CONDOLENCES

2021-08-31 46 1 7 House of Reps 0 1

Tuesday, 31 August 2021

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

CONDOLENCES 1 CONDOLENCES Gallacher, Senator Alexander McEachian (Alex) 1 12:01 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I move: That the House record its deep regret at the death, on 29 August 2021, of Senator Alexander (Alex) McEachian Gallacher, Senator for South Australia, place on record its appreciation of his service to Australia, and offer its heartfelt sympathy to his family in their bereavement. It is with great sadness that I rise today to pay tribute to a colleague gone too soon. On Sunday Senator Gallacher lost his battle with lung cancer, but he fought bravely. He was 67. Today we gather to remember a straight talker, a man who knew the values he stood for and the working people he fought for, and a servant of Australia who loved his adopted country and the party he so honourably and faithfully served. Senator Gallagher was born in 1954 in New Cumnock, Scotland, a remote town that has weathered the seasons and struggles of life for centuries and is known for its vast open vistas and rolling green hills, and a town that, like many, has wrestled with its place in the 20th and the 21st century economies. Sixty years ago New Cumnock was a vibrant coalmining town. Working in the pits was of course difficult and strenuous and, indeed, dangerous work, but with that hardship comes camaraderie and community and a determination to watch out for each other because your life is always in each other's hands. On the town's worst day, in 1950, 129 miners were trapped underground, and it was a race against the clock. Thirteen lives were lost that day. In that world safety was everything; looking after your mates mattered. That was the world of New Cumnock. During the 1960s, as the pits started to close and jobs disappeared and houses were boarded up and opportunity faded, in 1966 Alex's father brought his family to Australia. He moved from the cold and remote and windswept places of southern Scotland to a place just as vast but nowhere near as cold: the Northern Territory. In so many ways Alex's story is typical of immigrant stories going back centuries. In Alex's words, his father came to Australia seeking a better chance for him and his family. But he and his family knew that a better chance is never handed to you. You work for it and you take the opportunities where you find them and you're rewarded for them. Indeed, some of Alex's criticisms of the casualisation of the workforce related to the way you can get stuck in roles that have neither security nor opportunity. Alex's early career as a labourer and a truck driver in the 1970s ignited what became for him a lifelong mission—giving a voice to workers in the transport industry. After working at TAA as a ramp operator, Alex had established himself in the union movement. He worked for the Transport Workers Union representing members in South Australia and the Northern Territory. He represented transport workers for 22 years—faithful, dedicated service. As we know, he rose up the ranks of the TWU, becoming president in 2007. It was a lifelong passion he brought to this place. His approach, as those who knew him well, was no nonsense. No doubt, he was influenced by Aunty Doris and Aunty Mattie, who, on hearing he had been elected to the Australian Senate, gave him some stern Scottish advice: 'Don't get a big head,' they said. In the Senate Alex brought with him the beliefs, values and humility so conferred to him by Aunty Doris and Aunty Mattie, and these guided him, his decisions and his conduct, in this place. When he entered the parliament, he spoke of his love of the transport industry and said: In my humble opinion, there is no better place to work. There is no smoke and mirrors, just plain-talking, hardworking employees and employers alike in a tough, competitive industry which works harder than most people imagine and continues to work while most people are asleep. It was a point he reminded us of during this pandemic. Alex had an understanding and appreciation of what Australian wage and salary earners give to this country, and it was not something he left at his first speech. It was integral to his last as well, where he spoke of the workers who carry this country. Alex had a rich and nuanced understanding of the place of work in our lives and of the dignity of work and what we sacrifice in our labours. He saw it wherever he went. When he returned to Australia after a nine-day placement in Afghanistan as part of the ADF Parliamentary Program he said this: Probably the biggest thing that I learned in my short time in Afghanistan was the absolute commitment of our people, the courage of our people, their wanting to do their job well, to serve their country well, to look after each other each and every day and to get home at the end of each day in one piece, with all their crew intact. I can hear echoes of the lessons of a mining town that suffered such tragedy, in those remarks, and I hear a former advocate for transport workers who wanted his drivers to return home, at the end of a long stretch, each day in one piece. It's a passion he brought to this place, in the parliament. In 2014 he formed, along with the member for Gippsland, the Parliamentary Friends of Road Safety group. It was something he felt in his very being. He once said: I don't ever go down the Hume Highway without calling into the truckies memorial at Tarcutta. If I have 10 minutes to spare, I pull off and look at the names on that list. That was the sort of bloke he was. We know Alex Gallacher loved his family, he loved his work and he loved his country, but he had another love, I'm told, and that was golf. He once said one of the most peculiar statements ever recorded by Hansard—and that's saying something! He said: There is no more beautiful place in the whole of Australia than a new golf course. It's a nod, perhaps, to the undulating green Scottish fields of his childhood. But I think we saw a deeper insight when he was sick. I'm advised he said after receiving chemotherapy, 'Golf makes me feel good, exercise makes me feel good and work completes it.' He continued to work to the very end because he found and saw meaning and purpose in his work. He said, 'I'm trying to change my use-by date to 'best before'. I just keep going as long as I can.' And he did, bravely. He did, and those who love him can be just so proud of his service to our country—those of his family, those of his friends outside of this place and those here in this place who join us today. He did, right until the very end. Alex's birthplace, New Cumnock, has in its town centre a statue of one of the most famous Scottish compatriots, the 18th century poet Rabbie Burns. Burns's face adorns the roadside that welcomes people to that town—Scotland's national bard. We mostly remember Burns for what have become his most famed words, about old times and old friends and memories of what was, in the words of 'Auld Lang Syne'. In a lovely coincidence, the son of New Cumnock who we mourn today was actually born on New Year's Day. Alex's birthdays were ushered in with 'Auld Lang Syne'. Allow me to read—certainly not sing—a few of the verses in memory of a colleague and a friend: Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne, we'll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne … … … And there's a hand my trusty friend! And give me a hand o' thine! And we'll take a right good-will draught, for auld lang syne. In farewelling our colleague leaving this place too soon, we honour his service to this place and to our country. To Alex's wife, Paola, and his children and grandchildren, I offer my and Jenny's gratitude and condolences and those of the government and also of the people of Australia. May God bless you, and may Alex rest in peace. 12:10 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the Prime Minister for his fine words and his genuine sentiment with regard to farewelling our dear friend and colleague Senator Alex Gallacher. It's more than a year and a half since Alex was diagnosed with lung cancer, and we're deeply saddened that this was a battle that could be fought but, in the end, not won. Alex carried on fighting for his fellow Australians as he dealt with the realities of this illness. That's the sort of man that he was. Senator Don Farrell told me when he spoke to me last week that the end was near, that Alex wanted to stay as a senator till his final days. Indeed, Australia won something of a lottery in 1966 when the young Alex and his parents left their native Scotland and headed for our shores. It must be said that the Labor Party and the trade union movement have enjoyed a pretty good track record when it comes to Scottish imports, and Alex was a prime example. By the time he arrived in parliament he'd spent many years as a labourer, a truck driver and a ramp services operator at Trans Australia Airlines. He joined Labor in Darwin in 1988, when he also began to work for his beloved Transport Workers Union. He eventually became secretary of the South Australian/Northern Territory branch and ascended to vice-president and then president of the national Transport Workers Union. Alex stood up consistently and passionately for the rights of his fellow Australians at work and for their right to come home safely from work. There was no stronger advocate of safe rates than Alex Gallacher. It was his driving energy as a trade unionist, and he carried it burning brightly with him when he became one of Labor's senators for South Australia in 2010. As South Australia's Labor leader, Peter Malinauskas, so rightly put it yesterday, 'transport workers could hardly have had a better friend, ally and advocate in the Australian parliament'. If there was even a flimsy chance that Alex would get carried away by his transition to high office it was nipped in the bud by his aunts Doris and Mattie. Their advice, which could have been given that extra bit of gravity by their Scottish accents, was: 'Don't get too big for your boots!' As Alex said in his first speech to the Senate, it was advice that he intended to heed. And he did. In that same speech he charted a clear course for his parliamentary career as he outlined his priority interests—the transport industry, road safety and superannuation. What he then said gave a perfect insight into the character of the man. He said this: I have been involved in the transport industry all my life. In my humble opinion, there is no better place to work. There is no smoke and mirrors, just plain-talking, hardworking employees and employers alike in a tough, competitive industry which works harder than most people imagine and continues to work while most people are asleep. In this time of the pandemic, those words echo never more truly than today. Alex was an exemplar of the enduring bond between the Australian Labor Party, the mighty trade union movement and the shop floor. His life was an act of dedication to the interests of working people, and as you'd expect from a man who knew so well the rumble of the road beneath him, his particular love for the transport sector and those who worked in it never, ever wavered. It was a love that sometimes manifested itself in surprising ways, such as that time he had a crucial cameo on the SBS reality show Marry Me Marry My Family. It was a wedding in Nairobi negotiating the dowry on behalf of a young truck driver, who was the son of an old friend. After what was described as a pretty hectic two hours of talks, an agreement was reached and the wedding was a great success. As a microcosm of the Alex Gallacher approach to life, it was perfect—tenacity, determination, loyalty, love. Look back over Alex's long and considerable record and you will see all those qualities and energies working together. You see them in the way he defended workers' rights and conditions. He fought against WorkChoices and, understanding that a decent working life must include dignity in retirement, he was tireless in his efforts to protect and bolster universal superannuation. Again, if we turn back to his first speech we find he moved almost to poetry on the power of superannuation. He said: In order to take advantage of what Einstein referred to as the eighth wonder of the world, compound interest, young people need to be educated, preferably at school. During his time with cancer he was a champion of the workers who are getting us through the pandemic. The thought that Alex won't be here with us when we emerge is a poignant one. The Labor family appreciates the kindness from across the aisle, from the Prime Minister and from others who have reached out to offer their condolences, among them, finance minister Birmingham's touching farewell to his fellow senator in which he said: A straight shooter, you always knew what Alex believed and where he stood. On that note, I would like to turn to the words of Alex's good mate, his Canberra flatmate and fellow truckie, Senator Glenn Sterle, who for so long served alongside him on the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee. As Sterlie put it: I would like to blame Albo, the leadership team and all the shadow ministers for not taking Alex's advice on each and every issue that mattered to him. This would leave me copping an Alex sermon every night in our Canberra unit over a wine or three as to how he saw the world and how it should be and what I needed to do to get people thinking his way. He described the annual duty at the Senate Christmas barbecue, which I had the privilege of attending for a number of years. He said: 'We were clearly instructed each and every year not to cook the vegan patties amongst the sausages and steaks. Now Alex couldn't quite grasp our instructions that the vegan burgers had to be kept separate. He said they needed to be cooked with the good stuff or they had no flavour. Sorry, comrades; I tried, but you could not argue with Alex when he had a set of extra-large tongs in his right hand. Alex reckoned if he hadn't had meat at least twice a day he was feeling like a vegetarian. Old school was Senator Alex Gallacher. Senator Sterle also reminds us of another side that is an insight into the gentleness beneath that gruff exterior of his character. When Alex was tasked to be on the NDIS committee his first response was, 'What do I know about people living with disabilities?' but, as was consistent with Alex, he wanted to know more. This led to him employing a lady in Adelaide who was confined to a wheelchair so he could hear firsthand her experiences and challenges living with a disability and how the NDIS assisted her. What a great story. Alex's colleague in the Senate and fellow TW giant, Tony Sheldon, told me a story that epitomises Alex's twin traits of humility and great pride in the men and women he represented. When approached in recent months by the South Australian branch of the TWU for his blessing to have them name a refurbished and expanded training room after him, Alex gave a typically laconic and self-facing response: 'You've got to be kidding me. Don't waste your time'—and, yes, that quote is missing a couple of unparliamentary words! However, branch secretary Ian Smith was determined to prevail, and the move was endorsed at the next rank-and-file branch committee management meeting. Once Alex knew it had the overwhelming endorsement of the membership, he quietly let it be known that he was inordinately proud of the honour. Thus was born the Alex Gallacher training centre at the TWU South Australian branch office in Adelaide. Alex may be gone, but we're surrounded by all the good that flowed from his principles, his passion and, crucially, his actions. In the words of his good friend Senator Marielle Smith, 'Over the years I knew him, I came across countless people for whom he had a life-changing impact.' As we share our memories of him, we are reminded of why we are here: to make a difference, and that is what Alex did. Alex came to Australia with his family in search of a better life, but ultimately he helped make our country, Australia, better. In what proved to be his last speech to the Senate, in March, Alex was, unsurprisingly, fighting for workers, firing shots against the: … national shame—that workers who carry this country, such as cleaners, garbagemen and all of the people who do all of those jobs we take for granted, are not getting a fair share of the national income. Had things turned out differently, that's what he would have been doing today—fighting for workers, fighting particularly for the most vulnerable—because that's who he was. He told us so at the beginning. Indeed, Alex wrapped up that first speech with a Theodore Roosevelt quote: Far and away the best prize life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Alex seized that prize with both hands, and we were all winners because of it. Our hearts go out to his wife, Paola, and to his family and his friends. May Alex rest in the peace of a job well done and a life so very well lived. 12:22 Mr JOYCE E5D New England It's a great honour to speak at the condolence of a person that I worked with, Alex Gallacher. For Paola, for Caroline, for Terry, for Ian, for Frank and for the grandchildren, I offer the sympathies of this parliament and so many of our colleagues. Alex was a fair dinkum guy. You know people in this game, you know the people who play on the other football side, and, although your job in here is to compete, you know the people who are fair dinkum and play by the rules, and Alex was one of those. He was also passionate about rural and regional affairs. I remember him wanting to decentralise sections to, I think, Port Augusta, which I think he was on a unity ticket of one on. But the thing about Alex that I found is he was a person who never deserted his Labor loyalties—they were red hot in his blood—but you could negotiate with him. He didn't carry on with trivialities and rubbish. If he thought a deal needed to be done, he would go outside into the courtyard and—unfortunately, a bad habit for so many of us—have a cigarette and have a yarn about how you could try and see your way through something. That, I think, is a very admirable trait, to be able to think that we are here for our nation, not just some form of puerile parochial game. In his industry, living out in the country, as so many of us are aware of, one of his former good mates from our side Senator 'Wacka' Williams shared a common bond—both being truck drivers, they both understood how that worked, and they both had some very similar habits. It's an industry, of course, that takes you away from your family and takes you on the road and in which you sleep in your cabin, stop for fast food and pull over at service stations. I've never been a long-distance truck driver, but obviously I'm very aware of it, being on the same roads as them, eating the wrong food and trying to break down the monotony of those miles and miles and miles, what they call white-line fever, by whatever you could do—any break, anything that broke the monotony, anything that could keep you looking forward to what was 40 kilometres ahead. Of course, that attracts you to things such as smoking. Today I think what was so powerful about Alex is that he had a life before he was a politician, and he brought that with him. So few these days, to be frank, come into this parliament with the life that Alex had lived. Living a life outside of politics—very similar to Wacka Williams—means that he had the capacity to cut through the BS and just get to the issue and understand, with the sort of empathy that comes from being a person of wider life experience. He was, and had been, a person who had laboured, and it's a great loss—it is a great loss. What was also admirable about Alex was that he didn't aspire to higher office. He aspired to do his job. He wasn't the Prime Minister. He wasn't a minister. He wasn't the Leader of the Opposition. I don't think he was ever a shadow minister. And you could see that in him. He wanted to do the hard work that the Labor Party required of him, and he did the job that was given to him, and he did it with a smile on his face. Sterlo and I started at the same time. I've been communicating with Sterlo and I said, 'Tell me three things about him.' He said, 'He loved his family; No. 1.' He loved his family, he loved golf, and it sounds like he also loved the capacity to be part of trying to direct this nation. In closing, I don't know whether Alex was a man of faith, but I thought of something in thinking about him. It's from Corinthians. It's 15:10 and it goes like this: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. I believe that Alex, whether he had a faith or not, is with Him who looks over all of us. 12:27 Mr MARLES HWQ Corio [by video link] I start by acknowledging the heartfelt words of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Prime Minister. It's fair to say that Alex could be a little cantankerous. If you were looking to get a warm hug on first meeting Alex Gallacher, you had definitely come to the wrong place. David Feeney would say of Alex that he was his favourite grump. His manner of speaking was the precise opposite of attention seeking. His quiet, low, mumbly drawl actually required you to listen just a bit harder, but when you did Alex always had something to say; he never left you wondering. He didn't like flowery verbiage. He always had a very clear opinion. The truth is that Alex was slow to give his trust to people, but when he did he stuck, because Alex's view of human relations was not about winning a popularity context on any particular given day. Instead, he was focused on the quality and the longevity of the relationships which really mattered, and that's why there are a number of people who are serving or who have recently served in this parliament who are completely devoted to Alex Gallacher—Tony Sheldon, Don Farrell, David Feeney and, most particularly, Glenn Sterle—and my thoughts are very much with each of them today. Alex knew who he was and where he came from. His first speech was a down-to-earth fanfare for the truck driver. He loved the transport industry and the people within it, including the employers but, most particularly, the transport workers that he represented throughout his life. I first met Alex in 1994, when I started as the national legal officer at the TWU. At that point Alex was an organiser in the South Australian branch, albeit one who stood out from the rest. Within a couple of years, Alex was elected as the South Australian state secretary of the TWU. In the ensuing years, Alex and I both served on the federal committee of management of the TWU. If I'm being honest, having grown up and having been educated at Geelong Grammar School and then Melbourne Law School, coming to the TWU was something of a profound culture shock. People spoke their own language—literally. In any given sentence, the ratio of expletive to non-expletive words was at least one in three, which meant that for a long time I had no idea what anyone was actually saying. This might seem like an unlikely place to get an education in political philosophy, but for me that's exactly what happened. Practical, pragmatic solutions for working people—that's what Alex was about; that's what they were all about. In the midst of that was an uncompromisingly clear goal: Did any given proposition advance the lives of transport workers? That's what drove Alex Gallacher. He hated identity politics. He couldn't give a stuff about what was popular or what was trendy. He didn't care about what people thought he should say. He was never looking for a cheer in any meeting that he spoke at in the union or later in politics. Because his goal, his sense of purpose, was so crystal clear, his life was deeply impactful in the union movement and then later here in parliament on the transport sector and on improving road safety in Australia. Alex loved his family—his wife, Paola, his children and his grandchildren. He left this world sounded by a family and, indeed, a political family who completely loved him and were totally devoted to him. Really, that actually says more about Alex than anything else. When we look to the great Labor figures of the past, we are reminded of Ben Chifley, who rose from being a train driver to the Prime Minister of our country. There are many who feel that Chifley's journey is a story confined to the past, but that is completely belied by the life of Alex Gallacher, who rose from being a truck driver to an Australian senator, participating in the governance of our country at the highest level in 2021. It would be true that our party room today is more diverse—there are more women and there are more graduates than there were back then—but I am enormously proud that Alex Gallacher's life is one that occurred in our movement, in the Labor movement. Alex's is a great story. He was a great man. He was a great friend and he will be sorely missed. 12:33 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson It's an honour to follow the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the Opposition. Alex is not a person I knew personally, so I have obviously been in search of who he was, and I've certainly developed a much greater understanding of that. I first went to his Twitter account. I don't have a Twitter account. For obvious reasons, I don't engage much on Twitter. Alex's last tweet was in November of 2018, only a few years ago; he obviously wasn't a great fan of the medium either! The last tweet that he made, in November of that year, had a photo that he had taken on a plane he was flying on of the TV screen at the front of the plane. The tweet said: 'Peter Dutton paused due to inflight message. Not a great look!' He tweeted this photo of me somehow being frozen on the screen in front of him. I thought maybe, from what I have come to know of his personality since then, he might have a wry smile on his face now and appreciate the irony that I've got the last word here today in response to his tweet. Having looked carefully at his career, at the person that he was, and having spoken to his colleagues and heard the fine words of, in particular, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, I will say this: Senator Gallacher was a no-nonsense, plain-talking and committed union man. He was, in short, a blue-collar Labor man of old. He was a thoroughly decent Australian. He sought election not for self-aggrandisement but to better the lives of those he represented. From the outset, in his maiden speech, he emphasised humility, respect and the importance of remaining humble. Senator Gallacher was a man who came to Canberra for the right reasons. He came here because he believed in something. We each serve in this place for different reasons. We represent different communities. We hold divergent beliefs and seek our own goals and aspirations. Alex was a proud and lifelong truckie. He revered the transport industry and he rightly saw it as a central pillar in our society. He praised the spirit and the drive of the industry, shared by employees and employers alike. He described this as a capacity for hard work and a selfless dedication to the task at hand. These were attributes he himself embodied. As we know, for 23 years in the TWU, and for 10 years in the parliament, Alex was an indefatigable advocate for road safety. The Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee will indeed not be the same without him. It is true the parliament has lost a colleague, a friend and a fine public servant, and the Labor Party has lost a true believer. In the parliament Senator Gallacher was a formidable sparring partner and dogged interrogator both in the chamber and in the committee room. His passing should give members pause to stop and reflect. Parliament is by nature, as we know, an adversarial place, and Alex was no shrinking violet. But there is another side to this place. Beyond our verbal jousting and the pitch clash of ideas, the parliament is a community. This marble-clad boiler room of democracy is a workplace like no other—the highs, the lows, the early mornings, the late nights, the vagaries of convention procedure and precedence, the incessant ringing of bells and the habitual glancing at clocks. We grieve together today for a man who came to this place to fight unyieldingly for something he truly believed in and to make our country a better place. Today all members of this place grieve together and we feel acutely the loss of one of our own. To Senator Gallacher's family, to his wife and pillar of strength, Paola, and to his children and grandchildren: we send our deepest and most sincere condolences. I know you are proud, and you should be proud, of him, and we know that he was equally proud of you. To Alex's colleagues across the parliament, both in this chamber and the other, I want to say: we stand with you as you grieve the loss of an old friend. We thank Alex for his many years of service to our nation. The parliament is a poorer place for his loss. 12:38 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I want to thank the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the Leader of the House for those generous words. We have lost one of our own and lost someone who has been described, quite rightly, as a true entity of the Labor Party through and through. We often get debates about people with a union background, and it's often not understood how people come to the union movement. I think Alex Gallacher was a classic example but not a unique example. Yes, Alex had a career as a labourer, a truck driver and an airline ramp operator, but take the TWU team in the Senate: Tony Sheldon worked as a garbage collector; Glenn Sterle delivered, as a truck driver, a whole lot of green leather—and that's what everyone is sitting on here now. Those chairs were delivered here by a truck driver who is now a senator. The solidarity of that TWU group is something really special in the parliament, and they have lost more than a colleague. There have been a few opportunities now to quote Alex's first speech. It's rare in this place that you get members of parliament for whom their first speech and last speech marry up so neatly. But for Alex, Alex was not changed by being a member of parliament. But he did change what happened here by virtue of being a member of parliament. In his first speech he referred to workers in the transport sector; there's no smoke and mirrors, just plain talking—hardworking employees and employers alike in a tough, competitive industry that works harder than most people imagine and continues to work while most people are asleep. He wasn't showy, but worked hard and all the way through, right to the end, still chairing meetings of the wage theft inquiry, trying to fight for people who were having their pay stolen. He was tough in all his negotiations. I think there's a risk, when we lose someone like Alex, that we describe them in terms that become so genteel that we're not really describing the person we've lost. Glenn Sterle was very keen for me to relate the anecdote from the Wagga ACTU meeting. He said, 'It won't be true to the delegates unless you say it out loud. They want to know.' This was at the ACTU meeting in Wagga where, as an organiser, Alex was unhappy with his union secretary and got into a fight with the union secretary—not an argument, got into a proper fight—and decked the union secretary. Now, you would normally think, 'Okay, that means you won't last much longer as an organiser.' That's true: shortly after, he became the secretary. Tony Sheldon last night was receiving text messages from employers remembering Alex very fondly. But as part of their fond memories, it was how uncompromising he was. He was not uncompromising if you put an argument to him that was logical or that he then accepted. But if he knew he was right, he was not going to cave, which resulted in one Qantas executive sending a message to Tony Sheldon that concluded with the line, 'He was the only union official to ever throw a chair at me.' He loved his family, was loyal to his friends and, unlike some of the people you get in this place who just try to be friends with as many people as possible, Alex worked out whom he trusted and he stuck with and was loyal to them. He believed in secure jobs, safe jobs and a secure retirement and fought for the superannuation as part of that secure retirement, a retirement that he himself would never enjoy. But he dedicated his last speech in part to young workers, pointing to the challenges, where he said: There are many young people at the moment who have never had the luxury of a permanent job. They have never had it. They can get 16, 17, 22 or 25 hours but they can't get a permanent job. In other areas of quite reasonable economic activity, you have an inordinate number of casuals or labour hire people. Once again, those people don't see a permanent opportunity coming forward. He continued the whole way through to fight for people who needed a champion. He continued the whole way through to never take a backward step. He loved life and loved his friends. He would have cancer treatment in the morning and play golf in the afternoon. He was not going to let cancer beat him, and indeed it hasn't. There are so many who will take up the mantle and continue to fight for what Alex believed in, and there are so many people at work to this day who have more dignity, who have safer jobs, who have better conditions and who will enjoy a better retirement because of Alex Gallacher. To his family and his friends, our deepest condolences. The SPEAKER 10000 I understand it's the wish of honourable members to signify at this stage their respect and sympathy by rising in their places and I ask all present to do so. Honourable members having stood in their places— The SPEAKER 10000 I thank the House. Debate adjourned. BILLS 7 BILLS National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021 7

National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021

Second Reading 7 12:45 Ms BUTLER ( 248006 Griffith ) ( ): 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 urges the Government to learn the lessons from its lack of urgency in supplying sufficient and timely vaccines to the Australian people and improve its vaccine delivery programs, including First Nations Australians". Mr Speaker, I yield the remainder of my time to the member for Hindmarsh. The SPEAKER 10000 Is the motion seconded? Mr Stephen Jones A9B I second the motion and reserve my right to speak. 12:46 Mr BUTLER HWK Hindmarsh [by video link] Thank you very much to the member for Griffith for moving that amendment on my behalf and to the member for Whitlam seconding it. This is an important bill that deals with some substantial administrative complications in Australia's vaccine rollout strategy, in particular because of the way in which appropriations work for departments, including the Department of Health. As the government is making arrangements with vaccine and other medicine and pharmaceutical companies to implement our vaccine rollout strategy, the government are effectively having to make payments out of their existing appropriations, then reallocate internal finances until they're able to recoup the additional money through an appropriation which might be several months down the track. This is obviously not an efficient or effective way for a government to be able to implement a vaccine rollout strategy during a global pandemic. So this bill confers a spending power, effectively, on the minister for health to enter into arrangements and to make payments that relate particularly to securing COVID vaccines; in time, we hope, securing COVID vaccine booster shots; goods and services that relate to those things, including consumables; and also, in time, COVID-19 treatments or therapies— The SPEAKER 10000 We just lost the audio. Mr BUTLER HWK Mr Speaker, I've turned off my video. Can I be heard now? The SPEAKER 10000 Yes, we can hear you. Mr BUTLER HWK And not see me—that seems like a very good outcome for everyone, if I can say so myself! I apologise for the IT— The SPEAKER 10000 We will give you the choice: you can persist in that fashion—no-one here objects—or we can go to the next speaker and come back to you, and cede the time. Mr BUTLER HWK I'm happy to persist, if that is okay with you, Mr Speaker. The SPEAKER 10000 Yes, that's fine. We probably missed about the last 90 seconds, so we don't mind if you rewind a bit. We can hear you perfectly. We will try to sort things out in the meantime. You're right—we know perfectly well what you look like! Mr BUTLER HWK Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will take that as a positive remark! The bill confers a spending power on the Minister for Health and Aged Care to enter into arrangements and to make payments that relate to the securing of COVID vaccines, but also related goods and services such as boosters, consumables and, in time, COVID-19 treatments. This is a sensible bill that the opposition supports to ensure that the vaccine rollout strategy and associated matters are implemented in the most effective and efficient way possible. Given that the powers are quite extraordinary and relate particularly to the global pandemic that we're all confronting, the power is appropriately time limited to 30 June next year. We support that arrangement as well. Obviously, if the need arises for that power to be extended, then the government of the day—which we hope by then would be a Labor government, of course—would be able to bring back a proposal to the parliament to extend it. But we hope that we'll have been able to get this sort of thing under control by 30 June next year. In saying that the opposition does support this bill as a sensible administrative and fiscal arrangement, we do want to stress, as the member for Griffith's amendment makes very clear, that coming up with this more effective implementation measure does not absolve the Morrison government from the fundamental, deep failures that have beset their vaccination rollout strategy. It's important to recognise that the Australian people performed magnificently through the course of 2020, implementing and abiding by measures put in place by state governments to suppress community transition of COVID-19 in Australia. By the end of 2020 community transmission was largely defeated and Australia was seen around the world as one of the most outstanding nations in terms of its response to that first, dangerous phase of the global pandemic. I think it's fair to say that the Australian people went into 2021 feeling that they, and we, were well positioned to deal with the second phase of the pandemic, which was to take advantage of the extraordinary innovation by global scientists in developing not just one, not just two, but a number of COVID-19 vaccines. I think the Australian people were entitled to expect that their federal government, which would take principal responsibility for that second phase, would implement this phase, the vaccination and quarantine arrangements that underpin the second phase, as effectively and magnificently as the Australian people had performed in 2020. Unfortunately, though, that hasn't been the case. As early as months into last year, Labor, through the shadow health minister at the time, the member for McMahon, were making very clear our view, supported by so many public health experts, that our vaccine rollout strategy should really have five or six vaccine deals secured by the federal government. That was the very clear position of public health, vaccine and epidemiology experts in Australia. Frankly, it's what countries to which we usually compare ourselves managed to do over the course of last year. In particular, going back to last year, the member for McMahon and I, when I took over the shadow health portfolio, had been asking time and time again: 'Why was the government not doing a deal with Johnson & Johnson? Why was the government not doing a deal with Moderna?' Back in the middle of last year, the Prime Minister assured the Australian people that they would be at the front of the vaccine queue; that they would be among the first in the world to get the benefit of that extraordinary innovation, and the manufacturing that followed it, from scientists and, ultimately, vaccine companies. That simply wasn't the case. We know that, again, that basket of countries to which we usually compare ourselves, like the UK, Canada, the US, European nations and Japan, all secured vaccine supply agreements with Pfizer in June, July or, at the latest, very early August. It is now the stuff of legend in the pharmaceutical industry that, when Pfizer approached the Australian government—the Morrison government—wanting Australia to be one of the early adopters of their extraordinary innovation, their mRNA vaccine, because they understood that we'd managed the first phase of COVID just so well and they understood the quality of our public health system, the response from the Morrison government was derisory. That is now the stuff of legend. Instead of securing a vaccine supply deal with that company as early as June, July and August, which so many other countries did—all of the countries to which we usually compare ourselves—the Prime Minister did not sign a deal with Pfizer until Christmas Eve, months and months later. He entered into 2021 with no deal—not even a negotiation, apparently—underway with that other state-of-the-art mRNA vaccine company, Moderna. In January, the government then rolled out its vaccine rollout strategy. It was a strategy that we thought had real merit and that Labor, as the opposition and the alternative government of the country, threw its support behind. Unfortunately, though—and this is where so much of the debate around the current plan really centres—it was not the strategy that was the problem; it was the implementation. What followed the rollout of the strategy was just a litany of failed promises from this Prime Minister. He promised that there would be four million vaccinations by the end of March. There was only a fraction of that number. He promised that the Australian population would be fully vaccinated by October. Clearly, that's a promise that has no prospect of being achieved. The vaccine rollout strategy quite properly prioritised different cohorts in the population that were particularly vulnerable to the impact of COVID, such as aged-care residents, who we had discovered, tragically, through the second wave in Melbourne and to a degree in New South Wales as well, were just so incredibly vulnerable to COVID. We'd seen that right through the rest of the world as well. Aged-care residents, disability care facility residents and their staff, who are the obvious transmission points of COVID between the rest of the community and those facilities, were promised to be fully vaccinated by Easter. It's a Commonwealth responsibility. It was taken on quite properly as a Commonwealth responsibility. But, by Easter, only a fraction of aged-care and disability care residents and scarcely any staff were fully vaccinated. Phase 1b of the vaccine rollout strategy, again quite properly, promised that other vulnerable cohorts in the population would be fully vaccinated by the onset of winter, understanding, as we do, that a respiratory illness like COVID-19 is particularly dangerous in the winter season. The government promised that Australians over the age of 70 would be fully vaccinated before the onset of winter. They promised that Indigenous Australians would be fully vaccinated before the onset of winter—again, a cohort quite properly identified as a responsibility of the Commonwealth government, not of the states. And, again, as we're seeing quite tragically through the west and far west of New South Wales right now, those promises were nowhere near met. Close to 40 per cent of Australians aged over 70 are still not fully vaccinated, and winter ends today. Forget 'the onset of winter'; winter ends today. Forty per cent or so of over-70s are still not fully vaccinated, and the rates of Indigenous Australian vaccinations are shamefully low. I will come back to that. Instead of being at the front of the queue, we ended up, through the course of this vaccine rollout strategy, at the bottom of the OECD table. We have the worst, slowest vaccine rollout in the developed world. The Prime Minister changed his tune from saying that Australia should be at the front of the queue and Australians should be able to access vaccines earlier than anyone else on the planet to saying instead that it wasn't a race. He said, a number of times, that the vaccine rollout is not a race, so we shouldn't worry our heads about the fact that we're going more slowly than any other developed country in the world. He now says, of course, that he was talking about the TGA approval process not being a race, rather than the vaccine rollout. This, to be frank, is misleading at best. It is quite clear that weeks and weeks after the TGA approval had been given, both to the Pfizer vaccine and the AstraZeneca vaccine, when the Prime Minister was asked, quite properly, by journalists the reasons for the slowness of the vaccine rollout and the reasons why those earlier promises were failing to be met, the Prime Minister said about the vaccine rollout—not about the TGA approval process—that it was not a race. And Australians are paying the price for that approach. I think the Prime Minister and the government are drawing attention to the fact that, particularly as a result of the sense of urgency that has been injected into the vaccine rollout by this disastrous third wave, vaccination numbers are definitely improving. That is to be welcomed. No-one welcomes that more than the opposition. But we point out that Australia is still far behind, way behind, all of those countries to which we usually compare ourselves. I do not accept the argument put forward by the Prime Minister time and time again that the reason why we are so far behind the UK, the US, European nations, Canada and many more besides is that Australia's approval process for the vaccines took longer than in the rest of the world. At the time, we were quite clear that we supported the TGA taking a longer process to approve the vaccines than was taken at the time in the US and the UK because of the level of emergency that they were facing through the northern winter period. But let's be clear: the United Kingdom reached 70 per cent of their eligible population aged over 16 being vaccinated within 34 weeks of the vaccine being approved—70 per cent after 34 weeks. We are now 32 weeks since the TGA approved the Pfizer vaccine and we are only halfway to 70 per cent. It's taken us 32 weeks to get halfway to 70 per cent, while it took the United Kingdom 34 weeks to get the full way. So let's not hear any of this rubbish from the Prime Minister that everything's fixed, that it's all back on track. Australians are still way behind the rest of the world, the developed world in particular, in our vaccine rollout, and that slowness—the consequences of the Prime Minister's belief that this was somehow not a race—is a price being paid by the Australian people. This third wave has become an unmitigated disaster, a disaster that is getting worse every single day and a disaster for which the Prime Minister is responsible, caused directly by his failures on vaccines and on quarantine. As much as the Prime Minister and other members of the government seek to point the finger of blame at the New South Wales government—in particular, at the New South Wales Premier—typical of a government that never takes responsibility for its own actions and its own failures, the Prime Minister is actually more responsible than any other single person for this third wave. It must be remembered that this third wave began with a breach in quarantine transport arrangements, a breach in PPE and vaccination arrangements for a limousine driver tasked with the transfer of international aircrew from an international airport to hotel quarantine. And this should not have been of any news to the Prime Minister, because he was warned by Jane Halton, not this year but last year, that this was a gaping hole in our quarantine arrangements. He was warned that it was a gaping hole and that it needed to be urgently addressed. It was his responsibility to address it, but he did nothing. That is how this third wave began. And the third wave took hold, as we all know, because New South Wales was too slow to lock down. Why was it too slow to lock down? Because eight days into the outbreak, knowing the infectious nature of the delta variant because we had been dealing with it for weeks and months, the Prime Minister went on television and cajoled the New South Wales Premier, in his words, to resist going into full lockdown. In the face of all that, knowing all that we know about the delta variant and its highly infectious nature, Sydney, New South Wales, Victorian and ACT people are now dangerously exposed to the impact of this third wave because we have the slowest vaccine rollout in the developed world. We are seeing people die every day. We are seeing more than 800 people in hospital. About one in 10 adults who get COVID end up in hospital. The hospital system in New South Wales is breaking already under the strain of this third wave, and we know that it will only get worse. People are dying every day, including, shamefully, people in aged care. Because the Prime Minister was unable to meet his promise, was incapable of meeting his promise, to vaccinate all aged-care staff, we see unvaccinated aged-care staff, some working across multiple sites, unknowingly, of course, taking the virus into aged-care facilities. We know that a number of people in New South Wales, residents of aged-care facilities, have died in this third wave. After all we learned, tragically, last year no-one should be dying in an aged-care facility. One of the most significant sources of shame for the Prime Minister in this third wave, however, should be what's happening in the west and far west of New South Wales. We fear that, potentially, it will spread to other Indigenous communities. As I said earlier in my remarks, it was the Commonwealth's responsibility to ensure that, as part of phase 1B, Indigenous Australians were fully vaccinated before the onset of winter, but we know that Indigenous Australians in New South Wales have some of the lowest rates of vaccination and that towns like Wilcannia are seeing the highest rates of infection. Shamefully—utterly shamefully—the government has sought to blame Indigenous vaccine hesitancy for these low vaccination rates. As I said, that is typical of a government that never takes responsibility for its own failures and its own actions. We know from case after case which has been drawn to our attention and drawn to the media's attention, that it's an issue of supply. Aboriginal medical services—the ACCHOs—other service providers and vaccine points of presence in Indigenous communities simply aren't getting the vaccines that they need to put into people's arms. Why doesn't the Prime Minister, for once, take responsibility for the unfolding public health disaster that we're seeing in Indigenous communities in New South Wales? We're seeing real consequences among our teenagers and children, who have become the front line in this disastrous third wave. In different jurisdictions they account for somewhere between a third and as high as 40 per cent of all new cases. Finally, I'm glad to say that, after advice from ATAGI, the government has said that 12- to 15-year-olds are now part of the eligible population, although they won't be counted as part of the national plan to end lockdowns. I say that it's about time. Canada and the US started to vaccinate their 12- to 15-year-olds back in May. Most European nations and Israel started to vaccinate their 12- to 15-year-olds in June. In Canada, fully 60 per cent of 12- to 15-year-olds are already fully vaccinated with two doses of the vaccine; the figure here in Australia is zero. And still the Prime Minister persists in playing word games with Australia's parents and grandparents because he refuses to answer the question, 'When will our 12- to 15-year-olds be vaccinated?' If he continues to refuse to count them as part of the national plan—and that appears to be his intransigent position—then, at the very least, parents deserve an answer to that question, 'When will our 12- to 15-year-olds be vaccinated?' We understand that this disease is less severe for younger people than for adults, but let's not pretend that this is not a severe disease for teenagers and children. We know it is from our own anecdotal experience, and we know from the research that about one in 30 teenagers who get COVID will end up in hospital. That is a very severe disease. Finally, I think Australian parents want a sense that the Prime Minister is not going to take the same 'it's not a race' approach to vaccinating the under 12s if that is something approved by the medicines authorities around the world. We know that clinical trials are underway in the United States and that it's likely that Pfizer and Moderna—or, at the very least, Pfizer—will supply data to the FDA in the US over coming weeks. We can expect a high possibility that a paediatric dose of vaccine will be approved by the FDA over the course of the next couple of months and then after that by European authorities, after which it's likely to be submitted to the Australian authorities and to others. But what's the government doing to secure, through an advance purchase agreement, priority doses of Pfizer for the under 12s? President Biden secured an agreement back in June for enough paediatric doses of Pfizer vaccine—in the event that it is approved by the US authorities—to start putting into the arms of American children as soon as that approval takes place. Are we again going to see the Prime Minister repeat his litany of mistakes by being so slow to act, by continuing to prove that he really does believe this is not a race and that, if those approvals are given by the Australian authorities following authorities overseas, we won't have struck an advance purchase agreement for paediatric doses to protect our younger children? Right now, 14 million Australians are paying a very high price for the Prime Minister's appalling failures on vaccinations and on quarantine. The impacts of these seemingly never-ending lockdowns in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT are becoming clearer and clearer every day. It is not just about the economic impacts, which run to billions of dollars every week; it is about the fact that kids aren't going to school and are having a very serious interruption to their learning, which is so important to setting up a good life. Workers aren't able to go to work, which is having a very serious impact on them emotionally as well as financially. But what is becoming really clear is the devastating mental health impacts these lockdowns are having on all Australians who are subject to them—in particular, young Australians. We are seeing that through all of the feedback that we get from service providers, whether they are in the acute sector at state level or some of the wonderful organisations who do such great work providing youth mental health services. We must see a plan out of these lockdowns implemented safely by the Prime Minister. But is it any wonder that the Australian people harbour such doubts, such little trust, in this Prime Minister to implement that plan safely when he has bungled every single job he has had this year? 13:12 Mr WALLACE 265967 Fisher Picking up on the words of the member for Hindmarsh, there is little doubt that the people of Australia are sick and tired of the absolute rubbish and weaponisation that those members opposite continue to perpetrate upon the Australian people. I've never heard so much rubbish in my life. Talk about talking out of both sides of your mouth! Those opposite say, 'We don't want to delay any of it; we don't want to be talking anything down,' but that's exactly what the Labor Party are doing every time they get on their feet and talk about COVID. They are continuously talking Australia down and continuously impacting on Australians' mental health. It has got to be called out. I will not stand here and listen to this rubbish without calling it out. This is a time where Australia has faced significant threats to the lives of each and every single Australian. And what is the Labor Party doing? They are absolutely weaponising this for their own political gain. Shame on you for weaponising what is a terrible thing, a once-in-100-years pandemic. I won't say I can't believe it, because they are continuing to run to form. I am greatly disappointment that they continue to do so. There is no doubt that the global COVID-19 pandemic and the actions of governments and populations around the world will be argued by historians for generations to come. Unfortunately in this debate, as we've seen time and again in recent months, members opposite are already trying to do their own rewriting of that history in pursuit of naked political gain. So I'll begin by briefly setting the record straight. Members opposite would have the public believe that the Morrison government has not done everything possible to secure vaccinations for this country. Opposition members interjecting— Mr WALLACE 265967 The truth, of course, is very different. An opposition member interjecting— Mr WALLACE 265967 On 18 August 2020—that's the difference between this side and that side. I sat there and listened to the member for Hindmarsh dribble on for half an hour and didn't interrupt. You guys, as soon as you hear something on this side that you differ with, you're up in arms. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 Member for Fisher, just pause for a moment because I'm going to interrupt everybody right now. I'm going to ask for a little bit of quietness—and I'd like you to use a little less unparliamentary language. You're using adjectives that you might think about before uttering. Mr WALLACE 265967 On 18 August 2020, just months after this now-familiar disease was first recognised, the health minister signed a letter of intent with AstraZeneca to support the development of an effective vaccine and to get early access to it for Australians. We agreed with AstraZeneca that Australia would be able to manufacture their vaccination on home soil, under licence, to ensure that our protection would not be compromised by failures of international supply. However, to ensure we had a second option, just three months later the government signed a contract with Pfizer for access to 10 million doses of their new vaccine. By February the government had doubled this to 20 million, and in April, as it became clear that medical advice was changing, the government doubled it again to 40 million. In July the government signed an agreement for another 85 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine and, as the pressure on supply all over the world remained sky high, successfully negotiated with Pfizer for this country to receive more doses sooner. Instead of the 350,000 doses a week we'd received in June, Pfizer agreed to increase supply of its vaccine to Australia to approximately one million doses per week in July and a total of more than 4½ million doses in August. Even then the government wasn't satisfied and just weeks ago secured a further one million doses from Poland, even as our supply continued to ramp up. And, whilst we've been sitting in here, the Prime Minister has announced a further 500,000 doses as a vaccine swap with the government of Singapore. That's not to mention, of course, the government's additional agreements to access the Covax Facility, in September 2020; the Novavax vaccine, in December 2020; and the Moderna jab, in May 2021. In total, the government has secured 126 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 53.8 million doses of AstraZeneca, 25 million doses of Moderna, 25 million doses through the Covax Facility and, if approved by the TGA, 51 million doses of Novavax. That's 281 million doses of vaccine for a country of 25 million people, and that doesn't include the additional doses that we've secured for nations in our region. Yet members opposite frequently complain that the government failed to secure enough vaccine doses. It is clear from these figures that, once again, Labor will simply say anything, no matter how out of touch with reality, if they believe it will give them a political advantage. Put simply, the government has secured enough doses, across four different vaccines, for every Australian to receive 10 separate shots. We are seeing the fruits of those energetic and focused efforts around us right now. I think most Australians know that the vaccine rollout today is progressing as quickly as is humanly possible. But I don't think many appreciate the true extent of its current lightning pace. The first million doses in Australia took 45 days to administer. The second million doses took 20 days. The most recent two lots of a million doses took three and four days, respectively. In the past four weeks we've administered more than 6½ million doses. On a per capita basis, this is a faster pace of vaccination than was ever achieved by the United States or the United Kingdom. The Morrison government has recently invited over 3,900 community pharmacies to join in the vaccine rollout, and mass vaccination centres are opening across many states and territories. Momentum continues to build. I'm sure that when we began discussing the national plan for our path out of COVID-19 in July the targets of 70 and 80 per cent of the adult population vaccinated must have seemed very far away for many people. Now, just four weeks later, we have more than 57 per cent of the population protected with a first dose, and those targets are looking much closer to becoming reality. The federal government is doing its job. Now it is time for state and territory premiers and first ministers to do theirs. I call upon them to abide by the national cabinet agreement that they signed up to and prepare to open up when our targets are met. We need to stick to the plan. The hard work and proactivity on vaccines we've seen from the Morrison government is in evidence once again in the bill before the House. While state Labor party governments constantly seek to shift the goalposts in respect to abiding by the national plan, and do everything they can to delay the opening up that Australians are rightly crying out for, the federal government is thinking ahead and today is bringing before the House a bill to facilitate the purchase of even more vaccines in the future. The government recognises, as we all should, that COVID-19 is not going away. No one expects to eliminate this virus forever. Like the flu, it'll be an ongoing part of our daily lives. It is likely that the vaccinations we are all receiving today will not be our last. 280 million vaccine doses are much more than enough to get us where we need to be today, but that doesn't mean we can shirk our responsibilities in planning for the future. If there are two things that we've learnt during this pandemic, they are that fighting COVID-19 is a rapidly changing and unpredictable process and that it requires a great deal of resources. This is unlikely to change as we move into the next stage. New variants, and the booster vaccines needed to deal with them, are likely to arise quickly and at unpredictable times. When they do, we need to ensure that Australia is at the front of the queue to receive the latest treatments and vaccines. That means making often large and unexpected up-front payments to the pharmaceutical companies and medical product manufacturers which are developing and supplying the tools that we need. Our arrangement with the COVAX Facility, for example, required an immediate up-front payment of $123.2 million. In total, the existing five arrangements the government has entered into for vaccine supply amount to $8 billion. At the moment, the only avenue available to the government to acquire the funds needed to make these payments is appropriation bills, which can take six months to receive royal assent. This is simply not fast enough or flexible enough to meet our needs during an ongoing global pandemic. As it stands, in the absence of this bill the government would be unable to make any payments for vaccines and treatments beyond January next year. This is clearly an unacceptable limitation on our ability to fight this virus and an unacceptable risk to our ongoing vaccination program. As such, this bill gives the Minister for Health and Aged Care spending power to enter into arrangements and make payments to secure COVID-19 vaccines, new effective treatments for COVID-19 and the equipment and consumables needed to distribute them. The cabinet will retain the ability to make the ultimate decisions about which tools we need, but the bill will ensure that the government can always act on those decisions. There's no doubt that spending powers beyond the normal appropriations bills process must always be carefully managed to ensure that parliament continues to have oversight of how Australians' hard earned money is spent. The bill ensures the power to appropriate funds continues to lie with the parliament by including a sunset clause which will bring these arrangements to an end on 30 June 2022. This is a temporary measure to deal with the extraordinary circumstances we find ourselves in, but it is a much needed one. Vaccination is our best defence against COVID-19 and our only way forward out of this global pandemic. For all Australians, whether they want to travel overseas to see family, go back to school or university on campus, visit a great Australian landmark in another state or simply go to the shops without a mask, vaccination is the key. The national cabinet and the Doherty Institute set out the equation very simply in Australia's four-stage national plan: the more people that get vaccinated, the sooner we will get back to normal life. To make that a reality from here we need to overcome two challenges. We need to reassure all Australians that vaccination is safe and effective. Unfortunately, there have been all too many wild stories and myths flying around about COVID-19 vaccinations in recent months. For any Australian who is concerned and wants the full truth about the safety and effectiveness of taking COVID vaccines, how they are tested and approved and what they mean for your health, I would ask that they please speak to their GP as soon as possible. For me, like many of us here in parliament, I've already had two doses of AstraZeneca vaccine. I know that there are small risks involved in taking any medication. However, there are also significant risks to health involved in contracting COVID-19 when unvaccinated. So I chose to get the jab for my own health, for my family's wellbeing and to help protect our Australian community. For any Australians watching this who have not already done so, I would urge them to do the same and check their eligibility and register for a vaccine through the health.gov.au website. Alongside ensuring that all Australians are fully informed about the safety and effectiveness of getting vaccinated, we also need to ensure that vaccine doses continue to be available to meet demand. That is what we are debating today. The bill before the House will help to ensure that whatever COVID throws at us, whatever new treatment, vaccine or equipment we need, the Australian government will have the power and the flexibility to secure it right away and keep protecting Australians from this disease throughout the months to come. It is an extraordinary measure for extraordinary times. I commend the bill to the House. 13:27 Mr KEOGH 249147 Burt [by video link] In the few moments I have I want to respond to some of the comments made by the member for Fisher in this debate. The Morrison government needs to stop trying to politicise this debate. Labor is doing the job that Australians have asked of it—to hold the government to account, to call for transparency and to highlight where the government could be doing better on behalf of the Australian people that they govern. Yet, when we do that, the Prime Minister, the government and the member for Fisher right now say that we are talking down the government's response to COVID. No. We all desperately want the government to succeed, and we are pointing out how they could do just that. Australians know that when the government is talking about Labor they are just trying to distract from their own failures and how the Morrison government has let Australians down. When we come to this legislation, the question must be asked: why are we only just debating legislation like this now? Why is the government only just introducing legislation to manage the pandemic and the rollout, to secure vaccines and associated required goods? Legislation realistically should have hit this parliament by at least this time last year when other nations were having conversations about securing their vaccines. We should have been having this conversation over a year ago. This necessary legislation does not excuse the Morrison government's failures, but of course we support it, as we have supported all of the action that has been taken to help Australians manage their way through this pandemic. Indeed, we are the party that have called for many of those measures that the government eventually ended up adopting to support Australians through this pandemic. The PM needs to stop responding after the fact, after the last minute—too little, too late—and actually start delivering for Australians right now, because for this Prime Minister every problem ends up being somebody else's fault; every crisis is somebody else's responsibility. Australians have been plunged into uncertainty and disruption because of a quarantine system that is far from fit for purpose and a slow vaccine rollout that everyone is experiencing. He said it's not a race. Well, we all know that it is a race. But for this Prime Minister, who always acts after the fact, always after the last minute, everything is truly too little too late in his approach. The Prime Minister did have two key jobs this year. In fact, they are jobs that he should have been working on last year. The DEPUTY SPEAKER HK5 Order! This debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 14 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Medicare 14 13:30 Ms THWAITES 282212 Jagajaga [by video link] I begin today by registering my ongoing thanks to all the healthcare workers here in Jagajaga—the nurses, doctors and pharmacists—administering vaccines and caring for people in really difficult and tiring circumstances, and our community health services and our hospitals. Please know you have the support and thanks of our community. We value you and the essential care that you provide. My community also values the bedrock of our system, Medicare, and the way it allows for affordable, accessible health care no matter what your background is. But it's this that is under threat from the Morrison government. The Morrison government snuck out almost 1,000 changes to the Medicare Benefits Schedule under the cover of a pandemic, meaning patients were left in the dark and unsure whether they were facing the choice of either cancelling life-changing surgeries or having to work out how they will pay for medical bills. Eight long years of this government have proved time and time again that cutting Medicare is in the Liberals' DNA. Under this government, people in Jagajaga are paying 32 per cent more in out-of-pocket costs to see a doctor or a specialist than they were in 2013. This has a direct negative impact on people's health. I thank the thousands of people in Jagajaga who have already signed my petition to save Medicare. Labor built Medicare and we will always fight to protect it. I will always fight for Medicare. Babb, Mr Lloyd, SC 14 13:31 Mr LEESER 109556 Berowra [by video link] I want to acknowledge the service of my constituent, Lloyd Babb SC, who recently stepped down after 10 years as New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions. Lloyd Babb was educated at Asquith Boys High School, where he was school captain. He took degrees in arts and law from Macquarie University. After being admitted as a solicitor, he completed a masters in criminal justice from the University of Illinois and later became a visiting fellow at University of Copenhagen's institute of criminology. After returning to Australia in 1993, he served as a solicitor advocate at the office of the DPP and was called to the bar in 1995. In 2000 he was appointed a Crown prosecutor and in 2007 he took silk and became New South Wales Crown Advocate. He was appointed New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions in July 2011. Lloyd Babb is not only a great technical lawyer but is also a great leader of people. He told Bar News: The leadership and culture building is also important. I put a lot of time into that. As DPP he was instrumental in introducing the early appropriate guilty pleas regime, which has helped reduce delays in the District Court. He appeared in many important High Court appeals, including Hughes v The Queen, a leading case on tendency evidence; Swan v The Queen, a leading case on causation; and Aubrey v The Queen, a leading case on grievous bodily harm. Throughout, he has continued to be a contributor to our community through the local basketball association, where he serves as president. On behalf of my community and the federal parliament, I want to thank Lloyd for his service as New South Wales DPP and wish him all the very best for the future. Tasmania: Economy 15 13:33 Mr KEOGH 249147 Burt [by video link] Lockdowns don't just affect businesses in the areas locked down. Other businesses hurt too. The too little, too late approach of the Morrison government on business support is being felt across Australia. Recently, alongside Senator Polley, I visited Tasmania and joined my friend Ross Hart, the former and future member for Bass, visiting small retail businesses in Launceston that told us how they have been affected by the pandemic. When the mainland is locked down, Tassie gets a hit too. There's no consumer confidence in locals, and piecemeal support packages from this federal government aren't good enough. I visited Par Avion, a small tourism business that gives people the opportunity to view the sites of Tasmania from a whole new perspective, as well as providing flight training. Businesses like these outside lockdown areas are affected by COVID restrictions and need real support. They need a national plan of support, not threats from the Treasurer to withdraw support. I also visited the Australian Maritime College. The work they are doing is vital to supporting our Australian defence industry and capability and our ADF. They are a truly national institution that should be proud of all that they do, but they need more support from this government to expand their facilities, along with our sovereign capability. I also visited the Forager Food Co, a Tassie owned and operated innovative food company. We learned about their cutting-edge technology and exciting plans for the future, especially working with our defence forces. Tasmanian small businesses are working hard, right on the cutting edge. But they're doing it tough now and need more support at the national level. Australian Defence Force: Infrastructure 15 13:34 Mr CONNELLY 282984 Stirling Under the 2024 structure plan, the Morrison government is investing $270 billion in defence capability over the next decade. Sustainable naval shipbuilding will ensure our Navy is equipped to meet the challenges that lie ahead. To support the anticipated build and sustainment of the new large hull vessels our Navy will require, we need an additional docking facility. Australia currently only has one such facility, the Captain Cook Graving Dock in Sydney, which was built during World War II. With the Indo-Pacific region heating up, Western Australia's position on the rim of the Indian Ocean gives us a natural strategy advantage for a large vessel dry berth at the Australian Marine Complex at Henderson. This has strategic and economic benefits. It would support a two-ocean basing strategy for Navy. It would be able to support allied vessels as well as commercial vessels. It would provide opportunities for shipbuilders to complete bigger builds locally. And it would generate around $1 billion in construction activity alone, as well as jobs for generations of Western Australians to come over its approximately 100-year lifespan. If we in the west are going to advocate for defence projects that are innovative, strategically important and have long-term economic benefits, then we should focus our energy on securing a large vessel dry berth at Henderson. COVID-19: Vaccination 15 13:36 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor [by video link] I'm joining you virtually today, from the heart of Wyndham, the heart of the electorate of Lalor, where we're in lockdown again. Many families have done weeks and weeks of isolation. We are in our second COVID winter, one we thought we would avoid, one we thought we would be protected from by vaccines. Instead, we are here. There is some good local news today, as 100,000 people in my electorate and across the City of Wyndham have had their first jab. That's 50 per cent of those eligible. Over 53,000 people have had their second job. This is amazing, particularly when you consider that 64 per cent of my community are under 40. To my community I want to say, this is a race and I'm glad to see that you're in it. The best vaccine you can get is the vaccine that you can book today. And, please, don't listen to the Prime Minister, who said that vaccines could wait; who faffed about instead of ensuring we had the appropriate number of vaccines and the variations of vaccines that we needed at the beginning of this year. To the Prime Minister I say this: locals are saying they are waiting six to eight weeks for Pfizer. PM, my community are up for the challenge. They are in this race. Your job is to deliver the vaccines we need. COVID-19 15 13:38 Dr MARTIN 282982 Reid Last week a young constituent called Kian wrote to me. Kian's father, Dr Kevin Chan, is a respiratory physician. In his email, Kian said: 'There are many healthcare workers in the Reid constituency battling this virus. Unfortunately, most have not been recognised for their actions. One of these incredibly vital people is my father. He works tirelessly, without hesitation or reluctance—day and night—to not only continue to serve his patients, but also provide support to his family endlessly.' We are being kept healthy and safe through the tireless efforts of our frontline healthcare workers. To Kevin, I say thank you for your professionalism and commitment. To the thousands of nurses, doctors, testing clinic workers, pharmacists, psychologists, paramedics and counsellors, I say thank you. Just yesterday in New South Wales, we heard the emotional plea of Western Sydney paramedic Joe Ibrahim. His story of providing CPR in full PPE and providing care to those with COVID-19 was heartbreaking, but Joe's message was clear: follow the rules; stay at home; get vaccinated. All of us in this place and around Australia owe our frontline healthcare workers a debt of gratitude. Each day they not only put their own health at risk, but the health of their loved ones and yet they keep going. (Time expired) Indonesian Republic: 76th Anniversary 16 13:39 Mr GOSLING 245392 Solomon 'Indonesian Tangguh, Indonesia Tumbuh, Dirgahayu ke-Tujuh Puluh Enam, Selamat Indonesia Merdeka.' Indonesia tough, Indonesia growing, 76 years of independence, congratulations to Indonesia. The Australia Indonesia Business Council NT branch held a gala dinner on the weekend marking the 76th anniversary of the Indonesian republic. Unfortunately, being stuck here in lockdown, obviously I wasn't able to attend, but I sent a video speech. What I said to the gala dinner is that Indonesia is our friend, Australia and the Australian Labor Party in particular were very supportive of Indonesian independence back then, 76 years ago, and we appreciate that Indonesia is a committed and robust democracy and our relationship is stronger than ever. As I've said in this place before, the reason I say Indonesia is tough is that the people of Indonesia are going through a very difficult time with COVID, a devastating health emergency. I acknowledge the federal government has made commitments to provide some AZ vaccines to Indonesia. But none have been delivered as yet, so let's act and help our near and dear friends in Indonesia. Superannuation 16 13:41 Mr TIM WILSON IMW Goldstein Super is members' money, not a soft cushion for corrupt union leaders to feather their nests. Recently, the parliament passed the Your Future, Your Super legislation introducing a new test obliging funds to act in the best financial interests of their members. Frankly, it's absurd that it was required, but we now see why. Many super funds have a cosy relationship with the ACTU where they pay tens of thousands of dollars in 'marketing expenses'. The House Economics Committee has grilled its value, and we've been advised by Industry Super Australia that their $60,000 annual fee gets them access to their newsletter. IFM Investors' equivalent fees meant that they get the opportunity to meet trustees of the super funds that owe them. These payments in the tens of thousands of dollars aren't legitimate marketing expenses, but super laundering through to the ACTU. Finally, under the new best financial interest test APRA accepted that, without a very strong basis, such expenditure is unlikely to be consistent with the best financial interest duty. It's a welcome change from earlier dismissing an $11,000 political donation to the Australian Labor Party from superannuation funds as 'immaterial' in comparison to the size of the fund under the sole-purpose test. Super remains a Kama Sutra of festering self-interest between the Labor Party and many of the funds, demonstrated by Cbus appointing Wayne Swan as their new chair. It's time we cleaned up super, and we're making no apology about it. The DEPUTY SPEAKER HK5 Order! I call the honourable member for Mayo. Aged Care 16 13:42 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo [by video link] Tomorrow is Thank You for Working in Aged Care Day, and I would like to recognise Australia's aged-care workers: personal care workers, nurses, allied health professionals, cleaners and cooks in aged care. We all know you work long hours, day after day, doing the important work of looking after the older Australians who worked so hard to nurture us for years and build the nation that we have today. With the recent handing down of the report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, this is a pivotal time to recognise your efforts. Yet personal care workers with the same skills are paid 25 per cent to 30 per cent less than the same workers in the disability care sector. This is just unfair, and that is why I urge the government to express its support for the applications to the Fair Work Commission for aged-care workers to receive the same fair pay. If we all acknowledge the sector needs to attract and retain more people to this important work, we need to support them to receive fair pay and fair conditions, otherwise ultimately our older Australians will lose out on the better care that they deserve. Victoria: COVID-19 16 13:43 Mr CHESTER IPZ Gippsland [by video link] I commend the presiding officers, the parliamentary staff, the Prime Minister and the opposition leader for finding ways to allow federal parliament to sit with the virtual participation option for members and senators. This collaborative approach stands in stark contrast to the Premier of Victoria, who refuses to subject his government to any scrutiny by the opposition at this time. The continued cancellation of state parliamentary sittings has reached a new low with the Premier saying a Zoom parliament is not at the top of his list: I think if you ask Victorians whether people giving speeches on the floor of the parliament is as important as getting jabs in the arms of people … I am not going to apologise for the priorities I have got. Mr Premier, what's important is democracy. What's important is the government of the day being subjected to public scrutiny. What's important is accountability. How you spend Victorians' money, how you respond to the pandemic, why Victoria has the world record for lockdowns—these are all issues that need to be scrutinised in the state parliament. We have a pandemic which is being compounded by a loneliness epidemic and a mental health crisis. The Premier should stop hiding from Victorians. The state parliament should be sitting, and the Premier should make that happen this week. Finally, I want to thank all the health and the care sector workers. Your effort on the front line of this pandemic has been extraordinary. Not all heroes wear— The DEPUTY SPEAKER HK5 Order! I call the honourable member for Macquarie. Macquarie Electorate: Mental Health 17 13:45 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie I can't imagine playing politics with people's lives, with their mental health, but the same can't be said for the likely Liberal candidate for Macquarie—the former candidate for Reid, who wanted to be the member for Hawkesbury—who has dangled a headspace clinic in front of thousands of young people in the Hawkesbury for months for her own political gain. Quite frankly, it disgusts me. We needed a headspace before the fires, we needed it before the floods and we have needed it throughout this pandemic, but just hinting about something that this government—your own party—could deliver right now and should have delivered eight years ago doesn't cut it. I say to her and her Liberal masters: it's clear you're going to announce a headspace at some point. So announce it. Build it. Staff it. Open it. Do something good with your time rather than trawling community Facebook groups promoting yourself. The fight for better mental health services is personal for me. My community knows this. I know the difference good local services can make to a young person and to their family. This is my why. It is people's lives we're talking about. It's not a tool to win votes. This is bigger than your next promotion. But then again, this is the difference between you and me. You fight for your own career. I fight for my community. Superannuation 17 13:47 Mr WALLACE 265967 Fisher In my electorate of Fisher we have more than 31,000 retirees and another 63,000 Australians who are paying taxes and saving towards their retirement. Thanks to the Morrison government's landmark reforms to Australia's superannuation system, those Fisher residents have access to new information today which could make a major difference to their quality of life in retirement. Thanks to the Morrison government's Your Future, Your Super reforms, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has published the first annual performance test of MySuper products on its YourSuper comparison tool. The results show how important the government's reforms are and make uncomfortable reading for those funds which are failing hardworking Australians. The report found that $56.2 billion of Australians' money is invested in 13 underperforming funds and that 1.1 million Australians are being short-changed today on their hard-earned savings—and that's not to mention the eight super products which exited the market of their own accord when they knew the jig was up. There is little doubt that among these 1.1 million Australians there are many who live in Fisher. To them I say: the Morrison government is on your side. Thanks to our reforms, your underperforming fund will now be forced to write to you to let you know that you could be getting a better deal elsewhere and how to go about finding one. I urge you to take that opportunity. Smith, Uncle Bill 17 13:48 Ms CLAYDON 248181 Newcastle It's with great sadness that I stand at the dispatch box today. I want to acknowledge that last Sunday we lost a much loved and treasured leader in our community of Newcastle, Uncle Bill Smith, who died aged 83 following a terrible struggle with pancreatic cancer. Uncle Bill was born in Tamworth, a very proud Anaiwan-Wanarruwa-Gamilaraay man whose parents instilled in him an incredible cultural strength and pride. Fortunately for us in Newcastle, he made his way down to our region for work and, along with his family, set up the extraordinary Smith General Contracting group, which literally laid thousands of railway tracks transporting people across our region. He was full of great stories about those days where his company contracted hundreds of Aboriginal workers on the railway. He was very proud of that, and rightly so. He was also the co-founder of Awabakal Newcastle Aboriginal Cooperative and a foundation member of the National Aboriginal Rugby League Association. He was a representative on the National Aboriginal Conference for five years. There was not a social or political moment in history that he was not part of in our region. (Time expired) Flynn Electorate: Central Highlands Region 18 13:50 Mr O'DOWD 139441 Flynn The Central Highlands region is part of the Flynn electorate, an area of 60,000 square kilometres and home to 30,000 people. It's a hub for agriculture, mining and tourism. The Central Highlands is a diverse region and boasts some great towns—13 unique communities: Arcadia Valley, Bauhinia, Blackwater, Bluff, Capella, Comet, Dingo, Duaringa, Emerald, Rolleston, Sapphire Gemfields, Springsure and Tieri. Incidentally, Dingo is the home of the great tennis legend Rod Laver and the NRL star Ben Hunt. Emerald is the largest town, located on the Nogoa River, and home to the Fairbairn irrigation system and Lake Maraboon. The region is a great food bowl and is well known for its production of beef, cotton, wheat, chickpeas, sorghum, citrus and grapes. The Gemfields district—Anakie, Sapphire, Rubyvale and the Willows—is an excellent tourist destination and offers many gems, with sapphires and activities for tourists. There are plenty of national parks, including Carnarvon Gorge and Blackdown Tableland. I encourage all to visit the Central Highlands region sometime soon. Prime Minister 18 13:51 Mr HILL 86256 Bruce People would know the Danish fable of 'the emperor has no clothes'. Here in Australia we have a similar tale: it's called 'the Prime Minister who doesn't hold a hose'. The last 18 months have stripped this Prime Minister of any credibility he may once have had. He has been exposed nakedly as the fake that he is. He's the kind of bloke who will force you to shake his hand even if you don't want to. He's the kind of bloke who'll say, 'That's not my job,' and then take the credit whenever he can. He's a very cunning politician but he is not a leader. Recently, the Prime Minister stopped hiding under his doona and he's back. The shapeshifter is back! He is now trying to reinvent himself as Australia's COVID messiah. He wants Australians to believe that he's here to save their freedoms. He wants Australians to forget that the reason they're locked up is because he spent 18 months not doing his job, leaving the hard work to the state premiers. If the Prime Minister really cared, he'd have built safe quarantine and he would have ordered enough vaccines. People in Melbourne are enduring their second winter in lockdown and rocking up to vaccine clinics at six in the morning, desperate to get a jab. The lockdowns are because the man who sits over there in the Prime Minister's chair didn't take responsibility or lead. The truth is that Australia would already be safely opening up if he had done his job. Australia will not just move on and forget, as he hopes; they'll hold this bloke to account for his failures and for his broken promises. Men's Shed Week 18 13:52 Mr PASIN 240756 Barker This week is Men's Shed Week. Sheds across the country are celebrating the fundamentals of that movement: connection, community and camaraderie. They play such an important role in providing men with a place to connect, a community to belong to and mates who make it all worthwhile. A lot of men, particularly those from older generations, find it difficult to talk about feelings and emotions and, quite frankly, don't take an interest in their own health and wellbeing as much as they perhaps should. Because of this, on average, many men are less healthy than women—they drink more, take more risks and suffer from isolation, loneliness and depression. Getting together and just having a yarn is priceless and never more have we valued this simple act so much than in this time with millions of Australians suffering through lockdowns. It's given us all an appreciation of the importance of social connection and, perhaps, a greater appreciation for what the men's shed movement has to offer. Having being locked out of South Australia and in Canberra for five weeks, I have really missed my regular catch-ups with members of the 25 men's sheds across Barker. Whilst I won't be able to see it for myself, I know that the men of these sheds are celebrating with gusto right across Barker this week. I know that because what each shed brings to its members and wider communities is worth celebrating. JobKeeper Payment 19 13:54 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner Billionaire Gerry Harvey once said that donating to charity is 'just wasted', and that giving money to people who 'are not putting anything back into the community' is like 'helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason'. Gerry Harvey called the Victorian mental health levy a 'dreadful, horrible, stupid tax'. Earlier this year Gerry Harvey opposed a 3.5 per cent wage increase for his workers at a time when his profits had more than doubled. Yet even Gerry Harvey has now decided to repay his JobKeeper. Why has he done it? One reason—public pressure. Harvey Norman might have blocked its critics on Twitter and threatened news outlets that ran stories with pulling its ads from their programs, but Gerry Harvey couldn't ignore the chorus of condemnation from the public, from the union movement and from Labor. We only know that Harvey Norman got JobKeeper because ASIC required listed companies to disclose it to the share market. So far, about $200 million has been repaid, almost all of it from listed companies. Transparency didn't come from the Treasurer; it came from the corporate watchdog. If the Treasurer had his way we would know almost nothing about who got JobKeeper. The Treasurer is still fighting for JobKeeper secrecy. He doesn't want Australians to know which large firms got JobKeeper. It says something about the Treasurer that he can't even match the ethical standards of Gerry Harvey. Grey Electorate: Roads 19 13:56 Mr RAMSEY HWS Grey Some years ago I had been campaigning for some passing lanes between Port Augusta and Whyalla; it's a distance of about 87 kilometres and it's a pretty busy bit of road. I had been informed by some people back in the electorate that I had Buckley's chance of getting any kind of allocation for that. But I was very pleased when, in 2016, my persistence was rewarded and we ended up with a passing lane in each direction. I'm even more pleased to announce today that we are to get two more in each direction—one on the first 30 kilometres of a section of the Eyre Highway through to the Whyalla turnoff, and the other between that turnoff and Whyalla. So we will have four more passing lanes, at $16 million. This stretch of road has had some very sad accidents and fatalities. I don't for one minute suggest that passing lanes will necessarily get rid of fatalities but they will certainly reduce driver stress as we line up behind heavy transport, and they will give people an opportunity to get past—particularly those people enjoying our country while pulling caravans at the moment, which can block other people trying to move along a bit more quickly. I have to say that, with this announcement, we have well over a billion dollars worth of Commonwealth support coming into the federal seat of Grey at the moment. To all those people who have said to me over the years, 'I wish we were a marginal seat so we could get a bit more,' I say: 'You're on the wrong horse, mate.' We are backing you and we are backing regional Australia. COVID-19: Aged Care 19 13:57 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler On 27 July this year a staff member at the Wyoming Nursing Home, in Summer Hill, tested positive for COVID-19. This staff member had been working at multiple facilities as an agency nurse providing surge workforce capability. That was the case even though experience showed previously in 2020 that aged-care workers needed to be vaccinated, and, more significantly for this case, that aged-care workers should not be working in multiple facilities. But it continued, and it continues today—an unvaccinated nurse working in multiple facilities. The result has been five deaths of people in my electorate associated with that nursing home—a woman in her 80s, a man in his 90s, another woman in her 80s, another woman in her 80s and, just this week, yet another one at Concord hospital. These five constituents all have families, friends and loved ones who are mourning. The government needs to, when it comes to COVID, look at where things have gone wrong and make sure it gets it right so that we don't repeat the mistakes with tragic consequences. (Time expired) Rosh Hashana 19 13:59 Mr SHARMA 274506 Wentworth [by video link] Next Monday evening begins the Jewish New Year, or Rosh Hashana. It will usher in the new year of 5782. Normally, of course, Jewish communities around the country and in my electorate of Wentworth would be going to synagogue to celebrate the new year and listening to the sound of the shofar blowing out. Of course, this year that won't be happening in New South Wales or indeed where a large part of the rest of the Australian Jewish community is, down in Melbourne. I know it's been a difficult year for many in the Jewish community. They've been separated, like many Australians, from friends and family, overseas and domestically. They haven't been able to join together for their normal celebrations. They haven't been able to celebrate weddings or even, sadly, commemorate funerals in the way they would like to over the last several months of lockdown. So I want to wish the Jewish community a particularly sweet and happy new year, shana tovah u'metukah, for the year that's coming up, wish them well for the time ahead and let them know, importantly, what a valued and appreciated part of the Australian community they are. The amount that they've given in terms of their contribution to Australia is well recognised and highly appreciated. Shana tovah u'metukah. The SPEAKER 10000 In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded. MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS 20 MINISTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS 14:00 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I inform the House that the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment will be absent from question time today and, I believe, for the remainder of the week. I will update the House. The Treasurer will answer questions on his behalf in the Trade, Tourism and Investment portfolio, and I will answer questions on his behalf in the Foreign Affairs portfolio. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 20 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE COVID-19: Vaccination 20 14:00 Ms STANLEY 265990 Werriwa My question is to the Prime Minister. Gandangara Health Services is a First Nations organisation in Liverpool, a COVID hotspot. Gandangara's CEO says they've only been allocated around 40 vaccine doses per day and 'We are being asked to fill a Grand Canyon sized need with a handful of pebbles.' Why did the Prime Minister say yesterday that challenges in the vaccine rollout had been overcome, when they simply have not? 14:01 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook Today—indeed, just before question time—an additional 500,000 doses have been added to the some 4½ million Pfizer doses that will be distributed over the course of September, the one million Moderna doses that will go out in September and the many millions more of AstraZeneca doses. I particularly want to thank all the GPs and the pharmacists around the country who are doing such a fantastic job, together with the state hubs, the nurses and others who are supporting those many, many points of presence, over 9,000 points of presence, right across the country, whether they be in Western Sydney, up in North Queensland, down in Tasmania, over in the west or wherever they may be. They are doing an extraordinary job, so much so that now, as we approach the end of August, 35 per cent of our population aged over 16 has had two doses, and 58.7 per cent have had their first dose. Very importantly, of those aged over 70, our most vulnerable, 87.4 per cent have had their first dose, and 62.9 per cent have had their second dose. More than 50 per cent of over 50s now had both doses of the vaccine. What we've been able to do, particularly over the course of August, going into September, is bring forward those doses by getting access to those extra million Pfizer doses we were able to get out of Poland and now the extra 500,000 that are coming from the arrangement with Singapore—and I thank Prime Minister Lee and all of those involved in that initiative. That and the other irons we have in the fire mean there are more and more doses, and that means that we are fast approaching the time when everyone in this country will have had the opportunity to have that vaccine. We are fast approaching that time, and I want to thank everyone across the country for the sterling job they've been doing in rolling up their sleeves and getting those vaccines. We are operating at vaccination rates, on a weekly basis, in per capita terms, that exceed even the highest levels achieved in the United States and the United Kingdom. COVID-19: National Plan 20 14:03 Mrs ARCHER 282237 Bass My question is to the Prime Minister. The national plan will bring Australia through the COVID-19 pandemic by reopening our economy and ensuring Australians can live with the virus. Will the Prime Minister please inform the House about the importance of sticking to this national plan? 14:04 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I thank the member for Bass for her question. Along with her, I want to thank all Tasmanians for the great job that they've been doing, because they have the highest double-dose rate of vaccination in the country. Tasmania leads the way—I'm sure the member for Braddon is also very excited about that—with 42 per cent double doses, in a state where the level of COVID has been significantly below the more populous states, like New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, and indeed even Queensland. Yet in that state, in Tasmania, they are doing an amazing job in maintaining very high rates of double-dose vaccinations—in fact, the highest rate anywhere in the country. That is essential to the national plan, because the national plan enables Australia to live with the virus, not live in fear of it. By doing that, we can move all of the country forward together. But we acknowledge that, whether it be in the member's home state of Tasmania, my home state of New South Wales or the Treasurer's home state of Victoria, we're all starting from different places under this national plan but we're all heading to the same location, and that same location, that same destination, that same goal of the national plan is to connect all Australians once again with each other and to connect Australians with the rest of the world. That plan is about getting children back at school. It's about getting businesses open and ensuring that they can stay open. It is about ensuring that we're getting Australians back the hours in their jobs, in their workplaces. It's about getting planes back in the air. It's about getting tourists back into towns and regions right across this country, from one end to the other, and indeed enabling Australians to travel once again beyond our own shores. That's what the plan is achieving—because we know that the lockdowns are taking a heavy toll on Australians' wellbeing. It's not only on the economic wellbeing of this country but, even more significantly, on the physical wellbeing of Australians, and there is a mental health toll that we know that the lockdowns are imposing on the country. That's why it continues to be so urgent that we move together as part of this national plan. Vaccinations, of course, are a key part of that plan. I have already responded on the issue of 500,000 additional Pfizer doses secured in our dose-swap arrangement with the government of Singapore. I thank Prime Minister Lee and I thank the minister for health and also the high commissioner, another great Tasmanian in Will Hodgman—our high commissioner up there in Singapore—for putting this arrangement together which starts September off, as we enter it and spring into Spring, with 500,000 doses of additional hope, courtesy of that arrangement which sees our national plan advanced. COVID-19: Vaccination 21 14:07 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie My question is to the Prime Minister. Is the Prime Minister aware that today the New South Wales health minister, Brad Hazzard, confirmed that the gap between the first and second doses of the Pfizer vaccine in Sydney will be spaced out to eight weeks? Mr Hazzard said: Simply, there is not enough Pfizer in New South Wales … or Victoria—for the people who are now wanting it … Why didn't the Prime Minister do his job on vaccines? 14:07 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook The decision to focus on first doses in New South Wales was a decision taken together, between the Commonwealth government and the New South Wales government, and it was done because of the outbreak that was occurring in south-western Sydney and to ensure that we maximised the use of vaccines in that part of the country, that part of Sydney, to ensure that we lifted the level of resilience and to seek to slow that spread of the virus in those parts of New South Wales. That was a very sensible plan, and we added to that plan. Indeed, the government has provided to New South Wales almost a million additional doses beyond their allocations, both in bring-forwards of Pfizer doses and in new, complete over-the-allocation doses—500,000, specifically—that were made available through the Polish arrangement that the government was able to secure and that I was able to secure with the Polish Prime Minister. That is what our plan was when those issues arose in south-western Sydney—to get the additional doses into New South Wales, supported by the New South Wales government. Those arrangements were done directly between me and the Premier, over many days, to ensure that we could maximise. That was not done at the expense of other states and territories. The Commonwealth did not divert doses from other states and territories to New South Wales. We maximised the use of the doses we had available and we went outside our borders and got more doses to support New South Wales, which was facing the most difficult part of this crisis that it had seen in the course of the entire pandemic. So we have been supporting New South Wales very heavily as they've worked through this very difficult time. Because we were able to vaccinate, in particular, those who are in residential aged-care facilities, we know that the fatality rate of what we observed during the Victorian wave, when the vaccine wasn't in place, was some 4.2 per cent. That rate has fallen to 0.45 per cent in New South Wales this year because of the work done to protect our most vulnerable people in that state and, indeed, across the country. Eight hundred, or thereabouts, lost their life last year during the second wave in Victoria, and that has fallen by almost 90 per cent with the same amount of cases—indeed, more cases—in New South Wales this time. We will continue to work with New South Wales. I will continue to work with every single premier and chief minister. Despite the criticisms that are made of me for seeking to work with those premiers and chief ministers, I will keep working with them every single day, as I have throughout this COVID pandemic, to continue to bring them together to focus on the national plan, which means we can live with this virus not in fear of it. COVID-19 21 14:10 Mr CONAGHAN 279991 Cowper My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. Will the Deputy Prime Minister update the House on the importance of the Morrison-Joyce government's national plan in the safe recovery of our regional economies from the COVID-19 pandemic, and is the Deputy Prime Minister aware of any alternative policies? 14:11 Mr JOYCE E5D New England I thank the honourable member for his question. I know that the member for Cowper has been such a champion, especially for the chemist rollout. The member for Cowper has also been a champion in understanding that we have to have a safe plan and we have to be able to make sure that we get this nation back to where it was, returning the liberties and freedoms that people are born with. We know how important that is for things such as the Coffs Harbour bypass. I was speaking to the member for Cowper and he was noting that the Coffs Harbour bypass will remove 12 sets of traffic lights, take 12,000 cars off the road and have three tunnels. But we can only build that $1.8 billion piece of infrastructure if we have the workers on the site. And the workers can only get on the site if they have a belief that they are safe and have the capacity to go to work without hindrance, which is what we are delivering. And it is not just that, it is not just the big projects; it is also things such as Lanes Bridge at Bowraville, which is only a $1 million project but incredibly important to the people of Bowraville, or the Coramba Road-Azalea Avenue roundabout, which, at $200,000, is an even smaller project but incredibly important to them. The work the member for Cowper has done in pursuing the purpose of getting pharmacies—921 pharmacies are administering vaccines in regional areas; we've got 2,645 locations in regional areas getting this. And this is having an outcome not only in the member for Cowper's electorate. In Port Macquarie 67 per cent of people have now received at least one inoculation, and in Bellingen, as you head towards the hills towards my electorate, 64.3 per cent have received one inoculation. And that is the case across the country. In Walgett, just up the road from me, 73.7 per cent of people have received one inoculation. In Warren and Parkes it is 76.7 per cent of people and in Goondiwindi it is 73 per cent of people. The member for Cowper asked if I know of any alternative policies. I don't. I turned on Insiders on the weekend to listen to the shadow minister, the member for Hindmarsh, and his policy for the Labor Party going forward. Do you guys up there know what the answer was? I don't. Does anybody here know what the answer was? I couldn't understand what the answer was—because they have no alternative policy. You'd think that if the member for Hindmarsh, the shadow minister for health, was going on Insiders he would have gone there with a policy to inform the Australian people what would happen under the Labor Party. But it is quite clear: nothing is going to happen under the Labor Party because they have no plan. Inland Rail 22 14:14 Mr DICK 53517 Oxley My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture. Can the minister explain how a text message sent by the Minister for Agriculture to the Deputy Prime Minister last Wednesday about the Inland Rail route appeared in The Weekend Australian? Does the Minister for Agriculture agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that the Inland Rail route is settled? The SPEAKER 10000 The Leader of the House on a point of order. Mr Dutton 00AKI That is not a topic that the Deputy Prime Minister could have any knowledge of— Mr Burke DYW What? Inland Rail! The SPEAKER 10000 Members on my left! Mr Dutton 00AKI and a text message sent to somebody else allegedly by somebody is not within the knowledge of the Deputy Prime Minister. The question is out of order. The SPEAKER 10000 The Manager of Opposition Business on the point of order. Mr Burke DYW I'm a bit astonished! Sorry—to the point of order. The SPEAKER 10000 I'm perpetually astonished! But anyway, go on. Mr Burke DYW To the point of order: the Leader of the House is alleging that the Deputy Prime Minister is not in a position to answer whether or not a text message was sent to him, and it's about Inland Rail, for which he is responsible. The SPEAKER 10000 The point I'm going to make—and I can take members through Practice if you really want me to—is ministers can't be just asked about newspaper reports, reports in party rooms, allegations left, right and centre. That's been well established, and I'm conscious of not going over it all. I will if I have to, but it just eats up a lot of question time. Mr Burke DYW Without disputing anything you just put there about newspaper reports and the like, the substance of this is two things: one, it relates to a message between one minister and another, between the minister the Deputy Prime Minister is representing and himself about Inland Rail, and, two, asks whether or not the Inland Rail route is settled. The Deputy Prime Minister has to be responsible for that. He has to be able to answer that and— The SPEAKER 10000 I'll tell you what I'll do. Most of the question is out of order about text messages and newspaper reports. It's not in the position for the chair to judge the accuracy of those, just as I can't judge the accuracy of claims made in questions and answers. But, in terms of the policy topic of the Inland Rail, the Deputy Prime Minister can answer. But, as I've pointed out before, he's not terribly confined given the nature of the question that's been asked. 14:17 Mr JOYCE E5D New England I genuinely thank the member for his question and can, right at the start, say the route is determined. It is absolutely set. It's been through cabinet, and we're getting on with it. We're getting on with the job. That is what we do. And why we are getting on with the job is because this 1,700 kilometre piece of nation-building infrastructure is so vital for us taking this economy ahead. This 1,700 kilometre piece of infrastructure will have 3.6-kilometre-long trains going along it at 110 kilometres an hour. On this 1,700 kilometre piece of infrastructure, each one of those trains will take 110 B-Doubles off the road, and it will take more than 150 semitrailers off the road, each one using around over 600 litres of diesel—one of the great carbon abatement policies that goes to show how the Prime Minister and I and our colleagues are using technology. We are using technology to take this nation ahead. And that 1,700 kilometre piece of infrastructure will drive decentralisation, drive the growth of the town of Parkes, drive the growth of the town of Narrabri, drive the growth of the town of Goondiwindi, drive the growth of the City of Toowoomba and assist in the further growth of the great cities of Melbourne and Brisbane. We have a vision. We have a vision for this nation, because we could not rely on the Labor Party's vision for this nation. We could not. For them, the best we got was it was a 'nice idea'—a nice idea! But it's not a nice idea for us; it is a reality. And, as we drive this piece of infrastructure forward, we're going to make sure that the people who produce the culverts, the people who produce the bridges, will be producing the jobs in regional Australia. Even in my own electorate of New England we are building the culverts. We have jobs. A place that used to only have 12 jobs now has over 100 jobs, and that is this nation at work and that is competent management and that is us taking this project ahead. Every day I'm making sure that we put our shoulder to the wheel to see this project finalised. I am very happy that you ask about the Inland Rail, because every time we see the Inland Rail we see something that the coalition is doing and the Labor Party never did. They had no intention of doing it. It was never going to happen. All we have, and we still have, is that now they are saying they might do it to Gladstone. They were never going to do anything else of it. Of course they're not going to do it to Gladstone, because they don't believe in it. But we do. I thank the honourable member for his question and I look forward to many more questions on one of the great pieces of infrastructure in this nation that we will build and we will see completed because we have a plan. Afghanistan 23 14:20 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo [by video link] My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Minister, I understand there are 4,427 Afghan refugees living in the Australian community on SHEVs, or temporary protection visas. Given the horrendous events unfolding in Afghanistan, will the government now provide these recognised refugees permanent residency visas? 14:20 Mrs ANDREWS 230886 McPherson I thank the member for her question. I'm sure that she, along with everyone in the House and in this place, is very much aware of the significant needs of Afghan communities, whether they are remaining in Afghanistan or they are here in Australia. What I can say to the member—and I'm more than happy to continue this discussion outside this place today—is that particularly the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs and I are working very closely with local communities here in Australia. We need to understand and come to terms with a range of issues in relation to those people who have been in Afghanistan and either are on their way to Australia or have just come here. We need to continue to do the work that is necessary with the Afghan community that is already within Australia. I can assure her that that work is underway. The minister for immigration is taking a leading role in that. We will continue to do all that we can to support those people who are currently in Australia and who are on their way here. Morrison Government 23 14:22 Mr ALEXANDER M3M Bennelong [by video link] My question is to the Treasurer. Will the Treasurer update the House on why Australians can trust the Morrison Government's strong economic management and its support for small businesses to help our economy bounce back from the delta strain of the COVID-19 pandemic by sticking to the national plan? Is the Treasurer aware of any alternative policies? 14:22 Mr FRYDENBERG FKL Kooyong I thank the member for Bennelong for his question and acknowledge his strong advocacy on behalf of business across his electorate. Indeed, more than 23,000 businesses in the electorate of Bennelong are eligible for the extended instant asset write-off. I had the pleasure of joining the member for Bennelong in his electorate not that long ago to visit a great Australian company, namely Cochlear, which is at the forefront of technological innovation. Last year, the Australian economy faced and stared into the economic abyss. Treasury thought that unemployment could reach as high as 15 per cent and that we could see the economy contract in one quarter by more than 20 per cent. The Morrison government responded with unprecedented amounts of economic support, and we saw strong economic growth in the back half of last year and the unemployment rate fall to a 12-year low of 4.6 per cent. But right now we have our two largest states in lockdown, and tomorrow is the national accounts. For the June quarter we have seen 29 days of lockdowns, meaning at least one part of the country was in lockdown for the period of 29 days over the course of that quarter, including five out of the eight jurisdictions. Our four largest states experienced some form of lockdown over the course of that June quarter. So no matter what the exact number is tomorrow, it doesn't change the fact today that our economy faces some significant challenges. That's why we've got to continue with the economic support, both income support and business support. That's why we have to stick to the plan agreed to at national cabinet, a plan that will see restrictions ease at 70 to 80 per cent. If it's not enough for small business to be fighting the virus, small business is now fighting a Labor Party that is seeking to destroy one of the fundamental pillars of our tax system—namely, the protection of confidential information. The Labor Party is seeking to have the data of more than 10,000 businesses dumped in the Senate. This is what the Australian Hotels Association has said of Labor's proposal: 'It's a dangerous political stunt.' This is what the Australian Industry Group has said of Labor's proposal: 'It's a dangerous precedent.' This is what the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has said of Labor's proposal: 'It's a deliberate attempt to smear.' This is what the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia has said of Labor's tactics—it's determined that it's been 'pursued for pure political gain'. While businesses were seeking the support of government in the middle of a pandemic, the Labor Party is now seeking to attack them and come after them. COVID-19: Economy 24 14:25 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is to the Prime Minister. Most economists expect that economic growth had slowed in the June quarter and is now going backwards in the September quarter. Why doesn't the Prime Minister take responsibility for the fact that Australia's economic recovery was always hostage to his failures on vaccines and quarantine? 14:26 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook Australia is one of few countries in the world that, after the COVID-19 recession of last year, saw its economy grow back to a level higher than it was before the pandemic started—that was before delta hit—and saw a million people get back into work. That was the product of economic policies that provided significant, in fact, unprecedented, economic support not only to individuals who had lost hours and indeed had been stood down through JobKeeper, but also through the cash flow boost and the many other measures that supported businesses to see their way through at a time, particularly last year, at the outset of COVID, when the uncertainty was at such a level that it was like looking into an economic abyss. The certainty that was provided by the government to step in with the single largest economic intervention in Australia's history gave businesses, gave families, gave individual employees the confidence to be able to get up the next day and see it through, and do it again day after day, month after month. The product of that was a million people getting back into work, particularly women and particularly young people. That is something that this government did at a time of great challenge to the nation. We continue to do it as we work through these most recent challenges, when we have a country that is beset by lockdowns as a result of the delta strain of the virus. It doesn't just affect Australia; it affects countries all around the world, including across the Tasman in New Zealand, where they also fight this same challenge. As we go through these more recent months with the delta strain of the virus wreaking its impact, I tell you what will happen: we will get through it again. This government will continue to have the back of Australians and Australian businesses. We won't be going after them, like those opposite. We'll be there to support them and we will continue to be there to support them. And with the national plan, with those vaccination rates, which are at world-leading levels on a weekly basis per capita, we will see the Australian economy come back from the challenges that it is currently experiencing. We will see that. How do we know that? Because we've done it once and we will do it again. We've done it by supporting the ingenuity and the resilience and the determination of Australians and Australian businesspeople. The people of this country have been through a lot, but I know that they will come through and they will be able to restore their livelihoods. They will be able to restore their lives, and the path to that is the national plan. COVID-19: Vaccination 25 14:29 Mr SIMMONDS 282983 Ryan [by video link] My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Will the minister please update the House on how the vaccine rollout is continuing to ramp up, highlighted by a record number of vaccinations being administered last week to implement the national plan? 14:29 Mr HUNT 00AMV Flinders I thank the member for Ryan for his question. He is the son of a pharmacist and proudly so. There are now almost 3,000 pharmacies around Australia contributing to the vaccine rollout. They have already delivered over 311,000 vaccinations around Australia, and that's set to accelerate over the coming weeks, particularly as the Moderna vaccine arrives in Australia and is added to the Pfizer and the AstraZeneca vaccines—adding to and supplementing the additional half a million doses which the Prime Minister and the Australian government have been able to secure as a swap from Singapore. That will mean earlier access to more doses for more Australians. We know, of course, that this challenge is affecting every country. Singapore is facing its own challenges. We know that the world has seen over 683,000 cases and 8½ thousand lives officially lost in the last 24 hours, in the latest evidence of a global pandemic which continues unabated. Against that background, the fact that we have been able to deliver record weekly vaccinations at a rate in advance of even the highest weeks in the United States and the United Kingdom is a testament to the work of all of our health professionals right across Australia: our pharmacists and our GPs, and I particularly want to give a shoutout to our nurses, who've played such an extraordinary role throughout the pandemic in providing health care but also in providing vaccination, and everybody involved in our state clinics, in particular our Indigenous clinics through the Aboriginal medical services. All of these are coming together. One particular figure that I want to focus on today, as we've now reached 19.36 million vaccinations, is the 12.1 million Australians who've had first doses. That means there are 2.4 million Australians to take us to the 70 per cent first-dose rate and 4.4 million Australians to take us to the 16½ million which will represent the 80 per cent rate. That's 2.4 million Australians to get to 70 per cent and 4.4 million Australians to get to 80 per cent. Those are first doses, but we know that once they're through that door they'll keep coming back. That's the critical thing. They will be back. That means we have Australians who are coming forward and presenting to be vaccinated. It's about protecting them and saving their lives, as we can see in the massive difference in lives lost between New South Wales now and Victoria a year ago. That's why vaccination matters: it saves lives and protects lives. JobKeeper Payment 25 14:32 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner My question is to the Treasurer. Gerry Harvey has now repaid $6 million in JobKeeper out of the $13 billion that went to companies with rising revenue. Gerry Harvey thinks the money should be paid back. Why doesn't the Treasurer? 14:33 Mr FRYDENBERG FKL Kooyong I thank the member for Fenner for his question. On 25 March this year, I did an interview on ABC radio, and I said the following: … I would welcome Gerry Harvey or any other major company that's in the position to repay their JobKeeper payments back. I would welcome that. That is what I said in March of this year. Let me remind the House of another quote: We've made it really clear for some time now that JobKeeper - which has been doing a lot of good in the economy, it's the reason that we proposed it in the first place … That was said this year. Who said that? Who said it was doing a lot of good and they proposed it in the first place? It was the member for Rankin. Only the Labor Party could say that they invented a program that they are now criticising. The SPEAKER 10000 The Treasurer will resume his seat for a second. The Leader of the House on a point of order? Mr Albanese R36 Close, Mr Speaker—once was! The SPEAKER 10000 Sorry, Leader of the Opposition. Mr Albanese R36 Thanks, Mr Speaker—I was quite good at that job! On relevance: the Treasurer wasn't asked about alternatives. We know we did support wage subsidies and we did support JobKeeper. That's why we voted for it. But this is about the rorting— The SPEAKER 10000 I just ask the Leader of the Opposition to resume his seat. Mr Albanese R36 and the overpayments of $13 billion— The SPEAKER 10000 The Leader of the Opposition will resume his seat and won't use points of order to introduce new material. If he doesn't like the question that's been asked, he can't alter it by way of a point of order—that is the point I'm trying to make. I do though just say to the Treasurer: this was a specific question, and I think he was entirely relevant to it when he first got to the dispatch box, but it isn't an opportunity to range more widely on the topic. Mr FRYDENBERG FKL Well, Mr Speaker, it is a good opportunity to talk about the importance and the success of the JobKeeper program, a program that was described as 'remarkable' by the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia; a program that was described as 'well targeted' by the federal Treasury in a review they did in mid last year; a program that the Australian tax office delivered, in which it was, in the words of the Australian National Audit Office, 'effective in managing risks'. Now, the Prime Minister earlier alluded to the economic abyss that Australia faced last year when we introduced the JobKeeper program. I want to point out to those opposite that business confidence fell by 62 points in March of last year, the largest single monthly decline and the lowest level since the survey began. But, in the months following, business confidence increased by 17 points and then a further 26 points to May of last year. Over March 2020, consumer confidence fell by 38 per cent, a record low for the index. The week following the announcement of JobKeeper, consumer confidence increased by 10 percentage points, and consumer confidence has continued to improve. JobKeeper is perhaps the most remarkably successful economic support program this country has ever seen. And it's contributed to the strong rebound in the economy that we saw at the end of last year and the start of this year. Defence 26 14:37 Mr THOMPSON 281826 Herbert [by video link] My question is to the Minister for Defence. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government's significant investment in defence capability is keeping Australians safe and secure in a time of global uncertainty? 14:37 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson I want to say thank you very much to the member for Herbert, who, like all of those who have worn the uniform in our country's name, would be mourning the loss of the two soldiers who were tragically killed north of Townsville yesterday. By way of update to the House, two members of the Brisbane based 7th Combat Brigade died following a vehicle incident at the Townsville Field Training Area yesterday. The two men, one aged 29, the other, a warrant officer, aged 40, tragically lost their lives when their vehicle rolled. I want to recognise the Defence rescue and medical teams who attended that scene in the most difficult and traumatic of circumstances; but, sadly, the members were unable to be saved. I want to say to all of those at Gallipoli Barracks and to all of those in particular at 7th Combat Brigade that all of this parliament and all Australians feel for you today and for the families of those lost. We know that there will be very significant grief at Gallipoli Barracks today and at Lavarack Barracks, and indeed around the country. The defence family is a very tight one, and we know that not only the families but the defence families of these two men will be greatly mourning their loss, and we pay tribute to their service. The Morrison government is committed to making sure that we can provide every support to those diggers. We do it in many, many ways. Taking care of our personnel is absolutely paramount. There are countless conversations that the Prime Minister and I have had about ways in which we can provide additional support to our service men and women, who serve us, who protect us, who keep our country safe. Let's be very real: we live in a very uncertain time, and not just in the Middle East. We've seen the tragic circumstances there and the circumstances in which our soldiers are deployed—and also in our own region, in the Indonesia-Pacific. The fact that we've been able to commit $270 billion over the course of this decade to provide support, by way of new equipment, to those troops demonstrates our commitment to keeping our country safe. At least 15,000 companies and 70,000 Australian workers are benefiting from the government's investment in shipbuilding and defence. We're investing $65 billion over the next decade into next-generation air capabilities, including through acquiring long-range anti-ship missiles. We're investing $55 billion into land domain capabilities, such as strike weapons, watercraft, helicopters, robotics and autonomous systems. Our Naval Shipbuilding Plan represents the largest regeneration of the Navy since the Second World War. That investment is absolutely essential, not only to keep the men and women of the Australian Defence Force safe but to keep our country safe. We will continue to make decisions to support our personnel today and into the future. 14:41 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I join with the Minister for Defence in expressing condolences to the families of the two men in uniform who lost their lives in the accident yesterday. There are many things that are up for debate in this chamber. One of the things that is not is the support for the men and women who wear our uniform and who keep us safe, on whom we all rely on as a nation for our national security. COVID-19: Vaccination 27 14:41 Mr STEPHEN JONES A9B Whitlam My question is to the Prime Minister. This morning, the New South Wales Deputy Premier, John Barilaro, said in relation to the First Nations' vaccine rollout: Should they have been vaccinated earlier? Yes. It was all part of the federal government's rollout of the vaccination program at the start of the year. It didn't occur Why did the Prime Minister get this so wrong? 14:41 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook Vaccinating, and indeed the public health of our Indigenous population, is a very high priority for the government. There have been many challenges there, as there often are, in ensuring that we provide the best possible health care to our Indigenous Australians. This program in particular has had its challenges within Indigenous communities. The Minister for Indigenous Australians has been working very closely with Indigenous communities to address these issues and so I'll ask him to update the House on those matters. 14:42 Mr WYATT M3A Hasluck In March of this year AstraZeneca was rolled out to over 150 Aboriginal community controlled health services to enable Aboriginal people to access it. Last year there was an Aboriginal COVID vaccination committee stood up, co-chaired by Pat Turner, to develop a strategic approach to ensuring that there are adequate supplies provided to the ACCHOs. In addition to that are the many GPs who our people also access. The continuation of the rollout of the vaccine program is complemented by the strategic coordination that we commenced in March 2019, where I work very closely with ministers for Indigenous affairs out of other jurisdictions on the application of the Biosecurity Act to lock down communities in the first instance. That work has continued. Two weeks ago the ministers for Aboriginal affairs were briefed on the status of COVID supplies and strategies within their jurisdictions and what the Commonwealth was doing. They have joined with us in addressing and giving priority focus to the needs of their community controlled health services, as well as aligning the resources that are available at the state and territory level. In talking with the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in WA, he made the comment, 'I must have further discussion with my colleague Roger Cook, the Minister for Health, so that we ensure that we lift our vaccination rates.' I find it interesting when people talk about hesitancy not being an issue. Really, what that's doing is saying that Pat Turner and I are deceiving you on what the community is saying. The community is hesitant, based on the information. I have listened to media interviews; hesitancy is an issue that we have to overcome, and our work on the number of vaccinations is increasing. We have 37 per cent who've had their first dose and 20.5 per cent have had their second dose, so the numbers are increasing. We still have a lot of work to do and so we will continue to focus on making sure people are vaccinated and safe. National Security 27 14:44 Mrs WICKS 241590 Robertson My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister please update the House on how the Morrison government is backing our national security agencies to create a stronger Australia and keep all Australians safe against those who would seek to do us harm? 14:45 Mrs ANDREWS 230886 McPherson I thank the member for her question. The security of our nation, of our families, of our businesses is an absolute priority for this government as we work through the various phases of our national plan to return to our normal way of life. While our frontline health workers have very rightly been in the spotlight during this pandemic, our law enforcement and national security agencies have also worked around the clock to deal with a new and evolving threat environment. We all know that the world has changed since COVID, but that COVID is not the only challenge to our safety and security. And that's why our government continues to provide support to our law enforcement and our national security agencies so that they have the tools that they need. We are certainly equipping them for their fight against terrorism, on organised crime and to counter foreign interference, all with the very clear goal of making sure that we are making our communities safe and secure. It was only a couple of months ago that we saw the enormous success of the AFP's Operation Ironside, which cut through the Australian criminal underworld. The foundations of that success were the laws that this government had introduced to keep our agencies well ahead of the game, particularly in relation to technology. In the last few months alone our government has gone even further to keep Australians safe. We've made ports and airports safer and more secure by ensuring that people with serious criminal backgrounds cannot work there. We've secured key counterterrorism tools, including control orders, which are used to ensure the safety and security of all Australians. We've passed new laws to give police and intelligence agencies a greater ability to tackle criminal activity online, making the internet a safer place for everyone, especially for our children. And we've improved foreign intelligence capability to make sure that our agencies are better equipped and better able to detect and determine any imminent threats, which is especially important to protect us from terrorist attacks. We are making sure, as a government, that our agencies are very well equipped to deal with the emerging threats as and when they happen, and that's why we have provided record funding both to ASIO and to the Australian Federal Police. I can assure Australians that this government is absolutely committed to making sure that we are doing all that we possibly can to ensure the safety and security of all Australians. COVID-19: Aged Care 28 14:48 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister announced that all aged-care workers would have had at least one COVID dose by 17 September. But today New South Wales health minister Brad Hazzard said he is 'not at all confident that will happen'. Will the Prime Minister ensure that all aged-care workers receive a vaccine by 17 September to protect them but also to protect the people in their care? 14:49 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook The Minister for Health and Aged Care will add to this answer. I can confirm that the first dose outcomes for aged-care workers currently are 78.8 per cent and the second dose outcomes are 56.7 per cent. Importantly, for those they look after, aged-care residents, first doses are 89 per cent and second doses are 84.4 per cent. The primary reason that we are not seeing the same level of fatality as we saw during the Victorian outbreak has principally been the vaccinations that were undertaken as the top priority of getting to every single residential aged-care facility in this country and vaccinating those residents. We know that alone has saved hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of lives, and I want to thank all those inreach teams that made it their priority to do that. There are still challenges with the inreach to reach all of those aged-care workers, but General Frewen and his team continue to work diligently to that end. I will ask the minister to add to the answer. 14:50 Mr HUNT 00AMV Flinders To add to the Prime Minister's answer, he is correct that two fundamental outcomes of the last year have been 89 per cent of residents around Australia having been vaccinated, and we continue to encourage all of families to ensure that they do give consent for their elderly relatives to be vaccinated. It's absolutely fundamental. Equally, we want to encourage every one of the aged-care workers to take up the opportunity. Every aged-care worker will have that opportunity. We have done what other jurisdictions have not, but which they are now considering with regard to healthcare workers, and on the medical advice we did put in place a requirement that all aged-care workers, unless they have an exemption, do have vaccination as a workplace requirement. What that has done has seen a skyrocketing of rates. There has been a significant period of access, since March, for aged-care workers. What we have done though is supplement that with a combination of general practice, pharmacy, state clinics, Commonwealth vaccination clinics—39 hubs around Australia—and now in terms of the other channels that are available we have the inreach channels in particular. A thousand onsite clinics at residential aged-care facilities have been delivered, 670 onsite clinics organised by residential aged-care providers themselves. We also have 585 onsite clinics delivered by GPs or Commonwealth vaccination clinics. All of these are giving every aged-care worker the opportunity to be vaccinated. (Time expired) Domestic and Family Violence 28 14:52 Ms HAMMOND 80072 Curtin My question is to the Minister for the Environment, representing the Minister for Women. Will the minister please advise the House on measures the Morrison government is taking to address the issue of women's safety, and how the upcoming National Summit on Women's Safety will progress the development of the next National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children? 14:52 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer I thank the member for Curtin for her question. She is an educator, a lawyer and she was a vice-chancellor. She brings a wealth of experience, particularly with her deep understanding of women's issues, to the federal parliament. The Morrison government are absolutely focused on making Australia a place that is free from violence against women and their children, and we demonstrated our commitment to this in the 2021-22 budget, where we made the largest-ever commitment to women's safety—$1.1 billion. The upcoming women's safety summit, on Monday and Tuesday next week, has round tables later this week, on Thursday and Friday, and I look to participating in those. It's a crucial part in developing our next steps. The round tables will have full and frank discussions with stakeholders who work on the front line, with people who understand how we need to build the system for the victims, for their children and for the future. The summit will give us an opportunity to shine a light on the terrible violence that women and families from all walks of life experience. It will discuss key issues for women's safety, including financial security; policing and justice responses; sexual violence; and the often unique challenges facing, for example, migrant communities, Indigenous communities and rural and regional Australians. Now, breaking the cycle of violence and offending by perpetrators has to be a key focus. That's why programs like the coordinated enforcement and support to eliminate domestic violence program, the CEASE program, which was announced by Minister Ruston in the other place, are so important. Protecting women and children from violence is not just about providing emergency interventions and justice; it includes critical intervention, prevention and changing behaviour so that we can hold perpetrators to account, but prevent repeat offences. The CEASE program will ensure justice pathways and, in certain low-risk instances, rehabilitation and drug and alcohol treatments. Every instance of family and intimate partner violence is different and complex. As I sat in the Downing Centre Local Court on DV listing day a few months ago with the Women's Domestic Violence Court Advocacy Service, and listened to victim-survivors seek justice and the best outcomes for their families, the need for high-risk offender targeting and low-risk diversion programs that support victims became apparent. I look forward to this trial announced by Minister Ruston, and it's of course just one part of our very coordinated response to women's safety. This summit is so important as we develop the next national plan towards ending violence against women and their children. Along with other ministers in the other place, I look forward to updating the parliament on the outcomes of the summit and the next important steps the Morrison government intends to take. Women's Economic Security 29 14:55 Ms CLAYDON 248181 Newcastle My question is to the Prime Minister. Today is Equal Pay Day. Will the Prime Minister adopt Labor's plan to require companies with more than 250 staff to publicly report their gender pay gap and to prohibit pay secrecy clauses that prevent some employees from disclosing their remuneration? 14:56 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook I note the gender pay gap is now at 14.2 per cent. When we came to government it was 17.4 per cent— Mr Frydenberg FKL It rose higher, to 18.2. Mr MORRISON E3L It rose even higher than that, as the Treasurer reminds me—to 18.2 per cent, while Labor was in government. I'm sure everyone in this House is working to achieve outcomes that ensure we close that gap. Australian women, who make up the majority of those who have lost jobs during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, have also been those who have most fully participated in the comeback, in the job creation that we saw after the COVID-19 recession of last year. The female participation rate still exceeds pre-COVID-19 levels; it is 61.4 per cent as of July 2021. One million jobs have been created since May 2020, and 54.4 per cent of those jobs have gone to women. There are 78,000 more women employed, in the most recent figures, of July 2021, than in March 2020, before the impact of COVID-19. We have delivered record-high women's workforce participation and record-low gender pay gaps, and our economic plan—the economic plan that was set out in last year's budget, the economic recovery plan from COVID-19—continues to support getting women more opportunities to participate in the workforce. As the Women's Economic Security Statement underpinned—that budget statement included: $1.9 billion to support women's workforce participation and economic security; $1.7 billion to increase the childcare subsidy for families with two or more children aged five and under; $42.4 million over seven years, with $20.7 million over the next four years, to support nearly 600 women to pursue higher-level STEM qualifications; and $38.3 million over five years in the Women's Leadership and Development Program to boost women's employment opportunities and set Australian women up for future jobs. And we are removing the $450-a-month threshold for the superannuation guarantee, at a cost of $31.5 million. Our government continues to see more women realising their economic opportunities in this country, whether it's to secure the career they are seeking or to have the choices that they want to have in this country and haven't had in the past, and securing those opportunities for them and their future. But all of it is underpinned by something very important—that is, the economic plan that actually lifts the whole country. We know and we have seen the resilience of the Australian economy throughout this pandemic, and despite the blows of COVID— (Time expired) Resources Sector 29 14:59 Mr O'DOWD 139441 Flynn My question is to the Minister for Resources and Water. Will the minister update the House on how the Morrison-Joyce government's commitment to sticking to the national plan will help sectors like the resource sector safely reopen and on what opportunities exist for communities such as mine in Flynn? Is the minister aware of any alternative policy approaches? 14:59 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler I thank the member for Flynn. We know where the member stands when it comes to sticking to the national plan. You've only got to go to his Facebook page to see his big, smiling dial with a sign that says, 'I want to reopen Australia.' This is incredibly important for the resources sector. We have seen BHP this week announce that they will have vaccinations onsite at the Mount Arthur coalmine in the Hunter. They will roll that out through Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. BHP, the Big Australian, recognise how important it is to stick to the national plan. The sector has done a phenomenal job. Throughout the last 12 months, the last financial year, they have hit a record export of $310 billion in a situation without vaccinations. They've kept their people safe. Up until very recently there hadn't been a single outbreak at a resources site. That has meant that they've been able to continue to contribute to our economy. They've actually put on tens of thousands of jobs, not gone backwards. They know how important it is that we stick to the national plan. I was asked about alternatives. The alternatives are very straightforward. It is forecast that $344 billion worth of economic activity will occur this financial year. The alternative to that policy is to not stick to the national plan and not deliver that economic boost and increase. We put on tens of thousands of jobs last financial year. There will be tens of thousands of jobs this financial year to hit that target of $344 billion. The alternative policy is to not support the national plan, not deliver more jobs, not deliver more economic activity. We know those opposite are confident in an each-way bet. They need to be out there publicly supporting the national plan because it is important for our country. We know that there are other options. the other options include saying to resources sector employees: 'Thank you so much for what you've done in the last 12 months. Terribly sorry about the fact you've been out there, sometimes away for weeks, sometimes away for months.' But if we don't stick with the national plan, that will continue. While I have the opportunity, I want to thank those hardworking men and women in the resources sector, who have gone above and beyond. They have been away literally for weeks, some for months and some have had to move their families from state to state. We cannot continue to add to our economy through the resources sector if there are continual lockdowns, if we stop borders—if we continue the closures. We have a large fly in, fly out workforce. They are necessary and essential for the operation of the resource sector. Sticking to the national plan delivers for our country, delivers for our economy and delivers for the hardworking men and women. They deserve a break. Prime Minister 30 15:02 Mr BURKE DYW Watson My question is to the Prime Minister. In his media conference today, the Prime Minister was asked about changes to restrictions based on vaccination rates. The Prime Minister said, 'Ultimately, everything is a state matter.' Won't the Prime Minister take responsibility for anything? 15:03 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook That is just sad. Honestly, it is just sad, the way that the opposition come in here and seek to twist and turn comments. I was referring to public health orders and the public health social measures that are the province of the states and territories. These are not new powers of the states and territories. They have always had them. They haven't been referred to them. They haven't been granted to them. They are the responsibilities that states and territories have always had. The opposition needs to grow up. Mr Burke interjecting— The SPEAKER 10000 The Prime Minister has indicated that he's completed his answer. COVID-19: Defence Industry 30 15:03 Mr CONNELLY 282984 Stirling My question is to the Minister for Defence Industry. Will the minister please outline for the House how the Morrison government's national plan is critical to building the workforce that will be required to help deliver our $270 billion capability investment as we come back from the COVID-19 pandemic? 15:04 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack I thank the member for Stirling and I acknowledge and thank him for his service to our nation. Repeated lockdowns and border closures continue to place challenges on Australian businesses, including those in Australia's defence industry. The defence industry relies on the free movement of key equipment and personnel across states and territories, so any impact on that supply chain clearly has an impact when we're talking about the development of our defence capabilities. Over the last 18 months, my priority has been to keep the wheels of defence industry turning. A big focus of industry is to make sure they're building up their skills set and their critical workforce. Since late 2020, more than 60 small and medium-sized Australian defence industry businesses have shared almost $4 million in grants through the Skilling Australia's Defence Industry grant program. This is a grant program that supports businesses to upskill and retrain their employees so they have the skills to make sure our Defence Force gets what it needs. Our government recently launched the Defence Industry Pathway Program. This is a $10 million pilot investment to provide trainee placements for WA school leavers to build skills, experience and qualifications with shipbuilding companies in Henderson, WA. I want to acknowledge that this particular traineeship would not be possible without the cooperation of Western Australian shipbuilders. I want to thank them for that. Forty trainees have already commenced their journey, and there'll be another 80-odd trainees who will continue throughout the rest of this year and also next year. I did have the opportunity to meet a number of these trainees down in Henderson in July, and can I tell you how excited they were to be able to take their first steps to be part of a very exciting shipbuilding industry. The program is laying the foundations to build our Australian workforce to make sure we can deliver on our $270 billion investment in our defence capabilities. The key to building on this success is the national plan announced by our Prime Minister and endorsed by the national cabinet. This plan has given our defence industry a tremendous boost. At the heart of the national plan is accelerating and rolling out vaccination rates right across the country. I think we're all immensely proud in this House of the way Australians have been rolling up their sleeves and just doing their bit to get their jab. As of yesterday, more than 19 million COVID vaccinations have been given to Australians. I want to give a shout-out to and acknowledge regional Western Australians who are doing their bit to help us with the national plan. Many people—most of those living in the seat of Durack, but also those in the seat of O'Connor—have to travel hundreds and hundreds of kilometres to get their vaccinations. They are doing their bit, and I just want to tell them that our nation is incredibly grateful to them for doing their bit. COVID-19: Health Care 31 15:07 Ms BUTLER 248006 Griffith My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to reports the secretary of the Department of Health wrote to intensive care doctors on Friday asking them whether they think the health system can deal with an influx of COVID patients. Eighteen months into the pandemic, why has the Morrison-Joyce government waited until now to check whether the hospital system is coping? 15:07 Mr MORRISON E3L Cook The assertion put forward by the questioner is completely false. It is just completely false. If the Labor Party cared to pay any attention to what was going on, they would know that for months and months and months the secretary of the Department of Health has been providing regular updates to the premiers, the chief ministers and me, upgrading views about the status of the public hospital system and the public health system and their response capacity to the COVID-19 pandemic. That has been happening since the outbreak of the pandemic, and to suggest otherwise is just a deliberate attempt by the Labor Party to undermine public confidence in the COVID response. It is becoming a very regular theme from the Labor Party to undermine the response. They're for and against JobKeeper. They undermine the economic measures. They undermine the serious investment made by the Commonwealth—some $6 billion—to support public hospitals. The SPEAKER 10000 The Prime Minister will resume his seat. The Manager of Opposition Business on a point of order? Mr Burke DYW Yes, Mr Speaker. There have been many questions today that have asked about alternative policies, but this is not one of them. My point of order is on direct relevance. The SPEAKER 10000 I am listening to the Prime Minister. The question was specific. He has certainly addressed it, and I have, as I often do, allowed a bit of latitude for some context, and I think the Prime Minister has probably done that. Mr MORRISON E3L Since the beginning of this pandemic, we've been working with the states and territories to bolster the ICU capacity, the flexibility within our hospital system, the ability to move staff and resources around the country to respond to the needs that may present and, indeed, may well present in the future, because what we know about COVID is that it is very uncertain. There are new strains and we need to be prepared to respond, and that is exactly what's occurring. Again, the secretary of the Department of Health has been tasked to do even further work on that, because that is part of the national plan. The national plan seeks to put in place vaccinations at 70 and 80 per cent to move to the next steps, and that is supported by a number of other important measures. There's the testing, the tracing, the isolation and the quarantine. And, as we move into phase B and phase C, home quarantine will be very important, because home quarantine is what will allow Australians to travel again and to return—to get more Australians home—and the way TTIQ works, in phase B and phase C, is what is being worked on, together. In addition, there are the public health social measures that need to be kept in place at low levels to support the high levels of vaccination to ensure that Australians can live with this virus. There is also the essential support that is necessary to bolster our public health system. Under our government, we have continued to increase our investment in public hospitals—not just when we hit the pandemic but over our entire term of government. Indeed, in Western Australia, the rate of increase in our investment in public hospitals has been four times that which has occurred at a state level, and we will continue to do that under our hospitals agreement. But, in particular, during this pandemic, our fifty-fifty agreement with the states and territories has seen us already invest $6 billion to support the states and territories with their public health systems. I would encourage the Labor Party to stop being so negative. Support the national plan. (Time expired) COVID-19: Manufacturing Industry 32 15:11 Mr LEESER 109556 Berowra [by video link] My question is to the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology. Will the minister update the House on why sticking with the Morrison government's national plan is essential to supporting Australian manufacturers to grow jobs and secure our recovery? 15:11 Mr PORTER 208884 Pearce I thank the member for his question and his support for the manufacturing sector. There are 31,840 manufacturers across the member's home state of New South Wales. They're obviously doing it tough at the moment but showing enormous resilience. In fact, the resilience of the manufacturing sector as a whole throughout COVID is something that we as Australians can be very proud of. In the March quarter, manufacturing profits actually rose by 6.8 per cent, which is a remarkable result. In fact, they were 16 per cent higher over the year. But the manufacturers that I'm speaking to at the moment say they cannot cope with lockdowns forever, and they noted that they need continuity of access to two critical parts of their business. They need continuity of access to their critical and skilled workforce and to their markets. That's why we, the Morrison government, are supporting those manufacturers with a national plan and path out of lockdowns—because they need that access to their workforces and to their markets. We're also backing manufacturers to grow and create jobs on the other side of COVID, with the $1.5 billion Modern Manufacturing Strategy across six manufacturing priorities. Recently, $50 million of investment was made in one of those priorities, which is minerals and resources technology. That sector, as we've heard today from several ministers, generates enormous wealth in Australia—$114 billion in revenue—and it supports 200,000 jobs. And, off the back of that resources sector, we have an opportunity for enormous growth in secondary manufacturing and expansion. One great example is mining equipment. That industry alone, the equipment market for mining, is expected to generate worldwide revenue of US$165 billion by 2027. So that is an area that we think has potential for great growth in Australia, and I want to give an example to the House today. One of the recipients of the recent grants was Flip Screen Australia. They have designed screening buckets that can be attached to any skid-steer, excavator or loader, and, unlike what we would see on a normal front-end loader, they can actually screen contaminants out of the product. That's an innovation that started on the floor of a small hay shed in Mangoplah, and it will help grow Wagga Wagga into a regional manufacturing hub. Ten million dollars of investment will help this Australian company expand this world-leading product line and build a new heavy-steel fabrication facility so they can produce and export much larger versions of their product which are able to screen 3,000 tonnes of material per hour. What does this mean? It's a $35 million project, with 619 direct and indirect jobs over the first five years, and, with the partnership of the Riverina TAFE, it will train and upskill many workers in the regions. So what our manufacturers are saying is that they need a clear, consistent, secure and known path out of lockdowns, and that will help them, with grants like this, to grow on the other side of COVID and produce a boom in this sector for our economy. Mr Morrison E3L Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. DOCUMENTS 32 DOCUMENTS Presentation 32 15:15 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson 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. MOTIONS 33 MOTIONS Federal Integrity Commission 33 15:15 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi I move: That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Indi from moving the following motion immediately— That this House: (1) notes that: (a) on 8 September 2021 it will be 1,000 days since the Prime Minister made an election promise to establish a federal integrity commission; (b) the Prime Minister has failed to introduce a bill to Parliament to do so; and, (c) Parliament will rise in two days' time for a six-week break, during which the Prime Minister could call an election at any moment. (2) calls on the Government to: (a) abandon its Commonwealth Integrity Commission proposal, which retired judges and academic experts have described as ineffective and unamendable; (b) establish a strong, well-funded, wide-ranging, and independent integrity commission through the Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill that I introduced to this House almost a year ago; (c) admit it has deliberately stalled progress on a reform that over 80 per cent of Australians across the political spectrum have called for as a matter of urgency; (d) admit is has failed to meet a key election commitment to the Australian people; and, (e) acknowledge that their inaction has compounded falling trust in government at a time where trust in government is crucial to our safety and prosperity. Next week it will be 1,000 days since the Prime Minister promised the Australian people an integrity commission. Australians are still waiting. It's blindingly obvious the Prime Minister will not deliver one. Right now, Australians are putting their faith in government in ways we've never seen before. From lockdown orders to the vaccine rollout, Australians are living up to their side of the bargain, and, in exchange, when it comes to integrity this government is taking them for fools. The Prime Minister knows his Commonwealth Integrity Commission is a dud. He's been pretending to consult on it for over three years. Of the 333 submissions in the latest round, almost a year ago, only two had anything positive to say and none supported it as a whole. It's dead in the water. It would never pass the Senate. From former High Court Justice Mary Baldwin to Tony Fitzgerald, it's been called 'toothless' and 'unamendable'. The government knows that, the opposition knows that, every Australian knows it. Over eight in 10 Australians want a robust integrity commission. And, with respect to colleagues on both sides, a bill for an integrity commission would be ill-fated if it came from a major party. An important reform like this is best placed to come right through the middle, from the crossbench. That's why I introduced the Australian Federal Integrity Commission Bill over a decade ago. It's a consensus bill that has been regarded as the most robust model in the nation. It's learnt from the failures of state ICACs and it builds on over a decade of merry-go-round consultations and inquiries in this place. It's sensible, it's balanced and it's written in the public interest. It's sitting there right now, ready to be debated and voted on. Questions of integrity have plagued this parliament. Australians do not want to head into another election without a robust federal integrity commission. There is no excuse for this anymore, Prime Minister. Introduce a robust bill or step aside and let the parliament vote on mine. With that in mind, I seek leave to table this document which lists the names of thousands of Australians calling on the Prime Minister to do the right thing or step out of the way. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 Is leave granted? Leave not granted. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 Is the motion seconded? 15:19 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I second the motion. The member for Indi has come before this chamber promoting a national integrity commission. Let me say this on behalf of the Australian Labor Party: we support a national anticorruption commission. We support a national anticorruption commission with teeth, a national anticorruption commission with independence and a national anticorruption commission that can deal with some of the travesties in the use of public funds that we've seen by those opposite over the last eight years—in particular, over this term of parliament. When we have the abuse of taxpayers' funds that we've seen through the sports rorts program and through the abuse of the commuter car park program, where we have car parks for commuters where there are no train stations, we have— An opposition member: In the Treasurer's electorate! Mr ALBANESE R36 In the Treasurer's electorate, which received four separate grants. What we have from this government, when they decide where public funds are going to be used, is that they get out a colour-coded sheet based upon the marginality of electorates. Then, when the Senate has the temerity to ask for access to those documents, they say they're cabinet-in-confidence. This is a government that has established structures to avoid transparency and public accountability. They have a cabinet committee with a membership of one, the Prime Minister, who then co-opts people onto any meeting which he has so that it becomes so-called cabinet-in-confidence. Remember that this is a Prime Minister who put his former chief of staff, and now head of Prime Minister and Cabinet, in charge of inquiries, including into what his own office knew about a reported sexual assault just metres from his office. And then, of course, he says that they delayed that report for so long it can't be dealt with because the court case is already underway about that. All he had to do was ask his own staff what they knew—who knew what and when. What we have from this government, when it comes to the use of public funds, is scandal after scandal. That's whether it be regional programs, whether it be sports rorts programs or whether it be the allocation of funds from the Urban Congestion Fund. It's a program of over $4 billion which is being allocated on the basis of political need, not on the basis of merit, which is why we do need a national integrity commission. When the current Prime Minister knocked off Malcolm Turnbull—remember that; he wasn't ambitious for himself, he was ambitious for him! He wasn't ambitious to lead—well, that's the one thing he did get right, because we've seen no leadership from this Prime Minister. What we saw in terms of this government and their approach to these issues was that we do need a national integrity commission. In 2018—three years ago now—when he took office, the Prime Minister promised that we would have one. Three years later, he just hasn't got around to it. And it's no wonder, because of the stench that surrounds this government's commitments in the lead-up to the 2019 election. Quite frankly, they're on notice that the 21 separate slush funds that were allocated and set up in the budget this year will be the subject of integrity, having a good look at how those funds are allocated. Taxpayers' funds are not the same as Liberal and National party funds. They shouldn't be using money from taxpayers for the interests of the Liberal and National parties. They even do, basically, polling with the same companies that do the polling for the Liberal and National parties. What we've seen from the member for Indi—and perhaps I don't agree with her exact model—is what we do need: a body of substance. What we do need is for this Prime Minister to be kept to his commitments. That's why we need some transparency and accountability. Quite frankly, I sat in this chamber during the Howard government and, by and large, I disagreed with what ministers did, but there wasn't scandal after scandal in the way that this government operates. There weren't ministers being able just to keep going— (Time expired) 15:25 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah [by video link] Regular surveys show that over 80 per cent of Australians support the establishment of a federal corruption watchdog. With the limited time left in this term of parliament we ought to be concentrating our efforts on things that need to be done now. I'm calling on the Prime Minister to make good on his 2018 promise to establish a federal integrity commission. All states and territories have an integrity commission, yet there is no proper body to investigate serious allegations of abuse of position or power at a federal level. The closest thing we have is the Australian National Audit Office. The Auditor-General is going above and beyond to investigate matters of misuse of funds, but the list keeps growing. Most recently the auditor revealed the car park rorts. There are now questions over donations made by Empire Energy and grants awarded to the company to explore for gas in the Beetaloo basin. Australians need to have confidence that this government is actually working and that their decisions are made properly and on merit. Despite the many scandals that have been revealed, there is little that can be done to investigate and prosecute those accused of wrongdoing because we don't have an integrity commission. There are three things this government can do to clean up politics in this country, and that would be a great legacy for the Morrison government: to establish a federal integrity commission, to establish a code of conduct for all parliamentarians and to pass truth in political advertising legislation. 15:26 Mr BANDT M3C Melbourne [by video link] We need a federal anti-corruption commission and we need it now. The Prime Minister promised about three years ago—a thousand days ago—that there was going to be one and there still isn't. Why? What has this government got to hide? Rort after rort, scandal after scandal from this government and it looks as if the government is just running a protection racket. I was very pleased to introduce the first-ever anti-corruption bill into the House of Representatives. And I'm very pleased that other members, including the member who has moved this motion, the member for Indi, have brought forward their models as well. If the government wants legislation to pass for an anti-corruption commission, a bill has already passed the Senate. It's a bill that has widespread support across the political spectrum and independent experts backing it up because it works. That bill is now awaiting a vote in this House. The government could have an anti-corruption commission tomorrow but it is choosing not to. Instead, it's coming up with its own model that gives a free pass to politicians, that ensures that there won't be the kind of public hearings that the members of the public expect. As we look around the country we see that anti-corruption commissions around the country have resulted in Liberal and Labor ministers, across the political spectrum, in many instances being taken to court and in some instances going to jail. They know that it restores a bit of integrity and a bit of trust in the political process. If anyone thinks that corruption stops at state borders, I've got a bridge to sell them. People know that an anti-corruption commission means that there's a hand on the shoulder of every minister who's making a decision about where to allocate money. And it reminds governments that it is not their own money, it is the public's money. We need it and we need it now. I commend the member for Indi for bringing this, and I urge the government to just support the Greens bill that has already passed the Senate. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 The question is that the motion be disagreed to. Question agreed to. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 35 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE JobKeeper Payment 35 15:29 The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 I have received a letter from the member for Fenner proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The government's decision to give $13 billion of JobKeeper to firms with rising revenue. I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places. More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places— 15:29 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner Seventy-year-old Jan Raabe is a pensioner in Frankston who works as a part-time teacher. Because her employer got JobKeeper, Jan received too much in her age pension. She's now repaying it at a rate of $15 a fortnight because that's all she can afford out of her part pension. Still, she's repaying more than billionaires Brett Blundy, Marc Besen, James Packer, Nick Politis and Len Ainsworth combined. They're just some of the nearly a dozen billionaires who benefited from JobKeeper. Jan is one of more than 11,000 Centrelink recipients who've gotten letters from the government asking them to repay their social security benefits because of JobKeeper receipt. This is a government that's writing letters to people in lockdown asking them to repay historic childcare subsidies. Jan is beside herself with happiness, for today Gerry Harvey has announced that he's going to pay back $6 million of JobKeeper. But let's be very clear about why Gerry Harvey is repaying. He's not doing it out of the pure goodness of his heart, wanting to give something back—we know Gerry Harvey's views on charity. He's doing it because of public pressure from people like Jan. Australians work hard, and they need a government that's going to work as hard as they do. They need a government that will understand that every dollar raised from taxpayers is a dollar raised from the sweat of regular Australians—and that the role of governments is something sacred. Governments, in managing the public finances, operate in a position of trust from the broader community. A good government sits down in the Expenditure Review Committee and sweats out a decision on how to spend $13 million of taxpayer money. But here we're not talking about $13 million; we're talking about $13 billion, a thousand times more. This was like a welfare scheme for lottery winners. This is a government which gave $13 billion not to firms whose earnings were falling a little bit but to firms whose revenues were rising. Former COSBOA head Peter Strong said it was 'pretty close to theft'. Some of those firms even paid executive bonuses, a practice criticised by the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Banking Association and the Australian tax office, but not criticised at all by the Morrison government. We have AP Eagers, which got $130 million in JobKeeper and made over $200 million in profit last year and, in the first half of this year alone, another $200 million. There's jewellery seller Lovisa, part owned by Monaco based billionaire Brett Blundy, which got $23 million in JobKeeper, despite sparkling profits. There's Monash IVF, which pocketed $10 million in JobKeeper and admits that about half of that went straight to the profit bottom line. They've just given a big bonus to the CEO, almost doubling his annual remuneration to $1 million. Luxury home seller McGrath just saw a 38 per cent increase in revenue and got $4 million in JobKeeper that it's refusing to pay back. The board of Cochlear have boosted executive remuneration by 64 per cent at a time when wages for ordinary Australians are going backwards in real terms, and yet they're refusing to repay the $23 million of JobKeeper that they banked in 2020. Lifestyle Communities just doubled its profits to $91 million and is refusing to repay the $2 million in JobKeeper that it very clearly didn't need. There's an investment bank, Moelis, that got $3 million in JobKeeper and paid $5 million in executive bonuses. It may just be me, but I don't remember the Treasurer, at the time when the JobKeeper bill was going through parliament, standing at that dispatch box saying this would be great for investment bankers because they'd be able to increase their executive bonuses. There's Tabcorp, which made a $269 million profit, paid a $1.5 million bonus to the CEO and still won't repay its $12 million in JobKeeper. ARB, which makes accessories for cars, just doubled its profits but won't repay the $10 million in JobKeeper it clearly didn't need. Best&Less got $42 million in JobKeeper, despite its profits rising and paying executive bonuses. The Australian Golf Club got $1.5 million in JobKeeper from the Liberals. They must be thinking to themselves, 'We scored a hole in one with the Morrison government!' Then there's Accent Group, which got JobKeeper despite a 60 per cent rise in profits and paid a $1.3 million bonus to their CEO. When they were asked to repay earlier this year, they said no; they'd hold onto the JobKeeper, because they might need it for future lockdowns. The lockdowns came, and they stood down their Sydney staff. Premier Investments did much the same. They got more than $100 million in JobKeeper and barely paid any of it back. They said that they would not repay all the JobKeeper, because they were holding onto it for paying staff in future lockdowns. And yet they stood their staff down. Then there are the private schools. Brisbane Grammar School got $3 million in JobKeeper, gave a pay rise to the headmaster and increased its fee revenue. The King's School got $7 million in JobKeeper, despite the fact it is sitting on massive assets. We've had Wesley College also receive substantial JobKeeper from the government. During the pandemic, the government set up a $25 million fund for public schools. Almost all of that has gone unspent. Meanwhile, just three independent schools—Brisbane Grammar School, the King's School and Wesley College—between them took home $25 million in JobKeeper. Australia's biggest pastoral landholder, AACo, increased its profit fourfold last year, yet got $7 million in JobKeeper. Peter Warren, the car dealer, saw its earnings go up 20 per cent in June 2020, yet still put $14 million in JobKeeper into the boot and drove away. There's the Australian Club in Sydney. They're an elite club that doesn't allow women members. In fact, they just recently voted two to one against allowing women members. Hi, guys, it's 2021! They doubled their surplus last year, yet got $2 million in JobKeeper from the Morrison government. There's the donga maker, Fleetwood, which saw its profits grow 35 per cent last year, yet got $3 million in JobKeeper. Flower seller Lynch Group saw a 13-fold increase in its profits, got $3 million in JobKeeper. Time doesn't permit me to go through the many other examples of profitable firms that got JobKeeper. The fact is that the government is fighting for secrecy at a time when Gerry Harvey has given us the best reason why we need transparency. This is like one of those game shows with a money booth where you grab as many dollars as you can in 30 seconds. That's what corporate Australia saw under the Morrison government. The Liberals will come in here and say two things. First, they'll say, 'You voted for it.' The fact is that in mid-2020 they knew that 15 per cent of the money was going to firms with rising revenue, and they did nothing. Second, they'll say it created 700,000 jobs. But how did you create jobs by giving money to firms with rising revenues? Bob Breunig at the Australian National University estimates each full-time, full-year job costs taxpayers $140,000 to $204,000. That's well above the average wage. Joe Aston and Myriam Robin have belled the cat on this, referring to the 'epic leakage' from the JobKeeper program and describing the Treasurer as 'transactional, tactical, erratic, profligate and ultimately empty' and 'lighter than helium'. This is the Financial Review, the nation's financial paper of record, and this is what they are saying about the Treasurer on their back page. Small business people tell me they are shocked by the way in which the Morrison government managed JobKeeper. We can imagine the billionaire shareholders and millionaire CEOs who benefited from JobKeeper saying, 'You only get one Morrison government in your lifetime, and we just got ours.' At the next election, voters will hold the government to account on their two big failures: their failure on vaccines, the race which stopped a nation; and their failure on the $13 billion of JobKeeper, the waste that stopped a nation. When it comes to taking responsibility, 'Helium Man' and his boss have floated away. Helium Man can't manage money. They can't manage the nation's vaccine rollout. They do not deserve the sacred public trust that comes with public office. 15:39 Dr GILLESPIE 72184 Lyne Here we go again. They are just so negative. JobKeeper was a vital lifeline for millions of Australians, and all those opposite are doing now is trying to tear down what was the economic saviour of our nation's economy during the first COVID pandemic wave. Through the JobKeeper scheme, 3.8 million Australians were kept in employment. One million businesses are still alive and employing people because of the scheme. Ninety per cent of these businesses were microbusinesses with a turnover of less than $2 million, and eight per cent of them were small and medium enterprises, yet those opposite pick the very end of the bell curve to make out that the whole program was hopeless. They are such hypocrites. They were in favour of it. The member for Rankin tries to claim credit for it, but now he's here trying to tear it down—for goodness sake! Hypocrisy, thy name is 'over there'. There were 1.3 million people who returned to work within two months. That's how good the program was. Unemployment after the program dropped to 4.6 per cent, the lowest in over a decade. I think it's been a very good program. Mr Pitt interjecting— Dr GILLESPIE 72184 The member for Hinkler realises that. He's been in business. He knows what businesses have gone through. It was an economic lifeline for the whole nation—and here Labor are, currying favour. What they're not telling you people out there is that up in the Senate they're trying to get the private tax details of 10,000 people disclosed. That is counter to the whole basis of our taxation system. People self-report their tax measures under the tax administration act. As a former barrister, Deputy Speaker Wallace, you understand that privacy provisions in that act are essential for the working of our whole tax system. We have got a great tax system. Asking for documents is just outrageous, and they're trying to make it retrospective. All the COVID economic support packages had in the explanatory memorandum that it was all confidential. In a double whammy, they're going to just retrospectively try and get it away. It's none of the headline-grabbing stuff that they're after; they just want to get into people's tax details. Like I said, 90 per cent were microbusinesses, eight per cent of them were small and medium enterprises—mum-and-dad family businesses: the local publican, the local— An opposition member interjecting— Dr GILLESPIE 72184 My goodness. As well as JobKeeper, we had other programs. That's why we have had these outstanding economic responses. It was projected that our GDP was going to go down by 20 per cent. It was nowhere near that. It was so much better than OECD countries and other countries around the world, and we have got more people in employment. I just checked; we have got 166,000 more people in employment after the pandemic. These next figures will probably be different—I acknowledge that—because the second wave has put a dent in that amazing recovery, but that's why we have put the COVID disaster payment on the line and the business support payments that we're rolling out through the state governments. Through HomeBuilder we had a housing construction boom until this latest shut down. We've had the JobMaker hiring credit getting people off JobSeeker and back into a job. We have been boosting apprenticeships by $7,000 per quarter so that people can put on new apprentices. We're using them because of the housing construction boom. Having worked in that industry yourself, Deputy Speaker, you'll appreciate that. It takes a while to get the value out of apprentices. Once they've had a couple of years, they are away and they're launched into a job for the rest of their lives. We have had the biggest rise in apprenticeships in this country, off the back of these pandemic measures. On job training, we've got more TAFE and short courses happening around the country. We've had other things to benefit big companies, small companies and mum-and-dad businesses. We have continued the temporary full expensing provision so that we have eligible depreciable assets turning up in businesses to make them more efficient. We've had the loss carry-back provisions that have also benefitted businesses, and the list goes on. The outcome is that we have weathered this economic storm very well. By any rational analysis of any other country in the world, we have done really well. We are not saying it's perfect, but when you consider the destruction of economies in Europe, in Britain, in the US, in South America and in Asia, the same thing has happened. When you have a pandemic, all these things happen, and the speed at which we rolled out this program was exceptional. As I said, the member for Rankin is trying to claim credit for it and now he's trying to tear it down. I just don't follow these people. I don't think anyone on this side is going to support retrospectively changing the law and claiming access to 10,000 taxpayers' private tax details. No-one will be supporting this in the suburbs, in the cities, out in the country. These people have no idea. Mum-and-dad businesses, big employers and small employers report their tax details honestly 99 per cent of the time. All these provisions have been looked at by the Australian National Audit Office, and they haven't found any malfeasance. Those opposite just don't like the idea that big businesses or small businesses are making a profit. Profit is not a dirty word, and, as we have seen, this is a rolling plan to get our economy back on track. The stimulus from the leftover profit will be needed as we come out of this pandemic. We want to get our economy back, we want to get our freedoms back—our freedom of association, our freedom to run businesses—and we have a plan and we're rolling it out. The member for Hinkler is going to have a boom in his electorate, and there will be a boom in Sydney. We have a big economy waiting to go, and the only team in this building that has a plan to get that happening is on this side of the House. I watched Insiders too. The other side has no plan. They just nitpick about negative things. Really, it is a sad state because they like complaining, but they have no plan, as the member for New England pointed out. When I watched Insiders on Sunday, I thought there's going to be a gotcha moment and we'd see that they'd decided to do X, Y or Z. No, that was absent. JobKeeper was a great program, so was the support for pensioners. All those tax incentives to keep cash flow going were great plans and they delivered a great outcome for the nation. By all accounts there is no way we will be breaking that privacy position. We won't be breaking the laws that have run the tax system. This is just an opportunistic attempt by opposition and crossbench members in the Senate to curry favour because they're trying to politicise the very nature of our tax system, masqueraded as transparency. No, it's an attempt to use private tax information to cherrypick successful businesses and mum-and-dad businesses that have weathered the storm. Businesses across the nation deserve the right to privacy regarding their tax details. None of us on this side will ever break that principle. 15:48 Mr BURKE DYW Watson Can I say, that was an extraordinary contribution from the minister. 'We will not break the laws.' The problem is you didn't make the laws. The problem here is, if there were ever an example that this government is no good with money, that this government can't manage money, it is that the person who has won the competition is the Treasurer. And it's been a tight competition. We first had the now Deputy Prime Minister have a go with overpriced water, but that only made it to $80 million. We had the minister for communications on Leppington Triangle, but he managed to waste only $33 million there. On sports rorts, the minister gone, now returned, managed to waste $100 million. On car park rorts they thought they'd go harder with $660 million. But then the Treasurer arrived and said, 'That's not a rort; this is a rort!'—$13 billion in JobKeeper overpayments, and the only way they can defend it is to talk about the JobKeeper payments that weren't overpayments. I want to hear one moment when they defend this on the basis of what the objection is, because we haven't opposed wage subsidies; we called for wage subsidies. But we have opposed a rort. We have opposed a situation where a company puts in the paperwork and says, 'Yes, I reckon I'm going to have a 30 per cent cut in turnover,' then their profits go up and they get to keep the money anyway. We get told, 'You voted for this legislation,'—not so fast. Let's remember what happened last year: this parliament had shell legislation brought before it where every single regulation was to be contained in rules that would be set down later by the Treasurer. Not one rule—not one eligibility rule, not one compliance rule—was part of the legislation that went through the parliament. What we never realised was that there weren't going to be any compliance rules further down the track either. That's what the Treasurer has allowed to happen. It's not like they won't go after overpayments elsewhere. At the moment, families in lockdown zones are receiving notes from the government saying, 'You didn't estimate your income right, so you've got to start paying back your childcare subsidies.' They didn't make the right estimate, so they have to make the repayment. That's the standard for every Australian family. That's the standard for families in areas like my own currently going through the worst of the pandemic and the worst of the lockdown. But it's a completely different standard if you happen to be a company that had increased profits during the pandemic and increased turnover during the pandemic. My favourite line from the minister was when he said, 'Those opposite just want to nitpick about negative things.' It was a piece of pure oratory. Do you realise the size of this nit? Do you realise the size of what we are talking about—$13 billion! It's the size of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. We get told, 'That had to be spent to keep people in work,'—no, no, no. The $13 billion went to the companies with increased revenue. Those people were already going to keep their jobs. We get told, 'This kept the businesses going,'—no, no. If the business was increasing its profit, it was going to survive the pandemic anyway. What the government did was, after the parliament, in good faith, in the middle of the pandemic, say, 'You set the rules; we will give you that power.' They wrote down rules that said, 'Free money for our mates, and no compliance rules at all.' What did you think would happen? What did you think would happen with a system with no compliance? What sort of government is willing to chase down $1.7 billion of robodebt but say, 'It's too hard to ever ask anything of companies.' This exact question was put by Katharine Murphy to the Treasurer: 'Why not make them repay JobKeeper given you claw back debt from welfare recipients?' The Treasurer said, 'It's a false analogy, because one is in accordance with the law; the other is not.' Robodebt was illegal. This should've been against the law, and it was the Treasurer who made sure the loophole was there. 15:54 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler I love following the Member for Watson. He's got a bit of showmanship about him. In some of the workplaces I've come from he'd probably get the nickname 'show bag', but you can't have everything! I find it incredible—absolutely incredible—that those opposite are ultimately complaining about the success of the Australian economy. They're complaining about the fact that the Australian economy powered through COVID, provided returns for shareholders and helped to keep some 700,000 Australians employed through JobKeeper. What a terrible outcome—seriously! Who do you think those results go to when it comes to profits for shareholders? We heard them talking about the billionaire shareholders, but there are also those Australians out there who are mum-and-dad shareholders, pensioners or self-funded retirees, who might hold union superannuation funds. They are the ones receiving these returns. In fact, Industry SuperFunds invest in a lot of these big companies. Seriously, for those opposite to complain about the success of the Australian economy is just absolutely incredible. We have seen them be each way; we have seen them support and not support, we have seen them half-support; and now we see them being selectively supportive—for some but not others. In the midst of the COVID pandemic, there were difficult decisions to be made, and this government made them. There were incredibly tight time frames for things to be delivered, and we delivered them; that is the reality. I will acknowledge that at the time there was support from the opposition, at an incredibly difficult time for our country. The member for Fenner talked about epic leakage. The only epic leakage they need to worry about is the leakage in their primary vote across to the Greens; that's where the epic leakage is! We have a national plan to get the economy back up, to get lockdowns removed, and to ensure we have vaccinations done and that we continue to deliver for the Australian people. Ninety per cent of JobKeeper recipients were microbusinesses, with turnover under $2 million. I have never been described as a microbusiness before; I was quite proud to get close to $2 million in turnover in a former life! Clearly, that is an incredible amount of individuals who received support from the Commonwealth in their time of need, and that has meant that some 700,000 jobs were saved and that they stayed connected to their employers. This is the reason for this investment. Treasury's three-month review found that the program was well targeted, would you believe! The payment went to businesses that experienced an average decline in turnover of 37 per cent in April against the same month a year before, compared with a four per cent decline for other businesses. It went to businesses at which the job separation rate had doubled following the introduction of operating restrictions just before JobKeeper was introduced. To sum that up in a very brief way: they needed it. They needed the support to ensure that they remained in business post pandemic. Now we have the national plan, which we are lining up to ensure that that success continues. The ATO has also said, when it comes to claims from—it's of that little importance that I've actually forgotten the seat the shadow Treasurer comes from! The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 Rankin. Mr PITT 148150 Rankin—thank you. On the claims the member for Rankin has made about humiliating revelations about sending JobKeeper money to dead people, the ATO responded a day later to say: The ATO is not aware of any ultimately successful claim for deceased or other fictitious employees. The ATO is pretty hard to get on with usually, I've got to say. But, quite simply, they're right. This was an important program which was necessary for the success of the country as we drove through a very difficult period. We know there was a worldwide pandemic. We know it impacted economies around the world. We know that Australia has come through as the shining light as to how to manage this outbreak, keep our people employed and keep our people safe. If we hadn't done this, all of the things we're doing—including things in my portfolio like the extension of the Exploring for the Future program, with $125 million; and $100 million for the Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive—would have been pointless because these employees and these jobs would not have been there. You can't deliver these programs without support from business. You can't deliver the outcomes they are delivering unless there are employees and businesses that are profitable businesses. It was an important part of what we did during the outbreak, and I am absolutely supportive of the decisions we made around JobKeeper. It helped to keep our country strong, and in my own portfolio it meant that the resources sector delivered record exports of some $310 billion and more than 38,000 extra direct jobs in this country. 15:59 Ms MURPHY 133646 Dunkley [by video link] The wage subsidy, given the catchy name of 'JobKeeper' by our marketing Prime Minister, was of course a very important support measure for many businesses and workers last year; there has never been any doubt about that. But it was also massively expensive, and it's likely to be around $90 billion, making it the largest single one-off scheme the Australian government has ever run. You would think it would be commonly accepted that the public are entitled to expect that that $90 billion of public money is spent appropriately. Surely the public are entitled to expect that the government would have the same high standards of accountability for all recipients of public money, be they citizens, workers or large corporate businesses. Or so you'd think—wouldn't you? Let's engage in an exercise of compare and contrast to see what the reality really is. Compare: according to an analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office, from April to June last year, $12.5 billion in JobKeeper payments was paid to entities which didn't meet the shortfalls they themselves forecast to qualify for the scheme. Over the first six months of the scheme, $13 billion was paid to businesses which had increased revenue—not the ones that the ministers on the other side of the chamber have been talking about who needed the money to keep their workers employed, but businesses who increased their revenue. Contrast: the Prime Minister has described calls for these big-profiting businesses and corporations to pay back their windfall taxpayer-funded profits as 'the politics of envy'. Seriously, 'the politics of envy'! I know he meant that as an insult; he is good at insults. But there is some truth in his statement—the truth that the Prime Minister and the Treasurer seem determined to ignore. The truth is that there are more than 11,000 people across Australia who are full of envy that the Morrison government is content to stand by while corporations pocket massive profits of $13 billion. These 11,000 ordinary people have been issued a debt letter by the Morrison government, which is clawing back a grand total of $32 million of JobKeeper that these citizens were apparently overpaid. Denise, from my community of Frankston, sent me this email: 'Dear Peta, I'm on a payment plan with Centrelink as I owe them $1,000 due to being overpaid from JobKeeper. I'm on a disability support pension and was working in a disability day service. It's not fair at all that businesses don't have to pay back what they owe.' Denise is happy to pay back money she was overpaid, but she thinks it's only fair that everyone who was overpaid should also have to, including big businesses. Compare and contrast: the government has written to 11,000 people, telling them to pay back money, but it is yet to write a single letter to its mates in big business about the overpayments they received. I recently asked in this parliament why companies weren't being forced to repay a single cent, while age pensioners like Jan from my electorate, who lives in Frankston and received JobKeeper, is being made to pay it back. The Treasurer said: 'Oh well, people knew their obligations. Welfare recipients in particular had an obligation to report JobKeeper as ordinary income.' The people that the Treasurer so casually dismisses as 'welfare recipients' are age pensioners, disability pensioners, single parent pensioners and people whose jobs disappeared with COVID. They are decent, hardworking Australians. They are people like Jess, in my electorate, who did fulfil her obligation to report JobKeeper as ordinary income but is now paying back $2,300 to the government. Let me tell you about Jess in her own words: 'I'm a single mother in Frankston with a background in acting. Acting work has been scarce, so I've been working part time, casually, as a drama teacher. The last 18 months have been hard, like it has been for most people. We're in lockdown again. My company's policy that I work for is to cancel online classes and refund payments if lockdown goes for three weeks or more. I don't get JobKeeper, because it doesn't exist. I've got three children at home. We're barely scraping by. Bills are going unpaid and stress is going through the roof. To make matters worse, I've received notice of three debts from JobKeeper overpayments last year, even though I declared my JobKeeper income every fortnight and was told I was allowed to claim a part-payment of JobSeeker.' Jess did everything right and this government is making her pay it back. Why don't businesses have to pay their $13 billion of profits back? (Time expired) 16:04 Mr TIM WILSON IMW Goldstein I'm not sure everybody in the chamber here today will recall the day JobKeeper was passed through this parliament. I actually do. I was one of the few who was here, in a not dissimilar context to the one we are presented with now. Many of us came up from different parts of the country or across from different parts of the country. If I were to describe the mood, it was tense, not just in this chamber but of course across the nation, because we were staring into the abyss—the unknown. We saw people being locked up in their homes in places like China. We saw people being in lockdown, in a way that we had not experienced at that point, in places like Milan. And what hovered across the nation was a sense of fear about the unknown and where we were to go next. I remember the emergency support packages that were introduced into this chamber. Frankly, many of them raised deep philosophical questions for me, and I make no apology for that. Some people have made a virtue of deferring ideology at the point of crisis and, certainly, there was a need to reassure the Australian people at that challenging and difficult time. I remember the debate in this chamber and the mode that appeared at that time. I remember that the measures came in and the Labor Party of course were contorted about them. I had my own ideological conversations about what was necessary, but I want to make absolutely clear that I supported the legislation as the appropriate and right thing to do because of the moment we were in. But I remember the contortions that the Labor Party had at the time over that legislation and whether they could support it. I'm going to bring people into a history lesson: it had nothing to do with JobKeeper. I remember it very clearly, in fact, because they argue that they put the idea of a wage subsidy up before the government did. Their contortion was over another section of the legislation—one which I will make crystal clear I agreed with. It was the introduction of the early release of superannuation. Actively in crisis, they couldn't decide whether they were prepared to allow Australians and their families, in a moment of crisis, to access their own money. I just heard it there from one of the members opposite. They said that this was basically going to be the end of the superannuation system and retirement savings—because we dared, in a moment of crisis, to allow people to access their own superannuation to do things like pay off their mortgage, put food on the table and support their children and loved ones. They thought it was morally wrong. We all know deep down— An opposition member interjecting— Mr TIM WILSON IMW Go back and check the speech! I remember when those speeches were given at the time. Such was their obsession with stopping Australians being able to access their own money that some of us went back and read their speeches, and tabulated how many times speeches actively attacked the early release of superannuation. And guess how many members on the Labor Party benches opposed the early access of superannuation in that legislation? I'll give you a guess, Deputy Speaker Wallace: in a choice between zero and 100 per cent I can tell you that it doesn't sit anywhere near the zero per cent. It doesn't sit anywhere near the 50 per cent. It doesn't even get towards the part where most people would say it was a 'consensus position' of over three-quarters. It was 100 per cent, because when it came to the legislation introduced in this place, the choice they made and what they spoke out against—what they wanted to see corrected in that legislation—wasn't the measures related to JobKeeper. It was, 'How do we suffocate Australians from their own finances and their own money?' What they wanted to do was to protect the interests of their mates in the superannuation sector. And now we know why. Under the 'your future' legislation that was introduced and passed through this parliament, which they also opposed, a pathway was provided to make sure that Australians' money wasn't wasted on things like giant donations to the Australian Council of Trade Unions. They know it, I know it and that's their objective. (Time expired) 16:09 Mr BRIAN MITCHELL 129164 Lyons [by video link] JobKeeper is a good policy that was implemented badly. The positive impact of a national wage subsidy was never in doubt on this side of the House. It's why we proposed it and why, in the national interest, we continued to urge the government to implement it, despite the Prime Minister dismissing it as a very dangerous idea. But we never backed JobKeeper being abused. It became clear pretty early on that businesses were pocketing public money that they did not need. Gaining access to the public purse was pretty easy. Businesses just had to predict a downturn in revenue as a result of the pandemic. Fair enough—the money had to get out the door pretty quickly and nobody wanted it bogged down in red tape. But the government never thought to include a clause to pay back the money if the predictions of a downturn never eventuated. The result is that $13 billion of public money has been paid to businesses whose profits went up. Their profits increased over the year, and there's no mechanism that compels those businesses to repay that money. Businesses who never predicted a downturn got nothing. So there are businesses out there that did the right thing—they never put in a prediction that their revenue would go down—but there is no JobKeeper money for them. In a competitive environment, they are at a disadvantage. Make no mistake, this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, and most expensive policy blunders in this nation's history, and Treasurer Frydenberg has his fingers all over it. Labor supported and continues to support JobKeeper. A cursory glance of the record shows we have always said that it was cut far too early, and the tragic events across New South Wales and Victoria demonstrate that we were right. JobKeeper should never have been cut when it was. It ended too early. The Treasurer had the power to close the loophole. He always had that power. He could have simply inserted a requirement that money be repaid if predictions of poor revenue never eventuated. He chose not to act. He made a deliberate choice to transfer $13 billion from the public purse to corporate Australia. The Treasurer has fought every attempt to shed light on this financial fiasco, and I would like to pay tribute to my colleague the member for Fenner, who has led the charge on this issue—relentlessly exposing at every opportunity the magnitude of the Treasurer's failure. Thirteen billion dollars: that's 413 million Pfizer vaccines. That could build 688 primary schools or 29,000 homes during a housing crisis, or it could fund 32½ thousand quarantine facility places. That is the cost of this failure, because every dollar spent on one thing is a dollar that can't be spent on something else. When you give $13 billion to profitable businesses, that's $13 billion that's not available for other things and that then becomes a question of priorities. What is only too clear is that this government have the wrong priorities. The Liberals have absolutely junked the traditional Australian values of fairness and good governance in order to pursue a radical, American-style agenda, an agenda that gives public money—rare, precious, sacred public money—to millionaires and billionaires whilst squeezing the poor for every cent. Pensioners on Centrelink have to repay every cent of overpayment whilst CEOs can keep the millions they never needed. And the Treasurer's excuse? Overclaiming Centrelink is illegal, but businesses overclaiming JobKeeper isn't illegal. But it's only legal because the Treasurer failed to fix the law. Businesses should pay it back—they must pay it back—but they don't have to, because the Treasurer failed to do his job. It shouldn't matter whether it's Centrelink or JobKeeper, the principles should be the same for every Australian. Whether you're a pensioner, the president of a board or the president of a company, the same rules should apply. We have means-tested income support in this country. Companies that didn't need the money should pay it back. The Treasurer has failed his job by failing to make sure they do pay it back. I call upon the leaders of businesses in Australia to do the right thing by the country and pay the money back. 16:14 Mr PASIN 240756 Barker To those listening out there today: what you're hearing is further evidence of an each-way opposition. We've got an each-way Leader of the Opposition, but this is evidence of an each-way opposition. In 2020 they supported JobKeeper. They march in here in 2021 and they don't support JobKeeper. If the opposition were at the racetrack, they would approach the bookie, look at the board and say, 'I'll have 10 bucks on JobKeeper and I'll have 10 bucks on no JobKeeper.' The bookie would take their money, quite frankly, and it is a quintessentially ridiculous thing to do, but that's what we have. The other thing that people out there listening to this broadcast can take from this is that, if you were one of the one million small and medium enterprises—businesses—in Australia who took the benefit of JobKeeper and it assisted you with surviving the economic crisis caused by the pandemic, they're not for you. If you are one of the 3.8 million employees who got the benefit of JobKeeper—who, quite frankly, kept their job, kept their connection with their employer because of JobKeeper—they're not for you. What you always have to do with this opposition is look at what they do. Don't listen to what they say. I was thinking about this, and my mind turned to that Aussie folk rock band Weddings Parties Anything. I was thinking it reminded me of that tune 'Monday's Experts'. Nobody likes a Monday expert. But let me give you some lyrics from that tune. It was off their King Tide album of 1993: Always know what's best Always tell you what you should've done … Always know what's cooking How the game was lost and how it could've been won Well I see them up the shops; I see them down the street … And when I go up the Pub it's nearly everyone I meet They're saying I should've done this or I should've done that But by the time they're finished talking well my beer's are getting flat Ladies and gentlemen, the beer is flat. Those opposite don't get it. Everyone is an expert in this town on Mondays. Everyone on that side of the chamber is an expert on Mondays. The lyrics go on: Talking in the tea room In the worshop and the office talking all around the place … Hey they've always got the good oil Pity you can't put a bet on at the finish of the race That's the point here. We were facing, as a nation, unprecedented economic conditions. Treasury was estimating unemployment to reach 15 per cent and, if we had not moved quickly, those opposite, operating their well-known modus operandi of taking a bet each way, would have rushed into this place and said, 'The government isn't acting fast enough.' In fact, they were making that call at the time. The then Deputy Prime Minister knows this well; I expect he was sitting down rationally with the Prime Minister and the leadership team and working on this project. But those opposite were like: 'Don't worry about it. We'll have one position today and then, almost as if we can own the 'Monday's Experts' example, we'll have another position later on.' But that's not leadership. You don't get to make decisions 12 months later. You have to make decisions at the time. And so it caused me to think further: 'What's this about? Why is the member for Fenner so focused on this?' We know what that answer is. The answer is this is an opportunity to unlock those private details of those 10,000 or so businesses who, let's be clear, complied with the law and accessed this payment, keeping employees connected to their business. So my message to everyone listening, aside from the fact that you have effectively got an opposition in Canberra that does one thing today and then makes another decision tomorrow, is that, if they are prepared to seek to access your private, confidential information from a position of opposition today, what would they do if they were ever given the great privilege of governing this country? 16:19 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie I think the member for Barker, rather than letting that beer go cold, has been knocking back a few, because he's rewriting a history that this place saw, and that history was Labor pushing with the unions for a JobKeeper-style program, a wage subsidy that would keep the connection between the workers and their employers. We were not behind but way ahead of the government in its thinking. What we got when the government finally went, 'Oh my goodness, there are queues at Centrelink; we'd better do something'—because what they'd done, as usual, was not enough—was that they rushed legislation into this place. I think it says something about us that we trusted this government. We should have known better. I know. I apologise. I am very happy to say: 'We made a mistake in thinking that those opposite would do the right thing. We made a mistake in trusting that they would do what they said that they would do. We acted in good faith.' I have had people say to me: 'How could you have supported something that allowed companies that did not need JobKeeper to take $13 billion of taxpayer funds and never have to repay it? How could you have let that happen?' But of course we trusted them to do the right thing. What a mistake that has been for the taxpayers—that any trust was placed in this government to do anything that might be a good, sensible spend of taxpayer funds. All the regulations and the rules were to be made once the legislation went through. We didn't want to delay legislation that would get money in the pockets of small businesses and employers who were looking at putting workers off. We didn't want to delay that a moment. Those opposite came up with a piece of legislation with no compliance rules and said, 'It's okay; we're going to look after it.' Well, we've certainly learnt our lesson and we will not be trusting this government. No-one should trust this government with sensible spending of taxpayer dollars. There have been so many rorts. I still am staggered. I ran a business for 25 years and I grew up in my dad's shop, so I've been around business all my life—my dad was an accountant originally. Fancy someone not taking a moment in the rush to get this money out the door—and getting the money out the door was a good thing to do—and saying: 'Hang on; what if they turn out not to need it? What happens then?' That would have taken just a moment's thought, and we wouldn't be talking about $13 billion. That is the same amount we spend on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. That is $13 billion that could right now be supporting the businesses in my community who not only missed out last time but are missing out this time. What is also staggering about a government that talks a lot about how it likes small business is that it does very little to demonstrate that it cares one iota about small business. What they've done in this latest lockdown sums it up for me, because they've said: 'What happens to small business is not our responsibility. It's the states'. It's hands off from us. Small businesses are on their own.' That's what they've done. That's why small businesses in New South Wales have been stuck with a mishmash of assistance, where there are multiple gaps for them to fall through. It builds on the failures of the JobKeeper scheme last year, because sometimes it's the same people who are missing out. Those people look at the $13 billion and they see how obscene it is that companies that did not need this money are not required to give it back and, not only that, they're not even properly asked by the government to give it back. There is not even a statement of, 'Hey, mate, do the right thing.' Gerry Harvey has today been shamed into returning money. It shouldn't come to that. This should be something where the government says: 'We made a mistake. We didn't put the rules in place for good governance that should have been there.' I don't think this was an intentional rort. There are plenty of those on the other side, where they are intentionally ripping off people. I think this was just—it's not parliamentary to say it the way I'd like to say it—an error or a stuff-up, and that's what we're facing the consequences of: incompetence. 16:24 Ms LIU 282918 Chisholm I find it amazing standing here and listening to the other side. Listening to them, sometimes they support JobKeeper and then they're against it, then they support it and then they're against it. I am confused about what they stand for. As we know, JobKeeper has been the largest economic lifeline in Australia's history. In its first phase, it supported over one million businesses and over 3.8 million jobs. Without JobKeeper and other measures to support our economy, Treasury estimates the unemployment rate would have been five percentage points higher. According to the Reserve Bank, the Morrison government's actions to support the economy have saved 700,000 jobs. And yet Labor is obsessed with attacking JobKeeper—but sometimes they support it! It's really confusing. Earlier this month, the member for Ballarat even called the program a waste. Only the Labor Party could contend that a program that saved 700,000 Australian jobs was a waste. Meanwhile, the shadow Treasurer has been spreading lies that JobKeeper funds were sent to dead people. This has been continuously refuted, with the ATO saying that— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 Order! The member for Chisholm will resume her seat. Mr Brian Mitchell 129164 [by video link] On a point of order—if the rules allow it, with me being virtual, I'd ask the member to withdraw that reflection on a member. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 The member for Lyons will resume his seat. I don't think the rules do allow it, but I will ask the member for Chisholm to withdraw her reference to the member for lying. I will ask the member to withdraw that comment. Ms LIU 282918 If it's true— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 I'll ask the member to withdraw the comment or I will sit you down. Ms LIU 282918 I withdraw. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265967 Thank you. The member for Chisholm has the call. Ms LIU 282918 Well, let's continue with this. The ATO says that they were not aware of any ultimately successful claim for deceased or other fictitious employees. But that's just like Labor, isn't it? They are not going to be happy with it, but never mind. They never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Don't let the truth that JobKeeper has received nearly universal praise get in the way of your political attacks. Don't take my word for it. What about the words of the Governor of the Reserve Bank? He said that JobKeeper had done a 'remarkable job' at 'keeping people in jobs'. Now, what about business across the country? The Business Council of Australia commended the government for JobKeeper, saying that the program would 'make sure Australia is ready to rebuild quickly once this challenge passes.' Meanwhile, major Australian employer Cotton On Group said JobKeeper kept the company going through 2020. Let's not forget the Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Sally McManus, who called JobKeeper a 'historic win for working people' and actually asked for its reintroduction earlier this year. That's right, even the unions are full of praise for JobKeeper. Ninety per cent of JobKeeper recipients were microbusinesses with a turnover of under $2 million and eight per cent of recipients were small- or medium-sized enterprises, and Labor is now going after them. Instead of trying to help small businesses during a national crisis, Labor are trying to force the ATO to release their private and confidential information. These aren't big businesses that Labor is targeting. Big businesses already have to make disclosures as part of their obligations to the ASX. These are small businesses and ordinary, hardworking Australians who are bearing the brunt of Labor's political attacks. So I call on Labor to stop its political attacks and call off its war on Australian small businesses. The DEPUTY SPEAKER E0D Order! The discussion is now concluded. COMMITTEES 44 COMMITTEES Treaties Committee 44 Report 44 16:29 Mr TIM WILSON IMW Goldstein On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee's report, incorporating dissenting reports, entitled Report 196: Regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement. Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e). Mr TIM WILSON IMW by leave—Today, in the absence of the chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I make a statement on the committee's report 196. This report details the committee's findings on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the RCEP Agreement. RCEP is a plurilateral trade agreement between Australia and China, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and the 10 members of ASEAN: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It is ASEAN-led and reflects the interests and position of ASEAN. Although RCEP does not deliver much in the way of additional market access, it's significance lies in the broad composition of its membership, which accounts for almost one-third of the world's population and GDP. RCEP reinforces ASEAN's regional leadership role and simplifies and harmonises rules of origin and other trading standards, which should facilitate growing supply chain integration. In particular, RCEP contains a single set of rules and procedures for Australian goods exporters to utilise RCEP's preferential tariff outcomes across the region and increases opportunities for Australian businesses to access regional value chains. Similar benefits apply to trade and services, investment, intellectual property and electronic commerce. A number of issues were raised during the inquiry and are dealt with in this report. I will talk to two of these issues. Some inquiry participants were concerned that RCEP may impact the government's ability to implement recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. These, of course, are the chair's notes, as I am doing this on his behalf. I am going to be less polite than he is. They were fanciful allegations, trying to come up with a concocted argument to justify opposition and simply expose the people who made the arguments to absurdity. But, in returning to the chair's remarks: after reviewing the evidence, the committee reached the viewed that RCEP preserves Australia's right to regulate the supply of services in order to meet policy objectives, including in aged care. Some inquiry participants also raised the recent coup and subsequent repression in Myanmar as a potential reason to delay ratification of RCEP. The evidence heard, though, suggested that no other country would be likely to follow Australia's lead in this regard and it was unlikely to have any significant impact on the behaviour of Myanmar's military rulers. Again, departing from the chair's remarks and inserting my own: it was largely about signalling by members of the opposition on this issue. No-one disputes the human rights abuses related to the military junta and the very serious concerns that arise out of Myanmar, but the suggestion they were somehow going to bow because of a report of a committee is, frankly, again, fanciful. Returning to the chair's remarks: the committee notes the recent report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade into Australia's response to the Myanmar coup, which recommended the government further consider imposing targeted sanctions upon those responsible for the coup and subsequent repression in Myanmar. The committee supports this recommendation and recommends the government continue to pursue the restoration of civilian democratic rule in Myanmar as a foreign policy priority—and I agree—and consider making a declaration to this effect at the appropriate time of ratification. The committee is of the view that, on balance, it would be in Australia's interests to ratify RCEP and recommends accordingly. On behalf of the committee, I recommend the report to the House. 16:34 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills [by video link] by leave—I make this statement regarding the JSCOT report into the Regional Comprehensive Partnership Agreement—RCEP for short—as deputy chair of JSCOT. As has been noted by the previous speaker, it's an agreement between Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and the 10 members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations—ASEAN members. We in Labor support trade policies consistent with Australian values of justice and equality, community views, workers rights and the interests of developing countries. We support trade policies that are consistent with Australia's social and economic values, that are based on widespread consultation, that provide for appropriate minimum and enforceable labour and environmental standards, that take account of social and economic impacts, and that allow sovereign governments to make decisions and to implement policies in the interests of their citizens. During the public hearings for this inquiry there were many concerns raised with respect to human rights, labour rights and environmental protection standards. We also heard particularly about the deteriorating human rights situation in Myanmar, one of the parties to the RCEP. There were also concerns about the impact of the RCEP on the ability of the Commonwealth to regulate our aged-care system in line with the recommendations of the royal commission. In each instance, Labor members of the committee worked as best we could to strengthen the report before the parliament and the recommendations in that report to the government, all on those areas of concern. On labour, human rights and environmental standards: we noted in the report's additional comments that Labor members of the committee sought a new recommendation that would recommend the government continues to pursue the inclusion of labour and human rights, and environmental protection standards and provisions within the RCEP at the time of its first review. It's noteworthy that this particular trade agreement has an absence of those types of provisions, somewhat dissimilar to previous trade agreements. It's important that the government continues to pursue those particular protections at the time of the first review of the agreement. I note that the previous member, the member for Goldstein, had one job: to faithfully deliver the statement by the chair of JSCOT, the member for Wentworth. He was unable to resist the temptation to be somewhat bullish and litigious in his comments. Frankly, I have to say that those belie the collegiate and coordinated effort that was made by all members, regardless of where we sat politically, to come up with the best possible report. In fact, many of the hearings, and also the work done between the chair and me, were coloured more by cooperation and coordination, and a very respectful and civil attitude—somewhat belied by the member for Goldstein's additions to the statement by the member for Wentworth. On Myanmar: it's a very serious and significant human rights catastrophe that we're witnessing—a military junta and a coup d'etat that occurred after the signing of the treaty by Myanmar. As such, Labor members were very keen to seek an amendment to the recommendations that were in the report, to reflect the fact that the government should continue to pursue in all possible ways every effort to restore civilian democratic rule in Myanmar as a foreign policy priority, and also to include a declaration to be given at the time of ratification to that effect. That's an amendment that we sought to push, for the reasons that I've outlined—the importance of which I hope we all adhere to, even, I'm sure, the member for Goldstein—the importance of actually restoring democracy in Myanmar. Members of the committee also worked through a number of concerns raised during the evidence with respect to the aged-care sector. What we sought to do, again, in a cooperative fashion, was to seek clarification that nothing in the RCEP would prevent the federal government from regulating the aged-care sector, or from implementing recommendations of the royal commission into aged care or from regulating staffing ratios in the sector. I think that's an entirely reasonable effort on the part of opposition members in their work on the committee—to ensure that's the case. This is an important principle, and we have been calling on the government to confirm this in writing in our additional comments to the JSCOT because of the concerns raised and to ensure the public confidence in the system. Again, I think that was an entirely reasonable effort on the part of members of the committee. Other issues that the Labor members raised included: recognition of qualifications; concerns about the potential for an ISD mechanism to be introduced into the RCEP in the two-year review phase, although there is no mechanism currently in place; and the importance of independent economic modelling in trade agreements, which has been in the evidence given to multiple inquiries that we have heard at the JSCOT about the importance of independent economic assessments of trade agreements to look at the benefits to Australia and Australians. These are further detailed in the report. I wish, in conclusion, to once again thank all of the members of the JSCOT for their tireless work on this very important report. I particularly thank the chair, the member for Wentworth, Dave Sharma, and the JSCOT secretariat who also worked under some very tight deadlines and time lines to produce excellent work. We thank them for their work and their assistance. Reference to Federation Chamber 46 16:40 Mr TIM WILSON IMW Goldstein I move: That the order of the day be referred to the Federation Chamber for debate. Question agreed to. Report 46 16:41 Mr TIM WILSON IMW Goldstein On behalf of Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee's report, incorporating dissenting reports, entitled Report 193: Strengthening the trade agreement and treaty-making process in Australia. Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e). Reference to Federation Chamber 46 16:43 Mr TIM WILSON IMW Goldstein I move: That the order of the day be referred to the Federation Chamber for debate. Question agreed to. BILLS 46 BILLS National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021 46

National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021

Second Reading 46 16:43 Mr KEOGH 249147 Burt [by video link] The Prime Minister had just two jobs—key jobs, in fact—last year. He'd had these jobs since the beginning of last year: the speedy and effective rollout of the vaccine and fit-for-purpose quarantine. He's failed at both. When he's been called out, he passes the buck. 'It's not my job,' he says. 'It's a matter for the states,' he says. 'I don't hold a hose,' he says. Yesterday he even tried to deny that he'd joined Clive Palmer in a High Court case to bring down the Western Australian border that has kept Western Australians safe and the WA resources industry, and therefore the national economy, strong. Despite it being clear in the court papers, the Prime Minister denied that it even happened—just more spin. When things get really hard, he goes AWOL completely. His habit of going missing and passing the buck is a real cost for Australians. Our health is at risk. Children are stressed. Australians can see the Prime Minister for what he is, and Australians know that they deserve better. The Liberal government's handling of the pandemic has been an utter shambles. The Prime Minister said we were at the front of the queue for vaccines. In fact, we have one of the slowest rollouts in the developed world—worst in the OECD. So, ever the marketing man, this Prime Minister needed a new plan. When the Australian people saw through his ruse, the Prime Minister changed tack. Suddenly the rollout wasn't a race. Countries like the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom were all making deals to secure the Pfizer vaccine in July 2020. Australia didn't strike a deal until the end of the year. It is a race, and Australians are paying the price for this government's failures. But the spin from the Prime Minister kept going. The Prime Minister promised that four million Australians would be vaccinated by the end of March this year. By that deadline, only 600,000 doses had been administered. The Prime Minister had hit 15 per cent of his target. The Prime Minister promised that all aged-care residents and workers would be vaccinated by Easter this year. We know that target still has not been hit. The Prime Minister has missed every target he has set. Now the rhetoric is all about 'horizons'. Well, the thing about a horizon is that it is always in the distance; you can never reach a horizon. Now the Prime Minister, always the marketing man, has decided to play politics with the states, particularly with my state of Western Australia. You would think that, just maybe, he would have wanted to create distance from the New South Wales approach instead. But, of course, the Prime Minister thinks that is the gold standard. He has made the national cabinet unnecessarily divided. He undermines Labor premiers constantly while not criticising Liberal premiers, like those in South Australia and Tasmania, that have taken exactly the same approach. None has been singled out more by the Prime Minister than the Premier of Western Australia. The Prime Minister joined with Clive Palmer in an effort to bring down the Western Australian border. The Prime Minister talks down to WA, likening us to cave people and cave dwellers. He needs to realise there is in Australia, outside of New South Wales, an Australia that includes WA, a WA whose cave is completely free within, allowing people to go about their lives and, importantly, keep the whole nation's economy going. The Prime Minister has had his Treasurer out on his soapbox in recent weeks, allowing him to hold WA and other states to ransom, threatening to pull the economic rug from under us if lockdowns or restrictions are imposed after reaching 80 per cent of vaccinations of only those aged 16 and above. We won't forget that the Morrison government didn't provide financial support during the last lockdown in Western Australia either. Everyone wants us to come out of this pandemic situation as soon as possible, but we don't forget that the Morrison government's handling of vaccines and quarantine, as well as being anti-lockdown, is why we are not coming out of this yet as a nation. The premiers support the plan, Labor supports the plan, but the Prime Minister is trying to dictate responses by the states that are not what the plan actually says. He is trying to create a fight to distract from his own failures. He is trying to confuse the electorate in the lead-up to the federal election, so he can try to shift blame to the premiers when he inevitably fails to deliver yet again. Australians are onto this Prime Minister and his marketing spin. He is failing to hold a hose, and he is pointing to anyone else to take responsibility. 16:48 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina The national plan is in place. The national plan has been agreed to by national cabinet. The national plan is working. The National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021 is appropriate, it is timely and it is sensible; and, of course, it is a necessary medical and fiscal arrangement. This deal, this amendment, will ensure that the government can continue to purchase COVID-19 vaccinations, which are saving lives. It will include boosters. These vaccines will provide protections to Australians. Let's not forget that, when COVID-19 first came to these shores, there was a fear, and it was suggested, that up to 30,000 Australians could lose their lives. This government acted quickly and responsibly, and continues to do so. There's no manual that you can pull down from a shelf on this. It is a worldwide pandemic. We are certainly making the right arrangements, and this amendment continues that important work. This bill will also allow for the purchase of consumables which are needed for the delivery of these vital vaccines and treatments. The cabinet, of course, will retain its role in the consideration of and decision on COVID-19 vaccinations, consumables and treatment purchases. This bill will give spending power to the Minister for Health and Aged Care to enter into arrangements and make payments to ensure that Australia can continue the vaccination rollout, because parliament doesn't and cannot sit all of the time. When parliament is not in session, it will enable the minister, the cabinet and the Prime Minister to make the right decisions at the necessary time. Following a cabinet decision to purchase a relevant item, the minister for health—who I must say has been doing a sterling job all the way through. He has carried much of the burden of this nation, to making sure that the right decisions have been made and the right arrangements have been put in place. I commend him for that work. This amendment gives him the ability to exercise the spending power under this new provision. It ensures that payments will be made in a timely manner upon the execution of advance purchase agreements with vaccine manufacturers. Of course, that is so vitally important. Currently, funding is made available through appropriation bills, which are not frequent or flexible enough for the government to respond as necessary during what is a global pandemic, and so therefore this amendment is necessary. Without this power, due to the timing of recent advance purchase agreements, the Department of Health would not have been able to make payments beyond January 2022, putting at risk the government's national plan to transition Australia's COVID-19 response. This will sunset on 30 June 2022. It's important, too, that it is sunsetted. The government in June 2022, if we're still requiring this, will then have to extend that. I do hope that that is a Liberal-Nationals government, I certainly do. There are more than 9,000 points of presence for vaccinations across the nation. The president of the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Trent Twomey, told me this afternoon that 3,000 pharmacies had delivered 350,000 vaccinations. I want to thank those chemists right across this nation for the job that they're doing—equally, of course, with GPs and other health providers, but the pharmacies are doing a great job. This will ramp up in coming weeks as the Moderna vaccine rolls out in conjunction, of course, with AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines. I also want to commend the work that is being done by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. I was pleased to have had an integral role when I was transport minister in arranging, with Federation Executive Director Frank Quinlan, for the RFDS—a tremendous organisation, one of our iconic organisations in this nation—to do their important work. It will continue to be part of the national pandemic response, working closely with the Commonwealth; importantly, Aboriginal medical services; primary health networks; local hospital districts; and state governments. Certainly for those people who live in regional and very much remote Australia, this is saving lives. What the RFDS will do and has already done has saved lives, and it will continue to do so. I am saddened at the passing of father of 11 Gary Dunn of Dubbo, a Wiradjuri man, said to have been the first Indigenous Australian to die from COVID-19. That is very, very unfortunate. Of course, what we've seen in western New South Wales, and Wilcannia in particular, has been quite disturbing. We're certainly putting every measure in place to ensure that provisions are made possible for vaccination rates to be increased in those areas. I also want to commend the work of Saul Resnick from DHL. He's the chief executive officer of that transport and logistics organisation. Already, since the rollout began, as far as that company is concerned, more than 49 million kilometres have been traversed across Australia. That is an amazing effort. They've been getting those vaccines out on time and on schedule, and well done to them. Importantly, as I conclude my remarks, the Murrumbidgee Local Health District in my electorate has just announced four areas of concern after a potentially infectious essential worker visited Hay, Tooleybuc and West Wyalong. Of course, Temora had a scare at the weekend, with three exposure sites, but at least the results for those staff and the people who visited those particular sites came back as negative. Sewage trace element results will be in tomorrow and, hopefully, they will also prove negative. Superintendent Bob Noble has reported that 42 fines were issued for breaches of public health orders across the Riverina Police District. I thank Australians for what they've done so far. I urge Australians to roll up their sleeves and get the jab. But it is also important to follow, as imposing as they are and as restrictive as they can be, those public health orders that have been put in place by states. They are necessary. They are keeping Australians alive. We need to do everything that we can for our friends, for our communities and for those strangers we may never even know but we do come into contact with if we do the wrong thing. We don't want to do the wrong thing. We want to make sure that our communities stay as safe as they can. I say to all Australians: stay positive, test negative. 16:56 Ms MURPHY 133646 Dunkley [by video link] Let me start by agreeing with the member for Riverina: everyone who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated. If you are eligible, get vaccinated. If you have concerns, speak to your GP. The problem for too many Australians is that for too long they haven't been eligible to get vaccinated and they haven't been able to access the vaccine. This is because we have a Prime Minister who insisted that the vaccine rollout was not a race. It was a race, and now, as my community in Dunkley and communities across Victoria and New South Wales are living through yet another lockdown, we see the consequences of the fact that we are failing in that race. We were never in the front of the queue for the vaccine. Australia's rollout was ranked as the worst in the OECD as we approached the end of June this year. It was 113th in the world. We still have one of the slowest rollouts in the developed world. It's great that it's gathering pace now, but why did it have to take this devastating delta outbreak for the Prime Minister to finally approach the vaccine rollout as if it were a race. And now he wants Australians to believe him when he says that it's not how you start the race; it's how you finish it. What he fails to consider in that analogy is that between the start and the finish is everything that happens in the middle. It's what happens during the race—the one that we are still in. Of course, what happens during the race is that the people who weren't vaccinated and have been exposed and have caught COVID have got sick. Some have tragically died. Businesses have collapsed. Families are struggling under the burdens of remote learning, losing jobs and everyone seeming to be in the same house 24/7. What is also happening, and what I want to focus on in my brief remarks today, is that people's other health issues aren't being addressed in the way that they absolutely should be. Some of the decisions that are being made to try to deal with the delta outbreak, which we wouldn't have needed to deal with by lockdown had we actually been vaccinated, are exacerbating people's inclination to let other health conditions go untreated during COVID. The Australian newspaper published today what it called a 'COVID-19 national poll'. It was a YouGov poll. What it published in response to the question: 'Do you personally know anyone who has postponed or cancelled health checks—for example, mammograms—due to lockdowns?' was that 38 per cent of respondents apparently answered yes. Almost 40 per cent of people who were asked if they knew anyone who had postponed or cancelled a health check because of lockdowns said yes. In New South Wales and Victoria, perhaps not surprisingly, it was 43 per cent. And apparently, of the respondents who were women, 43 per cent said yes and 46 per cent who are parents of a child in school said yes. Those figures, no matter what the postponed or cancelled health check is, are disturbing. But I suspect, without knowing, that the pollsters put the example of mammograms in that question because we know that, during the pandemic, the instances of women going and having mammograms, having their breasts checked for cancer, has declined. And we know, from the experience last year in Victoria, that it can—and it does—have quite serious and devastating consequences for too many women and for the people who love them. Sometimes women haven't gone and had a mammogram during this pandemic, because, with all of the things that they've had to deal with, all of the extra burdens of family and loss of work and mental health and financial stress, they just haven't prioritised themselves. Sometimes they haven't gone and had their mammograms because they haven't been able to. Why is this so important? Because for Australian women, breast cancer is the most common cancer and it's the second most common cause of cancer related death. Women, trans and gender diverse people are urged to get routine screenings once they reach 40, because chances of breast cancer increase with age. One in seven women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, the statistics now tell us. The Radiation Therapy Advisory Group released a report recently that said there were 145,000 fewer mammograms in Australia in the first half of 2020, compared to the same period in 2018—145,000! Most people in this chamber know that I speak from real and deep personal experience about how important mammograms are. Director of the Breast Cancer Network Australia Vicki Durston told ABC's RNBreakfast recently that 2,500 cancers were either missed or had a delayed diagnosis last year due to screening disruptions and fears of leaving home—2,500 cancers were missed. That is a profound number, because we know that, basically, the earlier you detect breast cancer, the better your five-year and 10-year chances of living are. There were missed and delayed diagnoses of more than 300 breast cancer cases in Victoria last year alone—300! If we don't detect it early, it progresses and, with later stage diagnosis, chances of five- and 10-year success rates diminish. The total number of breast cancers diagnosed fell by 10 per cent and early diagnosis by 38 per cent last year in Victoria, and we can't see that as a figure that continues or that spreads across the country. And when you link that to the poll that was in the Australian today, it should be ringing alarm bells for governments and policymakers across the country. Breast cancers detected by breast screening through BreastScreen, which is Australia's national breast screening program, have a 54 to 63 per cent lower risk of causing death compared to breast cancer diagnosed in women who have never been screened. A screening mammogram can detect very small cancers, as small as a grain of rice, before symptoms are felt or even noticed by a woman or her doctor. It is the best method for early detection of breast cancer for women over 50, and yet we know that right now, as I give this speech, routine breast screening has been suspended in New South Wales as a consequence of this delta outbreak, as a consequence of the lockdown and not enough vaccines getting into arms. BreastScreen New South Wales said it's because of the increasing risk posed by the delta strain, significant cancellations and 'a need to redeploy staff to support the pandemic response'. Whilst I understand the crisis that's facing New South Wales at the moment and that it's all hands to the wheel to deal with the outbreak, this is a short-term measure which could have seriously negative long-term consequences. I'm not alone in saying this; I acknowledge state and federal Liberal and Labor members of parliament who have all called on the New South Wales government to step in and change this situation. I looked at the New South Wales BreastScreen website today, and there's nothing to indicate that it's changed. I urge the New South Wales government to do something about it. I also ask that the federal minister and the Prime Minister look at this, and, if the New South Wales government needs help to have extra staff so that BreastScreen can stay open, do something about it. We've had a debate in this chamber today about some $13 billion worth of JobKeeper that was paid to businesses who actually increased their profits. Imagine what we could do with that $13 billion in the health system? We certainly don't need all of it to keep BreastScreen going, but some of it would be very, very welcome. This is not the time for anyone to neglect anything to do with their health. Get the vaccine. Do it for yourself and your family and the community. But don't put off your regular checks and your regular screening, and don't put off your treatment. At some time we will get vaccines into enough arms and we will get out of this, and we don't want to then be dealing with another pandemic and another enormous burden on our health system of all those other illnesses, particularly cancers, which haven't been treated. I will finish by quoting Professor Boyle, a medical oncologist at the University of Sydney, who also noted that women were presenting with larger breast cancers late last year after the suspension of national screening services. Women didn't want to go to BreastScreen after it was closed and were scared, but then had a higher rate of lymph node involvement needing chemotherapy treatment. If BreastScreen is shut down again for extended periods, her prediction is: … what we will find is that we will have another wave by Christmastime of people with delayed diagnosis. Don't delay your diagnosis if BreastScreen isn't open; go to your GP. 17:07 Mr TIM WILSON IMW Goldstein I wish to commence where the previous speaker finished. I acknowledge the heartfelt and sincere contribution of the member for Dunkley around what would be fair to say is the shadow pandemic, or the other side of the COVID-19 pandemic, with regard to mammograms and breast cancer and whether people are accessing alternative treatments. But it's not just limited to breast cancer; it's the mental health impact. It's the shadow impact it's having on children's education. It's people not getting other check-ups that are having a direct impact on people's lives. They are likely to have a tale, which we will all experience, of preventable conditions and illnesses. Tragically, in some cases, the shadow pandemic also includes the claiming of people's lives through mental health crises all the way through to suicide. This is real, for all of us. It's the reason why we want this pandemic to be over as soon as possible. But it also brings into focus the measures that are being taken throughout this pandemic and whether they are proportional, justified and do more harm than good. The Prime Minister, in the context of the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021, has made the point about the critical role the Doherty institute modelling plays, and that there is a point at which lockdowns cause more harm than the good they do. There's an official modelled number from the Doherty institute of 80 per cent, but frankly I would contest that; I am not suggesting that the Doherty model is wrong, but, in the end, I suspect the number is much lower than that. We already know that there is a trail of human tragedy both on the health front and the economic front that's already being experienced by many people from lockdown measures. I start unapologetically with a deep reticence of the idea that that should always be our first result of a policy measure. We've gone through an interesting journey as a country in learning. The reality is that, last year, alpha did meet its match in lockdowns— Dr Freelander interjecting— Mr TIM WILSON IMW but, this year, lockdowns have met their match in delta, and we need to be honest about that. The member for Macarthur's interjecting and he's welcome to do so in the spirit of free debate. I don't change my views just because somebody has a different opinion. I welcome and celebrate diversity of opinion. But I do think we need to acknowledge that if we're going to have a sincere and honest conversation, and, more critically, so that we take the community with us on whatever the next step of this journey is—and I was talking before about the legislation we passed at the start of last year, as the world, not just Australia, frankly, looked into the abyss of the consequences of this pandemic—because we are not at the end. And, when we hit 80 per cent vaccination, something I absolutely believe in very strongly—I'm already vaxxed, as I suspect most of the members of this chamber already are—that will not be the end, and we need to explain that to the public very clearly. But it does mean that we will enter a new chapter. We'll enter a new chapter where, firstly, there is an expectation that people do get vaccinated and they accept their responsibility to get vaccinated. I regularly hear people talking about rights—that they have a right not to get vaccinated. I do agree, broadly; you do have the right to decide what goes into your body. I do agree with that proposition. But rights come with responsibilities. In the first instance, at least, if you care about yourself, which most people would hope, you will get vaccinated. But if you care about others, those that you love—those in your family, your friendship circles and elsewhere—you will understand that getting vaccinated isn't just about protecting yourself; it's about your responsibility to others. That's the other side of the rights coin. And it is of critical importance that, when that happens, we give Australians a pathway to make sure that they can access the vaccines they need. Of course, there have been issues and delays in the rollout of the vaccine in Australia. No-one is pretending otherwise. We initially hoped we'd be able to produce a vaccine domestically, at the University of Queensland, Unfortunately, that didn't work out because it identified false positives for other conditions. We did hope that we would be able to use domestically produced AstraZeneca, but various decisions and recommendations by ATAGI, and, tragically, some members of this House deliberately undermining confidence in that vaccine in, seemingly, a desperate attempt for the vaccine rollout to fail, corroded public confidence. Make no mistake, I have always believed that AstraZeneca is safe and people should get it. Frankly, I wish I could have got it. I have a very high degree of confidence in that vaccine, but at the time it was not available. Of course, we have other vaccines that will come. Moderna and, obviously, Pfizer, and others will continue to roll out over time. This legislation is about getting those and, as people start to make inquiries about boosters—and people have been starting, including the Goldstein constituency—about making it clear that we have boosters on order. Boosters are on order and are going to start arriving towards the end of this year, so that, if any efficacy of a vaccine does wane, those who need boosters will get them. This legislation is also about the government needing to extend its initial six-month time frame to be able to order more vaccines and more boosters as time goes on, because we don't know where this ends. I've had conversations, including with the member for Macarthur outside of the chamber, which I'm sure he won't mind me raising in a very anodyne way—that we've had the alpha variant, we've had the delta variant, but, if you go on the WHO website, it talks about other variants. We don't know what risks they pose and what that means for the health and welfare and safety of the Australian people. We need to empower the government to do everything it can to back the Australian people who take responsibility for themselves and for those that they love and care about. We sit in a dynamic environment where the mutations or variants that emerge will not necessarily originate in our country. Even with hefty quarantine measures, it may not end in a situation where we can keep them out. I always caution against this, but some of the states are talking about locking themselves off from the rest of the country—and I do understand their ambition to avoid the risks of COVID-19; I genuinely do. But the tragedy is that, the longer you create a gap between the lived reality of a virus that spreads around the rest of the world and a population that does not have full antibodies or immunity to it, the more you end up in a situation over time where the gap becomes larger and the impact can be much more devastating. I said in a speech to this chamber earlier that this is one of the tragedies of what occurred in the European settlement in Australia in the latter part of the 18th century, where viruses that were not previously exposed had an impact on a population who didn't have antibodies and then caused a terrible scourge. It is not the only basis on which we had a tragic loss of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lives; but it has an impact, and, the longer you let that gap grow, the bigger the impact it can have. This government is focused on what we need to do to get the population vaccinated. This government is committed not just to today but to what we need to do for the future and to continue to assist and adapt and provide the boosters that Australians need to protect themselves. But, critically, we need to do that swiftly. If you haven't had a chance, as a citizen of this country, to go out and get your vaccine, please do so; and do so quickly because the shadow pandemic, the physical conditions, the undiagnosed conditions, the education impacts, the mental health impact and the life impacts that the member for Dunkley raised are too real and, frankly, haven't been given the full consideration they deserve in a lot of the decisions that have been made, particularly by governments that have looked at matters through a singular focus. 17:16 Dr FREELANDER 265979 Macarthur I of course agree with the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021. I would like to say at the beginning that the smooth-tongued member for Goldstein has at least conceded that there have been significant delays in our vaccine rollout. That has been a very important factor in the outbreak we are facing in New South Wales—together with the failure of the hotel quarantine system. But my main concern with the so-called national plan and the Doherty modelling is that not enough is being done to protect the most vulnerable. For example, the vaccination rate in our Indigenous population in far western New South Wales was less than eight per cent, which is a huge problem when you consider the vulnerability of those communities. I also believe that not enough is being done to protect other vulnerable people, those at higher risk, people who are immunosuppressed. That includes people who are pregnant and people who have some of the chronic diseases that we see, such as lupus and other inflammatory diseases, who may be taking immunosuppressant medication. My concern with the Doherty modelling is that, unless we protect the most vulnerable, we are at risk of seeing a significant difficulty in controlling any outbreak that occurs. That will put our health systems at extreme risk. In my electorate of Macarthur, the main hospital is Campbelltown Hospital. It is now inundated with COVID-19 patients in the respiratory wards, in the COVID wards and in intensive care. And the main teaching hospital in the area, Liverpool Hospital, is, I would say, past capacity with COVID-19 patients. Unless we are able to control outbreaks when they occur, which depends on a very well-organised and quick testing regime and very good contact-tracing regimes, the Doherty modelling is less successful. And that is going to be a major difficulty for the high-risk areas. I just wanted to say those things to begin with. I appreciate that the member for Goldstein has concerns about the perhaps not-so-obvious effects of the response to COVID-19—the lockdowns et cetera. I'm well aware of that. And I agree totally with the member for Dunkley that the suspension of BreastScreen in New South Wales is a major concern. I think that should be reconsidered on an urgent basis, because people do need to have mammograms performed. I think just because we're in the middle of the pandemic and an outbreak in New South Wales it does not mean that we should suspend BreastScreen and other specialised screening processes. We support this bill of course, because it does provide the government with the ability to urgently acquire some of the drugs and some of the other treatments that are required for our response to COVID-19. I want to say that part of the reason that we're in this situation in New South Wales, with this huge outbreak—of over 1,000 cases again today—is because the vaccine rollout was very sluggish. The reasons for that, I think, are pretty obvious. I think all of us were a little lulled into a false sense of security because we'd done so well with the alpha variant, the original variant, and I think that the government didn't see this as an urgent priority. They made mistakes with vaccine procurement—I think because they were fixated on local manufacture and they shouldn't have been. The University of Queensland vaccine, because it caused false positives to a number of conditions, including HIV, was impractical to use, so that couldn't be used. CSL produced the AstraZeneca vaccine in Melbourne, which I think initially gave the government perhaps an overly optimistic idea about how quickly those vaccine doses could be rolled out. And the government did not procure enough vaccine doses of the messenger RNA vaccines, which have proven so successful overseas—the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine. There are other vaccines becoming available. The Novavax vaccine, which is a simple protein vaccine, will become available later in the year, but, again, that has been a little delayed. So, there were difficulties with vaccine procurement, and the member for Goldstein has conceded that. Over and above that, the government has also failed on a number of other issues. I've made the point about the government not calling out those on the very conservative side of politics such as the member for Hughes, Senator Rennick and others, including a previous member of this House—Clive Palmer—who are spreading false information in our population, increasing vaccine hesitancy and delaying uptake of the vaccines. That's been going on for a long time. This government has failed to call them to account, and that's part of the price we're now paying for being so slow in the vaccine rollout. It's ramping up now, which is good, but there are still difficulties with the vaccine uptake and still difficulties with people obtaining the vaccines that they need. For example, my daughter showed me recently a text message from Central Sydney Area Health Service saying that there are over 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine available through the Central Sydney health district and to come and get it if you want to get it. Yet I know people in my electorate, which is in south-west Sydney and is one of the areas of interest, can't get access to the Pfizer vaccine. That includes some people who are at risk, including pregnant women. So there is a real problem with the chaotic nature of the vaccine rollout. I would also suggest that the government has been tardy in obtaining supplies for some of the other medications that are used to treat COVID-19. In particular, there's a medication, a monoclonal antibody, called tocilizumab, which is what is called an interleukin-6 inhibitor, and this is part of the inflammatory cascade that occurs with inflammatory processes such as COVID-19, but it's also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, including juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Many of the rheumatologists who see these people who have severe rheumatoid arthritis have been told that tocilizumab is in such short supply that Australia might run out in the next month or two. And this is one of the treatments that's used in the management of severe COVID-19, for people who are in intensive care on respirators, and yet Australia could run out because this government has not procured enough supply of tocilizumab. I believe also there are concerns about possible shortages of other medications such as remdesivir, which is an antiviral drug which has some effect in severe COVID-19. So I'm worried that this government has not procured enough supplies of those medications that we know will help. They are also very cheap medications. Dexamethasone, which is a steroid, is used for severe COVID-19. Luckily, we have plentiful supplies of that. It's a cheap medication and readily available. But there are also emerging medications, including some of the other monoclonal antibodies, that are used to treat severe COVID-19. I just hope the government has procured supplies or supply agreements for some of these new treatments. One that they have secured some supplies of, but I'm not sure that it's enough, is the Regeneron CoV multiclonal antibody mixture. I think we need to be very careful about that and make sure we have enough. There are some emerging antiviral medications produced by some of the major pharmaceutical companies, but it is unclear whether the government has procured enough. The other thing I would suggest the government has also done very, very poorly is the messaging about COVID-19 treatments, particularly about the treatments that don't work. We hear a lot from some members of this place and other people about things like hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin et cetera. It is quite clear that these medications do not work in severe COVID-19, and neither do they work as preventatives, yet this government has done nothing to show people how poorly they work—in fact, how they don't work—and the side-effects that they can cause. There are a number of studies now that have shown that they don't work, yet we allow the member for Hughes, the member for Dawson and others to spread this absolute rubbish that people hang onto, because people want simple treatments that work. Of course they want them. The British Medical Journal, one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world, has concluded: … research related to ivermectin in COVID-19 has serious methodological limitations resulting in very low certainty of the evidence, and continues to grow. It concluded that it doesn't work. The use of ivermectin is not at this time recommended in any way for COVID-19. The FDA in America has said the same thing. We have a lot of false prophets out there, such as Professor Thomas Borody, who, as far as I can see, has never treated a case of severe COVID-19, talking about protocols using ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, amongst other things that don't work, but this government has done nothing to inform the Australian population about how poorly they work. I will finish on that note. Of course we need to support this bill, but I do have major concerns about the government's procurement policy and their lack of transparency, and I am worried about the outbreak in New South Wales and the pressure it is putting on our health systems and our supplies of medications that are used to treat severe COVID-19. 17:27 Mr ALEXANDER M3M Bennelong [by video link] Firstly, I would like to recognise the member for Macarthur for his most worthwhile contribution. It is a reminder that we have good people on both sides. Last week I spoke here about Treasury laws amendments in one of those small but essential bills which ensure that the country keeps running and that ring in changes slowly and as needed. It was the sort of bill which keeps the lights on and really goes unnoticed. Today we are talking about a bill, the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021, that is the opposite. There is possibly no more important bill that we will discuss this month than this bill, because it gives the Department of Health the funds it needs to keep fighting COVID-19. This bill will have implications which will be seen across Australia on a daily basis, and, hopefully, it will bring an end to this debilitating and life-changing pandemic. After 18 months of uncertainty, optimism, pessimism and more uncertainty, we find ourselves back in lockdown. I'm giving my contribution while I am seated in my office in Epping in the locked down Parramatta LGA. We have been locked down now for exactly two months, and it looks like there's another month on the way. This lockdown is hitting us hard. Businesses have been up against the wall. Even those which had the capital to cope with one shock have been dealing with constant restrictions and uncertainty now for 18 months. For every business that struggles, many individuals are affected. Government payments have allowed many businesses to keep people on; but the pain has been real for people with less work, less money and uncertainty about how long this will last. The strong community spirit we have around Ryde and Bennelong remains strong, with people still doing what they can to make sure their neighbours, friends and family are doing okay. But without the regular calendar of local events, sports, school fetes, and even the connections we make while we're doing our shopping, our human connections and our sense of community suffer. I have no doubt that this will bounce back when freedoms return, but it doesn't make it easier right now. However, if the picture is bleak, the light at the end of the tunnel we saw in May is still visible if we look. Vaccination rates are higher than we've ever seen in New South Wales, which recently set world records for the speed of the vaccination take up. It was only a handful of days ago that we celebrated 60 per cent with their first dose, and now we're already at 66 per cent. Last week over 800,000 people in New South Wales received a jab, which is incredible. At this rate we'll reach 70 per cent in the next few days and 80 per cent won't be far away after that. From there we'll only be four weeks away from the double dosage at that level. We will be through this soon enough, but to do that we need the government to have the ability to purchase vaccines, invest in treatments and buy the things we need to fight this disease. And for that we need this bill. Currently, in order to spend money to fight COVID, the health minister receives funding through appropriation bills, which are not frequent or flexible enough for the government to respond as necessary during a pandemic. The unpredictable nature of vaccine requirements, development and availability has made it difficult to predict funding requirements within the traditional budget process. Essentially, COVID variants don't respect time lines of budget or MYEFO processes. Just today we saw the Prime Minister announce 500,000 vaccine swaps with Singapore, that sees us buy their vaccines now and sell them ours in December, when we will need them less. This is a good deal for both parties and is increasingly the way things are being done, as we have seen previously with our deal with Poland. But these deals can't be easily foreseen and are often trades made in the light of changing developments. This is why we need the health minister to have these powers. Additionally, our spending on vaccines would be hitting a wall in general, pending our acquisition of COVID products after this point, just when we'll be needing to buy boosters or whatever we need for the next strain. This bill means we can keep buying what we need. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel through vaccines, and this bill will keep those vaccines coming into Australia for as long as we need them. There could be nothing more important than us passing this bill this week. 17:33 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper [by video link] I rise to address the House on the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill. Labor, of course, supports this bill as it will ensure funds are always available for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, treatments and related consumables. Vaccines are a vitally important part of the infrastructure needed to proceed to a world beyond lockdowns. I say 'part of the infrastructure' because a lot more needs to be done to ensure all Australians are safe in a world where COVID-19 exists. We need a government that doesn't say it's not their job, and we need a Prime Minister ready to hold a hose. To that end, I wholeheartedly support the amendment moved by my friend and colleague, the member for Griffith. The eyes of Australians are all on the Morrison government right now. We are all watching, holding our breath, waiting for the vaccine rollout to gather speed. Every morning Australians tune into the news or they chat to their neighbour over the fence or they get a ping from Twitter to find out the numbers that guide each and every one of us during our days—the coronavirus case numbers and the vaccination numbers. We watch these numbers like our lives depend on them, and perhaps they do. Each case number tells a story about a household and individuals. These numbers show a steady march of Australians who are keen to do their part. These numbers include elderly folk who are protecting themselves, knowing the havoc this disease could bring to their bodies and homes. They are men and women in their 40s and 50s—schoolteachers, tradies and retail workers who want to make sure we come out of this stage of the pandemic so that they can watch footy at the pub or visit their mum for dinner. They are young people in their 20s who have grown tired waiting for their lives to resume. But also behind Australia's vaccination numbers is another set of stories: hundreds of thousands of Australians can't get that vaccination appointment because there haven't been enough vaccines rolled out, because phone numbers ring out or because their GPs don't have enough shots of the vaccine. Millions of Australians have waited and waited and waited for their age group to be eligible. The Prime Minister assured Australians that four million of us would be vaccinated by the end of March 2021. Remember that? By the end of March there were only 600,000 doses administered—only 15 per cent of the Prime Minister's target. The Morrison government's vaccine rollout has been one of the biggest policy failures in a century. It has caused so much damage to so many. No other policy, failing that one, has damaged the lives of people at all stages from cradle to grave. It has seen the mental health of those who live alone spiral into dark places. The Prime Minister's vaccine rollout has kept Australia in a paralysis of lockdowns, uncertainty and economic gloom. Here's another number: 200. My fellow Melburnians have recently experienced the milestone of 200 days of lockdown. Beyond that number are more than five million stories, one for every Melburnian who has endured this milestone. Earlier on in this pandemic, the Prime Minister assured Australians that we would be at the front of the queue. Hear that? We would be at the front of the queue—first in line. But as Australia soldiered on he changed his tune. Then he told Australians, 'This isn't a race.' But he's wrong, it is a race, and Australians are nowhere near the front. Here's another number: 113. Australia is ranked 113th in the world for our vaccine rollout. We have one of the slowest rollouts in the developed world. The Prime Minister's refusal to secure a variety of vaccine deals early on in the pandemic has left Australians dangerously exposed. Now the Prime Minister has had to negotiate country-to-country deals to get vaccines when he should have negotiated with the pharmaceutical companies in the first place. Now the Prime Minister is attempting a crafty sleight of hand and pretending that each lockdown is the doing of the state premiers, as though they failed to keep their state safe when in fact quarantine is a Commonwealth responsibility. It will never fail to drive me to fury that the Morrison government is more concerned about keeping refugees out of Australia than keeping COVID-19 out of Australia. The Prime Minister is hoping that Australians blame premiers for the lockdowns that so many of us are currently experiencing, but Australians can see through that. Let me leave you with a final number: two. Scott Morrison had two jobs—a swift and efficient rollout of the vaccine, and keeping Australians safe from COVID with an effective quarantine system—and he failed both of them. It is a race, it always was a race and, frankly, the stakes couldn't be higher. The only people to lose from this will be the Australian people. 17:38 Mr HILL 86256 Bruce This is terrific, isn't it? We're 18 months into a pandemic and here we have a bill, the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021, giving the minister for health the power to spend money to go and buy vaccines and booster shots. Three cheers! Lack of money is not the issue; it has never been the issue. Last year this parliament gave the finance minister a $40 billion advance—a little kitty in case anything needed to be done. The problem here is incompetence and a lack of urgency. That's what we've seen now for 18 months. Australians, including those right across my home city of Melbourne and the state of Victoria, and indeed in most of the country, are sick of the never-ending lockdowns. Australians want the lockdowns to end, and they want to be safe. The lockdowns are the Prime Minister's fault, make no mistake, because he didn't order enough vaccines and he didn't build purpose-built quarantine. But the only way for these two things to be achieved, for the lockdowns to end and for tens of thousands of citizens not to then die from this deadly disease, is if we have enough vaccines. By any measure, Australian vaccine rollout has been a shambles. I want to read some quotes: … the biggest failure of public administration I can recall. And: … a colossal failure. And: … a phenomenal failure … That wasn't a Labor person. That was the previous Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, talking about the government's shambles of a rollout. I have another quote: … the reason we are locked down, which is so frustrating when so many other parts of the world are opening up, is simply because our government failed to buy enough vaccines. That was also the previous Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull. That's the commentary the government's getting from its friends. The incompetence and failure are bad enough, but what is even worse is the Prime Minister's abject refusal to do his job, take responsibility and face up to his failure. At every turn we've had 18 months of spin, gaslighting of Australians and blaming of everyone else. 'It's not me. It's the states' fault. They were supposed to do that.' 'It's not me. It's Labor. They're undermining our vaccine rollout.' Never mind that his own backbench is spreading misinformation day after day. Half the government senators seem to be in on it. 'It's the man on the moon. It's not me. It's someone else.' Now he has Lieutenant General Frewen to point at when something goes wrong. The Prime Minister told Australians we were at the front of the queue. A more ridiculous, untrue statement I could not think of. At the end of June this year we were last in the OECD, last in the developed world and 113th in the world on vaccine rollout. The Prime Minister said only yesterday, 'We've overcome the problems. It's all on track.' We're still near last in the developed world, while the rest of the world is opening up. Try telling people in Melbourne, who, hoping for a cancellation, get there at 6 am to get a jab of Pfizer so they can protect themselves and their families, that it's all going really well. This is the second winter that my home city has lived through a lockdown, but this time it would have been avoidable if the bloke who sits in the chair over there on the other side had ordered enough vaccines. He said it wasn't a race, and then he blamed Brendan Murphy and pretended he hadn't said that. It was always a race—to save lives, to save livelihoods, to get this country opened and to stop the lockdowns. People are sick of lockdowns. They're suffering because of this Prime Minister's failure to run and win that race. The race was at two levels, of course. There was supply—you've got to have enough vaccines. He didn't order the Pfizer until last December. He didn't get a diverse supply of vaccines, as is best practice—four to six different types. He put all his eggs in one basket. Other countries had placed their orders in July last year. He didn't get the order in till the day before Christmas. We were at the back of the queue, and you don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that Australia, frankly, being a small country, is a small market. We don't have much leverage with big pharma. We had to be at the very front of the queue to get our place. The government have been stingy on vaccines and stingy on quarantine and, frankly, because of their stinginess last year, they've blown tens of billions of dollars in unnecessary economic support that we wouldn't have had to pay. There's tens of billions of dollars being loaded onto the national debt by the incompetent geniuses over there that the next generation are going to be asked to repay. There's also the damage to the mental health of people who are suffering through lockdowns and living alone. There have been record numbers of calls to Lifeline, our national suicide prevention hotline. The Prime Minister has missed every target he has set. There were to be four million vaccinations by the end of March. He got 600,000. All aged-care residents and nurses were to be vaccinated by Easter. He did mean last Easter, not next Easter. He still hasn't met that target. Now he's given up on targets. There's no trajectory; we just have horizons. Horizons are something you never actually get to. So I ask the Prime Minister: when are we going to get to this 80 per cent target? What's the magical date when freedom day and all these good things over the horizon might arrive? He's not prepared to commit, because all he wants to do is fight with the states and territories when it suits his 24-hour news cycle. You've actually got to sit down and get on with the states and territories to get the distribution right. What about teenagers? Parents are crying out for vaccinations. What about booster shots? The Prime Minister will be due for his booster shot in two months. Is he going to put himself at the front of that queue while the rest of Australia is still waiting? Frankly, Australians are dangerously exposed because of his vaccination failure and his quarantine failure. People in Sydney are now dying. Gladys Berejiklian said only yesterday, 30 August, that October is going to be the worst month for ICU. Mr Deputy Speaker Freelander, you're a paediatrician. I know you live and breathe this. It's your colleagues who are putting their own lives and their families' safety at risk to save people's lives because he did not do his job. Do not expect Australians to forgive or forget this failure. We will get through this regardless of the incompetence of the Prime Minister and the government and their criminal, lethal negligence. He wants people to now forget his failure and pretend he's for freedom. He is the gaslighter in chief. So, yes, we will do it together. The Minister for Health and Aged Care can have the money to buy more vaccines and buy booster shots if he says he needs it now. But this government's failure cannot be forgiven. 17:45 Mr DICK 53517 Oxley I rise today to address the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021. As we know, this amendment facilitates the purchase of important public health supplies, including COVID-19 vaccines, consumables and treatments by amending the National Health Act. Labor will be supporting this bill tonight, because we want it done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. We support this bill because it's important that we consider the broader context of this government's COVID-19 response. That will be in my remarks tonight. As we've heard many, many times before across this nation, the Prime Minister had two key jobs this year: efficiently and effectively rolling out the vaccine and fixing quarantine. He has failed both. The government's vaccine rollout has been nothing short of a complete and utter shambles. Last year, we all heard the same Prime Minister say that we were supposedly at the front of the queue for vaccines and that it wasn't a race. That idea seems laughable now, after Australians have endured months and months of supply issues. It's clear that we were nowhere near the front, and, as we know, at one stage we were coming last in the OECD. We were told that all aged-care residents and workers would be vaccinated by Easter 2021. Only 45,000 residents were vaccinated by 10 April, with the Prime Minister later abandoning his plans to directly provide doses to aged-care workers. We were never at the front of the queue. How could we be when the Prime Minister adopted the attitude of, 'It's not a race'? It was a race. Labor knew that, and the people of Australia knew that. It's clear now that the real danger was in not rushing and implementing a vaccine 'strollout' instead of a speedy and effective vaccine rollout as the rest of the world has done. Australians have been placed in real danger. The government's complacency has put Australians in a very dangerous position. I want to conclude my remarks tonight by talking about and calling out the conspiracy theories in this country. It starts in this chamber, here and now, with the member for Dawson and the member for Hughes. They've allowed extremely dangerous conspiracy theories to fester, and it began with the member for Hughes, whose dissent to COVID conspiracy began when he sat on the government's back bench. The member for Hughes, who sits in this House and has all the privileges and responsibilities that come with it, has continually stated that he does not believe in the efficacy of vaccines and has made repeated false claims about the dangers of COVID-19. The member for Dawson, in this chamber, this week seconded a private member's bill to undermine our vaccine and undermine our health in this country. On Monday morning, I was in this chamber when that happened. The member for Dawson has appeared at antilockdown rallies alongside signs with vile and defamatory messages and where many participants wore shirts with the letter Q on them, a reference to the conspiracy theory QAnon. The member for Dawson is not alone in these dangerous views. Tonight, I call out Senator Matt Canavan and Senator Gerard Rennick, from my home state of Queensland, who have also used their platforms to undermine the important public health measures that have kept us safe. This is not freedom of speech; it is dangerous speech. It must stop, and the Prime Minister is the only one who can stop it. The Prime Minister has time and time again not taken his responsibilities seriously. He had a responsibility to deliver safe and dedicated quarantine, yet he decided to let the Queensland government pick up his slack and build it themselves. Tonight, I call out the member for Hughes. I call out his dangerous messaging that he is spamming Australians with. Residents in my electorate have received revolting text messages—dangerous text messages—from the member for Hughes. This is my message to the member for Hughes and the United Australia Party and its founder and overlord, Clive Palmer: stop misleading the people of Australia, and stop delivering dangerous health messages to the people of Australia. We all want to be out of lockdowns. We all want this nightmare to be over. It will not be over if they keep peddling their mistruths, dangerous conspiracy theories and myths that have been debunked and destroyed by health professionals across the globe. For the entirety of our country to be receiving this dangerous message undermines our health response to the most insidious pandemic that this country has ever seen. I am pleading with members in this parliament, for the privilege that they have in standing here, to use their voices wisely. I know it's only a fringe, but that fringe is growing, and we need to say that enough is enough. Tonight, I'm using my voice to call it out and to demand an end to it. 17:50 Mr BRIAN MITCHELL 129164 Lyons [by video link] Labor supports the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021. Labor has been a constructive opposition throughout this entire pandemic, as could be seen with our support of the JobKeeper measures that went through this parliament early last year, and we will not stand in the way of this money going through now for vaccines. But we would not be doing our job as an opposition if we did not point out the government's manifest failures through this pandemic and make suggestions as to how it could do better. The government has failed at every turn when it comes to the vaccine rollout—an absolute failure at every turn. We all remember the Prime Minister saying that we were at the front of the queue, promising Australians that we were at the front of the queue. But we weren't: more than a hundred nations across the world were ahead of Australia. We heard the Prime Minister say, 'It's not a race,' but it's always been a race. It's always been a race, and Australia has been losing that race in the vaccine rollout. It's not a vaccine rollout but a vaccine 'strollout'. Labor is pleased that the vaccines are starting to arrive, but there is so much more that needs to be done. Not for the first time, the Prime Minister has been wrong, and so very wrong, and it is Australians who are paying the price for his many failures. We have one of the slowest rollouts in the developed world, and all because our Prime Minister did not secure a Pfizer deal until the end of 2020. He had the opportunity to sit down with Pfizer early last year and make the deal, just like many other countries and other world leaders did. But our Prime Minister sat on his hands and, as a result, our country, our people, our nurses, our doctors and those Australians who are suffering in ICU wards are paying the price. Now we're seeing the Prime Minister change his tune completely. He has gone from, 'It's not a race,' to, 'It's more important how you finish the race.' That's what he said yesterday in the parliament: 'The important thing is how we finish the race.' That's cold comfort to the workers and businesses who have lost their incomes due to lockdowns that simply would not have happened over the past few months if the Prime Minister had simply done his job. It's cold comfort to the many Tasmanians in my electorate who are seeing their livelihoods crumble around them because this Prime Minister said that it's not important how you start it, it's only important how you finish. In the meantime, in that gap, livelihoods and incomes are crumbling. In Tasmania we're seeing increasing pressure on the tourism and aviation industries, and there's no support for these vital industries. Just because Tasmania is not in lockdown, the Prime Minister has not made support available to the suffering industries, workers and businesses that are directly impacted by flight cancellations because of the lockdowns on the mainland. They're receiving no support at all. That's a great failure by this Prime Minister during this pandemic and it's all because this Prime Minister cannot keep his promises. Here are a few more broken promises for the record. He promised that four million Australians would be vaccinated by the end of March 2021, but by the end of March only 600,000 doses had been administered—a massive failure, just 15 per cent of the Prime Minister's vaccination pledge. This is what this Prime Minister does: he makes a big announcement—he gets in front of all the cameras and all the microphones, and has all the flags behind him, and he makes the big announcement. Then he never keeps the promise, and he just moves on. He just keeps the caravan moving on. He doesn't want to talk about the past, he doesn't want to talk about the failures and he doesn't want to be held responsible for his own words and his own broken promises. It's a complete failure of leadership by this Prime Minister. Aged-care workers were promised that they would be vaccinated. Only 45,000 aged-care residents, let alone workers, were fully vaccinated by 10 April—chalk it up to all the broken promises. This Prime Minister has abandoned plans to provide vaccines directly to aged-care workers, didn't sign the right deal with the providers, and on 30 June just one-third of staff in aged-care homes were fully vaccinated, putting themselves and the people they care for at risk. At every turn this Prime Minister is failing the test. He's failing the leadership test on the vaccine rollout during this pandemic, and he should be held responsible for this failure of leadership. Before I finish, I would like briefly to go to the words of the member for Oxley, who quite rightly condemned the actions and the words of the member for Hughes and the member for Dawson. The Prime Minister saved the parliamentary career of the member for Hughes. The only reason the member for Hughes is in the parliament today is that the Prime Minister saved his preselection, and now he's the leader of the United Australia Party, which is spreading vaccination lies, vaccination rumours and vaccination untruths across the country. He's being aided and abetted by the member for Dawson, who sits on the government backbench. He is directly responsible to his party room in the coalition and by proxy to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister must show leadership and deal with the member for Dawson. If he fails to do so, he will be shown up for the hollow man that we all know he is. 17:56 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi The National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021 amends the National Health Act to facilitate the purchasing of COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, consumables and COVID-19 treatments. This bill shows more of what living with COVID might mean beyond the immediate political cycle. I'm relieved that planning is underway to flesh out the health details of the national plan. The Prime Minister has said over and over that this is a safe plan. By asking us to believe it's safe, he's asking us to take a great leap of faith. I support the national plan, make no mistake. I, like so many other Australians—most Australians—want to find myself in a situation of certainty, rather than continuous uncertainty. But I and my rural and regional constituents want reassurance too about how it will work in practice. And here's what I'd like to know: what does 70 to 80 per cent look like for rural and regional Australia? Are our unique circumstances of higher disease burden and inequitable healthcare access being considered? How will our chronically underfunded health services respond to three, a dozen, hundreds of cases? Will our under-resourced workforce's response be supported and equipped to deal with what comes next? Can we guarantee that our family members, our friends and our neighbours can still get elective surgery, can still see a specialist? Can our health infrastructure handle the requirements of COVID-safe isolation? My electorate has been largely COVID-free since the pandemic began. There have been a few scares, which were expertly handled by our health services, but the disease itself has largely existed somewhere else. This doesn't mean, of course, that we're unscarred. We've borne the economic cost of lockdowns and seen our small businesses contract. We've worked hard and followed the rules, and we've also benefitted from protection. The ring of steel around Melbourne was introduced last year because our small rural health services are not equipped to deal with large COVID outbreaks. My constituents are turning out in record numbers for vaccination, even though we've had little exposure, and, in spite of the many blunders of this vaccine rollout, we're still showing up. Country people are used to going the extra mile to get medical care. We're used to waiting a long time. But it's usually months, not hours, like it is in some COVID queues, and this rollout has been no exception. I am so proud that the health district of Hume, which is approximately the footprint of Indi, was the fourth-highest in our state for first doses. The LGAs on the first-dose leaderboard are: Indigo shire, at 68 per cent; Towong shire, at 67.4 per cent; and Alpine shire, at 67.1 per cent. Of fully vaccinated LGAs, the gold goes to Benalla, at 43.8 per cent, then Strathbogie, at 40.1 per cent, and Wangaratta, at 39.7 per cent. On Friday Albury Wodonga Health administered 708 vaccine doses, and that's a record for them. We're showing up because we're desperate to return to a life where we can work, study and travel. The Doherty institute says that, with higher vaccination rates, there will be less transmission of COVID-19, fewer people with severe illness and fewer hospitalisations and deaths. That's good news. But, for rural and regional Australians, the reality is that, when we open up at 70 to 80 per cent, our health services will experience something they have never grappled with before, and that's COVID-19 circulating in the community. This means it will get worse for them and it will get harder. It's not a possibility; it's a certainty. And of course the vaccination rates are key to that, to make sure that, as it's circulating much more broadly, people don't get as sick as they could do if they were not vaccinated. Before I became an MP, I worked in rural and regional health care for over three decades, and I know there's simply no give in our system. On a normal day, our health services are at capacity, and it's very common for there to be nowhere near enough staff. Like the bushfires exposed how brittle our regional infrastructure is from years of neglect, COVID has magnified the weaknesses of our regional health systems. That's why I'm calling on the government to explain, please, how we will transition from zero COVID to the place where we need to go with the national plan. The situation playing out in Shepparton, in the neighbouring electorate to mine, Nicholls, is a case in point. Shepparton has experienced the worst regional Victorian outbreak since the pandemic began. In tight-knit regional towns, lives overlap, and in Shepparton this has resulted in one-third of its population in isolation. People have struggled to access essential services such as groceries. Over the weekend, the Red Cross delivered 600 food parcels to families isolating at home. I know they're on top of it now, and that's because they're an incredible community. And the health service has responded valiantly, but of course it has to buckle under so much pressure. By Sunday, 500 Goulburn Valley Health staff had been furloughed due to the growing list of exposure sites, and that's having flow-on effects to services in Numurkah and Kyabram. The remaining doctors still working are focused on rolling out vaccines and dealing with critical emergencies. I'm told that everything that could be done is being done to support the community and its health services, but it's still not enough. What we're seeing in Shepparton is how little it takes to completely swamp our rural and regional health systems. And this is just one regional town. Just think about it. If it's a dozen across Victoria, then what? If our metro hospitals are struggling with increased demand like we're seeing in New South Wales, no-one will be spare to lend a hand in the country. And what's playing out in New South Wales is instructive. The New South Wales Premier says the worst is yet to come, in October, still a whole month away. The New South Wales Deputy Premier said that the health system is ready to repivot and recalibrate, but, goodness me, this is a claim that has been rebutted conclusively by doctors and nurses on the front line, who say that, on current trends, it's not long until the system is overwhelmed. The government had been warned of a looming COVID disaster in Wilcannia 18 months ago, and we find ourselves here—too little and too late. It's the people on the front line I'm most concerned about. As I said, I've worked in rural and regional health services for 35 years. Before I came to the chamber this afternoon, I was speaking to the director of medicine at Northeast Health Wangaratta, and she was telling me, too, about the burnout, about the exhaustion, about the uncertainty that so many of the workers there face. After a year and a half of this pandemic, despite this burnout, they're still showing up and they are trying to be strong, but it takes its toll. Wearing PPE is oppressive. The working conditions are hard. Many are exhausted. And, as she told me this afternoon, many are burning out. Many health services survive only through overseas trained locum doctors, but closed borders mean this supply has dried up. With some medical specialist exams cancelled just weeks out from exam day, it's not just a sunk cost of months and months of study for these doctors; it's fewer skilled medical workers when we most need them. It has come to a point where some of the most passionate healthcare workers are actually questioning their career choice, and this is a terrible shame. We can't afford to lose a single worker, not now, and we need to support them. We need a pipeline of medical professionals and we need confidence that plans are being made ahead of time, not just on the fly. This government needs to have the backs of our health professionals for the long haul. We need a dedicated focus on vaccinating rural and regional Australians. The New South Wales Chief Health Officer, Kerry Chant, said we're only as safe as the protection of our most vulnerable. It doesn't escape my attention that the people she identified as vulnerable should have been vaccinated months ago. People with underlying health conditions, First Nations people, people with mental ill health, prisoners, aged-care workers and people with disabilities should have been at the front of the queue. With higher disease burden and greater barriers to accessing health care, our regional communities must be a priority. In my electorate, one of these priority groups is our culturally and linguistically diverse community in Albury-Wodonga. With government resources focused on the Sydney outbreak, our local CALD communities have really struggled to find adequate, local public health information about vaccination, about their questions, about how the testing process works or about how to manoeuvre through the complex border permit system, particularly in the languages of Swahili, Kinyarwanda and Nepali, which are spoken by our refugee community. Our sector has now begun to meet regularly to coordinate these resources and support. I want to thank our community leaders, volunteers, local settlement, community services and health services staff, who work so hard on this response in Albury-Wodonga. I especially want to thank Lucy Wallace for pulling meetings together of these key groups. I represent an electorate which has endured the repeated closure of the New South Wales-Victoria border. This has and continues to have detrimental impacts on access to health care. When the border first closed in 2020, it prevented the region's only two infectious diseases doctors from getting to work. It stopped up to 80 frontline Northeast Health Wangaratta staff getting to work. It disrupted surgery and cancer care—and the list goes on. Every day we live with the cruel consequences of rules made in metropolitan cities without understanding the reality of life in rural and regional centres. And now we have hundreds of Victorians, many grey nomads in their 60s, 70s and 80s, stranded in limbo in caravan parks just north of the Murray River. They're barred from getting home through no fault of their own because there is no permit that allows them to enter Victoria. Anecdotally, there may be thousands of Victorians further into New South Wales in the same position. This is a public health crisis within a public health crisis waiting to happen. Ironically, one of the few reasons they can cross back into Victoria is to get medical treatment. They should not have to get sick enough to need medical attention before they have a legitimate reason to return home. It's a disgrace. Our community has fought for over a year for the protections in the border bubble. I was pleased to hear in my meeting with the New South Wales border commissioner yesterday that New South Wales is planning for specific arrangements for border communities once the 70 to 80 per cent vaccination targets in the national plan are met and restrictions are being eased. It's only because of the sustained advocacy for our border bubble that the interests of the hundreds of thousands of people who live on the New South Wales-Victoria border are taken seriously at all. Again I say as a long-term health worker, and one of only two nurses in this parliament, that I welcome this bill and the forward planning it foreshadows. But here's what else we need to see: our essential workers, our frontline health professionals—the nurses, doctors, allied are workers—need reassurance that they will have the resources to be safe and supported for the long haul. We need modelling done on a local level for projected patient numbers so that we can plan ahead. We need a long-term plan for properly staffing the administration of vaccinations, including these booster shots that we're legislating for today. We can't keep redeploying specialists from the front line into the vaccination line. We need our multipurpose services in regional Australia. They need capital funding from the Commonwealth for modifications to make them COVID safe. We need a national cabinet approach to resolving workforce shortages across the country. And, just for good measure, by golly we need a new hospital at Albury-Wodonga Health. Let's see this as an opportunity, because we can do two things at once. We can equip our rural and regional health sector to respond to COVID, and properly resource it to deal with whatever the future will bring. 18:10 Ms LANDRY 249764 Capricornia I thank members for their contributions to the debate on the National Health Amendment (COVID-19) Bill 2021. The bill will support our national plan to transition Australia's COVID-19 response by ensuring the government can continue to purchase COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters, COVID-19 treatments and related consumables. Not only will these vaccines and treatments provide protection for Australians, reducing the risk of severe disease and hospitalisation from COVID-19; they will help steer our nation towards the next phases of transition out of this pandemic. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265979 The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Griffith 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 amendment be disagreed to. Question agreed to. Original question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced. Third Reading 60 18:12 Ms LANDRY 249764 Capricornia by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021 61

Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021

Second Reading 61 18:13 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner I will be speaking on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021 on behalf of the member for Barton. She of course would do a far better job than me in presenting Labor's view on this bill but is impeded today by technological problems. If only Australia had a first-rate national broadband network, you would be able to hear from the member for Barton rather than me! I move the second reading amendment that has been circulated in my name: 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: (1) notes many families would not need these changes if the Prime Minister had done his job on quarantine and vaccine roll-out; (2) further notes the Government's delay in providing certainty about Paid Parental Leave rules in relation to both Jobkeeper and the COVID-19 Disaster Payment; and (3) calls on the Government to ensure that families that rely on Paid Parental Leave are not left worse off". This isn't the first time in the 46th Parliament that we have discussed changes to the national paid parental leave scheme. These changes are a reflection of the frustration that many of the recipients of paid parental leave will be feeling amidst a year of intense frustration for so many Australian households—those who are angry about the slow vaccine rollout and the quarantine failures, those who are frustrated at the Morrison government's lockdowns stopping them seeing loved ones and those who, as my kids have at times, have said to their parents, 'Mum, Dad, can we have another home-school teacher?' The fact is that these are very hard times for Australian families. The Paid Parental Leave scheme is a Labor legacy, a proud initiative of the Rudd and Gillard governments, which is taken up by parents of around half of the 300,000 children born in Australia each year. It allows parents to take time off while staying connected to their workplace, by providing 18 weeks of payments at a rate based on the national minimum wage of $772.55 per week, a total of $13,905.90. There are two payments in the scheme: parental leave pay and dad and partner pay. The second, I believe, is somewhat underrated, and there's good research right now indicating that it's possible to close the gender pay gap by ensuring that there is greater equity in parental leave. The so-called daddy months which have been put in place in a range of Scandinavian countries and Germany seem to narrow the gender pay gap. It is an important finding and an important consideration in a week in which we've discovered that the gender pay gap has indeed widened under the Morrison government. Eligibility for the Paid Parental Leave scheme requires a person to have worked for around one day a week—330 hours in 10 of the last 13 months. A recipient cannot have had a break from work for more than 12 weeks. Those who don't meet the paid parental leave work test may be eligible for family tax benefit. When the pandemic was ramping up in March last year and lockdowns were announced, the government appropriately changed the rules so periods on JobKeeper counted as work. It did so by creating an exemption so people could remain eligible if they passed an extended work test which required working 10 out of the last 20 months. But those amendments came seven months after the first lockdown in March 2020. That was an unnecessarily slow response from the government. Labor and many community groups had pointed out to the government that it needed to tweak the Paid Parental Leave scheme, but the government took seven months to act, causing unnecessary anxiety for Australian families and a family tax benefit debt for families who considered themselves to be ineligible over that seven-month period. That change to the work test ended with JobKeeper in March 2021, but we had Melbourne's third lockdown in February and the fourth starting in May, and those families had no certainty that they would manage to pass the work test for paid parental leave. The government is now proposing to make the period of time spent on the COVID disaster payment count towards the Paid Parental Leave scheme work test, which is effectively the same as the arrangement for JobKeeper last year. This time the change would be made for individuals who live or work in a Commonwealth declared COVID-19 hotspot and are eligible for the COVID-19 disaster payment. We've been advised that the enabling rules will ensure that parents relying on state government business support will also be eligible. This amendment is necessary because, without it, parents who cannot meet the work test because of lockdowns would otherwise lose access to paid parental leave. But the government has been characteristically slow to act, so the new provisions would take effect from 3 June this year, that being the date of the Prime Minister's announcement of the COVID-19 disaster payment. That was a while back—almost three months ago. It's taken three months for the government to finally, again, be shamed into offering support for working families suffering under lockdown. This has been a slow response which the government is now looking to push through the parliament. Labor is happy to facilitate the rapid passage of this bill. But why has it taken this long? Why wasn't the government bringing this bill into the parliament months ago? The government may also like to consider reaching out to those families who thought they weren't eligible for the Paid Parental Leave scheme because of the work test and now assist them in applying. That sort of action by the Department of Social Services would be helpful for many Australian families. There will be many parents who claimed family tax benefit in the meantime thinking they were ineligible for the work test. Again they are likely to have incurred a Commonwealth debt, the same problem that arose last year, and I call on the government to manage such debts sensitively. Families have been doing it very tough over the last 18 months. The Australian Institute of Family Studies carried out research that found that, in the first lockdown, there was a great deal of uncertainty, anxiety and financial stress for many families, and that many parents have been struggling to manage. Seven out of 10 parents reported they were either actively or passively caring for children while they worked. And, while multitasking has led to some lighter moments, with children interrupting Zoom meetings, it has also led to considerable stress, the bulk of which has been borne by mothers. We know that there's a growing body of research suggesting that lockdowns have widened the gender pay gap, particularly by holding back the progress of working women. We know women are five times more likely to take on the primary caring role and to be caught in a juggling act between work and kids. I can't say that without a shout-out to my own wife, Gweneth, who, while I'm standing here in the parliament, is homeschooling our three wonderful little boys— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265979 Just as well! Dr LEIGH BU8 indeed—and who is, in doing so, bearing a greater portion of the burden of COVID-19 lockdown. Perhaps I will make it up to her next week, but I suspect I won't manage to even the ledger appropriately. The changes, as I've mentioned, only affect people who are working in a Commonwealth declared hot spot, but if you have been affected by lockdowns in other areas then you are not eligible for these changes and your access to the Paid Parental Leave scheme may be denied because you were stood down and the government hasn't recognised the changed circumstances. Who might that affect? It could well affect a tourism sector worker in Cairns or in Tasmania who, because there are no tourists from New South Wales, Victoria or the wonderful ACT, might find that they are stood down. This bill will give them no support. This bill will not assist those who are stood down as a result of lockdowns in other states depressing business activity. We know that's happening across the country. We know that there is a significant adverse impact on workers in non-lockdown states as a result of the lockdowns. The government's bill is certainly a reflection of the importance of paid parental leave to many Australian families, and it illustrates the importance of parental leave in boosting gender equality. But we know that, under the coalition, Australia's international gender equity ranking has fallen and that paid parental leave in Australia is lower than the OECD average. This bill addresses the immediate need of many Australian families who are in Commonwealth declared hotspots and who are unable to access the Paid Parental Leave scheme. Of course Labor won't stand in the way of that, but it comes late and there are gaps in its application. As a result of the way in which the bill has been drafted, it only provides certainty for those receiving a COVID-19 Australian government payment, which is defined as 'the COVID-19 disaster payment and another payment prescribed in the paid parental leave rules'. The prescription in the paid parental leave rules will be at the discretion of the minister. Parents receiving other forms of pandemic financial support must now rely on the minister to include them in the definition. Without that, if they're not appropriately included, they may not meet the work test rules. Labor will be closely watching the government's implementation of the bill to ensure these other eligible parents aren't left behind. We will also be relying on the minister to positively respond to Labor's detailed amendment that I will be moving in the consideration-in-detail stage. That amendment would ensure that people who would otherwise be eligible for paid parental leave but are dealing with or fleeing from family and domestic violence are not ineligible because they don't meet the paid parental leave rules work test. Such an amendment would reflect the broad concern, of course shared across the House, about those who are at risk of family and domestic violence. It is my understanding that the government is considering whether or not it will support those amendments. Naturally, we will withdraw those detailed amendments if we're given a guarantee that the government will move them itself. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265979 Is the amendment seconded? Mr David Smith 276714 I second the amendment and I reserve my right to speak. 18:25 Ms LIU 282918 Chisholm I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021. This bill amends the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 to assist people who have been affected by the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic to be eligible under the Paid Parental Leave scheme. The Paid Parental Leave scheme is intended to support working parents. To be eligible for parental leave pay or dad and partner pay, a person must meet certain work test requirements, including having worked for 10 months out of a 13-month work test period and having worked a minimum of 330 hours in that 10-month period—that is, on average, 33 hours per month or roughly eight hours per week. There is also an income test of $151,350, which is tied to the primary claimant's, usually the mother's, income. She must not have earned over this amount in the financial year before her child's birth. But right now, because of the state imposed lockdowns resulting from the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic across much of Australia, many people who would otherwise have qualified for paid parental leave may no longer meet the requirements of the work test. People have been stood down or have experienced a significant reduction in work hours, affecting their ability to qualify for payment under the Paid Parental Leave scheme. Amendments to the legislation are proposed to allow periods a person is in receipt of the COVID-19 disaster payment to count towards meeting the paid parental leave work test. The COVID-19 disaster payment is paid to provide financial assistance to limit the financial hardship for eligible individuals who are unable to work and earn an income under a state public health order for restricted movement. The recognition of periods in receipt of this payment as qualifying work is consistent with the objectives of the Paid Parental Leave scheme. This change to the legislation is predicted to support at least 14,000 individuals to remain eligible to claim either parental leave pay or dad and partner pay in the areas of New South Wales that have been in lockdown since late June alone. Naturally, it will also support a great many people who are currently being affected by lockdowns in my own state of Victoria as well as here in the ACT. These changes will ensure that parents with a genuine connection to work are able to access the government's Paid Parental Leave scheme. Without this amendment, parents who work part time or have been in lockdown close to or longer than the permissible 12-week period may lose entitlement to the payments under the PPL scheme due to failing the work test. So this bill mimics the amendments that were made to the Paid Parental Leave Act during the peak of the pandemic last year. It will provide certainty and ensure that more parents, particularly women, can be supported to take time off work after the birth of their child through their demonstrated attachment to the workforce. These important changes to the PPL scheme are about ensuring that the government continues to provide support to working parents to spend time with their new children. I think all of us in this place support that worthy goal. 18:30 Mr CLARE HWL Blaxland [by video link] Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I support the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021. It is a very important piece of legislation. It will help to ensure that women here in Western Sydney who are pregnant at the moment and have lost their job because of the current lockdown don't miss out on paid parental leave. I also support the amendment foreshadowed by my friend the member for Fenner in this debate. It asks the government to make a further amendment to the Paid Parental Leave Act to ensure that women who are victims of domestic or family violence don't miss out on paid parental leave. Some members may know that I have been calling for a change like this for a number of years, spurred by the story of a constituent of mine. Her name is Amani Haydar. Six years ago her mother was murdered by her father. She was stabbed 30 times in front of Amani's younger sister. At the time, Amani was five months pregnant. With her father in prison and her mother in a grave, Amani had to stop working and go home and look after what was left of her family—her younger sisters. A few months later Amani gave birth to a beautiful, healthy young girl. But, when she applied for paid parental leave, she was rejected by Centrelink, and she was rejected because she didn't meet the work test in the Paid Parental Leave Act. To get paid parental leave you have to work in 10 of the 13 months prior to the birth of your child, and there are only a couple of exemptions to that. One is if you have a pregnancy related illness; another is if you have a premature birth. But what happened to Amani, domestic or family violence, isn't an exemption to the work test. We should change that for Amani and for women like her. Amani eventually received paid parental leave, but only because she picked up a pen and wrote to me and then wrote to the then Minister for Social Services, Christian Porter, and he agreed to pay her paid parental leave as an act of grace. People like Amani, after everything that they have been through, should not have to rely on the good grace of government. This should be written into the law. It's pretty simple. If you're the victim of domestic or family violence while you're pregnant, you shouldn't miss out on paid parental leave because of this arbitrary work test rule. It's not right. I've now been calling on the government to make this change for three years. I raised this in the parliament for the first time in September 2018. I again wrote to the minister about this as recently as February this year. The minister wrote back to me in May, again refusing to make this change to the Paid Parental Leave Act. The amendment that the member for Fenner has foreshadowed, if passed, would require the minister to consider this again and table a report in this place within 90 days on what they have done or plan to do and the reasons for it. But this shouldn't take 90 days. It shouldn't have taken three years. If the government wanted to they could move a substantive amendment and make this change tonight. The rumour is that they might just do that. I hope they do. I hope that they do that at the end of this debate. Next week, on Monday and Tuesday, we have the National Summit on Women's Safety 2021. Hopefully, this important event might just shame this government into acting tonight and finally agreeing to amend the Paid Parental Leave Act for Amani and for women like her, who are victims of this terrible crime. They shouldn't miss out on paid parental leave because of it. 18:35 Mr RAMSEY HWS Grey I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021. Paid parental leave in Australia operates by paying parents, mothers in particular, for 18 weeks—90 payable days. It comes in two tranches: 12 weeks for immediate leave and then another 30 flexible days, which of course is equal to six weeks. It pays $772.55 a week. There's also a two-week benefit to the dad or partner which they can access as paid parental leave on a flexible basis. To qualify, parents need to meet a work test. I'm indebted to the previous speaker for this: you must be in employment for 10 out of the previous 13 months before the birth or adoption of your child, at a minimum of 330 hours over that period. That's around one day a week, so it's pretty generous in its terms in that way but people still need to meet those qualifications. During the JobSeeker period we recognised that the state-generated lockdown periods were interfering with that process of people being able to maintain active employment, as it were, so we changed the rules to accommodate JobSeeker, but it was specific to JobSeeker and not to other government programs. Today, this legislation simply seeks to emulate the conditions that we produced for JobSeeker to ensure that we don't need to do this again, because it's a little more open in its wording and not specific to any particular program. So that's all good and I presume it will receive support from the other side, even though I notice that they've moved an amendment—which they seem to do with just about all the legislation they're going to agree with. It's a modern world, where matters of equity between the sexes have become increasingly important. What was once a clear delineation between men's and women's duties has come much closer together, and that's a good and proper thing—even though it would be fair to say that in the majority of relationships the woman is still the primary caregiver, and we need to recognise that. It's a very important role. There are a lot of reasons for why women want to be in the workforce. The first one, and most important of all, is that they want to be there. They want to for a lot of reasons. It can give them an outside input into their existence—to broaden their horizons, if you like—and provide some kind of worth and diversity outside that very worthwhile project of being a child-rearer. And it's an opportunity to do something more with their lives after that period of intensive caregiving has passed. It can also provide a certain amount of financial success and security for the family. And there's another good reason to have women in the workforce that's not necessarily about their benefit: it's for the national benefit. At the moment—and you would know, Deputy Speaker Goodenough—we have skills shortages right across Australia. We have this wonderful resource in women who are, in many cases, highly trained but taken out of the workforce for a period of time. We want women to have the opportunity to have children—it's very important for Australia's future as a society that they do. We certainly don't want them to be in the position of feeling as though they cannot have children because of their time absent from the workforce. So that's what the Paid Parental Leave scheme is about. It would be fair to say that the support provided by government is working, because participation by women in the workforce is at a record high. The Prime Minister today, during question time, actually enunciated that for average weekly full-time earnings the gap between men and women is down to a record low of 14.2 per cent. I'm pretty sure he said the figure was— An opposition member: It's gone up! Mr RAMSEY HWS I don't believe that is correct. I believe it was 17.4 when we came to government. An opposition member: It's just gone up in the last year. Mr RAMSEY HWS Well, you may be able to actually put a figure on that, and there are reasons for that. Obviously we've had quite a change in Australia in the past 12 months—you may have noticed!—and there are all kinds of conflictions going on in the workforce at the moment. We are on the general trend that we are actually improving it on a regular basis, and that is off the back of government supports which have enabled women to come into the workforce. It's also off the back of our comprehensive support for the childcare system, which now sees parents earning less than $70,000 heading for an 85 per cent subsidy on their childcare payments. That doesn't come in until July next year, but these months are getting closer and closer by the day. So we can continually improve the lot of women generally, their access to the workforce, and this broadening or strengthening of the criteria around their ability to access the paid parenting scheme is to be applauded. I support the legislation, and I think it will go through this House with flying colours. 18:41 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi I rise to support the bill before us, the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021. This is an important and, I must say, much-needed bill that will come as some relief for many families around Australia. Australia's Paid Parental Leave, or PPL, scheme is intended to support working parents. To be eligible for paid parental leave pay a person must have worked 10 out of 13 months prior to giving birth and have worked a minimum of 330 hours in that 10-month period. Like so many things, COVID means that meeting these requirements is difficult for many Australians. Last year, lockdowns and border restrictions were inevitable measures necessary to protect our public health. These restrictions are interfering with the working lives of millions of Australians, especially in border communities such as I represent. Across Australia people are being stood down or experiencing a significant reduction in work hours. This may, in turn, have an effect on their ability to meet the PPL work test requirements. The legislation will fix that oversight by ensuring that, if a person is receiving the COVID disaster payment, that time counts towards meeting the paid parental leave work test. Up until now, parents receiving the disaster payment may have found themselves ineligible for paid parental leave if they lost hours of work as a result of the lockdowns, and this would have been yet another hard economic blow for hard-hit families. I'm rather surprised that we're only debating this legislation now, on the very last day of August in 2021. It's baffling really why the government has been so slow off the mark giving people the reassurance they need to make it through the pandemic. We had to make this exact change for JobKeeper last year, and it's taken until now for the government to realise we need to do it again for the updated disaster payment scheme. When the government ended JobKeeper, even when the nation was plunged once again into lockdowns, they stubbornly refused to bring it back even though people and business were desperately asking for it. Indeed, many of the businesses that I talk to daily tell me that the current program is nowhere near as effective as JobKeeper. But, instead, the government has given us an entirely new scheme, the COVID disaster payment, and as the lockdowns of 2021 started to ravage Victoria and New South Wales, the support the government comes up with is, I'm afraid, ad hoc, constantly changing and seemingly based on the political criticism of the day rather than a sober assessment of what people actually need. Unfortunately, the Paid Parental Leave scheme has been no exception. Just consider this point: when the government originally introduced the COVID disaster payment it was only made available to people who were directly in lockdown, and this ignored the fact that many people who weren't themselves in a lockdown lost work because of the lockdowns. It was a mistake, and it was a rushed job. Thankfully, though, it was corrected. But imagine if the government hadn't corrected it. Families in regional Victoria whose incomes had been gutted by lockdowns in Melbourne wouldn't have had the PPL work test exemptions available in this bill. For people living in border communities, the biggest problem with the government's approach to economic support during this pandemic is not simply that it's haphazard and insufficient; it's that it doesn't account for the additional burdens border communities have to face. If you live in Wodonga, you're affected by an outbreak in Watsons Bay. If you live in Albury, you're affected by an outbreak in Albert Park. If you live in Wangaratta, you're affected by an outbreak in Parramatta. The impact of the border closure last year was immense. It took 138 days of disruption, pain and crisis before those restrictions were lifted and our community came together again. But it was only a temporary reprieve. This year has been like groundhog day. People have been forced to obtain permits simply to get to work, to access health care, to take their kids to school and to care for elderly parents. In some cases when the borders close these things are simply not possible. Nothing in this bill recognises that these are additional border area impacts, because there's nothing in the COVID disaster payment scheme that recognises them either. As a midwife, I know how important access to paid parental leave is for healthy families and parental bonding. We are living in a time when social networks are being put to the ultimate test. Grandparents who would usually pop by and assist with informal child care can no longer help out. Family budgets are tight and many will be counting on PPL months ahead of giving birth. This financial stress can have flow-on effects on the health of newborns who are entering this world in the middle of a pandemic. There is a growing body of empirical evidence that demonstrates very clearly that anxiety in parents has a direct flow-on effect with anxiety in offspring. Families come in all shapes and sizes in this country, but the evidence shows that women have borne the greatest brunt of this pandemic when it comes to economic impacts. Women are also by far the greatest subscribers to schemes like PPL. So, when I see legislation like this, which adapts our Paid Parental Leave scheme for the realities of COVID, I think: 'Sure, good, this is sensible. But why didn't the government learn from last time? Really, why?' I think at the start of the pandemic, even for the first year, Australians were happy to cut the government some slack. It's a crisis that no-one saw coming and that no-one really knew how to handle. Mistakes were bound to be made, and I think we are a generous nation. But we're 18 months into this now, and people have been patient enough. So I support this bill, but I call on the government: please, think ahead, plan ahead and learn from what we experienced last year. 18:47 Ms BELL 282981 Moncrieff I rise to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021. I will start by asking why paid parental leave is so important. On this side of the House we really believe that the family is the building block of society and that keeping families together and strong is critical for society to function well and, indeed, to thrive. No-one knew that more than Sir Robert Menzies. That is why his government, in 1941, introduced a payment of just five shillings per week for each child in a family after the first. As the minister, it was actually Harold Holt's task to introduce a national child endowment scheme for baby boomers like my parents and their mothers. At the time, Mr Holt was the only bachelor in parliament, and he was widely featured in popular magazines like The Australian Women's Weekly, which was unable to resist the opportunity to declare him 'the godfather of a million children'. Of course, later, in 1966, he was Prime Minister for a short time before his tragic disappearance. I just wanted to highlight for the House that it was under Menzies that these sorts of payments came to the fore. What was really significant about those first child endowment payments was that those payments were paid directly into the mothers' bank accounts. It was often the only money that women could call their own at that time. I remember my late mother, Barbara, talking about the child endowment, which by that point had been renamed the family allowance. It helped my mother pay for groceries and buy school uniforms, books and sometimes a small treat, like a finger bun and a cappuccino, after visiting a doctor after school on a weekday. I haven't actually had a child myself, but my mother had four, and family payments from the Commonwealth certainly helped my parents provide for the four of us children. They were both low-income workers in the city of Playford, in Elizabeth, in South Australia. That was one of the country's manufacturing hubs at that time. My aunt, who I messaged earlier today about this area, said to me that no-one went to child care back then and that we relied on the family to look after us, if mum had to go to work, until we were four and we could go to kindy. However, I am a step-grandmother. My grandsons call me Beebaa, which, of course, I love and enjoy. Like many grandparents around the country, I am missing those special occasions, like my grandson Archie's fifth birthday next week, and visiting my younger grandson, Freddy, in New Zealand at the moment, all due to COVID lockdowns. My heart goes out to and my thoughts are with those grandparents and parents who are separated from their children at this time during COVID-19 lockdowns. My heart goes out to them. I of course support payments that assist families to raise their children and payments that strengthen the family unit and provide assistance where it is needed. I especially support the COVID disaster payment. But there are several other payments for families, and I will take a moment to outline them. There is family tax benefit part A and part B; newborn supplement and newborn upfront payment; multiple-birth allowance; bereavement payment; stillborn payment; single-income family supplement; childcare subsidy; additional childcare subsidy; double-orphan pension; parenting payment; and paid parental leave, or PPL, including parental leave pay, or PLP, and dad-and-partner-pay, or DAPP. The last two I mentioned are the two that are incorporated in this bill. Our government is committed to the Paid Parental Leave scheme, which aims to provide financial support to parents of newborn children to allow them to take time off work after the birth to bond with the child and to support the health and development of mothers and their babies. This bill amends the Paid Parental Leave Act to provide that a person in receipt of a COVID-19 payment as specified by the Paid Parental Leave Rules or the COVID-19 disaster payment will be considered to be performing qualifying work for the purposes of the paid parental leave work test. This will mean that the period during which the person receives the Commonwealth disaster payment will count towards the paid parental leave work test and applies to both parental leave pay and dad-and-partner-pay claimants. That's fair enough. I think that's a reasonable measure. The COVID-19 disaster payment is provided by the Australian taxpayer and it should count as income during this time. For 2021-22, the Paid Parental Leave scheme is estimated to cost taxpayers around $2.26 billion. I would like to speak about the COVID-19 disaster payment. It's there to support people whose hours of work have been affected by the lockdowns in Commonwealth declared hotspots, and the government is committed to ensuring additional support is available for people in all states and territories affected by the public health response to COVID-19. People who have lost between eight hours and 20 hours or a full day of work can receive $450 a week. There is a payment of $750 per week for those who have lost 20 hours or more of work. The payment rate for people on income support payments is $200 per week if they have lost at least eight hours of work or a full day. These payments are available now. Claims opened on 22 August for people affected by the lockdown in regional New South Wales, for any of those who may be listening at the moment. Services Australia is delivering that payment. The easiest way to claim is online through myGov. It is actually a great time now to set up your myGov account and your myGovID account, so that when you are vaccinated there is a record of it that you can access readily. You just download the myGov app and the Medicare app, and you link those two accounts, and then up pops the name of your vaccination—all of your vaccinations, not just your COVID-19 vaccinations. You can access that information pretty readily. Mine was up there within 24 hours after I had my second COVID-19 vaccination on Friday. The COVID-19 disaster payment is to provide financial assistance to limit the financial hardship of eligible individuals who are unable to work and earn an income under a state public health order restricting movement. The recognition of periods while in receipt of this payment as qualifying as work is consistent with the objectives of the Paid Parental Leave scheme. Due to the state-health-ordered lockdowns and the continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic across much of Australia, many people who would otherwise have qualified for paid parental leave might no longer meet the requirements of the work test. For those who have lost out, receipt of the COVID disaster payment will be proof that they have a connection to the workforce, and they will therefore be able to use their time receiving CDP towards the work test. This change to the legislation is predicted to support at least 14,000 Australians to remain eligible to claim either parental leave pay or dad-and-partner pay in the areas of New South Wales that have been in lockdown just since late June. That's a lot of people to help. These changes will ensure that parents with a genuine connection to work are able to access the government's PPL scheme. Without this amendment, parents who work part time or who have been in lockdown close to or longer than the permissible 12-week period under the PPL scheme may lose their entitlement to the payments due to failing the work test. Nobody wants that, nobody wants that to happen to Australians, and that's why this bill is so important. We especially don't want any parents with young families to miss out on these payments. I'm sure Australians, and those opposite, will agree that this bill is a further measure to assist those Australians who need extra assistance. That's what this government does; it helps Australians in their hour of need. In 2021 the scheme supported 169,029 people, mainly mothers, through parental leave pay; and a further 89,784 people through dad-and-partner pay. Here are just a couple of facts. Of the 169,029 PPL recipients from the 2021 entitlement year, 135,800 had a child born or adopted on or after 1 July 2020 and were therefore eligible for the newly introduced flexible paid parental leave. Of the 135,800 eligible for flexible PPL, only 0.17 per cent, or 228 people, have sought to share some or all of their six weeks of flexible PPL with their partner. This is something the government are aware of, and we're actively engaging with stakeholders and business to encourage them to ensure that their employees know about this flexibility. Parents who are not eligible for PPL are encouraged to test their eligibility for the range of other payments that are available, including newborn supplement, newborn upfront payment and parenting payment. Eligible fathers or partners of the birth mother may also access DAPP, irrespective of the mother's eligibility for PPL. To close, this bill will provide certainty and ensure that, through their demonstrated attachment to the workforce, more parents, particularly women, are supported to take time off work after the birth of their child. This bill introduces amendments aimed at supporting working parents who have had their work affected by the COVID-19 lockdowns across Australia to continue to access payments under the Paid Parental Leave scheme. I support the bill and I commend it to the House. 18:59 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah [by video link] I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021. This bill makes necessary amendments to the paid parental leave work test arrangements to ensure that those who have lost work as a result of the government imposed lockdowns are not disqualified from receiving government paid parental leave and the dad and partner pay package. Currently parents need to have worked at least 330 hours, approximately one day per week, for 10 of the preceding 13 months to be eligible for paid parental leave. They also can't have more than a 12-week gap between each workday in a 10-month period. In the current situation of lockdowns, up to 14,000 families would be prevented from receiving paid parental leave without this amendment passing. This bill amends the work test to include people who are receiving the COVID disaster payments, regardless of the rate they are receiving. Business owners who are receiving state based business support grants such as the New South Wales COVID grants for small and medium enterprises will also qualify, provided they can demonstrate some worklike activity. This could include, among other things, a musician rehearsing for performances or writing a new song. I support this bill and I understand the urgency with which it needs to pass. New South Wales has now been in lockdown for over two months, and this parliament won't sit again for another six weeks. If this bill were not to pass, up to 14,000 families, through no fault of their own, would be disqualified from receiving paid parental leave. Participating remotely, I'm acutely aware of the lockdown situation in New South Wales and in Sydney. We have now been in lockdown for over two months and it's clear that this is desperately needed. This being the second lockdown on the northern beaches, what's interesting is that the Northern Beaches Hospital, which services the electorate of Warringah, is actually reporting a baby boom. This is occurring across the country, but particularly in our region, probably because we also had a lockdown some nine months ago at Christmas time. It is important for families that this bill passes and that new parents have access to leave payments despite the lockdown. We also need to talk about the broader reform needed to the Paid Parental Leave scheme. We've got gross inequalities throughout our system that need to be fixed. The system embeds gender stereotypes and discourages women from taking on higher-paid jobs. The Grattan Institute has conducted research that shows that, by the time she retires, the average 25-year-old woman who goes on to have a child can expect to have earned $2 million less over the course of her working life than the average 25-year-old man who becomes a father. Contrast that to a childless woman and man, for whom the gap will be about $300,000. Not that that's a good thing, but it is dramatically different. Despite desperately needed changes to improve flexibility of the scheme going through last year, it's quite outrageous that the Services Australia website still states that our Paid Parental Leave scheme of 18 weeks paid leave at the minimum wage is available to the 'birth mother'—that's how the website labels it—the 'initial primary carer of an adopted child' or 'another person caring for a child under exceptional circumstances'. Secondary carer's leave is called—again, this is incredibly discriminatory—'dad and partner pay', and is just two weeks at minimum wage. This gendered language needs to be updated urgently to reflect that we're living in 2021 and to align the language on the Services Australia website to the kind of flexibility measures that were actually introduced by the government last year. I urge the government to note this and urgently amend their website. The language and the discrepancy means that, in Australia, 99.5 per cent of paid parental leave is taken up by women. It reinforces the stereotype of women taking on greater caring responsibilities and unpaid work around the home. The income test applied to both leave arrangements further reinforces the gender pay disparity. Each form of leave is individually income tested. If the mother of the child earns more than $150,000 per year, she is ineligible for the leave, regardless of the income of the father. So a family where the mother earns $152,000, for example, but the father earns less than $150,000 is ineligible for paid parental leave. But, conversely, in a family where the father is the primary earner, he can earn millions of dollars per year while the mother, who may work a day a week, can still claim the full paid parental leave entitlement. This is ridiculous. The gendered division of labour reinforced by our paid parental arrangements is holding Australian parents back. Australia has high rates of part-time work by women compared to other similar nations. In Australia 37 per cent of women work less than 30 hours per week. That is the fourth-highest percentage in the OECD. Improvements in women's workforce participation and economic security can only be sustained if there is more equal sharing of unpaid care. We must improve this system. The Grattan Institute, the Parenthood group, Parents at Work, UNICEF and Karitane all support the view that more gender-equal paid leave promotes more equal sharing of paid work and care and that parental leave design is one of the most important policy levers impacting the sharing of paid and unpaid work. It could also benefit families and children to have more full engagement with both parents. Australia has one of the least adequate paid parental leave schemes of the OECD. The average length of paid parental leave among OECD countries is 55 weeks, while Australia has 18 weeks. Paid parental leave in Australia is granted to one parent, the primary caregiver, whereas in other OECD countries it can be shared. More equitable paid parental leave schemes are important. They will encourage fathers into caring roles, improving their long-term bonds with children, participation in unpaid work in households and appreciation of the work involved in raising a child, and they will provide primary carers with the opportunity to return to their careers sooner and more sustainably. There are a number of options on the table, and I urge the government to address this issue. So I welcome the bill and support the need for a temporary alteration of the work test, but broader reform of our scheme is definitely needed. 19:06 Ms COKER 263547 Corangamite [by video link] Some of the financial impacts and inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic are not immediately obvious, yet they can have profound implications on people's lives, especially women's lives. The Paid Parental Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021 goes some way to addressing one of those inequities, and that's why I rise to support the bill. However, the Morrison government has taken way too long to bring this bill forward. Even now the bill fails to provide an exception to the paid parental leave, or PPL, work test for victims of family violence. Labor's proposed amendment would address that oversight. It must be said that the Morrison government continue to be missing in action on women's issues on so many levels. They haven't even accepted without qualification the 55 recommendations of Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins's Respect@Work report. I'll return shortly to the Morrison government's failures when it comes to supporting women across the nation. The passing of this bill is essential to ensure parents who cannot meet the PPL work test because lockdowns have prevented them from working can gain parental leave. Across the nation, people are being stood down or are having work hours significantly reduced due to COVID-19. People who under normal circumstances would qualify for the leave payments under the PPL scheme can't currently meet the working-hours eligibility requirements. Through no fault of their own, these parents are becoming silent victims of COVID. Many families are already battling financially and emotionally in this pandemic. It's devastating that currently they are now also potentially being denied parental leave. For many people who have lost work hours or their job due to COVID lockdowns, the current PPL work test requirements are simply impossible to meet, through no fault of their own. We know paid parental leave is vital for so many families. Anyone with children understands the challenges of that initial period after a new baby comes into a family. We know there are around 300,000 births in Australia each year. About half of those parents would normally access PPL, so this amendment has the potential to assist many thousands of families in a really meaningful way. This bill allows a person receiving an Australian government COVID-19 payment or the COVID-19 disaster payment to count it towards the work test requirements for parental leave pay and dad and partner pay. These payments are made to those who live or work in a Commonwealth declared COVID-19 hotspot and have lost hours of work due to lockdown restrictions. I've seen the hardship caused to people by lost work due to COVID across my electorate of Corangamite. Make no mistake, the hardship for people and families is real and harsh. That's why I'm concerned for parents, particularly women, who cannot meet the PPL test requirements for accessing paid parental leave. We know women have borne the brunt of this pandemic, and this is why Labor is proposing an amendment to this bill which introduces an exemption from the paid parental leave work test for victims of family violence. Currently there are exemptions from the paid parental leave work test for women in dangerous jobs or women who cannot work because of pregnancy related illness. However, women who would otherwise meet the work test but for the impacts of family violence are not currently included. Our Labor amendment would correct this oversight. Labor calls on the government to support this amendment because, while it potentially impacts upon only a small number of people, it will be of enormous significance to those people and families. The passing of this Labor amendment would be especially poignant in light of the national summit on women's safety that is coming up next week. It would be a sign of support and good faith to the women of this nation who are not currently safe in their own homes. Women who are subjected to family violence should never be punished for being victims, least of all those being deprived of their rights to paid parental leave. Sadly, good faith with the women of Australia is not something that the Morrison government has a strong track record on. It was only after concerted pressure from Labor that the Morrison government was embarrassed into waiving the fees for parents who have had to keep their children at home from child care due to the current COVID-19 restrictions. This commonsense move will not only ease financial pressures on families by allowing them to keep their children enrolled; it will also provide long-term benefit to childcare service providers. Today is Equal Pay Day, but on this day the Morrison government is missing in action when it comes to the gender pay gap and closing that gap. Figures from the Australian government Workplace Gender Equality Agency show the national gender pay gap has risen by a further 0.8 percentage points over six months, to 14.2 per cent According to that agency, it will take 26 years to close the gender pay gap. Women on average are earning $261.50 less each week than men. This is appalling. This gender pay gap is reinforced by paid parental leave, which is means tested. Effectively, the scheme disadvantages a family where the woman earns more than $151,000 and her partner earns less than $151,000. The Australian Gender Equality Agency director, Mary Wooldridge, was quoted in the media this week as saying that the existing parental leave options are a 'big driver of inequality in the workplace'. She said: There shouldn't be a distinction between primary and secondary carers, and men and women should be equally able to make those choices … When asked if government and employer parental leave policies were appropriate, Ms Wooldridge reportedly said: I think everyone can do more, and needs to do more. Well, in the Labor Party we are doing more. In 2020 the Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins provided the Respect@Work report to the government. This report was a comprehensive examination of workplace sexual harassment. It made 55 recommendations to help eliminate sexual harassment, change legislation and create safe workplaces. The Labor Party has accepted and, in government, will implement all 55 recommendations. In sad contrast, the Morrison government has only accepted the recommendations wholly in part or in principle. This is not surprising, but it is a profound concern to the women in my electorate and across the nation. Labor supports the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021, but we see it as just one part of many changes that need to be made to address the many issues of equality for women more broadly. It is the Labor Party that will stand with women, and it is the Labor party that will always fight for women when it comes to respect in the workplace, gender equity and representation, and opportunity for all. 19:15 Mrs MARINO HWP Forrest In summation, the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (COVID-19 Work Test) Bill 2021 introduces amendments aimed at supporting working parents who have had their work affected by the COVID-19 lockdowns across Australia to continue to access payments under the Paid Parental Leave scheme. The Paid Parental Leave scheme aims to provide financial support to parents of newborn children to allow them to take time off work after the birth to bond with the child and establish breastfeeding. In order to be eligible, parents must meet a range of eligibility criteria including satisfying the requirements of the work test. This bill aims to allow parents to include a period in receipt of the COVID-19 disaster payment as qualifying work for the purpose of satisfying PPL work test requirements from 1 July 2021. Qualification for the CDP is dependent on losing income and work as a result of living or working in a Commonwealth declared COVID-19 hotspot, ensuring that this measure is targeted and can be accurately applied to those affected while also ensuring integrity. Parents in receipt of CDP will be able to count the period they are receiving the payment towards their work test for parental leave pay and dad and partner pay. These changes will ensure continued access to the Paid Parental Leave scheme for workers who had their employment affected by the impacts of a Commonwealth declared COVID-19 hotspot. While expecting parents are forced to cease work due to local and state lockdowns, they may be unable to meet the paid parental leave work test despite the fact that they have had a long work history and would have met the work test if not for the impact of the lockdown on their ability to work. Under this measure, parents in this situation would still be required to meet the same work test requirements as all other parents, but periods in receipt of CDP will count as qualifying work. Currently, qualifying work includes a period of paid work, a period of paid leave and a period in receipt of JobKeeper payment. This bill helps to ensure that more parents, particularly women, can be supported to take time off work after the birth of their child through their demonstrated attachment to the workforce. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 74046 The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Fenner 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 amendment be disagreed to. Question agreed to. Original question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced. Consideration in Detail 70 19:19 Mrs MARINO HWP Forrest I present a supplementary explanatory memorandum to the bill. I ask leave of the House to move government amendments (1) to (4), as circulated, together. Leave granted. Mrs MARINO HWP I move government amendments (1) to (4) together: (1) Schedule 1, page 3 (after line 26), after item 4, insert: 4A Section 30 (paragraph beginning "Division 3") After "(see section 36A)", insert ", in special circumstances (see section 36AA)". (2) Schedule 1, page 3 (before line 27), before item 5, insert: 4B Section 32 (after note 1) Insert: Note 1A: A person may also satisfy the work test in special circumstances: see section 36AA. (3) Schedule 1, page 5 (after line 3), after item 9, insert: 9A After section 36A Insert: 36AA Special circumstances A person also satisfies the work test on a day if: (a) the Secretary is satisfied that special circumstances of a kind prescribed by the PPL rules for the purposes of this paragraph exist in relation to the person on the day; and (b) the Secretary is satisfied that the person would have satisfied the work test on the day in accordance with section 32 if those circumstances had not existed. (4) Schedule 1, item 10, page 5 (after line 10), at the end of the item, add: (3) Section 36AA of the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010, as inserted by this Schedule, applies in relation to working out if a person satisfies the work test on a day that is on or after the commencement of this item. 19:20 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner I had foreshadowed in my speech on the second reading that Labor would be moving detailed amendments to the bill to address the issue of paid parental leave in the circumstances of family violence. The member for Blaxland spoke in his contribution on the bill about the way in which he had advocated on this, coming from the most tragic circumstances of his constituent Ms Amani Haydar, whose father murdered her mother in March of 2015. She had to take extended leave from work to deal with the consequences of the murder of her mother and to look after her younger sisters. But she was then rejected in her application for paid parental leave because she didn't meet the work test. She had worked 95 days rather than the required 100 days. The member for Blaxland wrote to Minister Ruston in February to suggest that this mistake be fixed, that the government make changes to the administration of paid parental leave that would ensure that someone in Ms Haydar's circumstances was not rejected for parental leave, as was the case. Minister Ruston wrote back to the member for Blaxland and said that the government did not intend to make such changes. So it should not have taken this long for the government to make changes such as these, to make changes that recognise that, in the unique circumstances of family and domestic violence, it is critical that people are not disqualified from paid parental leave. On the basis that the government has moved these detailed amendments, Labor will be withdrawing our detailed amendment, which has been circulated, which aims at substantively the same issue. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that there is a family violence exemption to the work test. And I would point out that there are work test exemptions for women undertaking dangerous jobs, such as jockeys, and for women with pregnancy related illnesses. So dealing with this issue is not something that ought to have been difficult. The measure that we are calling for is consistent with Labor's private member's fair work amendment bill, tabled in parliament last year, and our call for 10 days paid domestic and family violence leave. We must do more to ensure that women are kept safe from domestic and family violence and that the effects of domestic and family violence are minimised to the greatest extent possible by public policy. We know that family and domestic violence is the leading cause of death, disability and illness among women aged 15 to 44, and we know that two out of every three women who experience domestic and family violence are in the workplace. So the workplace must be an essential component of the government's family violence policy response. Dealing with or fleeing family violence takes a lot of time, planning, effort and resources. It creates upheaval within the family unit. It can be costly, both financially and mentally. And we all know the bravery that it takes to flee an abusive relationship and the uncertainty surrounding such a decision. It is an extraordinarily stressful time, and it has been made especially stressful for women dealing with domestic or family violence in the context of the current COVID lockdowns. They may be forced to stay at home with their abusers because they are unable to easily access their safety plans. The situation of women facing violence or abuse may mean that they need to take time off from working for a range of reasons. A woman who is fleeing her abuser may need to go into hiding and may not be able to continue in her job in the short term. We do know that the incidence of domestic and family violence does increase when women are pregnant. Horrid as that thought is, it is a time of particular risk, and it is vital that this House supports women who are at risk of family violence. The government should be doing everything at its disposal to assist these women. Labor is pleased that the government has belatedly moved to address this issue. On that basis, as I have said, Labor will be withdrawing our detailed amendments. Question agreed to. Bill, as amended, agreed to. Third Reading 71 19:26 Mrs MARINO HWP Forrest by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment Bill 2021 72

National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment Bill 2021

Second Reading 72 19:27 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner 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: (1) notes that the Government has not committed to implementing all the recommendations of the second anniversary review of the National Redress Scheme; and (2) calls on the Government to listen to survivors and: (a) increase the cap on payments to $200,000, as recommended by the Royal Commission; (b) end the indexation of prior payments; (c) fix the assessment matrix and properly recognise the impact of abuse; (d) make sure funder of last resort arrangements are in place so survivors do not miss out; (e) guarantee that offers of redress will not be reduced on review; and (f) provide ongoing counselling and support". The National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment Bill 2021, so far as it goes, will be supported by Labor. We note that the government, however, has not committed to implementing all of the recommendations of the second-anniversary review of the National Redress Scheme. We call on the government to listen to survivors; to increase the cap on payments to $200,000, as recommended by the royal commission; to end the indexation of prior payments; to fix the assessment matrix and properly recognise the impact of abuse; to make sure the funder-of-last-resort arrangements are in place so survivors do not miss out; to guarantee that offers of redress will not be reduced on review; and to provide ongoing counselling and support. It has been almost a decade since the Gillard Labor government announced the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Survivors waited a long time for that royal commission. I've spoken to people in my electorate who were affected by institutional child abuse, and the impact of that trauma is lifelong. Those survivors have waited a long time for redress. I pay tribute to their dignity, their honour, their resilience, their toughness. We know that it has been a painful journey, and a long journey for many, and these delays are only compounding the trauma. This bill has made some welcome changes, but it has left out many other necessary changes. The government needs to listen to the royal commission and needs to act on the recommendations of the royal commission. Debate interrupted. ADJOURNMENT 72 ADJOURNMENT COVID-19: Vaccination 72 19:30 Ms BIRD DZP Cunningham [by video link] I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this adjournment debate. As my colleagues would be aware, I'm in Wollongong and we're part of the New South Wales lockdown area. I want to report to the House and make some comments about the feedback on the experiences of my constituents at this time. It is the case that in Wollongong we have a very small number of cases being announced daily. This is a situation where people in so many local government areas and electorates across Greater Sydney are watching those daily numbers, watching the lists of exposure sites as they're released, and checking where they've been, with all the hypervigilance that people have at this time. This is putting a lot of stress on my community. I have to say that there are so many people across the community who, each and every day, make me proud to represent them: community groups, church groups, volunteer groups, those organising meals. Our local ABC Illawarra, each morning, talks to a local community group doing things to support the less fortunate in our community each and every day. It's great to hear about what they're doing. As always, the volunteer groups that are part of our community are impacted by people's need to stay at home, and that is affecting the volunteering capacity. I want to acknowledge that there are some really great initiatives happening locally. We have had a group of Illawarra people coming together, leaders in business and community groups. They are running a campaign called 'vax the Illawarra' with the intention of getting us in the race to make sure that we reach the vaccination targets. They've pulled together a really great campaign. I want to acknowledge the media partners who've signed up to this campaign and are running stories to remind people to get vaccinated. They are the WIN network, PRIME7, Network 10, ABC Illawarra, Illawarra Mercury, i98FM, Wave FM and Vox FM. Across our TV, newspaper and radio media partners, they're all getting on board to get that message out to get vaccinated. There are also some really important community partners, such as: the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute; Destination Wollongong; the Aston Group; Housing Trust; Hansen & Cole Funerals; M&M Lawyers; MMJ Real Estate; the University of Wollongong, whose new Vice-Chancellor has a great message; The Cram Foundation; the Illawarra Turf Club; Greenacres; Dion's Bus Service; Convenient Chemist; and BlueScope. They've come together in a great way to get that message out to our community. I want to give a shout-out to Alex Volkanovski, our champion boxer, who is out there reminding people that it doesn't matter how fit and healthy you think you are, you still need to get vaccinated. There are also really great messages from all sorts of people across all sorts of areas: religious, entertainment, education. I give a big shout-out to our Olympic gold-medallist Emma McKeon, who's a champion of this campaign and is sending out the message. I want to acknowledge that I, along with my colleague the member for Whitlam and our state colleagues Ryan Park and Paul Scully, have been making the point that people are also expressing great frustration because they want to do the right thing, so they're getting on lists to get the vaccination and some of them are getting appointments that are six or eight week weeks away. It is frustrating. The government really need to understand that the mistake they made by not getting ahead of the vaccination rollout at the beginning is a real problem in our community at this point in time. A big thank you to all of those in the community who are out there, determined to get vaccinated and having conversations with family members who might be a bit hesitant. It would have been a whole lot easier and a whole lot better if those people could have got those vaccinations a whole lot quicker. Spinal Muscular Atrophy 73 19:35 Mr VASTA E0D Bonner I rise tonight to speak on an extremely important matter and one that is very close to my heart. August is Spinal Muscular Atrophy—commonly known as SMA—Awareness Month. Sadly, one in 10,000 births in Australia are affected by SMA. With no cure, this disease is the No. 1 genetic cause of death for babies under two in Australia. I first became aware of SMA through the story of baby Mackenzie in 2018. At just 10 weeks old, little Mackenzie was diagnosed with SMA, sadly passing away at just seven months old. Mackenzie's parents, Rachael and Jonathan Casella, have made it their mission to shine a light on this disease. Learning of their story, I had the privilege of working with Rachael and Jonathan to bring it to the attention of Minister Hunt. Their hard work resulted in the delivery of a $20 million study into reproductive genetic carrier screening, called Mackenzie's Mission, in the 2018 budget. Our government has remained committed to supporting SMA patients with more lifesaving measures to support babies with this horrible disease. In fact, this month, on 1 August, our government listed Evrysdi on the PBS. This medication means families living with SMA now have access to less invasive treatment options. It also means these families may experience a reduction in visits to specialist hospitals. Childbirth, and welcoming your little one into the world, is meant to be one of the happiest moments in a parent's life, a time when spending days, weeks and sleepless nights at the hospital shouldn't be the case and a time when a debilitating disease like SMA shouldn't be taking the place of precious family moments. I want to thank the Morrison government for this listing. I am a strong advocate for bringing awareness to SMA. There are families in my electorate of Bonner currently battling this disease, just like Kate and Grant Gough and their beautiful six-month-old baby, Oakley. I first met with the Gough family last year and have been working with them to bring awareness to SMA in Queensland. It has been a long and challenging journey for baby Oakley after being diagnosed at just eight weeks old. Baby Oakley has recently been able to access Zolgensma, a life-changing gene therapy drug to treat babies with SMA. After just two weeks of accessing this drug, Oakley rolled over for the first time. She lifted her head and scored 100 per cent in her physio assessment. I'm happy to report that she is improving every day, but that doesn't mean life will be easy. Had Oakley been screened for SMA as part of the Newborn Bloodspot Screening program, her quality of life may have been completely different to what it is today. And it is incomprehensible that, had Oakley been born in a different state, that too may have meant her quality of life would be completely different today, a disadvantage which should not be happening in this country. Today I also rise to bring attention to the lack of action from the Queensland state government in including a screening for SMA as part of the NBS program. Newborns in New South Wales and the ACT are already being screened for SMA as part of a pilot NBS program. Just last month, Western Australia signed on too. Queensland is now one of the few remaining states left to include SMA as part of this program. Early detection of SMA can slow the rapid decline in the health of the child and give them the best chance at a healthy life. I hear the overwhelming calls from Queensland families for the state government to take action. Today, I am speaking up for these families. I recently had two more precious babies who are battling SMA in my local area brought to my attention. They are just a couple of months old. How many more children, grandchildren, siblings and loved ones must endure this unforgiving disease when it could have been prevented? How many more babies will fall victim to the lack of life-saving testing in the state of Queensland? I understand rolling out testing like this can't be done overnight, but, at approximately $10 per test, there is no reason why it should not be added. No family should have to endure the heartbreak of losing a child to this disease, and no child should be disadvantaged based on where they are born. Climate Change 74 19:41 Mr ZIMMERMAN 203092 North Sydney [by video link] Climate change is unquestionably one of the great threats facing the world in the 21st century. The consequences of failing to respond would be dire for humankind, peaceful international cooperation, our economic and social structures and the planet's biodiversity. As we head towards COP26 in Glasgow, there has been positive and growing recognition that the international community will need to increase its ambition if we are to address the incredible challenges presented by climate change. I know that residents in my electorate feel strongly about this issue, but that is not unique. Australians in every corner of the country—city and rural, young and old—recognise the importance of reducing Australia's emissions as part of that global effort. At a federal level, the government has committed to the medium-term 2030 target of reducing emissions by 26 to 28 per cent and the longer term goal of reaching net zero emissions. To achieve these targets we're backing Australian-led innovation and technology for a range of mechanisms, including the $20 billion low-emissions technology road map and through the incredible work of agencies like the CEFC, ARENA and the magnificent CSIRO. We are seeing that work bear some fruit. Our emissions are down 20.8 per cent from 2005, and they are at their lowest level since 1990. Of course, the pandemic has driven some of the gains during the last year, but the most recent figures also reflect the transformation happening in our energy systems. Australia's embrace of renewable energy continues, and we rank second after the Netherlands in the deployment of new wind and solar on a per capita basis. And Australians have voted with their feet—or more precisely their rooftops—in what is the world's highest per capita deployment of household solar panels. We've also seen green shoots in the uptake of electric vehicles, with new figures showing the second consecutive year in which electric vehicle registrations have doubled; however, this is an area where we can do so much more, and I particularly want to commend to the House the recent Grattan Institute report on policies that could improve the electric vehicle uptake. Across our economy, companies and all levels of government are committing to more action. I'm confident these trends will ensure that we meet our Paris Agreement targets. But we must realise this isn't the end of the journey; it is but a stage post on the way to what must be our destination of net zero emissions. Committing to net zero emissions by 2050 is the right thing to do, and it is why I have argued that this must be a firm commitment and a target we take to Glasgow on behalf of Australia. To get there we will need greater ambition and a quickening of the pace of change across our economy. Earlier this month the IPCC released their latest report on the state of our climate. The report pulls together the findings from more than 14,000 peer-reviewed studies and provides an update on the latest physical science on climate change, including the rates, causes and likely future trajectories of global warming and other changes to climate. The report makes for grim reading and reinforces the IPCC's earlier work—that humans have warmed the planet, causing increasing changes to the Earth's atmosphere. Without reaching net zero emissions, the climate will continue to warm at what could become an alarming rate. Not only does committing to net zero emissions bring significant benefit to our planet it also comes with a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity for Australia. The transition to a decarbonised economy will benefit all parts of our country, but it will particularly benefit regional areas of Australia. A report by Beyond Zero Emissions has proposed the establishment of renewable energy industrial precincts in regions that are already renowned for their mining and manufacturing abilities. The report found that there's the potential to transform the manufacturing base, for example, in the Hunter and Gladstone regions, supporting a total of 45,000 new jobs by 2032 and $13 billion in annual revenue. And the opportunities aren't simply limited to those two regions. If successful, these projects could deliver tens of thousands of future-proof jobs and attract billions in new capital investment in our regional communities. The work being led by the federal government in the development of hydrogen hubs across the country can and will form the foundation for developing these kinds of opportunities. If we get it right, transitioning to a decarbonised economy will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, will generate billions of dollars in annual revenue and will inject tens of billions of dollars in new capital investment into our nation. These are changes we should embrace and not fear. Adopting the 2050 net zero emissions target is not just doing the right thing but will give Australians and future generations opportunities that we can't afford to lose. Afghanistan 75 19:46 Mr WILKIE C2T Clark [by video link] Afghanistan really didn't need to end this way. It was simply not preordained that Afghanistan would fall back into the clutches of the Taliban. It was not preordained that we would see scenes, particularly over this last week or so, reminiscent of the evacuation of US forces from Saigon. Yes, I'm the first to make the case that the military operation against Afghanistan in 2001 was warranted. Clearly, we needed to respond to the shocking al-Qaeda attacks in the United States. And, clearly, al-Qaeda was so interwoven with the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 that to remove al-Qaeda we needed to remove the Taliban regime. I don't dispute any of that. But what was required back then was a short, sharp military action, backed up by the strongest possible Western support and investment in nation rebuilding. But of course what happened, as early as the year after 2001—2002—was that the US and the UK in particular were pulling their troops out of Afghanistan to get ready to go and 'do' Iraq, if I can use that term. In fact, by 2004 there were some 100,000 US soldiers in Iraq and only about 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan. In other words, where we are today was failure by design. In other words, the architects of that withdrawal or thinning out, and the distraction of the terrible Iraq war, were President George W Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair and our own Prime Minister, John Howard. But we are now where we are, and the question is: how do we help clean up the mess that we helped to create? Of course, there was much effort by the Australian Defence Force, and the British, US and other military, to get as many people out as they could in recent days. But of course so many people who are at grave risk are still in Afghanistan and somehow still need to get out of that country to safety. Somehow we have to have a channel of communication with the new regime, as does the United States, the UK and, ideally, the UNHCR. We need some sort of channel of communication to try to work with the new regime, to allow people at risk to get out of that country. Of course that will amount to nothing unless fortunate countries like our own greatly increase their humanitarian intakes to allow those people somewhere to go and not just be stuck in countries of first asylum, like Pakistan or Iran. I note that the Australian government has announced an initial allocation of 3,000 in our humanitarian intake, and I note that the Prime Minister has signalled this won't be the end of it. But let's stop the uncertainty; let's get out there with big numbers. The US and the UK are talking about tens of thousands as a sure thing. Why don't we end the uncertainty and announce that, over the next year or so, we too will take tens of thousands of wonderful people from Afghanistan? There are doctors, engineers, nurses, social workers, poets, artists and all sorts of people there at risk. Let them come to Australia. Let them make our country all the richer. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that a lot of Afghans will be fleeing across land to find some sort of safety in neighbouring countries, countries of first asylum—like I said, Pakistan and Iran. We really need to help those countries host those people, at least temporarily. We need to send humanitarian aid to Pakistan and Iran. We need to very quickly give certainty to Afghans in Australia. Give them permanent residency. We also need to use the episodes of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan as a prompt to revisit the whole issue of war powers. I asked a question of the Prime Minister on this the other day and he batted it away. He can't keep batting it away. We need the parliament to be more involved in the future in decisions of war and peace —not in emergency situations but when there's time to really think about an impending conflict, as was the case with Afghanistan, which was a matter of months ; and a s was the case with Iraq, which was almost a matter of years. In closing, Speaker — and I thank your forbearance with the technology I've battled through down here in Hobart in recent times, but I'm online now — I make this point: we helped to make that mess. We need to do everything in our power to help clean it up. Afghanistan 75 19 Dr ALY 13050 Cowan [by video link] As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan, I'd like to start first by acknowledging all those who lost their lives and lost their loved ones : our troops, innocent Afghans and victims of terrorism. The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly every single day. I was most distressed to hear that the sister and brother-in-law of one of my constituents were murdered recently by the Taliban. His brother-in-law was a subcontractor for the Australian Army working with our country and our troops in Afghanistan. They have three teenage children who are now orphaned in Afghanistan. They have no remaining relatives in Afghanistan, and the Taliban is hunting down those orphans as well. It is just disgraceful that we are leaving behind those Afghans who worked with us. On 20 September 2018—that's almost three years ago—the member for Maribyrnong, who was then the Leader of the Opposition, asked a question in question time. He asked the then Minister for Home Affairs why our veterans had been trying for three years to secure visas for Afghan interpreters who had helped them in Afghanistan , and why it was so much easier for the minister to grant visas to au pairs but not to those who had helped our troops. Three years on and that question remains unanswered. I would also like to acknowledge my staff , staff from other offices and shadow ministers. It has been emotionally and mentally draining for them. My office has escalated close to 1,000 cases for emergency evacuation from Afghanistan. We provide assistance to anyone who needs it. One thousand cases is one-third of the government's emergency intake from Afghanistan—from this office alone. Three thousand people simply isn't adequate to address the dire situation in Afghanistan. I have absolutely no faith in anything that the Taliban says about granting any sorts of rights to anyone in Afghanistan, particularly women and children, and I have grave concerns for the wellbeing of women and children in Afghanistan. We have a large Afghan-Australian community in Cowan, and so it perhaps makes sense that my office has been so flooded with calls for help from members of the community here. However, dozens of those cases are coming from outside of my electorate. It concerns me that many of those people report that they have contacted their Liberal members of parliament and were turned away, not given any form of assistance. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that we're all here for the right reasons. Regardless of where we sit on the political divide, we represent all the people in our electorate, regardless of where they sit on the political divide, regardless of their personal circumstances, regardless of their beliefs or their status. I simply cannot abide members who turn away desperate people and refuse to help them, especially when it is a case of life or death. Australia must do more. People in Afghanistan put their lives at risk to help our troops in the belief that, in doing so, they would be assisting their own country and their own nation-building. We made many mistakes in Afghanistan, and I've spoken before about the mistake of treating the incursion in Afghanistan as traditional warfare and why we needed to treat it differently. But we are in this situation now, 20 years on. Twenty years on, women in Afghanistan are facing some dire consequences. We cannot leave them behind. I urge the government to consider increasing the intake of refugees from Afghanistan. Those who are here have made an incredible contribution to Australia, and I have all faith that all the Afghan refugees that we take will continue to make an incredible contribution to Australia. They are hardworking people. I have witnessed this myself. I know them. I know them as family friends, I know them as members of the community, I know them as constituents of Cowan and as constituents of other electorates here. I also urge government members: please do not turn your back on those people who are asking you for help, who are coming to your offices and seeking assistance. Please do everything that we can to help these people. COVID-19: Mental Health 76 19:56 Mr LEESER 109556 Berowra [by video link] Tonight I want to talk about the challenges my community faces in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns. The Prime Minister rightly reminds us that the national plan says that, once we get to 70 to 80 per cent of eligible Australians having been vaccinated, we can open up again safely. We will see fewer transmissions, fewer people with severe illness and fewer hospitalisations and deaths. Being able to open up will help our economy, our communities and, most importantly, our mental health. Patrick McGorry has called the massive increase in mental ill-health the 'shadow pandemic', and he's absolutely right. Over the last year in my state, around 8½ thousand people under the age of 18 have presented at emergency departments for self-harm and suicidal ideation. This is up nearly 50 per cent on pre-pandemic levels. In the last month, Lifeline had the three biggest days of calls in their entire history. The government has responded by establishing two Western Sydney region and one northern Sydney region Head to Health pop-up clinics to serve my community, and seven more pop-up clinics across Greater Sydney. These clinics offer COVID-safe face-to-face, as well as video and phone supported, mental health services. My community has now been locked down since late June. As someone who's passionately interested in mental health policy, I want to talk about the mental health toll that the pandemic and lockdowns are taking on my community. I can see it in our businesses, our schools and our community groups. People are struggling to juggle the responsibility of working and running a business with homeschooling. Children who can get connected are struggling to concentrate, with all-day lessons online. They miss their teachers; they miss their friends; they miss the freedom to play team sport or play in the band. People living in Carlingford, in the Parramatta LGA in my electorate, who are locked down for all but an hour of exercise a day and are subject to nightly curfews feel like prisoners in their own homes. People who are usually optimistic are exhausted from the uncertainty of watching yet another press conference. Press conferences are meant for journalists and political junkies; they were never meant to be watched by ordinary citizens, and yet they've become a macabre spectacle in people's lives. That's why the Prime Minister and the premiers' unity ticket on opening up in accordance with the national plan is so important in giving people hope and optimism that there is an end in sight, and that booking a vaccination is the part that all citizens can play in getting there. Unfortunately, in my community, the mental health issues are exacerbated by the poor telecommunications, which prevent people from connecting to those they love, having a telehealth appointment, working from home, studying or even watching those daily press conferences. Those same telecommunications services that make the lockdown possible in other communities are just not available in my community. I want to give some examples of some stories from my community, in the words of people in my community, about the telco situation. One woman shared her story recently, and I quote: 'I had Telstra come round and they installed a new modem. It's worse. I cannot make phone calls out, and that's using wi-fi, because there's no signal. My internet is so slow that my colleagues cannot hear me. I had to watch my father's funeral streaming from South Africa from a car park. My husband and children had to sit in their cars at the nearest main road to do Zoom calls for work and university. I inquired about the satellite NBN, and my neighbours have told us it's useless. I don't know want to do. I have to work from home, as I can't go into the office; it's in a restricted LGA.' Another constituent talked about the impact of the bad coverage on her family, and I quote: 'We run a business from home and have four children. The oldest child's doing her HSC. The best internet speed we can achieve is three to four megabits upload on a good day. Most days the internet speed doesn't get past 0.2 megabytes upload, especially with working remotely and learning. The anxiety and stress for my high-schoolers, especially the HSC-er, is enormous, because they simply cannot even log into class—not to mention running a business. I'd hate to quantify the losses to our business due to the appalling phone service, especially when we have sometimes literally had days on end without service, having to go to extreme measures of jumping in our car to seek out better reception. And this doesn't include the hours of productivity lost following up with Telstra, complaining, lodging requests. My husband trades on the financial markets and has ceased trading as a result of the risk. The internet failing during trading can result in thousands of dollars in losses in a matter of seconds.' And this isn't in the outer reaches of our regional areas; this is in metropolitan Sydney. I want to say to the CEO of Telstra, Andy Penn; and the CEO of the NBN, Stephen Rue: the inaction of your companies is directly contributing to the mental health issues in my community. I know they're not interested in my community. It's alright for them; they can work from home, make calls from any room in the house on their mobiles, turn on their computer and get great speeds, and watch TV uninterrupted, with perfect reception. But just remember: your lifestyle is funded by the bills and the taxes of the hardworking people in my electorate who have got no service from your companies. House adjourned at 20:01 NOTICES 77 NOTICES