BILLS

2023-06-20 2 1 0 House of Reps 0 1

Tuesday, 20 June 2023

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

BILLS 1 BILLS Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 1

Public Service Amendment Bill 2023

Second Reading 1 12:01 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield I rise to speak on the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. The opposition will be reserving its position on this bill, having regard to the fact that the minister has offered to provide a briefing to the relevant shadow minister and that debate on this bill has commenced prior to that briefing occurring. While there are many elements in the bill that the opposition supports, we believe this bill can be improved in several ways. We note the significance the government has placed on these changes, in the second reading speech delivered by the minister, and we will be seeking to have this bill referred to the relevant Senate legislation committee for inquiry. Australians deserve and should expect a world-class public service in the context of the constitutional democracy as set out in our Constitution. A world-class public service in the context of our constitutional democracy is fundamental to the development, implementation and realisation of good policy and public administration of our nation's resources and tax revenues. In my contribution to this debate, I want to address, firstly, the issue of how this bill responds to the recommendations of the Thodey review, and, secondly, the importance of a strong Australian public service in meeting the needs of the Australian government and, through the government, the Australian people. The changes included in this bill respond, in part, to the review of the Australian Public Service that was commissioned by the former government and to which the former government responded. It was led by Mr David Thodey AO, a very eminent Australian. The Independent Review of the Australian Public Service provided over 40 recommendations. In its response, the former government had this to say: The Government respects the experience, professionalism and capability of the public service, both in policy advice and implementation, and we expect the APS to get on and deliver the Government's agenda. In the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, it is the Ministers who are accountable to the public. It is Ministers who provide policy leadership and direction. This statement is fundamental to a healthy and strong relationship between governments and public officials, departments who acknowledge the relationship and the important position of elected officials who carry out their duties on behalf of voters. The bill before the House would make changes to existing legislation to address recommendations 2a, 2b, 5 and 6 of the Thodey review, as well as make amendments to clarify current provisions and make certain technical amendments to the act. In response to recommendation 5 of the review, the bill would create a new APS value of stewardship. The APS values are set out in section 10 of the Public Service Act. There are currently five APS values: impartial, committed to service, accountable, respectful and ethical. In response to recommendation 6, the bill would create a requirement for an APS purpose statement to be developed by the Secretaries Board. The Secretaries Board is chaired by the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and is composed of the secretaries of all Australian government departments, the Secretary for Public Sector Reform and the Australian Public Service Commissioner, who acts as the board's deputy chair. This bill also clarifies the operation of section 19 of the Public Service Act to provide 'that Ministers must not direct Agency Heads on individual employment matters' for the Australian Public Service. The bill would establish measures and impose requirements upon agency heads to create a work environment which enables decisions to be made by Australian Public Service employees at the lowest appropriate classification. This change is in response to the findings in the review that decisions involving risk have tended to be increasingly escalated upwards in the Australian Public Service. The aim is to empower the Australian Public Service to make decisions in line with the delivery of government policy, balancing this with the need to ensure that these actions by the Australian Public Service have accountability to the government, to the parliament and to the wider community. The bill would also make amendments to allow for the Australian Public Service Commissioner to, at any time, cause a capability review of an agency. This change is in response to recommendation 2a of the Thodey review. Capability reviews would be required for each department, for the Australian Taxation Office and for Services Australia at least once every five years. The reviews would be published alongside agency responses. In relation to the Australian Public Service Commission, the secretary of the Prime Minister's department must cause a capability review of the Australian Service Public Commission to be undertaken under this new mechanism at least once every five years. In addition to the capability reviews, the bill would also require the Secretaries Board to request and publish regular long-term insights reports to make available information about medium-term and long-term trends, risks and opportunities that may affect Australia or Australian society and information and impartial analysis relating to those trends, risks and opportunities. The bill also responds to recommendation 2b of the Thodey review by creating a requirement to have agencies publish their annual APS employee census results. Finally, the bill also contains minor and technical amendments relating to the sunsetting of the Public Service Regulations 1999 by updating the new Public Service Regulations 2023. The coalition supports many measures in this bill which provide clarity for the operation of the Public Service and outline the way in which it can deliver better outcomes for Australians. However, we are concerned that the government has not taken this opportunity to outline the core purpose of the Australian Public Service: servicing the Australian people and the elected government. As is outlined in the Australian Public Service Commission's own guidance on the values and principles of the Australian Public Service: Accountability relationships in the Australian constitutional and legal system may be summarised as: 1. governments are accountable to the Australian people at elections 2. ministers are responsible for the overall administration of their portfolios and accountable to the Parliament for the exercise of ministerial authority 3. public servants are accountable to ministers and, through them, to the Parliament for the exercise of delegated authority. It is the view of the opposition that this bill presents an opportunity to provide this articulation of the accountability relationship. The position of the Australian Public Service is critical to the delivery of better outcomes for Australians, and the proposed amendments, in particular, to outline the APS purpose are a fitting opportunity to put that role of delivery front and centre. The opposition believes that, in addition to addressing this important issue, the mechanism of capability reviews as outlined in the bill could be improved by requiring that those reviews are conducted in consultation with the relevant minister. It is important, of course, that these reviews be conducted independently, to provide a clear assessment of how a department or agency is performing and how it is equipped for the challenges ahead. However, we note that these reviews go to the ability to deliver outcomes and policies developed by the government of the day. To that end, including a consultation mechanism with the relevant ministers will provide an important input into the assessment of whether the department or agency has the required posture and resources to achieve these outcomes for the community. The Australian Public Service has long been and will remain the engine room for the delivery of the will of the Australian people, guided by the elected government and the parliament. The opposition trust that any changes we propose to improve this bill and to ensure that the Australian Public Service is provided with a clear and strong framework for that delivery will receive the support of the government and the parliament. 12:11 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner One of the pleasures of being appointed an assistant minister in the Albanese government has been to work with the extraordinarily capable public servants in the departments of Treasury and employment and in organisations such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Every day, Australians interact with the Australian Public Service—a cafe owner calling Services Australia asking for help after their business has been damaged in a flood; a high school student requesting a book so they can work on a research paper and therefore touching base with experts at the National Library; a new parent accessing parental leave payments through myGov; a teenager applying for their first tax file number after getting their first job; a retiree receiving their medical rebates when they see a doctor. And then there's the work, which is so important, occurring behind-the-scenes—CSIRO researchers exploring cutting-edge science, cybersecurity experts keeping Australia safe from the latest attempted cyberattack. Those people don't much care about the structures that underpin the Australian Public Service, but, when those structures are right, the experiences of Australians are better, and our APS reform agenda is targeted at ensuring the Public Service works best for Australians. We understand that people need to be treated with respect and dignity. We understand too that, when the Australian Public Service is itself treated with respect and dignity, it will do a better job of serving Australians. During the nine years of the coalition government, I was shocked sometimes to hear the way those opposite talked about public servants. I remember one Liberal member referring to public servants as people who 'feed on others', and I remember successive Liberal governments using the Public Service like their own private ATM, a way of making cuts to fund programs elsewhere. Under the Liberals, we saw the Public Service during those initial years of the coalition government literally decimated. There was a period where the Public Service was down a 10th in job numbers since the coalition had come to office, and, as a result of those Public Service cuts, we saw harm done to Australians' ability to access services. The robodebt debacle came as a result of a coalition government that thought that it could make savings by allowing computerised systems to send out debt collection letters, taking the human out of the process. The robodebt royal commission has laid bare the damage that that approach to the Public Service did to Australians. We saw the blow out of waiting times for Veterans' Affairs. We saw the problems of the National Disability Insurance Agency, with people being unable to get the expert support they needed. In agency after agency, the arbitrary Public Service staffing cap meant an overreliance on outside consultants and contractors. Now, there will be appropriate times to use consultants and contractors, but when consultants and contractors were used for policy development or for the delivery of core services, that simply harmed Australians and undermined the ability of the Public Service to build up the expertise it needed. The Independent Review of the Australian Public Service, led by David Thodey, concluded that the APS lacked a unified purpose, was too internally focused and had lost capability in important areas. These problems were demonstrated by the approach of former Prime Minister the member for Cook, who made clear to the Australian Public Service that he saw them simply as a delivery arm. He didn't want frank and fearless advice from them; he simply wanted the execution of coalition policies. That undermining of the professionalism and integrity of the Public Service meant that, under the former government, the Public Service was not sufficiently responsive and agile to meet the changing needs of government. We need an Australian Public Service that is honest, truly independent and empowered to provide the frank and fearless advice that government needs to defend legality and due process. We need an Australian Public Service which is confident and capable, which can demonstrate thought leadership and which is transparent about the state of the service and its ability to deliver. Our government's APS reform agenda has four priorities: first, an APS that embodies integrity in everything it does; second, a Public Service that puts people and business at the centre of policy and services; third, a Public Service that is a model employer; and, fourth, a Public Service that has the capability to do its job well. This bill, the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, supports each of those priorities. It is about restoring the public's trust and faith in government and its institutions. We understand the complexity of the Public Service, with tens of thousands of people working across dozens of different departments and agencies. The work of the Public Service is extraordinarily varied and diverse. This bill enshrines a new APS value of stewardship. The notion of stewardship has a long history among First Nations people. Within the context of the APS, that means that the values will articulate the culture and operating ethos of the Australian Public Service. That stewardship value has been developed through consultation, with responses from over 1,500 Public Service staff across the country, ranging from graduates to senior executives. The stewardship value means: … the APS builds capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. Stewardship involves learning from the past and looking to the future. The APS will also have a single unified purpose statement, providing a common foundation for collaborative leadership, aligned services and shared delivery. Under this bill, agency heads will be required to uphold and promote the new purpose statement as well as the APS values and employment priorities. This bill will limit ministerial directions to agency heads. An impartial Public Service maintains public trust. This bill will strengthen the relevant provision in the Public Service Act to make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual Public Service staffing decisions. That will reaffirm the apolitical role of the Australian Public Service and provide confidence to agency heads to act with integrity in the exercise of their duties. We will not see, under our government, the sorts of behaviour that resulted in the conflict between the member for New England and his departmental head, an issue that finally came to a head when the member for New England attempted to change the Hansard, which undermined the integrity of the Public Service. This bill embeds ongoing measures to build Public Service capability and expertise. We need to build the capability of staff and ensure that that expertise is broadened in areas such as data literacy. I want to commend the head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Dr David Gruen, for his leadership in the APS Data Profession and the way in which professionalisation of data expertise has been so important in the Public Service. We've seen this also in the APS Human Resources profession. The notion of a profession is that it crosscuts departments, builds up expertise across the Public Service and allows high-quality hiring and the nurturing of talent within the Public Service. I hope too that, ultimately, under the Australian Centre for Evaluation that is being established in Treasury, we're able to set up an evaluation profession across the Public Service. This bill will make regular, independent and transparent capability reviews a five-yearly requirement for every department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These capability reviews are independent and forward-looking. The Thodey review called for the Public Service to strike a better balance between short-term responsiveness and investing in deep expertise. This bill will build expertise by requiring the Secretaries Board to commission regular, evidence based, long-term insight reports. This bill will also ensure that the APS employee census, an annual survey, is published in aggregated form, along with an action plan from each agency responding to those results. Again, that's building the culture of transparency and accountability for continuous improvement. This bill will require agency heads to implement measures that enable decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest appropriate classification level. That ensures that decision-making is not raised to a higher level than necessary. That's about improving decision-making processes, reducing bureaucratic bottlenecks, empowering staff and fostering professional development. The Australian government recognises too the importance of a Public Service which is free of discrimination. We know that employment of people with disability in the APS has reduced in the last 30 years, and we need to do more to attract and retain employees with disability. Representation of First Nations people in the Australian Public Service is currently 3.5 per cent—a figure that has hardly budged in two decades. It is government policy that the Australian Public Service meet an ambitious target and increase First Nations employment to five per cent. That involves ensuring that First Nations people have careers in the Public Service of the same duration as non-Indigenous employees. Right now, First Nations people tend to have shorter Public Service careers. There needs to be genuine opportunities for promotion for First Nations people within the Public Service. We need to ensure too that people from non-Anglo backgrounds have the same opportunities for promotions as those who are of an Anglo background. New analysis by economists Robert Breunig, David Hansell and Nu Nu Win studied promotion prospects within the Public Service over a 20-year period, from 2001 to 2020. There are more than 100,000 public servants in their data set, so their data set runs to literally millions of observations. Their analysis asks the question: 'Who gets promoted?' They find that at every promotion point, Anglo people had the edge. From APS4 to APS5 and APS5 to APS6, the gap is about a tenth. From APS6 to EL1, Anglo applicants were a quarter more likely to win promotion. From EL1 to EL2, Anglo applicants were around 50 per cent more likely to get promoted. From EL2 to SES, Anglo applicants were about 60 per cent more likely to get promoted. The Public Service minister, Katy Gallagher, has asked the Australian Public Service Commission to develop a culturally and linguistically diverse strategy, which will address some of these issues. It is of significant concern that non-Anglo public servants in the past had been less likely to win promotion. We are committed to an in-house consulting model. The Australian Centre for Evaluation will increase the evaluation capability across the Public Service. A report prepared for the Thodey review found that evaluation capability was low and 'piecemeal'. So we've established the Australian Centre for Evaluation within Treasury not only to talk about evaluations but to do evaluations. These evaluations will include robust randomised trials. The global commission on evidence, on which I served as a commissioner, has pointed to the need for improving evidence systems around the world. One of the ways in which we're implementing those findings of the global commission on evidence is to establish the Australian Centre for Evaluation in Treasury. Through conducting randomised trials, quasi experiments and other high-quality evaluations, we will raise the evidence bar. We will get a better sense as to what works and what doesn't. That will allow us to scale up effective programs and to redirect funding from ineffective programs towards things that work. A 'what works' philosophy isn't ideological; it's practical. It is about ensuring that the Australian Public Service works for all Australians. Through this in-house consulting model, and through improving the quality of evaluation right across agencies, we are able to do a better job of ensuring that Australians' tax dollars are spent as effectively as possible and that government has the maximum impact on improving the lives of every day Australians. I commend the bill to the House. 12:26 Mr STEVENS 176304 Sturt I rise to speak on the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 and commence by saying that both of my parents, for periods of their careers, served in the Commonwealth Public Service. I am a great advocate for a fierce, frank, fair and impartial public service, serving the interests of the nation and serving the interests of the government of the day, but also being enduring. As much as it is very important that we have elections and a democratic process to ensure the people of this country are choosing at regular intervals the composition of this parliament and the government, it is equally important that we have an enduring continuity that's provided to government from the Public Service. It's extremely important that we take every opportunity to undertake any reforms that enhance and modernise the public sector, and I commend the contribution from the Manager of Opposition Business, where he has indicated that we are a very good faith party when it comes to discussing legislation like this with the government. And we hope that the government are prepared to engage with us in the debate around this bill about ways to potentially improve and enhance it. Of course, it was the coalition government that undertook the review that David Thodey conducted in the interests of identifying opportunities to enhance and improve the way in which the governance of the APS is structured and ensure that everyone working in the APS is very happy and comfortable and has a pride in serving in the APS because there is that robustness in place. There are some technical parts of this that I won't delve too deeply into, but one of the principles that is touched on in this amendment regards something that a lot of people in the public probably don't recognise: it is vitally important that politicians don't interfere in or have a role in the way in which employment decisions are made within the APS—apart from with the heads of departments, which, quite rightly and appropriately, are accountable to the political leadership. It is not the place for political leadership to influence the way in which employment decisions are made within the departments. It is vitally important to have that fierce, frank and fearless advice from the public service. We don't want a circumstance where public servants feel that they should tell ministers and political leaders what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear. That is one of the great things about an enduring public service: you can rely on them—you should be able to rely on them, and I believe in this country you can rely on them—to always ensure that ministers and decision-makers are being given the information they need to make the best decisions possible. There are some notable examples of very poor decision-making and that was absolutely because those principles weren't followed. One of the great scandals in the history of the Commonwealth government, in the Whitlam government, was the Khemlani loans affair, when proper due process was completely abandoned. Let's just reflect on what happened there. Sir Frederick Wheeler was an extremely famous, lifelong Commonwealth public servant who, in 1971, was appointed as the Secretary of the Treasury and served with great distinction and knighted for his service to the Commonwealth and the Public Service. Rex Connor, the minister at the time, decided that the usual way in which the Commonwealth raised funds through borrowing didn't need to apply to him, that he had a better way of going out and obtaining funds for the Commonwealth, completely outside a provision of the Constitution, I might add, and completely outside the proper processes, not only of the loan council but of the parliament in decisions to encumber the government with billions of dollars of debt—and I use the term 'billions' in 1974 terms, not 2023 terms—billions of dollars of borrowing outside proper processes of the Commonwealth Treasury. What happened was a very dubious decision of the Whitlam government, not full cabinet, from recollection, where a small group of ministers decided that Rex Connor should be given authority to engage with a gentleman named Tirath Khemlani, who would go out and raise billions of dollars for the Commonwealth outside the proper structures of government and the proper structures of Treasury. It got worse, of course, because not to be outdone by Rex Connor, the Treasurer of the day, Jim Cairns, also engaged in the process of signing a letter authorising borrowing money in the name of the Commonwealth government without even getting the Prime Minister of the day's—Mr Whitlam—approval, without any process whatsoever. That's the way the Whitlam government ended up conducting itself, deciding they could just borrow money and give letters of authority to people to traipse around the planet, saying, 'I act on behalf of Rex Connor or Jim Cairns, the Treasurer of Australia, and I'm here to engage in a loan agreement with you for billions of dollars for the Commonwealth of Australia. I don't feel the need to inform my cabinet colleagues or have proper approval of executive council. I don't feel the need to engage with the Treasury department,' which are pretty experienced in borrowing money from the Commonwealth of Australia because no-one but them was ever doing it until these two characters came along. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 Do you rise on a point of order, member for Bruce? Mr Hill 86256 Yes, I was just trying to understand standing order 66(a) to see if you would like to talk about robodebt? The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 The member for Bruce, take your seat. Mr Hill 86256 It is nice to hit a nerve. I am allowed to seek an intervention. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 I am aware of the standing orders. The member on his feet has sought the call. He is being relevant to the bill before the House. You are the next speaker. You will have your opportunity to ask your questions of the minister after that. I understand there is provision within the standing order to ask for an intervention. Actually, member for Sturt, would you accept an intervention? Mr Stevens 176304 No. I would rather keep talking about the Whitlam government and the illegal behaviour of former Whitlam government ministers when it came to the raising of funds outside of the appropriate processes that occur within the Australian Public Service. Because we are here to talk about frank, fearless advice from the Australian Public Service, and it is important that we the worst example of breaking that principle and that covenant, which is what Connor, Cairns and the Whitlam government were engaged in. They were found out, ultimately. It obviously was a significant scandal. Jim Cairns was ultimately sacked by Gough Whitlam, sacked from the Whitlam government. That takes some doing. You really have to hit rock bottom to not be good enough to be in the company of all those characters. But poor Sir Frederick Wheeler, the Secretary of the Treasury at the time, was left in the humiliating and embarrassing situation where he was informed, through established financial channels, that there were ministers of the Crown out there seeking to raise funds outside the proper authoritative channels, to encumber the Commonwealth of Australia. I don't think the full consequence of that was ever properly meted out against the two gentlemen involved there. That was a different era, when the change of government meant that sleeping dogs were left to lie in some ways. A proper full inquiry would potentially have identified conduct that could have even been criminal there, but we'll never know. But it is such a salient and important reminder that proper, established channels are absolutely vital and that the Australian Public Service should always be empowered and supported by everyone to be frank and fearless and non-political. I believe that we have that circumstance with the APS. I think there is a lot of merit in aspiring to having the entirety of your career in the Australian Public Service. One of the great things about the Public Service is that you can enter it as a graduate, through an intake program, and expect to serve your entire career in the Public Service. I think that's a noble aspiration. We have the benefit of people with decades of experience in their departments and in the Public Service. When they ultimately enter those senior positions, they have spent a life serving in a variety of ways and gently developing and maturing their understanding of government areas of policy expertise. I'll conclude on a point that is raised in this bill: the principle of re-empowerment of the Public Service, away from consultants and the outsourcing of decision-making. I think there has been a drift, over decades, across multiple governments, towards looking for opportunities to engage external providers to come in and do reviews and analyses of ways in which particular difficult problems can be addressed. I think politicians at times like to be able to say, for example, 'We got KPMG in, and they did this review and said we should do all these sorts of things, and their logo is in the top corner of this report, which means that it's got some kind of greater robustness than something undertaken internally.' I actually dispute and reject that, because I think the subject matter experts in these areas are well and truly within the Public Service. I think the Public Service is at its best when the political leadership has confidence in it and gives confidence to it and says, 'We don't need some external consultant at extremely high cost to come in and tell us how to address a challenge or a problem that you are actually an expert in.' Invariably, of course, the people working for the consultancies are former public servants, so we just engage them at much higher cost than we did when they were salaried to the Commonwealth, to give an answer that we could get from the Commonwealth. There are certainly times when and reasons why external, impartial and independent sources of analysis and information should be sought, but I think that we should be re-empowering the Public Service at every opportunity. They should have our confidence that they will be the first port of call for developing and providing solutions and suggestions to government. To the extent to which this bill may be able to facilitate that, that would be tremendous, but, as the member for Bradfield, the Manager of Opposition Business, has said, we in the coalition, when it comes to this bill, would like to engage further with the government. We haven't had the opportunity yet to talk to them about not only what's in this bill but broader elements of the Thodey review. It's a review that we commissioned in government and that we have broad support for. We hope that we will be able to engage with the government, through this bill and other opportunities, to all work together to enhance and empower our Public Service. 12:39 Mr HILL 86256 Bruce The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is the next step in rebuilding the Australian Public Service after, frankly, a decade of degradation, disrespect, disregard and decay. I thought of those four 'd' words, but, having listened to the previous contribution, I'd have to add 'denial'. I've said before that Christopher Pyne sent that member here to make us miss Christopher Pyne, as he would certainly win the boring Olympics! But really, that level of denial about the decade that is gone, the privatisation by stealth, the attacks on the Public Service's independence, the politicisation, the appointment of mates, the overuse of consultants and the logo fetish without taking any responsibility. He waffled on for 10 minutes about the Whitlam government 50 years ago—nothing about robodebt. I'm still waiting for anyone over there to apologise for that disgraceful scandal in public administration perpetrated on their watch. They want to talk as if that's somehow the fault of the Public Service. Great societies have great public services, and great public services need great public servants. It's an honourable profession. If there's one word that I'd use to characterise how the government should see its responsibilities with respect to the Australian Public Service, I'd say 'stewardship'. That means understanding that the Public Service is a form of societal capital. It's been built up over years, decades or indeed a century, and the government of the day must understand their responsibility to leave the Public Service in as good or better shape than they found it for the governments, the societies and the community that comes afterwards. The Public Service is Australia's institutional memory. Really, you cannot contract out your brain, much as this mob have tried with the overuse of the big four consulting firms to do things which can and only should be done by skilled public servants. As the previous speaker said—I couldn't disagree with a lot of the substance, it's just the denial about the level of responsibility which the previous government bears for the state we find ourselves in—it's the Public Service that society rightly expects to remember the public policy lessons of decades past. Only the Public Service should and could be expected to remember the lessons of royal commissions from the 1920s and the 1930s, the history of relations with foreign governments and so much more. Only the Public Service, not private consultants, is bound by those eternal values of impartiality, accountability, ethical advice and decision-making. I want to read a quote from a book by Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land. It's just a few sentences: Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them. Frankly, if anyone thinks that governments are going to be challenged, provoked and advised in that way with a set of foundational public values by the big four consulting firms or so-called independent contractors then they've got rocks in their head. It is the role of the Public Service to give governments frank and fearless advice, whether they like it or not. We hear the words, but the former government set a culture of fear and disrespect and disregard over the Public Service so that, as we saw through the robodebt royal commission, they were frankly too scared and cowered to give the government advice which they needed to hear. Those values of public service and advising in the public interest contrast with the record of the Liberals: of privatisation, of contracting out, of wasting literally billions of dollars on overheads for labour-hire workers, casual workers and the big four consulting firms—a global cancer on public services right around the world—and of casualisation. Their record is the very opposite of stewardship. Probably the tool which is most responsible for the situation we find ourselves in was Tony Abbott's policy of staff caps, continued by all of them for 10 years—the ASL caps. It was privatisation by stealth. Here's a fact: when Tony Abbott and the Liberals were elected, their one policy for the Australian Public Service, literally their only policy, was to cut the number of public servants by 15,000. Why? It bore no relationship to service models, delivery, outcomes or society's needs. It was because that was the number that we had when John Howard left office. That was it. That was the rationale. So in all the time after John Howard left office in 2007 to when we came to government, the population of the country had grown, we had an ageing population, we had the new NDIS, we had deteriorating strategic circumstances requiring more investment in defence and myriad needs, yet in real terms the Public Service was cut by 25 per cent. Opposition members interjecting— Mr HILL 86256 See, they yell and they scream and they don't want to hear it. When you cut the Public Service, yet Australia has grown, you say to secretaries and government departments, 'To get the work done, you have to contract this out.' That is their only choice. In a private business, to randomly control one of your cost inputs, or one of your levers, is completely irrational. But that's what those opposite did to the Public Service. If we were writing emojis into Hansard, at this point we'd have 'facepalm', 'head explosion' and a few others that I probably won't mention. What happened, though? With this privatisation by stealth, we've inherited government departments with thousands upon thousands of casual labour hire workers—permanently temporary, a shadowy shadow workforce, sitting there at desks doing the same work as the public servants sitting alongside them. But the private labour hire companies clip the ticket on the way through—literally thousands of them. In this budget the government put forward an initiative to convert 3,000 of these people to permanent jobs, with a saving over the next four years of $800 million. Through the audit committee, which I've been a member of for seven years, we proved, year after year and inquiry after inquiry, that those opposite wasted billions of dollars. That is on the national debt for the next generation to repay because of their ideology of privatisation and their hatred of and disregard for the notion of a public service and the public sector. It is based on a flawed view that somehow the private sector is always more efficient. It's just not true; it's rubbish—as, interestingly, the previous speaker actually acknowledged, without taking any responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in. I will say: there is absolutely a role for good consultants, commercial advice, a fresh set of eyes, sometimes surge capacity, international lessons and jurisdictional comparisons. There is expertise from time to time that you don't have in the Public Service, and that's perfectly fine. But let's not pretend: the billions of dollars of work that flowed at great expense and great profit to the big four consulting firms was body shopping, as it's called—stuff which should and could have been done far cheaper within the Public Service, stuff like grant assessments, business cases and business plans. Why on earth was this stuff—low-level routine rubbish, frankly—to contract out, given to the big four consulting firms? It was a false economy from the so-called party of fiscal discipline over there with a trillion dollars of Liberal debt—wasted money. Labor's policy, unashamedly, is to remove the staff caps and save money—who knew! You employ more public servants in the right areas and you actually save money—a thing those opposite still fail to accept. They say all the stuff but they don't get the core point; they created the mess because of their ideology. We are unashamedly reinvesting in the Public Service. We heard the start of a scare campaign earlier this year from the Leader of the Opposition. Remember him in question time: 'Labor is employing 10,000 more public servants.' He started that line, and then the PwC scandal erupted—haven't heard that line since! I think that's driven home the point to the public: yes, we can save money and rebuild the capability of the Public Service now and for the next generation by bringing some of that work in-house. Wait and see whether that scare campaign returns! There's also—and the previous speaker touched on this—what I've termed the logo fetish. I hope if something good comes from this disgraceful scandal at PwC, it's that, once and for all, the media, the public and people in this place, and, frankly, ministers, get over the logo fetish. I've been a senior public servant myself. I've had the experience with Labor and Liberal governments that, when you do a piece of work and you're an expert in the area and you send it up, and they go, 'I'm not so sure about that'—it was worse with the Liberal governments but not across the board—you then go to KPMG or PwC or EY or one of them, and say, 'Can you do this bit of work; here's what I want you to do,' and they put your work with their logo on it, and, somehow, it's a form of magic. There's a demand side to this equation, not just a supply issue. That's something we all need to take some responsibility for. It leads to my next point: there's no such thing as an independent consultant. It is a fiction. It is a fantasy. The Auditor-General said that very clearly to the parliament a number of times through the public accounts and audit committee. He does not accept that there's an independent consultant. There's not. Like I said, there's a legitimate use, but, at the end of the day, you get the draft report. I've had that experience myself when we had a minister of the other persuasion who said 'No, all program evaluations have to be done by an external firm.' So you put it out for $75,000—a cheap bit of work, frankly—and get it back on a Friday night. It's due back on a Sunday and it's rubbish. Then you look, and the firm has sold us back someone who, frankly, you got rid of about a year ago because they weren't any good. They did this work. You sit there and make tracked changes on a Sunday. They accept them and give it back to you, and that's the independent report. That's too often what goes on. That's a frank exposition of the reality. There is no such thing as an independent consultant. You can partner with consultants. You can get external capability. You can get grunt. You can get intellectual experience. But they're not independent, and we should stop pretending that they are when we're paying the bill. This bill responds to the independent review of the APS led by Mr David Thodey, the former CEO of Telstra. It was commissioned by the former Liberal government. It was nice to hear that they now say they support it, because they wouldn't implement it. Prime Minister Turnbull commissioned it. Then they got the report, and Prime Minister Morrison went 'Well, we're not doing that; the Public Service is here to shut up and do what they're told.' That is basically what he said to them. In the first address as Prime Minister, he said: 'We'll do the policy. You'll do the implementing.' In a narrow sense, of course that's true. Of course governments decide. But it is the Public Service's responsibility to brief governments whether they want to hear it or not. That's part of how our system of government works. The Public Service does not just work for executive government. It was created in the Constitution and it's also accountable to this parliament separate and different from its accountability to ministers. Like I said, frank and fearless advice is so critical. The final thing I would say on the notion of the APS value of stewardship is that it's incredibly important that we add that value in as a new Public Service value. The APS values articulate the culture and the operating ethos of the APS. They reflect the expectations between public servants and the government, the parliament and the community. They should change very slowly. They really should stand the test of time and they shouldn't be changed lightly, so it is a significant thing that the government is legislating a new value. It was developed through extensive consultation and input from over 1,500 APS staff across the country, from graduates to senior executives, and it outlines the stewardship value as meaning 'The APS builds capability and institutional knowledge and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does.' All APS employees, from the last person in the door last week at the most junior level to the most senior secretary, the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, are bound by those values. Unlike consultants, it is the Public Service, which the public ultimately can trust, that is bound by those values. Stewardship involves learning from the past and looking into the future. It's actually a conservative value because it involves conservation of the capital you've inherited—the knowledge which should be valued—as well as cultivation, leaving things in a better place than you found them, seeing your role as part of the whole, preserving public trust and promoting the public good. It also has deep roots in Australia. It's a First Nations Australians value, with our country's original stewards caring for the country over tens of thousands of years and untold generations. And so, whilst it's a value that this legislation is inserting or imposing on all public servants to be accountable for, I will close close to where I started. It's also a value that governments—this government and governments that will come after us—and secretaries must also hold dear for their responsibilities to steward the Public Service for the next generation. 12:54 Ms CHANEY 300006 Curtin The need to reform the Public Service is pretty clear. The recent robodebt and PwC scandals have blown wide open the fact that the APS is not functioning as it should. Is it the bastion of frank and fearless advice it's meant to be? Does it have the intellectual capital required to be the main source of advice to government? The Thodey review, to which this bill responds, says that the answers to those questions is no. But I also think that this legislation is an inadequate and untimely response to the problem. The Public Service Act already sets accountability as a Public Service value and says that the APS is open and accountable to the Australian community. The act sets out, as a main objective, to establish an apolitical Public Service that is efficient and effective in serving the government, the parliament and the Australian public. But after years of resourcing neglect, Australian departments do not have the capability or the permission to live up to this objective. For decades, governments have demanded more efficiencies within departments. This means reduced resources with increased expectations. The long-term effect of demanding more output with less budget has resulted in a hollowing out of the public service. The government has a huge task ahead of it in rebuilding the Public Service. It is going to take decades of concerted effort to get departments to where they should be. But this bill is not the right way to start, nor is it coming at the right time. I want to make it clear that none of my comments are intended to reflect on the public servants within the APS who turn up to work every day and commit to performing their obligations with the greatest of care. Particularly in the last few years of COVID response and restrictions, departmental staff have been working above and beyond. My comments are about the fundamental structures, hierarchies and practices that have evolved within the Public Service that need reform. The Thodey review confirmed in 2019 the finding that had been made a number of times in recent years that APS capability is no longer fit for purpose. The Thodey review noted a weakened Public Service results in weakened service delivery for Australians, and that's the key issue. Yes, the Public Service needs to be delivering advice and support to government, but it is also the interface between government and the Australian people. The Thodey review report says a rundown public service results in 'direct and adverse impacts on the APS's ability to deliver for the community'. That report outlined two fundamental concerns: firstly, that there has been a trend of outsourcing core ongoing Public Service work to contractors; and, secondly, that the APS is suffering from creeping politicisation. This could not have been more accurately illustrated than through the PwC and robodebt sagas of the last few months. We have all borne witness to the ongoing investigation and extensive media coverage of external contractor PwC's use of confidential information acquired in 2015 while assisting the government in drafting new multinational tax laws. So many questions have been raised about the interaction between sensitive government policy and the private sector. It has been revealed that PwC had more than half a billion dollars worth of contracts with the federal government in the last few years. The issue has highlighted how dependent the APS on the consulting industry, which is entirely inappropriate—and I say that as an ex-consultant myself. This is exactly what the Thodey recommendations identified, and these were generally ignored by the former government in 2019. The APS is bound by values and codes of conduct and has an obligation to serve the public and the government of the day. External contractors have none of these requirements. More importantly, the outsourcing of core work to contractors hollows out the ability of the APS to advise. It removes the core purpose of the APS. Outsourcing core work redesigns an APS into a briefing hub that relies on external advice rather than supporting a workforce that can provide quality, considered and situationally aware advice. A well-resourced, capacity-rich APS will always provide better advice than a contractor and won't leak secrets to clients. The robodebt debacle goes to Thodey's second fundamental concern: the creeping politicisation of the APS. The horrors of the robodebt scheme and the effect of this scheme on the lives of so many Australians cannot be underestimated. But how did this happen? How did a theoretically apolitical APS that delivers frank and fearless advice manage to implement this unlawful and immoral scheme? Well, it didn't. The APS that implemented this scheme was following the instructions of government without challenging or questioning the principles. The APS that implemented this scheme was not serving the public. In 2017, a Senate committee found that a 'lack of procedural fairness is evident in every stage' of the program, which 'should be put on hold until all procedural fairness flaws are addressed', but nothing happened. Robodebt was implemented as directed by government without frank and fearless advice from the APS. This is the problem that we should be addressing. So what does this bill actually do? We've just heard from the member for Bruce about these problems but not much about how this bill will actually change anything. At the outset I do applaud the Albanese government in its announced commitment to rebuild the APS. It requires a long-term commitment to the task. I acknowledge the narrative that this bill is the first step, but it's not a step. This amounts to platitudes which will do nothing to operationalise a rebuilding. If rebuilding the APS was akin to rebuilding a house, this bill is choosing the colour of the roof tiles. I worry that this bill will detract from significant reform as we all pat ourselves on the back because we've started. So what does this bill actually do? Firstly, the bill legislates a few of the rhetorical elements of the Thodey review but does not include the substantive recommendations. Secondly, it adds in an APS value of stewardship, which is not a Thodey recommendation, given that stewardship is a function, not a value. It requires an APS purpose statement to be prepared by the Secretaries Board. This seems like labour-intensive and arduous lip service when the APS is already bound by the Public Service Act and APS Values. The third thing this bill does is require agency heads to create a work environment that enables decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest possible classification level. I'm assuming that this is to attempt to dilute some of the top-heavy decision-making in the APS hierarchy, but it makes no sense to me that this, which is not a Thodey recommendation, is a priority. It's not clear that it even belongs in legislation. I worry that the government is touting this bill as part of long-term thinking when actually it's a piecemeal, knee-jerk reaction for the need to action. So what actually does need to happen? Before we can even begin to have conversations about how to rebuild the APS, we need to hear the response from the robodebt royal commission. Understanding the failures of the past is essential to equipping us for the future. If we really want to improve and fix the organisations in front of us, we need to know what went wrong, which is why I'm introducing a second reading amendment, which has been circulated in my name, to suspend any further work on this bill until the robodebt royal commission has reported. There is no point undertaking royal commissions if we don't hear from them before deciding how to respond. The royal commission report is expected in a few weeks. Surely, it's worth listening to it before deciding on the highest priority reforms. Secondly, we need to respond to the Thodey review—and not just the rhetorical elements. We need legislation or regulations that strengthen the power of the APS Commissioner, clarify the distinct roles of the Secretary of PM&C and the APS Commissioner and strengthen the merit based processes for appointments and termination of secretaries. Thirdly, we need to undertake a comprehensive review of the APS Values, preferably after receiving the robodebt royal commission report. A comprehensive review should focus on each group of employees and their relationship with government and the parliament, their relationship with the public, their workplace relationships and ethical behaviour. Fourthly, the government needs to commit to long-term, substantial resourcing of the APS. This means enough money for the APS to hire well and when it needs to, enough money that the APS can develop or redevelop in-house expertise and won't have to farm out to contractors for advice and enough money that public servants are not skewing their programs, advice or delivery in favour of political goodwill and therefore budget. Fifthly, we need to re-establish the correct relationship between government, the APS and the public. The APS must be regarded as a significant institution in its own right as part of responsible government under the Constitution. I refer to Andrew Podger AO's comments in this regard and defer to his experience. He said: The partnership between Secretaries and Agency Ministers is therefore critical: it requires trust and mutual respect, and confidence in the confidentiality of communications between the two. Equally, the degree of independence of the APS, and hence of Secretaries, must be recognised. The relationship should be along the lines of trustees, each respecting the other's role and responsibilities; not quite equals (as the APS does 'serve the Government') but not the 'principal-agent' relationship which has emerged since the 1980s let alone the 'master-servant' relationship which I have detected in more recent times. Finally, we need to make ensure that APS leaders are fully equipped to lead. Concerns about leadership and leadership responsibilities within the APS have been raised regularly over the last two decades. It seems ludicrous that we've been talking about leadership concerns in the APS for two decades. I'm told these conversations have resulted in some strengthening of requirements and expectations and improvements in training and development for APS leaders. Thodey recommended that 'performance management of secretaries should be robust and comprehensive', and 'robust processes should govern the termination of secretaries appointments'. I urge the government to prioritise the reform of APS leadership and to ensure departmental secretaries are appointed on merit, with a full understanding of purpose and responsibilities and a commitment to the rebuilding of expertise and capability in their departments. In conclusion, and to quote the Thodey review again: APS capability has arguably deteriorated and is not fit for the future. The approach to all aspects of workforce management lacks strategic direction and is below best practice in many areas. But I ask the government to consider these three points: (1) reform of the APS is essential for our government and our democracy to function, so it should be done comprehensively and strategically; (2) the timing of reform is critical and we must wait for the report of the robodebt royal commission in order to learn from past mistakes to prioritise our reform for the future; and (3) reform must be substantive, not rhetorical and it needs to be backed by appropriate resourcing and budget. We need government to act decisively. I move: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "The House declines to give the bill a second reading until such time as the report on the Robodebt Royal Commission is handed down". The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 Do you have a seconder? Ms 286042 I second the motion. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 I thank the member for Wentworth. The original question was that this bill now be read a second time. To this the honourable member for Curtin has moved an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I'll state the question in the form that the amendment be disagreed to. 13:07 Ms STANLEY 265990 Werriwa I rise to make my contribution to the debate on the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. Millions of Australians interact with the Australian Public Service every day. They are helped, advised and assisted by hardworking, loyal and knowledgeable people who care deeply about the job they do and how they can support everyday people in the best way possible, whether it's interactions with Centrelink, Medicare, the National Library for research, applying for a tax file number or assistance with the NDIS, and so many more different touchstones. They encounter professionals who make a positive difference every day. These dedicated staff who work for the Public Service are important to every Australian. A strong, well-funded, fiercely independent Public Service is vital for good government, and it's also vital for a healthy democracy. This bill amends the Public Service Act 1999 so that the Albanese government can take the steps necessary to rebuild the Australian Public Service, which, unfortunately, has not always enjoyed the support it has deserved in the recent past. This bill and the Albanese government's broader APS reform agenda are to restore the public's faith and trust in government and its institutions. It is unhealthy to be second-guessing decisions made, and furthermore distrust in public institutions is not healthy for the good working of our society. A Public Service that provides advice to government without fear or favour ensures that decisions made by government will always be in the best interests of the society it serves. They avoid costly missteps and keep government running smoothly and efficiently. Trust is vital for a democracy to function properly and deliver a better life for the people who live within its boundaries. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 will strengthen the core purpose and values of the APS and ensure that the APS has the capabilities and expertise necessary to effectively function and deliver accountability and transparency in our institutions. It will do this in four ways: add a new APS value of stewardship that all employees must uphold; require the secretaries to oversee the development of a single unifying APS purpose statement to be renewed every five years; require all agency heads to uphold and promote the new APS purpose statement in addition to the APS Values and the APS Employment Principles; and strengthen and reaffirm the APS apolitical nature by strengthening the act to make clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. The bill will ensure that there is an apolitical merit based approach to APS management matters devoid of political interference. This is key to maintaining an impartial public service. This bill will also build the capacity and expertise of the APS. It will do this in two ways: by making regular independent and transparent capability reviews a five-yearly requirement for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian tax office; and require secretaries' boards to commission regular long-term insight reports to explore medium- and long-term trends, risks and opportunities for Australia. This bill will also introduce the following two amendments: it will require publication of agency APS census results and an action plan that responds to these results, and require agency heads to implement measures to enable decisions to be made by employees at the lowest possible classification for those decisions. This, in turn, will reduce unnecessary hierarchy and empower APS employees. The new APS value of stewardship will articulate the culture operating ethos of the APS. It will reflect the expectations of the relationship between public servants, the government, the parliament and the Australian community. This value is the result of extensive consultation, with the input of over 1,500 APS staff of all levels, graduates to senior executives, across all of Australia. Informed by these consultations, the bill outlines the stewardship value meaning, which will build the APS capability and institutional knowledge and support the public interest, now and into the future, by understanding the long-term intent of what the Public Service does. In 2019, the Thodey independent review of the Australian Public Service was given to government. It was a 384-page document detailing the challenges that the Australian Public Service was facing but also what could be done to ensure it was fit for purpose and served the Australian people. The review concluded that, whilst the APS was not broken, it lacked a unified purpose, was too internally focused and had lost capability in key areas. The APS needed substantial changes so that it could better respond and prepare Australia. The bill responds to the recommendations 2a and 2b, 5, 6 and 32 of the Thodey review. The Albanese government will also implement policies to improve the employment of First Nations people within the Australian Public Service. For the last two decades the percentage of First Nations people employed by the APS has been around 3.5. The Albanese government intends to increase this to at least five per cent. The APS will look at culture and commit to actions to ensure that the APS is attractive to First Nations people and that it provides them with rewarding careers. Rewarding careers that will mean First Nations people will be encouraged to stay and build their careers within the Public Service, especially in leadership roles. Since the Thodey review was given to government, Australia has faced the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing national disasters, turbulent global economic conditions and increasing geopolitical tensions. The importance of an agile and adaptive APS has become increasingly necessary for the proper functioning of government services. The importance of the values and principles of the APS—impartiality, commitment to service, accountability, and respectful and ethical commitments—have also been highlighted. Core values that underpin the APS are the values that we expect from our Public Service. We want a public service that acts with a clear purpose, with the long-term implications of decisions and the actions at the forefront, and we want it to be fearless in giving impartial and truthful advice when needed. It is for those reasons that the Albanese government is delivering on several of the recommendations in the Thodey review for this bill, delivering on the amendments to the Public Service Act so that reform is embedded in the legislation that guides and governs our public service. I also want to take a moment to personally thank all the public services that work to support our community in Werriwa and around Australia in whatever capacity they do. I want to note how much your work is appreciated and how much it is needed to improve how we live and how we interact with each other. I commend the bill to the House. 13:15 Mr GOSLING 245392 Solomon The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 makes amendments to the Public Service Act 1999 and is a key element of the Albanese government's APS reform agenda. The need for ambitious and enduring reform of the APS is clear. The independent review of the Australian Public Service, led by Mr David Thodey, concluded that the APS lacked a unified purpose, was too internally focused and had lost capability in important areas. The Thodey review called for a Public Service that is trusted, future fit, responsive and agile to meet the changing needs of government and the community with professionalism and, of course, integrity. This bill delivers on several important recommendations of the Thodey review, recognising that the case for reform has only strengthened in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, geopolitical disruptions and increasing economic volatility have highlighted the importance of an APS that acts with agility and common purpose. The experience of recent years has also highlighted the enduring importance of the existing APS values to be impartial, committed to service, accountable, respectful and ethical. To model these values and embody integrity, the APS needs to be honest, truly independent and empowered to provide frank and fearless advice and to defend legality and due process. The APS needs to listen to and engage with the Australian community, developing policy and delivering services with empathy and in a spirit of partnership. We should expect greater transparency about the state of the Public Service and its ability to deliver. That helps build trust in government—in the institutions of our great nation. We want the APS to be confident and capable, acting with a clear purpose, demonstrating thought leadership and taking a long-term view of the implications of each decision and action. Reform of such a large and complex organisation takes time, and it takes sustained effort and commitment. That is why the Albanese government is introducing amendments to the Public Service Act to embed reform in the legislation that guides and governs the Public Service. The Albanese government's APS reform agenda has four priorities. They are: firstly, an APS that embodies integrity in everything it does; second, an APS that puts people and business at the centre of policy and services; third, that the APS is a model employer; fourth, an APS that has the capability to do its job well. This bill supports each of these priorities. At its heart, this bill and the Albanese government's broader APS reform agenda is about restoring the public's trust in our Public Service, in government and in our institutions. The reforms in this bill will strengthen the APS's core purpose and values, build the capability and expertise of the APS and support good governance, accountability and transparency in our nation. The Australian Public Service is a complex organisation made up of tens of thousands of people working across dozens of departments and agencies. The work, naturally, of the APS is incredibly varied and diverse. To ensure that the APS works as an integrated organisation—as one APS—the Thodey review recommended strengthening the APS's purposes and values. Amendments in the bill deliver on this intent and support the government's APS reform priority to create an APS that acts with integrity in everything it does. This bill adds a new APS value of stewardship. The APS values articulate the culture and operating ethos of the APS. They reflect expectations of the relationship between public servants and the government, the parliament and the Australian community. The new stewardship value has been developed through extensive consultation, with responses from over 1,500 APS staff from across the country, all the way from the graduates to the senior executives. Informed by this consultation, the bill outlines the stewardship value as meaning, '… the APS builds capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does.' By requiring all APS employees to uphold stewardship, the bill will strengthen the important and enduring role that all public servants play as stewards. Stewardship involves learning from the past and looking to the future. It involves conservation and cultivation, leaving things in a better place than you found them. It involves seeing your role as part of the whole, preserving public trust and promoting the public good. Stewardship has deep roots in Australia. As all honourable members know, First Nations Australians are the country's original stewards. There is no doubting that; that is a fact. Caring for country over tens of thousands of years and multiple generations is what First Nations Australians have done. To compliment the addition of stewardship as an APS value, this bill will require the Secretaries Board To oversee the development of a single, unifying purpose statement for the APS. This will provide a common foundation for collaborative leadership, align services and share delivery across the many departments and agencies that make up the APS. It will contribute to a shared sense of purpose for tens of thousands of APS employees, reinforcing a one-APS approach. This purpose statement will be developed through consultation by the service, for the service and it will not be set in stone. The bill requires that it be refreshed every five years, accounting for the APS's evolving role over time. The purpose statement should guide the way the APS works. The first APS value is for the APS to be impartial, and this value is crucial to the successful operation of the service and to maintaining public trust. It is important that we defend it. Having an apolitical and merit based approach to APS employment matters devoid of political interference is key to maintaining an impartial Public Service. This bill will strengthen the relevant provision in the Public Service Act to make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. This will reaffirm the apolitical role of the APS and provide confidence to agency heads to act with integrity in the exercise of their duties and powers. The bill also embeds ongoing measures to build the APS's capability and expertise. Talented, committed people are the foundation of our Public Service. To be future fit, the APS needs to continually build the capability of its staff to create a skilled and confident workforce to remain a robust and trusted institution that delivers modern policy and service solutions for decades to come. The APS needs to be future focused, looking ahead to solve the challenges facing Australia. The Thodey review noted concerns that the capability of the APS has been eroded over time. It also called for the APS to strike a better balance between short-term responsiveness and investing in the deep expertise required to grapple with long-term strategic policy challenges. This bill will help the APS to maintain that balance and build expertise by requiring the Secretaries Board to commission regular, evidence-based, long-term insight reports developed through a process of public consultation. These apolitical and evidence-based reports will encourage the APS to engage with academics, experts and the broader Australian community on long-term policy challenges. By partnering in this transparent way, the APS can build trust in its expertise and understanding of cross-cutting issues that matter to all Australians. Transparency can shine a light on the culture and make-up of the APS and prompt changes to ensure it remains a great place to work for people from all walks of life. The Thodey review called for the APS to adopt best-practice ways of working by reducing unnecessary hierarchy and empowering APS employees to make decisions. This recommendation was prompted by findings that decisions involving risk tended to be increasingly escalated upwards in the APS. This bill introduces a healthy counterweight to that tendency by including a provision to require agency heads to implement measures that enable decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest appropriate classification level. To be clear, this isn't about pushing work or risk down to an inappropriate level. Instead, it is about ensuring that decision-making is not raised to a higher level than is necessary. Ultimately, it is about improving decision-making processes, reducing bureaucratic bottlenecks, empowering staff and fostering professional development. All of those things will be done with an appropriate level of shifting decisions and empowering employees at the appropriate level. It's important, of course, that managers don't use this as an opportunity to shift work, and I'm sure that they won't. More so, it is to make sure that they're developing their people and no allowing inertia to stop the important work of the Public Service. The challenges facing Australia over the coming decade are immense. The APS will continue to play an integral role in meeting the changing needs of government and the community with professionalism and integrity. The Thodey review provides an important blueprint for ongoing public sector transformation that can endure while adapting to changing needs and circumstances. Our government has responded with its ambitious APS reform agenda. By amending the Public Service Act, this bill advances that agenda significantly and locks in important reforms. Through this and other measures, we can uphold and build the public's trust and faith in government and one of its most important institutions, our Australian Public Service. The APS makes a real difference to the lives of all Australians in delivering essential services, and that's true in my electorate of Solomon, too, where public servants play a very prominent role. I'm glad that I've been successful in having the DFAT office in Darwin increase its footprint in recent times. It's a win for the Northern Territory, helping to deepen our international linkages with our immediate region, especially with Indonesia and Timor-Leste, and it's something we want to see more of. The APS needs to reflect the whole of Australia in its hiring decisions but also in a balanced geographic spread of its regional offices, such as those we proudly host in Darwin. I'd like to highlight in particular the Commonwealth APS Academy campus initiative in data and digital training for entry-level jobs. This APS Academy campus is based at Charles Darwin University, in my electorate, and will provide vocational education and training courses. It will have 300 spots open to Darwin residents wanting a career change or to boost their skills in digital roles in the APS. The academy is set to open this year, with graduate placements to follow in 2024. Like the private sector, the APS is struggling to find enough people with the technical skills to fill roles in the data and digital space. That's why this academy program is the latest positive step in the right direction to deal with this issue and, ultimately, to keep those workers in the APS. The CPSU's NT branch welcomed the announcement of this new APS Academy, with regional secretary Kay Densley saying: New jobs and new opportunities in the Territory are welcomed after years of the Coalition Government's cuts to APS jobs and services. And CDU vice-chancellor Scott Bowman said he was 'delighted' with this innovation. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour, and the member will be granted leave to continue when the debate is resumed. STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 14 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Cowper Electorate: Cost of Living 14 13:30 Mr 279991 Cowper CONAGHAN () (): I'd like to take this time to acknowledge those people who are doing it tough in my electorate: people like Amanda Lee in Boambee East, whose mortgage has increased $100 by a week. Her food bill is up $50 a week, electricity has gone up $50 a week in the past year, and she's on a pension. She is forced to choose between paying those bills and purchasing medication. Craft brewery Wicked Elf in Port Macquarie will close their doors for good this weekend, after 16 years, because the electricity bill is now more than their rent and they can't pass that on to local consumers, who themselves are finding it tough. At the start of last year, we were celebrating the opening of new businesses in my region and the multitude of awards that local producers like Wicked Elf were winning, hopeful about our economic future. Fast forward to June 2023: our communities are rallying together to save flagship brands, and our elderly are living off baked beans. These are not isolated examples. Labor made a lot of promises around the cost of living last year, but people in my electorate are struggling to find a single one that's come to fruition. Why does this government insist on focusing on symbolism and ideology whilst businesses close and pensioners are forced to choose between eating and heating? Stop the distractions and start addressing the issues today. (Time expired) Aged Care 14 13:31 Ms CHESTERS 249710 Bendigo I rise today to give a shout-out to our amazing aged-care workers. Over the last few months, when we've not been in this place, I've had the opportunity to visit a number of aged-care homes in my electorate, and I'm really struck by the dedication and commitment of our aged-care workers: the cleaners, chefs, nurses and patient-care assistants. Everyone that I spoke to during these visits spoke about their love for the job and their respect for the residents. They've had a tough few years with the pandemic, with all of the changes occurring in aged care and with the royal commission, which really put a spotlight on the work that they do. We're now implementing the recommendations of the royal commission, and whilst they all welcome them—they believe that the sector will be better for it—they are still quite anxious about what it means for them and their jobs. They're also very excited and relieved to be getting a decent pay rise. They wanted to thank me and asked that I pass on their thanks to our government for what we've done and how we've backed our aged-care workers. The residents spoke to me about their love for what they call their 'angels' and about the respect that the staff show them. We all owe our aged-care workers a great deal of thanks. Thank you for what you've done over the past few years and what you'll do in the future. You deserve every cent of the pay rise coming to you, and you'll always have a friend and a supporter in the Albanese Labor government. Tibet 15 13:33 Dr SCAMPS 299623 Mackellar Today the Australian parliament is immensely privileged to welcome the Sikyong, the president of the Tibetan government in exile, to our House. In April this year I was deeply honoured to join a cross-party delegation to Dharamsala to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile. Right now, the Tibetan people are facing their own stolen generation with a campaign of assimilation. A recent UN report revealed the rise of Chinese-government-run residential schools in Tibet, where around one million Tibetan children have been mandatorily removed from their families and are now being raised in boarding schools from preschool age. They are not taught in their own language and are permitted little contact with their families. They are thus divorced from their culture, religion and traditions. Another most critical of issues for the Tibetan people is the plan of the Chinese government to intervene in the succession of the 14th Dalai Lama. The succession process is a deeply religious, centuries-old right that lies at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It is unthinkable that this process could be usurped or interfered with in any way for political reasons. The right to religious freedom is as a central tenet of both our democracies, and it is my hope that Australia will continue to stand up for the religious rights of the people of Tibet. Housing 15 13:33 Mr BRIAN MITCHELL 129164 Lyons Yesterday, the Greens and the Liberals voted to delay until mid-October a vote on labour's $10 billion housing package. Greens MPs and senators are telling their voters, many of whom are good, decent, compassionate people, that they haven't rejected the bill; they've only delayed it. But the founders of this country anticipated this sort of game-playing. Under the Constitution, blocking a bill for more than three months counts as a rejection, so the Greens might think they're being cute by blocking the bill instead of voting it down, but there's nothing cute about the real world impacts of their student politics. The unholy alliance between the Greens and the Liberals has blocked 30,000 new homes for vulnerable Australians, including 4,000 homes for women and children escaping domestic violence. It's blocked new homes for veterans and new homes for first responders to live close to work. It's blocked $500 million every year being invested. It's blocked a permanent 1,200 homes every year in Tasmania. The Greens' and Liberal's rejection of labour's housing package means longer delays for people who are living in cars and tents and under bridges—Tasmanians who need our roof over their head now, not when it's politically convenient for the Greens. In Tasmania we have more than 4,000 people on the public housing waiting list, and they need homes now, not in the future. That list is only going to grow because of this unholy alliance between the Liberals and the Greens. (Time expired) Cost of Living 15 13:36 Mr COULTON HWN Parkes This morning my office was contacted by a pensioner from Gunnedah. She was most upset because she lives alone and is terribly concerned about how she's going to manage her living expenses. The Albanese government before the election promised power prices would go down by $275, and exactly the opposite has happened. The impact of that is that people like this lady that contacted my office and making really hard decisions. They're deciding what to turn off. They are very careful just turning on the lights in the room they're using. She's reluctant to turn on her stove to cook a hot meal. She was telling my office this morning how cold it was in Gunnedah, and she's even considering turning off her hot water system. The difficulty as we sit here and we listen to the people from the wealthier suburbs of this country talk about their desire to reduce emissions and use signals for people to use less energy is that on the ground it's the most vulnerable people in the poorer parts of this country that pay the price. They can't tick a box that gives them offsets. Their only way of reducing their emissions is to turn off the power point. Work Experience 15 13:38 Dr GARLAND 295588 Chisholm I want to take a moment in this chamber to highlight the contribution of Charlotte, a talented young woman who undertook work experience in my electorate office in Chisholm last week. Charlotte's a bright young student at Presbyterian Ladies' College in Burwood, which is just across the road from my electorate office. Work experience is a really important part of a student's development. It is crucial to their personal and professional development, giving young people the chance to experience firsthand what it's like to work, enabling them to explore potential career options and make decisions about their future, and we know that work experience also enables students to explore their interests and passions. I was so delighted to be able to help facilitate this experience for Charlotte. Charlotte displayed an impressive level of organisation and attention to detail well beyond her years. Her assistance in updating community databases, media monitoring and collation of mail-out information was incredibly valuable to our office's efficiency and effectiveness in serving our community of Chisholm. Her work ethic and proactive approach meant that our staff faced the challenge of continually finding new tasks for her to assist with. She consistently went above and beyond, seeking ways to contribute further and make a meaningful impact. Charlotte was provided with a copy of the standing orders, which she eagerly embraced and read to cover to cover, which I'm not sure everyone in this place has done! I would like to wish Charlotte and other students undertaking work experience their absolute best for the future, and I thank Charlotte for her contribution. Curtin Electorate: Sustainability 16 13:39 Ms CHANEY 300006 Curtin I'm heartened by the number of people in Curtin who talk to me about their concern for the future of our planet—the massive challenge we face with overconsumption, the changes they are eager to make in their own lives, and also their appetites to get involved with local initiatives, working groups and advocacy. This Saturday, I'm hosting a whole-of-community event, the Curtin Sustainability Fair at the Claremont Showground. This free event will showcase products, ideas and innovations that encourage all of us to make better choices and live more sustainably. We can all make changes, even small ones, to our energy consumption, how we manage our waste, what we recycle and upcycle, how we use water, how we build our homes, how we eat to avoid food waste, and how we remain open to innovation for future generations. In my experience, it's often the young people in Curtin who lead. I'm looking forward to welcoming local high-school students to the fair and hearing their ideas and solutions for championing sustainability. We also asked primary school students to create a piece of artwork that represent sustainability to them. I look forward to seeing 60 of those pieces displayed at the fair so we can view through the eyes of young people the sustainability challenges that lie ahead. Puffett, Mr Bob, AM 16 13:41 Dr REID 300126 Robertson Today I rise to pay tribute to the life and work of Bob Puffett AM, a passionate champion of vocational education and skills development. Bob was a plumber by trade and then moved into teaching plumbing at TAFE. This began a lifelong commitment to elevating the profile of vocational education in New South Wales, and during his illustrious career Bob held the positions of Institute Director of the Sydney Institute of Technology and Assistant Director-General, TAFE, for the Department of Education and Training. He worked hard to make TAFE an institution that strived for excellence so TAFE students would be proud of their trade and themselves. After introducing academic dress at TAFE graduations, Bob said: 'Why not TAFE? We attracted some criticism at the time, but almost overnight the perception of the courses, the pride of the students and the commitment of the staff changed dramatically, and it was a good thing to do.' Bob was also elected chairman of WorldSkills Australia, and was Australia's official delegate to the international WorldSkills movement. In 1998 he was honoured by being made a Member of the Order of Australia for his contribution to technical education. Following his retirement, Bob and his family moved to the Central Coast, where he remained an active member of the community. He was the president of the Bays Community group for 16 years and was instrumental in upgrading the Bays Community Hall and making it accessible for all. I wish to extend my sincere condolences to Bob's family, his son, his daughter and his grandchildren. Vale Bob Puffett, and thank you for your service. King's Birthday Honours 16 13:42 Mr ENTSCH 7K6 Leichhardt I would like to pay tribute to some remarkable individuals from my region who were recognised during this year in the King's Birthday Honours. Firstly I acknowledge Theo Bacalakis, who received the Medal of the Order of Australia for his invaluable work with St Johns Community Care and in the establishment of that organisation. The Cairns Greek Festival exemplifies his passion and dedication to our multicultural society. Mayor Angela Toppin has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia after her tireless commitment to education through her many years as a principal of Cairns, Malanda and Mareeba State High Schools, and now in her ongoing services as the Mayor of the Mareeba Shire Council. We've had recipients of the Australian Police Medal, with Senior Sergeant Jamie Horn and Sergeant David Raymond both receiving the award for their exemplary leadership and commitment to public service. Both officers have served for well over 30 years within the Far North Queensland police service. Leading Seaman Jahlayla Weazel was awarded the Conspicuous Service Medal. Her work in promoting diversity and inclusion in HMAS Supply is commendable and has made a significant impact on the Royal Australian Navy's Indigenous Engagement Plan. Once again, I congratulate them all for their well-deserved recognition in this year's King's Birthday Honours. Vinnies CEO Sleepout 17 13:44 Mr DAVID SMITH 276714 Bean After the parliament rises on Thursday, I will be taking part in my ninth St Vincent de Paul CEO Sleepout. My parliamentary colleague Andrew Leigh will also be taking part. As many of you would know, particularly from your experience today, Canberra winters can be harsh and cold, getting down to as low as minus-six degrees. I've been involved since some here were in short pants. In the last census it was estimated that over 122,000 people in Australia were homeless, of which over 1,500 came from the ACT. By the very nature of this problem, though, the census can only estimate what is likely to be a much larger problem. Many of our fellow Australians are living in severely overcrowded dwellings or supported accommodation, and seven per cent of homeless people were rough sleeping, living in improvised dwellings, tents or sleeping out. So on Thursday, along with hundreds of other community leaders across Australia, I'll be taking part in the annual one-night sleep-out to raise money for Vinnies. But these funds don't solve the housing affordability and supply issues now. There has been welcome news this week. An additional $2 billion is going into social housing now, with $50 million of that coming here to the ACT. This is in addition to historic improvements to rental assistance. But it beggars belief that, despite the current crisis, the Greens have collaborated with those opposite to block the Housing Affordability Future Fund. (Time expired) Early-Onset Bowel Cancer 17 13:45 Mr HOWARTH 247742 Petrie This morning I met with Rachel Bernardo, 38, and Jodie Elisara, 35, both from Deception Bay, and Sarah Chaundy, 33, from Rothwell. All of these women have been diagnosed with early-onset bowel cancer. They're here raising awareness of Bowel Cancer Australia's Never2Young campaign. They, alongside 49 others, are all here trying to spread the word. Bowel cancer is the deadliest cancer for Australians aged 25 to 44 and is the sixth-leading cause of death in Australia. Rachel, diagnosed at just 38, had stomach pains that were dismissed as constipation. Sarah was diagnosed at just 33. When her GP tests revealed some abnormalities, it was suggested that she change her diet and monitor. Without her private health cover, she would not be here today. Jodie, diagnosed at 35 after her symptoms had been dismissed for five years, had a 15-month wait for a colonoscopy in a Queensland public hospital, when the recommended clinical time frame is 30 days. All of us here in this place have a chance to advocate. We encourage everyone in our electorates to get checked. If you're over 50, make sure you do the free bowel cancer screening test and return it. Get educated. If you're concerned, get a colonoscopy immediately. We're also advocating for a younger screening age. Philippines Independence Day: 125th Anniversary 17 13:47 Mr GOSLING 245392 Solomon I rise to congratulate the Philippines and the Filipino people on the recent anniversary of the declaration of their independence, which happened 125 years ago. Emilio Aguinaldo oversaw the proclamation of the Philippine Declaration of Independence on 12 June 1898, which was just a few years before our own Federation. Although this declaration wasn't recognised internationally at the time, it kindled a fire in the Filipino people that would lead to their full independence in 1946, and that's when the great friendship between Australia and the Philippines began. President Manuel Roxas and Labor Prime Minister Ben Chiefly exchanged warm letters at that time, and that friendship has gone from strength to strength. Roxas indeed saw Australia as a partner of choice, and today our cooperation is deep and mature, covering defence, security and development, trade and investment, and, of course, strong people-to-people ties that any honourable members with a Filipino community will know well. Across Australia there is a 400,000-strong Filipino community. In my home of Darwin we've got a fantastic Filipino community. I really admire them. They're hard workers. They're good people—good family people. As we step up our security cooperation with the Philippines, we have a trusted partner there. McLennan, Ms Susie, Club Forster 17 13:48 Dr GILLESPIE 72184 Lyne I would like to acknowledge Susie McLennan of Wauchope for her outstanding career as an occupational therapist. She's retiring in July after a 55-year career. Susie is a well-known therapist, honoured and respected by the whole community in Wauchope. She started her career at Mt Wilga Rehabilitation Centre in Hornsby and set up many ADL, activities of daily living, programs, which are now stock standard across occupational therapy. She worked in Canada and attended the international occupational therapy congress, visiting rehabilitation centres and continuing to work there for 18 years. In Australia, she set up the psychogeriatric team at Macquarie Hospital, in Ryde. Thank you so much, Susie, for your dedication and work over the years. Also, I put out a big congratulations to Club Forster, after being recognised at this year's Clubs and Community Awards. Club Forster was named the winner in the mental and social wellbeing category, which recognises all the innovative approaches to supporting and improving mental wellbeing. The Clubs and Community Awards are the New South Wales club industry's premier awards. It really shows the outstanding social contribution that Club Forster has given. Cranbourne Casey Mens Shed 18 13:50 Ms FERNANDO 299964 Holt The Cranbourne Casey Mens Shed is an institution in my electorate of Holt. I was so excited to visit them only a few weeks ago and see firsthand the work they are doing. I found their work to be pristine and quite amazing. I think my favourite piece was a contraption that allowed marbles to be filtered through; I was watching them drop down and bounce across the design. Men's Sheds provide a vital volunteer driven service for men of all ages to come together in a community space to create new things and make new connections. With Men's Health Week just concluding, I couldn't think of a better group in my electorate to speak of. It is important we support groups that support men in such a positive way in our communities. If any Holt locals would like to participate, head to the shed on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 am to 2 pm at 685 North Road, Cranbourne South, to check it out. A big thank you to the whole committee, particularly Rob Adams, for facilitating the visit. I cannot wait to visit you all again. Thank you once again. Pharmacies 18 13:51 Mr GOODENOUGH 74046 Moore Local pharmacies are essential to our community. Labor's 60-day dispensing changes will effectively result in a cut to pharmacy funding of $3.5 billion nationally. That represents $150,000 for every pharmacy across Australia. Our pharmacists were not consulted and will struggle to afford this. It will mean cuts to services which are currently provided free of charge, including packing medication and Webster-paks; free health checks; the issuing of medical certificates; home delivery of medication; and child health advice. There are 400 types of medicines currently in short supply. Sixty-day dispensing means that some patients will be able to access a double supply while others will struggle to access medicines to treat common ailments such as cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety and epilepsy. One-hundred and fifty-eight medicines listed for 60-day dispensing are in shortage. Shadow minister for health Senator Anne Ruston visited Moore and joined me to hear the concerns of local pharmacists, many of whom face going out of business. Pharmacists support affordable medicines but fear the policy changes by Labor will lead to cuts in patient services and hurt the viability— (Time expired) Human Rights: Tibet 18 13:53 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie I am delighted to recognise the visit to Australia by Penpa Tsering, the Sikyong elected leader of the Tibetan government in exile, and welcome him to the chamber today. Having travelled to Dharamshala, it is so good to return the hospitality. Since 1959, many Tibetans have fled their homeland. Some are in the Blue Mountains, in my own electorate of Macquarie, where they tell me how much they value their freedoms. It's vital Australia keeps speaking out about our serious concerns on human rights in Tibet, publicly and privately, directly with China and in multilateral forums. Our foreign minister has consistently done this. In March the assistant foreign minister delivered Australia's national statement at the Human Rights Council, expressing our concerns about reports of the erosion of educational, religious, cultural and linguistic rights and freedoms in Tibet. There are disturbing reports by UN experts of Tibetans being forcibly transferred to vocational training programs and of separation of Tibetan children from families in government run boarding schools. We are deeply concerned by reports of the detention of Tibetans for expressing peaceful political views or for religious expression; the excessive security measures; mass surveillance; restrictions on travel; and China's policies on Tibetan cultural rights and heritage. It is good to have the Sikyong here to highlight these issues. You have my support. Queensland: Crime 18 (Groom) (13:54): Mr HAMILTON 291387 Another week, another terrible crime on Toowoomba's streets. In today's Chronicle we have reports of four men forcibly entering a house, stealing a car, going to another house, committing an assault, stealing another car and then, as has become all too common, leading police on a dangerous chase through our streets. This has been happening for a long time now. We are in the midst of a youth crime wave in Queensland. It was incredible to see in Queensland's budget last week confirmation of what we know: there has been a reduction in police numbers in Queensland. There are now 72 fewer police officers across Queensland since the last election, despite a whole heap of promises to the contrary. Violent crimes and property crimes are increasing across Queensland. In Toowoomba, as reported in the Chronicle last week, there are now 25 fewer officers on the ground than there were in June of 2015. We're growing at an extreme rate—we're absolutely bursting at the seams—and we have fewer cops on the street. It's very, very clear that Labor's response in the midst of this crime wave has been to take police off the streets. You wonder why it's bad? This is who's to blame. I want to take this moment to profusely thank the police officers who are out there, who are keeping us safe, who are doing a very, very good job. Since this Labor government has come into power they've seen a watering down of the laws that they need, and now they're seeing a reduction in their numbers. It's an absolute disgrace. This Queensland Labor government absolutely needs to stand up and do the right thing by the citizens of Queensland. Housing 19 13:56 Mr BURNELL 300129 Spence After nine years, we thought that the denial, delay and inaction was over—over because there was a new government in town, the Labor government. Just recently, we had the sandal-wearing Liberals, the Not In My Backyard Party, the Greens, riding in on their unicorns, sprinkling fairy dust everywhere, thinking they're in never-never land. Well, it's time to wake up. It's time to wake up for one reason: we need to get the Housing Affordability Future Fund through. Why? Because, for every six months that we don't deliver, that's $250 million that's not going towards social and affordable housing. This is affecting veterans, affecting the homeless and, more importantly, affecting those fleeing domestic violence. Not on my watch. Not on my watch will that be allowed to go unanswered. Pull your heads out of the sand and start doing something for the greater good. Stop blocking this bill. Let the people have what they need—social affordability access. Treasurer 19 13:57 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield It is now nearly six months since the Treasurer set out to dazzle us all with his essay in the Monthly. He wanted us all to know how clever he is—he quotes Greek philosophers; he reads weighty books like Jared Diamond's Upheaval; he name-checks cool lefty economists like Mariana Mazzucato! Most of all, the Treasurer wanted us to know that he had big plans. No rearranging the sock drawer for him. The Treasurer's to-do list includes: 'redefining and reforming our economy and institutions'; 'reimagining and redesigning markets'; 'renewing and restructuring' of 'the way our markets allocate and arrange capital'; and 'creating a new, sustainable finance architecture'. Dr Chalmers 37998 Stay out of my sock drawer, you weirdo! Mr FLETCHER L6B My personal favourite was his plan to 'build a better capitalism, uniquely Australian', and his promise that 2023 would be the year he did it. So how is the Treasurer going? Well, since the essay came out, the cash rate has increased four times and now stands at 4.1 per cent. Inflation now stands at 6.8 per cent, the highest in 30 years. Honourable members interjecting— Dr Chalmers 37998 Come on, back him in. He's been working on this for six months. Give him a charity chuckle or something! The SPEAKER 53517 The Treasurer will cease interjecting. Mr FLETCHER L6B According to Westpac, household sentiment is stuck at recessionary levels, and NAB's Monthly Business Survey finds business confidence is diving. We're nearly halfway through 2023. I don't think we're halfway to 'a better capitalism, uniquely Australian'. Stop writing pretentious essays, Treasurer. Get on with the key bits of your day job: get the cost of living down, get energy costs down, get interest rates down and get inflation down. The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The Treasurer will cease interjecting. Australian Greens 19 13:59 Mr LAXALE 299174 Bennelong This week, we saw the Greens team up with the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation for the second time to block the delivery of more housing across Australia. We've seen this movie before, and there's no plot twist. We know how this horror movie ends: when the Liberals and the Greens join forces to block progressive policy, Australia loses. We all remember when they teamed up to block climate policy in 2009, and we all lived through the near 15 years of needless environmental destruction that followed. Through their actions this week, the Greens political party have been found out. They don't want action on housing, they want chaos on housing. They want the headlines. They want the division. They want more attention so that they can continue their relentless attacks on a sound progressive government. Until they pass this bill, all of us on this side of the House will join the community housing providers to call them out. Their actions have real consequences. Because the Greens and Liberals have blocked housing, families fleeing domestic violence will suffer. Because the Greens and Liberals have blocked housing, renters across the nation will suffer. And because the Greens and Liberals have blocked more housing, Indigenous Australians will suffer. Instead of playing politics with homes, they're putting retweets ahead of renters. They're valuing headlines over housing affordability. The Greens and Liberals are on a unity ticket here. They have two days to change their minds. Pass this bill. The SPEAKER 53517 Order. In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 20 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Prime Minister 20 14:01 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson My question is to the Prime Minister. Before the last election, the now Prime Minister promised: … as your Prime Minister—I won't run from responsibility. I won't treat every crisis as a chance to blame someone else. I will show up, I will step up, I will bring people together. But today the Prime Minister refuses to take responsibility for surging power prices, which will increase again on 1 July. He also refuses to provide basic detail on divisive changes to our Constitution. When will the Prime Minister come clean about the damage his government is causing our country? 14:01 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler That was a very wide-ranging question from the Leader of the Opposition. I say to the Leader of the Opposition, you're the leader; you can get more than one question a day. I say to the Leader of the Opposition, maybe next time divide it up and try not to mix energy policy, First Nations policy, constitutional change and everything else that was included in that. But I am asked by the Leader of the Opposition, who of course is a Queenslander—I'm a friend of Queensland 365 days and 362 nights a year, but tomorrow night is not one of them. I hope that NSW goes well. But as a Queenslander, what the Leader of the Opposition would know is that for Queensland's 2.2 million households, they'll receive at least $550 off their power bills. What the Leader of the Opposition might also know is that many low-income households and pensioners in Queensland, including people in his electorate, will pay nothing for electricity in the coming financial year as a result of the work that the government has done in partnership with the Queensland government. This change will make an enormous difference. The Leader of the Opposition should know that because, of course, he voted against this energy price relief. He voted against the $1.5 billion from us as part of a $3 billion commitment to energy price relief. And when it comes to the Voice to Parliament, with that seamless segue in that question that the Leader of the Opposition did, the words before the parliament are very specific. Indeed, the Leader of the Opposition probably should know that a second reading speech counts as well, it has legal value, and the Attorney-General said very clearly in his speech: Matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would include: matters specific to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; and matters relevant to the Australian community, including general laws or measures, but which affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples differently to other members of the Australian community. Housing 20 14:04 Dr ANANDA-RAJAH 290544 Higgins My question is to the Prime Minister. How will the Housing Australia Future Fund improve Australia's housing supply? Why did the Senate fail to pass it? 14:05 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the member for Higgins for his question. Honourable members: Her! Mr ALBANESE R36 Her question. Indeed, she is the best member for Higgins that there has ever been. Our $10 billion HAFF will build 30,000 new social and affordable homes, including housing for veterans, frontline workers and women and children fleeing domestic violence. But, of course, yesterday the Liberals and Nationals were teamed up with the Greens political party in the Senate to block support for this. We know that every day of delay means $1.3 million a day not going to social and affordable housing for Australians. That is the price that the Greens political party, with their new coalition allies in the Liberal and National parties, want Australians to pay. For the Greens political party, this isn't about renters. It's not about people in social housing. It's not about affordable housing. It's about them. They want the issue, not the outcome. They deal in protest; we focus on progress. They see issues to campaign on; we see challenges to act on. They want to build their profile; we want to build more homes. I say to the Greens political party: there are more people involved in this than you. Understand who you are saying no to. You're saying no to people who are at risk of homelessness who are veterans. You're saying no to women and children escaping domestic violence. You're saying no to Indigenous Australians in remote communities. And you are saying no to those housing groups who stood up before this vote in the Senate yesterday, calling for the HAFF to pass. The Community Housing Industry Association said yes; you said no. National Shelter said yes; you said no. Homelessness Australia said yes; you said no. Everybody's Home said yes; you said no. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association said yes; you said no. The Property Council of Australia said yes; you said no. The Master Builders association said yes; you said no. It is time that you put aside this pettiness, put aside the politics and actually voted for more public housing. Interest Rates 21 14:08 Mr SUKKAR 242515 Deakin My question is to the Prime Minister. Under this government, the cash rate has risen 11 times, from 0.35 per cent to 4.1 per cent. According to analysis from Canstar, if it rises just a little bit further, to 4.6 per cent, repayments on the median priced house will consume up to half of a typical family's before-tax income. When will the Prime Minister come clean about the damage that his government is causing our country? Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The Minister for Cyber Security and Minister for Home Affairs will cease interjecting. Members on my right! The member for Holt and the member for Macarthur, if they continue with that behaviour, will be warned. There is far too much noise. Questions will be heard in silence. 14:09 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler Well, he's replaced the shadow Treasurer, but the Treasurer still can't get a question! Mr ALBANESE R36 The Treasurer still can't get a question, but we do get the interjections from those opposite. The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Deakin has asked his question. Mr ALBANESE R36 The economic circumstances that we inherited were: the largest deficit since the Second World War and $1 trillion of debt with little to show for it, sluggish economic growth and productivity sliding backwards. The highest quarterly rise in inflation this century was on their watch—2.1 per cent. And of course, interest rates started rising on their watch. The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Deakin will cease interjecting. Mr ALBANESE R36 And what they did as a result of that, when you had the highest inflation growth of any quarter of this century, and interest rates beginning to rise—their response—was to hand out a budget that just splashed money everywhere and made the fiscal situation worse. Indeed, they put forward a budget that projected a $78 billion deficit, and what we did was turn that around. We turned that around so that the projection is for a $4 billion surplus and we did that while we have the strongest jobs growth in the first year of any new government in Australian history—465,000 new jobs created. For the first time, more than 14 million Australians have a job. If you compare Australia's economic performance, GDP growth, at 2.3 per cent is higher than all G7 countries. Our participation rate is higher than all G7 countries. Our employment growth is higher than all G7 countries, and we are the only ones with a surplus. I understand that those opposite wouldn't recognise it, having produced record deficits, having presided over the first recession in Australia in 30 years. The SPEAKER 53517 If the member for Lyons continues with that behaviour, you will be warned. I give the call to the member for Holt. Housing 21 14:11 Ms FERNANDO 299964 Holt My question is to the Treasurer. Why are the Albanese Labor government's housing policies important for delivering a stronger economy? And what is blocking further progress? 14:11 Dr CHALMERS 37998 Rankin Thank you to the member for Holt for her question, and to her community for the opportunity to work with her on housing affordability and cost-of-living pressures and a whole range of other economic issues. Housing affordability is one of a number of economic challenges which we inherited from those opposite, which had been left to fester over a long and wasted decade. We take responsibility for reforming and renewing our economy and for making our communities more resilient— The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Deakin, if he interjects one more time, will be warned. Dr CHALMERS 37998 and that is why it's so important under the leadership of this Prime Minister and this terrific housing minister that we have a broad and ambitious agenda when it comes to housing. The $2 billion social housing accelerator announced on the weekend, the National Housing Accord that we are working on with the states and territories, the biggest increase in Commonwealth rent assistance in 30 years, changes to the First Home Guarantee and to the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee, all of these are important parts of our agenda. I will have an opportunity on Friday when I convene the state and territory treasurers to advance our agenda on housing, including with two very welcome new faces in that group, Treasurer Saffioti and Treasurer Mookhey as well. This will be an opportunity, consistent with the way this Prime Minister leads our team and our country, to bring people together to solve some of the big economic challenges that we confront together. In doing this, we bring together the super funds and the investors, local government, the Master Builders, the community housing providers and others to try and solve this problem, which has been neglected for too long. The same approach applies to the Housing Australia Future Fund. As the Prime Minister said, community housing providers, advocates, are all calling for the fund to be passed. National Shelter, Community Housing Industry Association, National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association are all calling for the Housing Australia Future Fund to be passed. When the Greens teamed up with the coalition in the Senate, they turned their backs on all of those organisations and they turned their backs on vulnerable Australians, who desperately need this government to build tens of thousands of new social and affordable homes. And what the Greens showed in the Senate is that they care more about retweets than renters. They care more about TikTok than housing stock. With all of the flowery speeches and all of the rhetoric in this place, when it actually came to the crunch, when the Greens had the opportunity to work with Labor to build a more social and affordable homes or to side with the coalition of cookers which sit opposite, they chose the coalition of cookers. It will show, in the Hansard, for all time, that when the Greens were given— The SPEAKER 53517 The Treasurer will pause. I'll just get him to withdraw that last remark. Dr CHALMERS 37998 I withdraw. When they were given the opportunity to vote for more social housing, they squibbed it and they left people hanging. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 22 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS Bowel Cancer Australia, Multicultural Australia: Future Leaders Advocacy Group, Vietnam Delegation 22 14:15 The SPEAKER 53517 I'm pleased to inform the House that present in the gallery today is a delegation of representatives from Bowel Cancer Australia, Multicultural Australia's Future Leaders Advocacy Group and also a delegation from Vietnam and students who are in the glass gallery. A warm welcome to you all. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 22 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Donations to Political Parties 22 14:15 Ms CHANEY 300006 Curtin This is a question for the Prime Minister. There's an unhealthy co-dependency between government contractors and political parties. On average, Australia's major parties are pocketing $430,000 every single year in donations from the big four consultancy firms. In return, Labor and the former coalition government have handed them contracts worth billions—$1.4 billion last year alone. Will the government follow other OECD countries and ban political donations from significant government contractors? 14:16 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the member for Curtin for her question, and note that there was a lot more money raised for the Curtin campaign then there was for Grayndler. I do make that point. It was a good campaign, and I'm pleased that she's here. I say congratulations. I don't know who the Labor candidate was for Curtin, but I don't think they thought they were going to win. The fact is that what we have done as a government is employ more public servants in order to reduce the reliance on contractors. That is what we have done. We are addressing these issues because what we understand is that you've got to rebuild the Australian Public Service. We understand that the Public Service is an honourable profession, and we have given respect so that every single one of my ministers has— The SPEAKER 53517 The Prime Minister will pause. I'll hear from the member for Curtin on a point of order? Ms Chaney 300006 A point of order on relevance. The question is about banning political donations. The SPEAKER 53517 The question also included a preamble about government contracts. That is part of the question, so the Prime Minister is able to answer that part of the question, and he's being relevant to the question. Mr ALBANESE R36 Indeed, every single one of my ministers has been down at their departments, not just to meet with the secretary, the deputy secretaries and the senior people, but to meet with the people on the front line—whether they be people in Minister Shorten's portfolio in Centrelink, whether they be the people working in Amanda Rishworth's portfolio, whether they be people in the department of the environment with the minister for the environment—to say thank you, and that we honour the work that they do. What we are doing, very clearly, if you look at where we're at, is seeking to rebuild the Public Service exactly so we're not as dependent upon contractors, as happened over a period of time, more and more, for things that should be the automatic function of government—getting advice from public servants in an independent way, whereby no one could argue that there's any private sector connection or profit motive involved so that you get that advice to government. I believe that will lead to better government. It's something my government is committed to. It's something that we're implementing in practice, and it will make a difference and produce better government in this country. Housing 23 14:19 Mr ZAPPIA HWB Makin My question is to the Minister for Housing and the Minister for Homelessness. How is the Albanese Labor government getting on with the job of making sure more Australians have a safe and affordable place to call home, and what is blocking long-term certainty to build more social and affordable homes? 14:19 Ms COLLINS HWM Franklin I want to thank the member for Makin for that question. I know that he, like many others in this place, wants to see more Australians have a safe, affordable place to call home. I know that he also has been very supportive of government's broad housing agenda, which we have been busy implementing. Indeed, last weekend, on Saturday, we did announce the $2 billion social housing accelerator, which will help build thousands of homes across Australia and help get those Australians who've been waiting on public housing lists into a home. We also unlocked the $575 million coming out of the Jobs and Skills Summit, and we have homes under construction today in Australia because of that. Then, in our first budget, we had the Housing Accord. We have made changes to the Family Home Guarantee, with more changes to come on 1 July. In our last budget, we made changes to build-to-rent. We increased the Commonwealth rent assistance, and of course there's our $2 billion in additional financing for more social and affordable homes. This financial year we're investing $9.5 billion in housing and homelessness services—$9.5 billion in one year—so that more Australians can have a safe, affordable place to call home, because it's all about people. It's about those Australians who are doing it tough, those Australians that need a roof over their head and need it today. What we saw yesterday in the Senate, with the Housing Australia Future Fund, is disgraceful; I can't put it any other way. When we have Australians who are doing it tough, people languishing on public housing waiting lists, women and children fleeing family violence, older women at risk of homelessness and veterans at risk of homelessness, we have the Liberals and the Nationals teaming up with the Greens to block this important legislation in the Senate that will deliver 30,000 social and affordable rental homes in the first five years of the fund. As we've heard, frontline service providers, community housing providers and construction industry members all support the Housing Australia Future Fund and it getting through the parliament. The truth is that this fund would provide half a billion dollars each and every year, on top of other government programs, for social and affordable housing. It would provide a pipeline so community housing providers and the construction sector can plan and know that this funding is coming. The truth is that future funds work. Those opposite actually implemented some. Of course, the Leader of the Greens was advocating for one previously. Now, apparently, they're opposed to them. The truth is this fund does deliver for renters, because they're rental homes we're talking about. The truth is the federal government cannot force the states to do rent caps. The truth is that our fund will work and some of the things that those opposite are talking about will not work. We're getting on with the job of delivering more homes. (Time expired) The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Fisher and the member for O'Connor! I want to hear from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Australian Constitution 24 14:22 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Australians. Which policy area, portfolio or government department would the Voice not deal with? 14:23 Ms BURNEY 8GH Barton I thank the member for Farrer for her question. In the second reading speech, the Attorney-General said that the primary function of the Voice will be: … making representations to the parliament and the executive government about matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples would include: matters specific to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; and matters relevant to the Australian community, including general laws or measures, but which affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples differently to other members of the Australian community. The Voice will not be required to make a representation on every law, policy or program. The Voice will determine when to make representations by managing its own priorities and allocating its resources in accordance with the priorities of First Nations peoples. In addition, the provision we are putting to the referendum makes clear that the power of the parliament will not change. Subsection (iii) says: The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures. Let me be clear: there will be no change to how the parliament operates. The Voice will not run programs. The Voice will not deliver funding. The Voice will not have a power of veto. It will address issues that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people differently. As I said yesterday, we know the issues that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people differently: gaps in education and employment, higher rates of family violence and incarceration, higher rates of disease and suicide, more risk during childbirth. Let me be very clear: this is about two things: it's about recognition and listening. I can assure the parliament that recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our Constitution and listening to them so we get better outcomes is the means to the end. The end is the better future for First Peoples. Housing 24 14:26 Ms VAMVAKINOU 00AMT Calwell My question is to the Minister for Social Services. How is the Albanese Labor government delivering on its commitment for housing policy, including for women and children escaping family and domestic violence? What is blocking further progress? 14:26 Ms RISHWOR HWA Kingston TH (—) (): I would like to thank the member for Calwell for her question and for her deep commitment to housing policy in this country. The Albanese government has a comprehensive housing agenda for Australia. We are delivering the largest increase to Commonwealth rent assistance in 30 years, helping one million households. We've also elevated the importance of safe and affordable housing for women and children escaping family and domestic violence through our national plan to end gender based violence. One of the ways we are delivering this is through our Safe Places program, which is a partnership with community housing and family and domestic violence organisations to deliver crisis accommodation for women and children fleeing domestic violence. In the last year, 10 new projects have become operational, delivering critical accommodation and services on the ground. Since coming to government, I've also worked hard to ensure that a number of Safe Places projects have been put back on track after running over budget and behind time because of the former government's poor planning. I am very pleased to inform the House that they will be delivered in coming months. To guide our next investment in the Safe Places program, I recently convened a roundtable with family and domestic violence services and housing providers to discuss how we will invest an additional $100 million allocated by our government. Providers at this roundtable certainly welcomed our government's investments, not just through the Safe Places program but also through our Housing Australia Future Fund. They saw the opportunity that a combination of the Safe Places program and the investment opportunities and possibilities provided by our Housing Australia Future Fund could deliver, and, in particular, the opportunity to provide a broader array of housing options for those in need. It was therefore disappointing to see this important investment being blocked by the Greens and the coalition, who are more interested in playing politics than seeing tangible delivery. This delay is a lost opportunity and has real-life impact. If those opposing more housing on the ground won't listen to the government, they should listen to those working on the front line about this impact. Ivan Simon from the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association said his staff had spent the last 18 months preparing 3,000 properties to start construction as soon as the bill was passed, which may not happen now because we may have missed the boat. This is what is happening as a result of delay. It is time for the coalition and the Greens to listen to those building houses. The SPEAKER 53517 The minister's time has completed. The member for Deakin. Mr Suk 242515 Mr Speaker, would the minister like to table the document that she read word for word from? The SPEAKER 53517 Was the minister reading from confidential documents? Ms RISHWORTH HWA It's confidential. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice 25 14:30 Ms L 00AMN Farrer EY (—) (): My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Australians. Would the Voice be able to make representatives to the Chief of the Defence Force on military acquisitions or the location or operation of military bases? Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Ms LEY 00AMN Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister is laughing at me. Can I repeat the question? The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Macnamara is warned. If he says one more thing during the question, I'm going to leave the chamber. The House will have absolute silence so I can hear from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Ms LEY 00AMN My question is for the Minister for Indigenous Australians— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The member for Hunter will leave the chamber under 94a. Ms LEY 00AMN Would the Voice be able to make representatives to the Chief of the Defence Force on military acquisitions or the location or operation of military bases? 14:31 Ms BURNEY 8GH Barton I thank the member for Farrer for her question. I can only repeat what I have already said. The Voice will make recommendations that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, but the Voice will not run programs, it will not deliver funding and it will not have the power of veto. The Attorney-General was very clear in his second reading speech about specific matters to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander— The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Fisher is warned. Ms BURNEY 8GH peoples, matters relevant to the Australian community. I repeat that—matters relevant to the Australian community, including general laws and measures that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people. I am so pleased that the member for Farrer has such a thorough idea of what those things are! I can tell you what the Voice will not be giving advice on. It won't be giving advice on parking tickets. It won't be giving advice on changing Australia Day. It will not be giving advice on all of the ridiculous things that that side has come up with. The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The minister will pause. The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Barker, I'm trying to hear the Deputy Leader of the Opposition on a point of order. She has the call. Ms Ley 00AMN On relevance: it's a yes or no question that goes to a very important question of public policy. If the Minister for Indigenous Australians cannot answer it, she could choose to hand the question— The SPEAKER 53517 Resume your seat. Mr Dreyfus HWG You don't like the answer! You're pathetic! You shouldn't let them put you up to it. The SPEAKER 53517 The Attorney-General will cease interjecting, and I'll hear from the Leader of the House. Mr Burke DYW Mr Speaker, I would suggest that every part of that point of order was an abuse of the standing orders. The SPEAKER 53517 The minister will continue. I want to be clear. She's being relevant to the question. The question was about the Voice and what it is able to make representations on. She's giving context, and I just heard her say, 'What it won't do,' so I can't imagine how she could be more relevant to the question. I'm giving her the call, and she'll be heard in silence. Ms BURNEY 8GH I will say this to the parliament: they go lower; we go higher. Minerals Industry 26 14:34 Ms MASCARENHAS 298800 Swan My question is to the minister for Resources. How will the new national Critical minerals strategy 2023-2030 drive the development of Australia's critical minerals sector and help Australia reach net zero? What approaches has the government rejected? 14:35 Ms MA 102376 Brand DELEINE KING (—) (): I thank the member for Swan for her question. As a former resources worker, she knows very well the great value of the resources sector and the critical minerals resources sector to the economy of Australia. Today I released Australia's new national critical minerals strategy, which establishes a framework to grow Australia's critical minerals sector. As you may know, the minerals required to develop a standard solar panel include but are not limited to gallium, indium, silicon—all of which are presently on our critical minerals list—and also several important minerals like aluminium and zinc. Silicon is used to generate electricity in solar panels, while aluminium is the ideal panel for the frame that controls a solar panel, because it is lightweight, conducts heat, is durable and can be easily recycled. These minerals are the ones the world needs to reach net zero emissions by 2050, and the world absolutely knows this, and it is absolutely astonishing the depths to which the Liberals and Nationals were willing to put their heads in the sand when they were in government and ignore the obvious connection between critical minerals and reaching net zero. That is the approach that this government has rejected. Another approach we rejected was the approach of issuing two versions of the critical minerals strategy and failing to consult absolutely anyone at all. This approach is the rock bottom of policy development in this nation, and those opposite were responsible for it. The new national critical minerals strategy, released today by the Albanese Labor government, changes that. Australia has the geology and, thanks to this government, we now have the policy. As I've said before, the road to net zero runs through Australia's resources sector. Thanks to this government, our strategy highlights the role that our critical minerals will play in the world's net zero ambitions. This strategy will help to create diverse, resilient and sustainable supply chains. It will build our sovereign capability in critical minerals processing and it will extract more value from our resources, resulting in more jobs and economic activity for our regions. It will help deliver net zero by 2050. Northern Australia will play a very important role in the development of this industry, and that is why we have earmarked half a billion dollars of NAIF's additional $2 billion appropriation to projects that ally with this critical minerals strategy. This government has also earmarked $1 billion for the Value Adding in Resources Fund, part of the broader $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, which of course those opposite did oppose. This government, through Prime Minister Albanese, established the Australia-United States Climate, Critical Minerals and Clean Energy Transformation Compact, a compact which would be impossible for those opposite ever to have introduced, because they denied the important link between critical minerals and reaching net zero emissions in this country. (Time expired) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice 26 14:38 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Australians. Does the minister have full confidence in Thomas Mayo remaining on the referendum working group when he referred to the powers that be as 'murderers' and sees the Voice as the first step towards reparations and compensation? The SPEAKER 53517 I'll hear from the Leader of the House. Mr Burke DYW In terms of issues for which a minister can be responsible, to be bringing in individual comments like that just goes way beyond. The SPEAKER 53517 I call the manager. Mr Fletcher L6B Standing orders are very clear: A Minister can only be questioned on matters for which he or she is responsible or officially connected … public affairs or administration … This is squarely within the responsibilities of the Minister for Indigenous Australians. The SPEAKER 53517 The question is in order. I call the Minister for Indigenous Australians. 14:39 Ms BURNEY 8GH Barton Thank you, Mr Speaker, and, I think, thank you to the member for the question. I will say three things. The Voice is about doing things differently. What we have been doing for many decades, despite the best will in the world, has clearly not worked. That's what I outlined yesterday, with life expectancy, educational outcomes, housing and employment. I spoke to an Aboriginal elder this morning, and she spoke about the moral authority that this would give her people. In relation to the issues that the Voice is responsible for, I can only make this point: it does not have a capacity to fund anything. Energy 27 14:40 Mr NEUMANN HVO Blair My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. How is the Albanese Labor government providing additional support to Australian households and small businesses with the cost of energy from 1 July? Have there been any obstacles in developing this plan? 14:41 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon I thank my honourable friend for his question. I'm very pleased to tell him that, on 1 July, just like in so many other policy areas, there will be real and material relief provided by the Albanese government when it comes to cost of living. In relation to energy, there will be more than five million houses right around Australia that receive energy bill relief. Mr Speaker, I'm very pleased to inform the honourable member for Blair and your good self, sir, that 1.1 million of those households will be in Queensland, and the average bill relief received—increase avoided—for Queensland families will be $819. That's for those families that receive the rebates—the impact of our coal and gas caps and our bill relief that was legislated last December and was opposed by those opposite. Those opposite opposed that relief for 1.1 million Queensland households. They opposed the bill relief right across Australia. That relief also applies to small businesses. There are around a million small businesses that will receive relief, and 205,000 of those businesses are in the great state of Queensland—205,000 businesses that will receive bill relief and reduced bills as a result of the action of the Albanese government in Queensland that was opposed by those opposite. The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The member for O'Connor is warned. Mr BOWEN DZS But, of course, we know there is more to do as well. In addition to that, we know that long-term bill relief, long-term steps to reduce energy bills, really comes through investing in energy efficiency and in renewable energy. Businesses around Australia know what the opposition does not know—that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy available in Australia. Opposition members interjecting— Mr BOWEN DZS It sends them off every time when you talk about renewable energy being the cheapest! In they come, with the old anti-renewable energy interjections! We had a serving Liberal National Party senator today say that climate change is a scam. Senator Rennick today claimed that climate change is a scam. They didn't get the memo from the Australian people last May! Businesses know that they need to invest—and they are investing—in renewable energy and energy efficiency. But they need support to do so, so the tax concession announced by the Treasurer on budget night, the 20 per cent tax concession for those investments, is vital and will apply to up to 3.8 million businesses across our country. Three point eight million small businesses will have that relief available, delivered by the Albanese government. That's part of our $1.7 billion energy relief program for energy efficiency and renewable energy, which will apply to households, will apply to businesses and, as announced last week, will apply to local governments as well, to help them reduce their rates bills, by converting to renewable energy and energy efficiency. That's what this government does, and 1 July will be a good day, because that relief will begin to flow. It will apply to energy bills after that day, and that's a very good thing. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 27 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS Women Empowerment and Leadership 27 14:44 The SPEAKER 53517 I advise the House that in the gallery is Women Empowerment and Leadership and the interns. A very warm welcome to you all. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 27 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Murray-Darling Basin 27 14:44 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Water. It is now recognised that supply projects will only return a maximum of 425 of the 605 gigalitres, and efficiency projects will only return a maximum of 50 of the 450 gigalitres, by the planned statutory deadline. Will the government negotiate a Murray-Darling Basin Plan 2.0 to protect our river and the environment? 14:44 Ms PLIBERSEK 83M Sydney I want to thank the member for Mayo for her question. I know that she is absolutely committed to seeing the Murray-Darling Basin Plan delivered in full, as we are on this side. I know this is a particular issue for South Australians. Although there has been a lot of water in the system in the last couple of years, we know that the dry years are just around the corner again. That is why it is so important, for environmental reasons, for drinking water reasons, for economic reasons, for industrial development reasons and also for agricultural reasons to make sure that we are taking a sustainable amount of water out of the Murray-Darling Basin system. Sadly, in the last decade before the change of government, we saw the Murray-Darling Basin Plan tied up in brown tape. We had a government, in those opposite when they were sitting on this side, who did everything they possibly could to sabotage the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Honourable members interjecting— Ms Ley 00AMN You had a government that cared about farmers. The SPEAKER 53517 The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will cease interjecting. Ms PLIBERSEK 83M There are not a lot of irrigators on the Gold Coast! They're not buying apartments on the Gold Coast! I'll go back to the member for Mayo's question, because it really is a very substantial question. We know that the infrastructure projects, if I can put it that way, that are supposed to return water to the system are behind time, are overbudget in some cases and won't deliver what they were originally said to deliver. It's also true that, of the 450 gigalitres of additional environmental water that is part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, just two of those gigalitres were delivered when we took over. We are a long way from delivering on the 450 gigalitres part of the plan as well. I can assure the member for Mayo that we are working very closely with state and territory governments across the Murray-Darling Basin system. Ms Ley 00AMN Complete misunderstanding! Hopeless! The SPEAKER 53517 The minister will pause. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition will cool it for the remainder of this question. The minister has the call. Ms PLIBERSEK 83M Thank you, Mr Speaker. We are a long way from delivering on the infrastructure-type projects. We are a long way from delivering on the 450 gigalitres, because so little was achieved under those opposite. In fact, about 80 per cent of all water that has been recovered towards the Murray-Darling Basin Plan was done when we were last in government and since we have come back to government. We are working very closely with the Murray-Darling Basin state ministers. I am hopeful that we will come to a resolution that delivers the plan in full. It is complex to do that, because we're starting from a very poor launch pad left to us by those opposite, but I know why the member for Mayo is so concerned, and I am— (Time expired) The SPEAKER 53517 The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is warned. I specifically said no more interjections. Education 28 14:48 Ms MURPHY 133646 Dunkley My question is to the Minister for Education. What action is the Albanese Labor government taking to close the education gap, which has worsened over the last decade, and why is closing that gap so important? 14:49 Mr CLARE HWL Blaxland I thank the awesome member for Dunkley for her question. We've got a good education system, but it can be a lot better and a lot fairer. The fact is that a lot of the big challenges we face in education have got worse over the last 10 years. Teacher shortages have got worse. In the last 10 years, there has been a 12 per cent drop in the number of young people becoming teachers. School attendance rates have got worse. They've dropped from about 93 per cent10 years ago to 87 per cent last year. The gap in reading skills of children from poor families and wealthy families has got worse as well. Fifteen years ago the gap in reading skills of eight-year-olds from poor families and eight-year-olds from wealthy families was about one year of learning. Now it's two. The fact is most of those children never catch up—in fact, the reverse happens; the gap gets bigger and bigger. The result of that is this: in the last six years we've seen a drop in the percentage of young Australians finishing high school, particularly poor kids and particularly in public schools. In 2017, 83 per cent of students in public school finished year 12. Last year that was 76 per cent. This is happening at a time when nine out of 10 new jobs require you to finish school and then go on to TAFE or to university. It is at a time when we need more people to finish school, not less—rich and poor, city and the bush, black and white. This is what we've got to fix. In two weeks time, education ministers will consider major reforms to the way we train our teachers to teach literacy and numeracy and classroom management, and better prepare them for the classroom. A few months ago we made major changes to NAPLAN to raise the bar, lift the minimum standard that students are expected to meet and more clearly identify the children that need additional support. The next step is to provide them with that additional support. We've committed to work with state and territory governments to make sure all schools are put on the path to full and fair funding. That funding is important but so is what it's spent on, what it's invested in, what it does and the difference that it makes. We've got to close that funding gap and the education gap. That's why I've said the next National School Reform Agreement will set targets and tie funding to the sorts of things that will help children who fall behind and make sure that more children finish school. On election night the Prime Minister talked about opening the door of opportunity wider for more Australians. That's what this will do. That's what education does more than almost anything else. Making our education system better and fairer is the key to opening that door for more young Australians. Mayo, Mr Thomas 29 14:52 Mr HOGAN 218019 Page My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Affairs. First Nations working group member and Yes 23 director Thomas Mayo has stated: … we need the power of the Constitution behind us so we can organise like we've never organised before … and: We keep going, we maintain this momentum, until we change the system, until we tear down the institutions … Does the minister agree with Mr Mayo's statements? The SPEAKER 53517 There is some difficulty with that question, because the minister has got to be directly responsible. I'll hear from the Leader of the House about the responsibilities of the minister. Mr Burke DYW On a point of order: this question was framed quite differently to the previous one. This one does not go to the minister's responsibilities at all. The SPEAKER 53517 I'm going to give you another chance to rephrase the question—and I need to be clear that the minister is responsible for the working group, not the Attorney-General. I'm just going to seek some advice on that point. If she's not responsible for the working group, the question will have to be redirected. I'll seek some advice from the Clerk. I'll give the shadow minister the opportunity to rephrase the question. The Leader of the Opposition, on a point of order? Mr Dutton 00AKI Mr Speaker, it might help you in your ruling to understand, as I do, that the Minister for Indigenous Affairs makes the appointments of the people, including Mr Mayo, to the referendum working group. The work of the working group is solely within the responsibility of the minister. The minister meets regularly with the working group and has provided support to the working group. In fact, it is funded, as I understand it, by the minister's department—the secretariat, the costs of Mr Mayo and others to travel around the country. On that basis, I put it to you that it is squarely within the minister's responsibility. The SPEAKER 53517 I will invite the member for Page to rephrase the question, so that it is the minister's responsibility. Mr HOGAN 218019 My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Affairs. First Nations working group member and Yes 23 director Thomas Mayo has stated: We keep going, we maintain this momentum, until we change the system, until we tear down the institutions … Given that the minister's responsible for the working group and the people on the working group, does she agree with Mr Mayo's statements? Government members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my left! I'll hear from the Leader of the House. Mr Burke DYW The rephrasing doesn't solve the problem that I raised in the previous point of order, which is that, after all of the context, the question is just, 'Does the minister agree with someone else's statement?' and that doesn't go to her responsibilities. The SPEAKER 53517 I'll hear from the Manager of Opposition Business. Mr Fletcher L6B It's absolutely clear that the establishment of the Referendum Working Group is within the minister's responsibilities. She can respond to this as she chooses, but the suggestion that the question is in some way out of order is completely incorrect. The SPEAKER 53517 Every minister cannot be held responsible for every single statement made by the person that they've appointed, but the question is on the borderline. I'm going to allow it, but just for future reference: questions should be phrased about not just agreeing with the statement, more about the actions. 14:56 Ms BURNEY 8GH Barton What we have in this nation is a group of people that are poorer, sicker and more incarcerated and die earlier than anyone else. The Voice and the referendum are about doing things differently to change those things. It is not about individual statements of people that are involved in this. I am not responsible for what other people say, but I'll tell you what I'm responsible for. I'm responsible for what I say and what I do. At every step of the way, I have conducted myself with integrity, I have conducted myself properly, and I have conducted myself with honesty. I have embraced every single person in this parliament if they wished to participate. The working group has provided advice on a number of occasions, including to the Leader of the Opposition and the then shadow minister for Aboriginal affairs on two occasions. Do not use the ridiculous, underhanded notions that you're using— Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my right. The minister will pause. The 53517 The member for Macnamara will leave the chamber under 94(a) for that statement. I'll hear from the member for Page. Mr Hogan 218019 The point of order is relevance. In the question, there was no reflection on the minister. We hold the minister in high regard. These questions are going to the workings of people on her working group and how this Voice will work, and I ask the minister to be relevant. The SPEAKER 53517 The Leader of the House. Mr Burke DYW Under precedents from both you and former speakers, when a question that was particularly borderline has been allowed, there has normally been a pretty light-handed attachment to the relevance rule. With Speaker Smith and a number of speakers, when a question could have been in or out, that's been taken into account in the relevance rule. The SPEAKER 53517 The minister is in continuation. I'm going to make sure she's remaining relevant to the question. Ms BURNEY 8GH To finish my answer, can I just say this: if anyone has wanted to have a discussion with me about this issue, I have been available. There is no way that I can see where I haven't conducted myself appropriately and respectfully. At the end of the day, this is about doing things differently so that we can move the dial on a national shame in this country. Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme 30 15:00 Mr DAVID SMITH 276714 Bean My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Why is it important to list life-changing medicines on the PBS, and how is the Albanese Labor government overcoming opposition to making those medicines cheaper? 15:00 Mr BUTLER HWK Hindmarsh I wonder whether, on indulgence, I could add my words of welcome to the Never2Young group from Bowel Cancer Australia. They've been sharing their stories with members across the chamber about the alarming increase in rates of bowel cancer among young Australian adults and the need for us to lift our awareness, our understanding and our early diagnosis and treatment of young adults. Thank you for sharing your often very difficult stories with us today. I know the member for Bean campaigned very hard at the last election on our promise to deliver cheaper medicines, and we are delivering on that promise. Last July we slashed the maximum amount pensioners would pay for their medicines across the year. In September we cut the price of 2,000 brands of medicine, putting $130 million back into the pockets of hardworking Australians. On 1 January we delivered the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS. In just five months, $100 million has been saved by general patients on nine million cheaper scripts because of that decision. That is $100 million back into the pockets of hardworking Australians at a time of a global cost-of-living shock, and that figure will climb each and every month because of decisions taken on this side of the chamber. We continue to put more and more medicines on the PBS, giving Australians affordable access to new, cutting-edge treatments that continue to be brought to market in this turbocharged period of discovery that we are all so lucky to be living through. Just this month, we listed Erlyand, a new treatment for a particular form of metastatic prostate cancer. As we in this House all know, prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in Australia and the third-biggest cancer killer, taking the lives of around 3½ thousand Australian men each year. This non-chemo treatment is highly effective, has very limited side effects and is able to be taken in tablet form at home, rather than forcing patients to hospitals or to travel often significant distances to medical centres. Around 3,000 men will benefit every single year from this listing, paying just $30 as a maximum for a script instead of the tens of thousands of dollars that they would otherwise pay. One patient, Graham, for example, said after the listing: 'I am so grateful this drug is getting on the PBS. I have a friend in America who is paying $22,000 a month for this treatment.' Listings on the PBS, I think we in this House all know, change and save lives. Our government realises that we still have much more to do, but our commitment to cheaper medicines is making a real difference. (Time expired) Motor Racing: Mount Panorama 31 15:03 Mr GEE 261393 Calare My question is to the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. Ford versus Holden; Brockie, Johnson, Moffat, Bond and Skaife—Bathurst is the home of motor racing in Australia. Every year the great race at Mount Panorama/Wahluu draws hundreds of thousands of racegoers and a global viewing audience. Your department has just pulled $12.5 million in grant funding for a second racetrack and won't allow an extension of the completion date or upgrades to the existing circuit. Will you agree to meet with me and the mayor of Bathurst to review this outrageous decision? 15:04 Ms CATHERINE 00AMR Ballarat KING (—) (): I thank the member for his question. I know he's a very passionate advocate for his community. Of course, there's the mighty Mount Panorama and the Bathurst 1000. My older brother goes every year. He rings me from the top of the mountain each October. It was a little wet last year. He's been going for a long time, and I know just how important it is. I am absolutely happy to meet with the mayor. In fact, I actually spoke to one of the councillors from the Bathurst council about this very issue at the recent Australian Council of Local Government, and I'm also very happy to meet with the member about it. The facts of the matter are these. This community development grant was announced almost three years ago now. There have been significant problems with planning approvals for the second racetrack, and the council has informed us that it is unable to meet the deadline to build this racetrack by 2026—that's how long they've got to get this done. So the grant has been concluded because it simply could not be delivered in the time frame required. What I encourage the member and the council to do is to put in an expression of interest to the Growing Regions fund, a $300 million fund that opens on 5 July. I'd certainly welcome an application, if it then goes to application, from the Bathurst council for this project. I understand the council was seeking to move the funds to another project, still at Mount Panorama, but the previous Community Development Grants guidelines would not have allowed that to happen. Workplace Relations 31 15:05 Ms BYRNES 299145 Cunningham My question as to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. Can the minister clarify how the Albanese Labor government is closing the labour hire loophole? 15:05 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I want to thank the member for Cunningham, who's been a relentless defender of trying to get wages moving in this country and for the workers in her electorate. I'm glad the question specifically referred to the need to clarify the labour hire loophole. It's a very simple policy, which is: if a business has already agreed to rates of pay in an enterprise agreement, they shouldn't be able to use labour hire to undercut them. They'll still use labour hire for all the other reasons: of specialist workforce, of short-term replacement or for a surge. All of that's completely legitimate, but it shouldn't be used to undercut a rate of pay that the employer's previously agreed to. It's important that this be clarified because back at the start of the month—it was on the front pages of the papers—there was going to be this enormous campaign, and I felt for the business organisations that were funding that campaign because they were claiming that there was a government policy that there just wasn't. They were claiming that there was a government policy that everyone would have to be paid the same, so I came out immediately to correct the record so that the business lobby didn't waste that money. Then yesterday I was reading a great article in the Sydney Morning Herald, about the Cooks River, and I looked on the page beside and realised they're still running the ad. And the ad is campaigning against a government policy that purports to do this: It means that if you've chosen to work hard because you want more pay—by law—you can't be paid more than someone who doesn't want to work hard at all. Now, that sounds like a terrible policy. It's absolutely appalling! And I realised what these ads were about. They're going to run a successful campaign, because you start with a policy that government has no intention of implementing, you campaign hard against it and at the end the government doesn't implement it. And it's a complete victory! I say to those who are funding these ads, and they're out there on social media as well. They're on the news.com.au website as well, and I say with this campaign: go hard—go hard! It will be incredibly successful because it is railing against a policy idea that they have come up with themselves, that I would never support, that this government would never implement— The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Page. Mr BURKE DYW and, at the end of that, they will be absolutely successful in making sure that something that was never going to occur, doesn't occur. The SPEAKER 53517 I give the call to the member for Wannon. Mr Tehan 210911 Could the minister please table that very good ad that he was reading from? The SPEAKER 53517 I call the Leader of the House. Mr BURKE DYW I'd love to. I'll table that and I'll also table the script of the other ad, which is also wrong, which says, 'It means by law employers will have to pay workers with little knowledge or experience the same as workers with a lot of knowledge and experience.' They're both wrong, they're both tabled and they'll probably both still be funded. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice 32 15:09 Mr LLEW O'BRIEN 265991 Wide Bay My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Australians. How many people will make up the Voice body, who will appoint them and how long will they be appointed for? Mr Perrett HVP Ask the guy behind you! The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Moreton is warned. 15:09 Ms BURNEY 8GH Barton Thank you for that question. I can only repeat that in his second reading speech the Attorney-General made it very clear that parliament, subject to the Constitution, will have the power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures. Refugees 32 15:10 Mr HILL 86256 Bruce My question is to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs. How have refugees contributed to Australian society—I ask you this on World Refugee Day today—and how has the Albanese Labor government supported those seeking Australia's protection? 15:10 Mr GILES 243609 Scullin I thank my friend the member for Bruce for this question. There is no-one in this chamber, I think, who works harder to stand up for humanitarian entrants with connections to their community than the member for Bruce—no-one who works harder and, frankly, few who have thought more deeply about these issues in the parliament. Today is, of course, World Refugee Day. It's a day on which we honour those people who have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict or persecution. We acknowledge and we celebrate the extraordinary and transformative contribution of nearly a million—950,000—refugees who have shaped Australia since World War II, who have made an invaluable contribution to this nation, people from Awer Mabil to Anh Do, Tan Le to Frank Lowy, and people in this place too. These people have brought with them significant economic, social and cultural benefits that have enriched this nation. Right now, we need to reflect on this, because there are more than 100 million people displaced worldwide. Our government is committed to playing our part in addressing this global challenge. This Refugee Day, the Albanese government reaffirms our commitment to those in need. We also recognise that this means much more than helping someone get to Tullamarine airport. We need robust settlement support so that people, when they arrive here, can make their contributions, can fulfil their potential to contribute, as so many have done. We've been getting on with the job here and, in doing so, trying to bring people together in unity, not division. We've delivered on our commitment to convert people on temporary protection visas to permanent protection. Around 3,000 visas have been granted to date, and I'm pleased to advise the House that more than 94 per cent of those eligible have now submitted applications. This is a government that will continue to be tough when it comes to securing our border, while never abandoning our sense of decency and compassion. We are committed to Operation Sovereign Borders and to delivering an orderly and legal pathway for people in need of our protection. We're also on track, I want to inform the House, to fill the 2023-24 Humanitarian Program. This will include granting more than 7,900 visas to Afghan nationals, in line with a strong commitment across the parliament to this. As the then minister, the member for Mitchell, said when committing the places following the fall of Kabul, this government has always said that this commitment is a floor, not a ceiling. This is consistent with our government's approach, because we are determined to do more. We are determined also to change the tone of this debate, in this building and in our communities, to a debate that's anchored in compassion and generosity and the fair go, the essence of the Australian spirit—something that, of course, has been enriched by nearly one million refugees. Mr Albanese R36 I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members can leave or resume their seats quickly and quietly. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 33 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Economy 33 15:14 The SPEAKER 53517 I have received a letter from the honourable Manager of Opposition Business proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: This Government's economy destroying policies which are hurting Australian families and small businesses 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— 15:14 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield Across every front, this government is pursuing economy-destroying policies which are hurting Australian families and small businesses, policies which are driving up interest rates. The most urgent challenge facing millions of Australians is the steady drumbeat of rising interest rates making it ever harder for them to repay their mortgages and hold onto their homes. The current Prime Minister, when in opposition, promised Australians cheaper mortgages, but the reality has been so very different. Today the cash rate sits at 4.1 per cent, after 11 rate rises since this government came into office. Of course, the actual rates that households are paying are so much more than that. Economists—certainly economists who observe the work of the Reserve Bank—and the Reserve Bank are opining that there are even more rate rises to come. Indeed, the Governor of the Reserve Bank recently warned that the central bank may need to lift rates again in coming months to get inflation down to its two to three per cent target. In other words, the Reserve Bank is warning embattled mortgage holders of more pain to come. Economists are pointing out the same risk. Westpac now expects another two rate rises. The NAB chief economist, Alan Oster, believes that the Reserve Bank will lift official interest rates to 4.6 per cent by the end of winter. He has said that the economy is now facing its worst back-to-back years since the 1990-91 recession. According to the latest report from Westpac, household sentiment is stuck at recessionary levels. According to the NAB Monthly Business Survey, the pipeline of future economic activity is shrinking and business confidence is diving. According to the Centre for International Economics, there is flatlining productivity in the mining sector and its supply chains. According to the budget, interest rates were going to stay at 3.85 per cent until early 2024 and then fall. Already, after just over a month, that prediction is sadly out of date. The grim reality, in contrast to what was forecast in the budget, is that the latest interest rate decision adds another $75 a month to repayments on a typical $500,000 mortgage, making monthly instalments $1,130 higher than when this government came to power. A family with a mortgage of $750,000—an entirely typical mortgage in many parts of Australia today—is now paying $22,000 a year more in repayments than a year ago. It is no surprise that, as a result, a record number of homeowners are now struggling to pay their mortgages. According to new research by Finder, 40 per cent of Australian mortgage holders said that they struggled to pay their home loan in May. That is the highest recorded percentage since that survey began, and is up from 24 per cent 12 months ago. Canstar, the respected website that surveys pricing in many areas of the financial markets, has analysed the impact of the widely expected further increase in the cash rate to 4.6 per cent. As I mentioned, the NAB chief economist, Alan Oster, is among many who is predicting that. According to Canstar, the outcome of that grim increase will be that, for the median home, the typical household will be paying up to half its before-tax pay in mortgage repayments. Is it any surprise that, among young, growing families with a mortgage, 88 per cent are now in mortgage stress? This government, as well as bringing in policies which are driving up interest rates, is also enthusiastically pursuing ill-judged policies that are driving up the cost of living. Our core inflation is now higher than any G7 nation other than the United Kingdom. In March inflation lifted to 6.3 per cent, with an annual rate, through to April, of 6.8 per cent. That inflation is not coming from the Kremlin, despite the Prime Minister's repeated attempts to point to any possible kind of excuse. It's coming from Canberra. It's about time that this government took responsibility for the cocktail of ill-judged policies they have put in place, which are making the situation worse. There is $185 billion in new spending since this government came to office. There's $2 of new spending initiatives for every dollar of revenue initiatives. There is poorly planned migration that the budget papers say will drive up housing costs. There's of course the truckie tax. There's the $153 million tax on our farmers. There's a fiscal strategy described by economist Steven Hamilton as the weakest fiscal strategy in living memory and a failure to restore the fiscal guardrails that have been in the fiscal strategy since 1996. Just over the weekend, we saw this ill-disciplined spending continuing, with $2 billion splashed around on top of what was in the budget in a panicked response by this government as its highly dodgy Housing Australia Future Fund failed to get support in the Senate. Of course, the rising taxes that this government is enthusiastically introducing across the spectrum are also adding to the cost of living, whether it's that farmers tax I mentioned, whether it's Labor's franking credits and super taxes, which will be directly felt by self-funded retirees and pensioners alike. Indeed, over the next five years, the tax paid by Australians will increase by more than $300 billion. What stands out is the way that respected commentators and economists are very clear in their assessments that the government's budget and spending decisions are driving inflation. Despite all efforts by the Treasurer to walk away, to decry responsibility, by the Prime Minister saying, 'nothing to do with me,' by the constant litany of excuses that are rolled out by those in government, the fact is that respected observers and former participants, such as former Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Dr Glenn Stevens, say inflation is way too high and that interest rates could remain elevated for some time yet. ANU economist Ashley Craig confirmed that the government is making the Reserve Bank's job harder, saying, 'The present government decided to take an expansionary position,' and went on to say, 'If the government's spending and taxation choices are too expansionary, the RBA must act by raising interest rates.' It is this government's decisions which are putting the RBA into the position where it needs to keep raising interest rates, because there is no fiscal discipline being shown by this government. Steven Hamilton has said the budget is expansionary. In Senate estimates, the RBA governor confirmed that the discretionary spending in the budget was expansionary. Betashares chief economist, David Bassanese, called the budget 'unambiguously expansionary'. What did Rich Insight's director Chris Richardson say? He said that he had thought that the Reserve Bank was done and dusted, but this—namely, the budget—has notably raised the chance that they will do another swing of the baseball bat. S&P Global Ratings had this to say of the budget 'we expect inflation to be stubbornly higher than the Reserve Bank of Australia's targets until fiscal 2026,' and, 'handouts in today's budget may add to inflationary pressures.' Policy decisions are increasing the cost of living, policy decisions are increasing interest rates and, of course, let's not forget policy decisions are driving up energy costs. Over nine years of coalition government, power prices rose on average by a mere 0.3 per cent a year over nine years. What has this government delivered for just one year? They delivered 12.9 per cent. This is not a race you want to win. There's more pain to come. New power price increases are up to 25 per cent for households, 29 per cent for small businesses from 1 July with the increase in the default market offer, the Victorian default offer and Queensland regulator prices. Small businesses struggling so hard to keep their noses above water will see electricity bills increase by up to $1,310 a year. This from a Prime Minister who promised 97 times prior to the election that those power bills would go down by $275. In area after area, it is the policy decisions of this government which are destroying the economy and hurting families and small businesses. 15:24 Dr ALY 13050 Cowan It's always great to have an opportunity to speak about what this government, the Albanese government, has achieved in the relatively short time that we have been in office—relative, of course, to the nigh on 10 years that those opposite had when they were in government to do anything, relative to other OECD countries and relative to and in spite of global headwinds. I note that those opposite like to talk about the cost of living. I will remind them that I was elected to this place in 2016, and since 2016 I have lost count of the number of times I've come into this House and spoken about the cost of living for people in my electorate, in the election of Cowan. These are the people in suburbs like Girrawheen, in Lockridge, in Kiara, in Wanneroo and in Balgo, people who live in low socioeconomic suburbs, people whose minimum wages were kept deliberately low as a centrepiece of the economic agenda of those opposite when they were in government, people who have lower education outcomes and people who saw the cost of an arts degree go up by 113 per cent because of those opposite. I had young people, the very first person in their family able to go to university, in my office in tears because those opposite increased the cost of a university degree by 113 per cent, and they were not going to be able to complete their degree. These are the people in my electorate who had to choose between buying food and buying the medicines that they need to take control of their chronic illnesses and their chronic pain. Since 2016, I have been speaking about the cost of living for those people, and I know many of my colleagues on this side of the House have been doing the same for the people in the electorates that they represent. What have we achieved in just over a year of being in office? We've reversed a $78 billion deficit and turned it into a projected $4 billion surplus. We've created 465,000 jobs in this term of government. And I am very proud to note that I am part of an Albanese Labor government which saw, in March, women's workforce participation at an all-time high, reversing a 20-year trend. None of this was by accident. All of it is in no small measure due to the responsible and responsive budget delivered by the Treasurer in May. While those opposite like to quote, I shall just use one quote in my contribution today, and that quote is from the Reserve Bank governor, who made it clear that our budget is addressing inflation, not adding to it. In Senate estimates, on 31 May, the Reserve Bank governor said: I don't think that the budget is adding to inflation; it's actually reducing inflation in the next financial year. The things that we are seeing—the record job growth; the record number of women in full-time employment; the budget returning to a surplus, even though those opposite promised it and were unable to deliver it—are a direct response to a responsible and responsive budget that was designed to deal with the greatest challenge that we are dealing with, which is the inflation challenge. The inflation challenge is a central focus of our economic plan and of the budget that was handed down by the Treasurer. If we were to look at the record of the Albanese Labor government in the last 12 months compared to those opposite, who had 10 years—or close to 10 years, to be precise. Let's do a compare and contrast. They took us to a record deficit; we saw record jobs. They deliberately kept wages low—let's keep reminding people of that; let's keep reminding people that their economic agenda, their approach to the economy, was to deliberately keep wages low. We have gotten wages moving again. We've seen an increase to the minimum wage, and my colleague the Minister for Aged Care has overseen an increase to the wages of aged-care areas. My mum was an aged care nurse; I welcome that, and I pay heed to the minister for that. Under those opposite, the cost of early childhood education and care rose by 49 per cent. One of our first acts in government, within our first six months, was to boost the childcare subsidy to provide very much needed cost-of-living relief to 1.2 million families right across Australia, including 265,000 in rural and regional Australia. When those families sit around the family table and budget, one of the first things they factor in is the cost of early childhood education and care. Then they work out everything else around that, including how many hours the primary caregiver—most often the woman in the family—can work before that financial benefit from working is eaten by the cost of early childhood education and care. Those opposite had 10 years to do something about the cost of early childhood education and care, to provide that cost-of-living relief to families, and they did nothing. Our biggest budget promise that we took to the election was that boost to the childcare subsidy, which will come into play on 1 July. In terms of housing affordability and supply, they did nothing. We have before us the HAFF, the Housing Australia Future Fund, to provide housing supply, particularly for those most vulnerable—particularly for women and children fleeing family and domestic violence. Those opposite teamed up with the Greens political party to block that. Mr Burnell 300129 Surprise, surprise! Dr ALY 13050 Surprise, surprise indeed. Strange bedfellows, might I say. Those opposite did nothing about giving families choice; we increased paid parental leave so that mothers and fathers could stay at home with their children in those first vital six months of their lives. Those opposite increased the cost of university degrees; what did we do? We made more university places available and provided fee-free TAFE for thousands of Australians across the nation. I had the great pleasure of meeting some early childhood education and care students at Swinburne TAFE with the fabulous new member there. They were saving thousands on their degrees in early childhood education and care. Those opposite failed to land a single energy policy, whereas on this side, as the Minister for Climate Change and Energy mentioned in question time, our changes—which they voted against—will deliver an average of $819 of fee relief on electricity prices for families and households, as well as for small business. Those opposite failed to establish a national anticorruption body, something that they promised for three years. It took them three years where they kept promising it, and then they failed to deliver it at all. We're delivering on that promise, and I look forward to when that body is established. Those opposite froze the Medicare rebate. We all know what they want to do with Medicare. We all know that their hearts are not in Medicare. What we do know is Medicare is a Labor government legacy and we will always protect it. We have slashed the cost of medicines. We've increased the GP rebate. And we have delivered $100 million saved by Australians on the cost of their medicines. I note that it's reported in the media that in their caucus meeting today the Leader of the Opposition urged his party to appear to be more compassionate. I would hope that every single member that comes into this place comes here with compassion. It's reported in the media. I would hope that every single person comes here with compassion for their electorate, but, hey, good luck doing that. 15:34 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack Middle Australia is hurting. Let me say that again: Middle Australia is hurting. That once proud group of Australians who worked hard, day in and day out, to get ahead now find themselves going backwards. Individuals and families who can't work any more hours and can't earn any more are in trouble. Once the bills are paid at the end of the week, there is very little left. In many cases, there is nothing left. This is an economic emergency, and those opposite are responsible. The Albanese government is responsible for this financial crisis. Those opposite would have Australians believe that this economic crisis has got nothing to do with them. That's what we're hearing, day in and day out. They would have you believe that all this pain is due to what Putin is doing in Ukraine, that somehow this is Ukraine's fault or it's Russia's fault. If that is the case, then why is our core inflation higher than each of the G7 nations, barring the UK? The truth is that inflation isn't coming from Russia; it is coming from Canberra and Labor's reckless economic policies—namely, its policy to add $185 million to the budget. Economists have confirmed Labor's reckless handling of the budget is increasing the supply of money into the economy, which in turn drives inflation and forces the RBA to act by raising interest rates. We've seen that time and time again, sadly, in the last 12 months. What does Labor's dangerous inflationary policy mean for families and businesses? A typical Australian family with a mortgage and children is $25,000 worse off compared to only 12 months ago—$25,000! While Labor spends and spends, Australians are forced to divert their income to paying those higher mortgages and the higher prices for essential goods. The flow-on effect is that families are not in a position to support their local business community, and therefore it's no surprise that the number of businesses which have gone into insolvency has almost doubled in the past 12 months. At a time when small businesses are on their knees, Labor should do everything it can to support them. However, this Labor government is instead undermining their success. This is clear through its attack on infrastructure—and I'm very pleased that the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government has joined us here at the table today. It is clear through Labor's attack on infrastructure commitments across the country and, in particular, in our regional communities. A great example of this—and I really hope the minister is listening and not just talking—is in a beautiful part of my electorate of Durack, the Shire of York, which is located some 97 kilometres from Perth. York's light industrial area has faced ongoing challenges with heavy vehicles being unable to access the area safely. This lack of access heavily impacts the capacity of local businesses to send and receive freight, with the flow-on effect of reducing their ability to grow and expand. In March 2022 I met with Mark, of M.A.L. Automotives, who informed me of his issues with his mechanics shop, which was facing problems due to these access restraints. York is one of the most fertile and beautiful areas of the state and has an annual rainfall of 400 millilitres of rain per year. Such heavy rainfall presents flooding issues and, of course, prevents customers from safely reaching M.A.L. Automotives. Working on trucks is a key component of Mark's business, and they told me that improving the safety of access to the light industrial area was critical to their future. This message was consistent, and, after a long consultation process, including multiple meetings with local stakeholders and advocates, I was very pleased to announce a coalition commitment of $8 million towards access improvements, in conjunction with the shire and the state of WA. The improved access was to deliver several benefits to the local community, including, of course, increased safety for road users and drainage upgrades. And it would of course improve economic activity in York's dominant agriculture industry, improve employment sustainability and allow businesses to expand their operations. To my surprise, the Shire of York was emailed last week, on 15 June, and asked for more information, and was given one day to respond. I ask the minister: What sort of show are you running? Would this be due to a lack business experience or the fact that you can't control the department? One day! It is a fantastic project, and we need to support regional Australia— (Time expired) 15:40 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie Since I came into this chamber, in 2016, I have welcomed every single opportunity to speak about small business, because that's my background. From being a kid in my parents' newsagency and growing up in that small business, through to having my own business for 25 years, working with a lot of businesses—small, medium and large, here and overseas—I have seen the pressures that small business is under. It's just a fact of life for small business. It is a tough road that you choose when you decide to work for yourself, and I really take my hat off to all the small businesses in my community, including those that I helped celebrate on Friday night at the Hawkesbury Business Awards. There were incredible businesses, from accommodation and hospitality through to plumbing, older business owners, younger business owners—the whole gamut. The point is that our job here, as parliamentarians, is to make sure we listen to our small businesses and listen to the communities that support those businesses. From what I've seen over my time here, from 2016 onwards, when I've raised issues of concern about the cost pressures that small businesses face, there was a tin ear from those opposite, a complete lack of interest in what my communities were experiencing. That was before the biggest bushfire the world had ever seen from a single ignition point swept through. That was before we had flood after flood. That was before COVID. As you'll all remember, during COVID it took a long time for those opposite to realise that small businesses needed help. I think that's the big difference I see: we know that things are really challenging out there for people. It's challenging for small businesses, who want to do the best by their customers, but it's also challenging for customers, who want to be able to keep supporting their businesses. When people step back and look at how this has happened, they know that this hasn't occurred in the last 12 months—this isn't because of decisions that were made in the last 12 months. It's the consequence of an attitude that we've had where people were pushed down and their incomes were suppressed. That builds up over time, and everything we're seeing in the economy has been from factors that we saw coming and that those opposite chose not to do anything about. We need to remember that the highest rise in inflation, which was a rise of 2.1 per cent for a whole quarter, occurred not when we were in government but when those opposite were in government. Did we hear a mention of it from them? Maybe they missed that bit in the ABS data that came out. On this side, we are taking it seriously. We know that small business needs help. One of the things that we did was to come back before Christmas to go: 'Let's not just help every family who's really struggling with power bills; let's help small businesses that are struggling with them.' Before Christmas, we were back here. We were voting on that and we were taking it seriously. I think you have to ask the question: Were those opposite taking it seriously? Were they interested in supporting small business? Well, no. They voted against legislation providing funds to help with electricity bills, funds that will start to flow through to small businesses in the coming quarter. I know it's going to be welcomed by businesses in the Blue Mountains and Hawkesbury. I know it's cold in Canberra today, but it's pretty chilly back in those mountains and the areas of the Hawkesbury. Not only have we looked at how we support businesses by helping with electricity bills—in New South Wales, businesses will receive $650. We've also looked at how we can equip them to be even better prepared going forward. I think that's the other big difference: we don't just want to solve a problem now; we want to put in a solution that's going to be sustainable and make a long-term difference. When I look at the alternative, I ask myself, 'What great ideas have the opposition come up with? Maybe they were hiding some ideas in government and they've kept them till opposition.' Nuclear power is their solution, and I think we all just go: 'Yeah, right. Really? I don't think that's going to be a quick fix, let alone a long-term fix.' So I'm looking forward to supporting our businesses to lower their energy costs in the long term with renewable energy going into the system and helping them reduce their costs. 15:45 Ms McKENZIE 124514 Flinders This is a government that really likes to pretend that it's still in opposition. More than a year into the job now, the government has failed Australian families and has certainly failed our small businesses. They still refuse to admit or recognise their failures and the struggle that most families are now confronting. Just now in question time they were constantly talking about the former government, rather than what they are doing for this country. This Albanese government has no comprehensive economic plan, no plan to reduce inflation, no plan to reduce pressure on interest rates and no plan to reverse the increasing cost of living. What this government has offered, though, is handouts—big wads of cash in the form of cost-of-living bandaids that might stem the bleeding today but do absolutely nothing for tomorrow. There was nothing in their last budget that rewarded effort, nothing that encouraged business owners to create opportunities and employment for others, and nothing that would help Australia's jobseekers into the 400,000 available jobs ready around the country today. This government would have you believe it did nothing to add to inflationary pressures, but, in fact, its duty is to do something to depress inflationary pressures. That is the job. Its mismanagement has been named by the economic experts and commentariat. Indeed, in May this year Anthony Walker, director of the independent ratings agency S&P, warned that handouts in the most recent budget 'may add to inflationary pressures'. We've also heard from former RBA governor Glenn Stevens, who has conceded that the Albanese government's budget would have an expansionary effect. It's easier to be blunt about the situation when you don't have the sword of Damocles hanging over your head. This government has clearly lost control, and Australian families and businesses are paying the price for its ineptitude. Australian families—Flinders families—are doing it tough. Food costs more. Petrol costs more. Energy costs more. Rents cost more. Building materials cost more. Houses and mortgages cost more. As we heard in question time, families with an average mortgage have to come up with an additional $22,000 a year. That's $22,000 a year after tax. I don't know how they do it. The goal posts are constantly moving for those who seek the opportunities and the way of life that Australia has historically offered. RBA governor Philip Lowe recently recommended that we need more people on average to live in each dwelling and said that higher prices do that. The RBA has made it very clear that there is more pain in the pipeline. The NAB expects more rate rises in July and August, and Westpac also expects more to come. In the RBA board minutes released today, the bank made it very clear that there is significant concern for the unstable and growing pressures on households. Household consumption growth has slowed, or, to put it simply, people have stopped spending money, a fact that any small business in my electorate of Flinders will tell you. To make ends meet, many Australians are now taking on extra jobs. Last week's labour accounts data shows that the number of Australians having to take on multiple jobs has increased by more than 10 per cent in the last 12 months. A few weeks ago, I hosted a tourism and hospitality round table in my electorate with businesses across food and beverage, logistics, hotels and accommodation, and tourism events. We discussed the recent IR law changes, including permission for pattern bargaining, which came into effect earlier this month. I was concerned when I heard from lots of small businesses in my electorate that they couldn't manage the economic impact of these changes, let alone the increases in minimum and award wages, at such a challenging time. This builds on the huge increase in energy costs which small businesses are already facing. The running of a business will become incrementally more expensive. In Victoria the default price for gas for homes and small businesses will be going up by about 30 per cent by midyear. How will vibrant businesses which are internationally competitive, like Chief's Son, the Original Spirit Co in Somerville or the beautiful Bass & Flinders in Dromana, or even bigger businesses like Sealite, which produces marine and aviation navigation tools, manage their costs when the bill for gas, which is absolutely vital to their businesses, goes up by 30 per cent overnight? In a few days we will reach the 14-month anniversary of the Prime Minister's promise to stand up and take responsibility. On 1 May last year, Anthony Albanese said: And—as your Prime Minister—I won't run from responsibility. I won't treat every crisis as a chance to blame someone else. He actually said that at the ALP campaign launch last year on 1 May last year. And yet Labor is failing to fight inflation, failing to boost productivity, failing to stoke and support economic growth, failing to house a growing population, failing to support small business when they need support the most. We need a government that has a vision of what Australia can be and should be, and a comprehensive economic plan to get us there. 15:50 Dr MULINO 132880 Fraser As with so many economic motions in this place put forward by those opposite, what we see is a list of economic factoids quoted completely out of context and slogan after slogan paraded around this place without even a skerrick of the most basic common sense or analysis. Those opposite say that inflation has nothing to do with the Kremlin, when in fact anybody who has followed the global economy over the last few years would say that elevated inflation is currently a phenomenon that exists in all advanced economies. It is a global phenomenon that followed immediately after a major war in a global powerhouse for food and energy production, and that manifested itself in elevated energy and food prices. Any kind of basic analysis would tell you that, yes, inflation was in fact largely caused by a global phenomenon such as the invasion of Ukraine and such as post-COVID supply chain constraints. So for those opposite to blithely say it doesn't have global aspects is utterly ridiculous. In fact, those who say that are denying the fact and won't accept the fact that inflation actually started rising on their watch. The largest single quarter of inflation increase was on their watch. Interest rates started increasing on their watch. These global trends were emerging at a time when Australia was poorly placed to deal with them precisely because of a decade of mismanagement in which we hadn't dealt with the energy transition in a way that we should have, in which we hadn't strengthened our economy. Those opposites are denying basic common sense by denying the fact that this is in fact a global phenomenon. What is the best way to respond to this global economic challenge? As the Treasurer has laid out, relief, restraint and repair—and that is exactly what has underpinned both of our budget strategies. Restraint in spending. We have identified almost $40 billion in saves in our first two budgets—in the October budget and the May budget. That figure of almost $40 billion in saves can be contrasted with the slightly lower figure of zero dollars achieved by those opposite in their last budget. So when it comes to structural improvement in the budget position, those opposite have a shocking record from when they were last in office. Consider also what happened to the short-term fiscal uplift that this government saw in its last budget as a result of a stronger labour market, stronger nominal wages growth and improved resource prices. Over 85 per cent of that was returned to the bottom line, improving the budget position and also making our budget position much stronger when it comes to future interest rate payments. So when it comes to restraint, this government has demonstrated it in a way that those opposite never did, and that's why we've turned around in one year from an almost $78 billion forecast deficit to a surplus. That is an absolutely critical means by which we are strengthening the bottom line. Relief—critical at this time, but done so in a way that is proportionate, that is targeted and that doesn't make the Reserve Bank's job harder. We have a range of measures, ranging from energy bill relief to rental relief to increases in key benefit payments. Those opposite again say the government is being reckless, but no economists of any serious stature line up in support of that. The quotes they've given here are, again, often cherrypicked and often out of context, often with caveats. Alan Oster, the NAB's chief economist: 'We don't think the budget will change the RBA's thinking at all.' Adelaide Timbrell from ANZ: 'We consider the budget to be a relatively neutral one on inflation.' Bill Evans, Westpac's senior economist: 'I don't think there's anything in this budget that will make the Reserve Bank go, "We have to raise rates."' Gareth Aird from the CBA: 'The budget doesn't add to inflationary pressures.' AMP's Shane Oliver: 'The budget's impact on interest rates will be neutral.' We've strengthened the budget's underlying position; we've given significant relief and we haven't made the Reserve Bank's job harder. And then of course there's repair. The medium-term job is also critical. Again, we just need to go back to the energy transition, which is an area that has been abandoned for 10 years under the previous government. This government has put in place long-term policies setting legislated targets, which those opposite fought tooth and nail, and this government has put in place critical short-term measures to help households and businesses with their power bills. Stephen Kennedy said it would take three-quarters of a percentage point of inflation, directly reducing inflationary pressures. So this government has a plan, a strategy—relief, repair, restraint. In two budgets now we have implemented that and it is already showing results. If you contrast that to what those opposite did—zero dollars in saves, zero long-term policy—it is an absolute contrast and one that the Australian people chose wisely at the last election. 15:55 Mrs MARINO HWP Forrest An additional $185 billion in the budget does not sound like restraint to me. When we look at cost of living and the cost of doing business for small and family businesses, there is no doubt that inflation is a real issue for them every single day. Input costs are constantly going up for small businesses in the same when they do for a family budget, but for the small business owners that have mortgaged their homes to buy businesses, the increases in interest rates hit them particularly hard. They are actually exhausted from what they had to do during COVID-19. If you're a small family business, you know this well. There is a lack of workforce out there to help you in what you do at this moment. You are now working even longer hours simply to make ends meet, because of those same labour shortages and the extra costs that are imposed on your business through high inflation. We know they will be higher for longer because of this budget. I was recently talking to Scott Lane, who is co-founder and a director of Premalayer, which is an accommodation and wellness venue in Yallingup in my electorate. As a small business, he has seen around 100 per cent increase in his utilities costs, whether that is power, interest, gas, insurance. He is supposed to keep running his business. His customers cannot afford to pay any more for the services that he provides, so he either has to absorb those increases as a business or go out of business. He has had a 34 per cent increase in other operating costs, in wages and consumables, and an insurance cost that has gone from $6,000 to almost $30,000. I went and spoke to a number of other small businesses that I used as a litmus test throughout COVID-19 and throughout my time to get a sense of how the local economy is running. One of the areas of discretionary spending that is most affected by inflation and high interest rates and where people find themselves having to meet those significant extra costs in their mortgage is in discretionary spending in places like toy shops. In the toy shop I visited last week, the owner said that people are now only buying what they need for those times in their kids' lives that are most important. There is little being spent in a discretionary sense. In the retail space, there is a real cooling in the market, particularly in women's clothing. In hospitality, I spoke to the cafes and the small restaurants. In the cafes they are finding that people have come back from possibly getting two or three perhaps coffees a day to one at best. If that is what your business depends on, there are real issues with these increases in costs. I had a chat to an owner of a business called Corners on the Bay after the ceremony on Australia Day. I asked, 'How are you doing?' They said, 'The cost of everything in our business has gone up. The ingredients that we use, what we're putting on tables, have gone up so much that we are struggling to make ends meet. We are working longer hours ourselves and, in fact, we have put up our prices, but the customers are struggling to pay.' So that restaurant is no longer there; they shut. As I said earlier, they are the options you have in small business. You can cut your costs, if you can pass your cost onto the consumer. That may be the case for some. But as a dairy farmer, that is not something we get to do in our business. We have to absorb the extra costs of doing business. When you look at things like fertiliser and energy and the other increases in our costs of doing business, there is no way to pass those on. That was where this small business found itself. I spoke to John Ablett at Featured Wood Gallery in Australind. It is a tourism operation. He said it has just gone cold. That is what keeps coming through—it's gone cold. I spoke to some of my livestock transporters, particularly in WA, where we see those affected by the closing of the livestock export industry in WA. There's a significant impact on all those businesses and every other small business in the community that depends on them. They're the ones also absorbing these extra costs of doing business. And we've seen significant uncertainty created around the Aboriginal Heritage Act in WA for farmers and pastoralists; I think 600 got together in Esperance, and 400 in Merredin, to talk about this. And we're not even going near pharmacists and what impact the government's changes will have on particularly those small regional and remote pharmacies. 16:00 Mr LAXALE 299174 Bennelong It gives me great pleasure to get up in this chamber and speak about the importance of small business to our economy and how this government sees just as much potential in them as I do. Before I do, I thought I might just do a little bit of myth busting. The first myth busted by this government in our year in office is the myth that those opposite claim to be the better economic managers. We've shone a light on that old chestnut, haven't we, colleagues? The Liberals left office with a trillion dollars worth of debt and nothing to show for it, yet they still believe they're the better economic managers. They handed out rort after rort and delivered budget after budget which added fuel to the inflation fire, leaving the economy in the mess it is in. They're no economic managers and they're no friends of small business. That is the second great myth in Australian politics—that those corporate wannabes opposite, those failed middle managers over there, understand and care about business. But Australia now knows that it's all show. Those opposite have never been so disconnected from business in their history. During the early days of the pandemic, they were dragged kicking and screaming to support small businesses. And then, of course, when they finally got there, their support was so poorly designed that many small businesses and sole traders were excluded, while big businesses, who didn't need support, were oversubsidised. Then, after hearing small businesses cry out for action on skills shortages, instead of supporting the government's measures to address them they opposed them. Then, of course, we have these endless culture wars those opposite wage against businesses who are speaking out on behalf of their employees and their customers. Businesses who support climate action, who support the Voice, who speak out against attacks on the LGBTIQ+ community are consistently attacked by those opposite. On economic management and on supporting businesses, those opposite have never been more out of touch. Their base has found a home in the Albanese government, because we've been consultative, measured, fair and transparent. They've found this to be a stable government that's getting on with the job of fixing the mess left behind by the Morrison government. Before my time in this place, I owned and operated a small business. I've been working in a small business for most of my life. I know firsthand how important small businesses are to our economy. They employ 5.2 million Australians and contribute more than $500 billion to our nation's economy every year. They're the heart of our local communities. They employ locals and they serve locals. As a former small-business owner and operator, I'm proud to be part of a government that sees as much importance and potential in small business as I do. In just over one year, we've delivered program after program which will help small businesses across the country. The Small Business Energy Incentive will help up to 3.8 million small and medium-sized businesses save energy and save on their energy bills. That figure is $650 for small businesses in New South Wales, which will apply automatically from 1 July. The $394 million industry growth plan will help small businesses innovate and adapt and change the way they operate, to digitise. We've got grants and tax incentives for energy efficiency, and huge investments in TAFE and training to provide a workforce for our modern economy. We're cleaning up the skilled migration system that those opposite totally destroyed. Small businesses have been crying out for reform to help bring skilled workers to the country but also to skill up local workers. Our fee-free TAFE has been fought tooth and nail by those opposite when those calls have come from small businesses in our economy. Then, of course, there are our broader macro reforms. Cheaper child care will give more families access to early education, which means more men and women will be able to get back into the workforce, which will help small businesses grow. There's not one business in my electorate that is at full capacity. They're all crying out for help and skills, and those opposite not only boycotted the Jobs and Skills Summit but are opposing measures that we're taking to help small business. Never forget, when they complain about the cost of power, that those opposite voted against price caps on coal and gas, which will go directly to helping small business. The big difference between the government and those opposite is that we don't just say we support small businesses; we actually deliver for them. 16:05 Mr WOLAHAN 235654 Menzies Time puts things in perspective. We can look to a year ago, when we had an election, and how things have changed. But, before I do that, I'd like to look back a bit deeper to 1990. I remember 1990 as a child. The top hits were by Sinead O'Connor, MC Hammer and Madonna. I also remember it was a World Cup year and staying up late to watch the Italian World Cup with my dad. I also remember that year because that was the year where, in January, this country saw 17 per cent interest rates. It's often used as the high-water mark for a period where Australians did it particularly tough. It was particularly tough because it led into a recession that we didn't have to have. It's often used, for those who can remember that time, in folklore. I remember my father—we hadn't long been arrived in Australia—qualified as a roof plumber. He qualified as a roof plumber to start his own business as a tradesman who could help people and also help our family to put his three boys through school. But I remember that recession hit so hard because it was a choice between keeping your home or keeping your business. I fear that we are heading into a very similar period in Australian economic history. We can trade insults about who's to blame and who's the best economic manager, but real Australians are hurting right now. Recently I went and met a cafe owner in my area who runs Project Black. It is an enormously successful business in Mitcham. In fact, it was voted as the second-best coffee in Melbourne. I sat down to talk to him, to listen to him as to what it's actually like for someone running a small business. He said he would like to employ more people, but he can't. He can't afford it. The increased costs of energy, of labour and of interest rates mean he and his wife are the ones who have to work seven days a week. He noted that, after the lockdowns ended in Melbourne, he was serving about 70 kilograms of coffee a week. I asked him, 'How many kilos are you serving now?' and he said, 'Thirty kilos a week.' In an impassioned Facebook post to his customers, he said: 'I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that I might have to increase the price of your coffee.' He's such a good small-business owner that he takes pride in his product and pride in his customers, and he knew that they were struggling to pay the increased costs that he's facing. He said to me that he's worried that he may not survive. I worry that those are some of the decisions that small businesses are facing again just like they did in 1990—only it's potentially worse. We talk about 17 per cent interest rates like it's a number by itself, but what is important is the ratio of that interest rate to the debt that Australians have. Australians now have three times the debt that we had in 1990. Let's not forget what happened in 1990. The percentage of mortgage interest rate payments as a share of total household income went from 4.5 per cent to six per cent. What did that do? That saw a huge increase in unemployment in this country, a huge increase in defaults and a huge increase in small businesses closing. It took the best part of a decade to recover from that. Part of that recovery saw a Liberal government reduce debt, reduce spending and reduce the size of government, because government is not the answer for small businesses. They do it themselves. We've heard speech after speech about how those opposite are the great saviours for people who are struggling, how it's the government that will provide answers. It's not. That is an insult to the people like the owner of Project Black cafe in Mitcham. It is they who are doing the work. He doesn't go to sleep every night thanking you and thanking the Albanese government for the great things you're doing for him. He goes to sleep every night thinking: 'What school trip am I going to have to cut tomorrow? What sporting program will my children not be able to go to? What fresh meat will I not be able to serve on the dinner table, because it might go off and I can't afford it anymore?' And he's going to think: 'Who will I have to let go of in my business? And what second job will I have to take just to pay the increased mortgage payments that I have on my house and my business?' The numbers are extreme. I've spoken about 1990, but you only have to go back one year ago. Australians are entitled to ask if they are better off now than they were a year ago, and $25,000 a year more has to be found. That is before tax income. So families have to find an extra income of $50,000 or savings of $25,000. When you sit down and go through that exercise, that is a tough ask for families, and we should all do better. 16:10 Mr ZAPPIA HWB Makin Every day the coalition comes into the House and raises the issue of the cost of living in their matter of public importance, led by the member for Bradfield. I say to members of the coalition: your tactics are simply not working, and they're not working because Australians know what's behind the cost-of-living problems that they all face and which we on this side of the House very well understand. They know that the coalition government that was last in this place wasted nearly a decade in government with no energy policy, no climate change strategy, no skills training policy, no housing policy. It left the NDIS in a mess, Centrelink in a mess, the immigration system in a mess, the health system in a mess, the Department of Veterans' Affairs in a mess. It wasted tens of billions of dollars on COVID support payments to businesses that were actually making an increased profit, and, ultimately, it left the country in $1 trillion of debt, literally trebling the net debt that it inherited when it came to office. Not surprisingly, in the recent Essential poll when Australians were asked who they trust to deal with climate change the answer was Labor. Who do they trust to deal with the cost of living? It was Labor. Who do they trust to deal with reducing government debt? It was Labor. And who do they trust to manage rising interest rates, the very issues that those opposite want to talk about every day? It was Labor. The reality is that the Australian people have lost confidence in the coalition, and the Australian people understand very well what is behind and what is driving the cost-of-living increases that they face each and every day. And the member for Fraser so clearly articulated all that in his own contribution to this debate. Small business is the engine room of our economy, and it employs some five million people, as has been stated time and again. Small business, in fact, would have benefited when we capped the price of coal and gas, because energy costs are one of the most important cost areas for small business. And yet, what did the coalition do? They opposed the very move to try and cap those costs. The most important thing that we can do for small business in this country is to put more money in the pockets of ordinary Australian households, because those people will spend their money directly on small business provided services. That's exactly what this government has attempted to do since coming to office. Indeed, we have increased the payments for JobSeeker, Austudy, Abstudy, parenting payment, youth allowance and youth disability support pension. We've increased child care, and we've reduced TAFE costs by having more fee-free TAFE places. All of that puts more money in the pockets of people, who will then spend it with their local small businesses and, in turn, support them. The truth is that this government has also directly targeted energy costs by supporting energy payments for some five million eligible households and one million small-business people. We've tripled the bulk-billing incentive, again putting more money in the pockets of families, which in turn allows them to spend with small businesses. We've expanded the paid parental leave, and we've introduced a new pensioner work bonus payment, allowing older Australians to keep more of the money that they earn—as well as all of the other payments I referred to earlier. The coalition might have some credibility if they actually came into this place and said, 'Look, we can see what you're doing, but here's an alternative to what you're doing that would actually make a difference, perhaps a better difference.' But we hear nothing. The truth of the matter is that, just as they had no policies when they were in government, they have no policies now that they are in opposition. Until they come into this place and tell the Australian people what they would do above and beyond what this government is doing, they will have no credibility. The reality is that the Albanese Labor government understands the problems of the people out there in Australia, and we are responding with measures that will make a true difference to their ability to support their families. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 The discussion has now concluded. BILLS 42 BILLS Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill 2023 42

Education Legislation Amendment (Startup Year and Other Measures) Bill 2023

Consideration of Senate Message 42 16:16 Mr CLARE HWL Blaxland I move: That the requested amendments be made. These amendments were introduced by the government in the Senate to fix a gap in the HELP system whereby New Zealand citizen students missed out on HELP loans for a portion of their Australian citizenship journey. The amendment aligns the Higher Education Support Act with the government's recently announced pathway to Australian citizenship for New Zealand citizens. It ensures that students who have already begun their citizenship journey are treated the same as those embarking on the government's new pathway, and it permits those students to access the HELP system whilst they do so. It's a matter of fairness. It's a modest fix but one which will be very important to those it helps. I am pleased that these amendments have received broad support in the Senate. I commend the amendments to the House. Question agreed to. COMMITTEES 45 COMMITTEES Public Accounts and Audit Joint Committee 45 Membership 45 16:18 The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 The Speaker has received advice from the Chief Government Whip that she has nominated Mr Perrett to be a member of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit in place of Mr Rae, with effect from 12 noon on Thursday, 22 June 2023. 16:18 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley I ask leave of the House to move a motion for the appointment of a member to the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit. Mr Perrett HVP Hear, hear! The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 Don't push it, Member for Moreton! Leave granted. Ms WELLS 264121 I move: That Mr Rae be discharged from the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit and that, in his place, Mr Perrett be appointed a member of the committee with effect from 12 noon Thursday, 22 June 2023. Question agreed to. BILLS 45 BILLS Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 45

Public Service Amendment Bill 2023

Second Reading 45 16:19 The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 The question before the House now is that the amendment be disagreed to. 16:19 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton Sadly, we've seen revelation after revelation about a conga line of dodgy decisions coming out of the Morrison government. It's what happens when a government treats the Public Service like his own political plaything rather than a source of frank and fearless advice. The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments trashed trust not just in government but also in our public service, whether it was the sports rorts, the Urban Congestion Fund, the commuter car parks for stations that didn't exist or, of course, the most recent Auditor-General's report finding that the $2 billion community health and hospital program was treated just like another slush fund. Imagine that: using health like a slush fund. To make matters worse, the public servants supposedly in charge of the program had to monitor the media to keep track of the Morrison government's announcements. You had senior public servants sitting at their computers, waiting for the next announcement in their area of portfolio responsibility, waiting for decisions to be made by a press release. Sadly, their expert analysis was being ignored or not even sought, because the money was being used for what was in the interests of the seats held by the Liberal and National parties or of targeted seats, not what was in the best interests of the Australian taxpayer. Again, the public were treated like mugs. The Public Service lost the trust of the Australian people. How about the public servants who knew that the former Prime Minister had five secret ministries and didn't think to tell the nation? Can you believe we have that as a political fact that we now accept? How low those opposite dragged our democracy—right down into the gutter. This is why change is needed. Just like almost every area of government, it's up to the Albanese Labor government to clean up the mess of a decade—a decade of wasted opportunity and dreadful mismanagement. During the last decade, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments set about diminishing and sidelining the Public Service through cuts and ignoring their advice and did so proudly and gleefully. Instead, they relied excessively on contractors, consultants and outsourcing policy decisions. Consequently, policy expertise withered on the vine. These legislative changes in front of the chamber are part of the Albanese government's agenda to rebuild the Australian Public Service. Most of the amendments contained within this bill are recommendations from the 2019 Independent Review of the Australian Public Service, the Thodey review, or go to the intent of the Thodey review. These are responses that are sensible, unlike how the LNP operated when they were in government for that wasted decade—those three squandered terms that had little to show for it but debt and disaster. The Albanese government has consulted widely on these changes, including with employees, representative groups, agencies, experts, the Public Service and the CPSU. At the heart of this bill are three guiding principles of change which aim to make the APS work better for the Australian people. They are: strengthening the APS's core purpose and values, building the capacity and expertise of the APS and, lastly—something that has been missing for way too long—supporting good governance, accountability and transparency. How will this bill strengthen the APS's core purpose and values? It will do this by adding a new APS value of stewardship that all APS employees must uphold. Stewardship will be defined as 'the Australian Public Service builds capability and institutional knowledge and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does.' When the APS doesn't meet these expectations, through either not understanding their importance or being set up to fail, it is ordinary Australians who suffer. Just look at the devastation reaped by robodebt. It damaged lives. In fact, it took lives. Government decisions implemented by public servants took the lives of Australians. They were our most vulnerable Australians. I will never forget or forgive some of those opposite for what they did. I do, on this occasion, think of the poor public servants who were forced to implement this dastardly LNP policy. The scheme rolled on and on and on, raising and chasing debts that were not owed, wrecking lives—and we're yet to receive an apology from those opposite. Sometimes I wonder if they have any shame at all. Robodebt was a failure of leadership to listen to its own employees, who had correctly highlighted the fact that simply averaging income over 12 months instead of every fortnight would yield incorrect outcomes. Sadly, some of the Public Service leadership failed to recognise or reconcile the impact these decisions were having on some of the most vulnerable people in Australia. The amendment bill will also require the Secretaries Board to oversee the development of a single, unifying APS purpose statement and review it once every five years. It will also require all agency heads to uphold and promote the new APS purpose statement, in addition to the APS values and employment principles. This will make sure that the APS looks at itself to make sure that it is delivering the right outcomes for Australians. The bill will clarify and strengthen these provisions in the act to make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. We don't want to see ministers having their fingers on APS staffing decisions. It's time to reaffirm the APS's apolitical nature. The second component of this bill will be to build on the capability and expertise of our wonderful Public Service. The bill will do this by having the APS make regular independent and transparent capability reviews a five-yearly requirement for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These mandated five-yearly capability reviews will assess organisational strengths and areas for development, with reports and action plans responding to findings required to be publicly released. The public needs to have confidence and trust in these organisations and, where improvements have been identified, that these are then being made. The bill will also require the Secretaries Board to commission regular long-term insight reports to explore medium-term and long-term trends, risks and opportunities facing Australia. These reports will ensure that the APS can build trust in its expertise and understanding of cross-cutting issues that matter to all Australians and can be a leader in innovation and change. Lastly, in terms of these guiding principles, the bill, just like the Albanese government, will help restore and support good governance, accountability and transparency. We will require the publication of the agencies' APS census results and an action plan that responds to results. Again, making this information open to the public will foster a culture of transparency and accountability for continuous improvement within agencies. We will also require agency heads to implement measures to enable decisions to be made by employees at the lowest appropriate classification for those decisions. This will ensure decision-making is not raised to a higher level than is necessary. Not only will this reduce the unnecessary hierarchical nature of the Public Service but it will also be empowering to APS employees. Let's look at those three guiding principles again: strengthening the APS's core purpose and values; building the capability and expertise of the APS; and supporting good governance, accountability and transparency. It is not a mistake that many of these changes come back to two simple words: trust and confidence. The government and the people of Australia need to have trust and confidence in the APS to do their jobs, the jobs that they are paid for, and trust and confidence that they will deliver the best outcomes and services for Australia, especially to those who most rely them. I commend this bill to the House. 16:28 Dr ANANDA-RAJAH 290544 Higgins I recently had the pleasure in Higgins of hosting the Measuring What Matters Forum. The Measuring What Matters Forum was in response to a call by the Treasurer in relation to a statement that he is going to be putting out later in the year called the wellbeing statement. The wellbeing statement will complement the various other statements that we have in Australia such as the statement on the environment. We recognise that there is a growing recognition that measures such as GDP and the consumer price index simply do not capture the state of our overall wellbeing. They don't convey what we value, like financial security, our democracy, our connection to nature or feeling like we belong. A key theme that surprised me that emerged during this discussion with my constituents was the need for goal-setting, program evaluation and accountability. My constituents were highly exercised over this, and they wanted to see measurable outcomes that were actually linked to aspirational, well-defined targets, supported by program evaluation to ensure accountability and public trust. That's a framework—it's a framework we need to build upon. These are some of the things that they actually said: 'Good government is founded on good policy and good policy depends on good advice. One of the APS core roles is to provide advice to support the government of the day, so that it can deliver its policy agendas and priorities.' I couldn't agree more. A second constituent said this: 'Ministers operate in an environment of high pressure, fast pace, intense scrutiny and great complexity. All of those things are true. They are responsible for making decisions individually and collectively, as members of cabinet, that have significant and far-reaching effects on individuals, businesses and communities. The importance of ministerial decision-making and the circumstances under which it occurs underscores the need to have well-functioning support systems in place for ministers.' What's a support system? For us it is the Australian Public Service. Then, finally: 'If it is a question of compliance, we have various rules in place, but our Public Service has been so gutted we have a lack of ability to evaluate and a lack of ability to deliver programs.' That's an indictment if I ever did hear one. We have come to government and inherited a Public Service that has been hollowed out, undermined and eroded under a wasted decade from those opposite. The erosion of the APS was laid bare by the robodebt scandal. The previous government essentially co-opted a Commonwealth bureaucracy to do its bidding and the results were catastrophic. Just when we thought we had seen it all, up popped the PwC scandal—a salient lesson on the risks associated with outsourcing, which has led to an overreliance on external contractors. Under those opposite, a shadow APS bloomed, resulting in cost blowouts and a false economy whereby a staggering $21 billion was actually spent in the year 2020-21—the last year of the previous government—on external providers and external contractors. The reforms put forward in these amendments that we are discussing will restore a positive culture, capability and integrity to the APS, which we want to be seen as a model employee. The Albanese government's APS reform agenda has four priorities. At its heart is integrity—an APS that puts business and people at the centre of its policy-making and its service delivery. We want the APS to be seen as a model employer. Finally, we want an APS that has the capability and capacity to do its job and do it well. The bill has certain objects that are now being added—one is a focus on stewardship. We know that the APS has a mission statement and certain core values, but we want to add stewardship to its operating ethos because we believe this is an overarching mission of the APS. New stewardship value has been developed through extensive consultation and has taken into account responses from over 1,500 APS staff across the country, from graduates all the way up to senior executives. The bill outlines the stewardship value as meaning that the APS builds capacity, capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. Stewardship, we believe, involves learning from the past and then looking into the future. It involves conservation and cultivation, leaving things in a better place than when you found them, as our First Nations people know. We believe that stewardship is important and we want the APS to be seen as having an important role as part of a wider public good. We are also introducing a purpose statement, and this was identified in response to the Thodey review, which showed that there was a lack of a unified purpose in the APS, an excessive internal focus and a loss of capability in crucial areas. The APS statement will be developed to oversee a single unifying purpose statement for the APS, a bit like a mission statement. It will contribute to a shared sense of purpose for tens of thousands of APS employees, reinforcing a 'one APS' approach. The purpose statement will be developed through consultation by the service for the service and will not be set in stone. In other words, it will be able to evolve with the changing demands of a contemporary culture and society, responsive to the needs of the community and the government, and it will be refreshed every five years. We are putting some guardrails around ministerial influence on hiring. The first APS value is to be impartial and independent, and we want to reinforce that. That's important to prevent scandals and catastrophes like robodebt from ever occurring again. It's important that we defend this value of impartiality, and so we want to ensure that APS employment decisions are made at arm's length from ministers and political interference. I think that's very important. This bill will make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. It's explicit. We will also look at building the capability, expertise and thought leadership of the APS. This really speaks to developing an institutional memory, which, after a long period of time, turns out to be a priceless asset. It surprises me that we have such turnover in some government departments. I've been a public servant my whole life. I've worked as a physician in public hospitals from the day I graduated to the day I entered parliament, and what was clear in my profession was that highly skilled health care professionals did not leave; we just did not have the churn that you see in a lot of government departments. It meant that we built up a huge institutional memory and capability. It's probably the reason why, for many of our hospitals and centres of excellence around the country, it's all about the people, the expertise and the capability. It's that memory that then trains other people coming up, whether they be nurses and doctors or allied health professionals, pharmacists and so on. You keep building and building on that capacity, and then you do other things with that ability, such as research, public policy or public health, for example. That's the kind of destination we want the Public Service to evolve into. It should be seen as a valued career pathway for our best and brightest. We, here, all serve our country, but there is another way to serve your country, and that is through the Australian Public Service. It is noble and fitting that we should be tightening up the legislation around this important asset. To be future fit, the APS needs to continually build on the capability of its staff to create a skilled, confident workforce for it to remain a trusted institution. We believe that the APS must work in partnership with the public to solve these problems and co-design the best solutions. Co-design is a very important word; it has a great deal of meaning, particularly in medicine but also in public policy. The best results come when you engage with the grassroots community stakeholders and co-design a solution with them. Bureaucrats and parliamentarians don't have all the answers. We have to listen to the people in order to craft the best solutions, and that has been a hallmark of the Albanese government. Just about every major piece of policy reform that has been undertaken, in every portfolio, has gone to some type of public consultation. In the chamber is the aged care minister, and she is chairing an important task force and review looking at aged care. Similarly, this has now gone out to public consultation. Why? Because we realise that this is a complex area and that we have to gather as many ideas as possible in order to solve this problem. There will be capability reviews that will occur. This is done in order to foster a continuous culture of improvement in the APS. We want to look to identify gaps and areas of improvement. The bill will make these regular, independent and transparent, and they are occur on a five-yearly basis for the departments of state, Services Australia and the ATO. That's a good thing. We will also have long-term insight reports. I found this fascinating. This is a recommendation from the Thodey review which compels the APS and these departments to come up with long-term strategic plans. This is designed to push back against the short-termism that has infected our public policymaking, which has led us into the mess that we're in. Short-termism has led us into a climate catastrophe, a health crisis, an energy crisis and all kinds of other problems, and it will be long-term thinking that gets us out of this. This is a welcome addition to this legislation. We'll also be publishing annual feedback of APS employee census results. This is a mechanism for employees to provide feedback and understand that this will be openly published. It will be transparent and it will be associated with an action plan to ensure that those grievances or areas that have been identified as being potentially weak can be improved. We also want to foster a culture of engagement and transparency. Finally, we will also be looking at enabling decision-making to occur at the lowest appropriate classification. What is that mean? It means that we're trying to flatten the hierarchy and empower those staff who might be at the lower end, who are often younger but often brimming with ideas, to come forward and share their ideas for the betterment of the nation. We will be compelling agency heads to implement measures that enable decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest possible classification level. This is also designed to stop this upward drift of decision-making, which just adds to delay and red tape. We find that kicking the can up the food chain doesn't always work and can lead to all kinds of problems. In conclusion, we are facing a multitude of challenges—environmental, health and economic. These problems are certainly complex, and they need a harnessing of ideas to allow these ideas to bubble up to the surface from all quarters—community, government, the business sector, industry and our APS. The solutions require a shift away from short-termism towards generational investment. For that, we need to ensure we have a mechanism that rewards and retains our most talented minds to serve the nation. I commend this bill to the House. 16:43 Mr DAVID SMITH 276714 Bean I'm pleased to be able to rise to speak in favour of this bill here today, particularly as a former public servant and as someone who represented public servants for more than a decade through the labour movement. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is an important step in recasting and resurrecting the capabilities of our federal Public Service. On this side of the House, this particular challenge has long been recognised as one of the most pivotal problems facing good government in Australia. That is why we made a commitment to the Australian people at the last election that we would take steps to fix this problem. Crucially, rebuilding our depleted public sector capability has been one of the drivers of our government from day one. This bill and our government's broader Australian Public Service reform agenda are about restoring the public's trust and faith in government and its institutions, and achieving this by rebuilding the capacity and expertise of government. Looking around the world at the state that many great democracies find themselves in, and contemplating the challenges for our country that loom on the horizon and creep ever closer to us, there are few tasks more important than restoring trust in and capacity of government. We are fortunate to have a good blueprint, through the Thodey review of 2019, for how to proceed with this important task. It, frankly, boggles the mind that this review was not acted upon before now—that it has taken a change of government for this important work to begin. Before I move onto the detail of this important bill, I would like to make an extended reflection on how we arrived at this particular point of crisis in our public sector. The degradation of the capabilities of government did not happen overnight, nor was it a slow-burning consequence of factors beyond the control of government. It was, rather, a result of a pattern of policymaking and an avoidance of taking action informed by analysis and review. Commissioning and then failing to act on the Thodey review played a role in that process, but, in truth, it was well underway before then. It was a process that I had the misfortune of seeing up close. Before I entered public life I worked for more than a decade as the public sector director and ACT director for Professionals Australia, the union for scientists, engineers and other professionals. I worked across the federal government, working with engineers and scientists in the Department of Defence; veterinarians in the department of agriculture; scientists in the CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, CASA and Air Services Australia; and engineers at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. These specialists performed important work for the government and rightly felt a certain sense of pride in the contributions they were making. It was a real honour for me to be able to represent them and advocate on their behalf. It was an honour, yes, but it was also a source of continual frustration. This sense of frustration was a consequence of watching these fine public servants, with their immense expertise—many were world-leading experts—being stymied in the execution of their roles. Their advice—informed by a learning expertise in many cases to high postgraduate level—was too often not given appropriate weight. At other times it was ignored or rejected in favour of consultants and contractors. Indeed, too often the advice of those external consultants and contractors, imbued with vested interests, was more highly prized than that coming from more deeply experienced public servants. The very skills and expertise of those I was representing was often too thinly spread, making capability assessments of their departments' and agencies' programs inherently difficult. It was this sense of frustration, witnessing these good and decent public servants have their expertise and advice not valued appropriately, that motivated me to seek election to this place, so that I could play a role to stop this terrible rot. I am proud to have represented specialists in the Public Service and even prouder to be here today standing up for them. This bill will not solve all their challenges, and those challenges it will resolve won't go away immediately. But this bill is a start—an important start—and a real acknowledgement from this government that a problem exists that needs to be acted upon. This bill will not just help my former members in the Public Service. It will help improve the roles and job qualities of public servants across the Australian Public Service. As an MP who represents a Canberra seat, I can tell you, Deputy Speaker, that many of my constituents are public servants or have devoted much of their careers to public service. It takes a special kind of person to become a public servant. You have to possess a strong commitment to service and the greater good. The rewards are often found more in the achievements of good policy and the effective delivery of government services rather than anything financial. I am proud to represent such dedicated public servants in this place, and it is my view that the least we can do to recognise their efforts is to ensure that they're working within an efficient and impactful public sector. This bill will achieve just that. What we are discussing here today goes to the heart of the capacity and capability of government to serve the interests of its citizens and protect the integrity of the nation it serves. We live in complex and troubled times. The Australian government is confronted with an ever-multiplying number of challenges. These challenges threaten Australia and its peoples at all levels and cannot be addressed or resolved easily. Think about what confronts us, what is in the forefront of our thinking as members of this place. There are climate change and the multiplicity of dangers it presents to our economy, ecology, energy policy, foreign policy, planning policies and management of emergencies and natural disasters. There is the state of our region and the wider world, where long-cherished and championed values are under threat on a range of fronts and dangers. We have an economy that without intervention has been leaving too many behind, creating insecurity in housing and other areas. We had a global pandemic which both dissolved and strengthened borders and barriers, highlighting deep-seated inequality across the world. We have a government committed totally to confronting and addressing these challenges, but the capacity of our government and, indeed, any government to face the challenges of today is conditional first and foremost on the capabilities it possesses through its public service. After nine years of shameful neglect, we can't honestly say that the new government was left with those capabilities by our predecessors. This bill, alongside the many other important reforms that have commenced, will help address this. At the risk of repeating some of the excellent points made by my colleagues in this debate, it's useful to examine some of the specific changes this bill will bring about. This bill will end ministerial interventions in employment within the Public Service. In talking about some of the positive things about our Public Service, I've yet to use an important word which describes what it should be: apolitical. One of the great strengths of our democracy and our country is that, despite a change of government and even the political direction the nation is heading in, a professional and apolitical public service remains in place to pursue and execute the agenda of government. This is so important and is an essential ingredient of our national strength and capability, but we have seen far too much erosion of this principle, and this erosion is often most egregious in the area of employment practices within departments. This bill will remove any ambiguity on this question and places a duty on ministers not to interfere in these matters. It is also critical that we have a public service where all involved are empowered to make relevant decisions, yet we have seen a tendency take root for decisions to be escalated up the chain of command. This is done in the name of risk management, but, by taking decisions away from the most appropriate, lowest level and escalating them, additional burdens and roadblocks are created and incentives for personal development and good workplace culture are lost. In the workplaces where I had responsibility, what it often meant was that the experts were lost in that mix. The people who actually understood these areas best had their work signed off by people who did not understand it. This bill will empower agency and department heads to determine the lowest, most appropriate level decisions can be made at. This will foster a much more positive work culture and flow of work, creating efficiencies and productivity. I have spoken at length in this contribution on the subject of public sector capabilities. Having represented so many specialist public sector professionals at an industrial level, my thinking is very much attuned to the attraction and retention of professional skills and capabilities in the Public Service. One of the conclusions I have come to having witnessed skills and capabilities being run down, devalued and discarded is that the solution to the capability question in the Public Service can only come from the top. It cannot be managed at the level of the workplace. This bill will achieve this change. Under the terms of this bill, independent, transparent and regular five-yearly reviews into the status of available capabilities will be a requirement for each department and agency. The resulting reports from these reviews will then be published on the relevant website of the department or agency. This is such an important reform. It may not sound sexy or exciting, but these reviews will present a clear picture of the status of capabilities. Being forward facing and informed by identified strategic priorities, these reviews will also be an important way of identifying capability gaps. This will enable the recognition of those skills and capabilities already present in the department or agency, and will further empower the retention and ongoing development of those skills. I believe this is an important and worthwhile change. All of us who are members of this place have chosen a career in public life at a time of heightened complexity and challenge. The decisions we make here will determine the success or failure of Australia. Of course, the same could be said of any cohort of representatives serving here over the past 120 years. But the confluences of challenges and opportunities are, in my view, more pronounced and impactful today than at any other time in our history. We look to government for solutions, for assurances that these challenges will not overwhelm us. But, even with the best of intentions, any government is both constrained and empowered by the capabilities, or lack of capabilities, of its public service. This is a government which is resolutely committed to overcoming these challenges, and the changes this bill will achieve will further empower our government to take Australia forward with confidence. Finally, this bill will do so much for all those dedicated and hardworking public sector professionals that I was fortunate enough to get to know and represent over many years. Their commitment and abilities always impressed me, and the ongoing disrespect they faced motivated me to see change happen. As I said earlier, this bill will not fix everything but it's an important step on the journey to respect and recognition of our public sector professionals. I pay tribute to them and their contributions and dedication. I commend this bill to the House, and I call on all members of this place to support it. 16:57 Ms SWANSON 264170 Paterson This issue is of paramount importance not only to this place because of our nation's governance but to all Australian people, all people who seek service. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is a key component of the Albanese government's APS reform agenda. This bill is more than just an amendment, quite frankly; it's a significant stride forward in our commitment to fostering public trust, enhancing government accountability and promoting transparency in our Public Service. It builds on the essential findings of the 2019 Thodey review, which highlighted several areas of improvement within the APS. This amendment bill aims to address the critique raised by the Thodey review that our APS requires a unified purpose, needs to shift from an internal focus and ought to recover capability in critical sectors that, quite frankly, have been dreadfully honeycombed over recent decades. It echoes the review's call for a trusted, future fit, agile and responsive APS that can effectively serve the evolving needs of our government and our ever-changing community, embodying professionalism and integrity in every endeavour. The last few years have been a testament to and a test for our Public Service. The necessity of an agile and robust APS has never been clearer. The COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, geopolitical instabilities and economic volatility all underscore the urgency of a public service that can adapt swiftly and work towards common purpose. The APS values—those of impartiality, commitment to serve, accountability, respect and ethics—have proven essential during these challenging times, and I defy any serious and fair dinkum Australian to challenge that. For these reasons we are introducing this amendment bill. It's a piece of legislation that will institutionalise these much-needed reforms, making them a permanent part of the ethos that governs our Public Service. Our ambitious APS reform agenda is articulated around four fundamental pillars: integrity, people-centricity, exemplary employment practices and enhanced capability. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, at its very core, supports these pillars. Firstly, this bill emphasises the new APS value of stewardship, developed through extensive consultations with over 1,500 APS staff right across the country. This value speaks to our commitment to preserve public interest, build that institutional knowledge and consider the long-term impacts of our decisions. It echoes the principles of conservation and cultivation and recognises our First Nation Australians time-honoured practice of stewardship over this land. Secondly, the bill necessitates a unified purpose statement for the APS. Like any good team, everyone in that team always responds when they pull together with a common purpose, and if that can be shucked down to a statement that people can focus on and remember then that has proven capabilities. This statement is going to be reviewed every five years. I personally think that's a good thing because whilst there's nothing like a good old-fashioned Latin motto, a statement like this really does need to be contemporaneous with the values of the times. It's going to help foster collaborative leadership and align services across the myriad of departments that form our Public Service. It's going to give tens of thousands of APS employees a shared sense of purpose, embodying one APS approach. Thirdly, the bill fortifies the impartiality of our public service, making it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. This prohibition enhances the non-political and apolitical character of the APS and affirms the agency head's ability to act with integrity. Moreover, the bill proposes amendments that encourage decisions at the lowest appropriate level, streamlining bureaucracy and fostering a culture of trust and empowerment within the APS. This is one of the critical changes that we are proposing in this bill. Rather than feeding decisions up, we're actually empowering down—and how often have you heard someone who is well and truly at the coalface of how something works make a suggestion, only to have that potentially snuffed out by those higher up or, indeed, claimed as their own work? It will be good to see people who have got those ideas, having those ideas fostered and them gaining recognition for them. I personally think this is a fantastic idea and I look forward to seeing how it lifts our Public Service. This bill also mandates regular capacity and capability reviews, ensuring continuous improvement and adaption to our ever-evolving operational environment, and you only have to look at how this place has changed in just the last few years with the ebbs and flows of COVID—the perspex going up and coming down, the doors being opened and closed and all the other myriad of serious changes that had to be adapted—and the changes that had to be made by our public servants to ensure not only the continued function of parliament and legislation, but also to ensure the health and safety of those people who work here every day, and I personally thank them for that. They embraced those changes robustly and willingly, and they've done a great job. Another important aspect of this bill is the publication of annual APS employee census results and the corresponding action plans. This measure seeks to uphold transparency and accountability and responsiveness within our Public Service and firmly positions the APS as a model employer. Lastly, the bill introduces the requirement of at least one annual long-term insight briefing. These briefings, produced through public consultation, will provide valuable insights into Australia's long-term trends, risks and opportunities, fostering the APS ability to strategise effectively for the future. Australia is poised to face immense challenges in the coming decade, and it is therefore paramount that we support good governance and recognise the APS will continue to play an integral role in meeting the changing needs of government and the community. I just want to take a moment to recognise my colleague and friend Anne Stanley, Chief Government Whip here in this Albanese government. Anne has instigated the Friends of the Public Sector parliamentary friends group. I went along to its very first function last week. It was terrific. In that room were some of the most caring and hardworking public servants. I don't want to try and rank the Public Service in any order of importance, but these were the people charged with the direct care of some of our most vulnerable children. I know that they spent the week meeting with members of the House and members of the Senate and talking through some of the challenges they face having charge of such vulnerable children. They made it very clear how difficult it is to recruit people into the jobs that they do. They also made it very clear how difficult it can be to retain people in these jobs. It is undoubtedly an incredibly difficult job. The one thing that stood out most clearly for me, whilst talking to these people, was an overriding sense of commitment to the greater good. Not only did they have the sense of wanting to help and care and lift up very vulnerable children and occasionally make very difficult choices to remove them from dangerous situations; they expressed the overriding desire to lift those children out of danger and create a safe place for them immediately and in a broader context. I couldn't help but think about the people that I know in the ADF. What struck me the other night at the Public Service event was that I was hearing, whilst not the same detail, the same character coming through. That is one thing that I always pick up when I'm in the company of defence personnel—there is something that underpins their service to our nation. They're not doing it for the kudos and certainly not for the money or for the stature or for any of those things. There is a deep driving desire within the character and personality of these people to serve. In my interactions with public servants, in the last seven years that I have been here, I have gained such great respect for them. In my previous role on radio and talkback radio, bashing a public servant almost seemed to be a national sport. People would often ring and have their two cents worth about the good, the bad and the ugly of the Public Service. Well, I have to say, since working in close proximity to incredible professionals not only in this building but also in the employee across the country doing a wide range of things, by far and above, the public servants that I have interactions with are true professionals. We should be very glad that we live in a country where we have people who are willing to take on those roles, who want to exemplify the best of the best, who want to work very hard for us all as the Australian public. I say to them that I hope this bill goes some way to correcting some of the issues that the Public Service has faced over the last 20 years, particularly. I look to people like schoolteachers and nurses and ambulance drivers and people who work with children at risk. They're all in the Public Service. I can only remember a time when they were venerated in their professions. It absolutely disturbs me now, when I read stories of people being attacked by the public when they're just trying to do their job. I think it does start with things like this bill, which will put into the law of the land that the Public Service is a place where we want the best of the best, where we want respect to be built again, where we want trust to be placed again. I do think that this is a direct reflection of the Prime Minister's values. While he sits on this side of the chamber, I think ultimately he's actually very conservative in his personal views about manners and respect and he places enormous store in those. I know he wants our Public Service to be an organisation that is revered, trusted and respected by the Australian people as it should be. I commend this bill to the House. I look forward to these changes being implemented, but, more than that, I look forward to the changes that we so desperately need to see and that will come as a result of them so that we have that stellar Public Service. The changes that come from that and make Australia an even better place to live will be there for everyone to see and everyone to experience. I commend the bill to the House. 17:10 Ms PAYNE 144732 Canberra It's a privilege to have been here for the member for Paterson's very eloquent and spot-on words about the Public Service and the professionalism and drive of those people who in their work seek to serve the public of Australia, which is what, obviously, the Public Service is about. Not enough is said about that incredibly important work, and not enough respect has been given to this in recent times. I rise today to also speak in support of this Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. The bill represents an important step towards implementing the government's Australian Public Service reform agenda, which is aimed at ensuring that the APS embodies integrity, puts people and business at the centre of policy and services, is a model employer and has the capability to fulfil its responsibilities effectively. The APS reform agenda is informed by the recommendations of the 2019 report of the independent review of the APS led by David Thodey. This comprehensive review provided valuable insights into the strengths and challenges of our Public Service, and the government is committed to implementing the necessary reforms to address these issues. I want to recognise the work of the Minister for the Public Service, Senator Gallagher, and the work that she has put into this reform agenda and this legislation. I would also like to thank the public servants who have themselves put the work in to prepare this legislation. I'm very proud to be part of a government that actually has an APS reform agenda, a government that respects the Australian Public Service. This should not be something novel, but over the last 10 years—with the absolute disregard that we saw for the Public Service and their critical role in our democracy, in the delivery of services to Australians and in providing the advice that shapes the policies that benefit the lives of all Australians and impact the lives of all Australians—it was really missing under the former government. As the member for Canberra, around 27 per cent of my constituents are actually employed in the Australian Public Service. I am incredibly proud to represent these hardworking, dedicated people as my constituents in this place. I will always stand up for the Public Service, the important role it has, the individuals that make it up and the work that they do. As I've talked about before in this place, I saw this in my father's career in the Public Service. He really instilled in me the values of professionalism and the importance of frank and fearless advice and of the Public Service serving the government of the day and not being politicised. And I saw how incredibly hard he worked in serving the various governments that he served in his career. I also saw this as an official at the Commonwealth Treasury, where I worked with some of the most inspiring, dedicated, intelligent people that I have ever had the privilege to work with. If there's ever any question of how hardworking the Public Service is, the process of working on budgets, which we have just recently been through, is a mammoth effort for people from a range of departments, not only—although probably in large part—the Treasury and the Department of Finance, who put incredible hours and work into that. I want to thank those public servants again for the work that they put into that and into each and every policy and piece of legislation that we deal with in this place. I also see that dedication and professionalism in the public servants that we work with in this building every day, who enable this parliament to run, essentially enabling our democracy to function. We see the people who run the secretariats of parliamentary committees and the incredible, quality work that they put in. I want to thank the secretariats that I work with on the committees that I'm in for the incredible work that they do, giving us quality advice and bringing together a range of issues and stakeholders to participate in those committee processes. It's another really important mechanism of our democracy that couldn't run without public servants. As the member for Paterson was saying, people join the Public Service because they do care about outcomes for Australia and the world. They care about outcomes for our environment, in health and in all the range of policy areas. They do it because they want to see improvements in those areas; that's what drives them. It should be a profession that is respected and upheld, particularly by people in this place, who see it firsthand, and ministers, who deal with the Public Service on a daily basis. So it was very disappointing to see disregard for the Public Service under the previous government. It's closely tied in with Canberra bashing. Let's not deny that that is a big part of it. It's bashing on our city and our Public Service and perpetuating myths about big government being slow to get things done, myths that it's an easy job and all of the things that we all hear too much of. It is a very important job that people do. They work very hard and deserve our utmost respect. So, as I say, I will always, as long as I am in this place, be incredibly proud to represent so many Australian Public Service employees in my electorate. As I've said, the work of the APS is a solid foundation that we use to build the future prosperity of the nation, and it's all done by hardworking Australians who are too often unfairly maligned in this place by those opposite. We saw a prime example just a couple of weeks ago of the opposition's contempt for the Public Service in budget estimates—again, another important mechanism of our democracy, where questions can be asked of public servants about the budget. You would have thought that the opposition would have some serious questions about the budget, but we saw a range of ridiculous lines of questioning. I won't go into all of them, but one that really stood out was when a very senior public servant was criticised for not wearing a tie and was asked about that. While in one sense it's laughable, it does speak to a much deeper disrespect and disregard for the important work that these people do, the important role of the Public Service and the way that that role in itself should be respected. For the last decade, under the previous government, we saw huge amounts of outsourcing. We saw arbitrary employment caps designed for political point scoring. We saw wage freezes. We saw speeches by the former prime minister, the member for Cook, which completely misrepresented the purpose and mission of the APS. Who can forget the Christmas social media video from the member for New England, declaring that he was sick of the government being in his life? It was an interesting comment coming from someone who had sought to be a member of parliament, given that that is the role of this place—to form governments and deliver the services, laws and policies that affect everyone each and every day. I would have thought a driving reason for most people to be here would be to see government make good policies, but then you have people saying they want the government out of their lives. This didn't stop him from forcibly relocating the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Armidale, in his electorate. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 00AMT Is there a point of order? Mr Hastie 260805 I would just direct the member back to the bill itself, rather than commenting on other members of the House. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 00AMT I'm sure the member for Canberra will continue her contribution relevant to the bill at hand. Ms PAYNE 144732 Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I think it was pretty relevant. Also, the former Prime Minister used his speech at the Institute of Public Administration to claim that only those who have put their name on a ballot can truly understand the significance of accountability—again, I think, misrepresenting the role of the Public Service—and this is from someone who secretly swore himself into multiple ministries. So I am proud that with the formation of our government the neglect of APS has ended. We will never treat public servants or the expertise they provide the way that those now in opposition did. We will always respect and take account of their frank and fearless advice. Integrity is a cornerstone of the Labor government's APS reform agenda. Recent events such as the robodebt royal commission and revelations about the role of consultancies in light of the PwC scandal have highlighted the need to strengthen integrity measures within the Public Service. This bill sets the foundation for broader reforms by introducing important new provisions. These provisions lay the groundwork for future legislation that will specifically target integrity concerns. One of the key measures of this bill is the addition of a new APS value of stewardship, which underlines the importance of building capability and institutional knowledge within the APS, and which all APS employees must uphold. Stewardship will be defined as the APS builds capability and institutional knowledge, and will support the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impact of what it does. This value emphasises the importance of long-term planning in considering the broader consequences of APS actions. It is so vital that we recognise the long-term impacts of the work done by the APS, and this bill reinforces the role of APS employees in serving successive governments, the parliament and the Australian public. It complements the stewardship duties of secretaries, the Secretaries Board and the commissioner. It also introduces measures to enhance the work environment within the APS. It requires agency heads to create an environment that enables decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest appropriate classification. This empowers employees and fosters a culture of accountability and effective decision-making throughout the service. By reducing unnecessary hierarchy and empowering APS employees, this provision will ensure efficient decision-making processes and a more agile and responsive APS. Furthermore, the bill empowers the APS Commissioner and the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to conduct periodic capability reviews of departments and key agencies. These reviews will become a five-yearly requirement for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. The reviews will assess organisational strength and areas for development, with reports and action plans responding to the findings required to be publicly released. This will enable continuous improvement within agencies and ensure transparency in their performance. Transparency and accountability are crucial in building public trust. That is why the bill includes provisions that require the Secretaries Board to request and publish regular long-term insights reports, which will provide information about medium-term and long-term trends, risks and opportunities affecting Australia. Additionally, agencies will be required to publish their annual APS employee census results, along with action plans that address the findings. This will foster a culture of continuous improvement, and ensure the APS listens to and addresses the thoughts, concerns and ideas of its employees. Extensive consultation has been conducted throughout the development of the bill, and a public consultation paper was released on 3 May, followed by an exposure draft and explanatory memorandum. As I said, this bill is an important part of a broader agenda for reforming the APS and part of that is a sign that our government takes its role seriously and respects the people that work within the Australian Public Service. I am very proud to be part of a government that does this. It is critically important. Public servants do the work that perhaps is not seen every day but that impacts the things that each and every Australian benefits from every day, like keeping us safe, delivering services, providing the advice that creates the policies that will benefit all Australians, even our interactions with other countries around the world, our security, our defence. Public servants play an incredibly important role each and every day, and I take this opportunity to again thank them for all that they do. I again thank all the public servants, particularly in this building, that support the parliament to run every day. I commend the bill to the House. 17:25 Ms LAWRENCE 299150 Hasluck The Commonwealth Public Service Act 1902, the initial legislative instrument of the Public Service, runs to some 27 pages. They were simpler times. It empowers the appointment of fit and proper persons. There was once a view, since superseded, that the main thing when filling any office was just to find a good person. In 1902—let's not gild the lily—the 'good person' was a white, middle-aged male person, a subject of His Majesty, preferably an English gentlemen, a family man, preferably possessed of property and of the right background. It is still important to find a good person to fill any role, of course. As time has gone on, we have sought to be more explicit about our expectations of our Public Service. The 1999 act includes a statement of values: The APS is professional, objective, innovative and efficient, and works collaboratively to achieve the best results for the Australian community and the Government. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, before the parliament, and other legislation which is part of the government's refresh of the APS, seeks to go further. As Minister Gallagher stated, the government has four priority areas for the APS: fundamental integrity; people and business at the centre of the work of the APS; the APS as a model employer; and an APS that is possessed of the capability to do its job and to do it well. It may seem a lot. It is certainly ambitious, and there will be some murmur from the benches wishing for a time when we could just choose a fit and proper person and look the other way. It is tempting to assume some tension between efficiency and accountability. I met with former minister Robert Tickner today. Tickner chaired the committee that created the landmark 1989 report, The AuditorGeneral: ally of the people and parliament—reform of the Australian Audit Office. That report saw no necessary conflict between accountability and efficiency, and recognised that political decisions would determine the criteria by which effectiveness could be assessed. It counselled merely that if there were regulations that reduced efficiency for no good reason they should be removed. Former WA Premier Geoff Gallop has had a lot to stay on this topic. In his book, Politics, Society, Self, he includes a speech he gave in 2008 entitled 'Putting the public back into the public service'. Saliently, Gallop notes that the last 40 years have seen a number of different approaches to the Public Service, some of which have not, in his opinion, served the public interest. He states: Slowly but surely, society is rediscovering the power that can come from collective purpose and collective action. It means a more strategic approach to government generally, more concern for the long-term and for social and environment factors in the sustainability equation. It means a focus on results and outcomes as well as outputs and efficiency. It means joined-up government and new partnerships with the private and community sectors to tackle seemingly intractable problems in health and education. Last year, as part of this legislative process, Minister Gallagher posed the question: what does good government look like? She quite rightly emphasised that good government delivers effective policy while being transparent and accountable to the public. Geoff Gallop succinctly reminds us: … you can't have democracy without politics, you can't have politics without politicians, and you can't have politicians without public servants. So we can reasonably ask: what does a good public service look like? I know from my experience of the Public Service, when I first joined the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in Western Australia as a graduate, I certainly had an expectation of the trusted place in which I was working. I looked forward to having the confidence to explore and understand the topics before me and then to be fearless in my representation of the way we should move and act on them. I had the opportunity to work on issues such as native title and was very proud to be part of the lead negotiating team representing the state government on the Ord native title negotiations, at the time the most complex negotiations. One of the ways in which we were able to deliver on a successful consent determination and negotiated settlement was by being empowered, as the public servant and lead of that team, to engage with local Indigenous communities—Miriuwung, Gajerrong and Gija people—to understand what they saw as the best method of being able to engage and negotiate without feeling any sense of power imbalance with the state. I then felt strength to be able to go and speak to the then minister for native title, Eric Ripper, and put to him a new model of negotiating with Indigenous people. That model was completely new and innovative at the time, but now it's common practice for all negotiations across the nation. That was to be able to have Miriuwung Gajerrong and Gija people nominate individuals to represent their different groups of both genders, and of different demographics as well, to be able to have equal input and sufficient time, and to be resourced to be able to negotiate equally at the table with the state. Pat Dodson was selected as their person to negotiate with the state on their behalf, and that began a fantastic journey. The reason I'm saying this is because I was empowered as a public servant to be able to identify the best way forward. I felt the courage and the strength from the nature of my position to take that forward to the relevant minister of the day and trust that he would listen to me without fear or favour as to what my advice was to be. Thankfully, he acted on that, and it resulted in the most significant determination of the time and has set the course of how we negotiate going forward in all native title negotiations. That's just one mere example. I have many other I could draw on from working in economic policy and state security emergency management, where being able to trust and rely on your public servants to do the work, to engage with community groups, to talk across agencies, to remove those silos—which frustrate politicians, I'm sure—and to make sure that we actually work through what the implications will be for the society at large, not just for the government of the day. These are the roles of the public servants, and it is incumbent upon them to deliver that because the capacity of the parliamentarians in this room to do it alone is obviously not realistic. The reality is that it's the public servants that hold the knowledge and expertise to do it justice. For me, the bill before us is absolutely the right direction to ensure that the Commonwealth Public Service is fully resourced and enabled to do what it should, my experience at the state just demonstrates the power of making that happen. But there are others perhaps more qualified than me to look at the role of the Public Service and how it should perhaps operate. For example, in 2019 the UK-based institute for government delivered a report entitled the International Civil Service Effectiveness Index. This report seeks to answer that question: what does a good public service look like? It ranks some 38 countries, including Australia, across a range of measures. The 12 indicators employed by the study are: capabilities, crisis and risk management, digital services, fiscal and financial management, human resource management, inclusiveness, integrity, openness, policy-making, procurement, regulation, and tax administration. Australia does what we might call well enough on that index, lying in an overall fifth place. But as Andrew Denton and Chris Harriot remind us, 'I don't care, as long as we beat New Zealand.' Unfortunately, we didn't beat New Zealand—they came in second, with the UK at the top. The Thodey report refers to New Zealand's experience, but perhaps we need to continue to look at the structures and measures taken there and in the other countries that trump us in this index—being the UK, Canada and Finland—to see how much more there is we can learn. On the upside, Australia's fifth placing on that index is not based on an outstanding position in any single measure but rather a good all-round performance with above-average scores on all 12 indicators. I call this an upside as it suggests a good foundation on which to base further improvements such as this legislation will bring. This bill will add a new value of stewardship, reminding public servants, politicians and all who deal with them that the APS serves the people now and for the future. It will require the development of a unifying purpose statement, clarify the relationship between ministers and agency heads to reaffirm the apolitical nature of their positions, and install regular capability reviews and medium- and long-term insight reports. It will require publishing of APS employee census results and action that will then follow. It will empower employees and reduce the bureaucracy. As the Prime Minister said today in question time, public service is an honourable profession. We value our public servants and we seek to do what we can to enable them to better fulfil their vocation. This bill is part of that effort. I commend the bill to the House. The DEPU E0D I call the honourable member for Newcastle. 17:35 Ms CLAYDON 248181 Newcastle I appreciate the kindness, Deputy Speaker! I am delighted to speak on the bill, the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, before the House of Representatives this evening. It's a bill that makes amendments to the Public Service Act and is a really key part of the Albanese Labor government's reforms to the Australian Public Service and the big reform agenda that we have for the Public Service. The Australian Public Service is vital to the running of our country. I am especially grateful to all public service sector employees for the work they do. There are literally millions of Australians that rely on the Public Service to ensure their lives are the very best they can be. They are delivering important programs in every city, every town and every region across Australia. It's an enormous task. Thousands of Novocastrians would interact with the APS each and every day, speaking to Centrelink officers on the phone or visiting the office, receiving subsidised medicines through the PBS, applying for passports, going into the Australian Taxation Office, the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the NDIS—each and every one of these agencies are employing exceptional Australian public servants. The APS is keeping our borders safe. In my port city of Newcastle, the APS officers at Border Force are there being very vigilant in monitoring ships coming in and out of the Port of Newcastle. It is the busiest port on the eastern seaboard of Australia—23 ship movements each and every day, at least. There is a lot to keep an eye on there. The veteran community in not just my electorate of Newcastle but my neighbouring electorates of Hunter, Shortland and Paterson are relying on the Department of Veterans' Affairs office, which is located next door to my office in Newcastle—as is the veterans counselling service Open Arms. All these people are dedicated to the delivery of really high-quality programs and services to our community. Every single one of the 151 members in this House is, I'm sure, deeply indebted to the service that is provided by Australian public servants. My electorate knows too well just how important the public sector is. We also know how decimated it became under the former government, who reduced capability and who outsourced billions of dollars of work to consultants and contractors. That was deeply damaging for our Australian Public Service. It left the staff in electorate offices like mine—and I'm sure members opposite would now have to attest to the fact that it left staff in electorate offices everywhere in this country—having to really step up and fill the gaps where services were not being delivered. There was such a high level of unmet need because of the lack of staff in some of the government agencies around the country. Over the course of the last decade, people in Newcastle were really struggling to get the responses that they needed and deserved from a number of government agencies. That put a lot of pressure on staff in electorate offices to try to get the sort of response you need from Centrelink when you're seeking an urgent payment or from Veterans' Affairs as you're trying to progress an important claim through their channels. At its heart, this bill—and indeed the Albanese Labor government's broader Australian Public Service reform agenda—is about restoring public trust and faith in government and its institutions. We know that that trust and faith have really plummeted. Some might even say they were at record lows. It is vital to the health of democracy, to the operation of parliaments, to have a really strong and robust Public Service. The reforms in the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 will help strengthen the Australian Public Service's core purpose and values. They will help build the capability and the expertise again within the Australian Public Service and support good governance, accountability and transparency. These are really critical, important pillars that underpin the Australian Public Service. If the Public Service is not about good governance, accountability and transparency, then we have a problem—and indeed there is a problem, which we are trying to fix right now with this bill tonight. The Albanese Labor government understands acutely the importance of training and upskilling the capacity of the Australian Public Service and ensuring that people feel motivated to stay in the sector so we're not just having a churn-through of public servants who are either burnt out because they're overworked and under-resourced, or they just don't feel valued and don't feel that their work is held in high regard sometimes. It's important that we turn that around right now. Coming from Newcastle, I understand, like any member coming from outside of a capital city understands, the value of keeping jobs in the regions. There are thousands of jobs in my electorate of Newcastle through the Australian Public Service. As I said, it's not just capital cities that get to benefit. Every one of our electorates has got deeply committed public servants operating and keeping the wheels turning in our communities. That's why we in Newcastle are so excited to be launching a partnership with the University of Newcastle and the Australian Public Service to boost regional jobs and create really important digital opportunities. The University of Newcastle will be one of four locations around Australia to host an Australian Public Service Academy campus, as part of the Australian government's Data and Digital Cadet Programs. Newcastle's campus location will provide opportunities for students to earn as they learn, and we all know that's an important matter for many, many students now. They'll be able to work as an Australian Public Service employee while they are completing their bachelor degree program. Successful candidates will be offered a part-time role in the Public Service while they study, with a remuneration package of up to $60,000 per annum plus 15.4 per cent superannuation. What a wonderful opportunity for young Novacastrians. No longer do you have to leave Newcastle to train to be a quality public servant; you can now do that with this partnership with the University of Newcastle. You can get great on-the-job experience whilst doing so, but also, importantly, be remunerated for that work experience. We're not asking people to do unpaid internships here, and these are important matters for any Labor government. We know that, like the private sector, the Australian Public Service is struggling to find enough people with those technical skills to fill the data and digital roles. The academy program is a significant partnership that is directly responding to the need to address a national skills shortage while also keeping workers in the Australian Public Service. And it means that Newcastle locals wanting a career change can upskill in data and digital roles within the Australian Public Service at one of the Newcastle university campuses. It allows Novocastrians to stay in Newcastle while taking part in training opportunities, and it will attract aspiring public servants to get the right skills to have the very best chance at jobs in the Australian Public Service while continuing to contribute to the Newcastle community. So, we'll be doing great things for our young and not so young Novocastrians who are looking for job changes. We'll also be attracting people to Newcastle from our region of the Hunter, ensuring they've got a great platform from which to be able to join the Australian Public Service and get skilled in some areas of great skills shortages for Australia. In total there are 300 flexible data and digital training and entry-level employment opportunities that are going to be offered across Darwin, Newcastle, Launceston and Townsville. These are terrific opportunities for Australians. Some of the potential data and digital careers in the APS include data analysts and scientists, cybersecurity analysts, user researchers, software engineers, web developers, programmers and system designers. The Data Cadet Program will be open to Australian citizens who have completed at least one year of a bachelor's degree program and have at least one year remaining in that course. The Digital Cadetship Program will be open to Australian citizens who have completed at least one year of an ICT or technical bachelor degree and have at least one year of that program remaining. I know that the University of Newcastle is very keen to welcome the minister when the cadet program does launch, and I will also be very excited to see that day. We all look forward to seeing how this program will be able to benefit workers, benefit the public sector and benefit the region as a whole. It's good for government, good for good governance, great for regional economies and really good for young people looking for a secure, purposeful job where they will be able to exercise influence and help shape what this nation looks like going forward. The Public Service Amendment Bill that's before us this evening will strengthen the Australian Public Service's core purpose and values and build the capability and expertise of the APS by, as I said, supporting good governance, accountability and transparency. I cannot stress enough how important all of those measures are. It's a bill that will add a new Australian Public Service value of stewardship. It will require an Australian Public Service purpose statement so that nobody can be under any misapprehension as to what their purpose is in the Australian Public Service. It will make clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on employment matters. It will encourage decision-making at the lowest appropriate level, and this is important in distilling skills and confidence in our younger, emerging public servants. It will make regular capability reviews a requirement. It will require annual Australian Public Service employee census results to be published along with an action plan responding to the results, so people will see their feedback being delivered and see what actions are being taken. And this bill will also establish at least one long-term insight briefing each year. Many of the proposed changes align with the recommendations from the 2019 review. This is an important part of the Albanese Labor government's reform agenda for the Australian Public Service. There is still much work to be done, but I cannot stress how important these jobs are for regions like mine. We will be doing absolutely everything we can to strengthen the APS and their capacity and capability in every town and city across Australia. 17:50 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills I'm going to start off by making a statement that I assume those on the opposition benches will refute, that they will disagree with. Over the last nine to 10 years, the coalition government diminished the important role of our Public Service. What I mean by that is that the Australian Public Service—and this is factual; I don't know if they can refute this—became far too reliant on contractors and consultants. We were simply outsourcing our policy and our policy development work. The workforce also was being casualised. There was a lack of interest in investing in and nurturing our public servants. Again, this is a truism: the Public Service is far too critical to have been distorted and changed in this way. Our Public Service is where we, in government, receive frank and fearless advice. That's a critical function of our democracy. In recent years, as we worked through the pandemic, natural disasters, increasingly economic instability, we've seen how important it is to have a public service that works in unity and acts swiftly. We've also learned how important public trust is. According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 41 per cent of Australians trust governments to do the right thing. That's not good enough, and I think the opposition would agree with that. This government, the Albanese government, is all about enhancing our transparency and our accountability. In this case, we're being more open about the state of the Public Service, and we'll begin to help build up the community and public trust again in the Public Service and therefore in our government. I was a public servant. So there's no conflict of interest in my speech, I was a public servant; I still am, as a member of parliament. We all are. But I was a public servant in the Public Service for a number of years, so I know how important the work of the Public Service is. We really couldn't function if we didn't have public servants. The vast, vast majority do fantastic work. So much of our everyday lives and the lives of Australians are intertwined with the functions that the Public Service deliver and the policy work that they develop. Whether it's getting your tax return, receiving your Medicare rebate or checking for paid parental leave on myGov, these are all Public Service functions, and they're critical to our day-to-day lives. Of course, there are healthy goals of a high standard in the Public Service. I remember when I was at DFAT for a period there was a view that we were much better than Treasury and all the other departments! And I'm sure Treasury would have thought they were the better public servants. But all of us were striving to provide quality advice and quality policy, to do our best to the highest possible standard in providing that frank and fearless advice. Of course, the APS, the Australian Public Service, contributes to our national interest in that critical way. It's integral to our national policy development. It's the driving engine room. It churns out the ideas, the policies and the priorities that should be considered by the government of the day. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is a key part of the Albanese government's APS reform agenda. It's an agenda that acknowledges the need for ambitious reform of the APS. That's why today I'm speaking in support of this bill, because I believe we do need to reform and rebuild the APS. These reforms are being introduced to help us start that process. This will help us reform and improve our Public Service after years of neglect and years of diminishment under the previous government. It will help us, of course, increase the numbers of the Australian Public Service, but that is just one part of it. It will help us build trust in government and the Public Service and the work that they do. There has been a fair bit of media about outside consultants recently. They do have an important role to play, don't get me wrong. There are certain policy areas and other areas of expertise where outside consultants can play a very important role in providing value-add to the work of the Public Service. There is no doubt about that. But it is, I think, quite ridiculous when everything starts to get outsourced—pretty much every function—to consultants, and the work of those Public Servants is completely diminished. We don't need to look far to see why this may be a problem. We've seen the recent PwC case, and other cases as well, highlighting risks around confidentiality and conflicts of interest. It's also not smart from a budget perspective, because in Australia the big four consulting firms increased their work, or the costs into the budget, by 400 per cent between 2012 and 2022 period. It's not a coincidence when it comes to aligning those years with the coalition being in government. The diminishment of the departments first started, I think, even earlier than that, when there were changes made during the Howard years around contracting senior public servants at a high level—deputy secretary and secretary—to two or three year contracts. I'm a bit old-fashioned. I know the US system is quite different to ours. When there is a change of administration there is a turnover from probably assistant secretary or first assistant secretary above across all the systems of the US government. They are clearly called political appointments; they are Republican or Democrat party appointments to those senior positions. That's how they do it. Our system, based on the Westminster system, has had a tradition of a public service that is frank and fearless and non-partisan: frank and fearless in their advice and non-partisan in their posture, regardless of who holds the Treasury benches, the government benches. The Howard era was where we started to see some of the diminishment occur—that non-partisan independence that we value start to be chipped away slightly. This bill amends the Public Service Act 1999 to enable transformational change. It supports the APS to best serve the Australian government, the parliament and the Australian public. The proposed amendments were recommendations from the 2019 Independent Review Of The Australian Public Service, the Thodey review, and support the intent of that review. The review established that the APS did not have a unified purpose, was too focused internally and lost capability in critical areas. This bill does a few things. It strengthens the core purpose and value of the APS, builds the capacity and expertise of the APS and supports good governance. We will be introducing a new APS value of stewardship, which all APS employees much maintain. It will ensure the APS purpose statement will be reviewed every five years and will have the Secretaries Board oversee the development of this. We will also ensure all agency heads uphold and promote the new APS purpose statement. This is in addition to the APS values and employment principles. Having a purpose statement provides a common foundation for collaboration, provides a shared sense of purpose and encourages a 'one APS' way of working. In other words, in short: break down the silos between the departments. Finally, we will strengthen provisions within the act to ensure that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. The new wording and language will be stronger, so it is clear that the onus is on ministers not to direct an agency head. We will do this to ensure the APS can continue working in an apolitical way and to enforce a culture of impartiality in the Public Service. This creates clear limits on inappropriate involvement by ministers in APS employment matters and ensures integrity in the Public Service. Integrity is very important to this government. These reforms feed into our broader work with the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which will work across government to introduce corruption measures, improve protections for whistleblowers and establish a code of conduct for ministers and staff. Strengthening the core purpose and values of the APS is critically important. The APS is complex. It's made up of dozens of departments and agencies, and these reforms will help the APS to operate in a more integrated way. We will complete independent capability reviews every five years for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These reviews will assess strengths, identify areas for improvement and create reports and action plans to respond to findings. These reports will be released publicly because the Albanese government feels strongly about the importance of transparency. We will also ask the Secretaries Board to commission long-term insight reports to assess medium- and long-term trends as well as risks and opportunities facing Australia in the policy space. This also provides the APS with an opportunity to engage with academics, experts and the broader Australian community on long-term policy challenges facing our country. Collaboration and partnerships are key to tackling long-term policy challenges. Reforms such as the APS Academy are already helping to boost capacity across the service. These reforms help the APS build ongoing capability and expertise in staff. This will ensure the Public Service continues to manage modern policy and service solutions in the long term. The APS was too reliant on consultants; we've established that. This government is working to develop an in-house consulting model for the APS to strengthen its core capacity and functions, giving it more of the flexibility that's needed within the Public Service. There is so much expertise within the APS, and we need to create the opportunities to better utilise the expertise of the wonderful staff that work so hard in our Public Service. We want to ensure that agencies' APS Employee Census results are published, in addition to action plans. This is information, through data collection, about the attitudes and opinions of APS employees. It provides us with an opportunity to hear from employees and allows them to share their experiences. This will foster a sense of accountability and ownership over the mission we're all working towards, which is to make good policy for Australia, and encourage continual improvement within our agencies. We want to ensure workplaces in our country are inclusive and respectful, and we need to model this within the APS. There will also be measures introduced by agency heads to allow employees to make decisions at the lowest appropriate classification for those decisions—we don't need unnecessary hierarchies—and this will reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and help with staff professional development. We want to support APS employees to feel empowered, to feel heard, to feel like they belong and the work they do is valued. We've listened to others, and we're trying to ensure that the APS can operate in the best way possible to serve the Australian government, parliament and public. This has been a collaborative process. We've worked with employees, representative groups, agencies, experts, the public and interested parties, including the Community and Public Sector Union. This bill supports the broader Albanese-government APS reform agenda, which aims to ensure the APS stands for integrity in all that it does, puts people and business at the heart of its policy and its services, is a model employer and has the capability to do its job well. The broader goal of this bill and the government's broader APS reforms is to restore public trust and faith in the government and its institutions. The Thodey review called for a Public Service that is trusted, future fit, responsive and agile to meet the changing needs of government and community. The view of public servants by Australians across the country—some of the cliches and stereotypes about public servants clocking off at five to five might have been true back in the sixties or seventies, but I know for sure that, even when I was in the Public Service, people were working long hours and doing what they needed to do to get the work done and the advice to the government of the day. Their work was quality work, and their commitment should not be questioned. This bill delivers on the key recommendations of the Thodey review—being future fit, being even better than it is today, breaking down the silos. We need an APS that acts with agility, with a common purpose and with the existing values of impartiality, commitment to the service it provides, accountability, respect and ethics, and it will only be further strengthened by these reforms. It is critical to this government, to our parliament and to our community that we have an apolitical impartial approach to the work that the APS does. And it is important that APS employment remains apolitical and merit based. There is no place for political interference within our Public Service. These reforms will strengthen transparency, prevent political interference and enable the APS to do what it does best—provide quality policy advice to the government. It will allow the APS to do what it does best—give us frank and fearless advice and help us as a government to help the community to have better lives. 18:05 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina I thank the member for Wills for his contribution and, whilst I wasn't in the chamber for the entirety, there wasn't much that I disagreed with, if anything. I know how much the member for Lyons is champing at the bit to also speak on this very important bill, a bill which now is taking up all of the time of the parliament. People listening must think, 'What is this bill of such significant proportions that every single Labor member is coming in and spending 15 minutes of their time to talk about?' Well, it's the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, the resumption of debate on the second reading and the amendment that has been moved. Mr Khalil 101351 Critical. Mr McCORMACK 219646 'Critical' I hear the member for Wills say. Indeed, it is so critical that we are going to take up 5½ hours of debate, as every Labor member is told to go in and speak about this critical—as the member for Wills calls it—bill. Indeed, the Public Service is critical. I acknowledge the role that it plays and I very much concur with the member for Wills when he said that public servants work hard. They do. Whilst I the appreciate that, at times, public servants are criticised for being in the big Canberra bubble, the bureaucracy, by and large, they do work very, very hard. They get things done for and on behalf of Australians and we thank them for that. Whether that means that every Labor member needs to come in here and speak on this bill for 15 minutes, well we know why they are doing that. I will tell you why they're doing it, because they have got nothing else to do. So the manager of government business has told them, 'Get in there.' They are getting their talking points from the Labor dirt unit and they're being told to get up and speak for 15 minutes. Those opposite could invoke the spirit of Albert Gardiner—known as 'Jupp'—a New South Wales ALP senator. He gained some fame—some might call it notoriety—by standing up in 1918 and delivering federal parliament's longest speech, 12 hours and 40 minutes. The combined Parnell-Bressington filibuster in the South Australian upper house went for over 13 hours. But what Senator Gardiner's speech did was force the introduction of the time limit on future speeches. More is a pity, because I reckon the people out there listening to the broadcast would love to hear the member for Lyons speak for a dozen hours, and I reckon he would be capable. I reckon he would be up to the task. Being a former journalist like myself, I reckon he would love that. He would relish that role. I digress and I don't want to play down the importance of the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. There are some things it does which are certainly very important. Noncontroversial, as we would argue, it creates a new APS value of stewardship. It creates a requirement for an Australian Public Service purpose statement to be developed by the Secretaries Board. It clarifies the operation of section 19 of the Public Service Act to provide that ministers must not direct agency heads on individual employment matters for the Australian Public Service. It requires agency heads to implement measures to create a work environment that enables decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest appropriate classification. It provides a mechanism for the APS Commissioner to, at any time, cause the capability review of an agency other than the Australian Public Service Commission. I say this because I don't want somebody to stand up and say 'he is not being relevant'. I will continue so we can prevent that. It requires the Secretaries Board to request and publish regular long-term insights reports to make available information about medium and long term trends, risks, opportunities which affect or may affect Australia or Australian society—very important—and information and impartial analysis relating to those opportunities, risks and trends. It requires agencies to publish annual APS employee census results. It makes technical amendments consequential to the making of the Public Service Regulations 2023 following the sunsetting of the Public Service Regulation 1999—Commonwealth law. Now, I know that all of those things are important. I get that the Public Service is important and does its due diligence and duty. This bill is important because we want the law to be updated. I get all that. I understand that. But what we've seen is the unedifying spectacle of having no Labor members on the speaking list—or very few—and all of a sudden the list is as long as Donald Bradman's batting average. From a very low starting point, it is now as long as the number of centuries he scored in first-class cricket. We're playing a bit of bazball here. Actually, we're probably not seeing bazball, because we're not actually getting things done in a hurry—more is the pity. We're not seeing Labor get on with the job of doing what they're supposed to do, and that is govern and bring legislation in. We were criticised so much during the last parliament—unfairly, with absolutely no justification—for not bringing in legislation in the House, but Labor is doing exactly what they criticised us for doing when we in fact weren't doing it. They're filibustering. They're sending in every member to speak about the Public Service as though it were the most important thing gripping this nation. I'll tell you the most important thing gripping this nation right now. It's cost of living. People listening to this broadcast are probably wondering: 'Why aren't they talking about my electricity bill? Why aren't they talking about the labour shortages? Why aren't they talking about cost-of-living pressures? Why aren't they talking about how hard it is for business to keep its doors open?' What are we talking about? When ordinary, average, everyday Australians just want this parliament to work on making sure that their cost-of-living pressures are reduced, no, we're talking about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. Now, I appreciate that the Public Service is important. I get that Labor has put more money into making sure that there are more public servants. They've done it in your state, Deputy Speaker Vasta; the Queensland Labor government spent all that money, all those mining royalties, and have put in a whole lot of public servants. If they're police, ambos and firies, well and good, but the trouble is they're not. But I digress. What we saw last week on 1 June was that we had a long, long list. At the risk of holding up a piece of paper when I shouldn't, there it is. This list meant that the opposition members who wanted to talk about the appropriation bills—they're the budget bills. With the budget bills, you get to speak about how important the budget is to your electorate. You get to speak about the things that are good. You get to speak about the things that you don't necessarily like. But no; for the first time since I've been here and no doubt since you've been here, because we've been together in this place for a long time, Deputy Speaker Vasta, the appropriation bills were guillotined. That is code for gagging. The opposition members were gagged. They gagged the members for Canning, Casey, Sturt, Independent teal Mackellar, Riverina—that's me. I was gagged. I couldn't speak for the first time. Mr Brian Mitchell 129164 Should have got in early! Mr McCORMACK 219646 The member for Mallee did get in early, and good on her, because her people were able to listen to what she thought about the budget. Her people were able to know that they are going to hurt from that budget. They are going to hurt from water cuts. They are going to hurt from the truckie tax. They are going to hurt from higher electricity bills. 'Where's the $275?' they're all asking. At least the member for Mallee was able to enunciate and clearly articulate exactly what she thought about the budget, but all of these other members weren't: O'Connor, Moore, the Greens leader, the member for Melbourne—they gagged him too. Good luck with your preferences next time there. There was the Independent from Indi and the member for Brisbane—not that I value what the Greens say, but I will stand up for their ability to say it, and they're right to say it in the house of democracy every day of every week. There were the members for Barker, Capricornia, Lyne, Cowper, Grey and Hughes, and the Centre Alliance member for Mayo. There were the members for Petrie, Nicholls, Fisher, Bowman, Groom, Wannon, Banks, La Trobe, Wright, McPherson and Hume—the Shadow Treasurer, because he was gagged, was not allowed to have his say on the member for Rankin's budget speech. What a disgrace that is! The member for Hume, the shadow Treasurer, should've been able to speak on that. Mr McCORMACK 219646 There were the members for Deakin and Lindsay, the Katter Australia party member for Kennedy, and the member for Monash. And, let's face it, there were probably more as well. To be fair, and I'm always fair, as the member for Lyons knows, there were Labor members who were also not allowed to speak on it. But, in good, disciplined Labor fashion, they would've just copped that. They would've accepted that, but some of them—no doubt all of them—have been up, even though they were not allowed to speak about the member for Rankin's budget speech. But guess what? I bet you they're in here talking about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. Do you know who misses out? It's not the ALP members. Quite frankly, it's not the LNP members or the Independents or the teals. It's the people of Australia. They deserve better. They expect better. They demand better. And they demand better of this place. It was supposed to be a nicer, more polite way— Dr Webster 281688 Gentler. Mr McCORMACK 219646 and this proves that it is gentler—thank you, Member for Mallee. It's supposed to be a more gentle place as well, but it's not because, when you can't actually get up and speak on the budget bills and speak to your electorate and have your electorate listen to how the budget will affect them, more's the pity. There were some things in a budget which the member for Mallee and I probably agreed with. There were some things in there which will, yes, make the lives, the lots and the livelihoods of people in regional Australia a little bit better. I tell you what: there was a lot there which was not good at all. But I wasn't able to enunciate that because I was gagged, as were all of those other members who did not get the opportunity, and that is just so wrong. That is so wrong. Yet here we are on a Tuesday evening. We're going to be talking till the adjournment, and tomorrow we'll be resuming, and what will we be talking about? It'll be the Public Service Amendment Bill. We won't be talking about the cost of living. We won't be talking about Labor's broken promise—the $275 that they said, without clarification, every household would be getting off their power bills. No, we won't be talking about that. We won't be talking about the truckie tax. We won't be talking about why the cost of groceries is higher every time people go to the supermarket. We won't be talking about all the things that matter to ordinary, average, everyday Australians who are doing it so tough. But what will we be talking about? The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. And when those Labor members go back to their electorates next week and they bump into people in the street and they go into small businesses which won't be having their instant asset write-off in an unlimited fashion—it's only $20,000; that was in the budget, but I wasn't able to talk about that. When they go into those small businesses or into that pharmacy, good luck there. I hope you've had your flu jab. They'll be shutting soon because of the 60-day dispensing rules. When you go into those small businesses and people front up to you and say, 'Well, what did you do in parliament last week?' I want you to look them in the eye and make sure you earnestly say, 'I spoke about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, because that's really going to affect your life. It's really going to make a difference in how you live your life in coming days and weeks and months and years.' Never mind the budget. Never mind what went on in the member for Rankin's speech. You spoke about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. And when they say, 'Well, what did that involve?' you'll be able to say, 'Well, in 2018 the coalition government commissioned an independent review of the Australian Public Service to ensure it is best placed to serve Australian governments and the Australian people into the future, and Mr David Thodey AO, former CEO of Telstra and then chair of CSIRO, was appointed to lead the review. The review received more than 750 submissions. It involved more than 120 round tables,' and they'll say, 'Well, you should go down to the racecourse because you read that like a race caller.' Mr Brian Mitchell 129164 I spoke on the appropriations. I got in on time. Mr McCORMACK 219646 Well done you! How lucky were you! You got in early, but so did everybody else. But they weren't allowed, because they cut it off unfairly—unjustly cut it off—because the appropriations normally have more time. I'll tell you why I know Labor cut it off—because there wasn't that much good in it to talk about. There wasn't that much good to share the love and to go around the nation, as Josh Frydenberg did when his budgets came down, to talk about what we were doing for small business, what we were doing for power prices, which came down in our term of government. We helped Australians—families, businesses, farmers—to get ahead. But what did you do? What did you do after a year of government? You spoke about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023; that's what you did. 18:20 Mr BRIAN MITCHELL 129164 Lyons It's always a challenge following the member for Riverina because he always sets a trap for me. He throws me off my game. So I've always got to respond to the ridiculous claims he makes. What he conveniently forgets to tell the House is the opposition voted for the motion to set the time limit on the appropriations debate. So it wasn't the government gagging debate. It was a joint decision by the House, including those opposite, to set the time limit. If he wanted to speak so badly on the budget, he could have got in early, like the member for Mallee did—due diligence to the member for Mallee, speaking on behalf of her electorate—but, no, he left it to the last minute. For somebody who thinks this bill before the House is not that important, he's spent his full 15 minutes talking about it. And the man can talk under water, under wet concrete, I reckon. He did mention one thing I'd like to talk about before I get to the substance of the bill before us. He said that this government is not getting things done in a hurry, that we're not getting on with legislation. That got me thinking about what occurred in the Senate yesterday. Here we had a bill ready to go, a $10 billion housing package, voted down—or blocked, rather—by those opposite and by the Greens in the Senate. It was ready to go. If that had being passed by the Senate yesterday, appropriation for that fund would have gone through and those houses could have started to get built. So that is getting things done. The people stopping getting things done are those opposite, the member Riverina and also the members of the Greens. Things that this government has done over the last year: aged-care wages; better pay and condition legislation; the legislation for an independent corruption commission; cheaper medicines; and fee-free TAFE. The list goes on and on of what this government has achieved in our first year. Unlike those opposite, we haven't been popping the champagne corks and we certainly haven't been breaking out any cigars, despite the success of the budget with the first surplus in many years, because we know there's so much work to do. There is so much work to do on behalf of Australians who are doing it tough with the cost-of-living crisis. We acknowledge that there is one but we also know it's a global issue. Countries around the world are facing higher interest rates and higher inflation. It's a shared problem, and Australia is weathering the problem better than most. Before us today, we have the Public Service Amendment Bill. The member for Riverina took great delight in throwing some shade on this bill. But I just say to every public service worker in this country, thank you for the work you do. To the Clerks here—I know they're not members of the APS but are of the parliamentary services—to the attendants, to the security guards—everybody who works in this House—the Comcar drivers, thank you.' When I think of the multitudes of people who work for the public sector and the incredible work that they do, whether they're backline or frontline staff, thank you for the work that you do. I think in my home state of Tasmania—and I'm sure I'm going to miss a few people out here—of biosecurity, health care, education, child protection, Indigenous rangers, Centrelink, NDIS, Veterans' Affairs, border security, AFP, defence personnel, intelligence personnel, our security agencies, and the numbers of public servants and public sector workers who work behind the scenes diligently doing all that really important admin work, often a thankless task. They're often derided in the public sphere by people who should know better—people in positions of national leadership—for the work they do. There's this false narrative that runs around about how much better, supposedly, small government is than so-called 'big government'. But I tell you what, for business to work best, you need an efficient and effective public sector. When you drive down the efficiency and the effectiveness of the public sector, when you hollow out the public sector, the private economy also falters. The regulations don't go through, the applications take longer to be approved, the reviews take longer—all the necessary checks and balances start to grind to a halt. It affects productivity. So there's a wonderful symbiosis between the public sector and the private sector. Under the former government we saw a false narrative. They used to champion how many fewer public sector workers there were under their watch, but what emerged, of course, was the phenomenal growth of contractors and labour hire. What would normally have been done by public sector workers was being done by those in the private economy, often for lower wages and fewer conditions. I know personally of examples where staff would be employed by an outsourced provider of aged-care services and would have a Commonwealth crest on their name badge and would go to people's homes on behalf of My Aged Care. For all intents and purposes, anybody would think they were dealing with a member of the Public Service, but they weren't. These were members of private operators who were contracted by the department to offer those services and those workers were on less secure conditions. They didn't get the 15.4 per cent superannuation—they got the nine per cent superannuation at the time—and, of course, if the contractor lost their contract with the Public Service, they had no job security. But they were expected to do the same job as Commonwealth public sector workers. Some years ago—I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here—I spoke to COMAR drivers and learned that traditional COMCAR drivers were employees of the public sector, but then the former government decided to contract out to a new mob. They brought in a labour hire company to put in new drivers on labour hire conditions, which were pretty much that, if you worked a shift, that was your only contracted work. Your work ended at the end of that shift; you had no ongoing entitlement to work, even though you were a casual driver. That was a loophole out of the casual provisions, where even casual drivers had to have protections for leave entitlements and so forth. So these sorts of things were going on even in the remit of this building and this city. There was a complete devaluation of the importance and the value that the public sector can bring. That brings me to the guts of this legislation, which is about properly valuing the role of the public sector. But before I get onto that, I want to talk about the importance of the regions, because my colleague, the member for Newcastle, talked about this. I've talked for some years now about rebuilding the regions and the importance of stopping the hollowing out. It's a natural consequence of economic change. With transport and everything else, people don't live in country towns much anymore. They gravitate to the big cities, and they'll often commute in and out. One way to try to arrest some of this is to reinvest in public sector jobs in the regions. They can provide economic anchors. They are good, well-paid, often secure jobs, and they provide a vital service. Aged care, health care, education, Centrelink, Australian government services—all these sorts of jobs can provide economic anchors for regional towns, and then you can grow from there. I thank the member for Newcastle for reminding me about the importance of the regions and what role the public sector can play in the regions. That brings me very briefly to my hometown, Sorell, where we've had a one-person desk for Centrelink for some years now. I was very pleased during the election to secure a commitment from Mr Shorten, now the Minister for Government Services, to enlarge the Sorell Centrelink office to six full-time staff. So a fast-growing region of Tasmania, one of the fastest growing population areas in the state, will finally get a fully staffed Centrelink office when that is built and staffed in the months ahead. Canberra is absolutely unfairly derided, nationally. I've been coming here for seven years as a member of parliament. I've been coming here for many years previous to that for family reasons. It's a wonderful city, with wonderful staff not just here in Parliament House but also across the city. I've talked about the false economy of outsourcing, the less secure and less well-paid, but there is a lot of work to do to regain trust in the public sector, and that's what this legislation seeks to do. I hesitate to talk about this because it does cast some shade on some sections of the public sector, but I don't think we can have this debate without talking about robodebt because that was a grand failure. If there is a grand failure under the former government then robodebt is certainly it. The testimony that has been heard at the royal commission is that we had middle-level and low-level public sector workers, who should have been valued for their expertise and their advice, telling their superiors and supervisors: 'You can't do this. It's illegal. You can't do it. We're advising you. It shouldn't happen.' But they were ignored. It goes to their importance—the role, expertise and advice of our public sector workers should be valued. They often know the best of what is needed and yet they weren't listened to. The top managers reckoned they knew best, they were trying to keep their ministers happy at the time, and robodebt is perhaps one of if not the biggest scandal this country has ever faced, where a government of the day actually engaged in what can only be described as criminal behaviour, actively stealing from its own citizens through either neglect or wilful neglect at the very least. The Public Service Amendment Bill before us represents a significant milestone in the Albanese government's plan to rebuild and reform the APS. It seeks to restore public trust and faith in our government and government institutions. One of the primary objectives is to establish a clear and unified purpose for the APS. The Thodey review highlighted the need for a shared understanding of the APS's role and purpose, emphasising the importance of a collaborative approach across various departments and agencies. We all know that siloed thinking can really—I don't know how we get across it, to be honest, because it's really difficult. If we knew how to deal with siloed thinking, we would have dealt with it before now, but, gee, we've got to keep trying because siloed thinking really gets in the way of progress in a lot of areas, and at least it's being addressed here. The bill addresses this by requiring the Secretaries Board to develop a single, unifying APS purpose statement which we review every five years to ensure continued relevance. By articulating a unified purpose, the APS can work as an integrated organisation focused on serving the Australian government, the parliament and the Australian public. This shared purpose will guide the APS in delivering policies and services that do meet the evolving needs of the community. Agency heads will be mandated to uphold and promote the APS purpose statement, along with values and employment principles, further reinforcing a cohesive and collaborative approach. To enhance these core values and culture, the bill introduces a new APS value of stewardship. There's a lot in this bill. I know the member for Riverina wasn't a huge fan. He derided it, much to his discredit, but it's an important bill. Getting the architecture of this stuff right is important. That's what this government do. We're not into showboating. We're not into doing welding with our helmets off—those silly photo ops! I just had that vision of the former prime minister with his helmet off while he was welding, with the sparks, and I thought, 'No, we're not into that.' We're into doing government right because it is important to get the structures right. It's not sexy, it's not something that makes good headlines—it's just good governance. It's just competent government, and that's what we are about—calm, collected government, doing the right thing for the right reasons. A key aspect of the bill is to safeguard the impartiality and apolitical nature of the APS. It clarifies and strengthens provisions in the act to reinforce that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual staffing decisions. That's important because, as we know, there's a very unwelcome trend in the US, in particular, where the public service is increasingly being politicised. Even the FBI and police agencies are being derided by political leaders and being heavily politicised. We don't want to see that culture take hold here, so we need to protect the impartiality of the public sector. The bill takes note of transparency and other issues. Before I finish, I will give a shout-out: on 23 June, it's United Nations Public Service Day. In advance, happy public service day to all our public servants all across the country. 18:35 Ms FERNANDO 299964 Holt I rise to discuss the transformative power of the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, a bold initiative set to overhaul the Public Service Act 1999. This reform is vital to ensure the Australian Public Service, or APS, continues to serve the government, the parliament and, most importantly, the Australian public effectively and efficiently into the future. The purpose of this bill is to provide the necessary support for the APS's core principles and values. To achieve this we are introducing an APS value of stewardship that all APS employees must uphold. 'Stewardship' will be defined as: The APS builds its capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future, by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. For those who have served as union delegates—shop stewards, in the past—this value is not something we are strangers to. This crucial amendment underscores our commitment to the strengthening, and the capability and institutional knowledge, of the APS. It underlines our unwavering support for public interest now and for future generations. The essence of stewardship lies in understanding the long-term impacts of our actions and decisions. It is an affirmation from the policymakers that the interests of the public today and their children and their children's children are at the forefront of every decision made. In line with this, the bill is stipulating that the Secretaries Board will oversee the development of a single unifying APS purpose statement, reviewed every five years. This statement will solidify the role of all agency heads, and they will be required to promote it in conjunction with the APS values and employment principles. Having a sole unifying purpose for the APS will bring together various agencies which perform different tasks under one umbrella. It will emphasise that, even though these diverse departments differ in their day-to-day tasks, their motivations and objectives are one and the same. A unifying APS purpose statement, which will be regularly reviewed, will also mean that this purpose is regularly looked at and kept up-to-date with time. We believe these changes will enhance the apolitical nature of the APS and ensure transparency in decision-making, empowering the APS to navigate the challenges of the future. One crucial aspect of this bill is the facilitation of independent and regular capability reviews, which will be required every five years for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These reviews will focus on organisational strengths and areas for development, with reports and action plans made publicly available in response to the findings. This not only ensures accountability but also creates a platform for continuous growth and development. Moreover, the bill mandates the Secretaries Board to commission regular long-term insight reports to explore medium-term and long-term trends, risk and opportunities facing Australia. This is a visionary step ensuring the APS is future ready, able to build trust in its expertise and understanding crosscutting issues that matter to all Australians. In this fast-paced world, the future often arrives a lot quicker than we anticipate. A nation that is well-equipped with the foresight to understand what the future might look like is a nation that will always be forward-thinking, dynamic and progressive. Mandating the Secretaries Board to regularly explore long-term trends will mean that Australia will never be caught by surprise and is well-equipped to deal with any challenge that may arise. Further, the Public Service Amendment Bill will aim to instil a culture of transparency, accountability and continuous improvement within agencies. It will do this by requiring a publication of agencies' APS employee census results and an action plan that responds to these results. This approach will not only keep the agencies accountable, but also create a transparent mechanism for the continuous improvement of our Public Service. To ensure effective decision-making and empower APS employees, agency heads will also be required to implement measures to allow decisions to be made by employees at the lowest appropriate classification for those decisions. We are of the firm belief that this approach will reduce unnecessary hierarchy, empowering APS employees and allowing them to bring their diverse experiences and perspectives to the decision-making processes. Now, you may ask where did these amendments come from? The proposed changes were primarily drawn from the recommendation of the 2019 independent review of the Australian Public Service, also known as the Thodey review. The amendments were also influenced by insights into public administration from state-level governments and from overseas. Over the past few months, we have engaged in extensive consultation with various stakeholders, including APS employees, the CPSU, agency heads, experts and interested parties, including the public. This collaborative approach has yielded valuable insights that have shaped this bill. A public consultation process on the proposed amendments was held and over 1,500 responses regarding the stewardship value alone were received. Further consultations with the APS agencies, HR areas, academics and employee networks help shape the broader legislative reform agenda. The proposed amendments respond to various recommendations from the Thodey review. For instance, the introduction of the APS value of stewardship and the APS purpose statement respond to recommendations 5 and 6 of the review. We have also addressed recommendation 32 by encouraging decision-making at the lowest appropriate level, creating a culture of empowerment and distributing responsibility within the APS. As we move forward with the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, it is crucial that we continue to prioritise the welfare and development of APS employees. This involves addressing recommendation 15, which proposes a new workforce strategy to futureproof the APS. In line with this recommendation, we are seeking to enhance the capability of our APS workforce. We aim to invest in ongoing training, upskilling and continuous learning programs by ensuring that our workforce has the necessary tools, resources and skills to deliver excellent service and meet the changing needs of our citizens. Turning to recommendation 24, we are also considering ways to better recognise and reward high performance within the APS. It is our firm belief that a culture of appreciation and recognition can motivate employees to strive for excellence, thus fostering innovation, collaboration and a commitment to service. Moreover, we are looking at ways to attract top talent to the APS by leveraging the appeal of the Public Service and by improving our recruitment and onboarding processes. We can ensure that the APS is filled with capable, passionate individuals who are committed to making a difference in our country. Furthermore, to reinforce a culture of integrity within the APS, the government proposes to empower the independent reviewer to investigate and address breaches of the APS code of conduct. We see this as an integral step to building trust and ensuring ethical conduct across the APS. We are also taking into account other recommendations, like the introduction of the independent reviewer and the commissioning of long-term insights reports. We believe this will enhance transparency, ensure accountability and drive continuous improvement. At the heart of these amendments lies our commitment to better governance, public service innovation and improved delivery of services to the Australian public. We are invested in creating a culture of robust stewardship, evidence based decision-making and forward thinking in the APS. Moving forward, we have proposed an independent reviewer, who will assess compliance with the new APS values, employment principles and code of conduct. This role, filled by an independent statutory officer, will ensure that the principles and code are respected and complied with, promoting a culture of integrity, accountability and trust in the APS. Lastly, but most significantly, the bill introduces a provision that would allow the Public Service minister to determine that a non-APS body or a group of employees within a non-APS body is a part of the APS. This provision seeks to provide flexibility in the coverage of the Public Service Act, allowing for a more adaptive and responsive APS. To conclude, the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is not just about legislative changes; it is about investing in our people, fostering a culture of trust and accountability, and shaping the future of the Australian Public Service. We believe these proposed changes will provide a solid foundation for the APS to continue to deliver efficient and effective services to the Australian public. This bill reflects our vision for a forward-thinking, innovative and adaptive Australian Public Service committed to serving the interests of the Australian people. With these amendments, we are repositioning the APS for the challenges of the future, ensuring it remains a global leader in public service delivery. I would lastly like to thank all the APS employees in Australia, a huge thank you, for all the hard work that you do, and I commend this bill to the House. 18:48 Dr MULINO 132880 Fraser It is with pleasure that I rise to speak in favour of the Public Service Amendment Bill. We all interact with the Australian Public Service at various points in our lives, whether it be something as basic as visiting a doctor and relying upon all of the systems that the APS manages that allows doctors to provide the services, whether it be visiting a library or whether it be receiving support payments. There are so many services that people in our community rely upon and those services rely upon not only policy design and implementation by the APS, but, at the coalface, as it were, APS staff to actually help people navigate those systems. I see this every day first hand, but I saw it in particular when floods ravaged a part of my electorate recently. Services Australia staff were so instrumental in helping people receive government benefits. Services Australia staff walked through the suburbs, going street by street, house by house, finding people and helping them to navigate online government systems. And then staff from Services Australia and other Australian Public Service departments came to that community and were physically there to answer questions. They placed themselves there in a community that was in so much trouble. Those staff provided such assistance to those people in need. When I was thinking about the APS and its role in our lives, it occurred to me that the APS provides so many services on a daily basis but also other services that so many of us rely upon that are more momentous, more once-in-a-lifetime and everything in between. It really is a cradle-to-grave institution. The other thing about the APS when one thinks about its role in our own lives, in our communities and in the nation is that it really is something that is there as a steward across multiple governments, across multiple generations. That is why the reforms that we're looking at today are so critically important. This bill is going to be part of the government's broader agenda of building up the APS's capability, of making sure that it is suitably forward-looking and focused on the long term so that it can meet society's current and emerging challenges. I started my career in the APS—my first job in the APS was in the Attorney-General's Department—and so many of the issues that we are dealing with today and, in fact, across this parliament are matters of proper governance and integrity, which are so integral to the issues that I was dealing with as a young lawyer back at the start of my career. When I reflect on the issues that I was dealing with back then, it is very gratifying to see that this government is progressing issues relating to integrity and good governance, so important to underpinning the work of the APS. The second job that I had in the APS was in the Department of Finance, and again this makes me think about some of the very important reforms that we're re dealing with in this bill but also, more broadly, across the government's priorities. The Department of Finance is one of the central agencies that thinks about the APS's capability in a whole-of-government sense. In a sense, the Department of Finance is there to help the government think about how to marshal its resources and deal with, on the one hand, all the various trade-offs that it needs to make, the finite resources that it has and the finite funding and spending envelopes, and on the other hand the many things that it wants to achieve. But the other thing the Department of Finance does and did when I was there is, in a sense, mirror the Public Service and constantly think about the Public Service's capability. How is it able to best achieve the various objectives and outcomes that it's seeking to achieve? A lot of the reforms we're talking about in this bill tonight resonate very strongly with me and my experiences in the Public Service. There are five APS Values in which public servants are committed to service, and that goes back to what I talked about earlier: that public servants are there in our lives. They're there in our lives in a daily way. They're there in our lives on our most momentous occasions. They're often there in our deepest and darkest hours. The values include that public servants be ethical, that public servants be respectful, that public servants be accountable and that public servants be impartial. They are all absolutely critical values, and I saw these values in practice. I saw how important they were to underpinning the rigour of the advice that the APS was providing to the government of the day but also to underpinning the way in which the APS dealt with people in the community, because the jobs of so many members of the APS are to help people very directly. So many tens of thousands of people in the APS are there at the coalface, where impartiality, respectfulness and accountability are so important. Of course, I also think those values underpin some of the other overarching concepts we often think about when we think about the APS. Some of its best attributes are that the APS be frank and fearless and that the APS help governments think through how they actually implement the policy priorities that they have. Governments often will come into power with a very well formed agenda. But even when governments have thought through a lot of their policies, there's so often a great deal of complexity in actually implementing that, and it is absolutely critical that public servants have the capacity to help governments think through all the nuances and complexities of how to take a policy and make it into something that can be implemented in a practical and effective way. That's where the frank and fearless advice becomes so critical. That's where providing workable options becomes so critical. That's where having the capability to undertake rigorous cost-benefit analysis and where undertaking very detailed consultation processes throughout the community become so critical. That's why it's important to look at the reforms that we're looking at today in the broader context of some of the challenges the Public Service is facing. A number of speakers have talked about the fact that the Public Service has seen an erosion in some of its capabilities—through outsourcing to consultants is one example; just through a lack of funding in some areas is another. I do want to go to the initial paragraphs of the report of the Thodey review. Early on, the report's authors say they are not undertaking these reforms because the APS is broken. The report says: … there are many examples of excellence across the service. But the APS is not performing at its best today and it is not ready for the big changes and challenges that Australia will face between now and 2030. I believe that that is actually a fair representation of where we stand now. I don't believe the APS is broken, but I do believe that, given the complex, long-term and dynamic nature of some of the challenges that our community is are facing, we need to strengthen the APS, and that's where some of these changes come in. I want to put the changes that we're talking about in the context of the Albanese government's broader APS reform agenda. Priority 1 is that we have an APS that embodies integrity in everything that it does, priority 2 is that the APS puts people and businesses at the centre of policy and ideas, priority 3 is that the APS is a model employer, and priority 4 is that the APS has the capability to do its job well. What we're talking about in this bill dovetails all of the priorities that the government has set out and, indeed, helps it to achieve them. I won't go through all of the recommendations and the different elements of this package, but one of them, clearly, is adding stewardship as a sixth value: The APS builds its capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future, by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. I want to refer to a few of the reflections on and responses to a survey that was undertaken of APS officers as to what it meant to add stewardship. I might say that that survey indicated that adding stewardship resonated very strongly with public servants, which says a lot about how important this will be as a sixth value. It also said that, overwhelmingly, the responses indicated that it will help the APS to look ahead and provide advice that considers the long-term interests of Australians. A majority of the respondents in the survey of APS officers indicated that stewardship to them meant taking care, thinking long-term, taking into account future generations, maintaining knowledge within the APS and responsibly managing the issues under the responsibility of the department. When it came to public servants thinking about what it meant to act like a steward, they provided a number of responses. I will mention a few of them. There was mention of providing frank and fearless advice in relation to long-term impacts. For me, even that phrase indicates that it dovetails with and supports some of the existing values and adds that long-term perspective to what the APS already does. There was mention that it supports staff to grow capability and to meet challenges. To me, that response indicates that adding stewardship is going to help the APS to think about their own staff in a more long-term way, investing in them over the long horizon. It was mentioned that it will help to maintain information and good record keeping, absolutely critical for good governance, and that is will also help to build better and longer lasting systems. That survey, to me, was very insightful in that it added a lot of meat to the bone on what it means to add stewardship. When you think about some of the challenges that we're dealing with today, like climate change, long-term changes in the labour force, the jobs of the future and how we prepare current people for those future jobs, that is all going to require long-term thinking. Of course, it's always been important that public servants think about the long term, but, given where we are and given that some of the challenges that we're facing now—an ageing society, climate change, the workforce of the future—some of these changes will have impacts over multidecades and multigenerations, so it is absolutely critical that we add stewardship. Another important element of the reforms that we're considering today is that we add a purpose statement—that, alongside the addition of the value of stewardship, a purpose statement be developed that will create a unified vision of what the APS aspires to do. I think that's absolutely critical, and it takes me back to my days at Finance, trying to think about the APS in that whole-of-government sense. That reflects the fact that a lot of the challenges that we're facing aren't just long term but will affect so many different departments and agencies at the same time. Work of the future, the ageing of society—these are challenges that will affect multiple departments and agencies, so it is absolutely critical that we think about the APS in a more holistic way, and, also, that we undertake a capability review. Again, I go back to that statement that I just read out from the Thodey review: a capability review that isn't motivated by some sense that the APS is broken, which it isn't. The APS does so much and has done so much for so long that is at a very high standard. What it does reflect is the fact that we need the APS to be even better, particularly given the challenges that we will be facing. In conclusion, the APS is a ubiquitous institution in our lives, in our community, in our nation. But it's also an incredibly important institution. It's there on a daily basis for our everyday events, but it's also there at so many of the most important times of our lives. It's there to help pick us up at some of the most difficult times of our lives. It's also an institution that is permanent, that does have stewardship of so much in our community. It outlasts the government of the day. It is there for multiple generations. It helps the multiple generations that are alive now and it thinks about the many generations that are yet to come. That's why it's so important that we make sure that the APS thinks about the future in a long-term way—that it has stewardship at its core—and also that its capacity is strengthened so it is able to deal with the very complex challenges that our society faces. 19:03 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor It is my honour and pleasure to follow the member for Fraser and his thoughtful contribution on this bill, which will directly affect the Australian Public Service. As a former member of the Public Service, his knowledge of the intricacies of the service that it does was worth listening to in this place this evening. I want to say a couple of things up-front about the Australian Public Service. Where the APS is public facing is where trust in governments is built or is undone. I think of the number of people in my community who want to talk to me about bringing back the Commonwealth Employment Service. When I listen to them talk about this, I always hear a time where they really trusted the Public Service. They trusted them, they were prepared to put their lives in their hands, they looked to them for support and for guidance. We hear it all the time in our electorates: 'Bring back the CES'. There's a real sense in the Australian public that the Public Service is what we need more of, not less of. I think about that often, that in Australia there is a long-term sentiment around the Public Service. As I say to the staff in my electorate office, where the public comes into contact with the Public Service, and they are often the public-facing public servants, they are often seeing Australians on their worst days. If you think about Services Australia, someone's walking through the door coming from a traumatic place—a loss of employment, a loss of life, coming to report a death, coming to change an application process because a dependent has left home. There is a myriad of reasons why the public are interacting with the Public Service, and I think about the quality of our Public Service and how good we need that Public Service to be because they could be dealing with Australians having the toughest day of their lives. I think about the feedback I've had in the past nine years about those interactions, and it doesn't fill me with inspiration. It doesn't fill me with inspiration because, in my community, there is a reflection in a loss of faith in the Public Service. Australians have felt put upon; they have felt they have not been dealt with fairly. And this is not a surprise if we think about the robodebt scandal over the last few years, if we think about the number of people we've seen in our offices across the last nine years who felt that they didn't get a fair hearing at Services Australia. Those two things are a clear contrast, but also give us some real insight. As a government, we were always set to look at the APS and to look at that loss of faith in the Australian Public Service by our constituents, by the members of our communities. We were bound to address it—aside from the Thodey report, which compels us to address it. In reflecting on the member for Fraser's contribution, I am also reminded harshly of the member for Riverina's contribution earlier this evening. Let me say, through you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Goodenough, budgets reflect priorities; speaking lists reflect commitment. Putting it bluntly, it is true that the opposition has left the field on this bill. We have government member after government member engaging in this place with legislation that we feel strongly about. And we feel strongly about it because it goes to the core of our democracy. A loss of faith in public institutions is a threat to our democracy. Chaos does not bring us prosperity, and a lack of faith in the public does not build our country. It tears it down. My community cares about the Australian Public Service because they rely on the Australian Public Service. When I think about those words, 'the Public Service', which is how I've always referenced it, I also think about that other commonly used word, 'bureaucracy'. The word 'bureaucracy' is often used in a derogatory way. When I think about the conversations I have in my electorate, when people are unhappy with the Public Service, they call it the 'bureaucracy'. They're 'having trouble dealing with the bureaucracy' or they're 'finding it difficult and confronting and dealing with the bureaucracy is impacting on their mental health'. This bill goes some way to making a pivot in this space, turning this ship around. It does so thoughtfully. It does so as part of this government's reform agenda. It does so in response to the Thodey review from 2019, which concluded that the APS lacked a unified purpose. It said it was 'too internally focused and had lost capability in important areas'. And I'm thinking about the member for Fraser's contribution and that blue-sky thinking that we ask the APS to do. We ask them to do public-facing work with people on their worst days. We ask them to do the blue-sky thinking that's going to take this country forward. And we ask them to do the difficult work of looking at policy ideas, tracking them out, trying to predict the shortcomings, trying to predict and fix things before they're actually attempted to be implemented. It is an absolutely critical service to this parliament, an absolutely critical service for all of us as members of here representing our communities. The bill delivers on several important recommendations of the Thodey review. It takes a look at the existing APS values to be impartial, to be committed to service, to be accountable, to be respectful and to be ethical. To model these values and embody integrity, the APS needs to be honest, truly independent and empowered to provide the frank and fearless advice that we've been hearing about all day and to defend legality and due process. To engage in this legislation is to cast our minds back and to think about what we've seen across the last decade. I can't help but go back to the robodebt scandal and how different many lives in my community would have been if the APS had felt empowered to provide frank and fearless advice, if they had felt empowered to defend legality and due process. That's how the public feel about that process. They feel that they weren't given due process by the Australian Public Service. Not to put too fine a point on it, the APS needs to be delivering services with empathy and in a spirit of partnership with the Australian public and with this parliament. Reform of an organisation the size of the Australian Public Service is going to take time and is also going to take sustained effort. Our agenda in this space and reflected in this legislation has four priorities—that the APS embodies integrity in everything it does, that it puts people and business at the centre of policy and services, that it's a model employer and that it has the capability to do its various jobs well. The heart of this bill supports these priorities. What's driving us in the introduction of this bill is restoring the public's trust and faith in government and its institutions. There is no more important thing that we are putting before this House. The reforms in this bill will strengthen the APS's core purpose and values, build capability and expertise, and support good governance, accountability and transparency. To strengthen the APS's core values and purpose, it's going to develop a purpose statement. It's going to introduce stewardship as a new value, but, more importantly, it's going to establish a purpose statement. This is something that I have done in the schools that I worked in before coming to parliament—pulling a community together and asking those questions: What is our core purpose? Why are we here? How do we wrap ourselves around this core purpose? How do we get that core purpose? For us, in education, of course, that core purpose is to support every student to reach their potential. The APS will go through this process, and it is an affirming process. I've done this with more than one body of staff in schools. It's an affirming process to think about the core purpose, to make a fresh statement that everybody in the organisation agrees to about what that purpose is, and then to have that as the lens through which you see the work that you do every day. As one of the regional directors in state education would remind us every day, if our core purpose is to improve student outcomes, what have you done today to improve student outcomes? I wish the Public Service well on their venture into creating a shared sense of purpose, with tens of thousands of APS employees reinforcing a one Australian Public Service approach—one that has at its core a partnership with parliament and a partnership with the public. One of the other things this bill introduces is limitations on ministerial directions to agency heads. This speaks to allowing the Public Service to be impartial, to being apolitical and to having a merit based approach to employment matters, devoid of political interest. It will strengthen the relevant provision in the Public Service Act to make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions, something that appears in this chamber to be a small thing but which is a huge thing because it goes to that notion of true independence. It will reaffirm the apolitical role of the Australian Public Service and provide confidence to agency heads to act with integrity in the exercise of their duties and powers. The bill will also go to building capability, expertise and thought leadership. Talented and committed people are the foundation of the Public Service, and to be future fit they need to continually build the capability of staff into a skilled and competent workforce to rebuild it as a robust and trusted institution. The bill will ensure that the Australian Public Service maintains a culture of continuous improvement, something that anyone who has worked in a forward-thinking organisation in the last 20 years has some understanding of. The Member for Fraser and the Thodey report say that, if the Public Service isn't broken, as is asserted, we would still be asking for it to adopt a culture of continuous improvement, because why wouldn't we aspire to continuous improvement? I want to finish with some thoughts of my own: that I'm not surprised about the speaking list. If the member for Riverina is listening, he might find me later to have a conversation about it. I'm not surprised that there's a speaking list of that length on this side, because this side is committed. If we add reduction of staff in the APS, the development of a lack of agency in the Public Service and a lack of trust to the list of the mess that we were left and that we have turned our mind to and tonight taken action on—work left undone by those opposite—it is not a surprise that many on this side are lining up to speak on this important piece of legislation. 19:18 Mr THISTLETHWAITE 182468 Kingsford Smith The Public Service is really the engine of government in Australia. Most Australians would interact with the Public Service on a daily basis. Going to the doctor, visiting a hospital, our kids going to school every day, any interaction that you have with the departments of taxation or immigration, getting a passport—all of these are vitally important services that Australians rely on every day for a good quality of life and to get by. With that in mind, when a new government comes to office, it's appropriate that we have a look at whether or not the Public Service, those that are interacting with Australians on a daily basis, are meeting the goals and aspirations that the Australian people expect of a public service. I think it's reasonable for the government to ask regularly: what do the Australian public think of our Public Service, and what do they expect in terms of the services that are delivered by public servants in their interests? That's really what the Thodey report and the inquiry that was conducted were all about. In my view, there are a number of traits that the Australian people expect of a good public service. Firstly they want the public service to be impartial, to advise and act in the interests of Australians, not one particular political party or another, and for public servants to provide fearless and frank advice to governments and members of parliament about what they believe is in the best interests of the Australian people. They want a public service that is accountable, that is transparent, where Australians understand and can see how decisions are made regarding policies that affect them. They want a public service that is efficient and effective. At the end of the day, the Public Service is driven by taxpayers' dollars being expended, and the Australian people rightly expect that those services are being delivered in an effective and efficient matter, getting value for taxpayers. And, of course, they want the Public Service to be respectful and ethical, to operate to ensure that the views of all Australians are catered for and it's done in a respectful and ethical way. As society evolves, so should the Public Service. The services that Australians now rely on on a daily basis today are very much different to those relied on by the Australians of 20 years ago. We all now get public services through our phones. The myGov app is a classic case of the Public Service evolving in the service that it delivers to the Australian people. The independent review that was conducted by David Thodey produced a number of findings, and those findings concluded that the APS, the Australian Public Service, lacked a unified purpose, was too internally focused and had lost capability in important areas. The review called for a public service that is trusted, future fit, responsive and agile, to meet the changing needs of government and the community with professionalism and integrity. This bill delivers on several of the important recommendations that were made through the Thodey review. It recognises that the case for reform has only strengthened in recent years. What does this bill do? This bill implements a number of those recommendations. Firstly, it adds a new APS value of stewardship. What does that mean? It means ensuring that the APS is capable and is responsive to the needs of the Australian people. We all know that organisations—be they community sporting bodies, corporations, companies, small businesses—have a set of values that the organisation or the individuals in that organisation operate by. Governments have values that we operate by. So too should the Australian Public Service. One of those values is stewardship on behalf of the Australian people. Another element of this bill is requiring an APS purpose statement, ensuring that there is a common foundation and there is an alignment of the services that are delivered through the Australian Public Service across the full gamut of different departments that operate on behalf of government. This bill also makes it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on employment matters. That goes back to the principle that I stated earlier that the Australian people expect from their Public Service—that it is impartial, that appointments to the Public Service and promotions through the Public Service are based on merit, not on political interference. That is a fundamental tenet of a good public service in any political system. This bill will encourage decision-making at the lowest appropriate level. That is all about ensuring that APS staff are properly trained and have the confidence to make decisions on a daily basis to ensure that we get more efficient and effective outcomes for the Australian people. There'd be nothing worse than someone going into a Services Australia office seeking the rectification of a problem with the delivery of their pension, disability support payments or rent assistance, or applying for a passport or settling visa—issues such as that—and knowing that the decision-maker that they are meeting with can't make a decision, because they haven't been adequately trained and don't have the confidence to make that decision. We want to make sure that decisions are made at the lowest appropriate level. Regular capability reviews will be a requirement under the new legislation. There will be a five-year requirement for each department to review the capability of the people working in that department and whether or not it's meeting its stated aims. The Australian Public Service employee census results will be required to be published along with an action plan responding to those results, and that goes to the issue of transparency and accountability in the services that the Australian Public Service is providing. Establishing at least one long-term insight briefing every year will ensure that the Public Service has a longer-term vision for service delivery on behalf of the Australian people. We all know that innovation has disrupted society in every way, and it also has affected the way that public services are delivered. I mentioned myGov as a new innovation that allows greater and more efficient access to information for Australians. Nearly all Australians have a tax file number or some form of account with a Public Service agency that can ensure that they get that access when they need it. And that's a service that has had to evolve to cater for the changes in innovation. Public Service departments can't rest on their laurels. They can't say: 'Okay, now we've got an app and everything is hunky-dory. We don't need to do anything in the future.' You need to anticipate where the next evolution in online services is going to come from. I've mentioned transparency, which is very important in terms of the delivery of public services and, importantly, in the advice that's given to government. We saw during the period of the previous government that decisions were made by government where funds were allocated through particular grant programs and the advice of the Public Service was rejected and replaced with political decisions. One of those—probably the worst case of this—was the sports rorts saga, where we had a public fund to which Australians and organisations could apply for the allocation of public money, but it was basically manipulated by the former government to serve political purposes rather than outcomes that were in the best interests of the Australian people. The Australian Sports Commission, based on the guidelines of the fund, made recommendations to government, but those recommendations were ignored. It was only uncovered through the senate estimates process. The Australian people have the right to expect that when decisions like that are made, there are reasons given for why the public servants' advice is not taken. That is a reform that has been adopted by the Albanese Labor government to provide more transparency and accountability to the Australian people in the making of those decisions. The government is also very keen to rebuild the Australian Public Service. In the area that I work in, the Department of Veterans' Affairs, we've seen what it means when a government cuts the number of staff that are working to deliver that important service to the Australian people. We're talking about one of the most important cohorts of Australians: veterans. The previous government had an arbitrary staffing cap on the Department of Veterans' Affairs. When the demand for services for the processing of rehabilitation claims through the Department of Veterans' Affairs increased, because the service went online, the government didn't provide the staff to deal with that increase in demand. They had a cap. As a result, the backlog built up and we saw the mental health consequences for veterans. It was unfair and it was wrong. The new government has acted to remove that Public Service cap to invest in the Public Service, to ensure we have enough people to process those important applications for veterans. That is what this bill is all about. Debate interrupted. ADJOURNMENT 72 ADJOURNMENT Northern Territory: Gas Exploration 72 19:30 Dr RYAN 297660 Kooyong In this place I have repeatedly raised concerns regarding the potential environmental, climate and health impacts of the petrochemical processing facility planned for the Middle Arm region of Darwin Harbour and of the proposed fracking of the Beetaloo basin in the Northern Territory. More recently I've heard from numerous medical colleagues, fellow paediatricians, who share those concerns. These committed, courageous individuals have stepped away from the bedsides of sick children to advocate for all the children of the Territory and of Australia. They've asked their Chief Minister to meet with them about their concerns. She has not done so. I present to the House a speech by Dr Louise Davidson, a paediatrician, given at the No New Gas rally in Darwin on 17 June 2023, to amplify her voice and to call to account the governments both of the Northern Territory and Australia. It reads thus: There is no safe way to expand the fossil fuel industry in the midst of a climate crisis, and there is certainly no safe way to frack the Beetaloo Basin. Almost 50 paediatricians working in the NT wrote a letter to the Chief Minister last month requesting a meeting to raise our concerns about the health impacts of fracking and the expansion of the gas industry. We were not granted a meeting. Fracking the Beetaloo Basin and gas processing at the Middle Arm poses serious threats to the health and wellbeing of our children and our communities. Fracking and gas processing risks contamination of air, soil and water by pollutants known to cause disease. These pose a risk to communities living and working near fracking operations or processing plants. This will include the population of Darwin should gas processing at Middle Arm proceed. Fracking fuels climate change. The federal government has recognised climate change as a primary threat to the health and wellbeing of Australians and yet they are subsidising the Middle Arm, an enabler of Beetaloo fracking to the tune of $1.5 billion. Beetaloo basin fracking has the potential to increase Australia's total CO2 emissions by 20%. The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that "we are on a fast track to climate disaster" and called for every country to end licensing and funding of new oil and gas projects. We must urgently transition away from fossil fuels including gas, to avert catastrophic climate change. Why are the federal and NT governments expanding the fossil fuel industry? The NT is on the frontline of the climate crisis and Darwin may become one of the first cities to become uninhabitable with the current rate of temperature rise. This may occur in our lifetime. As paediatricians who care deeply about the health and welfare of children and their families, we are asking you to stand with us, and demand that the Territory and Federal Governments take our health seriously and stop selling out Territorians to prop up the fossil fuel industry. An industry with no future if humanity is to survive. The health impact of fracking of the Beetaloo basin—the impact on the soil, the air and the water of the Northern Territory and on the climate of all Australians—would be catastrophic. It would release a 1.4 million tonne carbon bomb which will make it impossible for us to meet our emissions reduction targets. For that reason, the paediatricians and other health professionals of the Territory are mobilising. They're not being heard in Darwin, so they are coming to Canberra. On 8 August 2023, together with Senator David Pocock, I look forward to hosting a day of climate action in this place. On that day, doctors, veterinarians, nurses, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals, representatives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and parents of Australian children who will be affected by that carbon bomb will come to this place, and they will seek to be heard. We owe them that much. Cunningham Electorate: Multiculturalism 73 19:34 Ms BYRNES 299145 Cunningham I rise this evening on World Refugee Day to acknowledge some of the great multicultural initiatives taking place in my electorate of Cunningham. The Association of Community Language Schools is a not-for-profit association supporting the teaching, promotion and maintenance of community languages in the Illawarra, south-western Sydney and the southern regions of New South Wales. Recently, I attended the opening of the ACLS Festival of Community Language 2023 art exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery. The exhibition allowed students to explore their community, language and culture by learning about different cultural elements and considering what aspects of their heritage and language make it unique and interesting. Students chose a subject, either an artefact or an aspect of their heritage language or culture, to represent visually, and the artwork created was absolutely spectacular. Thank you to all of the great local volunteers and teachers that gave up their time to help ensure their traditional languages continue through generations, including the language schools in my electorate: the Balar Malar Tamil school, Wollongong; the Holy Cross Greek Afternoon School, Wollongong; the South Coast Chinese Language School; the Polish School in Wollongong; the Wollongong Russian Language School; the Macedonian language school in Cringila; the Our Lady of Fatima Portuguese School, Warrawong; the Illawarra Thai School; the Illawarra Arabic Academy; and the Wollongong Pelangi Indonesia School. Later that day I also attended the 42nd annual June Ball hosted by the Illawarra branch of the Australian-Philippine Association, at the Fraternity Club. This year's ball was celebrating the 125th anniversary of the declaration of Philippine independence, which occurs on 12 June and marks when the Filipino people fought for their freedom and self-determination in 1898. It was a beautiful night to reflect on the incredible journey of the Filipino people and their contributions to society and to appreciate the rich cultural heritage that Filipinos bring to our local community in the Illawarra and around the world. On the night, I was honoured to be able to read a message from our Prime Minister highlighting the vital contributions Filipino Australians have made to the successful, multicultural, multifaith country that we all call home. Congratulations to the APA Illawarra branch volunteers, including president Eddy Grant and secretary Erna De Los Reyes, for another fantastic ball. Also to mark the anniversary of independence, the state member for Wollongong organised for the Filipino flag to be flown on the community flagpole outside of Wollongong City Council chambers. I was thrilled to join the wider Filipino community on Independence Day to celebrate the flying of the flag before travelling back here to Canberra. Another local champion, Thit Tieu, who I have spoken about previously here in this place through her work with the Sisters Cancer Support Group, has been busy again. On the weekend she launched the Social Women's Intercultural Friendship Tricycling/Bicycling, or SWIFT, club. The SWIFT club is a new community cycling group with the main aim to enable women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to access a safe weekly sporting activity for their physical and mental health. The group aims to create an inclusive environment where everybody feels welcome, including newly arrived refugee groups. They work with younger women who have embraced cycling at the Thrills n Skills program by Wollongong Youth Services and the Warrawong Intensive English Centre at Warrawong High School. SWIFT meets at Port Kembla Sailing Club every Saturday morning to go for a ride and share a meal. Cycle enthusiasts of all levels are welcome, and there will be tricycles, bicycles and helmets available to use on the day for registered club members. I would like to thank all of the volunteer organisers: Darinka Radinovic, Claudia Hodge, Dr Farhannah Aly, Bronwyn Wood and Thit Tieu. Thanks also to the community sponsors making the program possible: the Illawarra Yacht Club, the New South Wales Office of Sport, Fornix Wheels, Port Kembla Sailing Club, B's Bike Worx, Blueprint Digital, the Multicultural Health Communication Service and Wollongong City Council. The program is supported by the Disability Trust, the Illawarra Cycle Club and the Multicultural Communities Council of Illawarra. I am so proud to represent a diverse, vibrant and welcoming community like the Illawarra. These community initiatives, run by dedicated and passionate volunteers, do an amazing job at cultivating our rich heritage and creating a culture that we can all be proud of. Robinson, Dr Mark, MP 73 19:39 Mr PIKE 300120 Bowman This evening I pay tribute to a dear friend of mine. I pay tribute to Dr Mark Robinson MP, who is the member for Oodgeroo in the Queensland state parliament, formerly the member for Cleveland, as the electorate was known. Dr Robinson has announced that he will finish his parliamentary career at the end of this term of the Queensland parliament. He is at pains to point out he's not retiring. He is keen to point out it is not a retirement, but he announced last week in the state parliament that he will be pursuing other opportunities outside of that parliament. I want to spend my contribution tonight paying tribute to his service. By the end of the term he will have served in the state parliament for 15 years, and I think that's a good long stint. He and his wife were mentioning to me that the plan was originally for a 10-year stint, so we've had more than our share of Mark and it's time to return him to his family duties. He is very much the embodiment of a conviction politician. Probably the most important contributions that he has made to the Queensland state parliament were in their recent debates regarding abortion law reform and euthanasia reform. Those two speeches that he delivered on those fronts, and the important work that he did in engaging with stakeholders on those important issues, will stand the test of time as perhaps two of the greatest contributions that have ever been delivered in the state parliament. Mark served in many different roles. He was a deputy speaker during the last term when the LNP was in power in Queensland. Prior to that, he served as the shadow minister for main roads, fisheries and marine infrastructure. He never took a backwards step in any of his policy positions that he holds, and I think that, unfortunately, came at the cost of his own political advancement. But I think that is actually a testament to him as an individual. It's a testament that he wasn't prepared to sacrifice his own views and his own heartfelt positions on different issues to simply allow him to progress through the political chain. He was someone who was prepared to take a firm stance on issues that were in front of him. I think that if every politician in this place and in the state parliaments across the country had that courage of their convictions, and always stood for what they believed in, and didn't compromise—at least, didn't compromise their own values—then we would be in a better place politically across the country. On a local level, as the representative for the Bowman electorate, which covers his Oodgeroo electorate, I see Mark on the ground as an amazing community leader. He has been fighting for so many of the local projects that we desperately need in the Redlands. He has been an impassioned advocate for new investment in Redland Hospital. He has been an advocate for the duplication of the Cleveland rail line. He has a great passion for marine infrastructure, with his background as a marine biologist. He has been a great advocate for the community of North Stradbroke Island, which has had significant challenges over the course of his time in the state parliament. He has been a tremendous advocate for the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities of North Stradbroke Island as they have had to deal with the advent of native title and the closing of sandmining. The biggest local win that he achieved during his period was the securing of the palliative care service at Redland Hospital that operates throughout our community. There are so many local families that have been touched by the work that service has done, and it exists only due to the advocacy of Mark. He is a man of incredible integrity. He has been a great mentor and friend of mine. My daughter, Laura, who is a great judge of character, absolutely adores him. Every time we see him she wants to get on his lap and have a chat to him. I will cherish every day that I get to spend with Mark over the next year as he finishes his term. A special shoutout to his wife, Julie, and his seven children, who are a great support to him. He is a great Australian and I'm going to miss him. He has fought the good fight, he has finished the race, and he has kept the faith. Thank you, Mark, for all you have done for our community and for your service over so many years. Artificial Intelligence 74 19:44 Dr ANANDA-RAJAH 290544 Higgins AI has exploded on the public consciousness thanks to ChatGPT. I started worked on AI during my doctorate in 2009 and I focused on a rare disease that affected patients with compromised immune systems and infection. I looked at developing a tool that relied on analysing radiology reports and the accompanying CT scan images of the chest. It focused on text and image classification. Over that 10-year journey of inquiry up until I decided to make the transition to politics, I developed this tool and deployed it actively at the Alfred Hospital. That journey allowed me also to really get a deep understanding of artificial intelligence, its potential but its limitations as well. Looking back now, I can see 'AI', I would say, is actually a misnomer. Artificial intelligence is not really what these models are about. What they do deliver, though, is augmented intelligence. I think it is a more befitting term because what underpins these applications is actually a mathematical model; that is all it is. It is a mathematical model made up of statistical probabilities. This model is then trained on usually large volumes of data, whether that be images or language, in order to come up with a prediction. The model is either rewarded or it is panelised depending on how close it gets to ground truth, and therein lies the rub. What is ground truth? Ground truth we take for granted as humans but, to a machine, ground truth can mean a lot of things. It is honestly a case of garbage in, garbage out. If you train an AI model with a vast amount of data which is unlabelled, it may well end up spitting out outputs that are not quite accurate, and we are seeing that now with ChatGPT. Although this application is able to write essays and prose, it has inherent problems. We are seeing that with the inadvertent creation of fabricated references. ChatGPT is being used by university students to write essays, and what it is also doing is actually inventing references, fabricating them. But they look so authentic that it is actually causing major headaches for university lecturers and tutors, who are then having to fact check what an AI application has done. The issue in medicine particularly is one of bias. This is not something we spend enough time talking to. When you have large amounts of publicly available data, that data is often messy. It is untidy and it needs to be organised into what is ground truth. The problem here is that we are drowning in information but we are essentially starved of knowledge. If we are expecting AI to come up with wisdom, then I think we are certainly not going to get to that point, because it is not going to be the salvation of humanity, I can guarantee you that. Why? Because bias is inherent to AI. It permeates every step, from ideation to implementation. The problem with AI is that it risks actually amplifying the biases that we already have. As British philosopher Miranda Fricker says, we come basically with baked-in biases and attitudinal fallout from a semi-toxic social environment. What that means is our own biases infect the AI models we are trying to create. It starts with the teams that are usually highly gendered, male dominated, devoid of the kind of experience needed to create models that are representative of the community they are trying to serve, and then the data itself is highly imbalanced, usually dominated by groups that are well represented in the community, with marginalised or underserved groups in the minority. That, in itself, can mean that an AI model can amplify not just medical harms and compromise patient safety but also social harms. I would say to the population: be careful what you wish for. AI is not all that it is cracked up to be. Cashless Debit Card 75 19:50 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler Is there any other greater indicator of the hopelessness of this Labor government, of how its ideology overrules common sense, and of how it is directed by the socialist alliance, the left, than the cancellation of the cashless debit card in the mandatory trial sites around this country? We warned the Labor government what would happen if they took away these trials. We know they worked. We know they had good outcomes and community. Yet they ignored all of that advice, including from the people in the community. It was incredibly strongly supported because it worked and people wanted to actually do something and get an outcome. One of the great challenges that we had in government was trying to secure data from state governments, particularly the Palaszczuk government in Queensland, who simply refused to participate and wouldn't provide the data that we needed to provide indicators. But, lo and behold, last week in the Senate we saw a document tabled very quietly—not a lot of hoo-ha, not a lot of noise—demonstrating the serious challenges inside the trial site in my electorate that were being addressed by the cashless debit card before those in government now dumped it. It's called the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay Local Service Plan. It had absolutely no detail on what the intention was to address the challenges, but it certainly listed them all. How will these long-standing issues in the community be addressed? Well, we don't really have too much on that. Almost everything that was in the Local Service Plan had already been identified. It was why we were doing the trial. It's why we introduced it, it's why it worked and it's why the community supported it. Labor has abolished it, and we've seen this report saying, 'Yes, there are significant issues.' What I want to know from the minister is: how much worse are these issues now? Because what it looks like on the ground is that it is much worse, and the reports from my colleagues in the other three trial sites are that it has been diabolical—absolutely diabolical. We knew about these problems five years ago. That is why we had over 6,000 individuals in the Hinkler trial site on the cashless debit card—it was different to the other trials—and what we've seen now is a Labor government who are spending more than $200 million. These are people who made all sorts of outrageous claims during the election, including that the coalition had privatised welfare, that they had gotten an Indue provider as a bank who apparently was no good, but we received the replacement card, the SmartCard, which I'm told has changed colour, provided by, guess who? The same bank—exactly the same provider. This Labor government, under their own rules, have now privatised welfare. Instead of 6,000 participants getting better outcomes, for over $200 million spent in my electorate, Mr Speaker, would you believe there are 22 for a $200 million expenditure? The plan, according to the government, is committed to extending existing support services and delivering a range of new initiatives, but guess what? There aren't any, and there's no money for it. It's great to have a plan. They've identified some priorities, including collating data. Guess what? We asked for that too, for years, and ensuring local service providers work together. Well, they do. It's how we get better outcomes. Here are some good numbers, Mr Speaker, which I'm sure you've heard before. Regarding concerns about alcohol and other drug use, the Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service notes that 37.6 per cent of adults in the region were risky drinkers and need rehab and detox facilities. The state government made a commitment in 2020 to provide that, and more mental health support, and they haven't even started out. There is an increase in family and domestic violence incidents, and a demand for services is identified in the local service plan as well as a waitlist for support services for families and children who are experiencing family violence blowing up. Issues around unemployment include intergenerational unemployment and welfare dependency, unwillingness to work, and a mismatch between skills and applicant skills, leaving a significant number of vacant jobs. We know—my community knows. It's why they supported such a tough policy. They wanted to change the situation locally. The Minister for Social Services needs to tell my community how the government intends to address these issues, not just a plan for a plan. How much is it going to cost—not just for the 22 individuals who are now on the new card, which is the same card but a different colour? Labor should get away from their ideology and do things that work that are supported by community. Albanese Government, Australian Constitution 76 19:55 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor It is an absolute pleasure tonight to join the adjournment debate, and I want to speak directly to the people in the community that I represent in this place. We are completing four weeks of five in the House of Representatives and in the Australian parliament, so we've all been away from home for a while. I'm really looking forward to the next few weeks at home, in the community, talking about this government's achievements across the first 12 months. I know people at home may have been watching the news over the last two weeks and may have felt a little disheartened about some of the events in this place. I want to tell you that, despite some of the negative commentary that you may have seen reported in the newspapers and despite some of the negative incidents that you're hearing about, this government has been getting on with delivering on the commitments we took to the last election. We've been working hard, day in and day out, to make lives better in communities like ours. On 1 July, the Net Zero Economy Agency will be stood up. This government is taking action on climate change and taking action to transform us into a clean energy economy. On 1 July the safeguard mechanism reforms commence—again, action on climate change. We've been busy fixing the aged-care crisis, and on 1 July aged-care facilities are to have registered nurses on site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to improve care. Our local Medicare urgent care clinic has now been operating for some time. We're strengthening paid parental leave, and from 1 July the current entitlement of 18 weeks paid parental leave will be combined with the current 'dad and partner pay' entitlement of two weeks pay. There's cheaper child care. On 1 July the childcare subsidy increases, and from 10 July 2023 the childcare subsidy will increase for most families. In our community, that's the highest number of families in the country. On 1 July up to 3.8 million small and medium-sized businesses with a turnover of less than $50 million will be able to electrify their businesses and save energy by deducting an additional 20 per cent of the cost of buying eligible depreciating assets, up to $100,000 of total expenditure. That's good news for local small businesses. We've been getting on with what has been left to us in terms of social and affordable housing. After 10 years of neglect, there is a Labor government taking action on the scourge of homelessness and of people fearing falling into homelessness. That's an important piece of work for my electorate. We've heard a lot of news about what's been blocked in the Senate. We know that those opposite—the Liberals and the Nationals—have joined forces with the Greens to block the Housing Australia Future Fund, but there are other things that the government is doing in this space. We are creating more social and affordable rental housing, and, as you will have heard in Saturday's announcement, we have the $2 billion housing accelerator, with $500 million going to Victoria, to be delivered in the next two weeks, to support the Victorian government's action in the housing crisis. I want to make sure that everybody understands that those opposite not only didn't act in this space and created this crisis but they're now blocking investment that this government would make that would see $500 million go to social and affordable housing every year, and they're being joined in that by the Greens in this place. I want to finish with this: when I come home after this sitting week, I will be actively campaigning for the 'yes' vote in the referendum. I will be doing so with pride, and I know I will be joined by thousands of locals in this campaign because it's the right thing to do, because it's an idea that is past its time and because the First Australians need to be enshrined in our Constitution and need to be listened to in this place. House adjourned at 20:00 NOTICES 76 NOTICES Presentation 76

Tuesday, 20 June 2023

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ) took the chair at 16:00.

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS 80 CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS Insurance 80 16:00 Mr CHESTER IPZ Gippsland I want to raise an extraordinary case, which is causing a degree of distress for a constituent in my electorate, regarding the insurance sector. As the member for Gippsland, I've unfortunately experienced many natural disasters and have dealt with the insurance industry on a range of issues, and it's almost always been a very positive experience. But the case I'm about to describe is troubling, as it is causing a degree of distress in my electorate. In April, my constituent's Nissan Patrol was stolen from her home and severely damaged. The events leading up to the theft are important. I'm advised that the car outside the premises, a Holden Colorado, was broken into, and the thieves accessed the family's garage fob pass, which was then used to enter the garage and steal the family's Nissan Patrol—so there were two vehicles involved. By accessing the Patrol in the locked garage, the thieves were then able to make off with the vehicle, because the vehicle's keys were inside it. What concerns me is that the constituent's claim for insurance has been rejected by Auto & General, operating under the name Budget Direct. They've rejected the claim because, in their words, the vehicle was unattended and the keys were inside the vehicle. Really this is a community service announcement, in that it's something people should be aware of. Even though your vehicle is in a locked garage, if the keys are inside that vehicle your insurance company may not honour the claim if your vehicle is stolen and damaged. The justification by Auto & General—Budget Direct—was: 'The decision to decline the claim has been maintained due to your keys being left in your car when it was stolen.' In the review process initiated by my constituent, the company went on to say: 'We understand having your car stolen is stressful, and we don't feel it's fair to decline cover in this circumstance; however, leaving the keys in the car while unattended for any period of time breaches the policy conditions, and therefore we cannot cover this claim for theft of the car.' The problem with the term 'unattended', Madam Deputy Speaker, is that the car was in the family garage. The family were at home asleep. They were the victims of aggravated burglary, and, to make things worse, their car was taken away and damaged significantly while they were asleep, and somehow this is meant to be the owner's fault. At the base of the review the company goes on to say: 'We acknowledge the vehicle was in a locked garage at the time of the theft, adding a level of security. The location of the vehicle at the time of theft does not contribute to or invalidate the policy requirements regarding the key location. It is our position that the act of leaving the keys within the vehicle has significantly contributed to the theft of your vehicle.' Again, as a community service announcement, I must say to my constituents: please read the fine print. I also must say to Budget Direct: there is some doubt here, and please consider giving the benefit of the doubt to my constituents, who have suffered a very significant loss. On top of the stress of being violated and having their home robbed, they now feel like they're victims again because their insurance company is refusing to honour their claim, and quite a significant claim, for the damage to the vehicle. Kingston Electorate: Early Years Strategy 80 16:03 Ms RISHWORTH HWA Kingston It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child. I was so pleased to be joined by many of the participants in the 'village' of my electorate in the southern suburbs of Adelaide as we hosted an Early Years Strategy consultation forum. I was delighted to be joined by educators, health and community service providers, parent groups, advocates and everyone else who wanted to make a contribution on how we deliver for our youngest children. That's exactly what our Early Years Strategy is doing: looking at how we give our littlest citizens the best start to life. I'd particularly like to mention Christies Beach and Seaford Heights early learning centres, the Southern Montessori School, the Noarlunga based Aboriginal family clinic and, of course, Parents Who Have Been There, a wonderful local group that supports parents of babies in neonatal care as well as others who have had challenges at the very start of life. It was really important for me to hear so many local insights from those that attended, really talking about the importance of giving parents not just support but ensuring that parents feel empowered and get the right resources when they need them. It was also important to hear from service providers, who were talking about the importance of joined up local services and making sure that they were easily accessible to families in times of need. The government really understands that a siloed and fragmented approach to services in the community that doesn't put families and children at the centre, whether they be parenting or early education support services, whether they be community or disability providers and support services, is not the right approach. So we are working diligently, consulting right across the country, to ensure that we have a strategy that looks at better coordination of services and supports but also, importantly, has a clear vision for the future of Australia's children and family. We are really working to ensure that the voices of not only those parents but also children are at the heart of our strategy and that a child's perspective is embedded. I would encourage all members of this place to get involved in the government's Early Years Strategy. It's an important piece of public policy. Cost of Living, Interest Rates 81 16:06 Mr CHANDLER-MATHER 300121 Griffith The big banks and gas corporations have open access in this building so often that I thought I'd use this opportunity to share some of a number of overwhelming responses we've got from local residents and people getting in touch about the cost-of-living and the rental and housing crisis. A woman sent me a message recently, 'As a single working mum that left all I had to escape DV, now trying to raise a child whilst renting, life seems terribly hard and with little hope. I am working so hard but barely getting by. I have no financial buffer for anything. It's so scary as a parent and keeps me awake every night.' Last night, a guy reached out to tell me how his disabled mum couldn't secure a rental because of the abysmally low pension and ridiculously high rates near her care. She died on the waiting list for public housing. A woman sent me an email last week, which read: 'I am so scared of having another rent increase. My children and I will have to move, even if my rent goes up by $50. It's a horrible feeling.' As another local resident rightfully points out, it's not just rent increases: 'Our mortgage has gone an extra up $450 a month. That's extra money that used to be used on bills and my kids. Not anymore.' For another constituent, after they pay the rent each week, they are left with only $50 to spare—$50 to spend on food, bills and literally anything else that they need. They reflected how the weight of this drags them down every day and the rising sense of panic they wake with each morning thinking about how they will make ends meet that day. For another, with the most recent interest rate rise, they are now paying $600 extra per fortnight since their first rate rise. They have started applying for a third job so they can afford enough to pay for food, while they've been sacrificing everything else. They feel that they will never be able to have a family of their own. A young guy shared with us, 'My 70-plus nan had to leave her home after 10-plus years only months after Grandpa passed away because of a $120 a week rent increase. It's awful.' A few weeks ago, a local couple in Holland Park sent me an email that really stuck with me. In it they say, 'We felt really proud of what we were able to achieve together. We saved so hard to get house deposit and looked forward to our future. Today, we really are struggling. Our once responsible savings nest egg has been completely absorbed by the cost-of-living pressures, and we now live pay cheque to pay cheque. Meanwhile, the big banks record a record $7 billion in profit. The federal budget found $12 billion in tax concessions for property investors and not a single cent extra for public or affordable housing. It took one hell of a campaign from the Greens to just eek out $2 billion dollars in direct funding for social housing. The federal government likes to pretend there's nothing they can do on rental and mortgages, but it's just not true. The federal government could coordinate a freeze on rent increases, they could use their existing powers to stop further interest rate increases and they could tax the big banks and corporations to give everyone what they need to live a good life. We're a wealthy country, and the experiences of these people should be considered unacceptable when we live in a country with such great wealth. East Coast Beverages 81 16:09 Dr REID 300126 Robertson Today I rise to acknowledge East Coast Beverages, which is an exceptional juice and beverage company operating on the New South Wales Central Coast. East Coast Beverages was started in 1965 by Salvatore Lentini, who began the business by growing citrus in Kulnura. Mr Lentini then went on to vend his produce at the famous Flemington markets, selling East Coast Beverages' Australian grown citrus produce to the wider Sydney community. Fast forward to the present day, and East Coast Beverages is a booming enterprise employing over 50 Central Coast locals. East Coast Beverages has kept true to its roots, with three generations of Lentinis having been involved in the organisation. Recently I was invited to visit and tour East Coast Beverages. I got to see firsthand the operations that take place at its beverage manufacturing facility in Kulnura. I was warmly greeted by managing director, Samuel Lentini, who provided an insightful overview of operations, including a tour of the robotics that process the fruit, bottle and prepare products to be sent to its retailers in Australia and even overseas. It was also an opportunity to meet with several employees who ensure the smooth operations of that facility. I would like to thank them for their work and patience while I visited their workplace. East Coast Beverages pride themselves on minimising the organisation's environmental footprint, and I was very impressed with their sustainability focus to 'return, regrow and reduce'. What this mantra means is that all products are recyclable. Water used in the beverage manufacturing facility is treated and reused to irrigate the citrus areas. Lastly, citrus pulp is sent to other businesses to make citrus infused yoghurts and desserts. There has been a tremendous effort to reduce the environmental footprint of the business and solve a range of other issues along the way. I was also impressed to learn that East Coast Beverages transports citrus pulp and other organic matter to drought affected farmers to feed their cattle and other livestock—a very generous service to our Australian farmers. To the brilliant Lentini family, I commend you all on your commitment to East Coast Beverages and on continuing to call the Central Coast home. East Coast Beverages is one of the Central Coast's most respected and recognisable family owned businesses, and this is testament to the dedication that you all have to its ongoing success. To Salvatore Lentini and his three sons, Sam, Mick and Frank, and their wives, Nina, Maria and Rosa, as well as third-generation Lentini family members, Samuel, Sammy and Dominic: well done and thank you for all that you do for our Central Coast family. Lastly, to the whole team at East Coast Beverages: keep up the outstanding work! King's Birthday Honours 82 16:12 Mr HAWKE HWO Mitchell Last Wednesday our nation marked the first official celebration of the birthday of His Majesty King Charles III. It's in honour of this celebration that we had the privilege of recognising and celebrating the work of outstanding Australians through the King's Birthday honours. It is the first of its kind in six decades, following the sad passing of our longest-reigning monarch, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. I congratulate all of the residents in my electorate of Mitchell who this year have displayed immense service to their community and received awards in this year's King's Birthday honours, including several members of the Mitchell community who received an Order of Australia in the General Division. Mr Bortolo Baitieri, who is known as Tas, received an OAM for his significant service to rugby league, and it is significant service. Representing the NRL as a former player for both the Penrith Panthers—and I note that the member for Lindsay is here—and the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, he has since acted as international developer manager for the Asia-Pacific confederation. When you think about how many Pasifika players are now playing in the NRL, that's a very significant role to hold for over 20 years. Mr Baitieri has also been a member of the International Rugby League since 1998, having coached for the French Rugby League Federation, and has held various other positions with rugby league, both domestically and abroad. Like so many NRL and rugby league clubs at all grades in my electorate, we welcome the commitment from the federal government to relocate the Parramatta Eels to Kellyville. That facility is doing great work internationally and locally for rugby league in north-west Sydney. Dr Gregory Marcar received an OAM for his service to medicine, serving the people of Western Sydney through his decades of work with Lidcombe hospital. He has further strengthened life-saving research into cardiovascular rehabilitation and drug and alcohol treatment. He has served on thousands of committees and research panels, and we thank him for his service. Dr Michael Morris received an OAM in recognition of his lasting dedication to the Jewish community in Parramatta, leading the community through various roles since 1981. Sometimes people don't understand that there is a significant Jewish community in Parramatta; there is a synagogue there as well. I want to commend them for the community work they do and the strength of that community over many years. Mr Jacob Jackson received a Public Service Medal for his outstanding public service in the swift implementation of the rapid antigen screening for Corrective Services in New South Wales. Through his skilful ability to procure rapid antigen tests, Corrective Services NSW has undertaken about 741,000 tests and prevented over 1,700 persons infected with COVID-19 from entering high-risk correctional facilities. Of course, I want to put my own comments on the record. Having worked with correctional facilities and immigration facilities, this was a very high-risk environment and Mr Jackson did an outstanding job. We hold tremendous admiration for these exceptional Australians. I want to say thank you on behalf of my electorate and on behalf of all Australians. I thank you for the tireless service, the hard work and the dedication. I want to take a moment to acknowledge them in the King's Birthday awards as well. Cusack, Mr James Joseph (Jim) 83 16:15 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong Today I honour a man who donated 15 years of his life to representing the people of Moonee Valley as mayor, deputy mayor and councillor. But I'm sad to say that this man, Jim Cusack, passed away on 30 May. He is survived by his wife, Helene McNamara; and sons, Aidan and Kilian. He loved his family, but Helene and the boys knew they had to share him with the 30-plus residents of Moonee Valley's Myrnong Ward. Jim was described as a man with an interest in everything and larger than life in everything that he did. Anyone who met him had a 'Jim story', such was his love of a good yarn. You could see him traversing the ward on weekends, playing his beloved lawn bowls, dropping in at events and at sport clubs and parks. He would have a beer at most stops, because it would be rude not to, in his worldview. Jim was union through and through. He embodied the very best of Labor values. His commitment to social justice, his fight for fairness and his passion for equality formed the cornerstone of Jim's worldview. This was formed at a very early age, when his father passed away and he had to become the key support to his mother and to his younger siblings. Those same values drove his determination throughout his life, in particular to make a difference in his community by sitting on the Moonee Valley City Council. He outright rejected the notion that council was about roads, rates and rubbish alone. To Jim, representing people at the grassroots level was the purest form of public service, and if you had the privilege to have a voice you used it for those who did not. He used it to represent the residents of the large public housing estates within his constituency, to gain the endorsement of the soon-to-open Flemington Community Hub and to help establish the Crown Street Stables, a social enterprise employing people with disabilities. I think some of the highlights amongst his many achievements were getting the council on board with support for climate change, for asylum seekers, for the Moonee Ponds Creek plan and for an Aboriginal reconciliation plan. Jim didn't sit on council for the glory, and certainly not for the money. Representing the people of Myrnong Ward was Jim's vocation. He set a high bar for all those who follow in his steps. He was a rarity, a great lover of Ireland and his Celtic roots—a Celtic unicorn. He will be terribly missed. Jim Cusack's legacy lives on through Helene and the boys. It lives on through the many people he mentored in the local Labor Party. It lives on through his battles for justice and equality that he fought and won. And it lives on through the many lives that he touched. It's great that he realised his greatest dream, to be the mayor of Moonee Valley City Council and to serve on the council with great distinction. They don't make people like Jim Cusack anymore. Sometimes we just use that statement, but in this case it has great meaning for those of us who knew him. The saddest thing about his passing is the people who won't be able to meet him, but we promise to tell the stories of Jim's life and his values at the funeral so that he can still live on in the memories of those who don't meet him. Vale Jim Cusack. Northam, Mr Hugo, Campbell, Ms Elizabeth Anne (Liz) 83 16:18 Mr 279991 Cowper CONAGHAN () (): I'd like to take this opportunity to acknowledge a local young gun whose initiative and dedication has garnered a national award. Hugo Northam is a year 11 student at Saint Columba Anglican School, in Port Macquarie, who has been named the Surf Life Saving Australia's uncrewed aerial vehicle service rookie of the year for 2023. Back in 2017 the service was contracted by the New South Wales government to provide shark surveillance using drones across the New South Wales coastline. Today Surf Life Saving New South Wales has one of the largest coastal UAV surveillance operations in Australia, which includes a number of my beaches: Sawtell, Urunga, Scotts Head, South West Rocks, Crescent Head and Port Macquarie. Hugo is an enthusiast of both the ocean and technology and has a keen sense of community, having been at the Tacking Point Surf Life Saving Club for many years. He put up his hand to be a drone operator and help protect swimmers on our local beaches. It was a no-brainer for this young, passionate man. After a few short months, Hugo proved his worth to the program through his willingness to learn and obvious respect for the strict protocols that operations of this kind require, as well as the high standard of jobs that he was logging. Thank you for your passion and your dedication to our community, Hugo. I know that you have a bright future ahead of you. I'd also like to dedicate time to acknowledge Liz Campbell, former Kempsey Shire Mayor and recipient of an Order of Australia medal in the King's Birthday Honours List this year. Liz has been recognised for her service to local government during her 14 years as a Kempsey Shire councillor. I had the pleasure of working alongside Liz quite often in her role as mayor, which she held over a decade. Originally elected as a councillor in 2008, Liz was then elected as mayor in 2012. In fact, she is the very first Kempsey mayor to be democratically elected by the community. That's a testament to her popularity and the positive impact that she had already made as a councillor. From the moment that she was elected to council in 2008, Liz consistently led with dedication and vision. Through fires, floods and pandemics she advocated and delivered some incredible projects, including the Macleay Valley Country University Campus, which she continues to chair. I'd also like to acknowledge the many personal sacrifices she made so willingly, whilst in the role, for the good of her community. These certainly did not go unnoticed. Liz, you are shining example of what regional community spirit is about. Congratulations. Gorton Electorate: Young People 84 16:21 Mr O'CONNOR 00AN3 Gorton I rise today to talk about the young people in my electorate of Gorton. Earlier this year I conducted a youth survey, as I wanted to hear directly about issues most important to them. In reading through the results it became evident that there were pressing issues they felt strongly about and challenges that we cannot ignore. First and foremost, education and skills were identified as a key priority. I was pleased to see that the Albanese Labor government's fee-free TAFE policy was overwhelmingly supported. These young people in my electorate recognise the importance of accessible vocational education as a catalyst for their personal growth and the prosperity of our society. Also apparent was support for Australia's commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions. Young Australians understand the urgent need to address the climate crisis and they're eager to see bold and decisive action taken to secure a sustainable future for generations to come. Additionally, there was strong support for the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Young people in my electorate understand the importance of acknowledging and honouring the rich Indigenous heritage of our nation and striving for genuine reconciliation. Many of them have already signed up to volunteer on the yes campaign and I look forward to working alongside them to achieve this historic milestone. Respondents also highlighted their concerns for the future. Cameron from Keilor Downs believed that he would have of a lower standard of living, economically, than his parents because of stagnant wage growth this country has faced. This is something the government is focused on addressing. Jess from Sydenham believed that younger people need more support to set up their lives with secure work and more affordable housing—again, two areas of public policy that we are looking to respond to and fix. There was scepticism about the prospect of ever owning a house. Nearly 90 per cent of the young people surveyed did not believe that owning a home was realistic, which, again, underlines a real concern amongst young people about their opportunities in the future. It's something we need to tackle both at a federal and a state level. This deeply rooted concern demands our attention and reinforces the necessity of the Housing Australia Future Fund. In May my office initiated more intensive discussions with individuals and small groups of young people. Through these conversations the passion and dedication of many young people in my electorate shone through. Young people are actively engaged in broader issues that affect our society at large. Our future generations are in good hands. It is our responsibility to encourage them to participate in the big issues that are shaping their future and that of their communities and country. Inland Rail 84 16:24 Mr HWN Parkes COULTON (—) (): It's now several months since Kerry Schott delivered her review to the minister on inland rail. It's important to note that in that review Kerry Schott reinforced that the route is in the correct place and the need is there. I'm hearing that the figures around the costing and estimation might have been a little high. But it's about time the minister now gave the people along that route, and at each end, certainty about what's happening. At the moment there's a great amount of unrest because people have gone and borrowed money and bought equipment—trucks, earthmoving machinery—and have been actively involved in the first completed sections, the sections between Parkes and Narromine and between Narrabri and North Star stage 1. It's a magnificent piece of infrastructure that's being built. But it's a timely reminder as to what this project is. This project takes 200,000 trucks a year off the Newell Highway. It removes 750,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide. So, if you're looking for genuine climate-saving carbon reduction projects, don't look any further than this one. My concern is that if the minister doesn't come out and reinforce her government's support for this project then the momentum will be lost. Already we're starting to see some of that happening. Long after Minister King and I have left this place, if this project doesn't go ahead the consequences will affect generations to come. The project could mean cheaper products on the shelves in Brisbane and Melbourne, as well as the fact that every capital city will be joined by a standard-gauged railway for the first time, with the connection giving options to other ports, such as the Port of Newcastle, the Port of Melbourne, and Brisbane, all connected, as well as over to the west and even as far as the Northern Territory. This is a great project, but there's a lot of uncertainty. Gilgandra Shire has invested millions of dollars building houses that will be used for workers, which are under construction. There's a Special Activation Precinct at Moree, where about $300,000 is already at risk, as well as the Special Activation Precinct at Narrabri, with the inland port there. And the level of uncertainty is rising. Minister King has had time to look at this review. I've heard the Prime Minister, for the 10 years that this project has been there, at numerous conferences supporting inland rail. The minister supports inland rail. Stop the uncertainty and come out and support this now. International Science Olympiad, Australian Filipino Community 85 16:27 Mr DAVID SMITH 276714 Bean Congratulations to a first-class Canberra student, Henry Morgan. Henry is a Brindabella Christian College year 12 student who'll be part of the team representing Australia in the International Science Olympiad. Henry and 31 other Australian students came to Parliament House on Monday morning to be announced as representatives for Australia in the 2023 International Science Olympiad. The International Science Olympiad serves as a platform to promote scientific education and foster international collaboration among young scientists. It encourages participants to excel in their scientific studies and pursue careers in STEM fields. This year's Olympiad will include more than 1,900 students and 104 countries, all competing for the top prize. Henry will represent Australia in the earth sciences team, after winning his spot for a series of regional and national competitions. When asked about this achievement, Henry shared: 'It is surreal. I've never really done anything like that at all before, so it's a very exciting.' I first met Henry when he competed in my near-mythic bean-counting competition. Through the support for this type of initiative—the Olympiad, not by bean-counting competition!—the Albanese government is helping a new generation of young and talented Australians to hone their unique skills and abilities now, for the future benefit of Australia. Congratulations and good luck to Henry, as well as all the Australian students competing in the International Science Olympiad. Monday 12 June was the 125th anniversary of the declaration of Philippine independence. I want to take a moment to acknowledge the significance of this day and the invaluable contributions of the Filipino community here in Australia—the community of more than 400,000 that plays a substantial role right across this country. I would like to extend my gratitude to the Canberra Filipino community for the friendship and support they have shown me and my family. Their warmth, hospitality and unwavering commitment to our shared values have strengthened the bond between our nations and made our nations stronger. Australia's multicultural society thrives on the diversity and richness brought by different cultures, and the Filipino community has played an integral role in shaping our great society. It was great to come together last night with members of the community to celebrate the 161st anniversary of the birth of Jose Rizal, their national hero, just a week after the anniversary of Philippine independence. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 249710 In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded. CONDOLENCES 85 CONDOLENCES Staley, Hon. Anthony Allan (Tony), AO 85 16:30 Dr GARLAND 295588 Chisholm I'd like to join with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, who recently paid tribute to the life and work of Anthony Allan Staley. As the current member for Chisholm, I felt it was right to pay tribute to Tony Staley, a former member for Chisholm, and to honour his contribution to both local and federal politics. Despite being of a different political colour to Tony, I think it's important to mark his service. We've already heard in this place that, as a schoolboy, Tony Staley was drawn to drama, history, poetry and debating, which happen to be interests I share and to which I was also drawn as a schoolgirl. Tony studied law and politics, and then he completed a master's degree in politics and subsequently taught at the University of Melbourne. In terms of his parliamentary career, he was able to win the faith and confidence of the very good people of Chisholm in 1970, in a by-election. Tony would end up holding that seat for 10 years, and I'm sure he treasured the opportunity to represent such a wonderful community as much as I do. Many will be aware that one of Tony's lasting legacies was his role as communications minister in the Fraser government. It was during Tony's time in the communications portfolio that he oversaw the establishment of the SBS—a legacy that has shaped the way our communities participate in and engage with the media and a wonderful legacy our nation is richer for. It was also well known that Tony was a strong advocate of the ABC and community radio, seeing them as providing vital services to members of the community. I know that the people of Chisholm and I share these sentiments. Tony also served as the federal president of the Liberal Party between 1993 and 1999. Former Prime Minister John Howard cited Tony's personal qualities of having immense personal courage, having a great sense of humour and possessing considerable grace and eloquence. These qualities were evident even amid great personal challenge, notably a near-fatal car accident in 1990, when Tony was hit by a drunk driver, which left him partially paralysed. Tony was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007 for his service to politics, to the telecommunications and arts sectors and to the development of the Liberal Party. At Tony's funeral, his son Sam noted that Tony's greatest legacy was his knack for seeing potential in others and helping others to realise that potential. I note that the member for Maribyrnong represented the Prime Minister on behalf of the government at Tony's funeral. It's been said that Tony's love of politics was only exceeded by his love of family. Tony's daughter, Lucinda, has said that her dad was kind, generous, supportive and had endless and unconditional love for his children. I'd like to provide now some comments here in the House from one of Tony's children, Sam, who spoke recently to the Australian Financial Review. He said: Few people have the courage or good fortune to be able to phone their friends to say goodbye, but Tony did this recently, a testament to his generosity of spirit and the love with which he regarded his friends. As you can imagine, not all of these friends were quite so happy to receive the call. In the end, Tony died peacefully and without fear, surrounded by his children and neighbour in the exceptional care of the staff of Rathdowne Place in Carlton, with books of poetry on his bedside table, Leonard Cohen playing on the iPad, paintings by his partner, Susie, on the walls, a glass of Cointreau, a soda and lemon, the TV remote, two tissues and a crumpled Age newspaper by his side. A happy end to a long and interesting life. Tony is survived by his five children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. My condolences to all his loved one. Vale, Tony Staley. 16:34 Mr TEHAN 210911 Wannon Can I thank the member for Chisholm for paying her respects to Tony Staley. Can I also commend the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for their words on the sad passing of Tony Staley. I had the great honour and privilege to be at the funeral, and to hear the speakers talk of Tony Staley's life was truly remarkable. Tony was someone who lived life to the absolute full. He had some very interesting loves. He loved poetry, he loved drama and he loved politics, and the poetry and the drama, I think, helped in his very, very successful political career. I got to hear about that unique success in two facets of politics. First of all was his success in being a parliamentarian and being able to shape the very nature of the parliament in which he operated. He was able to do it with regard to who ultimately led the Liberal Party, and who very successfully led the Liberal Party, Malcolm Fraser. He was also able to do it as a successful minister, as Minister for the Capital Territory and as Minister for Posts and Telecommunications. Being able to set up and establish community radio in Australia was something that he was very, very proud of. He also was able to do it on the administrative side of politics as well, and it's a rare talent that is able to mix all those parts of politics. When he became the Liberal Party federal president, it's fair to say that the party was down on its luck. It had been in opposition for quite some period of time, for over 11 years. Once again he was able to shape, this time from the administrative ring, the very nature of the political party, which saw John Howard take on the opposition leadership and ultimately, in 1996, defeat the Keating government. He was very much able to change Australian political history and our nation forever, because John Howard went on to become the second most successful Prime Minister that this nation has ever seen. That was the mark of Tony Staley. He was able to see leadership and values in others like no-one else could, and that's how he was able to identify who the Liberal Party needed as its leader, whether it be in the time to defeat the Whitlam government or in the time to defeat the Keating government. Through that, he has left a lasting legacy on our party. Having had the privilege of being at his funeral, while there were a lot of politicians from both sides there, and while there was a lot of reminiscing of the legacy that Tony left to the Liberal Party—and it is an extraordinary legacy—the most telling thing was the eulogies given by his children. The love, the admiration and the respect that Tony's children had for him and that he had for them was something that you had to be there to see. I don't think there was anyone at that funeral who didn't leave thinking that if you could get half the send-off that Tony Staley was given, you would have lived a very good life—a life where love was absolutely central to it. So, to Tony's children, Richard, Sam, Ali, Jon and Lucinda, I pay tribute to you for the way that you paid tribute to your father, because, although our nation is much the richer for his life through what he was able to do through politics, the legacy he was able to leave through you, his children, is without doubt his greatest achievement, and that was on display for all of us to see. The way that you paid tribute to your father was absolutely commendable. He lived an extraordinary life. You told the many parts of that extraordinary life so very well. We have lost a great Australian, and it's wonderful to be able to pay my tributes to the extraordinary life that he lived. The DEPUTY SPEAK 249710 I understand it is the wish of honourable members to signify at this stage their respect and sympathy by rising in their places. Honourable members having stood in their places— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 249710 I thank the Chamber. 16:41 Mrs 147140 Gilmore PHILLIPS () (): by leave—I move: That further proceedings be conducted in the House. Question agreed to. COMMITTEES 87 COMMITTEES Northern Australia Joint Select Committee 87 Report 87 16:42 Ms SCRYMGOUR F2S Lingiari The Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia, which I am privileged to chair, released its report into Northern Australia's Cyclone Reinsurance Pool in March this year. I want to thank my colleague Mr Neumann for tabling this report in my place and for his fine words. I want to use this opportunity to thank my colleagues on the Northern Australian Committee, the member for Solomon, Luke Gosling; the member for Blair, Shayne Neumann; Senator Nita Green; and, of course, we had a lot of fun with the deputy chair of the committee, Mr Warren Entsch. It was a collegiate inquiry and one that highlights the good results of working in a collaborative and bipartisan matter. I want to thank the fantastic staff of the committee secretariat, Patrick, Ros and Jason. This was a dense topic and required a deep dive into many technical aspects of the legislation and the scheme. Their work and professionalism made this a very easy inquiry to chair. I also want to thank all of the witnesses who appeared before the committee for their evidence and insight. Our insurance industry has an important role to play in the liveability of Northern Australia, and I believe they appeared in good faith and have continued to engage in a productive manner with my office. On the matter of the cyclone reinsurance scheme itself, the Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia was able to put forward a solid report which explored some of the issues relating to the cyclone insurance scheme. The committee made a number of modest recommendations, all aimed at minor improvements. Namely, (1) ensuring data was and can be released in a timely manner prior to key milestones of the scheme, (2) reviewing the availability and coverage of the insurance, (3) reviewing the 48-hour clause on the cost of insurance premiums, (4) that the Australian government announce a position on the inclusion of maritime insurance and (5) the coordination of land use, planning, building codes and mitigation to ensure all levels of government are working together. One of the prevailing issues was the expectation of the scheme put forward by the former government. This was noted by the committee in its report. As a committee, we also noted the pressure householders and households in northern Australia were under when it came to insurance premiums. This has been an enduring issue, and with the increase in the frequency of cyclonic activity and flooding, it is something that government and community will need to respond to. The committee also noted that, while a number of large insurers have joined, the scheme is not yet established enough to conduct a more comprehensive assessment. A small number of large insurers still need to join, as well as medium and small insurers. Only then can we fully assess the impact of the cyclone reinsurance scheme in reducing its premiums. Something raised in the inquiry process, in which I am particularly interested, is how we mitigate the effects of natural disasters. Our climate is changing, and that is something that is as clear as day. We must ensure our communities' infrastructure is resilient and fit for purpose. Over the last few years we have seen the serious impact of natural disasters right across the nation, but particularly so in northern Australian. Recent flooding in my electorate of Lingiari highlighted just how vulnerable many communities are to natural disasters. I want to single out and thank our Minister for Emergency Management, Murray Watt, for his work on disaster readiness. I also want to thank the Minister for Northern Australia and Minister for Resources, Madeleine King, and the Assistant Treasurer for their support in this Inquiry. I thank and look forward to working with other members of the committee in due course, when the time comes for us to review and re-look at the scheme and its viability moving forward. 16:45 Mr ENTSCH 7K6 Leichhardt I have been looking forward to rising to speak again on this very, very important subject of cyclone reinsurance. As the member for Leichhardt and the Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia, I've taken a very keen interest in this issue over many, many years and in finding a solution for insurance affordability in Far North Queensland, and in northern Australia more broadly, and it's been very challenging. We've been up a lot of dry gullies as we've tried to find solutions. I also would like to thank my very, very capable chair of the committee, the member for Lingiari. She is very, very capable and a great replacement for her predecessor, and I enjoy immensely working with her. I can't stress enough the level of cooperation that we have in working in a very bipartisan way. This in itself will allow us to achieve the best possible outcome that we can for our region. Other members of the committee—I see my good friend the member for Dawson here, ready to make a contribution, which I'm sure will be very positive, and other members, as well—have made a great contribution. I also would like to acknowledge the work of the secretariat. Patrick, Ros and Jason are doing a brilliant job. They make it a lot easier for us as members of the committee, and I really appreciate the outstanding work that they've done. During my previous address, when this report was first tabled, I spoke to the key recommendation that I believed would help drive the required reforms that will ultimately see insurance premiums come to a more affordable level. We're certainly not there yet, but we have to see it as a work in progress. There have been many important learnings going through this journey, and I believe we are getting a little closer now. I believe that I see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. Since the inquiry, we've seen a number of insurers make good on their commitment and join the reinsurance pool. We now have Sure Insurance and Allianz. Allianz is only partly there; it's only their general insurance. We've still got to get their strata and business insurance to come on board as well. I understand that will come later in the year. CHU was the latest one to confirm that they're part of the scheme. I was talking only today to the AAI group, and I know the member for Solomon also met with them today. I was pleased to see that they're very close to coming on board as well. This is the Suncorp group and the range of companies that are under that umbrella. As I said during my previous speech on this matter, the full impact of cost reductions will only really be ascertained once all of these companies are operating and have signed into the pool. I didn't realise at the time when we first brought this in that it was going to take a lot longer than I anticipated because they had contractual arrangements with international reinsurers, and it's only as those international reinsurers become due for renewal that they're able to step away from that and join this pool. But by the end of this year we will have all of them on board, and that's really going to make a very significant difference. Already we've seen premiums start to soften and a broader positive impact on many of the affected communities, which have certainly long suffered from the absolutely ridiculous costs to insure the properties. I'm sure all members will appreciate that it's now more important than ever that we really focus on getting these reductions, given the ever-growing cost-of-living crisis. I firmly believe that we can deliver savings to the affected consumers if we take meaningful action. This is particularly important with respect to strata, where we have to be also looking at encouraging the state government to look at reforms, in two areas in particular. One is the cost of stamp duties on renewals, and the second is the current policy which requires body corporates to insure for full replacement value. That, unfortunately, significantly increases the cost to the insured. We need to get to a point where they have an option of either full replacement, if they're super cautious, or insurance for the market value of the property, which is generally much, much less than full replacement value. The reality of the situation is that no insurance company, if they're going to write off an asset, are going to pay any more to the insured than the market value of the property. So that's something that we need to continue to focus on. Again, I reiterate the importance of some of the key recommendations from the report. Some of those were mentioned earlier by the member for Lingiari, who is our chair. One crucial aspect is the 40-hour limitation associated with cyclone related floods. Aligning with the international standard of 168 hours would offer more realistic coverage, but we must be careful to balance this with the potential of increased costs. Again, I retain significant concerns about insurance for farms and agribusinesses and marine insurance, and I'm not certain that these areas have yet been sufficiently addressed, so we need to be keeping a close eye on that. As the chair mentioned, the timely release of modelling data to insurers also remains an essential element to enable accurate decision-making in this whole process. My hope is that we will continue to work collaboratively across all jurisdictions to get the reinsurance pool to be as perfect as it can be, with the aim of using it as a model for other areas that have challenges more broadly in Australia. We've seen over recent years that much of Australia has been impacted by floods, and, if the reinsurance pool can be perfected in this case, as we're doing in northern Australia, I'm sure we can expand it to take these learnings to develop a similar solution for these other areas as well. One of the keys now is that we've got to wait until the end of the year when everybody is on board. That's going to significantly increase competition, and we'll see the real impacts of the changes in relation to costs et cetera as we wait for more insurers to join the pool. Once we've got all of these companies—large and small—in there, by the end of the year, we can start doing another assessment. As the chair also said, I think we need to be looking at this early in the new year. Let's have a look at the effects of the changes that we have now, and then I would be encouraging the committee to have another sharp, deep dive into this and have another go at it to see where we need to tweak it even further so that we can get it to be the absolute best it can be. I'm very keen to continue to work with the chair and the committee in a very strong bipartisan way to make sure that, at the end of the day, we can be proud of what we've been able to achieve. At the end of the day, I think all of our communities across northern Australia can be very, very thankful for the work that we're doing in this place. I certainly commend the recommendations and the report to the House. 16:56 Mr GOSLING 245392 Solomon The chair of our committee has just left, but I want to thank her, together with the member for Leichhardt, for guiding this shortish inquiry. It's very important, particularly for those of us who live in northern Australia and particularly those who are paying an enormous amount for our insurance. In the Territory particularly, because of cyclones, we're paying a lot more even than most of northern Australia, so by rights this cyclone reinsurance pool should help us the most. We're yet to see that, but obviously we're seeing some softening, as the former speaker said. We depend heavily on the availability and affordability of insurance not only for our citizens but for our businesses. The cyclones are incredibly destructive. We've seen that in recent years. Of course Cyclone Tracy is the one that saw most of our city flattened. Of course, we've had improvements in building standards since then, so, the next time we're hit, we're going to do a lot better. Affordable insurance in northern Australia, including in Darwin and Palmerston in my electorate, is incredibly important. At the moment, the unaffordability of insurance deters businesses from expanding at times, and it deters investors from investing. Some developers are reluctant to take on new projects because of the cost of insurance. People can even be reluctant to move up to northern Australia. Alternatively, if they are already living in northern Australia, they may relocate south when affordability becomes unworkable. A range of social infrastructure facilities, such as aged-care facilities, may no longer be able to operate profitably, should we not be able to rein in the cost of insurance. As rents increase, that puts a strain on people as well, particularly those who are on low incomes. So it's in all of our interests in northern Australia to make sure that the pool can work and also that there is more-affordable insurance going forward. As the report before us rightly notes, without affordable insurance, northern Australia cannot flourish to its full and massive potential, and that's why this pool is so important. I'll give some figures for context. On average northern Australians are slugged with about $2,370 for residential combined building and contents insurance. I can guarantee that, for the Northern Territory, particularly with a variety of house construction types and varying dates of construction, you can pay, as I do, over five grand for building and contents insurance. For some context, Australians living in the southern half of our country pay on average about $1,350 a year for their insurance—so it's a big difference. Strata insurance in northern Australia was over double the premiums paid by the rest of Australia, at around $7,740 on average compared to strata insurance in the south of about $2,940. I think all fair-minded members would agree that that is an outrageous difference. It isn't yet mandatory for insurance companies to join the pool. Time is sneaking up for those large insurers with premiums over $300 million. They've got until the end of this year. Smaller insurers, with less than $300 million, have until December next year to join the pool. As we have heard, two insurers, Allianz Australia and Sure Insurance have joined the pool. There are about 14 insurers in total in northern Australia who are involved. The pool now covers 19 per cent of home insurance sums in northern Australia. The chief executive of the Reinsurance Pool Corporation told Senate estimates last year that there would be premium savings of around 13 per cent on average for home insurance policies in northern Australia. That, of course, would be welcome. Separately, Allianz calculated the average premium saving would be around nine per cent—obviously, not as good as 13 per cent, but it would still be welcome if it became a reality. They also said that there could be a saving of up to 30 per cent in some regions of northern Australia—just with a little caveat there. But we'll see what becomes a reality. I'm a glass-half-full person. I hope that some of these premium reductions come to fruition. The general view that our committee derived from witnesses was that it was still too early to determine whether the pool has indeed led to reduced insurance costs. RACQ indicated in its submission that evidence did not show widespread premium reductions in northern Australia at that time. As I said, it was quite a heated day of hearings that day. I made the point strongly, and I make it again now, that it is unfortunate that there have been raised expectations that were pretty unrealistic—even at the time—that the pool could reasonably be expected to deliver. I don't think we should make any judgements on the performance of the pool as yet. But, if you can remember pre-election, there were certainly all sorts of claims on how big the premium reductions would be. Clearly, community expectations of cheaper insurance premiums in northern Australia, at this point in time, have not been met. But let's see. It should have acknowledged perhaps that this process was going to take time, and I acknowledge the member for Leichhardt for saying that. I've got to be a bit parochial for a second, though, and say that from the Northern Territory's perspective, the treatment of Territorians by some insurers has been disappointing. The Chamber of Commerce NT said that the most significant issue for the NT is the lack of interest from insurers in even participating, with barely 10 or 15 that actively wish to participate in our marketplace. So I say to insurers out there: have a look at the Territory. More competition is going to be good for Territorians, and what's good for the Territory is good for Australia. I hope that there is more interest, because there's going to be a lot more happening in the Territory going forward, and you'll help to build confidence. Some insurers called for more mitigation investment, such as improvements in zoning, building codes and land-use planning in the Territory, and some of that's already happening. It isn't a reason, therefore, to penalise Territorians, who are among the most exposed to dangerous cyclones—unless you want to say we shouldn't have any settlement between north-west Western Australia and the good folk of northern Queensland. We all agree that it's good to have Darwin as an operating base for our military but also to hold the continent, to have a settlement, in the north of Australia. I think that's a great idea. And, for all those reasonable Australians, that requires that there's a bit of a 'Team Australia' effort to make sure that it's affordable to live in Darwin and in the Top End as well as across the north of our great country. I regret that few insurers have signed up today. However, as I said, I am a glass-half-full person. I'm confident, as the member for Leichhardt said, that others will be signing up before too long. Obviously, that cut-off looms large by the end of this year for those larger companies. Overall, the committee had concerns about the ongoing implementation of the pool to date, but I think the recommendations are good ones. They call for, firstly, future releases of modelling to be provided well in advance of key dates in the ongoing rollout of the cyclone reinsurance pool and, secondly, the Australian government review the availability and coverage of insurance in northern Australia and the impact of the 48-hour clause that we spoke about during the hearings on the cost of insurance premiums for northern Australians. Recommendation 3 is calling for the Australian government to direct the ACCC in a number of ways. 17:06 Mr WILLCOX 286535 Dawson I rise today to speak about the inquiry into the reinsurance pool and the first report. I would like to start by acknowledging and thanking our chair, the member for Lingiari, Marion Scrymgour, for her fine work and the inclusivity of what she's done for this report and, indeed, on how the chair runs the committee. I would also like to thank the co-chair, Mr Warren Entsch, the member for Leichhardt, for his experience in this regard and all the members on the committee for their collaborative approach to try to make this reinsurance pool as good as it can possibly be. Here's a little history lesson. This started as a coalition initiative, and it received bipartisan support from the then in opposition Labor Party. It has now, in the same spirit, been taken forward by the current Labor government and enjoys the support of the opposition. The reason for this is that the insurance industry is so important so our constituents can actually purchase insurance and purchase insurance at an affordable price, because the prices they are currently paying in North Queensland and in northern Australia are just way too high, and it's not acceptable. So we need to do something about that, and hopefully this reinsurance pool will work towards that. This is all about creating liveability for our constituents, providing them with the comfort to make sure that they can insure their homes, their businesses and everything they do at a reasonable price, at an affordable price. Currently, we're paying circa 2½ times more in northern Australia than what they are in southern Australia, and this is not sustainable. It is certainly something that needs to be addressed, and it needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. I'm sure those opposite, like me, have people coming to their offices and are seeing them at markets, telling them, 'I've had insurance premiums go up 30 per cent.' This is 30 per cent year-on-year, and this is just not acceptable and not sustainable. This has led to some people doing self-insurance. Self-insurance might sound like not a bad idea. It's when people put money aside that they were going to pay for premiums and put it in a kitty, and then, if they have something go wrong, take their money out. Unfortunately, what happens is priorities get in the way of that. You might need a new washing machine or your dryer blows up or something like that, so you end up spending that money. Then, in times of need, that money is not there. The other thing people are coming to me about is the need for affordable insurance, because insurance premiums in the North have just gone through the roof. As you would be aware, the only thing worse than really expensive premiums is not being offered insurance at all, and that is what's happening as well. We've got people in our area who are not being offered insurance at all. The main objective of this pool is to lower insurance premiums for households and small businesses that have high cyclone and related flood damage by allowing insurers to reinsure cyclone risks at a lower cost than would be the case if insurers reinsured from a private market. The pool commenced its operation on 1 July 2022, but unfortunately many consumers are still waiting for their insurance providers to come onboard. Large insurers have until 31 December 2023, and those that have under $300 million have until 31 December 2024. We encourage these insurers to get onboard. As of February 2023 two insurers, Allianz Australia and Sure Insurance, have joined the pool, but there are still 14 more to go. Why is this so important? Without affordable insurance in northern Australia, people will simply not be able to live there. Businesses will be deterred from expanding and investors will be deterred from investing. Developers will not take on projects, and banks will simply not finance projects that it's not possible to get insurance for. This will cause rents to increase and will also exacerbate the housing problem. It's something we cannot have. And this is for northern Australia, the region that has 40 per cent of the landmass that contributes so much to Australia's finances, to our export dollars—through iron ore, through coal. This pool will cover 3.3 million households, 220,000 small businesses and 140,000 residential strata units. In my electorate of Dawson, which is the biggest sugar-growing region in the whole country, we need to keep people on their farms and we need to keep people in their houses, and the way we can do this is to make sure they can afford insurance. The region is also the winter salad bowl of Australia. If we want people to continue to feed the nation, we need to make sure they can live in northern Australia and thrive. Again, it's why we have to make sure they can live there with affordable insurance. We have ports, we have Bowen mangoes, we have cattle spread throughout, we have mining and we have tourism. If Australians are genuinely all about growing Australia, and if they're genuinely all about making sure we keep all these people who are working in business and looking after Australia, then we need to make sure we all work together collaboratively to give them the right insurance at the right price. The Joint Select Committee on Northern Australia, of which I am a proud member, started its inquiry last October, and we've made numerous recommendations to improve the rollout of the scheme over the next few years. However, in view of the evidence given during the inquiry, the committee considered it premature to recommend significant changes, because we didn't want delays. We need to let this insurance pool start. We need to let the insurers be involved and encourage more people to be involved so that the savings can start to follow through. We didn't want to put extra changes or more impediments on the insurers to make their life more difficult. So, next steps for this: as I've said before, the major insurers will be onboard by the end of December 2023. We need to encourage all the second-tier insurers to get involved and be on board by December 2024. After this, in about 12 months time, it will be up to the chair. We will need to review. We will need to have a look at exactly where we are in this whole scheme of things. We need to make sure we see how effective the reinsurance pool is, because it's so important that we get this right to bring down the prices of insurance in North Queensland. So I am committed to fighting to reduce all insurance premiums, be they for households, business, marine or strata. I think we can particularly do more in those last segments, but let's start off with what we're doing and then tweak it, make some adjustments from there, and make sure we can continue building on this. Then I'd like to tackle the public liability. It's something our tourism operators are facing each and every day when they take people out for adventure tourism in particular. They take them out for fantastic experiences—that's what we have in Australia; we have lots of experiences. People can go out there and enjoy the Great Barrier Reef, enjoy our beaches, enjoy the mountain walks, enjoy the natural wildlife and the natural flora and fauna that we have. We just need to make sure that our tourism industry can afford to do that, so let's have a good look into the public liability and see what we can do for that. It's for those reasons I commend this report to the House. It's a very good report. I would like to again thank my committee members for the way they've interacted and the way that they've worked together. Let's make sure that we bring down the cost of insurance premiums for northern Australia. Debate adjourned. GRIEVANCE DEBATE 91 GRIEVANCE DEBATE Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct 91 17:17 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah I would like to raise my grievance with the government's planned investment of $1.5 billion in the Middle Arm development in the Northern Territory, previously described as a new gas centre but now conveniently described by government as a sustainable development precinct. This would have to be greenwashing at its finest. The Middle Arm precinct will be a major manufacturing centre for gas. The precinct is key to the Northern Territory's ambition to develop its massive natural gas reserves in the Beetaloo Basin and offshore. The original plan for the site had its primary focus on the expansion of Northern Territory's gas industry, but now, conveniently, it's being sold as providing a pathway to a decarbonised economy by helping emerging clean energy industries, with petrochemicals, blue and green hydrogen and critical minerals added to its purpose. Despite this, the current plan is based on a massive expansion of the gas industry and relies on a yet-to-be-designed carbon capture and storage plant located beyond Australia's jurisdiction, in Timor-Leste's water, to control a huge increase in the country's emissions. Both sides of politics were lobbied in advance of the 2022 federal election by significant past members of their respective parties. The Prime Minister committed to $1.5 billion in funding without any apparent current business case or independent assessment of the merit of such a large public investment during the course of the election campaign. It can only be inferred the Prime Minister was prepared to commit to such a massive sum on the basis of prior lobbying. We know this announcement had already been made by Prime Minister Morrison at the time, so it does beg the question of that level of lobbying. Serious questions arise as to conflicts of interest and disclosures of key players lobbying both sides of politics. Conflicts of interest were raised under the Morrison government and remain key under the Albanese government. The documents revealed by the Guardian this week uncover the individuals and entities driving Australia's fossil fuel expansion. They expose a concerning reality where short-term economic gains are being prioritised over long-term environment sustainability. The key actors are people like Andrew Liveris, the architect of Scott Morrison's gas-led recovery; former Northern Territory chief minister Henderson; former Labor minister Simon Crean; and former Liberal minister Robert Hill. They are all deeply involved and have a strong, vested interest in the expansion of the gas and petrochemical industries in the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory government has also committed funding to this project, with public funds committed to supporting Middle Arm now amounting to over $2 billion. That is in addition to the public funding through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, which has already flowed to the development of Beetaloo exploration projects. It's disheartening to witness influential figures, from industry executives to politicians, downplaying the urgency of transitioning to renewable energy sources and failing to recognise the irreversible damage caused by continued reliance on fossil fuels—and gas is a fossil fuel—and the very real danger of accelerating short-term global warming by the expansion of gas and, consequentially, methane emissions. We must confront the truth behind this expansion and demand transparency and accountability from both our government and the corporate entities involved. The business case and offsets have not been detailed by the government prior to committing such a substantial amount of public funds. Darwin's Middle Arm development is key to the expansion of a number of fossil fuel projects. The anchor tenant for Middle Arm, in documents that have been obtained under freedom of information, is Tamboran. Tamboran, as some may be aware, is the licensee holder for fracking for gas in the Beetaloo basin. We know that is a methane bomb waiting to happen, to blow all commitments in terms of emissions reduction and any chance of limiting warming out of the water. The emissions from the expansion of the associated fossil fuel projects in the Beetaloo and Barossa gas fields must be accounted for in the business case. There are no transparency or arms-length assessments that have occurred prior to these commitments of substantial amounts of public money. This industry, gas, is a mature technology. We know it makes record profits through its export sales. The question is around its own financial commitment and viability. RepuTex estimates that to offset its emissions Beetaloo alone, over a 20-year period, would cost upwards of $22 billion. Why is it that we are putting public funds towards assisting these projects in getting up? Public funds should not be going towards these projects. Gas is a mature sector. It is making obscene profits from war. Now we also have the government offering it a sweetheart deal of seven years before any royalties are payable on a proposed PRRT, and yet here we are with the public purse proposing to pay $1.5 billion towards its key infrastructure. Do not have any doubt about this: Middle Arm is the key element to unlock the Beetaloo basin, because, without the public purse coming to build this infrastructure, Tamboran would not want to invest their own money. They would not do it. I call on the federal government and the Northern Territory government to disclose all the lobbying and conflicts of interest declared in relation to this reckless project, and urgently disclose the business case assessment and arms-length consideration by the government prior to committing such large amounts of public funding to fossil fuels. In fact, I note that the Minister for Resources was asked in the House some weeks ago around whether Middle Arm would be for gas. She indicated that that was not the primary intention, yet the documents that came out in the freedom-of-information request show the anchor tenant is the export of gas from the Beetaloo basin for Tamboran. It is urgent that the Middle Arm project and Beetaloo basin be considered within the context of the reformed Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, including, critically, an enhanced water trigger that would consider shale fracking and its impact in facilitating the expansion of gas exports and accelerating climate change and global warming. There are strong questions around why, for mature technology, public money is going to building infrastructure. At a time of record debt, where we do not have proper revenue for the Australian people for the resources, and where we know the vast majority of this gas will be for export to vastly profit companies but not the Australian people, why are the Australian public funding the key infrastructure? Blair Electorate: Disaster Recovery and Resilience 93 17:25 Mr NEUMANN HVO Blair In the grievance debate tonight I want to talk about disaster recovery and resilience and infrastructure issues in my electorate. Recently, I was pleased to hear that the Toogoolawah (Dingyarra Street) flood mitigation project in the Somerset region in my electorate had received funding through the $200 million inaugural round of the Albanese Labor government's new Disaster Ready Fund. The federal government and Somerset Regional Council are both contributing a million dollars towards the project, and the council will deliver the works. The Somerset region endured devastating floods in 2011, 2013 and, most recently, 2022. It was also impacted by the 2019 Queensland bushfires. So this is welcome news for the region, particularly Toogoolawah, which was significantly affected during last year's floods. The section of the town around Dingyarra Street and Eskdale Road contained a high concentration of residents in properties that were flooded. This area is at great risk of inundation in the event of a future flood without appropriate flood reduction and mitigation measures in place. This overland flow reduction project will involve the construction of new drainage infrastructure, which will mitigate future flood impacts for surrounding properties and make the area significantly safer during floods, storms and other emergency events. This will not only provide much-needed relief to the local community but enhance the overall resilience of the region against the impact of future floods. It was good to go there recently and inspect the project site, with Mayor Graeme Lehmann, Deputy Mayor Helen Brieschke and other local councillors, while I was in town doing my mobile office at Toogoolawah Show. I want to thank the council for their funding contribution and their strong advocacy for the project. Through the Disaster Ready Fund, the Albanese Labor government is investing $1 billion in Commonwealth funding over five years to build critical projects like this, which will lessen disaster risk, help to reduce recovery costs and strengthen community resilience across the country. The fund was a Labor election commitment and will deliver long-term mitigation funding to help communities recover from natural disasters and ensure Australia is better prepared for future emergencies. I know the first round was heavily oversubscribed, with more than 300 applications submitted across the states and territories, and unfortunately not all projects could be funded. I was very disappointed that a project proposal for a Mount Crosby and Karana Downs community support centre in my electorate was unsuccessful. This was an application for $3 million under the fund to match the $3 million commitment of the Queensland Labor government, for a total of $6 million, to upgrade the Mount Crosby State School hall and facilities for use as an emergency relief hub during floods and other natural disasters, to support the Mount Crosby and Karana Downs area. This area was cut off in the 2011 and 2022 floods, so local residents dubbed it 'Mount Crosby' or 'Crosby Island'. It was severely impacted by the lack of food and medical supplies and was the subject of much media commentary on the fact that in Australia's third-largest city an area could be entirely cut off, with local people left to fend for themselves. I estimate that in the 2022 floods, even though I've got Wivenhoe Dam, Somerset Dam, Lockyer Creek, Bremer River and Brisbane River in my electorate, about 30 per cent of my time was taken up in this area in assisting local organisations on local issues that were flood related—for example, Colleges Crossing Family Practice, who were trying to get people evacuated, trying to make sure medicines were available and trying to get food in to support local people, who rightly felt left behind and ignored by disaster management and government. During this time, the school hall became an ad hoc and informal refuge and relief coordination centre for local residents. In fact, so dire was the situation that some local community gardens and food libraries were helping feed people, distributing food, vegetables and other edible plants via the school hall and elsewhere—people sharing food because they'd run out of food; people sharing medicines because they'd run out of medicine. This was in the third-biggest city in Australia. The gap between what was happening on the ground and the feedback from senior people in government and emergency management was stark. I repeatedly was getting phone calls from people telling me about what was going on on the ground with this area of Brisbane entirely cut off. Ironically, and this is really bizarre, the first official food drop was received by helicopter after the road to Brisbane via Ugly Gully was actually opened, so people could drive to supermarkets and pharmacies in Brisbane to get much-needed relief. Following the event, I've work closely with local residents and local stakeholders like the Karana Downs Region Disaster Community Support group on ways to better prepare for future events. One of the key proposals coming out of these consultations was to set up a community support centre at Mount Crosby State School campus. The proposal has the full support of the state school, who want to play a bigger role in the local community; the Queensland Department of Education; and the Queensland state minister as well as relevant agencies like State Emergency Services and the Queensland Fire and Emergency Services. It has the support of local elected relatives at all levels of government, including myself; the state member for Moggill, Dr Christian Rowan; and Brisbane City Council Pullenvale Ward Councillor Greg Adermann. I pay tribute to both these gentlemen who've worked collaboratively and cooperatively in bipartisan work on this issue. We all provided letters of support for the DRF funding application. The idea of this community hub is entirely consistent with the findings and recommendations of two major reviews in response to the 2022 floods in Queensland. The state government Inspector-General Emergency Management's review and the Brisbane City Council 2022 Flood Review, conducted by former Queensland Supreme Court Justice and Governor Paul de Jersey, recommended the Brisbane City Council should formalise the role of community hubs and their volunteers as an integral part of the community response to disaster events. This is backed up by a previous report after the 2011 floods which also recommended the same thing. The lesson was not learned by the Brisbane City Council and by governments at every other level. I am not happy this project was not funded in round 1. I've made my views known to the minister, and I've discussed the issues with the minister. I look forward to seeing another application for this project in round 2. I will work together, in a cooperative, constructive way, with the minister's office and the Prime Minister's office and with locals, including the local councillor, the local state MP and local people. It is totally unacceptable that parts of Brisbane and people in this area could be treated in this way during the flood. This is a very important thing that needs to be undertaken. I urge the government to look at this in a future round. The funding is much-needed. This part of Brisbane gets cut off regularly, and three times, since 2022 floods, has it been cut off. However, I am pleased that the government's October budget provided $7 million in local flood recovery resilience projects in my electorate. For example, there was $3 million to support the Ipswich City Council's flood recovery and resilience projects along the Bremer River and its creeks; $4 million to upgrade the Ipswich Showgrounds, including $2.5 million for general upgrades as part of the stage 3 redevelopment of the showgrounds; and a further $1.5 million under the Disaster Ready Fund to improve amenities at a local emergency relief centre. This will provide toilets, showers and privacy for locals in a purpose-built emergency relief centre, which will service the entire region, rather like what's being proposed at Mount Crosby-Karana Downs community support centre but on a much larger scale. This showground has been open 11 times in the last 12 years because of natural disasters. During the 2022 floods, many Ipswich residents were forced from their homes when inundated with water and needed emergency accommodation and care at the showgrounds. So this is much-needed funding which will allow the Ipswich Showground buildings to be upgraded and to have amenities that people need until they can return to their homes. I thank the minister and I thank the government for that funding. Together, these projects will help futureproof and make Ipswich more resilient against the impacts of floods and natural disasters. We also need to futureproof major roads and highways to ensure better connectivity across one of the fastest growing regions in the country, and that's why I'm urging the Queensland government to release the options in the business case for the Mount Crosby Road interchange on the Warrego Highway. The first proposal on this was friendless. Finally, they have looked at another two options, and they will come up very shortly with a final proposal. I look forward to them releasing it, and I urge the Queensland government to release it urgently. Finally, I look forward to the response on the Willowbank interchange. This has gone on for far too long. I cannot see any alternative other than to divert the Cunningham Highway south and to make sure only local traffic goes through the interchange to Willowbank, Rosewood and the RAAF base. I support the local community in a major upgrade of the Willowbank interchange. Bowman Electorate: Native Title 94 17:35 Mr PIKE 300120 Bowman There is currently a native title claim—the Quandamooka Coast claim—over much of the Redlands, which is the community that I have the honour of representing in the federal parliament. The claim covers approximately 530 square kilometres, including most of mainland Redland City and Macleay Island, Karragarra Island, Coochiemudlo Island and Lamb Island in Moreton Bay. The Redland City Council are seeking clarity from the Federal Court to determine if native title has been extinguished on council owned or managed land within the Quandamooka Coast native title claim area. Approximately 3½ thousand council owned or managed properties are included in the current native title claim. The claim is likely to see thousands of council properties, including parks, reserves and public spaces, handed over to Indigenous ownership. Much of this land is of high value to our local suburban communities but would be of little benefit in improving the economic circumstances or wellbeing of our Indigenous population. The land in question includes some of our city's most iconic sites, including the Wellington Point Recreation Reserve, Cleveland Point Recreation Reserve and the Redland Performing Arts Centre. It also includes countless nature reserves, playgrounds and other community assets. Understandably, there is a growing level of community consternation about what a change of ownership of these land parcels would mean for how they are maintained, accessed and enjoyed by locals. Recent history on North Stradbroke Island in my electorate has raised serious concern from locals about land clearing and segregated access to land now under native title control. Our parks, reserves and public places should be available for our entire community to utilise, regardless of race. They should also be maintained in a professional and accountable way with the support of our rates. This question has to be asked: what possible utility or economic benefit can be gained from native title ownership over a neighbourhood playground? How can that ever be anything other than a financial and time burden upon the prescribed body corporate? While the Queensland government has advised that native title has been extinguished on approximately a thousand of these properties, there remain some 2½ thousand council owned or managed sites where the Federal Court is to determine if native title has been extinguished or not. The fact that these questions are yet to be resolved continues to frustrate Redland City Council, the interests of ratepayers and the rights of the Quandamooka people. The mounting costs for Redland City Council as a respondent to the Quandamooka Coast native title claim continues to place unreasonable pressure on planning and land use certainty and on the limited capacity of Redland City ratepayers and services. There are many sporting and community organisations who currently lease land off Redland City Council and who now have their tenure called into question due to this claim. They can't make the investment decisions required to grow their operations while their tenure is under such a cloud. These groups, as well as the Redland City Council and local residents, want a quick resolution to this issue. Consider, for instance, the Alex Hills Bombers, an Australian Rules club in my electorate. They've been working hard to develop a female program within their Australian Rules competitions, and we've been working hard on their behalf to try to secure an upgrade to the change rooms to enable female-players-approved amenity. I struggle to see how council can proceed with this project while the tenure of that land is unresolved. There is a real risk that the Redlands native title claim will drag out in the courts for decades, costing both sides millions and ultimately delivering poor outcomes for both our Indigenous and broader communities. While the federal government provides financial support to native title claimants, Redland City Council receives no funding support from the federal government to defend the position of the broader community through the native title process. This creates a significant financial burden for Redland ratepayers. Section 183 of the Native Title Act 1993 establishes the Native Title Respondents Funding Scheme specifically to provide grants of financial assistance to respondents in native title claims. In the years since, the sense of fairness and balance within the Native Title Act has fallen victim to partisan agendas, where the respondent funding scheme has waxed and waned at the whim of governments. The scheme was first expanded by the coalition in 1998 to remove a hardship test which previously applied to respondent applications and which was found to be prejudicial in many cases. The respondent funding scheme was again amended by the coalition government in 2005 to better promote agreement-making and to avoid the burden of overly litigious claims. These were applauded as positive reforms, in terms of fairness and sustainability. Since then, unfortunately, the respondent funding scheme has become a political football, following a significant funding cut in 2013 during the term of the Gillard government, whilst respondent funding scheme funding was then promptly restored by the Abbott government and continued under successive coalition governments through to 2022. At a time when issues of trust and understanding in matters of Indigenous recognition weigh so heavily on Australians, it is regrettable that the incoming Albanese government chose, perversely, to abolish the Native Title Respondents Funding Scheme. The government has sought to justify this decision by claiming it was a budget repair measure. It's a difficult position to argue as, under the previous government, only $1.7 million of NTRFS funding was allocated for 2022-23. In contrast, Queensland South Native Title Services Limited was granted $25.8 million in the same financial year. Across all of Australia, native title claimant funding from the federal government was $212.6 million over this financial year and, across Queensland, this funding totalled $83.3 million. Any informed person would argue that $1.7 million or even three or four times that amount is minuscule given the size of the federal budget and is completely dwarfed by the funding currently available to native title respondent bodies acting for claimants in such matters. In April I wrote to the Attorney-General on this front and have had no response. My repeated requests even for an acknowledgement of this correspondence have also gone completely unanswered. It is clearly not a priority for the government, but I have drawn the Attorney-General's attention to a letter he received in his first innings as Attorney-General. The then president of the Queensland Law Society wrote to him some 10 years ago to outline the society's objections to cuts to the NTRFS. In the letter dated 2013, the Queensland Law Society argued that cutting the NTRFS funding was completely at odds with the public interest. Certainly cutting it altogether, as this current government has done, of course continues to be completely at odds with the public interest. Unfortunately, what we have here is an ideological objection to respondent funding from the Attorney-General. There is a clear sense within the Labor government that stacking the deck in favour of native title claimants is a compassionate and progressive thing to do. While I don't doubt the sincerity of their motives, I simply can't agree that seeking to contrive these outcomes is in the best interests of communities across our country or is even in the spirit of the act—an act, famously, created by the Labor government. The act doesn't say that every native title claim is legitimate. It doesn't say that respondents must roll over and provide claimants with everything they want. It outlines a process and a legal framework to assess native title claims—a process which will test and evaluate those claims and ensure that dispossession of the past is not repeated in the name of redressing historical wrongs. But this shouldn't be about ideology. It should be about fairness, and the government's role should be about ensuring that all stakeholders can meet their obligations under the federal act. The sad reality, unfortunately, is that the successful native title claim on North Stradbroke Island has split the Indigenous community there in two. There is a growing chasm between those who wield power within the prescribed body corporate and those who are left on the outer. Many elders have confided in me that the successful claim has really left their community worse off, and I will be pushing for an outcome that leaves no community worse off on this claim and an outcome that doesn't lead to a protracted stand-off. A similar stand-off was resolved in Orange, New South Wales, through a historical agreement between the local Indigenous community and the state and local governments. I'm going to be pushing for a collaborative approach in the Redlands between all levels of government that will deliver a similar win/win solution to what was achieved in Orange, New South Wales. Unfortunately, the approach from the Queensland state government to date has been to try to pressure Redland City Council to not contest the native title claim and to simply ignore the legitimate concerns of ratepayers. That won't lead to a fair and equitable outcome. I'll be standing up for my community and my city 100 per cent of the way. Hunter Electorate: Wine Industry 96 17:45 Mr REPACHOLI 298840 Hunter Wines, mines and equines—these are three great industries that I'm proud to have in my electorate, the Hunter. Today I rise to speak about the wine industry and, in particular, what an important industry it is! First off, almost 4,000 people are directly or indirectly employed by the wine industry in the Hunter. That's roughly five per cent of all working people. There are all sorts of jobs tied to this industry: jobs for those who grow grapes, jobs for those who make wine itself, jobs waiting tables at wineries, jobs providing tastings and jobs providing accommodation for visitors—so many jobs. There are over 1,800 visitor economy businesses registered in the Hunter, and many hundreds of these employ the thousands of workers in the wine industry. They are viticulture, winemaking, cellar door, restaurant, accommodation and tourist attraction businesses. One of the things that is very special about the workers in this industry is that they are people of a wide range of ages, with both young and old workers involved in the process of making wine. This is an industry where knowledge is being transferred from the older generations down to the younger generations. Knowledge has been passed down like this for a very long time. In fact, there's nowhere else in Australia where wine has been made longer than in the Hunter. We've been making wine in the Hunter for almost 200 years. We are the oldest wine region in Australia. Those South Australians make a lot of claims when it comes to wine—all of which I strongly disagree with!—but they can never claim that the wine regions of South Australia are the oldest or more prestigious than the Hunter Valley. We also have heritage plant stocks of international significance, such as shiraz from 1867, semillon from 1899 and chardonnay from 1908. This is one of the oldest chardonnay vineyards in the world. Today the wine industry has grown into an economic powerhouse, generating over $641 million in economic value to the Hunter Valley annually. The Hunter Valley's vineyards have also grown in landmass, making up 2,376,000 hectares of vineyards. We are now known as wine country for a good reason: because this is bigger than some of the countries around the world. Our vineyards are almost 10 times the size of the Vatican City and Monaco put together. The numbers are mind-blowing. They provide over 6,000 tonnes of grapes grown by 155 grape growers, which are crushed into wine at over 150 wineries and winemaking enterprises. We produce a fifth of Australia's chardonnay and a whopping quarter of Australia's shiraz. If you're drinking some wine from the Hunter Valley and think to yourself: 'Far out! This is good. There has to be something special about this,' well, there is. Not only are the wines made in the beautiful Hunter Valley by the amazing, knowledgeable people of the Hunter but the soils in which the grapes are grown were finely and perfectly developed over millions of years to make them ideal for viticulture. Underneath the stunning grapevines lie red rocks with bits of shell and other fossils embedded into them. These rocks are known as 'bryozoan', and vineyards all around the Hunter are littered with them. This didn't just happen overnight. This is a process that occurred over the last 280 million years, way back when the Hunter Valley was covered up by the sea in the form of a huge gulf. Over time, the gulf was filled up with materials washed in from surrounding areas, and it became a swampy vegetation. The soil itself is some of the rarest in the world. It's known as the 'terra rossa' or 'red earth', which is clay over limestone. This forms when carbonite materials leach out of the limestone, breaking into iron deposits, oxidising and turning the soil into a rustic red colour. This is a complex process that takes time to occur. Limestone helps to grow vines that are balanced, and this is why it is highly prized amongst wine growers. The very best soils for vineyards in the world have limestone—just look at Burgundy in France, even the Coonawarra—but very few have the Hunter's combination of limestone and ancient fossils lying on a prehistoric ocean floor. Nowhere can quite compete with the Hunter Valley when talking about the best places in the world to grow wine. Clearly, it's no fluke that the Hunter Valley has the best wine in the world, and no-one will take that title for at least the next couple of hundred million years, because that's how long it takes to make wine this good. In fact, last week one of the Hunter's best-known winemakers, Bruce Tyrrell from Tyrrells vineyards, took home the prestigious National Wine Show of Australia award for the best semillon in Australia for its 2019 Pokolbin Hills semillon. Our excellent product has turned the Hunter into one of the most visited wine destinations in Australia. For over 1.6 million overnight visitors annually and over one million additional day-tripping tourists each year we provide some of the most delicious wines in the world. I'm convinced that this is one of the greatest wine-growing areas in the world, and that's why people from overseas are buying wine from the Hunter. Each year over 230,000 litres of wine is exported from the Hunter, heading to destinations like the United Kingdom, Japan, France and the United States. Seventy per cent of Australian wine is exported at a wholesale price of less than $5 a bottle, but the average wholesale price per litre for exported Hunter wine is $32.60. Our wine is delicious and something special. The world knows that, and it's reflected in these prices. I'm proud of this industry because it is a resilient industry. The 2019-20 summer bushfires had a devastating impact on the vineyards. Just four years ago these bushfires hit the Hunter hard. A total area of 4,095 square kilometres was burnt by bushfires, representing 19 per cent of the Hunter functional economic region, and 144 properties were damaged or destroyed. The bushfires caused telecommunications outages, road closures and rail connectivity disruptions. Over 90 per cent of the Hunter Valley's 2020 wine vintage was lost due to smoke taint, and the fires took a toll on the health and wellbeing of wine industry workers and the wider community. Thankfully, post-bushfires and post-pandemic the industry is back on track. Business is booming, and local producers are experimenting with emerging and re-emerging varieties of grape like pinot gris, pinot grigio, fiano, gewurztraminer, cabernet franc, barbera and sangiovese. I'd like to thank both Cessnock City Council and Singleton Council for the work they've done with the Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association to put together the Hunter Valley Destination Management Plan, a plan which will help us write the next chapter of the story of the Hunter wine industry. The plan presents a vision for the future development of the Hunter, which will attract more tourists for a wide variety of activities—pairing wine with music events, for example. Vineyards in the Hunter have hosted some of the biggest names in world entertainment, from Elton John, Whitney Houston, Cold Chisel and Andrea Bocelli to one of my favourite bands, the Killers. These names and so many more come to our region to host massive concerts, which attract tens of thousands of tourists and fans. These events are huge for our region and are yet another example of what makes our famous wine industry in the Hunter so good. Without the wine industry and the enormous reputation it has for itself, events like this would never happen. The Hunter Valley wine country is heaven on earth. There's nothing better than driving through our beautiful landscapes with endless views of grapes running into the horizon, topped off with the highest-quality and best-tasting wine in the world. I love escaping to these amazing wineries whenever I get the chance. I love taking my wife whenever I can, and I'm also bringing visitors to the Hunter, like the French ambassador, His Excellency Jean-Pierre Thebault. If you haven't visited the Hunter Valley, please make sure you do, because you're missing out. Get yourself to one of our multiple wineries and cellar doors, feast on some tasty food and enjoy yourself in our area. With almost 4,000 people employed, 200 years of history, 2,376 acres of vineyards producing over 6,000 tonnes of grapes, millions of tourists each year, 230 litres of wine exported and $641 million of economic value, the wine industry has well and truly helped put the Hunter on the map, and it continues to do that today. A massive shout-out to Jennie Curran and Stu Hordern from the Hunter Valley Wine and Tourism Association for all the great work they do, and a massive thankyou to all the amazing people involved in the wine industry and in making the Hunter what it is today. Sturt Electorate: Hunter Class Frigate Program 97 17:55 Mr STEVENS 176304 Sturt Thank you to the member for Hunter, talking about the great wines from his electorate. I suppose I'd just make the point that as the member for Sturt I of course have Magill Estate in the centre of my electorate, where Max Schubert made the iconic Grange Hermitage, so we know a little bit about good wine in my electorate as well! But I love the wines of the Hunter. I don't think we need to be competitive. You yourself, Deputy Speaker Archer, probably have some views on the beautiful Tasmanian wines made in your electorate as well. So, aren't we lucky—the things to be fighting about: who makes the best wine in their electorate! I am greatly concerned about some of the reports in the media recently around the Hunter frigate program, the type 26, which of course is already in the beginnings of construction in Adelaide. This is the decision that was made in 2015. I was there for the announcement by then defence minister Kevin Andrews, who came to Adelaide. I wasn't the member for Sturt at the time, but I was there in a different capacity for the announcement that Adelaide would be building nine frigates—the Future Frigate Program, as it was known at the time. Indeed, I was also there for the announcement in 2018 by my now predecessor, the Hon. Christopher Pyne, who announced that BAE was the successful construction partner for those nine frigates in Adelaide. I travelled to London the next week and up to Govan, which is just outside Glasgow in Scotland and is where BAE have their famous shipyard. It is building what they call the type 26 for the Royal Navy, which is the base design for the Hunter frigate program. Ever since that announcement in 2018—five years ago—there's never been any suggestion that that program in any way was in jeopardy. Indeed, at times there have been media reports around issues to do with design, which is very common when it comes to acquisition of capability, particularly—well, I was about to say surface vessels, but frankly, given the trauma of submarine acquisition, I might just say all vessels and boats on the surface and under the surface. But it is extremely concerning that we are seeing fairly well credentialled background briefings coming out of the defence department or sector, depending on the articles, that there is a cloud over the program. Frankly, it's frightening. It's frightening for, firstly, the capability of the Royal Australian Navy and the fact that we need to replace our frigates. The Anzac frigates have served us well, but we absolutely need that Future Frigate Program, and that's been identified for more than a decade now. So, it is frightening if there's a question mark over it from a naval capability point of view and a national security point of view. But it is doubly frightening to the people of Adelaide if it indeed means that the program to build those nine vessels in South Australia is in jeopardy. Now, I'm not trying to scaremonger, and I don't necessarily believe that the reports that the program is being completely reconsidered could possibly be true. But we do know that the Defence strategic review recommended another review, which was a review into surface ship capability requirements for the Navy, and the major program for surface vessels is the nine frigates. We've built the air warfare destroyers in South Australia, and they will serve the Navy well for some time to come. In fact, a major mast upgrade program to those three air warfare destroyers is happening in South Australia in the years ahead. The only program that the review could be targeted at is the future Hunter class frigate program—the nine frigates. There are suggestions that there is reconsideration of whether nine will be built. There are all kind of rumours, and that scares the people of South Australia, and particularly people in the shipbuilding industry. We've had a lot of turmoil in the past decade. We had the valley of death when, under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, not a single new major capital vessel was commissioned for the Navy. When the coalition came to government in 2013 those decisions hadn't been taken. We've obviously had the exciting opportunity to acquire nuclear propelled submarines, which is a decision well worth the issue of exiting a previously entered-into contract with the French to build 12 conventional submarines. The last thing we need for the defence industry in South Australia right now is any turmoil around the Hunter class frigate program. I was at the steel cutting of the first prototypes out at the Osborne South shipyard. That was more than a year ago, and there have been some very significant milestone events around that program. It is, to all intents and purposes, progressing through construction—steel cutting and the like. There have been issues with weight, with range and with speed. Frankly, all those three are linked. The heavier the vessel, the slower it is and the more fuel it needs to go the same distance. We respect and understand the challenges around the design. What I really am concerned about is any consideration of scrapping or walking away from that program or of going back to square one, and the government needs to take the first opportunity to rule this out. There are thousands of jobs that are being counted on not just at the shipyard, where the primary workforce comprises a lot of jobs, but also in the supply into that, where the jobs are even more significant. There have been a lot of decisions made by businesses who have progressed with confidence that that program was progressing, and the uncertainty that has been created through some of the media leaks is very concerning. It has been the case that there were leaks out of the Defence Strategic Review, around vehicles and other things, that subsequently proved to be extremely accurate. If there's a strategy of using the media to soften the blow of a decision to reconsider the Hunter class frigate program, then that is not the way to break it to the people of South Australia. We want any spectre of walking away from the program and the investment in the program to be completely ruled out by the government. We want certainty around the program and around the jobs related to the program because, in South Australia, all of the shipbuilding programs are starting to look like they're always on the horizon. Some of the information coming from the update to the AUKUS deal in the last few months is concerning, around when actual jobs will be in place in Adelaide—now that the first three submarines will be acquired; what work is occurring in Barrow-in-Furness; whether or not the Albanese government is making sure that all the jobs on the submarines that we will be constructing in Adelaide will be guaranteed to be here. We're spending a lot of money on helping other people build submarines for us. The last thing we need is questions around what's happening with the surface frigates as well. Any form of delay will cost jobs to the South Australian economy. The leaks need to stop. The speculation needs to be addressed. We need certainty and commitment around the program. It would be good to get some further detail, from an economy and jobs point of view, and when economic activity and investment will be occurring in the South Australian economy under AUKUS, as well. The last thing we want to see in South Australia is any form of equivocation or reconsideration of the important commitment to producing nine frigates in Adelaide. That is an enduring commitment that needs to be honoured by the new government. They need to rule out and put an end to this speculation and stop the leaks coming out of Defence. We need certainty, our industry needs it and, most importantly, the people of South Australia need it because we are counting on the economic activity that has been promised for our economy in Adelaide. Housing Australia Future Fund 99 18:05 Ms COKER 263547 Corangamite Secure housing is a basic right. It changes lives. It is the foundation on which we each build a career, raise a family and plan for the future. To the single mum couch surfing with her children, to the young woman fleeing domestic violence and to the homeless veteran sleeping rough: I stand with you. The Albanese government stands with you. We understand that you are hurting and that the housing crisis is biting. That's why before the last federal election we, the Labor Party, announced a comprehensive housing package. Central to this package was the Housing Australia Future Fund, a $10 billion program to build 30,000 homes. Now we are in government and it is time to act, but what is deeply disappointing is that the Greens and the coalition are teaming up to stand in the way of providing secure housing, a safe place to call home, for our most vulnerable Australians. I truly do not understand why the Greens and the coalition would do this. It makes absolutely no sense. It's all about politics and nothing to do with the people we are here to serve. So I'm proud that, in the face of such blind opposition, on Saturday our Prime Minister and our Minister for Housing announced an additional $2 billion for a social housing accelerator program, which will be provided to the states and territories in the next two weeks, to urgently address our desperate need for more housing. My state, Victoria, will receive close to $500 million to refurbish housing stock, placing greater emphasis on planning reforms that will improve housing availability in our urban and regional areas. It is only this government, a Labor government, that understands the urgency of this issue and wants to deal with it right now. The coalition's and Greens' delaying tactic of deferring the bill in the Senate is an absolute disgrace. It means that people in need are going to have to wait three more months before a decision may be made to enable the construction of these homes. As the Prime Minister said earlier today, this bill has resounding support outside of this place from the Community Housing Industry Association, Master Builders Australia and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association. These organisations understand, as we do, that each day this bill is not rolled out our building industry and its workers miss out, and each day $1.3 million is not going towards homes for those who need them most. This bill is vital. It's time to stop playing politics, because right now there are over 116,000 people experiencing homelessness. Their lives are marred by uncertainty and insecurity. We—all members in this place—have a duty to answer their call, to ease suffering and restore faith in a country and a government that cares for its most vulnerable. Each day the Greens and the coalition delay, another family slips through the cracks, another child worries where they're going to sleep at night, and another person loses hope. The number of people experiencing homelessness has increased by 14 per cent in the past five years alone. Indigenous Australians are disproportionately affected, comprising a staggering 30 per cent of homelessness across our nation. And let us not forget our veterans, who have bravely served our country only to find themselves facing the harsh reality of homelessness upon their return. These are not just numbers. They represent the faces and stories of our fellow Australians. They are our neighbours, our friends, our families and our community members, and it is our collective responsibility to provide them with the stability and security they deserve. The Albanese government understands this, and our record on housing policy shows we are determined to address the housing crisis right here and right now. We have consistently expanded our comprehensive housing agenda, leaving no stone unturned. We've introduced: the National Housing Accord; the biggest increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance in 30 years; reforms to facilitate build-to-rent projects; the expansion of the First Home Guarantee, Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee and an increase of the liability cap of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation; and extra funding to the states and territories, through the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, to help tackle homelessness. As the Minister for Social Services pointed out in question time today, the government has also committed an additional $100 million to continue the Safe Places Emergency Accommodation Program. This program is recognition that family and domestic violence is the main reason women and children leave their homes in Australia, and it is the leading cause of homelessness for women. Access to safe accommodation is fundamental to the immediate safety of women and children. This is all important and vital work, but we must take the next step and see the Housing Australia Future Fund passed in this place. In closing, Hansard will record for all time that, when the Greens were given the opportunity to vote for a bill that gives people more secure housing, they voted against it, as did the coalition, and turned their backs on our most vulnerable Australians. I urge the Greens and the coalition to rise above partisan politics and vote instead with compassion and generosity for more housing. Do the right thing and be remembered not for creating barriers but for embracing and voting for reform—reform that acts on the housing crisis and uplifts the lives of our fellow Australians. This parliament has an opportunity with the Housing Australia Future Fund Bill to redefine the narrative of our nation, to show that we in parliament value compassion, solidarity and the fundamental right to safe and affordable housing. Let history remember the Housing Australia Future Fund as the turning point, the moment all sides in this house stood united and declared that no-one should be left behind. I implore you to find the courage and the resolve to make a difference to the lives of those who need it most. In the words of former Prime Minister Paul Keating: There are no better measures real or symbolic of how well we are succeeding as a nation and as a society than the quality of our housing … … … … Look and you will see stark evidence of the fact that poor quality housing and poor urban environments mean greatly reduced opportunities … With that, I say to the Greens and the coalition: don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Instead, stand with us and address Australia's housing crisis right here and right now. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 282237 There being no further grievances, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Federation Chamber adjourned at 18:13