsurance pool. One of the findings by the ACCC, which they touched on a little bit but didn't really do a deep dive into, was that a reinsurance pool would only work in a place where there isn't insurance. Well, welcome to Townsville! We don't have insurance. Magnetic Island and other places all around the electorate of Herbert can't get insurance, but broader Townsville also can't get it. So I believe a reinsurance pool is a good idea. The government has a reinsurance pool, which was established in 2001 for terrorist attacks. So we know that it can work. And I think that we, in North Queensland, would appreciate some government intervention. This could be extended into the regions, not just as an insurance blanket but targeted—at cyclones, fires and floods. It should not be just a blanket, because I don't think that would be appropriate. We could also look at something like a mutual obligation, with insurers made accountable to their members. We know that that has worked in other places. In the event of a crisis, the reinsurer covers part of the claims that are paid out. Insurers pay the premiums to the reinsurers in much the same way as a household pays premiums to their insurer. I think this is a good idea. It has been supported by our chamber of commerce—and also by our council, which is good because council and I don't always agree, but on insurance we're in lock step. I think it is good to have our people leading on what needs to happen, because, though I'm in the government, we know that, with any government, when they take all the lead, sometimes the clumsy hand gets in the way. We need people-driven solutions, not government pushing what's happening. I know this isn't a silver bullet, but we know there are no silver bullets to this. The solution is multifaceted. It is difficult, but that doesn't mean it won't work. Time is running out for us to fix this problem, because we are getting into our cyclone season. We have had floods—and we didn't think that was going to happen. In the electorate of Herbert, we've been kicked in the guts a few times, and we want to make sure that we fix this insurance debacle. In one of my first speeches I spoke about insurance, and some good members of the Labor Party, members on the other side, came up to me and said: 'Don't talk about insurance,' because it has been kicked down the road from government to government to government, and the only people that that hurt were the people in North Queensland. You can't have these crooks from overseas coming in and jacking up insurance by 200 per cent or 250 per cent. It's just not fair. There are retirement villages that can't get insurance. I just can't fathom how any level of government, for consecutive decades, has sat back and said: 'This is okay.' I know that the Assistant Treasurer, Michael Sukkar, is probably sitting in his office now on the edge of his seat saying: 'I can't believe he's talking about insurance again!' But I know that he's working hard on it. I know that he is working with people, including the councils and the coalition members, and I'm sure he's had some feedback from the opposition on how we can best tackle this, because this isn't about political point scoring; this is about making sure that people who are doing it tough, in places like Townsville that have had cyclones and floods and other natural disasters, can get insurance, because, at the end of the day, it hurts their hip pocket. When you are taking more money away from people in these exorbitant prices and having different insurers pull out, it hurts, and it's not fair. I know that the state government had an insurance agency; that's been floated by different people in the public. All we care about and all the public cares about is us just getting on with this and fixing it. I know there's a lot of pressure on Minister Sukkar, and I have a lot of faith in him to be able to come to the table and address this issue and fix it. My colleagues in the north speak a lot about insurance. It's not a topic that I want to talk about. I want it fixed. I don't want retirement villages or people on Magnetic Island or people who live in areas of potential floods—or, as we saw, people in flood areas—not being able to get insurance or having to pay too much. We really do do it tough in the north. I know this is an issue around the country and definitely in northern Australia, but I just want to make sure that we're doing this the right way, at the right time, and for the people. A reinsurance pool is exactly what I believe should happen, and I know it's supported by my colleagues. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 241590 There being no further grievances, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Federation Chamber adjourned at 17 : 30