2024-03-27 2 1 0 House of Reps 0 1

Wednesday, 27 March 2024

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

 

STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE 1 STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE Parliamentary Business 1 09:01 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I thought it might be helpful for members if I give a run-down of what we expect arrangements for the day to be. First of all, I put a couple of motions on the Notice Paper, which are common. But I should start with this principle: even though it is the last day of sitting for the week, it runs as a Wednesday, not as a Thursday. Some people have been asking whether they are likely to get away at 4.30 pm. I can assure them the answer is no. The resolution that we always use on the final day under both sides, whoever's in government, which is to suspend the automatic adjournment of the House and to effectively suspend the 6.30 rule, I'll be moving later in the day. But that's on the Notice Paper as well. This morning there'll be a large number of introductions before we get to government business. At 4.15 pm today, following the MPI, we will have the first speech from the member for Dunkley. While that speech is taking place, a guillotine will arrive in the Senate, and they will start dealing with 15 bills in relatively short succession, I expect. Some of those bills will not involve amendments, some of them will. My intention, once we get back to government business, is to deal with each Senate message as it arrives, rather than bank them all up, and just try to get through them. So we'll go in and out of legislation during that time. We are in the hands of the Senate as to how quickly all of that happens. For people who were thinking they might leave at 6.30 pm, I think that's highly unlikely, but depending on the timing of the Senate I'm not expecting a late night. Certainly, once we're at the point where we don't believe anything else is coming back that will have been amended—and, therefore, there will be no procedures required from the House—I'll advise the House, because I know that's helpful information for members who have further to travel for them to be able to have conversations with the whips. That will be the procedure here. We are obviously not in control of the Senate order of business, but anything that has been amended will have to have a process in the House to deal with it. Anything that hasn't been amended will hopefully be dealt with last by them. We'll then be able to get back to something closer to a normal Wednesday. I hope that helps with arrangements for people. PARLIAMENTARY OFFICE HOLDERS 1 PARLIAMENTARY OFFICE HOLDERS Speaker's Panel 1 09:03 The SPEAKER 53517 Pursuant to the provisions of standing order 17, I nominate Marion Rose Scrymgour, the member for Lingiari, to be a member of the Speaker's panel to assist the chair when requested to do so by the Speaker or the Deputy Speaker. BILLS 1 BILLS Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Market Infrastructure and Other Measures) Bill 2024 1

Treasury Laws Amendment (Financial Market Infrastructure and Other Measures) Bill 2024

First Reading 1 Second Reading 1 09:04 Dr CHALMERS 37998 Rankin I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Today I introduce legislation that implements two important reforms: new mandatory climate reporting requirements for large businesses, and a new regime to protect our financial market infrastructure in the event of a crisis. Collectively, these two reforms will help modernise our economy, maximise the economic opportunities in the decades ahead and build a stronger financial system. We know we need significant and well-targeted investment to grasp the benefits of the net zero transformation and manage the challenges of climate change. Australian businesses and investors see the potential to harness demand for renewable energy to broaden and deepen our industrial base, while at the same time maximising our traditional economic strengths as well. But to enable this, and to give investors more clarity, we need a robust way to measure progress and manage risk and opportunity. To make the big, economy-defining improvements we want to see, we need to help investors make the right calls. And to make the right calls, they need the right information. That's why today we're introducing legislation mandating corporate climate reporting in Australia. Our new climate reporting requirements will help Australia maximise the economic opportunities of cleaner, cheaper and more reliable energy, and better manage climate risks in our economy. These changes introduce standardised reporting requirements for businesses to ensure they're making high-quality climate related financial disclosures. This will support Australia's reputation as an attractive destination for international capital especially when it comes to investment in our energy transformation, and it will bring us in line with international standards. The new climate reporting requirements will commence from 1 January 2025 for Australia's biggest listed and unlisted companies and financial institutions. And other large businesses will then be phased in over time. We do acknowledge that for some, making climate disclosures for the first time will be challenging. These lead times and this staggered approach gives companies time to build internal capability and expertise to make high-quality climate risk disclosures. The government will also provide limited relief from private litigation for a three-year transitional period. But ASIC can still take action for breaches of the reporting requirements during this period. These changes will establish Australia's climate risk disclosure framework, give investors and companies the transparency, clarity and certainty they need to invest in new opportunities as part of the net zero transformation, and ensure our economy is working to attract and deploy capital where it's most needed. We have consulted extensively with industry, investors, academics and regulators to ensure we take a balanced approach to mandatory climate disclosure requirements. And there is broad industry support. This legislation is part of our broader sustainable finance agenda, and it shows that the Albanese government is responding to the challenge of climate change by maximising the economic opportunities which come from cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy. Today, I also introduce legislation to strengthen the regulatory arrangements for Australia's financial market infrastructure. This legislation gives the RBA the power to step in and quickly resolve crises impacting critical financial market infrastructure and it strengthens the RBA and ASIC's regulatory powers. These powers were first recommended by the Council of Financial Regulators in 2015. The gap in emergency powers should have been addressed years ago to ensure continuity of clearing and settlement services in the face of a crisis. It took the previous government six years to agree to the recommendations—and they never got around to implementing them. As is the case in so many areas, we are delivering where the former government failed. We are acting to implement these important and longstanding recommendations. This regime has three key elements. The first one is giving the RBA the power to ensure stability of clearing and settlement services when a crisis occurs, as well as giving them the regulatory powers to help prevent a crisis in the first place. This will help maintain critical market functions and protect Australia's financial stability. While our financial system is resilient, the failure of a clearing and settlement facility would cause significant disruption to Australia's financial markets. That's why it's important that the Reserve Bank has appropriate powers to act quickly and decisively to resolve a crisis. The bill contains a range of supporting powers to ensure that the Reserve Bank can exercise its crisis powers as effectively as possible, but only when one or more conditions for resolution are met. These conditions clearly define the triggers for intervention and draw a distinction between the RBA's crisis powers and its day-to-day regulatory oversight and risk mitigation function. The bill also gives the RBA the power to provide up to $5 billion in support to ensure continuity of critical clearing and settlement services if a facility faces a crisis event. The funds are only intended to be used as a last resort, where a financial failure threatens the stability of the financial system. The funds allow the Reserve Bank to step in to resolve the business of the clearing and settlement service; the funds would be recovered after the event, and they'd only be used with the approval of the Treasurer of the day and the Minister for Finance. That's the first set of changes. The second set of changes are aboutproviding greater licensing and supervision powers to ASIC and the RBA to strengthen clearing and settlement facility standards. Our reforms enhance the regulatory powers of ASIC and the RBA, giving them the tools that they need to take decisive action to monitor, mitigate, and reduce risks in our markets. The new powers include notification requirements, the power to issue directions and rule-making powers for clearing and settlement facilities. It also gives them the power to ban people when they are not fit or proper or competent, and ensures that changes in control of any financial market infrastructure must be approved by either the minister or ASIC. That's the second set of changes. The third one is about transferring existing ministerial powers for licensing and supervision to ASIC and the RBA. The majority of these powers are already delegated to ASIC and the RBA. These changes would ensure that the day-to-day supervisory powers sit with the regulators, while the minister will retain broader strategic and governance powers. This will create a coherent, complete suite of regulatory powers that support strong financial markets. We urge the House to support the climate disclosure and financial market infrastructure reforms we are introducing today. These reforms will make it easier for businesses to make decisions about investing in the energy economy, and they will modernise and strengthen Australia's financial system. If we don't act, we risk missing out on capturing the investment opportunities of the transition, and leaving our financial system exposed to potential crises with a less effective way of responding to that. So we ask that honourable members support these sensible measures which come after a long period of collaboration and consultation. Full details of the measure are contained in the explanatory memorandum. Debate adjourned. New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024 3

New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024

First Reading 3 Second Reading 3 09:13 Ms CATHERINE KING 00AMR Ballarat I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Today has been a long time coming. After a quarter of a century of failed attempts, Australia will finally have a New Vehicle Efficiency Standard. After extensive consultation, the government is introducing a New Vehicle Efficiency Standard that delivers Australians more choice of new cars, will save Australians thousands at the bowser, will reduce our emissions, and a model where Australians will continue to buy the utes and the SUVs that they love. Australians have been left behind as consumers in most advanced economies across the world benefit from more fuel-efficient cars and greater access to new low- and zero-emissions technology. There are more than a million new cars being sold in Australia each year and unlike 85 per cent of cars sold worldwide, they are not required to meet a vehicle efficiency standard. Together with Russia, we have been one of the only advanced economies that do not regulate the efficiency of new vehicles. This means that Australians are missing out on fuel savings and can't access the range of fuel-efficient vehicles consumers in other advanced economies enjoy. There are more than 500 low- and zero-emission vehicle models available worldwide, but less than 100 are available in Australia. It is therefore not surprising that the average Australian vehicle uses 40 per cent more fuel than its European counterpart and 20 per cent more than in the United States. More choice means that you will be able to keep buying the vehicles you know and love. It also means that there will be more choices of new vehicles into the future. And, as importantly, we will be reducing transport emissions. With no action, transport emissions are expected to become Australia's largest source of direct emissions by 2030. Sixty per cent of transport emissions come from cars. This legislation will reduce the emissions from new cars by half by the end of the decade. It is an Australian standard for Australian conditions. The new vehicle efficiency standard draws on the best aspects of the standards that apply in other countries to build a framework specific to the Australian vehicle market. The bill will establish a duty for light-vehicle suppliers to meet or beat a carbon emissions target, adjusted for the types of vehicle they sell and the weight of each vehicle. Importantly, the government is smoothing the emissions trajectory for light commercial vehicles and moving a limited number of four-wheel drives such as the Toyota LandCruiser and Ford Everest, regarded as 'workhorse' four-wheel drives, into the light commercial vehicle category. The goal is not only to increase the number and range of zero-emission vehicles manufacturers bring to Australia, but to incentivise them to bring us the most efficient versions of the vehicles they sell across their range, be that better petrol, better diesel, better hybrid or other cars. The new vehicle efficiency standard will not ban or prevent the importation of any particular vehicle. A key feature of the new vehicle efficiency standard is the way it adapts to reflect the different types of vehicles supplied. It doesn't expect small cars and large SUVs to meet the same target, or a tradie's ute to beat the emissions of a daily commuter's car. We understand these vehicles have different uses and different characteristics. The goal of this legislation is to make next year's new vehicle more efficient than this year's—across the range—from the smallest hatch, to SUVs, to workhorses like utes. The new vehicle efficiency standard framework rewards suppliers who consistently beat their targets with tradable credits and enables trades of those credits between suppliers. Penalties only apply to suppliers who, two years after the initial calculation of their performance towards the emissions target, have not brought their emissions below the specified target by changing the vehicles they supply or by purchasing credits from other suppliers. Penalties can be avoided if vehicle suppliers send us their best cars, make more vehicles more efficient or buy credits from other suppliers that have done that work. This bill provides certainty for industry by including the targets for the next five years, while providing the flexibility for the responsible minister to set future targets that reflect the circumstances of that time. To maintain the integrity of the framework, a ratchet mechanism is included to ensure it becomes more effective as suppliers gradually adjust their stock. For car dealers, we have heard that the industry would like the scheme to move to a point-of-sale system, rather than the point of import. We have listened to that. While implementing this would be particularly complex and is not possible by 1 January 2025, the government will look to move to compliance at the point of sale, including through the review of the scheme to be undertaken in 2026. It is vital that all sectors of the Australian economy start taking steps towards net zero now to support vibrant, competitive markets over the longer term. The transport sector is no different. The new vehicle efficiency standard will bring Australia into line with other advanced economies, reduce transport emissions and reduce the amount Australian motorists spend at the bowser. The passage of this bill will mean Australians can start to benefit from low fuel and maintenance costs, with estimated savings of $95 billion out to 2050, and will see around $5 billion in health benefits from cleaner air over the same period. Australians deserve the best cars that manufacturers can provide across their range. The new vehicle efficiency standard will give Australian consumers a seat at the table so we can access the most advanced emissions technologies, and vehicle manufacturers are already supplying to other advanced economies. Can I particularly, in this debate, thank the officials from my department—in particular Tristan and Ben, who are in the chamber, and Marisa for their work on this important legislation so far. This is something you can be very proud of. Can I also thank staff in my office and in Minister Bowen's office: Joseph and Michael in mine, and Andrew and Cam in Minister Bowen's office. In particular to Joseph: when you came to me three years ago, this was exactly the sort of reform that you wanted to see governments bring in, and, again, this is something to which you can be very proud of. I'd also like to thank the industry and climate groups for engaging with the government in such a constructive way. Particularly, I would like to acknowledge Toyota, Hyundai, Tesla, the EV Council, the Smart Energy Council, the Motor Trades Association of Australia and the Australian Automotive Dealer Association for their really constructive engagement. This bill will make a substantial difference to the way in which consumers are able to access the most efficient vehicles, save money at the browser and reduce emissions at the same time as ensuring that you can still buy the cars that you love to drive here in Australia. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2024 5

New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2024

First Reading 5 Second Reading 5 09:22 Ms CATHERINE KING 00AMR Ballarat I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The New Vehicle Standards Efficiency (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2024 contains consequential provisions to support the commencement of the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024. The bill contains consequential amendments to the Road Vehicle Standards Act 2018(RVSA). The New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024 relies on the mechanisms in the RVSA to support the introduction of the new vehicle efficiency standard. The entry of vehicles onto the Register of Approved Vehicles, established under the RVSA, is critical to the application of the new vehicle efficiency standard. Registry account holders under the new vehicle efficiency standard are also the same entities that hold approvals under the RVSA. The RVSA to amended to ensure inspectors who are monitoring and investigating possible contraventions of the RVSA can also secure or seize any evidence they find of a possible contravention of the new vehicle efficiency standard. Non-punitive orders are also introduced to provide an alternative method for encouraging compliance with part 2 of the RVSA. For example, the secretary could apply to a court for an order that company staff are educated about the importance of ensuring information entered onto the Register of Approved Vehicles is correct, such as a vehicle's emission number. The bill also amends the Clean Energy Regulator Act 2011 to enable the Clean Energy Regulator to assist the Secretary of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts in establishing and maintaining the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Unit Registry. The Clean Energy Regulator administers similar unit registries for the Australian government, and their assistance will help to ensure the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Unit Registry is established and maintained effectively. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Commonwealth Frontline Workers) Bill 2024 5

Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Commonwealth Frontline Workers) Bill 2024

First Reading 5 Second Reading 5 09:25 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Australian government is introducing the Criminal Code Amendment (Protecting Commonwealth Frontline Workers) Bill 2024 to strengthen protections for Commonwealth frontline workers, who are increasingly subjected to acts of violence or aggression from members of the public. This violence and aggression can have devastating impacts on frontline workers and their families as well as on the broader safety and operation of Commonwealth workplaces. The Services Australia Security Risk Management Review was commissioned after a serious assault on a staff member at a Services Australia service centre in 2023 and conducted by Mr Graham Ashton. Mr Ashton made 44 recommendations to increase staff safety and deter acts of aggression. The government has committed to implementing all 44 of those recommendations. This bill will implement recommendation 18 of the Ashton review by amending the Commonwealth Criminal Code to increase the penalties available for causing harm, or threatening to cause serious harm, to a Commonwealth public official where the official is also a Commonwealth frontline worker. These amendments will align the penalties for causing harm, or threatening to cause serious harm to a Commonwealth frontline worker with the penalties applicable for the same conduct against a Commonwealth judicial officer or Commonwealth law enforcement officer. Specifically, the penalty for conduct that causes harm to a Commonwealth frontline worker under section 147.1(1) of the Criminal Code will increase from a maximum of 10 years to 13 years imprisonment. Similarly, the penalty for conduct that threatens to cause serious harm to a Commonwealth frontline worker under section 147.2(1) of the Criminal Code will increase from a maximum of seven years to nine years imprisonment. The bill defines 'Commonwealth frontline worker' as a Commonwealth public official who performs work requiring the person to deal directly (whether or not in person) with the public, or a class of the public, as a primary function of their role. This reflects the diversity of Commonwealth frontline worker roles, from service delivery to regulatory functions. Commonwealth frontline workers are in service centres and call centres across Australia. Commonwealth frontline workers are also out in the community performing essential outreach in our communities, providing access to government payments following emergencies or natural disasters, and safeguarding the integrity of government programs through monitoring and enforcement activities. These amendments send a strong message that the Albanese government values the contributions made by our frontline workers and that violence and aggression towards those workers is unacceptable. This bill is an important step towards creating safer Commonwealth workplaces. I acknowledge the strong support of the Minister for Government Services for the measures in this bill and I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus No. 1) Bill 2024 6

Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus No. 1) Bill 2024

First Reading 6 Second Reading 6 09:29 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus No.1) Bill 2024 clarifies the intended operation of certain provisions in the Crimes Act 1914, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and the Telecommunications Act 1997. These amendments will support the proper administration of government, law enforcement, and oversight processes. Amendments to the Crimes Act 1914,the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 and the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022 will complement existing search and seizure powers by including provisions that specifically address some of the unique complexities that arise in the search for, and seizure of, cryptocurrency and other digital assets. The amendments will insert a definition of 'digital asset' that captures cryptocurrency and a range of other contemporary digital assets that could hold value for investigations. Recognising the evolving nature of digital assets, the amendments will also provide enough flexibility to tailor the definition as technology changes. To ensure that the use of powers is appropriately targeted, the amendments will also clarify the circumstances in which cryptocurrency and other digital assets can be seized, in relation to warrants both over premises and over persons. Amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002will ensure the current information-gathering powers and freezing orders in the regime apply to cryptocurrency exchanges and the accounts they administer. The amendments will achieve this by expanding the definition of 'financial institution' to include a corporation that provides a digital currency exchange, ensuring the notices and orders provided under the regime can be extended to a digital currency exchange. This will enable law enforcement agencies to seize cryptocurrency and other digital assets, which is an avenue that criminals are increasingly using to benefit financially from their crimes. Amendments to the Crimes Act 1914 will increase the Commonwealth penalty unit from $313 to $330, with effect from 1 July 2024. Penalty units determine the maximum fines which can be imposed for criminal or civil offences in Commonwealth legislation and territory ordinances. This amendment will ensure courts have access to appropriate penalties to be able to punish the most serious breaches of Commonwealth law. Increasing the value of a penalty unit does not curb the court's existing discretion to impose a penalty that is appropriate with regard to all the circumstances. Rather, increasing the value of a penalty unit increases the maximum penalty that the court can impose as punishment for the most serious offending. This increase ensures that criminal and civil penalties across the Commonwealth statute book remain an effective deterrent against breaches of Commonwealth laws. As penalty units only apply where a person or company has committed a Commonwealth offence or infringed a Commonwealth civil penalty provision, the amendments to the value of the penalty unit will have no effect on Australian businesses and individuals that comply with the law. Amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and the Telecommunications Act 1997 will clarify the role and functions of the Communications Access Coordinator in the Attorney-General's Department and create the position of Communications Security Coordinator in the Department of Home Affairs. The amendments will also allow the Attorney-General to specify particular functions that a person or body may perform or exercise as a Communications Access Coordinator, and provide the Minister for Home Affairs the ability to specify the same regarding a new Communications Security Coordinator. Consequential amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and the Telecommunications Act 1997 will clarify that the Attorney-General may specify more than one person or body to perform certain Communications Access Coordinator functions, and that the Minister for Home Affairs may specify more than one person or body to perform certain Communications Security Coordinator functions. Further, amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 will enable state and territory bodies which oversee integrity agencies to receive intercepted information and interception warrant information from integrity agencies to support their oversight functions. The amendments will expand the definition of 'permitted purpose' for the relevant oversight bodies to encompass their functions as set out in their respective legislation. This will enable these oversight bodies to properly scrutinise and audit their respective integrity agencies' interception activities and compliance with the act outside of a formal investigation and assure the public that integrity agencies are acting within the law. Minor amendments to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 will provide clarity to references of relevant oversight and integrity agencies as many share similar names and are difficult to distinguish. The amendments will clarify the intention of the act by adding the relevant jurisdiction in parentheses following each mention of the agencies in the act. Conclusion The Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus) Bill (No. 1) 2024 makes amendments which will support the proper administration of regulatory, law enforcement and oversight processes. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Declared Areas) Bill 2024 7

Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Declared Areas) Bill 2024

First Reading 7 Second Reading 7 09:36 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Albanese government is committed to protecting the Australian community against the real and evolving threat of terrorism. The threat of terrorism is enduring and we must remain resolute in our response. To this end, this bill ensures the continuation of a key component of our counterterrorism legal framework: the declared areas provisions. Declared areas The declared areas offence in section 119.2 of the Criminal Code Act 1995, which is currently due to sunset on 7 September 2024, is an important part of the Australian government's efforts to stop Australians becoming foreign fighters. Where an area is declared by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, it is an offence to enter or remain in that area without a legitimate reason. A declared area is a place where terrorist organisations are engaging in hostile activity. There are very few legitimate reasons for entering such an area. The offence recognises this by providing a carefully targeted range of exceptions. Although there are currently no areas declared, these provisions remain a necessary component of our framework in the current threat environment. The offence plays a role in the disruption and prosecution of returning foreign fighters and their associates. The limited number of areas that have been declared, and the limited use of the offence to date, demonstrate its exceptional nature and judicious use of this power. Measures in the bill The bill would extend the offence in section 119.2 for three years, to 7 September 2027. A three-year extension reflects the continued appropriateness of the provisions and is consistent with the previous recommendations made by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. This will be the third time the provision has been extended. The bill would also provide that section 119.3—the provision under which the Minister for Foreign Affairs can declare an area for the purpose of the offence in section 119.2—also ceases to have effect on 7 September 2027. This will align the relevant declaration and offence provisions in the Criminal Code. The Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Bill 2023, which is currently before the parliament, would empower the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to review these provisions before they sunset, ensuring that due consideration is given to the continued utility of the provisions. Concluding remarks As is appropriate for such laws, the government has reviewed the declared areas provisions to ensure they remain appropriate and fit for purpose. I commend the bill to the parliament. Debate adjourned. Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024 8

Illegal Logging Prohibition Amendment (Strengthening Measures to Prevent Illegal Timber Trade) Bill 2024

First Reading 8 Second Reading 8 09:40 Ms McBAIN 281988 Eden-Monaro I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Illegal logging has wide-reaching and devastating impacts on climate, nature, and people. As the world's most profitable environmental crime, this complex problem is linked to corruption, organised crime, civil war, exploitation, and violations of human rights. Illegal logging can destroy forest ecosystems, reduces biodiversity, and contributes to species extinction. It deprives local communities of opportunities to improve their quality of life and undermines the rights and practices of Indigenous peoples that care for country. And it costs governments and primary industries billions of dollars every year in lost revenue. Australia is not immune to these impacts. Trade in low-priced, illegally sourced timber undermines the prices that can be obtained for local, sustainably produced products. This has negative effects on supply chains, business decisions, industry profitability, investment, and jobs in the Australian economy. Given the scale and reach of these environmental, social, and economic impacts, global action is necessary to effectively combat illegal logging. The Australian government is committed to playing its part and working with the international community to address illegal logging. In 2012, Australia introduced world-leading illegal logging prohibition laws that were among the first of their kind internationally. The Illegal Logging Prohibition Act 2012 seeks to reduce the harmful impacts of illegal logging by restricting the importation and sale of illegally logged timber and timber products in Australia, and the processing of domestically grown raw logs that have been illegally harvested. This includes a requirement for timber importers and processors of raw logs to conduct a risk assessment process known as 'due diligence' to minimise the risk of importing or processing illegally sourced timber or timber products. As global awareness of deforestation and consumer demand for sustainable timber products have increased, Australia has welcomed regulatory approaches introduced by many other countries to combat illegal timber harvesting and associated trade. This wider action globally has helped produce new approaches that Australia can adopt to augment our own laws. This bill seeks to do just that, implementing the improvements identified through both the statutory review of the act and the sunsetting review of the Illegal Logging Prohibition Regulation. Measures in the bill will modernise and strengthen the act, to better protect the Australian market from illegally harvested timber and timber products and support sustainable and legal timber trade into the future. In particular, new and emerging timber identification technologies hold great potential to enhance existing compliance and due diligence efforts. The Australian government is currently delivering a $4.4 million trial of timber identification methods. This trial will inform effective implementation of timber testing under a reformed act. It aims to ensure the supporting reference databases, systems and access to testing tools are in place to do so, so that Australian can readily identify products entering its market. Timber testing offers compliance officers a means to verify whether claims made about harvest origin and species of regulated products are accurate and assess whether importers' and processors' due diligence efforts are up to scratch. Timber testing can also confirm whether products are in fact illegally logged through closely pinpointing the harvest location and has supported prosecutions overseas relating to illegally logged timber. We know that the Australian timber producers and environmental groups alike support these developments and want to see these tools and techniques used effectively in Australia. The bill will allow for the taking of samples and testing of timber products at the border and beyond for compliance purposes. This will be complemented by a new requirement for importers and processors to give notice before importing or processing regulated timber products. This will enable the government to target testing and other regulatory efforts through having more information on what is entering Australia's market in advance. The amendment bill will also provide more flexible enforcement options and expanded monitoring and investigation powers. This includes the addition of strict liability offences, injunctions, and enforceable undertakings to the act. Amendments will also enable audits to be carried out to determine compliance with the due diligence requirements and extend the time frame for issuing infringement notices to 24 months to afford more time for audits and other compliance actions to first take place. Finally, further amendments will permit the publication of details of contraventions of the act on the department's website, which provides a further deterrent for noncompliance, and allows the regulation to be remade as rules, enabling more flexibility in updating key guidance on sourcing legally harvested timber that is incorporated by reference. Together, these amendments to the laws will help make Australia an even less attractive destination for illegally sourced timber and further protect Australia's reputation in international markets as a supplier of sustainable and legally sourced timber products. Strengthened illegal logging laws will complement other key Australian government priorities, such as supporting global action to mitigate climate change and protect biodiversity, combating organised crime, and alleviating the costs of corruption in developing countries. As a leader in international efforts to combat illegal logging, we know the eyes of the world are watching us. Other countries look to Australia to lead the way on timber legality laws. This bill will both uphold our reputation as a global leader through adopting further best-practice regulatory approaches, and help address the environmental, social, and economic harms of illegal logging and associated trade. Debate adjourned. Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering Better Financial Outcomes and Other Measures) Bill 2024 10

Treasury Laws Amendment (Delivering Better Financial Outcomes and Other Measures) Bill 2024

First Reading 10 Second Reading 10 09:47 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner I move: That this bill be now read a second time. This bill contains six schedules which range from red tape to red carpet and deliver better financial outcomes while improving the integrity of the Australian taxation system. Schedule 1 to the bill delivers the first tranche of the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes package, the government's response to the Quality of Advice Review. It amends the Corporations Act 2001 to streamline ongoing fee renewal and consent requirements into a single form, provide more flexibility for advice providers in how financial services guide requirements can be met, simplify the rules banning conflicted remuneration and introduce new consumer consent requirements for certain insurance commissions. This schedule also amends the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 and Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to provide a clear legal basis for the payment of advice fees from superannuation and associated tax consequences. These amendments support improved access to affordable financial advice for millions of Australians by cutting onerous red tape that adds to the cost of advice with no benefit to consumers. Schedule 2 to the bill updates the petroleum resource rent tax general anti-avoidance rules so that they align with the more robust approach of the general anti-avoidance provisions contained in part IVA of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936. Schedule 3 to the bill amends the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax Assessment Act 1987 to clarify the meaning of the phrase 'exploration for petroleum'. It also clarifies that mining, quarrying or prospecting rights cannot be depreciated for income tax purposes until they are used, not merely held and the circumstances in which the issue of new rights over areas covered by existing rights lead to income tax adjustments. Schedule 4 to the bill amends domestic legislation governing Australia's agreements with international financial institutions to automatically incorporate amendments made to the treaties between Australia and these institutions. This reflects modern drafting practises and will avoid administratively burdensome processes, helping Australia honour its commitments to the international financial institutions that we are a member of. Schedule 5 to the bill amends various laws in the Treasury portfolio to ensure those laws operate in accordance with policy intent, makes minor changes to improve administrative outcomes and remedies unintended consequences, as well as corrects technical and drafting defects. Schedule 6 to the bill amends the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 to make changes to the location tax offset to attract international investment in the Australian screen industry and provide domestic employment and training opportunities. The location tax offset is a refundable tax offset designed to encourage large-scale film and television productions to film in Australia. These changes increase the rate of the location tax offset from 16.5 per cent to 30 per cent. The minimum qualifying Australian production thresholds will also increase to $20 million and $1.5 million per hour for television series. To maximise the domestic employment and training opportunities these productions provide in the Australian screen industry, the changes introduce new eligibility criteria, requiring productions to meet the minimum training obligations or contribute to the broader workforce and infrastructure capacity of the sector, as well engage one or more Australian post, digital and visual effects provider to work on the production. Schedule 6 also introduces an alternative minimum expenditure threshold to the producer tax offset for drama series of $35 million per season in qualifying Australian production expenditure. This change will allow iconic long-form Australian drama series that film significant numbers of hours over a season to be eligible to access the producer tax offset where they have not been able to meet the existing per hour expenditure threshold. Finally, the Legislative and Governance Forum on Corporations and the GST policy and administration sub-group were notified of relevant amendments in the bill. I want to thank the office of the Assistance Treasurer, who is on leave this week, for their assistance in preparing this bill and these remarks. Full details of the measure are contained in the explanatory memorandum. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Australian Postal Corporation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 11

Australian Postal Corporation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024

First Reading 11 Second Reading 11 09:53 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Australian Postal Corporation and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2024 will strengthen regulatory regimes for domestic and international mail screening, inspection and, where warranted, intervention. The postal sector is in rapid transformation and responding to changes in technology, consumer preferences and markets, including ecommerce driving substantial growth of international parcels. Australia's international mail gateways, where incoming and outgoing mail is screened and processed, are being placed under increasing pressure due to rising volumes and growing threats to Australia's biosecurity and national security. It is essential that Australia is well-equipped to mitigate and respond to any risks that arise in the mail stream. This is why the government is ensuring the legislation that governs the security of postal articles continues to be fit for purpose and provides operational flexibility so our border agencies can adapt and lawfully respond to the changing threat environment. In response to these issues and challenges, the bill will make amendments to the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989 to improve the operation of the information sharing arrangements between Australia Post and border agencies and the rules for opening and examining of postal articles. The bill contains measures that will enhance the disclosure of information and documents in relation to postal articles between Australia Post and government agencies. A new exception will be introduced to the disclosure regime to better facilitate information sharing with Commonwealth, state and territory bodies to assist in the performance of their functions or duties. This will provide greater clarity on the agencies and purposes for which Australia Post is able to share information and documents. Existing exceptions will continue to apply. Information-sharing arrangements will be further enhanced by new provisions that will permit secondary disclosures of information and documents between government agencies, under strict parameters. This will support border protection and law enforcement outcomes and ensure alignment across levels of government. The measures for enhanced information-sharing arrangements have been designed with appropriate privacy safeguards and are reasonable, appropriate and justified. Australia Post and border agencies have consistently raised concerns about ambiguities in the current law due to changes in the way technology has been employed to support processing and screening of articles, and evolving risks in the mail stream. The bill therefore contains a number of amendments to simplify terminology and legislative processes to provide greater certainty to Australia Post employees, and customs and biosecurity officers, when exercising their legislative powers and functions for the inspection and examination of mail, and ease the burden of compliance. Another key element of the bill is a new measure to ensure that as the threat environment changes, postal articles suspected of containing explosive, dangerous and injurious goods are able to be handled appropriately and safely. The amendments will incorporate these provisions currently contained in Australia Post's terms and conditions into legislation. The bill will also make minor and technical amendments to clarify the operation of certain provisions of the Australian Postal Corporation Act 1989, and minor consequential amendments to the Criminal Code Act 1995for consistency with amendments to the act. It is proposed schedule 1 to the bill would commence on proclamation, but not later than six months after royal assent. This will allow sufficient time for Australia Post and border agencies to prepare for any necessary operational changes. In summary, the proposed amendments will contribute to immediate enhancements to Australia's border protection, biosecurity and national security, and provide greater flexibility for Australia Post and border agencies to lawfully deal with current and emerging security risks in the mail stream. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Parliamentary Business Resources Legislation Amendment (Review Implementation and Other Measures) Bill 2024 12

Parliamentary Business Resources Legislation Amendment (Review Implementation and Other Measures) Bill 2024

First Reading 12 Second Reading 12 09:58 Mr GORMAN 74519 Perth I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Parliamentary Business Resources Legislation Amendment (Review Implementation and Other Measures) Bill 2024 will progress important reforms to simplify how services to parliamentarians are delivered, including joining up administration, enhancing client experience and streamlining service delivery. These reforms build on significant reforms made in 2017 and 2018 to the administration of parliamentary work expenses. The bill will amend the Parliamentary Business Resources Act 2017 and the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority Act 2017to respond to recommendations of the independent review into the Parliamentary Business Resources Act 2017 and Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority Act 2017, which was conducted by the former member for Higgins, the Hon. Kelly O'Dwyer, and the former member for Adelaide, the Hon. Kate Ellis, in 2021. The review found that the legislative framework is broadly meeting its objectives, but identified areas for improvement and made 30 recommendations, including to reporting and certification processes, improving service delivery and training, changes to the administration of public resources, and supporting a modern, diverse parliament. The government announced its in-principle support for all of the recommendations of the review when the report was tabled in the parliament on 2 August 2022. Significant work has been progressed to implement these recommendations. The PBR Act and the IPEA Act set out the framework for the provision and administration of resources for parliamentarians. The PBR Act commenced in 2018 and established a principles based framework for the provision of public resources to senators and members of parliament. The IPEA Act commenced in 2017 and established IPEA as an independent statutory authority. IPEA currently has functions relating to the provision of travel resources to current and former senators and members under the PBR Act and other legislation. This includes the administration of those resources, including processing claims, paying or providing resources and providing personal and general advice. IPEA's transparency and accountability functions include reporting and auditing resources and giving rulings relating to the public resources that IPEA administers under the PBR Act. This bill directly implements three recommendations of the review which require amendments to primary legislation and substantially advances the implementation of a further six recommendations aimed at joining up administration, enhancing client experience and streamlining service delivery by transferring the administrative responsibility for certain PBR resources to IPEA. Since the review was tabled, the Department of Finance has been working closely with all administering entities to progress the other recommendations of the review. Implementation is being progressed in a sequenced and considered way, noting the complexities of the parliamentary environment and the interaction with different reviews being simultaneously implemented across the Commonwealth parliamentary workplace. These changes to the parliamentary business resources framework have been developed in the context of the government's broader reform activities to improve our parliamentary workplaces arising from the Australian Human Rights Commission's Set the standard report, including the establishment of the statutory Parliamentary Workplace Support Service and legislative amendments to the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act 1984 at the end of last year. An efficient and transparent administration regime that effectively supports parliamentarians to perform their duties in the public interest is an important feature of this system. The bill is making three main changes to the legislative framework. Firstly, the bill will provide for the transfer of the administration of certain PBR resources, including office expenses, from the Department of Finance to IPEA, implementing recommendation 23 of the review. Secondly, the bill will implement recommendations 8 and 11 of the review by extending IPEA's personal advice and rulings functions. Thirdly, the bill will provide enhancements to the PBR Act and the IPEA Act, to clarify certain provisions that have been identified as requiring amendment over time and to better support longstanding administrative practices under the legislation. Transfer of PBR resources Parliamentarians and their staff have access to a range of resources, which are provided by multiple entities, including the parliamentary departments and portfolio departments as well as the Department of Finance and IPEA, under the PBR Act and other mechanisms. It is unlikely that there will be a single provider to administer all resources that are necessary and appropriate for parliamentarians to undertake their parliamentary business. However, it is clear from the review that there is room for improvement. The transfer and consolidation of the administration of most PBR resources within IPEA will result in IPEA becoming the key administrator and point of contact for advice and support, including in relation to parliamentarians' obligations under the PBR framework. This will simplify how services to parliamentarians and their staff are delivered. The transfer will implement recommendation 23 of the review and substantially advance the implementation of several recommendations which focus on aligning the administration of parliamentary business resources. This includes a greater focus on joined-up systems, administration, training, guidance and enhanced information sharing to improve the experience of parliamentarians and their staff—recommendations 13 to 17. The IPEA Act will be amended to provide that IPEA is responsible, by default, for all PBR administration except for resources that are explicitly carved out. While some exclusions will be set out within the amended IPEA Act itself, the IPEA Act will be supported by legislative rules that will exclude other PBR resources from IPEA's administrative responsibilities as agreed by the government. The legislative rules will provide flexibility to allow for efficient changes to the administration of PBR resources that may be required over time. The scope of IPEA's existing administrative and service delivery functions will be expanded to include office expenses and other transferred resources. This will build on IPEA's existing high standard of service delivery. However, the bill will not reduce the types of resources provided to parliamentarians under the PBR Act. IPEA's responsibilities for reporting, compliance and audit for all work expenses will extensively align with existing practice. Currently, IPEA's personal advice function in relation to travel expenses and allowances is afforded exemption under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and safe harbour from liability for a debt or penalty loading under the PBR Act. These important protections encourage parliamentarians' use of IPEA's advice function prior to claiming or using public resources, promoting the careful and appropriate use of public resources. The bill will extend these provisions to also cover the PBR resources which IPEA will administer following the transfer of functions. Implementing recommendations 8 and 11 of the review The bill will implement recommendations 8 and 11 of the review. IPEA will have the authority to provide personal advice about staff use of travel resources to their employing parliamentarian. It will also allow IPEA to provide, with the parliamentarian's agreement, personal advice about a parliamentarian's use of resources it administers to that parliamentarian's staff. This will facilitate more effective and efficient communication between IPEA and a parliamentarian's office. The bill will implement review recommendation 11 by allowing IPEA to make a ruling in relation to public resources it provided under the PBR Act when a former member was a member. The extension of rulings to former parliamentarians engages the safe harbour provisions under the PBR Act and therefore provides assurance to current parliamentarians that if IPEA is found to have provided incorrect personal advice, the protections that apply while a member will continue to apply after they cease to be a member. Under the amendments, IPEA will have the authority to make a ruling either on the application of a former parliamentarian or at IPEA's own initiative. SPA—Responding to recommendation 5 of the review Recommendation 5 of the review called for the administration of special-purpose aircraft to be reviewed to ensure arrangements are working in a joined-up way to fulfil the PBR framework's objectives of efficiency, transparency, accountability and value for money. Since the independent review into the PBR Act and IPEA Act was concluded in late 2021, risks to parliamentarians' safety and security in relation to the reporting of special-purpose aircraft travel have been identified. This bill responds to recommendation 5 of the review and addresses the risks to parliamentarians' safety and security, while supporting transparency and accountability. The defence minister (for domestic travel) and the Prime Minister (for international travel) will continue to approve the use of special-purpose aircraft. The Department of Defence will continue to be responsible for operating the special purpose aircraft transport service and administering special purpose aircraft under the PBR Act, including public reporting of the Schedule of special purpose flights quarterly and in line with security advice. The bill will also address other security concerns associated with the reporting of parliamentarians' other travel resources. Specifically, the bill will require IPEA to have regard to protecting the safety of parliamentarians when determining the content of its published reports on parliamentarians' travel. These amendments to special-purpose aircraft and the reporting of parliamentarians' travel strike the appropriate balance between transparency and accountability of public resources and ensuring the security and safety of all parliamentarians. Other changes The bill will make a number of other amendments to the PBR Act and IPEA Act. These enhancements do not represent major policy changes, rather they aim to address gaps that have emerged, clarify or better align provisions to original policy intent, and better support longstanding administrative practices. These measures include clarifying the delegation powers for Presiding Officers and IPEA's reporting function to align with administrative practices. Amendments to the PBR Act will ensure that the Prime Minister's power to determine resources relating to former prime ministers aligns with existing decisions of executive government which preceded the PBR Act. Fortnightly remuneration The bill will modernise the payment frequency for parliamentarians' remuneration. The Remuneration Tribunal will continue to determine and report on the annual salary amounts for parliamentarians and other remuneration elements. However, the bill will facilitate remuneration being payable on a fortnightly (rather than monthly) basis. The commencement of this measure will be subject to the readiness of IT system updates required to enable this change. Consequential amendments to the relevant superannuation legislation will also be made to reflect this change to fortnightly payments. Estate allowance Since 1980, 10 members of parliament have died while in office. Sadly, five of these, former Senators Alex Gallacher, Kimberley Kitching, Jim Molan and Linda White, and the former member for Dunkley, Peta Murphy, have passed away in the last three years. These recent events have highlighted that allowances relating to a person ceasing to be a parliamentarian under the PBR Act are not payable to persons who pass away while a parliamentarian. This impacts the grieving partner and dependants of our former colleagues, as the provision of PBR resources stops with immediate effect upon a person leaving parliament. The bill seeks to recognise and redress this inequity by allowing the Remuneration Tribunal to determine allowances which would be payable to the estate of a person who dies while a parliamentarian. The Remuneration Tribunal would have the discretion to consider such factors as it considers relevant when determining what, if any, amount of estate allowance is appropriate. Territory senators' remuneration The bill will address an issue impacting retiring territory senators' remuneration which was inadvertently introduced with the PBR Act. The amendment will provide that a retiring territory senator is remunerated and able to claim PBR Act resources for the duration of their term when the Senate is not dissolved. The amendment will maintain the consistent and equal treatment of all retiring parliamentarians in the circumstances of a double dissolution election, whose remuneration ceases on the day of the double dissolution. Review timeframe The bill will extend the frequency at which the independent statutory review of the PBR Act must occur from every three years to every five years since the review was tabled. This will allow sufficient time for the proper implementation of review recommendations, and a sensible period in which any new arrangements can be reasonably reviewed. This does not prevent examination of the act, nor amendment, at other times. Technical a mendments The bill will make a technical amendment to the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022 (NACC Act) to clarify that the standing appropriation under subsection 280(3) of the NACC Act extends to all payments that may be made to, or for the benefit of, current and former parliamentarians under the arrangements prescribed by part 5 of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Regulations 2023 (NACC Regulations). This would ensure consistent funding of the legal financial assistance scheme for current and former parliamentarians under the NACC Act. Conclusion In summary, this bill will update, realign and reform the provision of parliamentary business resources to facilitate a more efficient, seamless, client-focused delivery of services to parliamentarians and their staff, as well as addressing key recommendations of the review which require legislative amendments to the PBR Act or the IPEA Act. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 15

Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024

First Reading 15 Second Reading 15 10:12 Mr GORMAN 74519 Perth I move: That this bill be now read a second time. Introduction One of Australia's first coal fired power stations started in Yallourn in Victoria in the 1920s. It was powered by the vast brown coal deposits of the Latrobe Valley. Over the coming decade, Australia's first offshore wind turbines will also start to run in the waters off the Latrobe Valley. Harnessing the power of the Bass Strait winds. Generations of Australians have powered this nation safely, reliably and with dignity. This bill helps ensure they will continue to for generations to come. Australian workers. Australian industry. Australian communities. Working together to power every part of our nation and every one of us. The way we power Australia will change. But those who do it will not. The target is clear—achieve net zero emissions by 2050 to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change. The pathway is clear—power our industries, light our homes, our businesses and fuel our transport with clean energy. The government is determined that Australian workers and Australian ingenuity will get us there. As the Prime Minister has said, we can be a renewable energy superpower. We can not only power our transformation but that of the rest of the world as well. But it may not happen automatically. The opportunities will not seize themselves. As the race to net zero accelerates—and it is a race—we must ensure Australian workers and communities are supported to play their part. We know there are communities in which the experience of the transition will be most concentrated. This government knows that we must support these communities and those that live in them. This government also knows the critical role it can play. To better coordinate programs and policies, to attract investors and help communities make the most of the transformation opportunities. We will engage major stakeholders in the decision-making and support structures. We will help deliver Australia's future as a renewable energy superpower. We will leave no one behind. In the net zero global economy of the future, it is hard to imagine where else you would rather be, where else than Australia, home to abundant renewable energy resources, to every metal and critical mineral essential to net zero technologies. Our geography has gifted us much. But only by working together will we be able to grab the opportunities of the future. Previous g overnment Less than two years ago, the approach of the Australian government was very different. The Australian government had: No legislated target for net zero, No legislated target for emissions reduction, No settled approach to the energy transition, No plan to bring our electricity gird into the 21st century, No policy to ensure replacement capacity of the 24 coal plants that announced closure dates. Back then, the Australian government could not even agree to a long term energy policy. One former Liberal premier went so far as to describe it as a 'slow-moving train wreck'. In the time since, Australia has changed significantly. A lbanese government Last month the Prime Minister described the history of the Liddell Power Station. He explained: It's a snapshot of the economic and energy transformation underway in Australia, particularly in regional Australia. A journey that every advanced economy has embarked on. And a race that Australia can win. Since the 2022 election, the Albanese government has acted to address climate change. We have also put Australia on the path to becoming a renewable energy superpower, with over $40 billion invested in Australia. This includes: The $20 billion Rewiring the Nation program to modernise our electricity grid and infrastructure so it can support a renewable energy based system; The $1.9 billion Powering the Regions Fund to support the decarbonisation of existing industries and the creation of new clean energy industries; The $4 billion Critical Minerals Facility to grow our critical minerals production sector; The $2 billion Hydrogen Headstart Program supporting development of large-scale renewable hydrogen projects; The $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund, to diversify and transform Australia's industry for a net zero economy. We have also supported Australian industries, workers and communities to participate in the shift to net zero, first with the establishment of the Net Zero Economy Agency, and now with the introduction of this bill to establish the Net Zero Economy Authority. Net Zero Economy Authority The Net Zero Economy Authority will be a new statutory agency. Its functions will be to: Coordinate policy and planning, Facilitate both public and private participation and investment, Support affected workers, Support First Nation Australians to participate in the transition, And deliver educational and promotional initiatives as Australia transitions to a net zero emissions economy. The Net Zero Economy Authority's mission will be to promote orderly and positive economic transformation for Australia, for regions and workers as the world decarbonises. This recognises that the way in which we navigate economic transformation is as important as reaching the destination of a net zero economy. As emissions-intensive industries and technologies decarbonise, the authority will help ensure Australians can access the opportunities new net zero industries bring. Communities It is critical that we support workers and communities throughout the transition. The authority will be a partner, on behalf of government, with industry and investors. It will help to get the big transformational projects happening—for example: Projects that decarbonise industrial facilities in central Queensland, Build new industries in the Spencer Gulf and Pilbara, And grow the future economic base for our regions like the Hunter and La Trobe. The authority will work with project proponents, state governments and others to get projects to investment decision. It will mobilise public and private financing support, address enabling infrastructure needs and navigate regulatory processes. The authority will be the government shopfront for industry and investors, helping as they seize the opportunities of Australia's transformation to a net zero economy. This will assist our regions to become the economic powerhouses of our future net zero economy. Industrial regions like Gladstone, the Hunter Valley, Latrobe Valley, Upper Spencer Gulf and the Pilbara have powered Australia's economy for generations. This can and should continue the transition to net zero. The authority will help place these regions in a position to continue to play the vital role they always have. The authority will also play an important role in supporting community understanding of the transformation to a net zero emissions economy, ensuring Australians are both engaged in the process and confident in its outcomes. The government wants to be a partner with communities in navigating the change, especially in regions where the changes will be more significant and with First Nations Australians, providing opportunities for economic advancement by partnering with workers and communities, by building understanding and relationships. We can ensure that no-one is left behind as we build the industries and jobs that underpin our future prosperity. Workers The authority will ensure workers receive the support they need. The authority will work with employers, unions and others to assist workers to engage in new opportunities. As part of this, the bill will establish the legislative framework for an energy industry jobs plan. Administered by the authority, the plan will enable the use of pooled redeployment arrangements. These will support workers in closing coal-fired power stations and closing gas-fired generators, and their dependent suppliers to transition directly to a new job. Workers in a closing facility will have opportunities to be redeployed into a new job with another employer in the same or a similar industry. Closing and dependent employers will be encouraged to participate voluntarily. Our largest coal-fired power stations are run by mature corporations. They often have strong plans in place to support their workforce as they prepare for closures. We expect many of them will put their hand up to participate in the Energy Industry Jobs Plan. The bill provides the Fair Work Commission with powers to require their participation as a failsafe to make sure the transition is orderly. It enlivens enforceable obligations for those closing employers to provide transitional support to their employees, subject to operational requirements. The authority would encourage receiving employers to participate voluntarily. This bill does not include compulsory participation of receiving employers. Those receiving employers that put their hand up will be in pole position to grab highly skilled and experienced workers. This community of interested employers will give workers the greatest opportunity to secure alternative employment. The proposed model for the plan reflects the outcomes of detailed consultations with employee and employer groups. This is about supporting workers on the frontline of the energy transition and supporting businesses to access the skills and experience they value. Helping workers and their families stay in place helps communities stay whole. Helping some businesses with challenging closures and others to deliver ambitious growth targets means making regional economies more robust and resilient. Stakeholder s upport The global economy is experiencing the biggest transformation since the industrial revolution. The spectrum of stakeholders for the transition to net zero is wide. This is why it is so pleasing that the government's approach has such broad support. Jennifer Westacott, the former Business Council chief executive, described it 'as an opportunity for better jobs and better living standards'. Innes Willox, chief executive of the national employer association Ai Group, said it 'can play an essential and positive role in helping regions like the Hunter, the Latrobe Valley and Gladstone to reach new phases of success'. And Steve Murphy, National Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union, explained, 'It delivers on the promise.' That is what this government has done, and what this bill will do. It will ensure, across Australia, local communities are able to enjoy the opportunities of our future. I would like to especially thank Greg Combet, the Chair of the Net Zero Economy Agency, along with the many dedicated public servants that have been part of the agency. Their work has helped to ensure the government's approach has broad support. The bill builds on this support and enshrines it within the operation of the authority. It will be led by an expertise based board, with a stakeholder panel as a dedicated forum for information and insights from different stakeholder groups. In c onclusion Australian workers and communities have long played a central role in the energy industry. Under this government, they will continue to. As we transition to net zero, opportunities will emerge. With this bill, Australians will be positioned to grab these opportunities. We will support workers and industry, communities and regions. The transition to net zero will push us through the doors of opportunity. We must not let them close behind us along the way but keep them wide open so all Australians can get through. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 18

Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024

First Reading 18 Second Reading 19 10:25 Mr GORMAN 74519 Perth I move: That this bill be now read a second time. The Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 enables the Net Zero Economy Agency, currently an executive agency within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to transition to a standalone statutory authority. The bill: supports the establishment of the authority as it facilitates the appointment of the first Chief Executive Officer of the authority; provides the meeting requirements of the board in its first calendar year; and ensures the ongoing operation of the enterprise agreement that applies to APS employees currently working for the executive agency. I commend the bill to the House. Debate adjourned. National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024 19

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Getting the NDIS Back on Track No. 1) Bill 2024

First Reading 19 Second Reading 19 10:26 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong I move: That this bill be now read a second time. I'm genuinely pleased on behalf of the Albanese government to be introducing legislation into the parliament today aimed at securing the future of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. I'd like to commence my remarks by putting some context for this bill. Before the National Disability Insurance Scheme was rolled out about a decade ago, Australians with disability were too often unseen and unheard—living in the shadows. Australians with disability suffered what was called by some 'the misery lottery'—that is, the disability support was patchy across the country. Depending on your postcode, you might be lucky enough to get some funding to help you and your family, or otherwise you might live a life of uncertainty and, quite often, disadvantage and poverty. I remember it was in 2009, the then Labor government, under Prime Minister Rudd and minister for social services Macklin and me as parliamentary secretary for disabilities, commissioned a report to help us move the analysis and debate about people with disability in this country. That report was titled Shut out. What was uncovered through the consultation phase was 'intensely moving and profoundly shocking'. It painted a picture then of people with disability isolated and alone, their lives a constant struggle for resources and support. An article written about this groundbreaking report at the time said: Where once they were shut in, now people with a disability find themselves shut out. Shut out of housing, employment, education, health care, recreation and sport. Shut out of kindergartens, schools, shopping centres and community groups. Shut out of our way of life. This segregation is a national disgrace. It was clear then that Australia needed a whole system of disability support, and the NDIS for people with the most complex support needs. The nation and the parliament at that time made a decision that we would no longer let a person's postcode or financial situation dictate whether they won the disability support lottery. Now, in its 10 year history, the National Disability Insurance Scheme has fundamentally changed Australia. The NDIS represents the best about our country. It fulfills a sense of collective responsibility—the essence of the fair go. It's integral to our national identity. Its value is measured in human terms, not just economic. People with disability should have the support they need to participate in the community. Every Australian deserves the peace of mind of knowing that if they or someone they love acquires a significant and permanent disability the NDIS will be there for them. And all of us benefit from building a more inclusive and accessible society. This is a 21st century story of successful political change driven by Australians with disability who demanded more control over their destiny. We can never—must never—return to the days before the NDIS. Through the NDIS, Australians have changed the way we view ourselves. It reflects the nation that we want to see in the mirror. Australians do not see people with a disability as 'the other'. They're family, friends, work mates, school mates, our neighbours—any one of us, to be honest, or someone we love. Treating our fellow Australians who have disabilities as second-class citizens—too hard, too costly, someone else's responsibility—reflects an image of ourselves that I don't believe that we should recognise or like. However, despite its life-changing impact, the NDIS is in danger of losing its way. It has not fully delivered on the original vision. When I became Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme in June 2022, I warned that 'the promise of the NDIS has been betrayed—not yet fatally, but still substantially'. While the NDIS has absolutely changed hundreds of thousands of lives for the better, it is not working well for everyone. Participants have spoken about how every interaction with the NDIS can become a battle. They've voiced their frustration at having to prove, year after year, that they still are blind or they still have Down syndrome or Prader-Willi or quadriplegia or motor neurone disease. This was a scheme that, along with thousands of passionate champions of the cause, I've worked tirelessly to help establish. As I've said, too often before our NDIS people with disability were treated as second-class citizens—out of sight, out of mind. We said, 'Never again'—never again would Australians with disability be forgotten. Labor has now been in government for about 676 days. I can proudly say that this government and myself have worked every day with the disability sector to do everything we can to make life on the NDIS and life for people with disability in Australia better. We promised to make the NDIS a priority and not penalise people with disability for wanting to live fulfilled lives. We promised to put more people with disability on the NDIS board and conduct a root-and-branch review of the scheme. We promised to make the scheme sustainable so that future generations of Australians with disability have an NDIS to access. We made a promise to ensure that every dollar was going to the people for whom it was intended—NDIS participants. And we promised to restore trust in the scheme. The work began in earnest within days of the election. We now have more people with lived experience on the NDIS board than in the entire history of the scheme. We have our first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander board member. We're getting more people with disability who are eligible for the NDIS and fit for discharge discharged from hospital rather than waiting in beds when they are medically fit to go home. We've slashed the 4½ thousand legacy appeal cases that were languishing in long queues at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. We've established a partnership between the National Disability Insurance Agency and the First Peoples Disability Network to collaborate on the new First Nations NDIS strategy and action plan. We've established the Inklings pilot with the Telethon Kids Institute in Western Australia to help families of children who are showing early signs of autism with evidence based interventions. Early intervention is one of the key principles of the NDIS, and the world-leading Inklings program takes us from a 'wait and see' approach to an 'identify and act' approach. Neurodivergent babies will still be neurodivergent and they will require support. But early intervention is crucial for a life with less reliance on supports later on and the chance for a child to flourish. We also promised to make the scheme safer for people with disability, and to tackle fraud, waste and overcharging so that every dollar goes towards a better outcome for the participant, not someone trying to make a quick, dirty buck. We're coming at this challenge from a number of angles. In its first year, the Fraud Fusion Taskforce that we established has investigated more than a hundred cases involving more than $1 billion of NDIS funding. Mr Michael Phelan, a former director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, and decorated former police officer, is now the Acting Commissioner of the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission. The commission will feature in a new taskforce alongside the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the NDIA to weed out those charging more for equipment and services simply because you have an NDIS funding package. This is wrong and it's a breach of federal law and we've upgraded the NDIS rules to make it clear that an NDIS 'wedding tax' is not on. That is when people approach a service provider and say, 'I'm on the NDIS,' and the price miraculously goes up for an identical service. I do say to service providers who are complaining about my campaign on price gouging: putting unfair treatment—by, admittedly, a small minority of service providers—in the too-hard basket undermines the reputation of the many very good, dedicated service providers, and ignoring price gouging and unethical conduct is a betrayal of NDIS participants and Aussie taxpayers and jeopardises the credibility and social licence of the scheme. Further legal changes are coming to more strongly prohibit and punish such unethical practices. But while this government has achieved an enormous amount in a short period of time, there is much more to do. The independent NDIS Review panel undertook some of the most extensive consultation with the Australian community in the history of the Commonwealth, to set a new course for the NDIS. The review's final report, released publicly on 7 December 2023, made 26 recommendations and 139 supporting actions to government, all based on what the panel heard from more than 10,000 people and organisations, and what they read in almost 4,000 submissions. National Cabinet considered the final report and, as part of the initial response, agreed that the Commonwealth would work with state and territory governments to implement legislative and other changes. I do acknowledge the remarkable goodwill of state premiers and territory chief ministers in agreeing to work as one for Australians with disability. I certainly applaud their commitment last December to finance additional disability services outside the NDIS program—the 'foundational supports' that we speak of—and I also acknowledge that they have agreed to contribute more to the NDIS from 1 July 2028. Australians with disability are relying on us to make good on our promises. There is, though, an urgency about making change. We've had almost 10 years of delay on the NDIS working for Australians with disability and the review panel also tells us that any changes we make will take years—the process of reform will take years. Australians with a disability shouldn't wait a day longer than they have to for governments at all levels to work together with people with disability to improve the scheme. The Albanese government is committed to engaging and consulting with people with disability, their families, carers, representative organisations, service providers, unions, and the broader community. The bill which I present will enable new and expanded rule- and instrument-making powers. The legislative approach taken is that we seek to establish an enabling architecture for rules and future reforms to restore the original intent, integrity, consistency and transparency of the scheme. These rules, together with all legislative instruments provided for in the bill, will be developed with all states and territories following genuine consultation with the disability community. Collaboration with the disability sector on design is essential. This was the clarion call from the NDIS Review panel. It will be complemented by design and development of foundational supports to assist people with a disability, including those outside the NDIS. This principle has also been agreed by all governments. This bill today is only the first step in this process of reform outlined by the review. There does remain an enormous amount of work to do together to implement the reforms. The government will work with state and territory partners, and across the political divide with the opposition, to deliver a common vision for the NDIS. Simply put, we wish to put the NDIS above the day-to-day political debate between levels of government and between political parties, because Australians with disability and their families deserve nothing less. We will absolutely continue to engage with participants, their families, carers, and disability representative organisations to ensure that this blueprint for the future reflects their experience and contributions. The bill that I presented today is the next part of our journey towards an improved NDIS. I've said it's a first step in responding to the NDIS review findings, and to the disability community who so generously of themselves gave their experiences and insights. But I'd like to take a moment to talk directly to the 660,000 Australians who are NDIS participants, to the 400,000 people who work in NDIS related occupations, to families, carers and guardians. I know that much needed—and indeed much wanted—change can produce anxiety. Talk of any change to a family battling to make ends meet can sound like a problem, not an opportunity, and I can respect nervousness which might be caused by this discussion. I just want to reassure these people who've battled hard to create an NDIS and to get their packages of support: we will work with you to make sure that people are getting the right support in the right way. Under this government this scheme will continue to grow. Changes will be for the best interests of the participant. A critical element of design and development following passage of the bill will be a person-centred model for needs assessment. This will deliver consistency and equity for planning decisions. Access to the NDIS should not depend on how rich you are or who you know or the reports that you are able to procure. This change that we're talking about will not take effect until design is done and new rules are made—transition will take time, and we don't seek to rush that. Importantly, agreement by all state and federal governments means the NDIS will become one part of a larger ecosystem of supports rather than being in danger of being the only lifeboat in the ocean. Before I talk about some of the technical parts of the bill, I do want to flag that some of the following part of this presentation will have some technical discussion. I'm here to explain its intent in plain language so that people with disability and their families, and disability organisations understand what is changing and when it will be changing. What we have to do is reform the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act of 2013 (the NDIS Act) and we have four goals: 1) that the NDIS provide a better experience for participants 2) that the scheme be restored to its original intent to support people with significant and permanent disability 3) that the scheme be equitable and 4) that the scheme be sustainable. The bill has two parts. One section lays the foundations for implementing key review recommendations, particularly those around planning and budget setting. I want to go through some of that with you. Once you're in the scheme, you will get a plan based on your support needs. What we all want is a more dignified, person-centred process that assesses needs to determine a consistent, accurate and fair budget. And that that budget can be spent flexibly. This starts with a needs assessment that we'll work on with the disability sector to make sure we get it right. I want to be clear. 'Reasonable and necessary' remains the core basis on which your support needs are met through the scheme. This bill proposes no changes to the 'reasonable and necessary' core operating principle of the NDIS. But your needs assessment will look at your support needs as a whole—and we won't distinguish between primary and secondary disabilities any longer. If over time your support needs change, because of a significant change in your function, your information can be updated with a new support needs assessment. The result will be a budget for disability supports that are fit for you; that reflect the support needs for your disability. You can spend this budget flexibly in line with your own support needs—because you know them best. But everyone will need to manage their NDIS budget, just as we do with our household budgets. We will be clear about what supports can and can't be funded by the NDIS to help you make informed choices and have confidence that you're using your NDIS funds within what is allowed. However, the changes to be implemented will be developed with people with disability and the disability sector. This will take time to get right. The legislation is starting to deliver our vision for a future NDIS. This legislation is not an end in itself. Until the rules and subsequent legislative instruments are made, the current planning rules will continue to apply so there is no change. Flexible budgets and a whole-of-person approach will increase the ability of participants to exercise real, true choice and control and to best realise their full social and economic participation in Australian society. However, all the changes to budget setting aim to provide participants with greater clarity and transparency and with fairer and more consistent decision-making, and will improve participant satisfaction. Creating this budget framework aligns with the original intent of the NDIS to support people with a permanent, significant disability as part of a larger landscape of supports outside the NDIS. We'll also make sure that we get expert advice on selection and use of any tools so the process is transparent. These rural areas were highlighted by the NDIS review as critical for improvement. But before we can introduce these things a lot of work needs to be done collaboratively with people with disability, their families, rep organisations, and state and territory governments. Therefore, there are some operational changes that need to be made. This is the second part of the bill. I know that some people feel anxious when we talk about scheme sustainability—what they hear instead is, 'Do I lose something?' There is still some media commentary that unfairly targets people with disability in a way that is stigmatising and deeply unfair, and, of course, we live in the age of social media. To meet some of the rumours head on, I say, (1) psychosocial disability is still included in the NDIS—full stop; (2) autism is still recognised as a disability—full stop; and (3) there are many good service providers in the scheme, but at the same time we need to have an honest conversation about the scheme. It cannot keep growing at the same rate that it is now. It can keep growing, but it just can't keep growing at 16 per cent annually, as it has in the past few years. The Disability Reform Ministerial Council is on record as saying: Without timely action to improve outcomes for people with disability, the NDIS is projected to grow to more than 1 million participants and cost up to $100 billion a year by 2032. Costs continue to grow without fairness, rigour and control over this critical investment by the Australian people. We simply have to take steps to get it back on track, and that's what we're doing with this bill. Some operational changes to improve things can happen soon after the legislation if it's passed by the parliament and signed by the Governor-General. One is the definition of 'NDIS supports'. The legislation will, for the first time, link the definition of 'NDIS supports' to the rights of people with disability under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is the first time that parts of the UN convention have been incorporated into NDIS laws. Another change relates to the provision of information-gathering for eligibility reassessment. We will work with the disability community on operating guidance on this matter. It is important for the CEO of the scheme to have the ability to request and receive information on whether participants meet the access criteria, including residence requirements, disability requirements or early intervention requirements. But let me be very clear—this will not result in people having to reprove their disability, but will allow the CEO to determine if a participant is receiving the most appropriate support. The process will take into account difficulties of participants in accessing information, but participants or their nominee will need to communicate with the agency in a way that works best for the person on the scheme. Not communicating is not an option. Another change that will be able to happen pretty quickly is with plan management arrangements where there is a risk for that participant, including financial risk. I want to make clear that the agency has responsibilities here too, an will be required to be consistent in its operations with the legislation and the rules. These are just a few of the things that you may see happen early on. Because this is such an important scheme for so many of our fellow Australians, I want to stress that those directly impacted by key decisions about the scheme continue to play a central role in developing the detail and the implementation of the reforms. The ideas from the review, on the other hand, will take time, and we respect that it will take time. There are two reasons for this. One—and it's a non-negotiable item for me—is that these things have to be done in collaboration with people with disability. Consultation on the early intervention pathway is crucial and there will be no changes until that work is done together. And the second is that the review was very clear about the sequence of events, particularly about building the ecosystem of supports. The NDIS was designed to help the people with the most complex support needs, but it was never designed to be the total scheme for all Australians with disability. We now need to finish the job of building a more inclusive Australia. It is why we, at the federal level, will need to begin the work of foundational supports with our colleagues at the state and territory level before some of the other elements can be introduced and finalised. The states and territories will play an important role here, consistent with the two National Cabinet agreements from last year. This bill also includes amendments to quality and safeguarding, providing greater flexibility for the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner in exercising compliance powers and building on our comprehensive fraud reforms. These changes will boost the commission's ability to undertake compliance action. I want to say again that, when we talk about improving the quality of outcomes for people with disability, some service providers feel criticised. I put on the record that the vast majority of providers are good, decent, hardworking people. I wish to record my gratitude for the quality services they supply with care, compassion and professionalism. But we owe Australians the truth. Some service providers are literally having a lend of the system. This scheme was not designed to put a second-storey verandah on a beach house of a service provider seeking to make a quick buck. We cannot ignore this and the poor outcomes that delivers for NDIS participants. With the measures we're talking about, this is not the end of the journey or the end of the story. We will consider more work on quality and safety once we have the report of the NDIS Provider and Worker Registration Taskforce, led by trusted lawyer and disability advocate Natalie Wade. Both the NDIS review and the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability made recommendations on the scope and powers of the commission, and these are still being considered by the government. We need to make sure we understand the various interactions between the recommendations of both reports before we consider taking action. I acknowledge the hard work of my colleague the Minister for Social Services in supporting this work. What I've outlined today requires a national coordinated effort across all governments and from each and every one of us as members of the community. These reforms will not happen overnight—there will be a significant piece of work to design this pathway and I again ask for the support and the contributions of the disability sector. But I do say to my friends in the state and territory governments today as we table this bill: we've tabled the bill today to be transparent. This reform process has been in the making since we commissioned the NDIS review nearly 18 months ago. Some think we're going too fast. Others think we're going too slow. I just want the best for Australians with disability, as I know this parliament does. I acknowledge there are questions and concerns from my colleagues in the states, and we will genuinely work to resolve issues and allay fears. There is no arrogance or hubris with the introduction of this bill. This is, in the government's best judgement, the time to start this stage of our reform journey. It is in line with the National Cabinet agreement to introduce legislation in the first part of this year, and we're delivering on that promise. As I say, I can only imagine that there will be some anxiety about any talk of changes within the disability sector. But the NDIS, as we all know, is not working quite the way it should and is not working consistently and well enough for many people. This is our chance to make it right. This is our chance as a parliament to help finish the job. If you have a significant and permanent disability which has quite an impact on your functioning, you will be covered by the NDIS. If you have a developmental delay which can be supported by a means of support other than an individual package, you will get what you need. There is nothing to be afraid of during this transition about your future on the scheme. We are simply seeking to put the best interests of the participants upper most in the decisions of the scheme. For me, this is all about what people need. I am tremendously committed to improving the lives of people with disability and working with people with disability to do this. The NDIS is a marvellous, world-leading Australian experiment. It is changing lives. We cannot allow people to be excluded from the great life of Australian opportunity because of their impairment. We should be proud of the NDIS. I believe that, along with Medicare, there's probably no better use of taxpayers' money. The NDIS enables Australians regardless of their level of ability to lead the most fulfilling life possible. I talk of a life of independence and dignity, a life of contribution to the community, a life of improved health and personal safety, a life of connection to others. The NDIS unlocks the great potential of Australians with disability and their families. It enables them to participate in the life of our country on their own terms. We should never change in fear, but we should never fear to change. The NDIS is not perfect, but it's not broken. We should never have a catastrophe mindset about the NDIS or a complete blue-sky mindset; we should just be truthful. We can, together, make it fairer, more transparent, more compassionate and more accountable to those it supports. It's still young—growing and learning. But it is most certainly here to stay. The NDIS is, daily, changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Australians with disability, and their families and the people who work with them. I want it to keep changing hundreds of thousands of lives, long after we've left this place. I hope that the parliament can rise to the occasion to help secure the future of the scheme—not just for Australians with disability but for all Australians. I will leave you as I began—with a quote from the Shut Out report. This was an anonymous submission: Disability is characterised by desire for positive change and striving for emancipation and flourishing. It is seen every day amongst people living with disability. It is active hope. We desire a place within the community! This place is not just somewhere to lay down our heads, but a place which brings comfort and support with daily living, friendship, meaningful work, exciting recreation, spiritual renewal, relationships in which we can be ourselves freely with others. And out of this great things may flourish. I commend this bill to the House. Debate adjourned. COMMITTEES 26 COMMITTEES Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee 26 Report 26 10:57 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie On behalf of the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, I present the committee's report entitled Recognising, valuing and supporting unpaid carers: inquiry into the recognition of unpaid carers, together with the minutes of proceedings. Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e). Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 by leave—Unpaid carers are heroes in our communities, but their roles are largely unrecognised and undervalued. Carers provide 2.2 billion hours of unpaid care each year in Australia, which would cost nearly $80 billion to replace with formal paid care. Carers often sacrifice their careers and retirement plans, education goals, social lives and health and wellbeing to look after the needs of others, and many do so with little support. However, demand for unpaid care is expected to outpace the number of carers taking on caring roles in the future. If we do not look after carers now, Australia will need to address an increasing carer deficit in the future as our population changes. The committee examined the effectiveness of the Carer Recognition Act 2010 in recognising and raising awareness of the role of carers and developments in the policy landscape since the act was established, and it considered options for reform. I want to acknowledge the important work of the former committee chair, the late Peta Murphy MP, who led this inquiry until her death in December 2023. Peta was committed to making a difference in public life and brought compassion, intellect, integrity and good humour to her work on this committee and in everything she did. The Carer Recognition Act aimed to increase recognition and awareness of carers and to acknowledge the valuable contribution they make to society by creating an obligation on the part of the Public Service and associated providers to observe its principles. In doing so, the act represented a step forward in the recognition of Australia's carers. However, despite the best of intentions, the act has not encouraged a cultural change in how Public Service agencies and their associated providers interact with the support carers. The act is not achieving its aims because it is unenforceable, contains weak and vague statements without clear calls to action and relies on a voluntary and inconsistent reporting system with little oversight or accountability. The act needs to be modernised and strengthened to encourage meaningful change in how carers are recognised and treated by the services they interact with. It should provide a more inclusive definition of the term 'carer' to reflect the diversity of care relationships. The definition should be extended to acknowledge care provided because another person has a disability, is experiencing mental ill health or a medical condition, is frail and/or aged or is experiencing alcohol or other drug dependence. It should explicitly recognise young carers and specify that people can be in multiple care relationships. Currently, the act allows Public Service agencies to self-assess if they are a care agency. This is not working, and there should be stronger obligations on all Public Service agencies and their employees and agents to reflect the principles of the act. The Statement for Australia's Carers contains important details that remain far from being realised, in part because the act confers no rights on carers. Carers' rights should be enshrined in legislation, and the committee recommends that the Australian government seek legal advice to determine how this could be best achieved. Rights for carers should include being acknowledged as partners in care, being involved in planning and policy development, being provided with information regarding the person they care for in order to provide care and accessing flexible work arrangements. While Carer Gateway is an improvement on the carer support services that preceded it, carers say that Carer Gateway is slow and difficult to navigate and that the supports they receive are not always helpful. Concerningly, there is a lack of respite care options available, which means that many carers are not getting a break and risk burnout. Similarly, there is a need to increase access to high-quality counselling and mental health support options for a diverse range of carers. Further work is needed to ensure carers' health and wellbeing is supported holistically and that carers are prioritised in the healthcare system. Improved support for First Nations carers and carers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds is needed to ensure that the supports they receive are culturally and linguistically appropriate. The Australian government is committed to delivering a new national carer strategy in 2024, which is a welcome development. It's critical that the new strategy outlines how governments will work to implement the act to address the reasons why caring may be unviable for carers and to ensure that carers can access the supports they need. One of the goals of the strategy should be to ensure that there are enough carers to meet demand for care in the future. To do this, we must minimise the negative impacts that caring has on carers' financial security, their mental and physical wellbeing and their social relationships. The new strategy should be co-designed with and monitored by carers and carers' representatives to ensure carers are treated as genuine partners in care provision. There is a need for more comprehensive data to inform policy and to track outcomes for carers, including a redesign of the Australian Bureau of Statistics survey of disability and carers, new funding for research and data mapping of carers and further ongoing work to collect evidence about carers' health, wellbeing and suicide risk factors through the Carer Wellbeing Survey. While many men are carers, most of Australia's carers are women. This has significant implications for the lives of women, the gender pay gap, the superannuation earnings gap and the representation of women in leadership roles. The new strategy should include gender equality as a key priority area. This will require work to overcome harmful gender norms that mean that the burden of care largely falls on women's shoulders and policies that encourage more men to be carers. Further work is required to address the financial disadvantages carers experience over their lifetime, including supporting flexible work arrangements for carers, introducing an income tax credit for carers returning to the paid workforce and considering other options to incentivise and recognise the impact of caring through the income tax and superannuation systems. A community education campaign is needed to promote recognition and awareness of carers' rights and the diversity of carers, to address gender stereotypes and reduce stigma and to drive positive workplace cultures for carers. This inquiry has been strongly informed by the lived experiences of carers, and the committee is so grateful for the courage of those who came forward to tell their stories. I extend my thanks to all the individuals and organisations who contributed their time, experience and expertise in making submissions and appearing at public hearings. I commend the report to the House. 11:05 Ms CHANEY 300006 Curtin by leave—Carers play an essential and undervalued role in the Australian community. In my electorate there are many people quietly supporting others. They might be caring for a child with an intellectual disability, a partner with multiple sclerosis, a parent with dementia or a friend with mental health issues. For example, Denis and Elizabeth are in their early 80s and are parents of a 44-year-old son with Down syndrome. They're struggling with many systems and services such as the NDIS, Centrelink, Medicare, medical professionals, banks and employment providers to plan for the future of their son when they're no longer around to care for him. I thank all the witnesses who gave evidence to this inquiry—people like Denis and Elizabeth—many of whom shared their difficult personal stories. I was struck by their generosity and selflessness. They play such an important and, often, silent role in holding our community together, and recognising and supporting them is so important. While caring is done with love, it does have an impact on the carer. Caring can and, most often, does affect employment, financial security, housing, superannuation, health, wellbeing and relationships. Carers like Denis and Elizabeth need to be recognised and supported. They need to be recognised as experts in the care that their son requires, and they need support to navigate systems to ensure he's housed, cared for and supported in life. The Carer Recognition Act 2010 does not work particularly well in this regard. The act has an aspirational statement for Australian carers, but this statement does not create any enforceable rights. I sincerely hope that the recommendations of this report are taken up by the government. My take on the evidence we heard was that the most important thing is the creation of enforceable rights to assist carers when they're interacting with the services they need to support the person they care for, and recommendation 4 seeks to progress this. There are also recommendations about better defining 'carer'; what Public Service agencies need to do for carers; accessing better supports, including counselling, training and respite; complaints; and an income tax credit for carers returning to the workforce. The report includes issues that need to be addressed in the new National Carer Strategy, including targeted supports for particular groups and a community education campaign. For Denis and Elizabeth, implementing these recommendations would mean that the services that they're dealing with recognise the vital role they play and that they know how to access respite and other supports when they need them. I also want to pay tribute to the chair of the committee during the hearings, the late member for Dunkley, and those who cared for her during her battle with cancer. As someone who was on the receiving end of caring support during the hearings, the evidence must have been very close to home for her. Despite this, she performed the role of chairing these hearings with her usual compassion, professionalism and courage. I commend the report to the House. 11:08 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie ():  I move: That the House take note of the report. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 265979 The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Reference to Federation Chamber 28 11:08 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie I move: That the order of the day be referred to the Federation Chamber for debate. Question agreed to. Intelligence and Security Joint Committee 28 Report 28 11:09 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present the committee's report entitled Review of the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018. Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e). Mr KHALIL 101351 by leave—On behalf of the PJCIS, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present our committee's report on its Review of the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018—also known as the FITS Act. The committee's review, required by section 70 of the FITS Act, commenced in August 2021, quite a while ago, and was readopted in the 47th Parliament. The committee received 25 written submissions, and held one public hearing and several private briefings in relation to the act. The FITS Act was established to provide the public with visibility of the nature, level and extent of foreign influence on Australia's government and politics. The scheme creates an obligation for people and organisations who undertake certain activities on behalf of a 'foreign principal'—that is, a foreign government or political party, or a related entity or individual—to be listed on a public register. During the inquiry, the committee heard criticisms of the scheme for its limited effectiveness in achieving its intended transparency outcomes. In particular, the committee noted with concern the very low number of registrations and minimal compliance and enforcement activity during the six years since the scheme was established. The committee was satisfied that the scheme's objective of shining a light on both legitimate and malign foreign influence activities in our society remains worthwhile and necessary. Nonetheless, given the significant flaws in the scheme, the committee considers that substantial reform is required if the FITS is to meet its original intent and justify the compliance burden and resources required to administer it. The committee has therefore made 14 recommendations to improve the scheme and its administration. These include amending the current FITS Act: to update key components of the definition of 'foreign principal', including to capture a wider range of company, governance and management structures that can enable a foreign principal to exert control over an entity; to review all current and potential exemptions to the scheme to ensure they are operating as intended and are not being exploited for the purpose of covert malign influence; to insert two new enforcement options into the scheme, including the ability for the secretary of the department to register a person who is liable to register but has failed to do so, and to place information on the register about any person who the secretary considers should be registered but who has not registered voluntarily; to retain the current reporting obligations for the lifetime of ministers who have served on the National Security Committee of Cabinet, while reducing the period of those additional obligations for other ministers and for designated position holders; to remove the requirement for those persons to register communication activities, such as media interviews, where the foreign principal's involvement in the activity is already apparent or declared, and where the activity is not for the purpose of political or governmental influence. The committee has also recommended that the government review the resourcing of the department administering the scheme to ensure both the level and the capacity of staffing are sufficient to support its timely and efficient administration. In its review the committee was conscious that the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme is distinct from, but sits alongside, the framework for combating espionage and foreign interference in Australia. The committee has recommended it be referred a review of the espionage and foreign interference laws put in place by this parliament in 2018, while avoiding duplication with any similar review if undertaken by the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor. On behalf of the committee, I extend my thanks to those who participated in the inquiry by providing submissions and appearing at public hearings. I thank the secretariat for their great work, as always, in an intense period when we were working on 14 inquiries at the same time. I thank my fellow members of the committee, the PJCIS, who put a lot of time and effort into what is important work for the national interest. I also thank and acknowledge the deputy chair for his work on this. I commend this report to the House. BILLS 29 BILLS Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies Bill 2024 29

Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 29 11:19 The SPEAKER 53517 The question before the House is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Maranoa be agreed to.    

The House divided. [11:19]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

62 AYES Archer, B. K. Bell, A. M. Birrell, S. J. Boyce, C. E. Broadbent, R. E. Buchholz, S. Caldwell, C. M. Chester, D. J. Coleman, D. B. Conaghan, P. J. Coulton, M. M. (Teller) Daniel, Z. Dutton, P. C. Fletcher, P. W. Gee, A. R. Gillespie, D. A. Goodenough, I. R. Haines, H. M. Hamilton, G. R. Hastie, A. W. Hawke, A. G. Hogan, K. J. Howarth, L. R. Joyce, B. T. G. Katter, R. C. Landry, M. L. Leeser, J. Littleproud, D. Marino, N. B. McCormack, M. F. McIntosh, M. I. McKenzie, Z. A. O'Brien, E. L. O'Brien, L. S. Pearce, G. B. Pike, H. J. Pitt, K. J. Price, M. L. Ramsey, R. E. (Teller) Ryan, M. M. Scamps, S. A. Sharkie, R. C. C. Spender, A. M. Steggall, Z. Stevens, J. Sukkar, M. S. Taylor, A. J. Tehan, D. T. Thompson, P. Tink, K. J. van Manen, A. J. Vasta, R. X. Violi, A. A. Wallace, A. B. Ware, J. L. Webster, A. E. Wilkie, A. D. Willcox, A. J. Wilson, R. J. Wolahan, K. Wood, J. P. Young, T. J. 77 NOES Albanese, A. N. Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Bandt, A. P. Belyea, J. A. Bowen, C. E. Burke, A. S. Burnell, M. P. Burney, L. J. Burns, J. Butler, M. C. Byrnes, A. J. Chalmers, J. E. Chandler-Mather, M. Charlton, A. H. G. Chesters, L. M. Clare, J. D. Claydon, S. C. Coker, E. A. Collins, J. M. Conroy, P. M. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Giles, A. J. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Husic, E. N. Kearney, G. M. Keogh, M. J. Khalil, P. King, C. F. King, M. M. H. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Marles, R. D. Mascarenhas, Z. F. A. McBain, K. L. McBride, E. M. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, B. K. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. O'Connor, B. P. J. O'Neil, C. E. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Phillips, F. E. Plibersek, T. J. Rae, S. T. Reid, G. J. Repacholi, D. P. Rishworth, A. L. Roberts, T. G. Rowland, M. A. Ryan, J. C. Scrymgour, M. R. Shorten, W. R. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thistlethwaite, M. J. Thwaites, K. L. Watson-Brown, E. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 11:24 The SPEAKER 53517 The question now is that this bill be now read a second time.    

The House divided. [11:24]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

74 AYES Albanese, A. N. Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Belyea, J. A. Bowen, C. E. Burke, A. S. Burnell, M. P. Burney, L. J. Burns, J. Butler, M. C. Byrnes, A. J. Chalmers, J. E. Charlton, A. H. G. Chesters, L. M. Clare, J. D. Claydon, S. C. Coker, E. A. Collins, J. M. Conroy, P. M. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Giles, A. J. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Husic, E. N. Kearney, G. M. Keogh, M. J. Khalil, P. King, C. F. King, M. M. H. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Marles, R. D. Mascarenhas, Z. F. A. McBain, K. L. McBride, E. M. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, B. K. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. O'Connor, B. P. J. O'Neil, C. E. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Phillips, F. E. Plibersek, T. J. Rae, S. T. Reid, G. J. Repacholi, D. P. Rishworth, A. L. Roberts, T. G. Rowland, M. A. Ryan, J. C. Scrymgour, M. R. Shorten, W. R. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thistlethwaite, M. J. Thwaites, K. L. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 65 NOES Archer, B. K. Bandt, A. P. Bell, A. M. Birrell, S. J. Boyce, C. E. Broadbent, R. E. Buchholz, S. Caldwell, C. M. Chandler-Mather, M. Chester, D. J. Coleman, D. B. Conaghan, P. J. Coulton, M. M. (Teller) Daniel, Z. Dutton, P. C. Fletcher, P. W. Gee, A. R. Gillespie, D. A. Goodenough, I. R. Haines, H. M. Hamilton, G. R. Hastie, A. W. Hawke, A. G. Hogan, K. J. Howarth, L. R. Joyce, B. T. G. Katter, R. C. Landry, M. L. Leeser, J. Littleproud, D. Marino, N. B. McCormack, M. F. McIntosh, M. I. McKenzie, Z. A. O'Brien, E. L. O'Brien, L. S. Pearce, G. B. Pike, H. J. Pitt, K. J. Price, M. L. Ramsey, R. E. (Teller) Ryan, M. M. Scamps, S. A. Sharkie, R. C. C. Spender, A. M. Steggall, Z. Stevens, J. Sukkar, M. S. Taylor, A. J. Tehan, D. T. Thompson, P. Tink, K. J. van Manen, A. J. Vasta, R. X. Violi, A. A. Wallace, A. B. Ware, J. L. Watson-Brown, E. Webster, A. E. Wilkie, A. D. Willcox, A. J. Wilson, R. J. Wolahan, K. Wood, J. P. Young, T. J. 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.

 Third Reading 31 11:25 Ms McBAIN 281988 Eden-Monaro by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Charges Bill 2024 31

Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Charges Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 31 11:29 The SPEAKER 53517 Yesterday the Federation Chamber fully considered the Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Charges Bill 2024. However, the question on the motion to report the bill to the House without amendment was unresolved. Under standing order 188, unresolved questions from the Federation Chamber are reported to the House for resolution. The process of reporting the unresolved question to the House now resolves the matter. There are a number of precedents for not proceeding to deal with unresolved questions which have become redundant in such circumstances. I refer members to page 786 of House of Representatives Practice and to the various examples where divisions on unresolved questions were not proceeded with. I propose to follow the practice of any precedents in not proceeding to a division on this question. I present a certified copy of the bill. The question is that the bill be agreed to.    

The House divided. [11:34]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

 74 AYES Albanese, A. N. Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Belyea, J. A. Bowen, C. E. Burke, A. S. Burnell, M. P. Burney, L. J. Burns, J. Butler, M. C. Byrnes, A. J. Chalmers, J. E. Charlton, A. H. G. Chesters, L. M. Clare, J. D. Claydon, S. C. Coker, E. A. Collins, J. M. Conroy, P. M. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Giles, A. J. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Husic, E. N. Kearney, G. M. Keogh, M. J. Khalil, P. King, C. F. King, M. M. H. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Marles, R. D. Mascarenhas, Z. F. A. McBain, K. L. McBride, E. M. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, B. K. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. O'Connor, B. P. J. O'Neil, C. E. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Phillips, F. E. Plibersek, T. J. Rae, S. T. Reid, G. J. Repacholi, D. P. Rishworth, A. L. Roberts, T. G. Rowland, M. A. Ryan, J. C. Scrymgour, M. R. Shorten, W. R. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thistlethwaite, M. J. Thwaites, K. L. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 67 NOES Archer, B. K. Bandt, A. P. Bell, A. M. Birrell, S. J. Boyce, C. E. Broadbent, R. E. Buchholz, S. Caldwell, C. M. Chandler-Mather, M. Chaney, K. E. Chester, D. J. Coleman, D. B. Conaghan, P. J. Coulton, M. M. (Teller) Daniel, Z. Dutton, P. C. Fletcher, P. W. Gee, A. R. Gillespie, D. A. Goodenough, I. R. Haines, H. M. Hamilton, G. R. Hastie, A. W. Hawke, A. G. Hogan, K. J. Howarth, L. R. Joyce, B. T. G. Katter, R. C. Landry, M. L. Le, D. Leeser, J. Littleproud, D. Marino, N. B. McCormack, M. F. McIntosh, M. I. McKenzie, Z. A. O'Brien, E. L. O'Brien, L. S. Pearce, G. B. Pike, H. J. Pitt, K. J. Price, M. L. Ramsey, R. E. (Teller) Ryan, M. M. Scamps, S. A. Sharkie, R. C. C. Spender, A. M. Steggall, Z. Stevens, J. Sukkar, M. S. Taylor, A. J. Tehan, D. T. Thompson, P. Tink, K. J. van Manen, A. J. Vasta, R. X. Violi, A. A. Wallace, A. B. Ware, J. L. Watson-Brown, E. Webster, A. E. Wilkie, A. D. Willcox, A. J. Wilson, R. J. Wolahan, K. Wood, J. P. Young, T. J. 0 PAIRS

Bill agreed to.

 Third Reading 32 11:36 Ms McBAIN 281988 Eden-Monaro by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies and Charges Collection Bill 2024 33

Agriculture (Biosecurity Protection) Levies and Charges Collection Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 33 11:39 The SPEAKER 53517 The question is that the bill be read a second time.    

The House divided. [11:39]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

74 AYES Albanese, A. N. Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Belyea, J. A. Bowen, C. E. Burke, A. S. Burnell, M. P. Burney, L. J. Burns, J. Butler, M. C. Byrnes, A. J. Chalmers, J. E. Charlton, A. H. G. Chesters, L. M. Clare, J. D. Claydon, S. C. Coker, E. A. Collins, J. M. Conroy, P. M. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Giles, A. J. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Husic, E. N. Kearney, G. M. Keogh, M. J. Khalil, P. King, C. F. King, M. M. H. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Marles, R. D. Mascarenhas, Z. F. A. McBain, K. L. McBride, E. M. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, B. K. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. O'Connor, B. P. J. O'Neil, C. E. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Phillips, F. E. Plibersek, T. J. Rae, S. T. Reid, G. J. Repacholi, D. P. Rishworth, A. L. Roberts, T. G. Rowland, M. A. Ryan, J. C. Scrymgour, M. R. Shorten, W. R. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thistlethwaite, M. J. Thwaites, K. L. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 67 NOES Archer, B. K. Bandt, A. P. Bell, A. M. Birrell, S. J. Boyce, C. E. Broadbent, R. E. Buchholz, S. Caldwell, C. M. Chandler-Mather, M. Chaney, K. E. Chester, D. J. Coleman, D. B. Conaghan, P. J. Coulton, M. M. (Teller) Daniel, Z. Dutton, P. C. Fletcher, P. W. Gee, A. R. Gillespie, D. A. Goodenough, I. R. Haines, H. M. Hamilton, G. R. Hastie, A. W. Hawke, A. G. Hogan, K. J. Howarth, L. R. Joyce, B. T. G. Katter, R. C. Landry, M. L. Le, D. Leeser, J. Littleproud, D. Marino, N. B. McCormack, M. F. McIntosh, M. I. McKenzie, Z. A. O'Brien, E. L. O'Brien, L. S. Pearce, G. B. Pike, H. J. Pitt, K. J. Price, M. L. Ramsey, R. E. (Teller) Ryan, M. M. Scamps, S. A. Sharkie, R. C. C. Spender, A. M. Steggall, Z. Stevens, J. Sukkar, M. S. Taylor, A. J. Tehan, D. T. Thompson, P. Tink, K. J. van Manen, A. J. Vasta, R. X. Violi, A. A. Wallace, A. B. Ware, J. L. Watson-Brown, E. Webster, A. E. Wilkie, A. D. Willcox, A. J. Wilson, R. J. Wolahan, K. Wood, J. P. Young, T. J. 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.

Third Reading 34 11:43 Ms McBAIN 281988 Eden-Monaro by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024, New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2024 34

New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024

New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2024

Reference to Committee 34 11:43 Mr TED O'BRIEN 138932 Fairfax I move: That the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024 and the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2024 be referred to the Standing Committee on Regional Development, Infrastructure and Transport for consideration and an advisory report by 3 May 2024. For the benefit of all members, I want to explain the motion that I am moving. I am moving this motion in accordance with standing order 143. This standing order provides for a motion concerning a bill to be referred to the Federation Chamber or a committee to be put after the first reading but before the question on the motion for the second reading is put—that is, before we conclude debate on the second reading. That is the simple object of this motion—to seek the agreement of the House to refer the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill 2024 and the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2024 to the Standing Committee on Regional Development, Infrastructure and Transport for consideration and an advisory report. I'm putting this motion forward because, in short, the measure that the government is seeking to pass through this House has become a complete and utter shambles. It is a mess. This, of course, is their measure to introduce a family car tax. This is where the government has basically said to the coalition, 'We're happy to cooperate.' Then they refused to cooperate and they ignored the coalition. Now they're back in the House saying, 'Oh, but we're ready to cooperate.' This is a government that told the industry that they're happy to engage and work constructively. Then they ignore the industry. Now they're back saying, 'Oh no, we're listening and we're engaging with industry.' This is basically family car tax 1.0 now becoming family car tax 2.0. There's one group in Australia that we can be absolutely certain has been ignored through this entire process. In fact, I put that this government has unashamedly targeted this group in Australia. It is Australian consumers—the everyday mums and dads who right now are struggling amidst a cost-of-living crisis—who can't afford to pay more money to buy the vehicles they love, to buy the vehicles they need. The last thing they need is a family car tax being introduced. When the coalition first heard last year that the government will be using a vehicle efficiency standard measure, we were very public in saying, 'We are happy to engage with the government constructively.' We put three key principles forward. We needed to see a balance of: (1) prices, (2) choice and (3) emissions. We're very clear with the government that we are happy to cooperate with them, so long as they come in good faith with a measure and engage constructively with the coalition to balance price, choice and emissions. But the government refused to engage. What's more, the first iteration, family car tax 1.0, made sure that there was a complete imbalance between those three key objectives, which is why, indeed, family car tax 2.0 has become nothing more than a fig leaf to try and camouflage what is yet another iteration of a tax. We do know a few things for sure. No. 1, we know that consumers will pay more to buy the cars they love. We also know that this government either has refused to do modelling on the impact of car purchase prices or is refusing to release that modelling. Think about this. This is their second bite of the cherry here. We were crystal clear when they came out with their preferred model: release your financials. At least be transparent. What have you got to hide? Tell the Australian people—just be upfront—'Our vehicle efficiency standard, our family car tax, is going to increase the purchasing price by X dollars when you purchase your vehicles.' The government refused to have any transparency on the impact to the Australian consumer. And, despite that, here today they walk into this chamber and table legislation on 'family car tax 2.0', and they still either haven't done that modelling or are refusing to release that modelling. It's pretty obvious why. They are trying to hide the impact of this tax from the very people who are being unashamedly targeted by them to pay for it: the Australian people, who are already feeling the pain when it comes to the cost-of-living crisis which has been created by this Labor government. Now, if there's any claim that they have made it has been that over time the Australian consumer will save money on the running costs of their vehicles. This government claims that the running costs of their vehicles will go down. Why? Because more people will buy electric vehicles—and there's no problem with that, so long as there's choice. But their argument is that, as more and more people buy EVs, they in fact will be drawing down on the electricity grid, and, because the price of electricity is coming down, their running costs are coming down. Of all the modelling that they could have released, there was one: an assumption on the price of electricity. They assumed that next year, in 2025, the price of electricity will be 27 cents a kilowatt hour. And so, when you hear anybody from this Labor government say, 'Yes, this measure will reduce your running costs,' they are assuming the price will be 27 cents a kilowatt hour. But what did we find out last week? The draft DMO figures came out which basically indicated the real price of electricity for next year. Guess what? Do you think it's 27 cents? Opposition members: No. Mr TED O'BRIEN 138932 Not a chance. Next year's DMO figures go up as high as 56 cents a kilowatt hour. And so the only argument Labor has to run in favour of this tax is based on a flawed assumption of electricity prices coming down. Now, should that surprise anybody? It shouldn't. This is the same government that went to the election with a promise of a $275 reduction in household power bills. They know that promise has been broken. In fact, last week's DMO figures proved that it's absolutely broken. Which means they are now perpetrating a deliberate untruth to the Australian people, and they are doing it also with this vehicle efficiency standard claim. Running costs aren't going to come down if the basis of their claim is 27 cents but we know next year it's going to be as high as 56 cents. And then their model goes on to say that every year thereafter electricity prices just keep coming down. Well, they're not going to come down; they're only going to be going up. So not only can this Labor government not be trusted on their claims of cheaper running cost; it is a fact that the purchase price will only go up. So why, you might ask, would the government be doing this in the first place? They will make all these accusations, as they have before—which I think are a slap in the face of the everyday Australian—implying that everyday Australians are like Putin's Russia because there's no vehicle efficiency standard. Such an argument is absolute garbage when you have this side of the House saying for well over a year that we are happy to be constructive on negotiating such a measure so long as you get those three things in balance: price, choice and emissions. You've had the industry saying that they are prepared to negotiate in good faith. But, again, they have been ignored. There's been one bad faith actor in this negotiation, and that has been the Albanese Labor government. But why? The reason is that this government applied an arbitrary target to EV sales by 2030. They promised that 89 per cent of all new vehicle sales by 2030 would be electric vehicles. Again, it's one of those many targets by the Minister for Climate Change and Energy which is failing. Their own department was asked, 'What is the trajectory for sales of EVs by 2030?' Do you think their answer was 89 per cent? It was 27 per cent. So, instinctively, what we have seen again from this minister is an act of desperation. Knowing full well he is failing across every aspect of his policy, he knows the only way to reach that target is to slap a punitive tax on everyday Australians to force them to buy the cars he wants them to buy. That's the only way he can achieve his target. We've seen it right across the board. We know that's what's happening with his 82 per cent renewables target by 2030. That's running at somewhere between one-fifth and half of the pace required. Again, they're steamrolling over regional communities to achieve that target, and now they're going to be steamrolling over everyday Australian families to achieve the EV target. To be crystal clear where we stand on this: have we ever had a problem, in principle, with the idea of a vehicle efficiency standard? No, which is why we've been on public record saying we're happy for a discussion on this. Have we set principles around it? Yes, we have: price, choice and emissions need to be balanced. Again, that balance has not been struck, which is why we are looking at this and shaking our heads yet again. What we see, in the market, is people being forced, if Labor gets this through, to choose the cars that Labor wants. Is there any problem with buying an electric vehicle? Of course there's not. The Australian consumer deserves to have the right to choose whatever vehicle suits him, her, or their family. Now, for some people, that will be an EV, and that's a good thing. But, for other people, especially in regional and remote areas, they can't even contemplate the possibility, and, for other families, the variance of price point just means it's out of reach. Now, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, they should not be forced to purchase a vehicle because we have inept minister of government falling short of his targets. This is why we put this motion to the House: the government has botched this so much. We do require a standing committee to bring light to the darkness of their lack of transparency. We need a standing committee to expose the truth behind what has been a series of untruths perpetrated by this minister and also the minister for transport. For that series of reasons, I put that motion to the House. The SPEAKER 53517 Is the motion seconded? 11:58 Mr HOGAN 218019 Page I second this motion with great enthusiasm. As you know, this New Vehicle Efficiency Standard Bill has basically become known as the ute and SUV tax, and that's why we need to refer it to the standing committee that the shadow minister has recommended. I just want to pick this straight up: since this has been introduced or discussed, when we've come up with figures like, 'This could increase the price of a ute and an SUV by up to $25,000,' these figures, with all due respect to him, have not come from the shadow minister. These figures haven't been formulated by anyone on this side of politics. These figures have come from the manufacturers, who weren't properly consulted before this bill was first discussed. In fact, it goes beyond the manufacturers. These figures actually came from Thailand's Prime Minister. When he was in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago at the ASEAN conference, Thailand's Prime Minister—Thailand make a lot of vehicles, and we import a lot of vehicles from Thailand—raised concerns about the speed. Again, it was the speed of what the minister wanted to introduce here that was causing all the problems. Thailand's Prime Minister said that this will—because of the penalties, because of the fines that it would be put on vehicles that they manufacture—increase the cost of the vehicles they are sending to Australia. This was apparently shock, horror, gasp to the government, who denied that it was the case. This comes back to the core of this government, of their not consulting. There's a history, there's a form that they have. We've got the religious discrimination bill going around at the moment. We've got other bills going around. And this government does not consult widely—or, when they do, you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. You then get a part of the bill—what they think is relevant to you. Then you're not allowed to talk about the bill and what you think might be its ramifications. That's why this government keeps making bad decisions. I note a member of the crossbench here, a teal. They were going to come into a parliament talking about how the sun was shining in—transparency. I'd like to hear a lot more from the teals about the non-disclosure agreements this government is forcing on all the negotiations they're doing, because this is why they're making bad decisions. I also would also ask, does this surprise us? Unfortunately, no. The shadow minister said very eloquently that the minister who has carriage of this has form. We could go way back to when he was the minister for immigration. He had form then. He was probably the worst minister for immigration we ever had, when he was the minister back then. And he had form when as shadow Treasurer he said, 'If you don't like the franking credits, don't vote for us.' Well, that went well for him. So he has form. And I say to any marginal seat holder over on the Labor side of politics, be very nervous about the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Be very nervous about him, because anything he's trying to introduce will probably make you a one-termer. So I encourage every marginal seat holder in the Labor Party to talk to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, because he's the best person you've got to make you a one-termer. Let's just go back, again, to the question of why the minister has rushed this and why he has not consulted on it. And he's got more than this ball in the air. He's also got his renewable energy target. But before I go there, I will say that the shadow minister missed one point in that great address he gave to the parliament. The one thing you didn't mention when you were talking about the modelling, with all due respect—and yes, they did model that it was 27c per kilowatt hour, and you said it's going to be 56c—is: when will they be charging them? At night! Well, good luck with that, if this minister has carriage of this, because we won't have any power at night, with the current Minister for Climate Change, because the lights will have gone out; it'll be 'Blackout Bowen'! Seriously, the renewable energy target that he has, with both sun and wind, means that the power won't be going on at night, so good luck with charging your EV at night if he's minister for much longer. Forget the price; you won't be charging up. There'll be nothing coming through. Again, this goes back to the target that this minister has on renewable energy. As the shadow minister said, we are happy to be involved with the fact that we get better emission standards within vehicles. We are also happy to meet our net zero 2050 emission targets. They're important. We actually understand, too, that renewables are part of that, and we're happy to have that conversation. But the reckless targets that this minister has on renewable energy mean that he's desperate, as the shadow minister said, in the sense that he set targets for renewable energy that are unachievable. There's not actually the technology to make renewable energy reliable through the targets he has set. So, the first easy pick was, 'Oh, well let's go for the EV; let's go for the transport industry.' There are obviously some people with some sense over there, because, as we know, he's crab crawling away from this. He's obviously been rolled in cabinet. Obviously they've gone to him and said. 'Well, you might not have spoken to the manufacturers, you might not have spoken to all the stakeholders, but we have, and they're telling us that your plan doesn't work.' Well, it would have been nice to have consulted on that earlier, before he embarrassed himself by coming in with a bill that he's now having to crab crawl back from. So at least there is some movement there, but this minister is dangerous. Mr HOGAN 218019 I take the interjection that batteries work. Well, they don't work very well for the volume you're talking about. If we want to go to what works, that will be interesting to see. He also says, 'Let's go to the cost aspect.' He says that renewable energy is going to make power cheaper. One thing he misses there—and I'd love the rationale for this—is that he needs 28,000 kilometres of new transmission system for that system. That's a red alert for people on the other side: 40 per cent of your power bills is the transmission system, and he wants to build 28,000 kilometres of new transmission system, which some industry people say is going to be over a hundred billion bucks. Good luck bringing that down with your power bill. Unfortunately, I'm surprised. I don't know how the factions of the Labor Party work—but obviously not well given that this minister is still a senior minister in the government. He has had form for over 10 years. There's not much he touched that didn't turn out badly for him, the government and the country, as I said, when he was immigration minister and shadow Treasurer. If you wanted to run through a top three of bad performing ministers on the other side, he would always be in the top three. There's some competition for it. I'd throw the minister for infrastructure in there because she's pretty close all the time as well. The SPEAKER 53517 I am reluctant to enter the debate, but we are straying. If you want to criticise other ministerial portfolios, that's fine, but it must be with regard to the legislation, not necessarily by weighing in with character assessments on other ministers. Keep the debate on the straight and narrow. Mr HOGAN 218019 Speaker, I have great respect for you. I will take that advice. Back to the minister, who had form for a long time. As I said earlier, I've been a backbench marginal MP in my time here. If I were a backbench marginal MP in the Labor Party and if there were one person that made me very, very nervous, it would be the minister for climate change. I thank the shadow minister for putting this motion up. This is a motion of goodwill. This is the shadow minister putting up a goodwill motion from the opposition, who is saying: 'We want to help. We want to be part of the conversation. We want to refer this to the committee that the shadow minister has recommended in this motion. We want it to go there. We want to be part of that discussion. We want this country to do its job by meeting net zero by 2050. We want this country to do its job with what we want to do with vehicle emissions, but we want to do it so people can still afford them. We want to do this so that the lights don't go out. If they're going to plug in their electric vehicle at night, we want the power to be on and we want to do it in an affordable way.' With great pleasure, I thank the shadow minister for moving this. It's a great pleasure to support him in seconding it. The SPEAKER 53517 Before I give the call to the assistant minister: during that debate the shadow minister, the member for Page, referred to political parties of other organisations which I understand don't exist. You made reference to the crossbench; could you just refer to all members by their correct title. 12:08 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper I move: That the question be now put. The SPEAKER 53517 The question before the House is that the question be now put regarding the motion moved by the honourable member for Fairfax.    

The House divided. [12:12]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

74 AYES Albanese, A. N. Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Belyea, J. A. Bowen, C. E. Burke, A. S. Burnell, M. P. Burney, L. J. Burns, J. Butler, M. C. Byrnes, A. J. Chalmers, J. E. Charlton, A. H. G. Chesters, L. M. Clare, J. D. Claydon, S. C. Coker, E. A. Collins, J. M. Conroy, P. M. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Giles, A. J. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Husic, E. N. Kearney, G. M. Keogh, M. J. Khalil, P. King, C. F. King, M. M. H. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Marles, R. D. Mascarenhas, Z. F. A. McBain, K. L. McBride, E. M. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, B. K. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. O'Connor, B. P. J. O'Neil, C. E. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Phillips, F. E. Plibersek, T. J. Rae, S. T. Reid, G. J. Repacholi, D. P. Rishworth, A. L. Roberts, T. G. Rowland, M. A. Ryan, J. C. Scrymgour, M. R. Shorten, W. R. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thistlethwaite, M. J. Thwaites, K. L. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 63 NOES Archer, B. K. Bell, A. M. Birrell, S. J. Boyce, C. E. Broadbent, R. E. Buchholz, S. Caldwell, C. M. Chaney, K. E. Chester, D. J. Coleman, D. B. Conaghan, P. J. Coulton, M. M. (Teller) Daniel, Z. Dutton, P. C. Fletcher, P. W. Gee, A. R. Gillespie, D. A. Goodenough, I. R. Haines, H. M. Hamilton, G. R. Hastie, A. W. Hawke, A. G. Hogan, K. J. Howarth, L. R. Joyce, B. T. G. Katter, R. C. Landry, M. L. Leeser, J. Littleproud, D. Marino, N. B. McCormack, M. F. McIntosh, M. I. McKenzie, Z. A. O'Brien, E. L. O'Brien, L. S. Pasin, A. Pearce, G. B. Pike, H. J. Pitt, K. J. Price, M. L. Ramsey, R. E. (Teller) Ryan, M. M. Scamps, S. A. Sharkie, R. C. C. Spender, A. M. Steggall, Z. Stevens, J. Sukkar, M. S. Taylor, A. J. Tehan, D. T. Thompson, P. van Manen, A. J. Vasta, R. X. Violi, A. A. Wallace, A. B. Ware, J. L. Webster, A. E. Wilkie, A. D. Willcox, A. J. Wilson, R. J. Wolahan, K. Wood, J. P. Young, T. J. 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

12:17 The SPEAKER 53517 The question before the House is that the motion moved by the member for Fairfax be agreed to.    

The House divided. [12:17]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

56 AYES Archer, B. K. Bell, A. M. Birrell, S. J. Boyce, C. E. Broadbent, R. E. Buchholz, S. Caldwell, C. M. Chester, D. J. Coleman, D. B. Conaghan, P. J. Coulton, M. M. (Teller) Dutton, P. C. Fletcher, P. W. Gee, A. R. Gillespie, D. A. Goodenough, I. R. Haines, H. M. Hamilton, G. R. Hastie, A. W. Hawke, A. G. Hogan, K. J. Howarth, L. R. Joyce, B. T. G. Katter, R. C. Landry, M. L. Leeser, J. Littleproud, D. Marino, N. B. McCormack, M. F. McIntosh, M. I. McKenzie, Z. A. O'Brien, E. L. O'Brien, L. S. Pasin, A. Pearce, G. B. Pike, H. J. Pitt, K. J. Price, M. L. Ramsey, R. E. (Teller) Sharkie, R. C. C. Stevens, J. Sukkar, M. S. Taylor, A. J. Tehan, D. T. Thompson, P. van Manen, A. J. Vasta, R. X. Violi, A. A. Wallace, A. B. Ware, J. L. Webster, A. E. Willcox, A. J. Wilson, R. J. Wolahan, K. Wood, J. P. Young, T. J. 80 NOES Albanese, A. N. Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Belyea, J. A. Bowen, C. E. Burke, A. S. Burnell, M. P. Burney, L. J. Burns, J. Butler, M. C. Byrnes, A. J. Chalmers, J. E. Chaney, K. E. Charlton, A. H. G. Chesters, L. M. Clare, J. D. Claydon, S. C. Coker, E. A. Collins, J. M. Conroy, P. M. Daniel, Z. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Giles, A. J. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Husic, E. N. Kearney, G. M. Keogh, M. J. Khalil, P. King, C. F. King, M. M. H. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Marles, R. D. Mascarenhas, Z. F. A. McBain, K. L. McBride, E. M. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. O'Connor, B. P. J. O'Neil, C. E. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Phillips, F. E. Plibersek, T. J. Rae, S. T. Reid, G. J. Repacholi, D. P. Rishworth, A. L. Roberts, T. G. Rowland, M. A. Ryan, J. C. Ryan, M. M. Scamps, S. A. Scrymgour, M. R. Shorten, W. R. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Spender, A. M. Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Steggall, Z. Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thistlethwaite, M. J. Thwaites, K. L. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilkie, A. D. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 MOTIONS 40 MOTIONS Australian Football League 40 12:22 Mr WILKIE C2T Clark I seek leave to move the following motion: That the House: (1) notes that: (a) last night the Member for Clark revealed deeply disturbing allegations of egregious misconduct within the AFL provided by former Melbourne Football Club President, Glen Bartlett, former Melbourne team doctor, Zeeshan Arain, and Shaun Smith, father of Melbourne player and now alleged drug trafficker Joel Smith, including: (i) the prevalence of drug abuse and other prohibited behaviour across the AFL; (ii) in particular the "off the books" drug testing of players at Dorevitch Pathology in Heidelberg, facilitated by the former Chief Medical Officer of the AFL, Peter Harcourt; (iii) the resting of players testing positive in these secret tests, ostensibly on account of injury; (iv) wilful inaction by AFL executives; and (v) the removal of Mr Bartlett as President of MFC after he suggested to current AFL Chairman Mr Richard Goyder and then AFL Chief Executive Mr Gillon McLachlan that AFL officials be regularly drug tested; (b) this subverts the official drug testing conducted by Sports Integrity Australia on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Authority; and (c) the Member for Clark was denied leave from the Government when seeking to table documents containing evidence relating to these allegations; and (2) therefore allows the Member for Clark to table the documents referred to in his speech. Leave not granted. Mr WILKIE C2T I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Clark from moving the following motion: That the House: (1) notes that: (a) last night the Member for Clark revealed deeply disturbing allegations of egregious misconduct within the AFL provided by former Melbourne Football Club President, Glen Bartlett, former Melbourne team doctor, Zeeshan Arain, and Shaun Smith, father of Melbourne player and now alleged drug trafficker Joel Smith, including: (i) the prevalence of drug abuse and other prohibited behaviour across the AFL; (ii) in particular the "off the books" drug testing of players at Dorevitch Pathology in Heidelberg, facilitated by the former Chief Medical Officer of the AFL, Peter Harcourt; (iii) the resting of players testing positive in these secret tests, ostensibly on account of injury; (iv) wilful inaction by AFL executives; and (v) the removal of Mr Bartlett as President of MFC after he suggested to current AFL Chairman Mr Richard Goyder and then AFL Chief Executive Mr Gillon McLachlan that AFL officials be regularly drug tested; (b) this subverts the official drug testing conducted by Sports Integrity Australia on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Authority; and (c) the Member for Clark was denied leave from the Government when seeking to table documents containing evidence relating to these allegations; and (2) therefore allows the Member for Clark to table the documents referred to in his speech. There is an urgent need to suspend standing orders and deal with this motion, because we now know that there's a secret game happening behind AFL games, and the government needs to act urgently to stop it. In the Federation Chamber last night, I ventilated deeply troubling allegations of misconduct in the AFL, in particular concerning the systemic failure of the AFL to effectively test for and prevent the use of prohibited drugs or to sanction players and officials found to have used prohibited drugs. I noted: … the term 'white line fever' has taken on a different and sinister meaning at the AFL. And I made it perfectly clear that the allegations are detailed in signed statements which I tried to enter into the parliamentary record but was stopped from doing so by the government in what I assume was a massive misstep or a cover-up. Since then, the whistleblowers who provided the material have implored me to do everything I can to ensure that these documents are tabled and read by the Prime Minister, because they're tired of cover ups. We all are. Incredibly, the AFL have this morning chosen not to deny the allegations. The Swans CEO is even being reported as having spoken to the AFL, who have admitted that the off-the-books drug testing regime does in fact exist. The whistleblowers are so concerned, and I am pushing so hard on this, because such appalling behaviour endangers the lives, safety and future of players and officials; subverts the official drug testing conducted by Sports Integrity Australia on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency; and is a fraud on the governments and taxpayers that provide millions of dollars in support to the AFL directly and indirectly, through tax breaks, grants and beneficial capital works, conditional on the AFL being a signatory to and complying with the World Anti-Doping Code. This evidence shows that they are wilfully breaking this requirement. In essence, the scheme facilitated by former AFL chief medical officer Peter Harcourt would give players access to off-the-books drug tests, before games, at Dorevitch Pathology in Heidelberg in Victoria. If no drugs were detected in the players' systems, they would play. If drugs were detected, the player would be advised to fake an injury. This allowed players to circumvent the match day drug testing by Sports Integrity Australia, as required under the World Anti-Doping Code. Substantiating this claim is a signed statement from former Melbourne Football Club doctor Dr Zeeshan Arain in which Dr Arain explains how the scheme allows players to use illegal drugs and continue to play through the season. But, as Dr Arain explains, this isn't just a Melbourne problem; it's an AFL problem, with multiple players coming to Melbourne from other teams with pre-existing cocaine dependencies, more than suggesting that drug-testing workarounds are, in fact, commonplace elsewhere in the AFL. Moreover, I've obtained documents indicating a shocking unwillingness by senior AFL executives to address drug abuse and, in particular, cocaine use—like the very detailed notes of a meeting between former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan, AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder and former Melbourne president Glen Bartlett. Two things jump out at you from that record. One, echoed by Mr Barlett in his signed statement, is that the AFL hid concerns about alleged cocaine use by Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin from Mr Bartlett for up to 18 months. The second is that in that meeting Mr Bartlett, who is a lawyer, said he planned to introduce drug testing of players and officials, arguing that sports administrators also should be drug free. Here's the rub: within eight weeks of that meeting, Mr Bartlett had been unexpectedly pushed out of the AFL, despite having just recently been asked to serve as president for three more years. Best I say that again: Glen Bartlett was dumped by the AFL just eight weeks after the meeting with Gillon McLachlan and Richard Goyder where he suggested mandatory drug testing for AFL executives. There's also the signed statement from retired player Shaun Smith, the father of current player Joel Smith. Joel, of course, is under investigation for allegedly trafficking drugs to his teammates. In his statement, Shaun maintains that his son had not been a cocaine user prior to joining the AFL and attributes his son's situation to the AFL's aiding and abetting of drug use—and he's right, we now know. To be clear: the AFL is not a private company, and these matters are no ordinary drug scandal. No, the AFL is an entity regulated by the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and receives hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect tax breaks, government grants and beneficial capital works. In reality, the AFL is just a big business, sustained, in part, by helping players secretly break the World Anti Doping Agency code. Moreover, it is not an exaggeration to say that the off-the-books testing scheme sees the AFL effectively involved in a multi-hundred million dollar fraud on the taxpayer. Australian Rules football plays an incredibly important part in the lives of so many of us, including the kids at Auskick clinics. To be absolutely clear: I'm thrilled that Tasmania is set to finally have an AFL team, but it's exactly because of all that that we expect the AFL to act with integrity and for us not be left wondering just how many young lives have been ruined by illegal drug use known to but not acted on by the AFL. This matter calls for intervention at the highest level, which is why I asked last night, and why I'm asking again right now, that the Prime Minister personally intervene in this matter, study the documents in my possession and do everything he can to restore and protect the reputation of our beloved game. In light of all of this, I ask the House to suspend standing orders and to support this motion urgently, because the whistleblowers need the detail of their allegations to be known and the context in which they've spoken up to be understood. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 249710 Is there a seconder for the motion? 12:32 Ms DANIEL 008CH Goldstein I rise to second the motion from the member for Clark. In support of the tabling of documents that go to the integrity of, arguably, our nation's favourite sport, these allegations are serious. They go to whistleblower protection, which is grossly inadequate in this country, and it's the reason we're forced to talk about this under privilege this morning. They go to the AFL's duty of care to its players. In Melbourne and in my electorate, football is life. From Auskick to community club footy to the VFL and VFLW to the big games at the 'G, this is the beating heart of Melbourne. In many ways, as I've said before in this chamber, maybe we've lost sight of what football is about. It's about kids, families, health and fun, not big money and fame. These allegations go to that loss of perspective. As many know, my father played in the VFL and I grew up at footy training, really. Both of my teenagers play AFL and dream of playing at the highest level. I note that Goldstein, in many ways, is Demons' heartland, and, as an Essendon supporter, I know what drug scandals can do to clubs. There is zero benefit to me of speaking to this motion, but there is a cost of not fully examining these allegations and releasing these documents to the sport and to the players. These documents must be tabled. I don't stand here to make a judgement on recreational drug use. However, the point of this debate is about what drugs can do to clubs and players—create a culture of normalisation of cocaine use and, in some cases, addiction—and how to protect players, young men and now young women in the hothouse of professional sport, who are on unusually high incomes, often at an early age, and are therefore highly vulnerable. The documents in question include sworn statements from whistleblowers, which I've examined in granular detail and which the member for Clark has outlined extensively, and this is what we seek to table today. As well as the concerns about whistleblowers and the way they're treated and role modelling, the thing that jumps out at me most is the allegations from the former Melbourne Football Club doctor. In his statement, Dr Zeeshan Arain says: At the end of the day it's a business and the players are treated as a commodity. There is no desire to address this issue because it's a fickle world particularly for people in power and people making money. He says: Ultimately this is a management issue. The culture comes from management. The players are there to play football. The players don't define culture.' I note that the AFL uses an opaque three-strike medical model as a way of protecting players from lengthy bans for non-performance-enhancing recreational drug use. My question, then, is: is this other off-the-books testing that's alleged the same thing, and do the sports integrity agencies, WADA and ASADA, endorse it, as it appears directly designed to subvert their systems, with faked injuries thrown in? The exact AFL policy needs to be clearly explained and justified, particularly given the implied concern in these statements about the take-up of recreational cocaine use after players join the AFL and whether such a subversion approach not only facilitates that but covers it up and is in turn innately dishonest. This is a matter of trust, and it's a matter of player welfare. If one thing convinced me to make this speech, it was this line in the doctor's sworn statement: Right now, I would not let my children play AFL … For me, not only as an MP but as a parent and a self-described football tragic, this goes to the future of our children and the very future of the sport. I therefore call on the government to allow these documents to be tabled to open this up to proper scrutiny. 12:36 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo I was in the Federation Chamber last night and heard the allegations made with respect to the AFL by the member for Clark. It's hard to know whether I was more horrified by those allegations or by the fact that leave was not granted for the member for Clark to table these documents. The call is on the Prime Minister to read these documents. It's a very simple call, and I think it's one that every Australian would support. We as a parliament provide a huge amount of money to the AFL. Many parliaments have done so. Importantly, children look up to these players as gods. They see them as their heroes. If we do not do everything we can in this place to ensure that the AFL is a place of integrity and that we are investigating and considering such horrific allegations—allegations of drug use, allegations of drug testing being done in a clandestine way so that it's subverting what should be the true form of how drug testing should occur, and allegations that we're seeing a cover-up to protect players—the question we need to ask here is: are we in this place also running some sort of protection racket for the AFL? The whole community would think it absolutely unbelievable that we would do that—that we would potentially run some sort of 'hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil' arrangement in this place. This place is supposed to be the apex of Australia, where our best actions are a reminder to the rest of Australia that we are here for transparency and justice. To not allow the member for Clark to table those documents last night was, I think, an appalling action against democracy in this place. I would urge the government to consider this suspension of standing orders and allow the member for Clark to table these particular documents, which have very grave allegations in them. Let's have a full investigation from the top down, run from the Prime Minister's office all the way down. 12:39 Mr GEE 261393 Calare I rise in support of the member for Clark's motion. The matters raised by the member for Clark are very serious and there is a huge amount of public interest in them. A light needs to be shone on what has gone on here. Giving members the ability to place documents of this nature on the national record is an important part of the transparent and open operation of this parliament. These documents should be tabled, and I would urge all members to support the member for Clark's motion, whatever party they belong to. Get behind this motion and support transparency. Let's see the documents and what they reveal and let the nation know what they contain and what they reveal. So I commend the motion to the House and I commend the member for Clark's courage and integrity, in shining a light on this issue and bringing it to the attention of our parliament and our nation. As I said, I commend the motion. 12:40 Dr RYAN 297660 Kooyong I also rise to speak in favour of this motion. The AFL is a really important institution in this country, and particular parts of the AFL are very precious to certain members of this House. I speak as someone who has grown up following AFL since childhood, who is a member of an AFL club, and who, like my colleague the member for Goldstein, has children who feel very deeply about the AFL and aspire to play for Carlton in the future or to umpire an AFL grand final. And I speak as a Victorian, knowing how very deeply Victorians feel about the AFL. The allegations that the member for Clark has raised in this House are serious. Now, we know that the federal government does support the AFL very significantly, in terms of funding and other material forms of support. That's an important relationship between the federal government and the AFL. The fact that these allegations have been raised is a significant one, and we deserve transparency about that—not only as taxpayers who have contributed to the funds given to the AFL, but as people who feel very deeply about an important body. So it's for my son, who wants to umpire 300 games for the AFL, and for all of those kids who are going to turn out and play Auskick on Saturday morning. It's so that we can contribute to restoration of the public's faith in a really important body. But it's also so that we can protect young men who are playing for the AFL now and who are, we are to understand, at some risk of being exploited by a system which potentially does not have their best interests at heart. I think we deserve to hear more, and we need the government to take the appropriate action, which is to cast a light on what is happening at the AFL and whether or not we do have real cause for concern about that. 12:43 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah I commend the member for Clark for his motion and for bringing this issue to light in the parliament. As an ex-sportsperson, I absolutely admire sport. I love sport. I love the role it plays in our society. I love the example it sets, the aspiration and the opportunity it offers to all of those who participate in the vast and many sports that we have. Australia has always been incredibly successful and really punched above its weight in so many areas. But it's really important to remember that sport—especially sporting codes and sports organisations—don't operate outside of the rules of society, and, in particular, our criminal rules. It's important that there is transparency and accountability and that we don't have a situation where the administration or the self-interest of a particular code or sport or club overrides that compliance with the norms of society and with our laws. But it's also important to look after the wellbeing of those involved. There is ultimately a concern here for the players. If there is truth to these allegations, then that is what the motion can help establish by having these documents tendered. It will show whether or not there is a duty of care that is going amiss in relation to these players by people looking the other way or condoning or facilitating the breach of these rules. That is incredibly concerning for the role that players have in setting an example for young people in our society. I was previously a member of the panel for the anti-doping rule violations, and a lot of that relies on sporting codes and clubs complying with procedures and rules and being upfront about testing and other procedures. It's really concerning to hear allegations of this nature and knowledge of not performance-enhancing banned substances but substances that incur criminal consequences. So it is important for there to be transparency around this is, and, as such, I strongly support the member for Clark's motion. The SPEAKER 53517 The question is that the motion moved by the member for Clark be agreed to.    

The House divided. [12:50]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

15 AYES Bandt, A. P. Chandler-Mather, M. Chaney, K. E. Daniel, Z. (Teller) Gee, A. R. Haines, H. M. Katter, R. C. Ryan, M. M. (Teller) Scamps, S. A. Sharkie, R. C. C. Spender, A. M. Steggall, Z. Tink, K. J. Watson-Brown, E. Wilkie, A. D. 51 NOES Ananda-Rajah, M. Belyea, J. A. Broadbent, R. E. Burnell, M. P. Burney, L. J. Burns, J. Byrnes, A. J. Charlton, A. H. G. Chesters, L. M. Claydon, S. C. Coker, E. A. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Kearney, G. M. Keogh, M. J. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Mascarenhas, Z. F. A. McBride, E. M. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, B. K. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Phillips, F. E. Rae, S. T. Reid, G. J. Repacholi, D. P. Roberts, T. G. Ryan, J. C. Scrymgour, M. R. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thwaites, K. L. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 BUSINESS 44 BUSINESS Rearrangement 44 12:53 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper I move: That business intervening before order of the day No. 1, government business, be postponed until a later hour this day. Question agreed to. BILLS 44 BILLS Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 44

Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024

Second Reading 44 12:54 Ms MASCARENHAS 298800 Swan It is so wonderful to see how many people in this place are concerned about the role of vaping in our society. When the debate was interrupted, I think I was in the middle of this speech talking about Kodak moments and how there was a time when there was a generation of people who understood what Kodak moments were. What the photography industry needed to do was innovate, and that's why we now see digital cameras. The thing that we've seen, from the tobacco industry perspective, is they had declining rates of smoking, and they were super desperate to increase their rates, so they did their revamp: cigarettes 2.0—e-cigarettes, vaping. What we've seen is big tobacco investing into developing new nicotine and tobacco products and, as I said yesterday, targeting the most impressionable young people. They've been using sneaky tactics to make vaping seem appealing, like discrete packaging and adding chemicals to improve the aroma. The truth is the tobacco industry is trying to cultivate this do-gooder image. Honestly, it doesn't wash with me. Let's be honest: this is big tobacco trying to sneak nicotine into young people through vaping and explaining that this is a healthier option to cigarettes. As my mother would say, a leopard doesn't change its spots. Creating this perception that vaping will help people quit smoking is just not true; it's quite the opposite. It's sneaky and it's predatory and it's getting young people hooked on nicotine. Unfortunately, it's working, and that's why this government is acting. This legislation will help stop big tobacco in their tracks. Our reform package, according to Professor Daube, will go a long way towards bringing us the outcomes we need, protecting our young people and protecting the health of the nation. It was a Labor government who introduced plain packaging, and it's a Labor government who's now taking the lead on vaping reform. I commend this bill to the House. 12:57 Mr LITTLEPROUD 265585 Maranoa I rise to speak on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 and the amendment moved by the member for Cowper. I have the same genuine intent as everyone who stands in this place and in the other place to make sure we formulate good policy that protects children. We all come to this place with that intent with this issue. I was part of a government that moved down a prohibition model, and I'm big enough to stand here today before the Australian people and say I got it wrong. I got it wrong. The statistics don't lie. Only about eight per cent of people who vape today have a prescription. The prescription model didn't work. As I visit small communities, listening to teachers and headspace representatives, the biggest issue they're facing at the moment is vaping. As legislators of this great country, we have an opportunity; we've been given a privilege to get it right, to admit when we get it wrong and to shift when we have the opportunity. The opportunity sits in front of this parliament. While the intent of the bill and much of what it's trying to achieve go very much to what we want to see happen in terms of the regulation of the product, it's about understanding that what we have done in the past hasn't worked and being big enough to admit that. I don't contest the science or the health advice. No-one should. It's indisputable. But I've got to say, with all due respect to the Cancer Council and the AMA, that's where their expertise ends. Regulating borders, regulating markets are not the expertise of the AMA or the Cancer Council. And they come to this with the same intent as every one of us in this building—to try and make sensible reforms about what is a scourge on our society. When we see children as young as eight on vapes, we know we've got to do something. What we've done by bringing forward a prohibition model has made it worse so, so we've got to shift the dial and look to what has worked in the past. I acknowledge the previous speaker, the member for Swan, in acknowledging that many of the reforms that were put in place by a Labor government in the past, around plain packaging and about ensuring a regulated point of sale for those that are over 18, have worked. In fact, we saw an 80 per cent reduction in juvenile use as a result of those courageous reforms. At the time, they were courageous reforms, which they should not have been. But they were the right reforms that the minister and the government at the time had the courage to undertake. When you look at the history, when you look at what's worked and when you look at what's in front of us, then you realise we've got to do something different. We've got to make sure that, at the heart of that, it's protecting the next generation. The greatest achievement of this is that we will see generations in the future not just not vape but not use cigarettes either. That would be a significant accomplishment, to see a significant reduction, if not a removal, of that because of the courageous steps that we take now—not ones that work on a prohibition model. History has shown for generations that prohibition doesn't work, particularly when you've got a marketplace that has exploded. In essence, the genie's out of the bottle. As the father of four young boys, their potential use of this product, the content and where they may get it frightens me. As someone who was a former agriculture minister, I can tell you that I have had experience managing a border and having an agency that is there to try and protect Australia. To think that we're going to be able to crack down and stop all this at the border is naive. It won't happen. Unfortunately, the consequence of that will be an unregulated product doing more harm, particularly to our children. When we see the consequence of what I voted for in the last parliament—I see that consequence daily. I've got to be big enough to admit that I didn't get it right. But I've got to look at what I can do in getting it right in the future. The National Party has been clear on this. We've taken that step. As a party room we've understood that, while our intent was right—our intent was about making sure that this product was brought in to try and get people off cigarettes—it hasn't worked. This isn't about big tobacco. In fact, if you want to take big tobacco out of this, you could regulate a product in this country where big tobacco isn't even allowed to actually display the contents of it. Why wouldn't we think about what the options and the possibilities are, that have worked previously, that we've got to be able to regulate a product? We're not trying to be reckless in anything we're doing. We're simply saying that much of the work that a previous Labor government has done with cigarettes should be heralded as a symbol and as an example of how we can minimise harm, particularly for the next generation. We believe in having licensed points of sale. We believe that only people over 18 should have these products. There should be strict verification of that. There shouldn't be packaging targeted at children. That's abhorrent. I think we're all in agreement on that. We should be regulating the contents of this product. What you've got to understand is that, with the path that we've gone down—saying that you've got to go and get a prescription to go to a pharmacy to get this, when we have over 1½ million Australians already doing this—I think we're naive to think that they're going to change their habits because of that. I don't doubt that there'll be some success at the border and some other places. In fact, the night before last I saw that 30,000 vapes were intercepted at the border. That's about two or three hours worth of vaping. It's not going to touch the sides. We've got to understand that, yes, there's an opportunity to make sure that we can police better. When you talk about policing, there are also issues around the alignment between federal and state responsibilities. In fact, as someone that caught up with the Queensland Police Service in the last couple of weeks, they're short 4,000 police officers in Queensland alone. When domestic violence and juvenile crime are out of control, the police force don't have the resources to then be pumped into what the government is asking them to do. It's making it harder. We were saying that we were going to police our way out of this. They don't have the resources to do it to start with. Much of that could be changed, in many respects, if we're honest with ourselves, through a regulated product, through the excise that could be achieved. And the excise should be done in a responsible way, with the medical advice about how we actually can use this product to try and transition people and get them off not just cigarettes but vapes as well, get them off tobacco entirely, and using that excise in a way that would not only educate the next generation of potential smokers and vapers but also be about investing in policing of the border and the streets. An opportunity sits in front of this parliament to look at this differently and to take a dagger to the heart of organised crime that is out there flourishing because of the prohibition model. I said before that history shows that prohibition hasn't worked. You only have to look at when prohibition was put in place. Who benefited? It was organised crime. This is where we have to look at the past and the things that we have done that have worked. So I think there is an opportunity for this parliament. We won't stand in the way of this bill. It is important that we try to continue to work on a pathway of getting an understanding. But the Nationals haven't changed our position. Prohibition doesn't work. A regulated model will work and gives us a better chance at protecting children. So, when the bill leaves this place and goes over the way to the Senate, it's important that it goes to an inquiry and that we test those principles and theories. I respect that we all come with the right intent, the very purest of intent—all of us. But at some point, at some juncture, when the statistics show that it's getting worse not only here but also in New Zealand, where they've taken this model—a 39 per cent reduction since 2020, when they went to a regulated model—we know that not only is history showing us but the world is showing us. And while we can stand there and beat our chests about having apparently the strongest laws in the world, it will mean nothing if we still see children on these vapes and the next generation on these vapes. I hate these things. I hope my children are never on them and I hope they go nowhere near cigarettes. But I'm a pragmatist, and I have been given the greatest privilege that any Australian has ever been given: to sit in this place and to make a difference. But I'm going to make that difference on the basis of my lived experience and to stand up and say, 'I got it wrong and I'm going to try and get it right as best I can.' So, I respect the government and all they are trying to achieve; in all honesty, I do. They come to this with the right intent. But unfortunately we are going down a trajectory that has been influenced too greatly—solely—by medical advice. As I said, I don't challenge that medical advice. I'm just saying that the weighting is that the medical advice and the health advice cannot be contested, but that's where it should end. It is in the regulation of it that the police and politicians need to understand—the agencies need to understand—how we can do this better. I welcome the bill. I can't say that I support the trajectory the government's taken, but I respect their position wholeheartedly. I suspect that at some juncture we'll all be back here again, and I might be standing here saying, 'You were wrong.' I just hope we will all say, 'We got it wrong and we're going to need to change this and get it right, because what we've done in the past hasn't worked.' I commend the bill to the House. 13:08 Mr NEUMANN HVO Blair I'm proud to speak on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. This is world-leading legislation that delivers on our promise to protect children, young people and other Australians from the harm of vaping. I have no doubt about the integrity and the bona fides of the member for Maranoa and his good intention. But truly, the coalition opposed Nicola Roxon's groundbreaking legislation that the Labor government brought in on plain packaging and a whole range of areas that we undertook in relation to tackling the scourge of smoking and for nine years did very little in relation to this. And I won't take lectures from those opposite, who were so bad in my home state of Queensland, cutting so many police out of the police force that Jack Dempsey, the police minister, lost his seat in the 2015 election. It was a Labor government in Queensland that increased the number of police on the beat to tackle the things that we're dealing with here today. I won't take lectures from those opposite about that. The facts do not bear out what they say. This bill bans the importation, manufacture, supply and commercial possession of disposable, single-use and non-therapeutic vapes, while preserving legitimate patient access for therapeutic vapes through pharmacy settings for smoking cessation and the management of nicotine dependence where clinically appropriate. It is a public health menace, a scourge, and the rapid rise amongst young people is alarming. This week I spoke to respected GP Dr Cath Hester at the Colleges Crossing Family Practice in my electorate. Cath is a deeply valued member of our community and has been on the board of the West Moreton Hospital and Health Service as well as a representative of the college in relation to GPs. She was talking to me about what GPs deal with each and every day in my area and about the problems of vaping. She agreed, and other GPs in my electorate agree, with the idea of tackling this issue in a prohibitive way but also a therapeutic way, and that's what we're dealing with. The member for Maranoa and the coalition were wrong about a decade ago on tackling smoking and tobacco rates and nicotine dependency. For nine years they did virtually nothing in this space. They were wrong in that nine years, and their attitude to this scourge could be characterised by indolence and inertia. We're tackling this issue in a respectful but therapeutic way, but also engaging law enforcement and making sure that people can tackle this issue in the right way. That's why what we're doing is making sure that we're introducing new offences and other civil penalties relating to the importation, manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertisement of vaping goods. We're also banning the supply and commercial possession of vaping goods unless those are included in the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods or notified to the TGA as being only for smoking cessation or the management of nicotine dependence. We're listening to doctors, listening to law enforcement and building on what we did in government last. Those opposite come in here and, if you listen to their speeches—I've listened to one or two of them already—you can't quite work out what they really want to do. They want to tackle this issue, but they don't want to do anything about it—and didn't do anything about it for nine years. They left it up to us to take the action. I still can't work out precisely what they want to do. Do they want to educate people? Do they want to do advertisements? I don't think that's what they want to do. If you look at what they did, it was nothing. You've got to believe in politics, society, familial life and domestic life in this country. You've got to look at what people do, not what they say. It's the doers who are righteous. It's the doers who do the right thing. Those opposite have a shocking record in this place. We are taking steps that listen to the AMA and listen to respected doctors, like Dr Cath Hester in my electorate. We're taking steps. That's why what we're doing here is the right thing to do. Those opposite should not be sitting on a morass of equivocation. They should not be sitting like Humpty Dumpty on the wall waiting for their position to fall one way or the other. They should actually come on board and support it. Learn from the lessons of a decade ago and stop procrastinating. Support it. There is a pathway forward, and they should be supporting this legislation. I commend the legislation to the chamber, and I condemn those opposite for their failures over nine years in this space. They have let young people fester in this morass and this drug dependency that they should tackle each and every day. That's why this legislation is so critical to the health of our young people. Those opposite should be condemned for their failure. 13:14 Ms DANIEL 008CH Goldstein I welcome the government's decision to ban the importation, manufacture and sale of vapes except when doctors prescribe them. I acknowledge the comments of the member for Maranoa on the difficulty in this policy area, and this will require close monitoring to see if there are unintended consequences. But the parents that I meet in Goldstein are so concerned about the plague that vaping has become. Vapes are widely distributed at schools. Smoke shops selling vapes have been located too close to schools. Peer pressure is creating teenage addicts of a substance that could well kill them—and now the data is in. Generation Vape is a research project led by the Cancer Council New South Wales in partnership with the Daffodil Centre and the University of Sydney, and funded by the government. The survey of more than 700 teenagers aged 14-17 has confirmed an explosion in the use of vapes over recent years, with an increase of more than 50 per cent in the five years since 2017. The survey found that 32 per cent of those surveyed have used vapes and 54 per cent had never smoked a cigarette before starting to vape. Access to vapes for these young people has been all too simple. Generation Vape reported that: 80 per cent of the teenagers surveyed declared it easy to access vapes; 31 per cent of those who bought a vape did so from a retail outlet, a tobacconist, a servo, a vape shop or a convenience store; and, disturbingly, 49 per cent of those who bought a vape did so from a friend—or what the survey termed 'a dealer'. Equally disturbingly, 80 per cent of those who did not buy the vape themselves got it from a friend. This rise in vaping among teenagers is hardly surprising given the extent to which manufacturers have been producing to designed to attract the young. Flavours include chewing gum, fruits, sweets and soft drink. Indeed, one is called 'Juicy Fruity', and it pretty much looks like Juicy Fruit chewing gum. The last Labor government's decision to escalate taxation of cigarettes has had a significant impact on the number of people smoking in Australia. According to the ABS, the prevalence of regular smoking is confined to just 10.2 per cent of people over the age of 15 and has declined by more than 50 per cent since the mid-1990s, so it's no surprise that tobacco companies should have turned their attention to finding a new profit centre, and that is vapes. No wonder parents are deeply concerned. In the Generation Vape survey, 83 per cent of parents declared their concern about their children vaping, 72 per cent suspected their children were using a vape, and four out of five regarded preventing their children from vaping as a priority. So it is too with teachers—not surprisingly, given that they're in the front line here, spending nearly as much time with children in their care as parents. Forty-three per cent of teachers reported having confiscated two or more vapes a week over a six-month period, 93 per cent declared concern about their students vaping and three out of four considered addressing vaping as a high priority. The tactics used by tobacco companies have similarities with those being used by gambling interests. Associate Professor Becky Freeman, a public health expert from Sydney University and one of the Generation Vape researchers, makes a number of highly valid points about this vaping legislation. She says it will stop non-prescription e-cigarettes being freely available in our communities, strengthening and streamlining the prescription pathway. But these reforms will make it easier for authorities to stop retailers illegally supplying vapes to kids and non-smokers by limiting access to only people with a valid prescription—and then only from a pharmacy with the personalised support of a doctor to help them quit. Retailers will no longer be able to advertise, supply or commercially possess non-prescription and disposable vapes. The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 introduces minimum-quality standards on flavours, colours and ingredients, as well as pharmaceutical-like packaging and limits on allowable nicotine contents to make vapes less appealing to kids and to people who don't smoke. When passed, these laws will stop the Australian manufacture, advertisement, supply and commercial possession of any non-prescription vape. I acknowledge that some people in my electorate of Goldstein have contacted me to encourage my opposition to this legislation. I have read several stories of vapes paving the way to quitting smoking. While seeing fewer people smoke is the objective, we should also share in this place that vaping is no genuine alternative. It has insidiously invaded the lives of our children, purposefully targeting them over aspiring cigarette quitters. It has been linked to heart and lung damage, including some cases that have resulted in death. Vapes are addictive but far more accessible even than cigarettes owing to the significantly lower price point. Their use as a smoking deterrent simply results in swapping one damaging habit for another. To be clear, those who are using vapes for genuinely therapeutic reasons will be able to obtain a prescription, with the model being that nicotine content is gradually reduced. One question that I do have before I close is whether the government has allocated sufficient resources to police and enforce these restrictions. The government's committed an extra $25 million to the Australian Border Force and $57 million to the Therapeutic Goods Administration over the next two years to introduce and enforce the reforms. As we know from the illegal trade in cigarettes, that enforcement is a challenge and will be with these restrictions on vapes. ABF commissioner Michael Outram has acknowledged that his organisation is 'pretty stretched', telling Senate estimates last year that wastewater analysis indicated that it was detecting only 20 to 25 per cent of drugs at the border. That's a pointed reminder, I would suggest, that it will require the best efforts and the complete cooperation of both federal and state law enforcement agencies to ensure that the black market in vapes is minimised, if not eliminated. It will be incumbent on all of us to ensure that this legislation does not have an unintended consequence and create an unregulated black market in which it's even more difficult to manage risks to our children. That said, I will support this bill. 13:20 Mr REPACHOLI 298840 Hunter I rise to speak in support of the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. The Albanese Labor government is taking world-leading action to tackle vaping. Our reforms will protect Australians from the harms of vaping and nicotine dependence while ensuring that those with a legitimate need to access therapeutic vapes can continue to do so. Vaping is an issue that affects people all across Australian society. What is especially worrying, though, is that there has been a huge increase in the number of young people accessing and using vapes. In my electorate, teachers and parents have been worried and frustrated about why it has been so easy for their children to access vapes for so long. Vapes have been advertised with flavours and colours that completely misrepresent how harmful they are. Given how much progress we had made in Australia against young people smoking, it has been frustrating to see how quickly vapes have caught on with young people. The link between vaping and smoking is very clear. Young Australians who vape are around three times more likely to take up tobacco smoking compared to young Australians who have never vaped. The Australian Secondary Students Alcohol and Drug Survey shows that about one in eight 12- to 15-year-olds and one in five 16- to17-year-olds have vaped in the past month. A factor that is alarming health professionals, parents and teachers so deeply is how young people are when they are accessing these vapes. Nearly one-third of students tried vaping for the first time when they were aged 15 or 16, while 23 per cent of students reported being 12 years or younger. That's 23 per cent of students reporting being 12 years or younger; that's absolutely disgusting. Vaping is creating a whole new generation of nicotine dependency in our community. Vaping is a major threat to our success in tobacco control. The Albanese Labor government is not going to stand by and let this happen. Enough is enough. The vital reform in this bill will protect our youth from the harms of vaping whilst still ensuring that those struggling with nicotine dependency who have legitimate needs to access therapeutic vapes can continue to do so. Labor is proud to have been the party to keep Australia at the forefront of world-leading health policy. In 2012, we introduced world-leading plain packaging. Labor's world-leading measures have helped Australians to ditch the harmful practice of smoking, and now, in 2024, we seek to lead the world again with these measures against vapes. While we were out of office, the coalition dropped the ball on this big issue. Big tobacco was allowed to walk in, bringing nicotine dependency back into Australian life. Big tobacco sold vaping around the world as a therapeutic product to help long-term smokers quit. What they didn't mention was that the vapes would also be a recreational product, especially targeted to our kids, but that is what vapes have become. The Labor government will put Australia back at the front of the pack with a world-leading policy to combat vapes. Labor will put us back on track for a healthier future. We have already closed illegal loopholes used to sell vapes in shops. We have already banned the import of vapes unless they are strictly for a therapeutic purpose and accompanied by an import licence. We are clamping right down. These measures are no joke. Australian Border Force is regularly seizing illegal vapes at the border, and, in early February, a joint law enforcement exercise in Sydney resulted in the confiscation of approximately 210,000 disposable vapes as part of a seizure of $12.5 million of black-market nicotine goods. This additional round of vaping reforms will break bad habits early and strongly reduce access. This bill bans the importation, manufacture, supply, advertising and commercial possession of non-therapeutic vapes. For those who have struggled with kicking the habit of smoking and have a legitimate reason to use therapeutic vapes to break that habit, this bill ensures that therapeutic vaping goods will still be available through the medical system. This is how it should have always been. The Labor government is also increasing funding to services which will help people kick their habits. Quitline, the national hotline, provides counsellors who can help Australians quit smoking or vaping With the second stage of vaping reforms, the Albanese Labor government will blow the whole vaping industry away. Goodbye, vaping; we won't miss you. I have a nine-year-old daughter and another daughter, who is about to turn 11, and I can tell you: the threat is real that my daughters will end up vaping one day, and I really hope they don't. This bill will help stop that. We can't buy them at service stations anymore. You can't buy them at a local shop around the corner. This is really good. It's really good for Australia and really good for Australians. 13:26 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi I rise to speak on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, which amends the Therapeutic Goods Act. This bill bans the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertisement of disposable single-use and non-therapeutic vapes. I welcome these long-overdue reforms to curb the use of vapes in Australia. As a former nurse and regional health researcher, I've dedicated my life to improving the health outcomes of regional and rural Australians. Health—including, importantly, preventive health—is a key concern for the people I represent, the people of Indi. I've long shared my constituents' concerns about the prevalence of vaping, most particularly among young people. While I acknowledge the need for some patients to access therapeutic vapes to help manage their nicotine dependence, the reforms proposed in this bill are much-needed safeguards against the growing health risks posed by the vaping industry. My office has heard from concerned parents, school principals and health professionals worried about the use of vapes by children, particularly in our schools. I share these concerns, because youth vaping has increased significantly in recent years. According to the latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare statistics, one in two people aged 18 to 24 have experimented with vape use at least once in their lifetime, and the current use of vapes among young women has increased from 2.4 per cent in 2019 to a staggering 20 per cent in 2023. Lung Foundation Australia reports that, in 2023, 14.5 per cent of all teenagers aged 14 to 17 years old were currently vaping, increasing to 20 per cent for young Australians aged 18 to 24 years. These, in anybody's language, are shocking statistics. With so many young people now addicted to vaping, I have serious concerns about how these products are advertised and targeted at young people. Most of these vapes come in novelty fruit and confectionery flavours, are sold alongside lollies and popcorn and are designed specifically to appeal to young people. They're positioned as healthier alternatives to cigarettes, but we find ourselves on track to creating another generation of addiction, with elevated risks of serious health issues. The increase in vaping has translated to three times as many teenagers taking up smoking. Teen smoking in Australia hasn't risen in decades, but here we are. A Curtin University study tested the chemicals of 52 flavoured e-liquids available for sale over the counter in Australia and widely used in vapes. The research revealed a toxic cocktail of ingredients, highlighting the significant— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate will be resumed at a later hour, and the member will be given leave if she wishes to continue speaking when the debate is resumed. STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 50 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Berowra Electorate: Telecommunications 50 13:30 Mr LEESER 109556 Berowra In the Berowra electorate, we lag behind the rest of Australia when it comes to telco, because we're neither city nor rural and parts of the electorate fall through the cracks. As the Minister for Communications said last week about gaps in her own electorate's telco: 'This is not a nice-to-have. It's a necessity'—and I agree. Over recent months, residents across the electorate have been expressing concerns to me about the impending switch off of the 3G network. The problem with the switch off of the 3G network is that it leaves people across my electorate who don't have access to 4G or 5G with nothing. A recent survey of my electorate revealed that in suburbs like Galston, Arcadia, Wisemans Ferry, Milsons Passage, Maroota, Annangrove, Mount Colah and Laughtondale—even in Cherrybrook, Pennant Hills and Hornsby—people are still relying on the 3G network and cannot get the 4G or 5G network. For those stranded on boats in the Hawkesbury River, the 3G network is a lifeline. Some of those responding included a doctor on call for the Westmead Emergency Department, several RFS volunteers and a lady bedridden and on oxygen. There's not a shortage of technology—only a shortage of will. I welcome the announcement by Minister Rowland of a working group inquiring into the 3G shutdown, with a focus on 000 calls. In 2021 I proposed in a private member's bill that a telco had to continue to operate a 3G network until the minister could certify that a substitute 4G or 5G network was available. I encourage the minister to adopt my plan to ensure that no-one is left behind. Blood Cancer 50 13:31 Ms BYRNES 299145 Cunningham I rise today to recognise a member of the Illawarra community on a truly outstanding achievement. This year marks 26 years of Joe Alves shaving his head for the World's Greatest Shave. Over the past 26 years, Joe, who is a survivor himself, has raised over $320,000 and counting for the Leukaemia Foundation, making him one of the highest fundraising individuals in the country. It is such an outstanding achievement by just one man, who is making a massive difference in hundreds if not thousands of lives. I am so proud each year to attend Joe's shave at the South Coast Portuguese Association and celebrate with his friends, family and our community. Blood cancer is Australia's hidden cancer crisis. We lose 16 people to blood cancer every day—that's mothers, fathers, daughters, siblings and grandparents. Sixteen families lose a loved one. Those numbers are set to nearly double by 2035. In supporting Australians like Joe through their cancer journey, the Albanese Labor government released the Australian Cancer Plan, which aims to improve prevention, screening, treatment and management of all cancers for all people living in Australia, regardless of their background or where they live. This record-breaking investment of over $700 million in last year's budget will deliver improved cancer outcomes across Australia. New Vehicle Efficiency Standard 51 13:33 Mrs McINTOSH 281513 Lindsay The new vehicle efficiency standard—the tradie tax or the family car tax, as we call it—will hit everyday Aussies hard. This is why I supported the motion moved today by the member for Fairfax to refer the bills introduced by the transport minister to a committee process. We need more time to scrutinise what the impacts of this policy will be on tradies, families, farmers and small-business owners. Western Sydney is the home of tradies. Tradies get up before the crack of dawn to drive their utes to worksites across Sydney. Our tradies need utes for their work. They need to take tools and supplies to build new homes to get us out of this housing crisis. They need equipment to build hospitals, roads and schools to help ease the intense population pressures we are facing in Western Sydney. They are facing so many increases in supply costs. This would be another hit to Aussies trying to get by. Some favourites on the market for tradies include the Ford Ranger, Toyota HiLux and the Isuzu D-MAX. Why on earth, in this cost-of-living crisis, is the Albanese Labor government making tradies pay more for buying these utes they need for work? Why should tradies effectively subsidise electric vehicles for others? We on this side of the House will back in our tradies every single day of the week. We are seeing the trades sector get back to business as best they can after a tough few years, and this tradies tax will harm too many of our tradies and their small businesses. Tangney Electorate: Lynwood Senior High School 51 13:34 Mr LIM 300130 Tangney Education is the passport to the future. Last week I was honoured to attend an event celebrating Lynwood Senior High School's 50th anniversary and the successful completion of the extensive $25.3 million renovation. It was exciting to see the state and federal Labor governments working together and creating great results. But is not just about a shiny new building. The heart of Lynwood Senior High School is the dedicated teachers. They are more than educators. They are mentors who tirelessly nurture the potential within each student. Lynwood Senior High School has been delivering quality education since 1974. The students I met at the 50th anniversary celebration truly inspired me, as their passion, determination and resilience embodied the Lynwood Senior High School spirit. I cannot wait to see what these future leaders go on to achieve and the places that their Lynwood Senior High School education takes them. To the staff, teachers, committee members and parents who work tirelessly to make this school such a great school, such a great success: thank you. To Lynwood Senior High School: congratulation on your 50th great year. I can't wait to see what you will do in the next 50 years. Mayo Electorate: Treecovery Ltd 51 13:36 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo I recently attended the Lobethal worksite of Treecovery Ltd, which has been undertaking works in the northern part of the Adelaide Hills to aid the recovery after the bushfire disaster of the summer of 2019-20. The fires destroyed properties, leaving many with damaged plantations and wood lots that couldn't be cleared due to a lack of capacity, funding and of course equipment. The only option for many landowners was to bulldoze their trees and to burn them onsite. This was a costly and traumatic exercise for so many of our residents. Treecovery successfully applied for a grant under the Black Summer Bushfire Recovery Grants Program in 2022, and I was very pleased to support the application. The grant of $800,000 that they received enabled Treecovery to utilise skilled local contractors, who transformed what was considered a liability into a wonderful resource. More than 6,000 trees were removed and various markets were found for the processed materials, one of which was approximately 3,000 cubic metres of woodchips intended for conversion to biochar. I wish to thank the Treecovery board—Cass Selwood, David Checker, Jillian Dunn, Hazel Grigg, Greg Sproule and Peter McEntyre—for their tireless work on this very important project. I'd also like to thank Monique Haynes, who's an intern with me from the University of South Australia and is studying a unit at the ANU. Thank you, Monique, for this great speech. Bean Electorate: Capital Chemist Southlands, Cost of Living 51 13:37 Mr DAVID SMITH 276714 Bean I rise to congratulate Capital Chemist Southlands on being named Guild Pharmacy of the Year 2024. Capital Chemist Southlands stands out for its comprehensive approach to healthcare and pharmacy services. It's part of a great group of pharmacies. The team, led by Stacey Fuller and Louise McLean, has built a pharmacy that not only serves the community but also leads the way in professional innovation and effective business management. They have supported my family for generations and the Woden community through bushfires, pandemics and more. Earlier this month, the Albanese government secured an important heads of agreement with the Pharmacy Guild of Australia for the next community pharmacy agreement. The agreement will deliver cheaper medicines, improve patient health outcomes and secure a strong community pharmacy sector. Australians have saved more than $280 million on their medicine costs since January 2023, thanks to the Albanese government's commitment to cheaper medicines. The government's commitment to providing real and targeted cost-of-living support means that Australians aren't having to choose between their health and paying their bills—and, when we get to 1 July, tax cuts and support for fairer pay increases under this government will mean Australians will earn more and keep more of what they earn. Qantas 52 13:39 Mr KATTER HX4 Kennedy My grandfather was one of the people who put a lot of money behind a little fledgling airline called Qantas, and I recently wrote a letter to them in which I said that Alan Joyce might be gone but his spirit lives on in Qantas, and one thing is for sure: it ain't the spirit of Australia. Joyce has been blamed for everything, as rightly he should be, but the board has got clean away with this. I'm going to name the board, because people have got to go after them. I will name the sins of this board and how they represent the exact opposite position to those people who founded Qantas to overcome the tyranny of distance. Two of the three Katter boys died as a result of the tyranny of distance, so we didn't regret putting our money behind them. Let me list them. They had their workers, their baggage handlers, sleeping on concrete floors with blankets over them. This went on national television three times. These board members did nothing about it. The aero engineers association claimed that over 1,500 aeromechanic positions have been offshored, putting a question mark over the safety of this airline but also meaning that 1,500 people were sacked. Qantas have outsourced their cleaning and maintenance services to companies employing extremely low-paid foreign workers. They've jacked up the price of airfares for regional and remote areas. (Time expired) Cost of Living 52 13:41 Ms STANLEY 265990 Werriwa On 1 July 2024, 71,000 people, or 89 per cent of taxpayers in Werriwa, will be better off under the tax cuts legislated by the Albanese government. Thirteen point six million Australian taxpayers will receive a tax cut, three million more than would have received those tax cuts under the previous government. Five point eight million women, or 90 per cent of women taxpayers, will receive a bigger tax cut. That includes nurses, teachers and truckies—all of the people in Werriwa and all over the country who do everything for our society to keep it moving. They will all get a bigger tax cut. Families on $100,000 a year will receive $42 a week, going towards helping with the cost-of-living issues that people are dealing with. The tax cuts, coupled with the changes to the Medicare levy, will ensure that more Australians are helped and will ease the cost-of-living pressures. The Albanese government has also instigated a supermarket inquiry by the ACCC, to ensure that Australian farmers and shoppers are better looked after. The Albanese government's priority is to address inflation and cost of living, and we are delivering $23 billion in targeted cost-of-living relief. The government has made medicines cheaper. It has done so much. The Albanese government wants to ensure that all Australians earn more and keep more of what they earn. Wild Dogs 52 13:42 Mr CHESTER IPZ Gippsland I want to raise my controls with the Victorian government's decision to end wild dog control measures on public land in Victoria's north-west. I've already been contacted by people in my electorate of Gippsland who are concerned that this is yet another example of extreme green madness working its way through the bureaucracy and the Labor Party ranks in Victoria. They feared that this madness will spread to Gippsland as well and lead to an explosion wild dog attacks on our farmlands. This is madness, because wild dogs cost the Australian economy in the order of $100 million per year in lost production, they cause enormous stress and mental health problems for our farming families and they devastate native wildlife. Even if the Labor Party and the Greens don't care about our farmers, they should understand the impact on biodiversity. Wild dogs are opportunistic predators. They will prey on anything from goannas to birds to koalas. We have a National Wild Dog Action Plan which promotes national consistency and strategies to conduct safe, efficient and humane-best practice control of wild dogs. I've written to the federal minister and urged him to pressure his Victorian Labor colleagues to support the National Wild Dog Action Plan, because these dogs are highly mobile. They don't respect state borders, and obviously to succeed in controlling wild dogs we need all jurisdictions working together. I note that this decision by the Victorian government was made without consulting the National Wild Dog Action Plan coordination committee. (Time expired) Cost of Living 53 13:44 Ms MILLER-FROST 296272 Boothby My electorate of Boothby has saved over $2¼ million in reduced prescription co-payments since 1 January 2023. That's over 180,000 prescriptions on the reduced co-payment. But wait—there's more. They've also filled over 29,000 60-day prescriptions, so those people not only saved on the co-payment but also got twice as much medicine for the same price, and they don't need to go back to the doctor for their new prescriptions as often. I met yesterday with my former colleague Dr Sian Goodson from RACGP SA, and I was really pleased to be able to tell her that the recent tripling of the Medicare bulk-billing incentive has resulted in a 4.8 per cent increase in bulk-billing in Boothby. But let's not forget: free-free TAFE, massively oversubscribed in my electorate; cheaper child care, dropping average childcare fees by 14 per cent; power bill relief for concession-card holders and eligible small businesses; the supermarket inquiry; and backing the rise in the minimum wage. This government has been focused on targeted cost-of-living relief that will not drive inflation but will drive productivity. What's next? A tax cut for every Australian taxpayer. Eighty-five per cent of Boothby taxpayers will be better off under our plan. Ninety-eight per cent of young people will be better off. Ninety per cent of women will be better off. This government wants Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn. Coppin, Mr Langtree Eric Christopher (Lang), OAM 53 13:45 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack Today I would like to pay tribute to Lang Coppin for his 46-year-long service as a councillor on the Council of the Shire of East Pilbara, and I'd like to acknowledge the shire representatives with us in the chamber today. During Lang's tenure, he provided leadership and representation for the northern part of the east Pilbara district, with a particular focus on the interests of the Marble Bar community and the pastoralist sector. Lang has always been a straight shooter and a real champion for his community. His lengthy service was—up until his retirement in October—I understand, the longest current period of service of any elected member to any council, parliament or assembly in Australia. Lang served as the shire's deputy president on a variety of occasions. In 2013, he received national recognition with a Medal of the Order of Australia with the citation 'For service to the community of the East Pilbara.' The shire has announced that it will bestow upon Lang the highest honour the council has to award: the freeman of the shire. This will be awarded at a community gathering in Marble Bar on Wednesday 10 April that I will have the great pleasure and honour of attending. Congratulations, Lang, and thank you for your service to the east Pilbara. Fuel 53 13:47 Mr REPACHOLI 298840 Hunter Everyone knows there's a lot of pressure on people's finances right now, but some businesses in my electorate are adding to this pressure. And it's a disgrace. In Singleton, fuel companies are charging up to 55c more, per litre of petrol, compared to what they charge in other towns in my electorate. This is an absolute rort. Costs are high enough as it is. This is just pure, unjustifiable greed. The same fuel trucks that supply Singleton also supply the other towns where petrol is sold 55c cheaper. When I speak to Singleton residents about this, they point out that the price spike is particularly around shift-change times in the mines. People are already working hard to earn money to pay their bills and look after their families. The last thing they need, after finishing a shift at work, is to get slugged by a multibillion-dollar fuel company when they fill up their car on their way home. It's a spit in the face for those doing it tough and working hard. There are eight petrol stations in Singleton—more than enough stations to expect competition on prices. I have written to the ACCC asking them to stop this collusion. I call on the businesses to do the right thing. Drop the prices. It's time to end this rort. And to the people of the Hunter: don't forget that every taxpayer in the Hunter will get a tax cut in the near future. Labor wants us all to earn more and keep more of what we earn. Labor Government 53 13:48 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina The tactics are obvious. Labor members have been sent in here to talk about the cost of living and to say, 'Keep more of what you earn'—it's all in the talking points. But it's so untrue. And you know, people outside this building know that Labor doesn't really mean what it says. Labor has just been sent in here to talk it up, but we all know that the cost of living is on Labor's watch and we all know it's Labor's fault. And people out there know that Labor's hardly doing a thing about it. Look at the number of tradies that we just don't have in our economy today. We're 90,000 short, according to Rob Sobyra, quoted in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald this week that describes him as 'head of research at BuildSkills, launched by the government to address construction workforce' issues. What's Labor doing about it? Labor talks a big game when it comes to the amount of housing we need. Labor is doing nothing about it. What Labor is doing for our tradies is whacking them with higher prices for their utes. The minister for climate change has had his reins pulled in, in relation to the fuel efficiency standards. It's all on Labor's watch, and it's simply not good enough. The construction industry is absolutely on its knees. So many companies are going bankrupt, and Labor comes in here, just reading the dirt unit talking points. Not good enough, Labor. Start listening to the people out there who are hurting. Higher Education Loan Program 54 13:50 Dr ANANDA-RAJAH 290544 Higgins Uni should deliver optimism rather than fear for young people over their financials. That's why we will be considering all 47 recommendations from the 12-month review of the universities that we initiated, called the Universities Accord. HELP needs to be made simpler and fairer; that's the take-home message. The report recommends that HELP needs to be modernised to reduce the financial burden on lower-income workers, like young people who are usually starting out; the timing of indexation should be changed; and HELP debt should not grow faster than someone's wages. Fixing HELP is in our national interest because going to uni or TAFE is linked to higher wages—in fact, $30,000 more compared to if you just finish year 12. We won't be abolishing it because there's no such thing as a free lunch; someone always pays. But we want to make it fairer and simpler. That's why we'll be giving these recommendations the consideration they deserve. In the meantime, we are delivering the intergenerational dividend through our tax cuts. Ninety-eight per cent of the 1.5 million 18- to 24-year-olds will be receiving a bigger tax cut under us—$1,000 on average—when before they would have mostly received nothing. If that is not the intergenerational dividend, I don't know what is. Add free TAFE to the mix and we then create pathways for young people into well-paid careers, enabling them to earn more and keep more of what they earn. COVID-19: Vaccination 54 13:51 Mr BROADBENT MT4 Monash Last week a 52-year-old woman from my electorate called me in great distress. Her name is Verity. Previously fit and healthy, Verity told me about the horrific pain and suffering she endured after reluctantly submitting to the COVID injection. Ironically, Verity had been terminated from her job as a midwife due to the mandates because she was waiting for Novavax—a decision she came to after seeing her sister diagnosed with Guillian-Barre syndrome following a Pfizer injection. Verity outlined the disgraceful treatment she received from the very people who should have given her comfort and solace when she sought treatment for her symptoms. Not one but two doctors accused her of being an anti-vaxxer. She was told us that her reactions meant 'the jab must be working' and that her severe chest pain and inability to breathe was 'just anxiety'. But it was her parting pleas that struck me hardest. Through loud sobs, she said to me: Russell, thank you for listening to me—I've been silenced, censored and ridiculed, and felt completely isolated … How can a doctor call me an anti-vaxxer when I took the vaccine? I'm a politician, and you can ridicule me; we're paid for that. But don't ridicule or abandon these injured people. I stand with Verity and all the voiceless vaccine injured, including Ro, who is in the gallery today, and Rado and Kara, who are unable to be here due to ill health. I seek leave to table Verity's email. Leave not granted. Housing Affordability 54 13:53 Mr LAXALE 299174 Bennelong For the first time in a long time I tuned in to Q&A this week to listen to an important discussion on housing. In and amongst some honourable contributions by the New South Wales housing minister, Rose Jackson, there was an absolute shocker by the member for Griffith. Get this; he said that the planning system had nothing to do with the affordability of housing. Now, anyone who knows anything about housing knows that what the member for Griffith said is absolute A-grade rubbish. To the member for Griffith and those who orbit in his alternative reality, let's get real: the best way to deal with housing affordability is to deal with housing supply, and the best way to deal with housing supply is through planning reform. For the member for Griffith to be so dismissive of the role planning has to play and then to mansplain to the housing minister about the housing affordability crisis tells you everything you need to know about him and his political motives. Unlike the Greens, we believe that planning reform can make a difference. Not only have we asked the states to reform their planning systems but we're incentivising them to do so—$3 billion will go to state governments that reform their planning systems and increase housing supply. More supply will lead to better housing affordability. Labor knows that we are in a housing crisis. Unlike the Greens, who play politics, and the Liberals, who vote against our policies, we're actually doing something about it. Flinders Electorate: Somerville Family Dental Care 55 13:54 Ms McKENZIE 124514 Flinders As we head off tonight to rejoin our communities for hot cross buns and Easter eggs this weekend, I stand up to give a pre-emptive shout-out to my local dentists at Somerville Family Dental Care. Last Saturday evening I had the honour of opening their new premises on Frankston-Flinders Road, where doctors Gisella and Pilar and their practice manager, Katherine, have renovated a beautiful Art Deco weatherboard home, putting in three chairs, modern equipment, peaceful places for patients and beautiful places for the team to rest, surrounded by a superb Mornington Peninsula garden. An amazing family story sits behind this business—a story of generations of dentists across two continents and bounteous parental pride. Pilar and Gigi were born in Peru, where their parents, Ada and Pedro, fell in love while studying dentistry. Their dutiful daughters heeded their parents' advice and mastered English but in their hearts desperately wanted to follow in their footsteps and become dentists. In his speech on Saturday, Pedro told us of his heartache when Pilar decided to move to Australia in 2006, where she passed her exams in record time. Her younger sister, Gigi, followed suit in 2010. There was not a dry eye in the house when Pedro concluded, en Espanol claro que si: 'One of the most important moments in the life of a parent is seeing how their children's projects become a reality. Today it is this moment for me and Adita. Our beloved daughters have opened their first dental clinic, thanks to their efforts, decision-making, professionalism and ability.' So eat up, I say, colleagues, because, if you are as lucky as me, your Easter feast will land you in the lap of the most loving family at Somerville Family Dental Care. Economy 55 13:56 Mr RAE 300122 Hawke I was very pleasantly surprised to see the newly minted—or perhaps recast—Senator Sharma make some insightful economic reflections in his first speech to the Senate last week. Senator Sharma highlighted that a 'rapid redistribution of national income' had seen labour's share of national income shrink. Senator Sharma concluded his economic analysis by saying: Big businesses have gained; workers and small businesses have lost. Perhaps since Senator Sharma was gifted an opportunity for reflection by the member for Wentworth he has come to realise that the Liberal economic legacy of suppressed wages, the worst decade for productivity in 50 years and a trillion dollars of Liberal debt have left the Australian people worse off. While Senator Sharma's analysis is likely the most insightful contribution a Liberal has made to the debate, it is sadly unlikely that his economic come-to-Jesus moment will move the needle of economic sense in his decrepit party room. While the Albanese Labor government is delivering cost-of-living tax cuts and supporting wage increases, the Liberals opposite have demonstrated their desperation to suppress wages even from the opposition benches. They opposed increases to the minimum wage; they opposed our secure jobs, better pay bill; they opposed closing the casual and labour hire loopholes; and they vowed to roll back Labor's cost-of-living tax cuts. The Albanese Labor government is ensuring that working people earn more and keep more of what they earn, while the Liberals opposite just want people to work longer for less. Economy 55 13:57 Mr TED O'BRIEN 138932 Fairfax To invoke the lyrics of one of Elton John's greatest hits, 'sorry' can be the hardest word. As we go to Easter and we see Australians right across the country struggling amidst Labor's cost-of-living crisis, we know how tough they're doing it. If I can give some gratuitous advice to the Prime Minister, maybe now is the time to just say sorry—to say sorry to the Australian people, who were promised a $275 reduction in their household power bills and who we now know will pay up to $1,000 more than what they were promised. Since Labor came to office, 500 families have gone on hardship arrangements every single week, and they're struggling. They'll struggle through Easter. So I say to the Prime Minister and to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, who also continues to hold that line: we all know your promise has been broken. The Australian people aren't fools. It's a hard word to say, but just say sorry. Economy 55 13:59 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor It not being question time, I'm free to compare and contrast. Those opposite carp and preach while we listen and act. What's the evidence? The climate change deniers over there want to get in the way of renewable energy while this responsible government wants to clean up the mess and get the country moving. Over there they left us with debt as far as the eye can see. Over here, we've got a government that delivered a surplus for the first time in 15 years. Over there, there are billions of dollars' worth of tax cuts that miss lower and middle income earners. On this side, we delivered a tax cut to every Australian taxpayer. Over there, they want to carp and talk about cost-of-living pain and have a knee-jerk reaction to everything we try to do to assist Australian families. The SPEAKER 53517 In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded. CONDOLENCES 56 CONDOLENCES White, Senator Linda 56 Report from Federation Chamber 56 14:00 The SPEAKER 53517 I understand it is the wish of the House to consider the matter immediately. The question is that the motion moved by the Hon. Prime Minister be agreed to. As a mark of respect, I ask all present to signify their approval by rising in their places. Question agreed to, honourable members standing in their places. The SPEAKER 53517 I thank the House. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 56 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Ministerial Standards 56 14:01 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Can the minister confirm that she verbally abused the secretary of her department, causing the secretary to leave her office in tears? 14:02 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham I thank the Deputy Leader of the Opposition for her question. The secretary of my department and I have worked together really closely—and, boy, have we got a job to do because we are working together to reform a department that was left in an absolute mess by the Leader of the Opposition. Look at what we have achieved on this together over the past year that we've been working together: a Cyber Security Strategy for our country which is leading the world, a migration strategy that is fixing the mess left by the Leader of the Opposition in a system that isn't working, a big focus on integrity that is addressing some of the issues that I've raised with the parliament before. We are continuing to work together very constructively. Economy 56 14:02 Ms MILLER-FROST 296272 Boothby My question is to the Treasurer. What does the recent economic data mean for the budget in May and how will the budget help clean up the mess the government inherited? 14:03 Dr CHALMERS 37998 Rankin Thanks to the member for Boothby for all of her hard work and for her great question. Earlier today, we got news that monthly inflation was steady at 3.4 per cent. This means that monthly inflation is at its lowest level in more than two years. It also means that monthly inflation is now almost half of what we inherited when we came to office—it's 3.4 now and was 6.1 when we came to office. As I said earlier in the week, the monthly inflation figure is a bit less reliable than the quarterly one—the monthly bounces around a bit. In the quarterly data, we're making even more progress. We inherited 2.1 per cent and it's now 0.6 per cent, still higher than we would like, but the direction of travel when it comes to inflation is welcome. It's encouraging and it's clear. We're especially encouraged in today's numbers by new analysis by the ABS, which I can share with the House. Rent over the last year was 7.6 per cent—too high, but it would have been 9.2 per cent without our budget. But the one I want those opposite to particularly focus on is that, when you look at the electricity price rises since June of last year, they have gone up three per cent. Do you know what that would have been were it not for our energy plan? Eighteen point one per cent. That is three per cent versus 18.1 per cent since the middle of last year. When they voted no to our energy rebates, they voted yes to even higher inflation. That's not an opinion; that is a fact. It means that our cost-of-living relief is working as we designed it to, and we see it in the figures. We're getting inflation down as an important part of ensuring that people are earning more and keeping more of what they earn. We have inflation moderating and we've got wages going—that means we've turned real wages around. We inherited negative-3.4 per cent and they are now growing again. Real wages are growing, inflation is moderating and unemployment is falling in the most recent data, but we do acknowledge that we've also got a slowing economy, we've also got global uncertainty and people are under pressure. These are the three most important pressures and influences on the budget that we will hand down from this despatch box in May when the parliament next sits. We will find the best balance of relief, repair and reform: cost-of-living relief built on a tax cut for every single taxpayer; repair of the budget; and reform of our economy so that we can attract and deploy investment in ways that deliver a new generation of growth, productivity and competitiveness so that we can get the budget in better nick without neglecting the pressures that we know people are still under despite the welcome and encouraging news on inflation today. Minister for Home Affairs 57 14:05 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Has the minister apologised to the secretary of her department following her verbal altercation? 14:06 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham It looks like I'm going to get a bit of time on my feet today, which I'm very excited about. On indulgence, I acknowledge that we have Greek leaders from around Australia here with us, and I welcome them to our parliament. It is a privilege to have you here. When the Greeks invented democracy, I'm not sure if this is exactly what they had in mind but we're doing our absolute best. As I said in response to the previous question, I work very closely with the secretary of my department. Let me talk about some of the work that we're doing so constructively together. As I have spoken to the parliament about before, we have a Department of Home Affairs with some significant issues. The SPEAKER 53517 The minister will pause; I want to hear from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Ms Ley 00AMN A point of order on relevance, Mr Speaker: it was a very direct question. Has the minister apologised to the secretary of her department? The SPEAKER 53517 The minister was asked a specific question. She is not entitled to then start talking about broad portfolio issues. She will need to keep her answer efficient to the question. Ms O'NEIL 140590 Absolutely. I would say again to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that my secretary and I work very closely together. It's why I was very supportive of the decision of the Prime Minister and PM&C to appoint Secretary Foster to this role. We have an incredibly important cleanup job to do in the department work that we're doing. Don't take it from me—take it from the litany of eminent Australians who have written reports about significant systemic issues in my department. Opposition members interjecting— Ms O'NEIL 140590 Perhaps you should have waited before taking your point of order so quickly. We have a significant job to do but I am committed to doing it because I'm here to serve the national interest and not a political interests of the Liberal Party. National Disability Insurance Scheme 57 14:08 Ms FERNANDO 299964 Holt My question is to the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. How is the Albanese Labor government getting the NDIS back on track, making the scheme sustainable for future generations, and helping ensure every dollar is going to participants who need it? The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The Leader of the Opposition will cease interjecting. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my left. The member for Barker won't interject before I call the minister. 14:08 Mr SHORTEN 00ATG Maribyrnong Members of this House know that the National Disability Insurance Scheme is changing lives. It is perhaps one of the best achievements of our parliament in the 21st century. There are now 650,000 people receiving individual packages of support and there are now about 400,000 people who say that they earn their main income working in the NDIS. It is an achievement of all sides of politics. It started via bipartisan consensus and we intend to try to keep that. However, it is true that the scheme is moving off track. The experience recorded by participants is that it isn't always consistent, it's not always equitable and it's not always transparent. There are some unethical service providers—a minority—who are taking advantage of participants in the scheme,. Indeed, it also faces the risk of becoming the only lifeboat in the ocean. What I mean by that is that the NDIS is now viewed as trying to solve issues for all people with disability in Australia. As a result, it's been growing faster than projected. Since the election, we've been getting on with improving the scheme. We've created a fraud taskforce, we've put people with disability in leadership positions in the agency and also we've commenced a root-and-branch review, which concluded in December of last year. Significantly, our National Cabinet—the Prime Minister and premiers—agreed to achieve eight per cent target growth in three years. Also, the National Cabinet has agreed that one way that we improve the future of the scheme is to build services for Australians with disabilities outside the NDIS and that we would introduce legislation in the first half. I'm pleased to advise the House that today we have introduced the draft bill. This bill is the result of a year and a half of consultation and of talking to people about how the scheme can be best improved, and I acknowledge the interests of members of the House in the scheme, because I've received 782 individual matters from MPs about issues to do with the NDIS. The bill contains a series of initial measures: how we can have better planning, better assessment and better cost controls and build supports outside the scheme. The bill is important, but it is not a fait accompli, and we don't put it forward on the basis that we don't want to hear the voices of the opposition and people with disability in coming weeks. There will be anxiety amongst people with disability whenever you talk about changing the scheme. The scheme, for all its imperfections, is the best chance that many families and people have of having a better life. So, in adopting the process of change, I want to reassure participants in the scheme, people who work in the area and the broader Australian people that we will work through these in a consultative and collaborative manner, but I also say that the option of doing nothing is not an option. We say to people with disability: we won't seek change in fear, but we shouldn't fear to change. This scheme's too important for future generations. (Time expired) DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 58 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS Parliament of Western Australia, Parliament of Queensland, Canberra Fellowships Program, Greek Australian Community 58 14:12 The SPEAKER 53517 I'm pleased to inform the House that in the gallery today are ministers Reece Whitby and David Michael from the Western Australian parliament; Ms Joan Pease, the member for Lytton; and a delegation from Thailand who are participating in the Canberra Fellowships Program hosted by DFAT. I, too, would like to welcome our friends from the Greek Australian community. Welcome to question time. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 58 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Australian Football League 58 14:12 Mr WILKIE C2T Clark My question is to the Prime Minister. Minister. Why has your government twice prevented me from tabling these documents, which contain evidence of appalling misconduct by AFL executives and some team staff? Why are you trying to keep them a secret—or can I walk down and give them to you personally right now? 14:12 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the member for Clark for his question. I note that walking around the chamber is disorderly, but I do note that the member for Clark has always had access to me, as other members of parliament do. There isn't a member here, including over there, up there or behind me, who has asked to see me or made a phone call and has not had a call returned—not one. That's the way that I deal with parliamentarians, and I deal with senators the same—with respect. In general, we have an approach that, when documents are requested to be tabled, if people want that, the normal process would be to ask, as when I was a member of the opposition and wanted something to be tabled. If I was serious about getting it tabled, I would ask, show it to the person at the dispatch box and receive that. I am aware that the member for Clark has made allegations. I am not aware of whether those allegations are correct or not. I have a big job; on that job description isn't the control of the Australian Football League. But, if issues are raised, Sport Integrity Australia are aware of the issue and they have begun their assessment, and I'm sure that the member for Clark will forward any documentation to the appropriate body. New Vehicle Efficiency Standard 58 14:14 Ms SITOU 298121 Reid My question is to the Minister for Transport. How is the Albanese Labor government's New Vehicle Efficiency Standard delivering for Australians where previous governments couldn't? 14:14 Ms CATHERINE KING 00AMR Ballarat I very much thank the member for Reid for that question. She is someone who wants her constituents to benefit from fuel savings and from having more efficient cars, whether petrol, diesel, hybrid or electric, than there would be in the Australian market. This morning I introduced the Albanese government's New Vehicle Efficiency Standard legislation into the parliament, and after a quarter of a century of failed attempts Australia will finally have a New Vehicle Efficiency Standard—a standard that will deliver Australians more choice of new cars, will save Australians thousands at the bowser and will reduce our emissions. It is a model where Australians will continue to be able to buy the utes and the SUVs that they love. The shadow spokesperson for transport let the cat out of the bag yesterday when her sole contribution to the public debate on this matter was to gloat about the fact that her government shut down the Australian car manufacturing industry. Despite being in government for two separate periods this century, that is their only policy contribution to the automotive sector in this country. While the Liberals and Nationals are gloating over and over again about destroying local manufacturing jobs, the Albanese Labor government is delivering Australians a greater choice of cleaner, cheaper-to-run cars. Ms CATHERINE KING 00AMR I note that the member for Bradfield is contributing. I understand that he's disappointed he was not able to get an efficiency standard when he was in government. Well, this side is delivering it, and I look forward to you voting for it, Member for Bradfield. Despite being in government for, as I said, two separate periods this century, those opposite failed to deliver on their own policy of an efficiency standard. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy and I have undertaken significant consultation with the industry and with climate groups in developing this standard, and we thank everyone who has engaged constructively with us through this process. I note that those opposite are of course not amongst that group, having yesterday said that they'd vote against the legislation, before it had even been tabled and before they had even seen it—nothing new about that. I'd particularly like to acknowledge Toyota, Hyundai, Tesla, the Motor Trades Association, the Automobile Dealer Association and the Electric Vehicle Council for their positive engagement, and all the other manufacturers who engaged constructively with our offices. Australians have, frankly, been left behind as consumers while the most advanced economies across the world benefit from more fuel-efficient cars and greater access to new low and net zero technology. Together with Russia, we were one of the only advanced economies that did not regulate the efficiency of new vehicles. It's time we got on with it. It's time we provided greater choice to Australian consumers so that they can benefit from the fuel savings that a fuel efficiency standard brings to everyone. Minister for Home Affairs 59 14:17 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Can the minister confirm that other departmental staff were present at the time of her verbal altercation with the secretary of her department? 14:18 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham I think we can all see and agree that agility is not exactly their strong point here. This is the third variation of the exact same question. I'd say again to the deputy leader and I'd say again to the parliament: I am incredibly proud to work with the secretary of my department. We're doing really important things in Home Affairs, and we have a very a close and collaborative relationship. Energy 59 14:18 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Why is the rollout of renewables and storage in this decade so important? What other energy policies have been proposed? 14:19 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon I thank my honourable friend for her question and of course her very strong climate leadership in her electorate and here in Canberra. The honourable member knows, as do experts in the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Operator and so many others, that rolling out renewables and storage over this decade is critical, not just for reducing emissions in this vital decade but also because it's the cheapest form of energy available and therefore puts downward pressure on bills. It's important for jobs and jobs creation. It's also very important for reliability. As coal-fired power stations get older, we need to replace them. As I said, that is why it's important that our 5.9 gigawatts of new renewable energy over the last year and record storage deployment has been rolled out. The honourable member asked me about alternative approaches. The alternative approach that's been proposed by those opposite is nuclear. Nuclear might have some other challenges in rolling out across the country. The Leader of the Opposition's been saying recently that business needs to speak up, business needs to talk out. The Leader of the Opposition said, 'I think CEOs have a moral obligation to speak up about what's happening in the economy.' Well, based on the previous answer, he believes that unless they disagree with him—and I might have some bad news for the Leader of the Opposition. The chief executive of one of Australia's largest energy companies, AGL, was asked about nuclear recently. He said, 'The cost, build time and public opinion are all prohibitive,' on nuclear. Then one of the country's largest energy users, Tomago Aluminium, in the Hunter, was asked about nuclear. Mr Selvaraja of Rio Tinto said: As far as we can see … all validated and independent data that exists on costs say that it (nuclear) is a very expensive source of energy. And I think in Australia, certainly, we've got low cost wind and solar, and we were going to run with that. So you've got one of the country's largest energy suppliers and one of the country's largest energy users saying it takes too long. That's before we even get to where they will go. We've heard those 12 brave souls say not in their electorate. We've also seen speculation that there'll be a nuclear power station at Anglesea in Victoria, but the Leader of the Opposition's office cleared that up. In the Surf Coast Times on the weekend—I read it every weekend—the Leader of the Opposition's office issued a statement, which said: Attempts to suggest the Coalition has any sort of nuclear plan are irresponsible and incorrect. There we go! Any sort of nuclear plan is irresponsible and incorrect. Maybe they got it right, because they got a thought bubble, but they certainly don't have a plan. The SPEAKER 53517 I give the call to— Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my left. The member for New England is continuously interjecting. He's now warned, so no more interjections from the member for New England. Immigration Detention 60 14:22 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. On 12 February the Department of Home Affairs told Senate estimates that 149 criminals, including 7 murderers, 37 sex offenders and 72 other violent criminals, had been released from immigration detention. Seven separate government sources have told the Sydney Morning Herald the minister's office attempted to ensure the department never gave this evidence so that the explosive document would be kept hidden from the Australian public. Minister, is this true? 14:23 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham I'd say to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that I'm not sure what the complaint is here, because information was requested of the government and the information was provided to the opposition and to the public. Manufacturing Industry 60 14:23 Ms SWANSON 264170 Paterson My question is to the Prime Minister. How do we build a future made in Australia? What's been standing in the way of making more things here, PM? 14:23 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the member for Paterson for her question. I look forward to being back in the Hunter tomorrow with the member for Hunter, the member for Paterson and other members. We'll be speaking about the importance, in that great manufacturing centre of Australia, of making things right here in Australia—not just exporting our resources that give a great deal of value to our national economy and create jobs but, where we can, making sure that we value-add. That is an issue for our economy, but it's also an issue of our national security because we need to be a resilient economy. We need to be an economy that isn't dependent and vulnerable to shocks, be it a pandemic or be it conflict internationally, which can have an impact on the Australian economy. That's why there is such a stark contrast. Our government does believe in a future made in Australia. It does believe in investing in solar and wind and new energy; investing in manufacturing and critical minerals; and investing in people through fee-free TAFE and the plan that's been put forward by the education minister through the Universities Accord. It believes in creating jobs in our suburbs and creating jobs in our regions; building energy security, economic security and national security; and moving up the international value chain. This is a whole-of-nation opportunity that we have which requires a whole-of-economy approach, and that is my government's approach. It does stand in contrast to the impediments which have been there. I was quite stunned that yesterday the shadow minister for infrastructure and transport sent out a tweet about EVs. She said: The changes being mooted by the Labor's policy are the most significant changes to our auto and motoring industry since we shut down manufacturing. Wow. She put her hand up in a tweet. But then, just in case it was an error, later she held a press conference and she said: 'The changes being mooted by the Labor Party's policy are the most significant changes to our automobile industry, to our motoring industry, since we shut down manufacturing.' She went on and she said: 'That's a fact.' It sure is a fact. That fact is that the coalition's shadow minister for infrastructure and transport— (Time expired) DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 61 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS Galea, Mr Michael, Australian Indigenous Education Foundation, Isolated Children's Parents' Association 61 14:27 The SPEAKER 53517 I'd like to acknowledge Mr Michael Galea, a member of the Victorian parliament, as well as Australian Indigenous Education Foundation scholars and CEO, Andrew Penfold, who are joining us in the southern gallery. I'd also like to acknowledge representatives from the Isolated Children's Parents' Association. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 61 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Immigration Detention 61 14:27 Mr TEHAN 210911 Wannon My question is to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. Minister, you weren't talking to the secretary of your department when 149 former immigration detainees were roaming free and 39 asylum seekers arrived at Beagle Bay in Western Australia. Why should the Australian people have any confidence that you can keep them safe? The SPEAKER 53517 I'm not sure if that was a statement or a question at the beginning—I'll hear from the Leader of the House on a point of order. There was a question at the end of the statement. Mr Burke DYW The member has been here long enough to know if he's using the word 'you' it's a question directed to the Speaker. The question could at least be phrased in a way that's in order. The SPEAKER 53517 I know the member for Wannon always likes to follow the rules, so I'll allow him to rephrase the question. Mr TEHAN 210911 Would you like me to ask the whole thing again or just the question? The SPEAKER 53517 You can do the whole thing. I'm feeling generous today. It's Easter. Mr TEHAN 210911 My question is to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs. The minister wasn't talking to the secretary of his department when 149 former immigration detainees were roaming free and 39 asylum seekers arrived at Beagle Bay in Western Australia. Minister, why should the Australian people have any confidence that you, the minister, can keep them safe? Ms O'Neil 140590 You had one job! The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The Minister for Home Affairs will cease interjecting. 14:29 Mr GILES 243609 Scullin I thank the member for Wannon for his question, but let me make one thing very clear: the allegation that it's based on is simply not true. It is simply not true. I can say, further to that, that I speak with Ms Foster very regularly, as I did when she was the associate secretary. She is a highly credentialed public servant who I am privileged to work with together with my friend the Minister for Home Affairs. Broadband 61 14:29 Ms BELYEA 309484 Dunkley My question is to the Minister for Communications. How is the Albanese Labor government's expansion of the national broadband network delivering productivity and cost-of-living benefits for Australians after a wasted decade under those opposite? 14:30 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway I thank the member for her question. Labor founded the national broadband network to provide fast, reliable and affordable broadband to all Australians, and we are delivering on our vision of a world-class fibre network. The Albanese government are investing $2.4 billion over four years to give more households and businesses full-fibre access, and we are making swift progress. Upgrades are underway across the country, with NBN announcing this week that two million premises in New South Wales and Victoria can now order a full-fibre upgrade. I'm pleased to inform the member that there are some 43,000 premises in her electorate of Dunkley that can get a high-speed fibre connection. The premises eligible for upgrades include 660,000 homes and businesses in the regions that are currently on slower, less reliable copper wire. Full-fibre upgrades boost the reliability of services and the productivity of our homes and businesses, helping give back precious time in the day as well as cost savings. The upgrades support the fast, evolving ways in which Australians work, study and interact. For instance, the average home now hosts some 21 internet connected or smart devices, and data usage in Australia has increased 10 times over the past 10 years. That's why fibre is so important; it can deliver speeds 18 times faster than the average copper connection can, has less latency and is less likely to drop out. The productivity and efficiency gains are so significant. Research commissioned by NBN Co shows that Australians can save more than 100 hours and $2,580 per year in avoided travel time and costs when working from home and undertaking tasks online. But this was lost on those opposite. During their wasted decade, their oversight of the NBN was a masterclass in economic and technical incompetence. Who could forget Tony Abbott's famous forecast that 'we are absolutely confident that 25 megs is going to be enough, more than enough, for the average household'. It is only a Labor government that can be relied on to invest in the long-term infrastructure that Australia needs to help with the cost of living, improve our national productivity and support our businesses to be globally competitive. It's great to see that NBN Co is now consulting with industry on a plan to turbocharge speeds and give customers upgrades to faster speeds at no extra wholesale cost, meaning that people will get more for what they pay on their telco bills. Only Labor can be relied on to provide meaningful help with the cost of living. Climate Change 62 14:33 Mr BANDT M3C Melbourne My question is to the Minister for Resources. A few months after being appointed resources minister, the minister said on ABC Perth radio that carbon dioxide was not noxious: It's the bubbles in your soda water or out of your SodaStream. So, we've got to keep it in balance, how we think about carbon dioxide … Is this reckless, dangerous view the reason the minister is so intent on opening up massive new climate-destroying gas projects, even if it derails the rest of the government's legislative agenda? Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my right and members on my left will cease interjecting. 14:34 Ms MADELEINE KING 102376 Brand No, it's science. The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Paterson is warned. Ms MADELEINE KING 102376 Carbon dioxide in low amounts, which is what's in SodaStream and in soft drinks— Ms Catherine King 00AMR It's a very popular product. Ms MADELEINE KING 102376 it's very popular—isn't noxious. It absolutely is not. Of course, dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide through our climate is dangerous. I'm not a climate denier. There are people in this building that might be, and I think there are fewer and fewer every year. It is not noxious in the small amounts to which I referred to in that interview. Dangerous amounts of carbon dioxide cause global warming, and that is why this government has taken steps immediately upon becoming elected to introduce measures. We've passed many bits of legislation—the safeguards mechanism, the climate targets, the vehicles emission standards scheme which is going through the parliament right now. I would remind the leader of the Greens political party exactly what his party has done in the past. It was the Greens political party that came into this parliament and voted against the CPRS many years ago. Mr Bandt M3C You're opening gas projects! Ms MADELEINE KING 102376 You might laugh, the member for Melbourne. He should go right ahead, through you, Mr Speaker. The record is here, in Hansard. History has been set, and you helped set it. You put back this country's battle to fight climate change by decades. So, I say to the leader of the Greens political party, you get exactly what you deserve. Your party has made this happen all on your very own for your very own political purposes. Ms MADELEINE KING 102376 I must object to the member for Melbourne continuing to laugh at what is a very serious topic. This government is taking action. From the moment we got elected as the party of government—not a party of protest, like the Greens political party—to take action to address dangerous climate change. The leader of the Greens political party comes in here— The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Melbourne is warned. Ms MADELEINE KING 102376 and has a little chitchat about soda streams and bubbles that might be in Coca-Cola and other soft drinks as if those are the same thing has dangerous climate change caused by carbon dioxide. Through you, Mr Speaker, the Greens political party and its leader have gone too far. You're ridiculous, and you should just stop it. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my right will cease interjecting. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The House is going to come to order so I can hear the next question. That sort of behaviour is completely unacceptable. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Every member is entitled to ask a question of their choice, and they should be respected it in their right to do so. Defence 63 14:37 Ms ROBERTS 157125 Pearce My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government investing in defence to keep all Australians safe? What does this mean for South Australia and Western Australia in particular? And what other approaches have been rejected? 14:37 Mr MARLES HWQ Corio The sovereign submarine partnership, which was announced last Friday, with the US and the UK will transform industry in South Australia and in the member's home state of Western Australia. The SPEAKER 53517 The defence minister will pause. We are 10 seconds into an answer. The minister for Casey has been interjecting all week. He is going to leave the chamber under 94(a). It is completely unacceptable to start yelling within seconds of when a minister has just begun. It is highly disorderly and highly respectful. The member for Casey then left the chamber. Mr MARLES HWQ At the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, at full production, there'll be 4,000 to 5,000 people building our future submarines. In combination with those building our future frigates, the Osborne Naval Shipyard will be home to 7,000 highly skilled workers. To enable this, the government is investing in a skills academy, which will be situated at Osborne, and modelled very much on the training academy of BAE, at its facility at Barrow-in-Furness. In Western Australia, ASC is standing up a workforce of 500 people to sustain submarines as part of the Submarine Rotational Force West, and that is happening right now. There are employees of ASC on their way to Hawaii to gain valuable experience. Indeed, by next year we will see a target of a hundred employees of ASC working and gaining experience at Pearl Harbor. That is in addition to 1,200 people that will be needed at the future Henderson naval precinct to build Navy's future platforms, including our general-purpose frigate. To see that happen, we're working closely with South Metropolitan TAFE, in Perth, to build the necessary skills. This is a future made in Australia to secure Australia, with high-skilled, high-wage jobs. But to do this requires resources, which is why the government is increasing defence spending to 2.4 per cent of GDP. Those opposite have been repeatedly asked about defence spending and they have stubbornly refused to answer that question, which leaves them where they were at the last election, which is a spend of 2.1 per cent of GDP over the same period. But the issue is that 2.1 per cent will not build our frigates; 2.1 per cent will not manufacture long-range missiles; 2.1 per cent will not deliver us an amphibious army; and 2.1 per cent will not give us AUKUS. Those opposite stand for cuts to defence spending and, with it, they stand for cuts to jobs in South Australia and in Western Australia, the shadow minister's own electorate. But, much worse than that, those opposite now stand for compromising Australia's national security. The Albanese government is committed to increasing defence spending, to deliver our future submarines to keep Australians safe. Department of Home Affairs 63 14:41 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. I refer to media reports about interactions between the secretary of the department and the ministers she serves. The minister for immigration was asked about these reports and gave a clear denial. I ask the minister again: did she verbally abuse the secretary, causing the secretary to leave her office in tears? 14:41 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham This question has been asked in a number of different ways. I've answered it in a number of ways, all of which have been accurate. I'd say to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition: I enjoy a very close and warm relationship with the secretary of my department. She is a public servant of decades of standing, serving the national interest in our government. It's why I supported the Prime Minister's decision to appoint her to this position, and we continue that warm and collaborative relationship. Health Care 64 14:42 Mr REPACHOLI 298840 Hunter My question is to the minister for health. How is the Albanese Labor government making it easier for all Australians to access affordable health care after a decade of cuts and neglect? 14:42 Mr BUTLER HWK Hindmarsh I thank the member for Hunter for his question and for all his hard work in delivering cheaper, better health care in the Hunter Valley—things like establishing the Cessnock Medicare Urgent Care Clinic and resurrecting the terrific GP Access After Hours service in that area. As the party that introduced the PBS, Medibank and then Medicare, Labor has no higher priority than ensuring every single Australian is able to access high-quality affordable health care, no matter where they live and no matter what their income. As the member says, that mission is especially critical after the decade of cuts and neglect we witnessed under those opposite. We came to government promising to strengthen Medicare and deliver cheaper medicines. The Treasurer's responsible budget management not only delivered the first surplus in 15 years, it also made room for landmark investments to deliver on that promise—a position that could not be more different from the position of the former government that didn't manage a single surplus in their decade of office and had a record of shocking cuts to Medicare, initiated, of course, by the Leader of the Opposition when he was the health minister. Australians will never forget that the Leader of the Opposition, as health minister, in his first budget, tried to abolish bulk-billing altogether—to make every single Australian pay a fee every single time they went to the doctor. When he couldn't get that through the parliament, he froze the Medicare rebate for six long years, ripping billions of dollars out of Medicare. Our first budget contained the biggest ever investment in bulk-billing in history, tripling the bulk-billing incentive—an investment which, just in the first two months, delivered an additional 2,500 free visits to the doctor in the member for Hunter's electorate alone. The Leader of the Opposition's first budget as health minister also tried to jack up the price of medicines by up to $5 a script, the centrepiece of his 'dearer medicines' policy. In just under two years, we've managed to lower the annual medicine bills for millions of pensioners—the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS—and introduce 60-day scripts for common medicines, saving patients time as well as even more money. Of course, no-one will forget that the Leader of the Opposition, as health minister, tried to rip $50 billion out of our public hospitals. This Prime Minister, by contrast, agreed a landmark new funding arrangement with premiers and chief ministers in December that will deliver an additional $14 billion in extra funds over the next five years for our important public hospitals. Stronger medicines and cheaper medicines: that's what you get under this government. All we got under the Leader of the Opposition was cuts and chaos. Vaccination 64 14:45 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. Minister, my constituents tell me that there is a 700-patient waitlist for the shingles vaccine at just one GP clinic on the Mayo south coast. It's reported that that clinic is limited to receiving just 15 vaccines at a time. As minister, what urgent steps are you taking to ensure that older and vulnerable Australians who need this vaccine are able to gain access in a timely manner? 14:46 Mr BUTLER HWK Hindmarsh I thank the member for Mayo for her question and her interest in health care, drawing the House's attention again to the very significant investment that we've made in listing the Shingrix vaccine very quickly after the first recommendation was made by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee late last year. This is really a life-changing vaccine, particularly for older Australians. It's not often well understood just how debilitating a case of shingles can be, particularly for older Australians but also for younger Australians who may be immunocompromised. The supply arrangements that we came to with the company for the new Shingrix vaccine late last year were modelled on the usual basis that we model these things, with ABS data and an analysis of likely uptake. I don't have the numbers off the top of my head for the member for Mayo, but we ordered literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of doses, recognising that there would be a very significant interest among older Australians to access this vaccine. I have been engaging very closely not just with my department but also with state and territory authorities—state governments—who have responsibility for distributing vaccines under the National Immunisation Program to access points, which are essentially general practices and pharmacies. We've been working very closely with them, including in South Australia, where there's probably been more public attention around this question than in other jurisdictions. I haven't had advice for a few weeks, but the latest advice I got was that supply issues were being resolved in all jurisdictions. We've got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of additional doses that are coming into Australia over the course of the first half of this year. Many of them landed in February. I haven't had an update for some weeks to suggest that there are additional supply issues. I'm concerned that the member for Mayo has raised that. I'd be very interested in having a discussion with her offline, because I am absolutely determined to make sure that as many Australians as possible get access to this life-changing vaccine. Education 65 14:48 Mr LIM 300130 Tangney My question is to the Minister for Education. Why do we need to build a better and fairer education system, and what is standing in the way of that? 14:48 Mr CLARE HWL Blaxland Can I thank my friend the terrific member for Tangney for his question. We want Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn. That means pay rises and tax cuts. For a brand-new teacher in New South Wales at the moment, they're now on $85,000 a year—the highest paid teachers in the country. From 1 July, they'll get a tax cut of more than $1,800. That's good news, because our teachers do an important job—the most important job in the country—and that job has got a lot tougher in the last 10 years. In the last 10 years we've seen teacher shortages go up, and over the last 10 years we've also seen the number of kids finishing high school go down, not everywhere but in our public schools. We've seen a drop from 83 per cent down to 76 per cent. It's no surprise that this has all happened after the Liberal Party ripped the guts out of Gonski funding. We've got a big anniversary coming up, because in seven weeks time it will be 10 years since the Liberal Party ripped more than $20 billion out of public schools in this country. Remember that cigar-chomping budget? Guess who was on the ERC at the time? Old smiley over there, the opposition leader. The health minister talked about— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The member for Moreton is warned. Mr Fletcher L6B Mr Speaker— The SPEAKER 53517 The Treasurer will cease interjecting, and he is warned as well. People cannot interject when someone is taking a point of order. I don't know how many times I have to tell you that. Every member is entitled to take a point of order, including—especially—the Manager of Opposition Business, and he has the call. Mr Fletcher L6B Mr Speaker, there are standing orders about the respectful way in which parliamentarians are supposed to speak about each other, and this minister has breached that. Government members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my right. This is an issue that I'm very exercised about too. The Leader of the House. Mr Burke DYW Mr Speaker, this would be the first time ever someone's taken offence to being accused of smiling. The SPEAKER 53517 Order! I'll hear from the manager— Government members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Members on my right. The manager is right to raise a point of order. Mr Fletcher L6B As the Leader of the House would be well aware, standing order 90, amongst other things, states that all imputations of improper motives to a member and all personal reflections on other members shall be considered highly disorderly—as well as a range of other standing orders. Government members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! We don't need sound effects from those on my right. The member for Swan and the member for Reid can stop interjecting immediately. The minister doesn't have to withdraw anything, but I'm just going to ask him to temper his language and make sure he's showing respect to all members of parliament—and that's to both sides of the House. Everyone has titles. Everyone's earnt titles to be here. I'm just asking everyone to show each other respect. The Minister for Education has the call. Honourable members interjecting— Mr CLARE HWL Ha, ha—now that's a breach of the standing orders, I suspect. The SPEAKER 53517 I just asked everyone to show each other respect. So we're going to put away phones; we're going to put away comments and just get back to question time. The minister has the call. Mr CLARE HWL I'm just trying to turn that frown upside down. I'm just trying to turn that frown upside down. They didn't just rip the guts out of hospitals; they ripped the guts out of schools as well, and we're all paying the price for that now. That's why what we announced in the Northern Territory a couple of weeks ago is so important—the biggest single investment in public education by the Australian government in the Northern Territory ever—bringing forward the day when we fully fund public schools in the Northern Territory by more than 20 years. That's not a blank cheque. That funding will be tied to the sorts of things that are going to help more kids finish high school. That will change the lives of kids in the Northern Territory, because, if they finish school, their kids when they have them will be more likely to finish school too. That's what a good education does. It ricochets through families and communities, it ricochets through generations, and it helps all of us here, too, because it means we'll have a stronger economy if more kids finish school—and a better and a fairer country. But to do this we'll need to introduce legislation through this parliament to increase the investment in public education. And London to a brick, when we do this, the Liberal Party will vote against it. And if they win the next election then you know exactly what they'll do—what they did 10 years ago: light up the cigars, rip the money out of public schools and smile while they do it. Department of Home Affairs 66 14:54 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. In 2018, the now minister said that the culture in parliament 'feels really toxic' for 'normal people generally, but in particular for women' and 'So there's a level of aggression, of conflict, of egocentrism that dominates the culture in Parliament House, and I think it's quite hard to handle.' How is this consistent with the minister's verbal abuse of her secretary causing her to leave her office in tears? 14:54 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham I thank the Deputy Leader of the Opposition for her question. I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this to her. I have an incredibly warm and collaborative relationship with the secretary of my department. We are doing very important work together, cleaning up the catastrophic mess left in home affairs by the now Leader of the Opposition. We work on it together and we're proud of the work we do together. Aged-Care Workforce 66 14:55 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor My question is to the Minister for Aged Care. What is the Albanese Labor government doing to ensure dedicated and hardworking aged-care workers can earn more and keep more of what they earn after a decade of neglect? 14:55 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley I thank the wonderful member for Lalor for her question. The Albanese government knows that strong, sustainable wage growth is part of the solution to the cost-of-living crisis; it is not part of the problem. That's why we believe that workers deserve to earn more and to keep more of what they earn. That's why, unlike the opposition, we backed aged-care workers in their fight for better wages at the Fair Work Commission. And, unlike the opposition, we delivered. We delivered a 15-per-cent increase to award wage minimums for 250,000 workers across this country—an $11.3 billion commitment. Under the Albanese government, registered nurses are now taking home an additional $196 per week, or $10,000 per year. Personal care workers are now taking home an additional $141 per week, or $7,300 every single year. That pay rise is changing lives around the country. Today I met Jocelyn, Sue, Donna and Michelle. These four women have between them 103 years experience working in aged care in Australia. They are, of their own volition, guardians. And they are the stewards of change in aged care. Before the royal commission, I'm sad to say that they were canaries in the coalmine. They marched through this place, they begged for help and, when the coalition were in power, their pleas fell on deaf ears. Jocelyn sang and danced in the halls of Parliament House on the day the now Prime Minister delivered his budget reply speech promising to back a pay rise for aged-care workers. And Sue was with the Prime Minister and I at HammondCare Miranda after we funded that pay rise. Today, these women told me that for the very first time a lot of their colleagues have now become the breadwinners in their households. Some of them are now earning more money than their teenagers. Mr Speaker, can you believe that until this point that was not the case? But we know that the cost of living is still biting for people like Sue, like Jocelyn, like Donna and Michelle. And that's why, from 1 July, the Albanese government will deliver a tax cut for every single Australian taxpayer so that every taxpayer, including our aged-care workers, can earn more and keep more of what they earn. Women, who are 97 per cent of aged-care workers, will be better off under Labor's tax cuts. Not only can a registered nurse working in an aged-care home take home $10,000 more under the Albanese government they'll also get a tax cuts of $1,679 from 1 July. That's almost double what they would have got under the coalition. With my final moments, can I congratulate the GOAT, Lauren Jackson, on her selection to the Olympic qualifying squad for Paris! Department of Home Affairs 67 14:58 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Can the minister now confirm that she verbally abused the secretary of her department, causing the secretary to leave her office in tears? 14:59 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham Yes, I say again to the deputy leader, with respect, that she has now asked me the same question about five times and I'm going to give her the same answer. And the answer is that Secretary Foster and I enjoy a very warm and collaborative relationship. We have an enormous job to deal with because we are, together, managing a department which was left in a catastrophic mess by the now Leader of the Opposition—cybersecurity, immigration and parts of national security needed a big clean-up effort. We're working on it together, and we're doing that in a warm and collaborative— (Time expired) Nuclear Energy 67 14:59 Dr ANANDA-RAJAH 290544 Higgins My question is to the Prime Minister. Why is the government rejecting nuclear energy for Australia? Could the Prime Minister compare and contrast the government's reasons for this position? 14:59 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the member for Higgins for her question. She is my favourite ever member for Higgins, I must say. The member for Higgins understands that climate change is not just a challenge; it's an opportunity to create jobs and grow the economy. Indeed, a survey of institutional investors with $37 trillion in assets under management asked what their top five responses were to deliver the best long-term returns for their beneficiaries. Number one was renewable energy, 47 per cent. Second, biodiversity; third, energy storage; fourth, low-carbon transport; and fifth, industry materials including critical minerals. Nuclear energy was last. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition has identified why. Because he said, in soothing the nerves of his members behind him there, that everything will be fine: there are only four outstanding issues—safety, disposal, cost and location. Apart from that, it's full steam ahead. It's no wonder why no-one wants to campaign with him on these issues, because no-one believes that absence makes the heart grow fonder quite like the Leader of the Opposition. There were no public appearances in Tasmania for 55 days before last week's election. There were no public appearances in Victoria for 37 days before the last state election. But that's nothing like New South Wales, where there were no public appearances in New South Wales for 142 days before the election—almost half a year. It seems to suit everyone. I will give you a big tip though: it's a lot harder to hide a nuclear reactor. You've said they're going to be right around the country. Ask your coalition MP, 'What would you rather have in your backyard—the Leader of the Opposition or a nuclear reactor?' And they'll reply, 'We'll get back to you.' One is risky, expensive, divisive and toxic; the other is a nuclear reactor. The bad news for the Liberal Party is that you can put both on a corflute, and we certainly intend to do so. Alice Springs: Crime 67 15:03 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson My question is to the Prime Minister. Since being elected, the Prime Minister has been just four hours in Alice Springs. At the moment local residents, business owners, school principals and the mayor have all been pleading for support from you, Prime Minister. Yet locals have seen little evidence of the $250 million package that you promised making any difference to improve community safety. In fact, the situation has got much worse. Children are committing serious crimes. Sexual abuse is at a record high. Juvenile crime and domestic crime and abuse is at a record high. When does the Prime Minister intend to visit Alice Springs? 15:03 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I have visited the Northern Territory, including Alice Springs, more than the three previous Liberal Prime Ministers combined, in two years. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The Leader of the Opposition has asked his question. He was heard in silence. Members of my left, we are going to hear the Prime Minister. It's a serious question, and we're going to listen to the answer. Mr ALBANESE R36 Last week I took the entire cabinet to the Northern Territory. We had ministers in Alice Springs, in Katherine, in remote Northern Territory as well. And I visited a remote community to commit to $4 billion to fix housing in remote communities. That's something that was never done by those opposite, who, when they were in government, in the 2014 budget, ripped money out of it, just like, in their last budget in 2022, they left funding going off a cliff, including in Alice Springs, for community organisations—for organisations that looked after women's safety; for organisations that looked after children. All of the funding stopped on 30 June of that year. We had to engage and find money, including $250 million, which we have done with our 'A better, safer future for Central Australia' plan. We are delivering— The SPEAKER 53517 Order. The Prime Minister will pause. The Leader of the Opposition will withdraw that comment so we can continue on. Mr Dutton 00AKI I withdraw. Mr ALBANESE R36 A bloke who barely leaves his office, who doesn't get out and about— The SPEAKER 53517 The Chief Government Whip will cease interjecting. Mr ALBANESE R36 except for his Wednesday night appearance on Sky News— The SPEAKER 53517 Order. The Prime Minister will pause. The Leader of the Opposition on a point of order. Mr Dutton 00AKI Mr Speaker, it's on relevance. I know the Prime Minister's got a glass jaw. He was there for four hours— The SPEAKER 53517 Resume your seat. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order. The Leader of the Opposition knows that's an abuse of process. I've been very lenient—very lenient—with taking points of order on relevance and explaining my process of dealing with relevance. That sort of interjection is highly disorderly and highly disrespectful. I'm warning the Leader of the Opposition. I just want some silence for the remainder of this question. The Prime Minister has the call. Mr ALBANESE R36 Thanks, Mr Speaker. The Leader of the Opposition shows his weakness with his incapacity to stand up, on any difficult issue, to his backbench—any whatsoever. And we saw it again today, with a group whose lesson taken from the last election was that they weren't right wing enough and they weren't conservative enough and they weren't reactionary enough; a group who have gone from being reactionaries to being nuclear reactionaries, with the one policy that they've come out with. But then they won't come out with any detail. As I said, I have been a regular visitor to the Northern Territory. I will continue to be a regular visitor to the Northern Territory—just as, I suspect, this bloke will be a continual, regular visitor to Gina Rinehart's parties. The SPEAKER 53517 Order. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is not helping the House come to order. I'm going to hear from the member for Werriwa. Workplace Relations 68 15:08 Ms STANLEY 265990 Werriwa My question is to the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations. How are the Albanese Labor government's reforms to enterprise bargaining helping Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn? How accurate have predictions about the policy been? 15:08 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I want to thank the member for the question. She's a tireless worker in south-western Sydney and a defender of making sure that people earn more and keep more of what they earn. There was a debate in the first year of this term on the secure jobs, better pay bill, about multi-employer bargaining, and different predictions were made. We said that it would improve wages, that it would improve conditions, that it would improve job security and that it would improve productivity. But those opposite made predictions as well, about multi-employer bargaining. They said, modestly, it would close down Australia, it would 'burn down' Australia, it would result in coast-to-coast strikes and it would smash productivity. Well, we now have the first of the multi-employer bargains—being reported by Ewin Hannan in the Australian today—in the air-conditioning manufacturing industry. And what we find there is the following: six per cent pay rises each year for four years for those workers; job security and casual conversion; productivity improvements, including skills development and span of working hours; and better apprentice pay rates. The full-time pay rate will go from $102,000 to $133,000 over the course of four years, and those same workers will get a tax cut of more than $2,200 now and more than $3,500 by the final year of the agreement. It's worth having a listen and comparing what those opposite said multi-employer bargaining would result in with what the employer organisation has said about this agreement, which is only possible because we changed the law. From HVAC's president, Mimmo Scavera: … some wins, some losses on both sides, and we came up with a happy medium we're all satisfied with. A better skilled workforce and an organised workforce is always a better productive workforce … For us, it's a move to improve our industry, to make it a safer, more skilled industry. The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Groom is now warned. Mr BURKE DYW He went on: It's a big leap forward by both sides. Working together means it's going to improve productivity. There's no use doing it any other way. It doesn't work. Those opposite might be determined to send people into their corners in a world of conflict. With these new laws we have brought together parties that have not previously been able to reach agreement. What happened in the past? You'd get one employer reaching an agreement, and then a dodgy operator would be able to come in and undercut the rates of pay, and there was a race to the bottom. What we have now is a race to best practice standards. What we have now is a race to improve job security. What we have now means the best employers don't get punished for being the best employers. Those opposite might be determined that people will work longer for less, but the Albanese Labor government is making sure people earn more and keep more of what they earn. Mr Albanese R36 I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper, given that it's the last day before the budget and there's been not a single question from the opposition on the economy—not one. AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORTS 69 AUDITOR-GENERAL'S REPORTS Report No. 20 of 2023-24 69 15:12 The SPEAKER 53517 I present the Auditor-General's performance audit report No. 20 of 2023-24, entitled Design and implementation of theAustralian apprenticeships incentive system: Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. Document made a parliamentary paper. DOCUMENTS 69 DOCUMENTS Presentation 69 15:12 Mr BURKE DYW Watson Documents are tabled in accordance with the list circulated to honourable members earlier today. Full details of the documents will be recorded in the Votes and Proceedings. BUSINESS 69 BUSINESS Leave of Absence 69 15:12 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That leave of absence be given to every Member of the House of Representatives from the determination of this sitting of the House to the date of its next sitting. Question agreed to. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 69 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Cost of Living 69 15:13 The SPEAKER 53517 I have received a letter from the honourable member for Fowler proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The lack of government redress in relieving the pressures of the cost of living crisis for Australians. 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— 15:13 Ms LE 295676 Fowler 'Is there going to be another interest rate rise?' 'How much will my mortgage go up by?' 'Why are grocery prices so expensive?' 'I can't afford to pay my electricity bills.' 'I'm never going to pay off my HECS debt, not with the 7.1 per cent indexation.' The cost of living is very real in Western Sydney suburbs; in particular, in my electorate of Fowler. You've just heard some of the questions and comments that I have received from my constituents, who are currently suffering from the cost-of-living crisis in different aspects of their lives. On 13 March 2024, I had the privilege of holding Bring Your Bill Day, which gave constituents the opportunity to bring their bills and connect with government agencies and providers that could assist them with the pressure of their bills. The event was scheduled for 4 pm, and at 3 pm people were already lining up and waiting eagerly to get through the door. Over 2½ hours, more than 100 people rushed in with the hopes of getting any support for their bills. The stallholders were overwhelmed by the number of people who required help. Energy and Water Ombudsman New South Wales—or EWON for short—reportedly engaged with 50 people on the day, and the running theme was that the majority of participants had high overdue balances on their electricity bills. Specifically, they were on the verge of disconnection as they were unable to afford to pay their bills. In some cases, EWON and had arranged for payment plans for the constituents, and sought waiver of pending disconnection on the spot. Most were given the option of hardship programs as a form of relief. These constituents walked in very distressed and frustrated by their circumstances, and walked out with smiles of relief. Why is the government not looking at policies to help the cost of living that actually targets people who are struggling? Yes, I hear the government spruik their stage 3 tax cuts as the solution to addressing the cost of living, but is this addressing the root causes? It's not just working Australians who are struggling with their bills. A local constituent who owns a cafe in Weatherill Park shared that his electricity bill with AGL was usually around $7,316 but is currently $11,000. For a business that already has numerous expenses to worry about, a $3,684 bill increase is a big slap in the face and, understandably, is causing him stress to continue operating. The Australian Energy Regulator released a quarterly retail report for October-December 2023 which revealed that the average hardship debt for electricity is $1,690. This is despite wholesale electricity prices dropping, largely driven by more renewable energy being in the system. Why isn't the decrease being passed on to households? While there have been talks about electricity costs going down further in the next few months, my constituents have been telling me a different story. While industry is quick to pass price increases onto the consumer if costs go up, we're giving people this elusive dream that somehow electricity costs will eventually go down. I can tell you: they're not. Back to my 'Bring Your Bill Day' event. While it was a focus on helping constituents relieve the stress of bills, we had constituents come in with their children asking if we were heading out free food. That, for me, was heartbreaking. My electorate office often had to referred people to food relief services. Our local schools have also advised that they have seen an unprecedented need to provide welfare support to families who require access to food relief services and energy relief programs. Students going to school should not have to feel stressed about the basic needs of food. While I can appreciate that this is within the hands of state governments, we as the federal government must take action to alleviate the stresses of the cost-of-living crisis. Can the government implement policies to drive down the cost of food? As the voice for one of the most disadvantaged electorates in Western Sydney, Fowler, I can tell the government firsthand that the struggle is very real in my community. Our Bring Your Bill Day highlighted how badly our community is struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. Our average wage is one of the lowest in the country, but the cost of staying afloat is not parallel to our reality. Paying your bills may seem like an easy task for many in this House; however, I ask the government to step into the shoes of families earning minimum wage and spreading the money thin across basic needs, and see how tough they are doing. We must focus on delivering policies that go to the core of the cost-of-living crisis so that people are not working to their deaths to try to pay their bills, businesses are not shutting down because operations are not feasible, and children are not going to school hungry as their families cannot keep up with the rising grocery costs. 15:18 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper I thank the member for Fowler for drawing our attention through this MPI to the cost-of-living pressures that Australians are feeling. It's a great opportunity for me to discuss with this House and with the crossbench every single thing that the Australian government is doing right now to relieve the cost-of-living pressures. You see, we are a government that listens, and we are hearing right across the nation that far too many people are struggling with the cost of living. There are global pressures right now that are driving up inflation and there are global pressures that are interrupting supply chains, and we know that these global pressures are affecting people here in Australia and the economy. We have a Treasurer that has outlined time and time again that our No. 1 priority for all Australians is addressing the cost of living while managing inflation. Sadly, though, as the member may well be aware, those opposite are a shambolic group of people who, in the simplest terms, don't care about the financial pressure that Australians feel. They pretend they do, but we know they don't care about, for example, increasing the real wages of Australians—in fact, they deliberately tried to keep wages down—and they certainly don't care about looking after people. They have voted against every single cost-of-living measure that this government has put forward. There are many, and I will alert the member to those in just a minute. Those opposite bang on about the cost of living and do not do anything to help this government alleviate the cost-of-living pressures with any relief. I must thank the members of the crossbench who have supported our measures and who have stood with us, saying that they care about Australians and the pressures that they are under. Let me assure you, as I said, the Labor government are listening to Australians and we are acting on what we are hearing. As I said, our No. 1 priority remains addressing inflation and the cost-of-living challenges. Tomorrow, the member may like to know, the government will make its submission to the Fair Work Commission's annual wage review. We will recommend that the Fair Work Commission ensures the real wages of Australia's low-paid workers do not go backwards. This is what we've done across our last two submissions to the commission, because—let me be clear—we will always stand up for workers. In particular, we will always stand up for workers who are on the minimum wage and who are struggling to keep up with the cost-of-living pressures around them. While we've seen positive progress on inflation and a return to real wages growth earlier than was forecast, we know that many Australians will still feel under pressure. We take the view, unlike those opposite, that Australians should be able to take home more money in their pockets from working, and—as you mentioned, Member for Fowler—that's why the Prime Minister has announced that, come 1 July, we will deliver a tax cut for every single working Australian. That's 13.6 million people, from teachers to nurses, from truckies to cleaners, from hospo workers to childcare educators. Under Labor's plan, more Australians will get a tax cut and more Australians will take home more money from their pay. If you're a uni or TAFE student who has a part-time job and rents, you will benefit. If you're a working parent who feels the pinch of rising costs, you will be better off. If you're nearing retirement or working part time, you will have more money in your pocket. If your name is Jenny and you work in IT, you will benefit. If you've got red hair, just bought a bunch of Easter eggs and you work three days a week as a receptionist, you will benefit. Every working Australian will be better off under Labor. That's more cost-of-living relief for lower- and middle-income Australians. But this is not the only thing that we are doing. This builds on an additional $23 billion in targeted relief—targeted relief that, I might add, the opposition opposed every step of the way. This includes making medicines cheaper by allowing people to buy two scripts for the cost of one. The opposition voted against this cost-of-living measure; in fact, when they were in government they tried to jack up the price of medicines. We're making it easier and cheaper to see a doctor by making the biggest investment in bulk-billing in Medicare's history, and I don't need to remind everyone in this chamber that those opposite tried to destroy Medicare and push up healthcare costs. We're providing energy bill relief through rebates and price caps. We're ensuring a fast transition to renewables, which we know is the cheapest form of energy, that will go a long way to helping household budgets. We know the answer of those opposite is to go nuclear, which is the most expensive form—not to mention all the other failings with nuclear energy. We're making child care cheaper and expanding paid parental leave, which we're now going to pay superannuation on as well. Those opposite called paid parental leave 'double dipping' for public servants. We're building more social and affordable homes and making the biggest increase in rent assistance in 30 years. We've made changes to our industrial relations laws that, along with our gender equality strategy, will actually work towards closing the gender pay gap. We've done all of this, including fee-free TAFE, where we know those opposite gutted TAFE. We are doing all this while delivering the first budget surplus in 15 years. In my own portfolio, Labor is working to shine a spotlight on women's health, tackling gender bias in the health sector that sees women endure poorer outcomes than men do. We're making sure women are listened to and cared for when it comes to health care, because too often they are not heard, they are not believed, their symptoms are dismissed and they do not get treatment. This has consequences for women. Let's take endometriosis, for example. We know that at least one in nine women have endometriosis, which is an incredibly painful condition, with people experiencing an unacceptable wait of seven years before diagnosis. Endometriosis is a difficult condition that can make it difficult to hold down a job. It has an impact on the education and financial stability of many women. They often chase care that can be very expensive. But our government has delivered 22 endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics right across Australia so women can get access to the care they need. The $58 million package also includes an endometriosis management plan for tailored treatment for women, for research, to develop living guidelines so that women can get better and updated care, and a series of measures to improve workplace supports for women with endometriosis. So women no longer need to suffer in silence. They can get affordable care under Labor. They can be heard, they will be believed and they will be treated. They can get on with their lives. They can get back to study. They can return to work and hold down a job. They can get on with enjoying their lives. We know that households and individuals are under pressure, particularly with rents and mortgages, but it is clear that only Labor can be trusted to help more Australians into homes that they own. We've helped more than 100,000 people across the country into homeownership since the election. The Help to Buy program will bring homeownership back into reach for tens of thousands of Australians. We're doing everything we can to boost the supply of affordable homes. We know that people want to live close to the jobs and opportunities we're creating in communities right across the country. Through the National Housing Accord we have an ambitious target to partner with states and territories to build 1.2 million homes over five years. We need to work across all levels of government, across all parties, to reach across the corridors and engage with the private sector in order to fast-track development and get more Australians into homes. Australian people voted for Labor in 2022 because they wanted a few things. They wanted trust restored in Australian politics after lies and deceit from a Prime Minister who secretly swore himself into multiple ministries. They voted for higher pay after wages stagnated for years. They voted for better working conditions after those opposite attacked our rights time and time again. They voted for the strengthening of Medicare and cheaper medicines after those opposite froze the Medicare rebate. They voted for action on climate change and cheaper energy bills after a decade of climate denial and inaction. They voted for a government that would listen to them and their communities, a government that would make the right decisions, not the easy ones. I'd like to wrap up by returning to my first point. We are a government of listening and action, and we are hearing the difficulties that keep people up at night. We know Australians deserve a roof over their head and food on the table, and they need these to be affordable, and this is our priority. 15:28 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo It is an honour to rise and speak on this matter of public importance, which the previous speaker on this side of the House, the member for Fowler, so aptly talked about. Over the course of the last 10 sitting weeks I've talked about the cost of living on no less than eight occasions in this place. Why? Because it is the most pressing issue facing my community right now. Despite the urgency, the government continues on a path that is exacerbating rather than alleviating this pain for every Australian. No matter what metric you consider, the evidence is obvious. We've experienced double-digit annual percentage increases in basic foods such as dairy and related products, bread and cereals. From talking with my farmers, they are not receiving record prices for their crops. Electricity price rises are even greater, rising 23 per cent in South Australia in 2023. However, this does not reflect individual experiences. I've been contacted by some residents who have received increases of more than 50 per cent. The impact on businesses is simply devastating. Earlier this month the Advertiser reported that the hospitality crisis is so widespread that 'every owner is considering throwing in the towel', blaming spiralling utility bills and the cost-of-living crisis curtailing consumer spending. This year alone, nine hospitality businesses have closed—and we're only in March: Little Banksia Tree, Enzo's Ristorante, the Edinburgh Castle Hotel, Folklore Cafe and Morris Bakery, just to name a few. Big Shed Brewing is battling to stay open. The Stag, on Rundle Street, is up for sale. These businesses are household names in South Australia. The Duke of Brunswick Hotel reported energy bill increases of 30 per cent and wage cost increases of 21.5 per cent. How can you run a business with those price rises? They installed solar panels; the owners were hoping that that would reduce their electricity bills, but they're still more than $4,000 a month. Rising costs and reduced revenue is destroying businesses and the employees that rely on those businesses to be successful, and it's creating a vicious cycle. It's no wonder that business revenue is down. Collectively, increases in energy, food and mortgages have pushed Australians to the edge and left them with no disposable income. Successive interest rates rises have seen the average repayment on a mortgage of $750,000 rise by about $2,000 per month; that is $24,000 a year that people have to find after tax money. The effect of this is revealed in the latest research released by Roy Morgan, which identified that 31 per cent of mortgage households, or one in three, are at risk of mortgage stress in the three months to January this year. In number terms, this equates to 1.6 million mortgage holders now in the risk category—an increase from the 1,527,000 recorded in December last year. More concerningly, the number of mortgage holders who are at extreme risk is 994,000—you could say a million, or 19.8 per cent—as of January. This is above the long-term decade average of 14.3 per cent. This is something we're not talking about in this place, and this is deeply concerning. We are approaching levels of stress not seen since the global financial crisis. This takes me back to my comments with respect to the path and the policies that we have in here, that the government has taken in here. I think one very sobering conversation that we need to have is around where all this demand is coming from. We need to be honest; the demand is coming from record migration that we have seen, to create a big Australia, that is putting huge demand on housing and huge demand on everything we buy. The simple economics is: the more demand you create—and this is artificial demand—the more that prices go up for everything. We need to have an honest conversation in this nation about this. We've talked about the duopolies in this place. We've talked about travel. We've talked about controlling prices and industrial relations. There is much we can do in this place to alleviate the suffering that families and households are experiencing, but, until we get migration under control, until we realise there aren't homes for people to live in, we're not going to address this at all. 15:33 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton I thank the member for Fowler for raising this matter of public importance on dealing with the cost-of-living crisis. I agree with the member for Fowler that there are a lot of communities around Australia doing it tough at the moment, and a lot of people with cost-of-living pressures. I would have thought that, if you initiated a matter of public importance, you would find the time to listen to the matter of public importance, but I notice that the member for Fowler is not here. I assure her, for when she looks over the Hansard, that the Australian Labor Party is working hard to put tangible relief in the hands of all Australians. I'm not sure about the member for Fowler's seat, but there are battler parts of my electorate where we have put emphasis on the cost of living—and that's all in the context of what we inherited. When we came into government, as I'm sure those opposite will well remember, they left us $1 trillion in Liberal debt. When we approach the job of government, obviously we are guided by that Sutton's law of social capital, that we go where the need is greatest. That's what we do. Obviously, some of those opposite go where the greed is greatest when they organise their policies. That's not what we do. We don't do the colour-coded spreadsheets organising largesse, policies with more pork than a piggery. We go where the greatest need is. In terms of the member for Fowler's constituents, one of the things that is taking dollars out of the pockets of her constituents is inflation. There are some global issues there. I am sure you have seen the other countries and how we are doing very well compared to other G7 nations. When we came to office, inflation was running at 6.1 per cent. Today, we have effectively halved it, down to 3.4. That's good news. We didn't get a lot of questions on that in question time. I'm sure that was an oversight by the tactics committee. We had the Leader of the Opposition deputising someone to ask the home affairs minister because he was too scared to ask her any questions. Obviously you need to get inflation under control. That helps people, because otherwise it's ripping off wage earners in particular. There are other things we need to do. We need to look after people's wallets as much as we can with wages. We have tax cuts coming through on 1 July, where 13.6 million Australian taxpayers will be better off, 84 per cent better off overall compared to the Scott Morrison tax cuts, and 90 per cent of females will be better off. I'm sure that's something the member for Fowler can tell her constituents. When it comes to wages, we have the fastest rise in a decade. Remember all that money we gave out to the minimum wage workers, who we will support tomorrow when we make our submission to the Fair Work Commission. We have more money for aged care workers. We're doing what we can in terms of making sure that people can take home as much as possible. When it comes to health, obviously cheaper medicines, easier and cheaper to see a doctor. Then something as simple as power bills. Our plan is to build wind and solar, which is the cheapest electricity. We have signed off on 45 projects, and there are 128 queued up in the system which will give power to 2.5 million homes. Wind and solar are cheaper, I'm sure the member Fowler knows that. Obviously those opposite have promised nothing now and more expensive later. That is their policy, which I can only assume is some sort of bizarre wedge with a dollop of culture wars built in. Otherwise I don't know what is going on with those opposite. It's like they're being led by Mr Burns in a bad clown suit or something. To say that nuclear is the answer in 20 years time, when we have a cost of living crisis right now, is bizarre. Being loud and brutish is not actually leadership. Saying loudly 'Follow me' as you strike off in the wrong direction, such as nuclear, is leadership, I guess, but it's bad leadership. As the Doors song says, 'If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there', which seems to be the policy of those opposite. We're doing lots of other things to try to deal with this: education, free TAFE, cheaper child care, expanded parental leave, housing, a whole suite of measures to help people in battling suburbs have access to housing, including 4,000 new social rental homes, $2 billion in social housing accelerator, so many great policies. 15:39 Dr RYAN 297660 Kooyong I rise to speak in support of the member for Fowler's matter of public importance. Last month I sent members of my community a survey asking for their thoughts on the cost of living crisis. I did that because it's important to me that I listen to my community, that I understand their values and their concerns and that I act on them in this place. We're still compiling the more than 3,500 responses we have received, but I would like to share some of those responses with the House. When I asked my community about their greatest concern regarding the rising cost of living, the most common response, selected by more than a third of the respondents, was that they knew that vulnerable people are facing increasing financial pressures. The most vulnerable people in our community are feeling the cost-of-living crisis the most. While the stage 3 tax cuts are welcome, many of the one in three Australians who do not pay income tax, are still struggling to pay their bills, their rent or their mortgage. As a matter of priority in the May budget, the government should double the Commonwealth rental assistance payment and increase jobseeker to 90 per cent of the age pension, as recommended by the EIAC in 2023. Unemployment benefits are so low that they have become a barrier to many people who would like to re-enter the workforce. You cannot get a job if you can't get to the interview. The next most common response from my electorate was that people were concerned because costs keep rising and because they themselves are facing financial pressures. The government must do more to alleviate the pressure that middle Australia is experiencing. In an inflationary environment, this urgent priority has to be carefully balanced with the need for responsible economic management, but we can—we must—provide more relief right now. I have been urging the government to abolish the activity test on the childcare subsidy and to guarantee all Australian children access to three days of quality early childhood education and care. That would be good for the economy, good for parents and good for our kids. It would be an invaluable investment in our future. The third-most-common answer on my community survey was that the residents of Kooyong were concerned that their children were facing unbearable financial pressures. A couple of weeks ago, an older lady came up to me at a Kooyong community forum and told me a story which reflects just how broken our HECS system is. She has four kids; all did well. They went to university. But all four of them have significant HECS debts. Her fourth child studied locally in the electorate to become a pilot and he now works in the Northern Territory. He has a great job, he flies sick kids in from remote communities to the Darwin Hospital and then takes them home. It is important work but it does not pay well. He finished his university studies with a debt in excess of $120,000. Over the years, his HECS debt has climbed, and it is now over $150,000 and is increasing faster than he can pay it off. He cannot get a home loan. His mum has gone back to work in a retail job to help her son pay off his HECS debt. Young Australians are facing a housing crisis, a cost-of-living crisis and a climate crisis. They should not face a HECS crisis as well. Less than two weeks ago, I put up a petition asking the government to change the way that HECS debts are indexed, so that they are indexed to whichever is lower—the consumer price index or the wage price index. This is a simple and modest proposal which would help many young Australians get on top of their HECS debts. The petition has now been signed by more than 200,000 people. In fact, 217,000 people as about 10 minutes ago. This has struck a chord and I'm not surprised. Younger Australians are facing a housing crisis. They are facing a cost-of-living crisis. They are facing a climate crisis. And we are presenting them with a HECS crisis as well. This government has not done enough to help us all get through the current cost-of-living crisis. My community has made its thoughts clear, and I am making my priorities for the upcoming budget clear to this government. I sincerely hope that it listens. I commend this motion to the House. 15:43 Mrs PHILLIPS 147140 Gilmore I am proud to have this opportunity to talk about the real work we are doing to support local people in my electorate of Gilmore on the New South Wales South Coast to help ease the cost of living. The Liberals might like to talk about the cost of living, but the truth is they have consistently and shamefully opposed every cost-of-living relief measure that we have implemented. We know that people are doing it tough, and that is why I am glad that Labor's tax cuts on 1 July this year will deliver a bigger tax cut for middle Australia, to help with the cost of living. Eighty-seven per cent of taxpayers in Gilmore will receive a bigger tax cut under the Albanese government. We want Australians to earn more and to keep more of what they earn. Our bigger tax cuts for more taxpayers will help make that happen. The Liberals want to take our tax cuts away. They want Australians to work longer for less. Over the past 18 months, and I'll say it again, the Liberals have consistently opposed any action to help ease the cost of living. The Leader of the Opposition and his Liberals are all negative with zero plan. On coming to government, we capped coal and gas prices and provided targeted energy bill relief, with eligible households receiving $500 towards their energy bills and small businesses receiving $650. Just last week, the Australian Energy Regulator was clear that our energy price relief plan and pumping more renewables into the grid have been successful in bringing down wholesale prices, substantially lowering costs for households, including through the default market offer. It's up to the Leader of the Opposition and his Liberals to explain why the Liberals voted against easing power prices for Australians and businesses. Instead, with the Liberals you get their expensive nuclear fairytale which would mean looking at 15 years, at least, with no nuclear in the grid and power stations shutting down because they are too old to operate. It's a recipe for disaster. And where will the Liberals build one of the nuclear power stations? Jervis Bay? As I said in my maiden speech, I will never accept a nuclear power station at Jervis Bay. We have made medicines cheaper. 12,814 60-day prescriptions were dispensed to people with chronic illnesses in my electorate between 1 September and 31 December last year. That was just the first stage of medicines released under this policy, which cut the costs of those medicines in half—again opposed by the Liberals. A further 119,075 scripts in Gilmore were dispensed last year at our cheaper co-payment rate per script. This has saved local people more than $1.6 million just on the cost of medicines under the Albanese government because we reduced the co-payment. We tripled bulk-billing incentives for the most common GP consultations for pensioners, Commonwealth concession cardholders, and children under 16. In the first two months of this change, bulk-billing rates in my electorate increased by 4.3 per cent. That's more than an estimated 6,000 additional bulk-billed trips to the GP, saving an estimated $252,000 in gap fees. These were all cost-of-living measures opposed by the Liberals. We've opened the Batemans Bay Medicare Urgent Care Clinic, helping local people access urgent critical care using just their Medicare card, easing pressure on GPs and easing pressure on local emergency departments. In its first two months of operation alone, over 1,900 patients have been treated there. There's so much more in our plan. There are around 4,800 local families benefiting from cheaper childcare and there's our expanded paid parental leave scheme. Our fee-free TAFE has removed cost barriers; helped apprentices, trainees and students; and assisted local businesses with skill shortages. We are getting on with building more social and affordable homes and increasing rent assistance. Wages are rising at the fastest rate in a decade, including for minimum and aged-care workers. Thousands of local people have seen their income support payments boosted. We've done all this as we've delivered the first budget surplus in 15 years. Unemployment remains at record lows, and more jobs have been created on our watch than any first-term government on record. Inflation is moderating because of our approach to the budget. We're focused on delivering strong and sustainable wages growth and delivering a tax cut to every Australian taxpayer on 1 July. Our economic plan is all about helping Australians earn more and keep more of what they earn. I'm proud to be part of the government that is delivering for our community. 15:48 Ms WATSON-BROWN 300127 Ryan Forty per cent of renters will struggle to pay rent over the next three months. Rents and the cost of living are so high that homeownership is becoming further and further out of reach with ballooning house prices. For those who have actually managed to make that jump and buy their first home, just paying the mortgage becomes a major millstone, with people's whole lives geared towards just paying off that debt. With rising interest rates, 1.6 million households are now at risk of mortgage stress. Right now there are 85,000 households that may not be able to pay their mortgages by the end of the year—chilling to think what would happen if this figure rose. I really don't think many in his place understand the pain first home buyer families are actually feeling: the cost of childcare, sending kids to school, paying for school sport, paying for other extracurricular activities, the cost of several kids seeing the GP or a specialist, the cost of putting food on the table as prices spike, the cost of paying to see the dentist, the cost of servicing the mortgage with rising interest rates, the cost of paying mounting bills. It gets to a point where you're just keeping your head above water and you're one medical emergency away from breaking point. So many of my Ryan constituents in this very situation reach out to me every single week. More than 40 per cent of Aussie households have struggled to afford basics in the last three months, and over half of Australians say they will struggle to pay an essential bill over the next three months. I'm sure people would be happier to accept tougher times if we were truly all in this together. But, while life has gotten more difficult and more stressful for millions of everyday people, a small handful of people, the big billionaires, have significantly increased their wealth. Big banks, mining companies and supermarkets have all posted record profits. Some people are buying their second or third superyacht while millions of people can't actually afford the basics. The Prime Minister and the Treasurer front the media and say they're working to fix this. They've got departments supposedly coming up with great plans. But people aren't feeling helped, and they don't trust that these committees and reviews are going to come up with anything that will actually meaningfully help them. And they're right. Too often these supposedly neutral policy proposals from bureaucrats are designed to sound like something is happening when it's clearly not. So what can actually be done about the cost-of-living crisis? Really, what we need are sensible policy solutions that are easy to roll out, are known to work and don't create major bureaucratic complexity. Simpler proposals are often the most effective. The more universal a scheme is, the fewer cracks emerge for people to fall through, the more everyone benefits, the more everyone feels invested in and the more universal pride there is in our society. The less inequality there is, the less bureaucracy is needed to actually police who is deserving and who isn't. The more publicly owned and run a scheme is, the less it is subject to rorting by private providers mooching off the government and taking advantage of the vulnerable for easy money. So, if you want to talk about effective ways to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, let's start with these: universal free child care; truly free state schools where your technology and excursion costs are all covered; fixing Medicare to again be a universal scheme where everyone can get to see the doctor for free; bringing dental and mental cover into Medicare so it's free for everyone; free school sports; free breakfasts and lunches at state schools for all families; abolishing student debt; and making university free. Contrary to what mainstream economists might tell you, these are all more achievable than many of the convoluted means-tested measures that our governments over the last few decades have seemed to favour. Those are designed to fail. So how do we fund all that? Again, it's simple. It's not wacky. It's not radical. Don't let politicians and bureaucrats fool you into thinking we need complex revenue-raising trade-offs or clever future funds and market mechanisms to fund all this, and certainly don't let them tell you that there isn't any money. Just don't let them. Honourable members interjecting— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 Please let the member for Ryan be heard. Ms WATSON-BROWN 300127 Let's just increase, in a modest but meaningful way, the taxes on big corporations and billionaires, the people who are making a killing out of this crisis. 15:53 Ms LAWRENCE 299150 Hasluck This is absolutely a matter of public importance. It's a matter of public importance to reiterate to the House and to every Australian the vast amount of work that this government is in fact undertaking to tackle inflation: bringing down the costs of everyday living goods, including medicines; delivering greater childcare subsidies; providing energy relief; and increasing opportunities to learn and to train with fee-free TAFE, to create a pathway and opportunities for other jobs that, in fact, may well pay better. Importantly, because we believe in ensuring that Australians can earn more and keep more of what they earn, we are delivering tax cuts to every taxpaying Australian—that's 13.6 million people—and we are making sure that we are not holding back wage growth. In my electorate of Hasluck, there are 84,000 taxpayers who will be receiving that tax-cut through our government's fairer tax cut plan in July. It is quite extraordinary to think that from July every woman in Australia—every woman in Fowler, every woman in the seat of Ryan—will receive a tax cut, at an average of around $1,700. Under our fairer tax plan, 84 per cent of all taxpayers are going to receive an even bigger tax cut than they would have under another government. It would be helpful for those opposite to keep in mind just how sensible Australians were in making a decision to vote an Albanese Labor government in—how otherwise their conditions would be so much worse. With regard to the states and territories, I want to mention that 83 per cent of taxpayers in New South Wales are going to receive a bigger tax cut, and, as we just heard from the lovely member for Ryan, 87 per cent of Queenslanders are going to receive that bigger tax cut. It will help. It will make a real difference. Because we're also a government that does not subscribe to the deliberate suppression of wages, real wage growth is now a feature of our economy again. The industries with the largest contribution to quarterly wage growth are health care and social assistance, and education and training. A great proportion of women in those sectors are the beneficiaries, yet again, of the Albanese Labor government. At the pharmacy—and we know there was a bit of a battle to get this over the line, thanks to the coalition—people can now make much greater savings on their medicine bills. We've reduced the maximum cost of a PBS script from $42.40 to $30. That's genuine cost relief for the member for Fowler's constituents, who have realised more than $1½ million in savings through more than 123,000 scripts. That is genuine cost-of-living relief. In addition, in the first five months since this government introduced 60-day scripts, constituents living in the seat of Fowler have benefited from the reduced cost—and, of course, the added convenience—with more than 27,000 scripts dispensed. It is the same in my electorate of Hasluck, where $2.3 million has been saved at pharmacies across more than 185,000 medicine scripts that are now cheaper, with around 17,000 60-day scripts dispensed. These savings will continue to grow, providing genuine relief for people managing their household budgets. We've made record investments in Medicare. We've tripled the bulk-billing incentive. This has enabled more people, particularly concession card holders, pensioners and people with children, to find a GP who is willing and happy to bulk-bill. We've also introduced urgent care clinics across the country. I'm really lucky to have one—the North Street Medical Centre in Midland—in my electorate of Hasluck. Every time our constituents take advantage of the increased availability of bulk-billed appointments, they are genuinely saving money. The government are committed to making it easier for people to see a GP who bulk-bills, and we are absolutely committed, as the party for Medicare, to protecting and strengthening Medicare as well. The previous speaker, the member for Ryan, mentioned cheaper child care. That is great, because it gives me an opportunity to speak to both her constituents and those of the member for Fowler about the thousands of families who are now eligible for greater childcare subsidies. In Hasluck there are 5,600 families who have directly benefited from cheaper child care, and in the member for Fowler's electorate there are around 4,600 eligible families. This is real, genuine cost-of-living relief that the Albanese Labor government is delivering, and it is already benefiting more than 16,000 families across Australia. On energy bill relief we've done the same. We have delivered direct payments and introduced major changes to transmissions to ultimately achieve greater— (Time expired) 15:58 Mr BANDT M3C Melbourne What does this government expect people to do? 'Work harder'? Is that Labor's answer? Is that Labor's answer to everyone living one rent increase away from eviction, everyone who can't afford to put food on the table? Labor don't want to cap rents. They don't want to stop their handouts to wealthy property investors. They don't want to stop the big supermarkets from price gouging us. Labor don't want to wipe student debt or stop unfair indexation or even touch the rate of income support. So what is it then? If you're leaving people out in the cold then tell me: what does Labor expect them to do? Do you know what the median salary in Melbourne is, Madam Deputy Speaker? It's just over $69,000 a year. Do you know what the average rent in Melbourne is? It's $633 per week, according to SQM Research. That's just under $33,000 a year into the pocket of the landlord, almost half of the average income. And it could be a lot more if you received an out-of-control rent increase, because Labor refuses to freeze and cap rents. Then there are groceries: just under $200 a week on average is spent in Victoria, but it will be a lot more if you're shopping—or getting price gouged!—at Woolworths or Coles, shopping for a family or shopping in the inner city. Over $10,000 is spent a year just on the basics, and that's before your bills, before expenses, before your university fees or TAFE fees or student debt, before seeing a doctor, before buying medicine. Of course, that's before doing any of the things that you enjoy, which make life worth living, a luxury for most in 2024. No wonder people are fed up. No wonder people are completely done with the status quo. So my question to Labor again is this: what do you expect people to do? If Labor won't help them, what do you expect people to do? The crisis is breaking people, and that's before they even think about the prospect of owning their own home, something the overwhelming majority of Labor MPs have the privilege of. Do you know what you would need to be earning on average to afford a home in Melbourne? Just under $190,000 a year. That is an impossible amount of money for most people. How is an average worker in the country meant to afford that? Are they meant to work harder, Labor? Is that it? Because lots of people are already getting a second job or more to try and make ends meet, let alone to buy a home. If you're a nurse or a teacher in this country, you might already be working a 64-hour week, and they're certainly not getting paid anything like the $190,000 you need to comfortably own a home in Melbourne. This is all while 75 per cent of Labor MPs own investment properties, while refusing to scrap tax handouts like negative gearing and capital gains tax. What an absolute joke! Everyone, no matter who you are, should have a safe and secure roof over their head. Instead, this government thinks the guarantee should be that wealthy property investors get billions in tax handouts. Renters and first home buyers deserve better. Students deserve better. They're not asking for much, just the basics of the good life their parents enjoyed—a home, a job, to be part of a community on a liveable planet, a future. Under this system and under Labor it's becoming a pipedream. Under Labor the people who are struggling the most are being left further and further behind. Over three million people live in poverty in this country, but Labor refuses to raise the rate of income support above the poverty line. Why are property investors entitled to billions in handouts to help them buy their fifth home, but someone on the disability support pension can't afford three good meals a day and to pay the rent for a safe and secure home? Why are corporations entitled to record profits when people are getting punished at the checkouts and farmers are in crisis? So much for 'no-one left behind'. This government should be ensuring that people who are disadvantaged are given what they need for a life of dignity and support, but it's throwing them to the walls, letting the corporations call the shots. As a result, people are paying the price. We can't afford any more bandaid solutions. And we can't let Labor make the problems any worse. We can stop the price gouging, stop the handouts of billions of dollars to wealthy property investors, stop the out-of-control rent increases and stop students being saddled with a lifetime of debt. Labor says it's impossible. But, if we rein in the profiteering corporations that have been ripping us off, we can do it. Labor needs to stop making excuses and start working with the Greens to get action. 16:03 Ms FERNANDO 299964 Holt It's a festive time of the year. We celebrated Holi earlier this week. Easter is this weekend. Ramadan is less than a fortnight away, and in mid-April many in my community will be commemorating the Vaisakhi and Hindu and Sri Lankan new years. While festive seasons are times of joy and happiness, they are also periods when cost-of-living increases are acutely felt. This is something myself and everyone on this side of the chamber knows too well. Addressing these rises in prices has been at the front and centre of the Albanese Labor government's priorities even before we were elected to govern. In my electorate, like others around the country, families are grappling with housing, health care, groceries and utilities becoming more expensive. As a government that is focused on ensuring no Australian is held back and none are left behind, we see it as our duty to support individuals and families in making ends meet and to provide them with the financial security and prosperity they need and deserve. This is why I am proud to be part of a government that does not take this duty lightly, a fact made obvious by numerous initiatives we have taken to tackle the cost-of-living crisis that we inherited thanks to the inaction and apathy of those opposite. Our plan is very simple. We want people to earn more and we want people to keep more of what they earn. Our support for ensuring Australians, especially those who earn the least, continue to receive the pay rises they are entitled to has been non-negotiable since the initial days of this government. The government's philosophy in its submissions to the Fair Work Commission's annual wage review have remained straightforward since 2022. We don't want Australia's low-paid workers to be earning less than they earned in the previous year in real terms. As someone who worked on the minimum wage for a decade and a half since I was 15 years old, being part of a government that values the work of Australia's lowest paid workers, like those in retail and fast food, is delightful, especially after nearly a decade of neglect by the coalition. I am pleased that tomorrow the government will recommend that the Fair Work Commission safeguard the real wages of Australia's low-paid workers, a position consistent with the government's last two submissions to the commission, while this government's economic sharpness has begun showing results through progress on inflation and a return to real wage growth earlier than forecast. We are not ignorant to the fact that many Australians are still under pressure. We will continue to advocate for Australians to be able to earn more, and that's why we are focused on delivering strong and sustainable wage growth. We want people in our community, in addition to earning more, to be able to keep more of what they earn. From 1 July this year, not only will every single Australian taxpayer receive a tax cut regardless of their income but 11.5 million Australians will also receive a bigger tax cut then they would have under the Liberals. These are not just numbers but real savings for real people. Labor's tax cuts will mean that nurses at Casey Hospital on $76,000 will save $1,600 a year. It will mean retail workers, like my former colleagues at Woolies, on $45,000 a year will be able to keep $800 more. It will mean IT workers living in my electorate earning $105,000 a year will have $2,300 more to spend on their families. This government will continue to support those who need it the most—hardworking families, like those in my electorate of Holt. 16:08 Dr CHARLTON I8M Parramatta The cost of living is something that is affecting all Australians. In many ways, Australians really face the brunt of the cost-of-living crisis, because after 10 years of neglect the cost of living has been driven up. After 10 years of doing nothing on supermarkets and nothing on supply chains, the cost of living for Australian groceries has only increased. In fact, Australians now pay among the highest grocery prices in the world. The average price of groceries in Australia is 54 per cent higher than it is in other countries around the world. That's because those opposite did nothing for 10 years—nothing to break down the monopolies and the lack of competition that exist in every single layer of Australian supply chains. That is why we have a government now that is finally taking the cost of living seriously, a government that has finally decided to launch an ACCC investigation into price gouging in the supermarket sector, a government that has decided to appoint Craig Emerson to make sure that small Australian suppliers are not being taken advantage of and a government that has appointed CHOICE, the consumer group, to crunch the data and show us which are the supermarkets that are charging the most and which are the ones that are most reasonably priced. This is a government that is taking this issue seriously. What we have over there is a group that did nothing, and over there a group that has stupid ideas for what to do about this issue. They're suggesting divestment. This is a competition of the most half-baked idea you could come up with for a very serious problem. If the Greens want to be a serious political party and if they want to talk about economic issues then they need to lift the quality of the ideas they are putting forward. Suggesting that we should Soviet-style split up the supermarkets—chop them in half, as if that's easy to do—is completely impractical. It's not done anywhere else in the world and it wouldn't be done here. Moreover, there is no evidence that it would actually reduce prices in the supermarkets. Two supply chains, two headquarters—that could increase the cost in our supermarket supply chains and, ultimately, mean that consumers pay higher prices. On issue after issue, the Greens have cost-of-living ideas that do not pass the pub test. They haven't been fully thought through. We know the strategy of the Australian Greens is to shift into being a party not just of climate and the environment but also a party of economics. They want to talk about the cost of living. They want to talk about HECS. They want to talk about supermarkets. They want to talk about rents. But they have no solutions to those problems that would not make them worse. All of their solutions in housing would actually make the housing situation worse by reducing supply rather than increasing it. Their spending proposals would make the HECS indexation worse, not better, by driving up inflation. Their proposals for supermarkets would lift the cost of Australian groceries, not drop them. It's one thing to spot an issue that matters to the Australian people, it's one thing to express empathy to those people, but it's another thing to propose solutions that actually work and make a difference for those people. For the last 10 years, the Labor Party have been the only ones proposing ideas that will actually work. We have been stuck in the middle—clowns to one side, jokers to the left. The clowns did nothing, the jokers have silly policies that simply wouldn't work. The cost of living is an issue that is affecting so many Australians, and that is why the Labor Party is working methodically on issue after issue to ensure that we make a difference without making the underlying challenge of rising inflation worse. For the Greens to come up and present themselves as a party of economics, a party that can put forward proposals in all of these areas just doesn't pass the pub test of sensible ideas—ideas that Australians can grab onto and realise will make a difference. That's why their aspirations to be a party that appeals to the centre, a party that appeals to Australians with aspiration, and to go beyond their traditional voter base are simply not working. We're very proud to be part of a government that is making a difference on these issues, a government that has put in place a whole range of cost-of-living measures that will help people at the checkout, help people when they're buying medicines, help people with cheaper child care and help people with lower costs on their TAFE. On issue after issue, the Albanese government is working. We've had no solutions from either of those sides opposite. STATEMENTS 79 STATEMENTS First Speech 79 16:13 Mr BURKE DYW Watson In the best procedural motion to be moved for a long time, I move: That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Dunkley making a statement immediately and that the Member speak without limitation of time. Question agreed to. 16:14 Ms BELYEA 309484 Dunkley G'day! I am Jodie Belyea, and if you haven't already heard, I am a mum from Frankston with a husband, a son, two dogs and a mortgage. I am going to tell you what it means to be a mum from Frankston, and what a mum from Frankston, who's Frankston-tough can do, because there are a lot of women and men out there like me. I acknowledge that we meet on the traditional lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples. I pay my respects to their elders past and present. I represent Dunkley, a community on Bunurong and Boonwurrung country, the land by the sea, the home of Nairm Marr Djambana, our local gathering place. I am fortunate to have deep friendships with many First Nations people. Some are here today. I thank them for guiding me so generously to learn about this country's ancestors and culture. I will continue to do what I can to close the gap. Just a few weeks ago, on International Women's Day, I was declared the federal MP for Dunkley. I'm conscious of the tragic circumstances that bring me here: the passing of my predecessor, Peta Murphy. I acknowledge the pain that many in this place and in our community feel for the loss of such a remarkable, strong warrior for justice as Peta was. I acknowledge and honour Peta's parents, Bob and Jan, in the gallery today and thank them for being here. And to Rod, who is watching: for your guidance and support this past four months despite your grief, a heartfelt thank you. To the people of Dunkley, I simply say thank you. Thank you for the immense privilege and honour of representing you in federal parliament. The gravity associated with representing Dunkley as a Labor MP in federal parliament hit me in my practice session for taking the oath just last week. As I stood in this chamber at the dispatch box, I burst into tears as the enormity of the responsibility hit me. It's a responsibility I will never take lightly. I will seek to honour my community's trust every day I am here. Dunkley is an incredible community with a can-do spirit, from Seaford to Carrum Downs, Frankston to Langwarrin and Karingal to Mount Eliza. We're proud people. We care about each other. We do awesome things for each other every day. We are demographically diverse, and I saw our mix of wealth and poverty and everything in between as I doorknocked in every suburb around the electorate. I saw that too many people in our community need a helping hand due to poverty and disadvantage. Yet, if one community gives me faith that these challenges can be met, it is Dunkley. Dunkley is a hive of volunteer and community organisations that work with people from all walks of life, small and large businesses, and institutions. There are so, so many people who give up their evenings and weekends to run the widest range of organisations you can imagine: basketball, bowling, cricket, football, netball, scouts, soccer and tennis, not to mention art, dance, theatre schools and swimming groups. You name it; in Dunkley, we've got it. At a time when volunteering across Australia is at its lowest, in Dunkley it's as strong as ever. I intend to advance the work of these organisations. For as long as I serve my community in this place, I will advocate for the responsible development of Frankston as the cultural, economic and civic hub for our area. We have great assets in a redeveloped Frankston Hospital, Chisholm TAFE and a campus of Australia's largest university, Monash. But we need to integrate these huge investments into a revitalised CBD precinct. We also need to build more homes, including affordable and social housing—an issue I heard a lot about over my campaign from single mums and young couples struggling to afford rent. And we must build a climate-resilient infrastructure to protect our greatest natural assets—our 'bay' and green spaces. Now is the time to transform our energy system to pursue renewable energy. If we do nothing, it's our children and grandchildren who will pay. I want to thank the inspiring locals, community leaders and organisations that I have already visited. I will champion your efforts and the efforts of those I haven't yet met to find solutions that improve the lives of people from Dunkley for ever, because that is the Dunkley way. I grew up not far from Dunkley, in Mentone, with my mum, Anne; stepfather, Peter; and my brother and sister, Shane and Meg. I was close to my grandparents and my aunt Robyn. On family birthdays, we sang and danced to Neil Diamond, Fleetwood Mac and Billy Joel. In summer holidays, we camped on the Torquay foreshore. We are an average, middle-class family. My grandfather Gough—Lieutenant Gough Garland—was head of the family. Gough was a tall man with a big booming voice and a sparkle of mischief in his eye. As a girl and a young woman, he was also my hero. Gough served in the 39th Battalion during World War II, serving 232 days on the Kokoda Track. After the war, he went on to make significant contributions through Legacy, looking after the welfare of war widows, and the 39th Battalion Association, helping to establish the renowned 1,000 Steps in Ferntree Gully, Victoria, in memory of the 625 soldiers killed in the Kokoda campaign. I have been fortunate to walk three times in my grandfather's footsteps across the Kokoda Track, learning the history of the battles—what our forefathers and the Papua New Guinean people endured and achieved, in extreme circumstances, to protect our shores and keep Australia safe. My grandfather role-modelled to me and us, as a family, his experience of dealing with the trauma of war by helping others. Sadly, trauma was something I came to know all too well. As a child, teenager and young woman, I experienced family and domestic violence and sexual abuse. To share this part of my story makes me feel incredibly vulnerable. However, I'm not alone. The statistics suggest that one in five women—and one in 20 men—experience domestic, family and sexual violence. I know there are many people in this chamber and the gallery who have lived experience of trauma, whose values, beliefs and life's work have been shaped by what we have experienced. To help me heal, mum got me into ballet, camping and bushwalking in the great Australian outdoors. Today, bushwalking and fitness are central to my routine, because trauma breaks you into a million pieces. It paralyses you and makes you wonder if you can go on. The experience of trauma puts you behind your peers in education, career and financial security. You have to work really hard to silence the inner voice that says, 'You are not enough,' to keep going and live your life. But trauma also gave me a gift—a steely determination to get over depression and self-doubt, and to work with other women, men and young people who have experienced the same pain as me. Over the past 30 years, I have worked for numerous community organisations and state and local government, leading programs and services for young people, men and women. I have a master's in business leadership, and undergraduate qualifications in training, youth work and community development. I know how to lead organisations, create solutions to issues and get things done for and with business, community and government. And I will get things done for Dunkley. When you walk the Kokoda Track, you connect with the values emblazoned on the four pillars at Isurava battlefield: mateship, courage, endurance and sacrifice. It ignites your inner fortitude. On that first trek, I thought a lot about my grandfather and how I could follow in his footsteps and those of his mates. One afternoon, as I cooled my feet in a river, I was surrounded by butterflies of every colour. It was a magical moment. I felt pure delight at the colours of nature gathered around me. Several years later, with Dave and Flynn, I visited the butterfly enclosure at the Natural History Museum in London. I took a photo of the most magnificent Ulysses butterfly. A year later I drew that butterfly on a canvas and I started mapping out a recovery program for women, informed by my work with women, men and young people. From that idea and sketch I founded the Women's Spirit Project, with women from Dunkley—a not-for-profit organisation that supports women to recover from trauma and abuse through fitness, health and wellbeing activities. Through that project and other programs I have walked thousands of kilometres with groups, traversing Tasmania's wilderness, the Larapinta Trail and the Bibbulmun Track, supporting thousands of young people, women and men on programs delivered out on country so they can heal and recover and discover their potential. Through the Women's Spirit I made a dear friend Mel, who's watching my speech in Frankston today. She had fled domestic violence and was recovering from addiction. In her first year she wanted to quit the program countless times. As a single mum with two children, her life was complex. She was carrying a very heavy load. But she never gave up because we accepted her without judgement, giving her the tools and support to slowly recover and heal, and she did the rest. Mel has now completed a diploma in community services and works with the Women's Spirit Project. She is also the coordinator of the MEGT Australia foundation, helping women experiencing disadvantage return to study through fee-free TAFE. She is flying. Her journey and that of hundreds of other women I have worked with affirms the need for wellbeing programs that support healing and recovery a steps towards social and economic independence. Through the Women's Spirit Project I also met Peta Murphy. We met at the most unlikely of places—but, then, probably not, due to all my walking—the Anaconda store in Frankston. A group of us from the project were being fitted out for boots to walk the 72 kilometres from Frankston to Cape Schanck. Peta was immediately engaged by the stories of the women putting one foot in front of the other, doing what they could to recover from trauma. Then, a little over a year ago, shortly after a chance meeting on the boardwalk by Frankston, Peta and I sat down for what proved to be an emotional conversation. We talked about Peta's aspirations in politics, her unfinished business and the fact that she did not know how long she had to live. It was during this conversation that Peta encouraged me to join the Labor Party and to consider politics as a different way to help my community. I may have been a bit late in life joining Labor; however, my career and pursuits in life show a Labor person through and through. In 2021, thousands of women and men joined the March 4 Justice outside this house. Peta invited me to walk from parliament with the Labor Party, where we stood with the crowd, singing loud and proud, 'I am woman, woman, hear me roar!' It was a huge moment for me. The shame I had felt for decades because of trauma finally lifted, and I knew in that moment I was going to need to do more—to be brave and to tell my story in order to make a bigger difference. And so here I am. People who know me know that I like a plan. Every New Year's Eve you'll find me pounding the beach in Frankston with an old friend Juanita, reflecting on the year just gone and setting goals for the year ahead. I need a KPI to work towards and a word for the year. My word for 2024 is 'powerful'. I will be a powerful local voice in Canberra for residents who are struggling to make ends meet, committed to being my community's voice in the government and advocating for solutions that build on the worthy measures already announced by the Albanese government, including Labour's cost-of-living tax cuts. I have aspirations—goals—I would like to achieve at a national level. But I've got to win the next election! I stand here as part of the most diverse government in Australia's history, with women making up 53 per cent of its members. It's an incredible achievement that needs to be celebrated. But there's still much more to do to remove persistent barriers to women's social and economic independence and to advance women's economic participation in Australia. Firstly, I wish to champion the development of policies and programs for women that strengthen their health and wellbeing—for women recovering from domestic and family violence and sexual abuse, mental health barriers, poverty and addiction. I wish to support initiatives that address menopause, because—pardon the pun—menopause is a hot topic for many middle-aged women. When women finally reach a time in their life when they can advance their career they are often besieged by hot flushes, insomnia, anxiety and a lot more. They can retreat from their careers and experience relationship breakdown, which hurts their financial security, independence and family and also impacts our economy. If we don't commit to delivering initiatives to support the health and wellbeing, the healing and the recovery of women impacted by trauma and poverty, gender equality could remain mere words on paper. In honour of Peta Murphy's passion for the unionist and feminist, I will reignite the Louisa Dunkley Network, enabling local women to come together to learn and lead. Secondly, Australians lose $25 billion to gambling each year, the highest amount per capita in the world. Families in communities like Dunkley feel the brunt of gambling magnifying the cost-of-living pressures and exacerbating disadvantage. I will advocate for the recommendations of the You win some, you lose more report. Peta drove this report's commonsense recommendations with great empathy and care. She is no longer here to fight this good fight, so it falls on us to meet her political courage with a little bit of our own. And to the young people of this country: I see you. I will do whatever is within my power to ensure that young people from all walks of life have the skills and confidence to live into their potential and navigate the complex issues they face now and into the future. My work over three decades has shown me that the greatest growth, learning and development I have seen in young people has been through programs delivered in the great Australian outdoors—on country, in communities. I believe we need to give young people hope—a sense of possibility—through the provision of leadership and personal development programs that teach them courage, resilience and self-determination out on our amazing country. I will invite my parliamentary colleagues to work with me to create this initiative for our young people. Australians live in a mighty democracy. We are naive if we think our democratic institutions are immune from the tide of misinformation and populism that threatens to sink other democracies around the globe. We, the Australian people, need to get involved in politics to prevent populist politics that ignites fear and perpetuates lies from taking hold. In Dunkley a far-right group that I will not name campaigned hard against me. They had money, but we had something else. We had people power. I want to thank the best group of campaign volunteers Dunkley has ever seen. You stood on stalls prepoll and spoke to thousands of people across the electorate. And to the leaders of my campaign team—to Jett, Georgie, and Lachie—you had my back every day. I am forever grateful. For every year of my 56 years, so many people—bosses, colleagues, friends and family members—have guided, nudged, provoked, supported and cheered me on. Some of you are here today and some are watching elsewhere. Thank you for all you have done to enable me to stand here today. To Paul Erickson, to Julian Hill and to Paul Edbrooke: thanks for believing in me. I thank my state Labor colleagues for doorknocking and helping the team to connect with 15,000 residents. To my colleagues from the Women's Spirit Project and MEGT Australia who've taken the baton from me at lightning speed, enabling me to embrace this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: I am incredibly grateful. To the Prime Minister: thank you for backing me, campaigning with me, taking great selfies with Dunkley locals and, most importantly, working hard, with all of my new colleagues, to provide opportunities for women like me to be in federal parliament. I first met my husband, Dave, when I was 25. I was a student at Chisholm TAFE, and he was my lecturer. However, 13 years later, we got together, we had Flynn and got married—we were all back to front. Dave, you have been my greatest ally, cheerleader and confidant. You are an incredible man, who has made your own significant contributions to the youth and disability sector, empowering people that need support. Thank you for being you and for all you have done for me. Your loyalty and dedication to supporting me is very precious, and thank you for the best present life has ever given me: our gorgeous son, Flynn. Flynn, like your dad's, your support of me has been unwavering. Despite the stress you felt, you rode the wave of the by-election campaign. You are amazing. You are a brilliant young man, funny, determined and warm. I am so proud of you and cannot wait to see what you do in life. Very few Australians get the opportunity I have to stand in this house—the big house on the hill. The honour and gratitude I feel will stay with me for the rest of my life. These past four months, walking the streets and knocking on the doors of Dunkley, I have seen and learnt a great deal. I intend to keep listening to the people of Dunkley and to use all that I am learning for the betterment of Dunkley and Australia. I believe in the Labor mission to fight for the average Aussie, for families like my own and women, men and young people, and standing up for justice, equality and fairness. I call on you to join me, a proud mum from Frankston—a mum who is more than Frankston tough—in making a difference for this great country, because, if I can, you can too. BUSINESS 82 BUSINESS Suspension of Standing and Sessional Orders 82 16:43 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That, in relation to the presentation of, and reply by the Leader of the Opposition to, the 2024-2025 Budget: (1) standing order 31 (automatic adjournment of the House) and standing order 33 (limit on business) be suspended for the sitting on Tuesday, 14 May 2024; and (2) standing order 31 (automatic adjournment of the House) be suspended for the sitting on Thursday, 16 May 2024 and at that sitting, after the Leader of the Opposition completes his reply to the Budget speech, the House automatically stand adjourned until 12 noon on Tuesday, 28 May 2024, unless the Speaker or, in the event of the Speaker being unavailable, the Deputy Speaker, fixes an alternative day or hour of meeting. Question agreed to. Rearrangement 83 16:43 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That business intervening before notice No. 18, government business, be postponed until a later hour this day. Question agreed to. Suspension of Standing and Sessional Orders 83 16:44 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That standing order 31 (automatic adjournment of the House), standing order 33 (limit on business) and standing order 133 (deferred divisions) be suspended for this sitting. For the benefit of members, at the moment we have no messages from the Senate. If at any point any messages arrive that require a decision of the House, I will move that whatever debate we are in be adjourned so we can deal with them immediately so we're getting through them in an orderly way. I commend the motion to the House. Question agreed to. COMMITTEES 83 COMMITTEES Public Works Joint Committee 83 Approval of Work 83 16:45 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner I move: That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, it is expedient to carry out the following proposed work which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and on which the committee has duly reported to Parliament: Department of Defence—RAAF Base Learmonth redevelopment enabling KC-30A Operations, Exmouth, Western Australia project. The Department of Defence is proposing works at RAAF Base Learmonth to upgrade the airfield to support KC-30A aircraft to perform strategic airlift and air refuelling operations. The works will include strengthening the runway and parallel taxiway, constructing new connecting taxiways and dedicated parking aprons for KC-30A and other large aircraft to support the loading and unloading of cargo and explosive ordnance. The estimated cost of the works is $662.2 million, excluding GST. The proposed works were referred to the Public Works Committee on 28 November 2023. Following its inquiry, the committee has recommended that the House of Representatives resolve, pursuant to section 18(7) of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, that it is expedient to carry out the works. Subject to parliamentary approval, construction is expected to commence in mid-2024 and to be completed by the end of 2028. On behalf of the government I would like to thank the committee, ably chaired by the member for Moreton, for undertaking a timely inquiry. I commend the motion to the House. Question agreed to. Approval of Work 83 16:47 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner I move: That, in accordance with the provisions of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, it is expedient to carry out the following proposed work which was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works and on which the committee has duly reported to Parliament: Department of Defence—RAAF Base Darwin—Mid-term refresh project. The Department of Defence is proposing works at RAAF Base Darwin to provide a new high-capacity main entrance, an upgraded entrance for heavy vehicle access, and capacity, condition and compliance upgrades to the potable water, firefighting water and sewer network. The total estimated cost of the proposed works is $159.9 million, GST exclusive. The proposed works were referred to the Public Works Committee on 15 November 2023. Following its inquiry the committee has recommended that the House of Representatives resolve, pursuant to section 18(7) of the Public Works Committee Act 1969, that it is expedient to carry out the works. Subject to parliamentary approval, design activities are expected to be completed by early 2024 with construction expected to commence in mid-2024 for completion by mid-2027. On behalf of the government I would like to thank the committee, ably chaired by the member for Moreton, for undertaking a timely inquiry. I commend the motion to the House. Question agreed to. BILLS 84 BILLS Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024 84

Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 84 Third Reading 84 16:49 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024 84

National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 84 Third Reading 84 16:51 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024 84

Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 84 Third Reading 84 16:52 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024 84

Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 84 Third Reading 84 16:53 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 84

Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024

Second Reading 84 16:55 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi The Curtin University research revealed a toxic cocktail of ingredients, highlighting the significant health risks that vape users are exposing themselves to. Of the vapes tested, they were all found to have been inaccurately labelled, containing chemicals with unknown effects on respiratory health. Sixty-two per cent contained chemicals likely to be toxic if inhaled repeatedly. Research also shows that more than 20 per cent of vapes available in Australia contain nicotine, despite this being illegal. It's unlawful to use, sell or buy nicotine for use in vapes in Australia without a prescription. Time and time again, people tell me that vaping is highly addictive. That's why this bill is needed, to help people make healthier informed choices. The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 will strengthen standards for therapeutic vapes by requiring a prescriptive list of permitted ingredients; accurate pharmaceutical packaging and labelling; and a ban on advertising, except in limited circumstances. Numerous studies highlight concerns about the potential adverse effects of vaping, including impacts on adolescent brain development, adverse pregnancy outcomes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer. A range of other health risks are also associated with vape use, including severe burns, poisoning and seizures. Therapeutic vapes can play a role in helping people to give up cigarettes, so we must ensure that anyone with a genuine desire to quit can afford prescriptions and has access to credible prescribing services, particularly in regional, rural, and remote areas, where access to medical services can be challenging. As we take these measures to protect people from the harm of nicotine addiction, we must ensure that we do not cause more harm to already vulnerable people struggling with addiction. I can't overstate it: we need to make sure that, for people struggling with giving up cigarettes, we do everything we can, with a full suite of therapeutic actions to support them and assist them to quit. At least 20,000 Australians die each year from diseases linked to smoking. Successive governments over many years have taken action to regulate the tobacco industry, and now the industry is hedging by investing in the vape sector. Tobacco companies are signing supply contracts with Australian pharmacies and telehealth providers who equip patients with scripts for therapeutic vapes. Vapes are indeed big business for big tobacco. With this bill adopted, the only vapes available legally in this country from 1 July would be those prescribed by medical practitioners and dispensed by pharmacies—and perhaps prescribed by other practitioners, too, such as nurse practitioners. It's outrageous to think that the tobacco industry has any involvement in products prescribed for therapeutic use. We must stamp out the pervasive lobbying, cash for access and political donations that buys big tobacco influence over state and federal MPs. Conflicts of interest and gifts must be clearly declared, as should the relationships between political parties and tobacco companies. Public health reforms must be about the community need, never about corporate greed. This bill builds on the progress the government has already made to ban all non-therapeutic vapes, by providing a national framework to regulate the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertisement of all vapes, irrespective of nicotine content or therapeutic claims. I commend the Minister for Health and Aged Care for prioritising this issue and establishing the National Vaping Working Group to oversee the development and implementation of a national vaping enforcement framework. I'm frequently told how easy it is to access vapes despite the regulations currently placed on them, and that's why these reforms are needed. Importantly, they must be enforceable, so we need as many resources put to this as we possibly can. I welcome strong and decisive action to halt and reverse rapidly increasing vape intake, to prevent long-term adverse effects on the health of our communities, especially the health of our next generation. It has taken far too long for the Commonwealth to reach this point, but I'm so glad that they have, with so many Australians already addicted. As a parliament, it's critical now that we work together to turn this public health issue around. 16:59 Ms MILLER-FROST 296272 Boothby Tobacco use is responsible for around 21,000 deaths a year in Australia—more than one in every eight fatalities. Around 15,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer every year in this country, with 90 per cent of them tobacco related. Tobacco is responsible for 9.3 per cent of the burden of disease in this country. A pack-a-day habit costs around $14,600 a year. For us as a community, the AIHW estimates smoking costs Australia around $5 billion in lost productivity, $2 billion for family members caring for someone with smoking related disease and $6.8 billion in healthcare costs, including 1.7 million hospital admissions. If you factor in premature death, the total cost to the Australian community is estimated at $136 billion annually. Imagine if we could travel back in time. Imagine if we could go back in time and prevent tobacco being normalised in Australia. Imagine all those Australians, 21,000 every year, not dying. Imagine 21,000 families every year not having the sorrow of the premature death of their loved one. Imagine 15,000 Australians every year not having to go through the rigours, physical pain and distress of lung cancer treatment—operations, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Imagine saving that cost in our health system. That is where we are now with vaping. Vaping was initially introduced to Australia as a therapeutic product to help people stop smoking, and there are some people for whom this works. This week I spoke to a man in my electorate who told me he had given up smoking seven years ago through the use of vapes, so it does work for some people. For those people, therapeutic-grade vapes will still be available via prescription. But more broadly we find that people, particularly young people, are taking up vaping recreationally—and vaping is a gateway drug, with one in three people who vape going on to smoke cigarettes. While around 9.4 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 smoke cigarettes, down from 32 per cent in 2001, 25 per cent of people in that age group have used vapes. So it is no surprise that this age group is now starting to record an increase in smoking rates as well. Vaping is not helping people in our community get off smoking. Instead it is addicting them and providing the gateway to smoking. It is creating the next generation of lifelong consumers, because addicts make for an excellent consumer market for companies. Vaping itself is not a safe activity. Just as cigarettes contain a lot of chemicals beyond the addictive nicotine, so also do vaping fluids, which can contain up to 200 chemicals including those found in nail polish remover, weedkiller and paint stripper. Vaping carries the risk of nicotine addiction; nicotine poisoning; serious injuries and burns, including internal burns; and seizures. Of course, we do not yet know the long-term effects of vaping, but I think as a general rule we can say that inhaling chemicals into your lungs is not a good thing. Lung cancer is already a cancer that causes the most deaths in Australia—21,000 a year. Worse than that, we know that children are being targeted by vaping companies. Just as the cigarette industry targeted children and young people to create lifelong consumers, addicts for their products, so too is vaping. Vaping is marketing itself with bright colours, with images like unicorns and rainbows, with sweet flavours. Vapes are disguised as highlighter pens so they can sit undetected in a pencil case, and it's working. Teachers and school principals tell of children so addicted to vaping that they can't sit through an entire class or an exam without nicotine patches. Nicotine increases anxiety and depression, increases sleep problems and affects memory and concentration, particularly in developing brains. Students are sneaking out of class or skipping classes because they're experiencing nicotine withdrawal. Australia has world-leading tobacco legislation, and we have made significant inroads into decreasing the impact of smoking on the health of Australians and the associated personal and financial costs to individuals, families and the community. But if we could go back in time and put the genie back in the bottle, wouldn't we? If we could stop tobacco taking hold in Australia, wouldn't we? Wouldn't we want to save those lives, save the sorrow, the misery, the pain, the cost to the health system and the cost to the community? This legislation to curb vaping is our opportunity to do just that, to put the genie back in the bottle. It is the new public health challenge, an entirely preventable one, and we should learn from the past. I commend the bill to the House. 17:05 Dr GILLESPIE 72184 Lyne The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 is a really important bill. It may not be as sexy as some of the big Treasury bills, but this is something that will have major ramifications for generations of Australians. Serving in the health ministry was one of my most enjoyable times, because getting to apply the knowledge and the skills that people like you and I, Deputy Speaker Freelander, learnt through our professional career in a legislative whole-of-Australia sense was really quite a thrill. The current policy of restricting vapes to prescription use was a policy that I endorsed and promoted. A lot of what is involved in this is existing policy, and it's been going for many years. But we do have a problem. To put it in perspective, a school down the road from my office, a high school in the beautiful Lyne electorate, has children in early high-school years dealing vapes at school. There are parents who see children's behaviour changing, and teachers are seeing it. They have a policy that people have to put their mobile phone away because they get anxiety not having their phone with them the whole time. That's a different level of mid-teen problems, but they are not concentrating, getting aggro at teachers because they are missing their nicotine hit. Then hello vaping, which was promoted as a vehicle to quit smoking and as a harm minimisation product may be a little bit less harmless. It is very early days, and there is so much more we are learning. Every time someone does a study, there's more to learn about how vaping is not safe. So, what is proposed here is just ramping up what we started doing. As other speakers have said, when people are vaping, it is not just steam or hot water, like a Vicks VapoRub inhalation. It has many damaging chemicals: nickel and chromium, which are heavy metals; formaldehyde, which we use to preserve bodies; nitrosamines, many of which are known to cause cancer; acetone, which plenty of people use to take nail polish off; and acrolein. And people willingly put that into their lungs? It's just mind-blowing what people will do. People don't realise that the nicotine in these is actually much more concentrated in many instances than it is in the traditional roll-your-own or tailor-made cigarettes. Just so everyone understands: it's not safe. But it has allowed a lot of savings for people who are serious addicts who have smoked their life and their savings away. A lot of the medical opinion is that there is less damage, but I can find you references that show that the same emphysematous processes, the hypersecretion and the oedema in the alveoli, are all happening among vapers as they do among cigarette smokers. What we're seeing is the tip of an iceberg that, if it isn't reduced by long-term measures, will grow and grow and grow. I've spoken to colleagues who are still working in Accidents and Emergencies, and it's not uncommon on any one shift in a busy A&E to have one or two cases of acute respiratory distress where vapes are involved. These patients either have asthma or have perfectly normal lungs and are just getting a reaction. We know about the EVALI reaction that was sort of like a mini-plague throughout North America, but there are many more chronic problems that will become much more evident when something that wasn't here in Australia 10 or 12 years ago becomes widespread Some of the proposals aren't new. That's what I was just alluding to. We did ban them. We did limit them to prescription. But, as many speakers, including my colleague the member for Cowper and other members on the other side, said: the genie really is out of the bottle, and it is pretty much impossible to put it back in. But the reason we got down to almost single figures in many communities in Australia in terms of regular smoking is that we have had an antismoking campaign since I was a little tacker. That's what we need to do with vaping. It can't just be a program for a year, and we spend $20 million. We have to treat it exactly the same as we have done with regular cigarettes and tobacco, and that is to get people, from childhood through to adolescence and up to adulthood, knowing that vaping isn't safe, is not trendy and damages their lungs. That's where we differ. We support all these measures that are proposed. I'm really pleased that the government are going to spend $63.4 million on an anti e-cigarette and vaping campaign. I'm glad they're going to all of a sudden check for importation at the border and restrict commercial quantities—banning importation, manufacture, supply and commercial possession. Individuals, whether adults or children, won't be charged or locked up. Well, we've seen that happen during COVID, so I hope that is not going to happen, but I did see in the popular press some guy being manhandled by policemen in Victoria because he was involved in vaping. So, it's a case of 'buyer beware' with these regulations. Some of the states might take this way further than it is intended to go. But the genie that is out of the bottle is that at least one in six secondary students have recently or are regularly vaping, which is a fourfold increase. I suggest that the figure is much higher. I have seen polling showing that eight per cent of all Australians are now vaping. Fifteen years ago, no-one was vaping, and smoking was down to 14 per cent across the country. So the so-called harm minimisation—well, in a way it is minimising harm for people who were smoking two or three packets a day. And, trust me, my parents were both two- or three-packet people. I grew up being a passive smoker and I had asthma as a child. Luckily when I went away to boarding school I stopped wheezing and coughing. It was probably because I wasn't surrounded by smoke. But, that aside, vaping probably is a little bit safer than burning stuff and inhaling it—but we don't know. We are going to see, when we've had 20 or 30 years of vaping, lots of people with emphysema, chronic bronchitis, chronic airflow limitation and maybe even fibrotic lung disease, given all the other chemicals in those mixtures. And God only knows what's in some of them—the single-use stuff that comes out of China and these knock-up shops. I've been told by people who visit China, who have Chinese heritage, that the vapes sold in China are actually more regulated than some that are made there and sent for export only. And guess what? Because selling vapes has been, by our policy, restricted to pharmacies and no-one has been checking the borders and no-one has been preventing vapes from being on sale, in some towns in my electorate there are two places you can go for vapes. You can buy them in many supermarkets. It's widespread. The genie really is out of the bottle. So we have analysed this very thoroughly. And it's not a binary choice, but we think we should be regulating it, restricting it based on age and restricting it to assessed and checked vapes that don't have toxic levels of concentrated nicotine and all the other secret herbs and spices that some of the manufacturers put in there to increase absorption across the blood-brain barrier and make it more addictive. The thing with chewing gums, patches and things like that is that someone who's seriously addicted to nicotine doesn't get that 'ah', that relief, because they don't get the hit. The vapes actually have more of a hit, if it's one of the highly concentrated vapes. I'm thinking that the policy that the member for Cowper outlined is the way we should be going now. As that wise man once said—he was a very famous Nobel-prize-winning guy—'If you keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome, that is a sign of madness.' So time-out, everyone—we're all against vapes. We don't want our children getting addicted to vapes. We don't want our young adults getting addicted to vapes. But, hey presto, they're all the people that are getting into vapes. It's not the hardcore smokers that need them. We have got to have something that you don't have to go to the pharmacy for and that you know has got a minimum amount or a maximum amount, and we have got to have the $63.4 million program permanently—possibly even more—so that we have plain packaging on vapes and we license and regulate them and check that they haven't got all these other horrible things in them that they say aren't there but, in fact, are. In fact, according to surveys, nine out of 10 that are sold as nicotine free actually have nicotine in them. So we have got a big problem, and that is why we think about regulating it, restricting it by age, having it enforced and making sure that what is in it is what is in it, not all these other things that are bad. I hope for that enforcement over time—that was the missing part of the link. Talking about having pharmacists selling it, I don't know if a lot of pharmacists want to get into selling vapes. That's another practical part. There's the pure—I don't want something that is good being the enemy of something that's perfect, if you want to reverse the analogy. We've got to be realistic. We have got a huge problem. It has taken us 40 years to get smoking down to this, so we need an equivalent response. You're only going to get that if you get the excise and the money out of licensing it and running it and using some of that money that comes out of those things, if you did have a regulated model, not a virtual prohibition—except for a few specialist pharmacies that are happy to have that. Do you think a pharmacist will want to sell cigarettes? No, it's anti-health. I don't think most pharmacists, unless they were really financially strapped, will get into the vape business, but we do have to approach it on multiple fronts. That includes taxing it, keeping the revenue, and putting it into the health system, education and long-term advertising so that we can get rid of this scourge. For those people that need it, it will be there, but you're not going to get some of the backyard labs that make it in faraway nations to the near north of us. We want our kids to know the dangers of it, and we want to make it hard for them to get it. You're not going to stop it. We're not being unrealistic. There will still be kids who are hooked, and now, if they can't get it, they might go start smoking. In fact, as the previous speaker said, vaping is a gateway drug. It was designed as a replacement for people who are already hardcore addicts. For those people, it probably is good, but that is the minority of people. We're worried about the big population of people—young people—who will be potential addicts of nicotine just introduced through vaping. All strength to the regulatory people who are now faced with this. I can't imagine the Department of Health and Aged Care turning up and doing raids on bikie and gangster controlled little sheds or something out in the burbs. You've seen all these places that are being torched. They're gang wars and turf wars, because the illegal tobacco trade has, like vaping, been taken over by people that do lots of other bad stuff that's highly illegal, like drugs of addiction—the trade in ice, heroin and coke—as well as vaping. It's high return. I really realise that we have a problem when people in my home town are talking about kids dealing vapes and running businesses, in their teens, in schools. And behavioural problems in schools. Like I said, if we keep doing the same thing we will get the same outcomes. So we've got to look at this with a rational, commonsense approach. I commend the rest of the bill to the House. 17:20 Ms FERNANDO 299964 Holt I rise today to address the urgent need for legislative action in response to the escalating crisis posed by vaping in Australia. The spread of vaping among our youth demands our immediate attention and robust intervention. The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 presents a crucial opportunity to safeguard the health and well being of Australians, particularly our youngest. Recent data underscores the alarming surge in vaping across Australia, with a particularly concerning rise among adolescents and young adults. Data shows that approximately one in eight 12- to15-year-olds and one in five 16- to17-year-olds have engaged in vaping within the past month. Shockingly, 23 per cent began vaping at the age of 12 or younger. These figures paint a stark picture of a growing public health crisis that needs action at all levels of government. In my electorate of Holt, where one in four people are below the age of 14, this is especially a concern for the parents I meet every single day. Disposable vapes have become readily accessible, further fuelling the problem among our youth. The sight of vape shops cropping up close to our children's schools has sparked concern among parents nationwide. These vapes are being sold alongside everyday items like chocolate bars and bubblegum in convenience stores, attracting children with flashy displays. The sales of vapes alongside snacks and lollies normalises vaping behaviour and increases the likelihood of youth experimentation and uptake. Even former state premiers have fallen victim to this scourge, with former New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet admitting to enjoying the occasional one, with his favourite flavour being mixed fruit. As parents, educators and policymakers it is imperative that we address this concerning trend and implement measures to restrict the access of our young to vaping products. It is imperative that we confront these predatory practices and enact measures to protect our young people from falling victim to nicotine addiction and its health risks. This bill represents the second stage of measures taken this year to address the risks posed by vaping. It follows an important ban under the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1958 that commenced on 1 March 2024, for all vapes, unless those vapes are for therapeutic purposes and are accompanied by an import licence. The measures outlined in this bill build upon that foundation, providing a comprehensive framework for tackling the broader challenges associated with vaping. This legislation seeks to prohibit the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, advertising and commercial possession of non-therapeutic and disposable single-use vapes. By implementing strict regulations and penalties we aim to stem the tide of vaping related harm and safeguard the health of Australians, particularly our youth and young adults. Crucially, it is important to emphasise that these reforms do not amount to a blanket ban on all vaping products. Therapeutic vaping goods will remain available subject to rigorous regulation in line with other medication. The measures in this bill include regulating vapes under the Therapeutic Goods Act, imposing restrictions on advertising, introducing new offences and civil penalty provisions and enhancing compliance and enforcement powers. By strengthening our regulatory framework and enforcement mechanisms we can effectively curb the illegal supply and promotion of vapes while upholding public health. By imposing significant penalties we send a clear message that the exploitation of children for profit will not be tolerated in this country. In addition to regulatory measures, our approach to addressing vaping includes a range of complementary actions, including public health information campaigns and 'quit smoking' services. By adopting a multitargeted strategy we can effectively reduce the prevalence of vaping and protect the health and wellbeing of all Australians, especially our young ones—the leaders of the future. I commend this bill to the House. 17:26 Mr JOYCE e5d New England I'm just reflecting on what the member for Holt said, and I respect absolutely the position she has put forward. I reckon, because I can hear it from the narrative, that a lot of that came from the department or from the minister's office. You can just tell from the tenor of the speech. It's got the generic words and issues that are pertinent to those speeches. And there's nothing wrong with that. What's wrong with it is that it's coming from the esoteric views of departments and people removed from the realities of exactly how this issue works. Not for one moment, not for one second, would I suggest that you should either smoke or vape or drink too much—I've given up all three, and I never realised how boring I am—but people do. That's just the truth. That is just the truth of the matter. Mr Wallace 265967 What do you say about me, Barnaby? Mr JOYCE e5d You don't drink, and I've realised that I'm now as boring as you! I'm not proud of it, but I had my first cigarette in year 6, and about 35 years later I managed to stop smoking. I stopped it by vaping. I don't condone vaping, but I definitely went to vaping to try and get off cigarettes. That was the trick, and it worked for me. I fully acknowledge that some people are vaping and going onto cigarettes. What I do know is this: smoking—there's inelasticity of demand. In the end, demand gets so low and it just doesn't stop. We know because we did the analysis of sewage. It's still there. The question is: where is it coming from now? I believe in a market economy. I just want to quickly go through this—I was just scribbling this down a second ago. A lot of those illegal vapes, the ones that are coming in from China, which have got antifreeze and formaldehyde in them—if you want to stick something in your chops and cause yourself problems, that would be a very good place to start. Start sucking that in. But the kiddies do, and we've got to do something to stop them doing it. But this is what they're thinking, and this is what others are thinking. I've had a look at one. I don't know what it was—raspberry flavoured or blueberry flavoured. It has 3,500 drags. In a bunger there are 13. If you're going for 25 in a packet, with 325 drags and 10 packets, you get 3,250 drags. So it's 10 packets of cigarettes to one blueberry-, raspberry-, banana-or mixed-berry-flavoured vape. A packet of durries is now about $57, or let's say 50. So you've got a choice: pay $500 or $35. What do you reckon is going to happen? If you believe the market, they're going to find the $35 one. What you do here is so virtuous—I don't know whether you lack authenticity or you're totally and utterly naive. If you're so virtuous as to stop drugs, go out and stop dope. See how you go. If you can't leave this building and pick up a bag of dope within half an hour, then I don't think you're trying. That's just the truth. I've got a better one for you to solve! Stop ice. There it is. In the suburbs and in the city it's coke—anyone in the universe can tell you how much coke is worth. Unfortunately, we're not rich out in the country, so it's ice, which is like picking your nose and eating it. It is the scum-of-the-earth drug. I have been to the funerals of people I've known and grown up with who killed themselves on ice. Their lives just went down and down. Beautiful girls—I remember one Aboriginal girl and just couldn't believe, piece by piece, the dissembling of her life. The people who bring that stuff into our regional towns are total and utter trash. They are human filth, and they prey on the vulnerable. My two boys grew up in a very poor town. In fact, Woolbrook Public School is the poorest in Australia. That's where my two boys go. Have a look at it. If you don't believe me, check it out; check out Woolbrook Public School. I don't want them ever meeting the person who sells ice. I don't want them meeting the person who sells smack. I don't want them meeting the person who lives in that evil world that brings those drug in. But they're there. You can tell the police about it; you can whisper and tell the police about it. But it's the height of naivete to think that—those people are now bringing in the illegal cigarettes. As I said, it's 57 bucks for a packet of cigarettes. For international cigarettes, it's 15 bucks. So which ones do you think they're buying? When you think you've stopped it and got it under control, that there's none at all—no you haven't, and you're not going to. In the western suburbs of Sydney—I don't know; some of you might be from around there, but you probably aren't—once upon a time the people selling drugs would be swinging around in a Porsche, a bit of a flash car, a souped-up Monaro. I can tell you, right now they've got Bentleys and Rolls. They're killing it. They're loving this. They will be loving the fact that you're banning this. This is working very well for their business plan. People don't want competition against their dirty little business. But you're doing that. What you have to do is regulate this market. You have to accept that people look at international cigarettes and vapes and say: 'Well, they take them. They can still drive. They're not really intoxicated. They don't go home and beat up their partner, so in the Maslow moral hierarchy of virtue I don't put these down as a huge evil. They're bad, but not a huge evil. So, my motivation to go looking for them is not really there.' If I'm a copper and someone's broken into a house, someone has beaten up their partner, someone's trying to set fire to someone and kids are vaping, and I've got only a certain amount of time to deal with it, I'll tell you which one I'm going to be looking for. It's not going to be the kids vaping. There are more important things to be doing out there. The person bringing ice into town—go look for them. This is a classic example of how this crazy boarding school which is Parliament House gets these issues and how people get their talking notes from the department or from the minister and get in here and give this really earnest speech—thumping their chest and then going out and probably forgetting all about it. But it's not touching the earth about exactly what is going on. Dr Freelander 265979 That is quite offensive. Mr JOYCE e5d It's the truth. I'll wait for your speech. I'm sure, because you're a doctor you're going to—we've both been in here long enough. There's nothing wrong with people getting it; that's their right. But you know when the notes have come straight from the department. I can tell. I've been a minister God knows how many times. I know exactly how they talk and exactly how it sounds. I know how they send you down here. I got a question the other day that was handed to me. I didn't write it. I listened to it later on and thought if I had my chance I'd never ask that again. That's the reality of it. Let's be honest about it. That's what we lack here—the honesty to say exactly how things work. But let's go back to another thing. I was just up in the other joint, the Federation Chamber, passing a new excise on roll-your-owns. People who roll their own cigarettes are poor—they have no money—and the reason they roll their own is because they're cheaper than buying a packet of cigarettes. So we're putting up the excise on that. The only people you're now going to get your money off are the people who legally buy roll-your-own tobacco. All the rest are going to go to chop-chop, and they are. Thirty per cent of the market is chop-chop, and that's what we can determine—it's probably a lot higher than that. About 95 per cent of the vape market is illegal already, and we're not stopping that. So we have decided that it is virtuous to go to people who cannot afford their fuel, their groceries or their rent and get $3 billion off them—$3 billion that they otherwise would have spent on milk, on their sanitary products, on fuel and on their rent. And we go: 'That's virtuous. What a good thing we did today.' What a load of rubbish. They're not going to stop smoking. You're just making them poorer. They will say to you, 'If I can't pay my rent because you, the government, are ripping me off because of my addiction, I'm going to go somewhere else and buy the product.' That's precisely what they will do. I've heard that we are going to have a campaign. So we've just earnt $3½ billion up the hill in the Federation Chamber, and now we're down here and they're saying, 'We're going to put $63 million to it.' Hang on—you just earnt $3½ billion up there. Why don't you put $3½ billion on the table for an education campaign? Let's be properly pure about this. 'No, that's going into the budget.' The Treasurer will talk about that in a few weeks time. He got that; he's got it booked. One of the reasons he can't argue against this excise thing is that he has to go and find that $3 billion that the other side has found. It's just such a hypocritical load of rubbish, and we all come down here and participate in it. So, no matter what you do here, I hope you all feel jolly good about it. I hope you all feel like you can walk out the door and think, 'I fought that one hard.' You'll walk out the door and, to be quite frank, forget about it, like most of us. You know what? Out there, nothing is going to change except that the illegal markets are just going to bigger and bigger and bigger. I have a choice for my four girls and two boys. They can choose not smoke cigarettes and not vape. Please don't do either—have the character not to do it. When other people are starting when you're really young—around adolescence—and you're easily moved by things, that's generally when you have your first bunger. I don't know about everybody else, but that's generally when you do it. Be in an environment where you don't do it—if you can do that, bingo, that is what you want—and everything else that goes with it. Stay away from the parties where people are pulling cones. Certainly don't hang out with anybody—with any families—who are doing powders or at any places where they're doing it. Stay away from it. If you're a parent, be good and keep them away from it. But, if you—like a lot of people—pick up the habit of smoking, then I want you to go to a service station or a shop and buy a regulated product that, as bad as it is, has some controls over what's in it. I want you to buy it off them. If you are vaping—the same thing. I don't want to have to rely on a factory in China to do the right thing by you. I'm pretty certain they won't. I'm pretty certain they don't give a toss about what they are putting in that product. I'm also absolutely certain that, just like we can test the sewage in Sydney and find in the inner suburbs that cocaine must be a big thing on Saturday night because it comes tearing through the sewage system, I can look at whole realms of laws about what happens to people if they take it—but it's there. What a surprise! We can also check the sewerage system and see that smoking is going up—not down, up—but we're not selling more cigarettes. So where is this coming from? It's magic. Surely they were all sitting in the chamber and listening to our speeches about how we didn't want it to happen. What happened to that? Why aren't we moving the Australian people with the wonderous speeches we are giving here? Because this crazy boarding school is distracted from reality on issues such as this—not only this; it's also a range of issues, but this is such a classic example. I know the good doctor over there— Dr Freelander 265979 The member for Macarthur. Mr JOYCE e5d Macarthur! Mike Freelander is from Macarthur, thank you. The speech he will give will be an earnest description and precise about this issue. I know him well enough to know that's precisely what he will do. I know that Dr Anne Aly, right in front of me here, from Cowan— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 The member for Cowan. Mr JOYCE e5d The member from Cowan would also have a pretty good understanding of the reality of what she'd say if she were outside this building—the reality of how we deal with issues such as this. I think on this issue we've all got to try to get our heads together and say: 'Both are evil, but what is the better of the two evils? What is the better outcome for two positions where, to be honest, if we had our choice we'd be in neither?' That is the only way we deal with this issue, and in the meantime, the drug dealers out there are clapping their hands and cheering from the rooftops because we have just made their business plan so much easier. 17:41 Dr FREELANDER 265979 Macarthur Mr Deputy Speaker, you probably noticed my interjection during the member for New England's speech. I did find it offensive because my speech is not about detailed talking points from the minister or departmental advices—this is lived experience. The vaping industry is being promoted and financed by the tobacco industry, which, like the product itself, is malignant. This is an industry that, decades after there was unequivocal evidence that smoking was heavily associated with lung cancer, bowel cancer, cardiovascular disease and peripheral vascular disease, the tobacco industry was denying this and actively running campaigns to promote smoking that was killing millions of people around the world. The vaping industry is being promoted by the tobacco industry. It's part of their business model. This is our last chance to introduce measures that will stop our kids becoming addicted to nicotine. I thank the Minister for Health and Aged Care very much for moving this very important legislation. It's associated with other measures as well, such as using excise taxes on tobacco to finance things like lung cancer screening and other public health measures. This is a huge moment in public health policy in Australia. I am proud to be a member of the Labor Party, which has longed believed in public health measures to improve the health and wellbeing of our citizens. I am very grateful, personally, for Nicola Roxon, who was Minister for Health and Ageing and, ultimately, the Attorney-General in the Rudd-Gillard years, for bringing in plain packaging and other measures to reduce smoking in Australia. Smoking is not increasing; it has been around the 14 per cent mark in most jurisdictions in Australia for the last few years. Of course, we have pockets of high levels of smoking, particularly in disadvantaged communities. In South Western Sydney we have a higher incidence of smoking than the national average, and smoking is quite a problem in many Indigenous communities around the country. That's why we're also investing in Indigenous anti-smoking campaigns. This legislation builds on a long history of public health policy that Labor Party has been doing in office. We've had 50 years of this. It started with the Whitlam government introducing the first restrictions on tobacco advertising. We followed this with the introduction of Australia's world-leading tobacco plain-packaging reforms, as I've mentioned. It was dismissed by the Liberal and National parties a too big government, too intrusive. Yet a decade on plain packaging has reduced smoking levels significantly. There is still much to do, I agree with you. I've recently been on a trip to the Northern Territory with the health committee looking at diabetes. We heard very strongly about the combination of diabetes, cigarette smoking and peripheral vascular disease and cardiovascular disease, leading to people under 30 having heart attacks and people under 40 having limb amputations because of diabetes. There's a very strong association of the combination of diabetes and smoking and vascular disease and also, unfortunately, in renal failure due to that combination of diabetes and smoking. We're dealing now with another menace. I should say, before I talk any further, that I used to a very heavy smoker. It did damage my health. Thank God, I was able to stop before it killed me. But I have seen many people die from cigarette smoking, and I fear I will see the same with vaping. The causes of the complications of vaping are still unclear, but clearly it is a combination of inhalation of nicotine, which itself causes damage to little air sacs in the lung, the alveolae and the small blood vessels in the lung. But all the other chemicals that have been mentioned—I can list them, from heavy metals to formalin, which itself is carcinogenic, to the many other unknown chemicals in vapes. People have compared this to other addictions. We should all remember that nicotine is a highly addictive chemical. But it is not the same, because we are allowing people to obtain vapes by prescription. These will be TGA approved, so they will be tested for dangerous chemicals et cetera and for nicotine content. They will be associated also with a visit to the doctor and getting appropriate advice about vaping. There have been issues, I will admit, with doctors prescribing vapes. Many doctors have been reluctant to do it. Many doctors are not educated in how to prescribe vapes and how to introduce other antismoking measures and where they fit in the antinicotine and antismoking measures that we can introduce, like the oral treatments and other things. But this campaign will also be associated with an education campaign through our general practitioners. I met with the college of general practitioners yesterday and we discussed how we need to upskill our medical force. There will be ways that people who are addicted to nicotine can safely get prescriptions to vapes so that they can be gradually weaned off nicotine. It may be a small role in using vapes to win people from smoking, but that is by no means clear. The industry itself has not been able to demonstrate that in any convincing way. So there will be ways where people can obtain nicotine vapes through prescription and that will also help them be weaned from the nicotine themselves. We should remember also that these vapes are having a terrible effect on children. I go to local high schools and run antivaping campaigns in those schools. They are confiscating literally thousands of illegal vapes that are clearly targeted to children, with bubblegum flavours, rum and raisin flavours I have seen, strawberries and cream. We all know that these are available and being imported in their thousands and they are damaging our kids. The side-effects are affecting their behaviour in school, their concentration. It's increasing their risk of having a mental illness. These vapes contain many thousands of times the concentration of nicotine in cigarettes as well, and they can be used 24 hours a day. I hear stories from my own patients about kids having vapes beside their bed, so they're having them 24 hours a day. To me this is something that we have to do everything we possibly can to stop. This is our last chance to do it. If we let this go now, this will have ongoing health effects on our children and adolescents for many, many years and we will be paying the price for that in terms of mental health issues and deaths. We know that there have been deaths recorded from shock lung from the overuse of vapes. We know that it increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. In people who have high risk of vascular disease, such as our Indigenous population, we know that it is already causing things like peripheral vascular disease and cardiac disease. We have to stop it now. This is our last chance. I have had extensive involvement with my local communities, GPs and hospital about electronic cigarettes and vapes. We did an enquiry in the Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport in the last parliament. We found that there was no evidence for the use of vapes in a healthy context to wean people from cigarettes. We have not seen convincing statistics about this. We spoke to many respiratory physicians, anti-smoking campaigners et cetera. There is no evidence of harm minimisation. There are some doctors groups going around the country that are promoting the use of vapes, saying that they are protective of health and that they are better than cigarettes. They have no evidence for saying that, nor do they have convincing evidence that they can be used to wean people from cigarettes. In our inquiry we found that these products are clearly a gateway to smoking, hence the involvement of the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry has run a very strong campaign against this legislation for one reason: so they can make billions of dollars—and they are billion-dollar industries—from causing serious health harm to our population, from our children and our at-risk groups, such as Aboriginal communities, to our older people. We should not in any way believe what they are saying. This is dangerous. More and more Australians are taking up recreational vaping. I've seen it in this building, I see it when I go to schools, I see it in our local hospitals—I see it everywhere I go. Literally thousands of vapes are being discarded in our rubbish dumps around the country—and there a particular harms with that as well, because they all contain lithium batteries, and have caused fires in a number of situations. In the recently released Australian Secondary Students Alcohol and Drug Survey, they found that almost 20 per cent of 12- to 15-year-olds were using vapes. That is a disaster in the making. We have to stop it, and this is our last chance. The thing that upsets me the most is that these things are being targeted at our children, even in our local primary schools. Principals have complained to me about vapes being found in their toilets. We have got to stop it. I was invited last year to Macquarie Fields High School to meet some of the parents and teachers and to discuss their concerns about vaping and the dangers that presents to their children, because of the number of vapes that they found being sold secretly at school. The schools are finding it incredibly difficult to police. I was thankful for the opportunity to speak to the schools, but I was also very thankful to speak to some of the parents, who told me the problems they were having with their kids, with sleep disturbance, anxiety, poor concentration, lack of attention to schoolwork, and the fact that they were sometimes selling their own possessions to be able to afford to buy vapes from the kids who were selling them at school. This is just terrible. I was very thankful to the school for having me there. I've been to some other high schools with similar issues. We're still in the early days of the vaping industry. Overseas it's much more persistent. Schools in places as diverse as Great Britain and Germany are finding huge problems with their kids, vaping at school and concentration and mental health issues. We in Australia have led the world in anti-tobacco policies. We can do it here with vaping, but it is important that we do it in a consistent and persistent manner. I do agree with the member for New England. We need to spend as much as we can on education programs and support for schools and other institutions to try and prevent our kids vaping. We also need to invest in our general practitioners and help them understand how they can help in this battle, with prescriptions and with antismoking and antinicotine programs—I'll call them antinicotine programs overall. It will only continue to get worse if we have the so-called regulation model with vapes available. If we regulate, I can't guarantee that, when someone goes into our local supermarket, our local service station or even our local pharmacies, the vapes will just be given to those over 18. In fact, I don't think that will happen. I think that we need to be very careful when we put up these artificial models, such as the regulation model, without any evidence that they will work. They certainly don't work overseas. They're not going to work in Australia. Some of my concerns are about not only nicotine addiction but what these materials are doing to our kids' lungs. We know from the asthma foundation that there is increasing evidence that vaping use makes severe asthma much more difficult to control. It also means that kids are spending money on things that they shouldn't. They're ending up in hospital with side effects from vaping. They're ending up with more mental health issues. I really thoroughly commend this bill to the House because I think that it is very important, that this is our last chance and that we should do it persistently and consistently. Thank you. 17:56 Dr WEBSTER 281688 Mallee I listened to the member for Macarthur. In fact, we were talking about this very issue yesterday. I think the painful fact is that, on both sides of the House, we want the same result. We want to see our children safe from vaping and safe from taking up drugs and cigarettes. At this point in time, at this juncture, we have a different way that we want to get there. Around 10 per cent of vapers are purchasing their product via the prescription model. Let's remember: this has actually been in place since the previous health minister. Around 90 per cent of vapers are not. Our concern is, as I said, for our young people currently accessing vaping products. I'm told that as many as 1.7 million Australians are vaping, close to seven per cent of the total population or, if you like, one in 15 Australians. Compare that with one in 21 Australians being a member of an AFL club, according to the AFL. That number of people, 1.7 million Australians, is more than the populations of Tasmania, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory combined; it's more than the number of Australians who are over 80 years of age. I draw those random examples to point out that the number of Australians vaping is a significant proportion of the population. By no means am I saying that vaping is good for your health. We've heard plenty about why it's terrible for your health. However, that is the scale of the situation that we are facing here in Australia. The government proposes a prescription-only model, or to continue the prescription-only model, and anyone vaping without a prescription will be deemed a criminal. Let me also remind the House, yet again, that Labor has a blind side, and that is regional Australia. In the regions we have a higher prevalence of tobacco addiction. But, yet again, we see the government taking a metropolitan-centric approach to policymaking. In fact, the latest data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare indicates that people aged 14 years or older living in a remote or very remote area of Australia have a smoking rate of 19.6 per cent and are more likely to smoke daily than people living in inner regional areas and major cities, where the smoking rate is 9.7 per cent. According to the AIHW there are two groups of people who use vapes: People aged under 30 were more likely to nominate curiosity while people aged 50 or older were more likely to use e-cigarettes as a cessation device. The voices of regional Australian voters in my electorate of Mallee, in north-western Victoria, have shared their stories of vaping with me. One constituent from the west of my electorate highlighted how hard it is to get to see a doctor in the first place—something I have been raising constantly in this House as shadow assistant minister for regional health. This constituent said: 'I cannot even get an urgent doctor's appointment for a shingles vaccine within a week, let alone to get a prescription for smoking cessation. I cannot have my blood taken for blood tests, despite having an appointment for a week prior, because there is no replacement nurse when the nurse is sick. I have to wait at the hospital until a nurse is free to take my blood, never mind if they are fasting bloods and I have to wait until midday'—we all know what that feels like—'so how is my local health provider supposed to find the time to write prescriptions for people to give up smoking or continue to stay smoke-free?' A constituent from the east of my electorate said: 'My husband and I have recently retired and live a quiet life in central Victoria. My husband had smoked for many years, much to my dismay, until he got put on to vaping by an acquaintance a couple of years back. The vape he uses is much less nicotine now than when he was smoking, as he has been gradually weaning himself. His doctor is in full support of this. It's getting hard to buy products for him, even with a prescription. If and when vaping is completely banned, he says he will go back on to cigarettes.' A constituent from the south of my electorate said: 'In 2017, I gave up smoking for the last time ever, with the help of vaping. I weaned myself off all nicotine eventually, and then gave up vaping. All other cessation aids didn't help me whatsoever, and, embarrassingly, I smoked through three of my four pregnancies because the cessation tools on offer just didn't work.' She says: 'Vaping has been scientifically proven to be less harmful than smoking, and in the UK, for example, it's advertised in hospitals for people to start vaping and quit smoking.' Another, from the north of my electorate, said: 'Being a health promotion officer and a parent of a teenager, I've been told numerous times how easy it is for underage children to simply walk into a shop and purchase vapes. I was also part of a youth mentoring program and became concerned with how reliant some of the teenagers were on their vapes. The only way to stop this is to follow the lead of New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Canada and regulate nicotine vapes with strict consumer safety standards. This would see them classified as an adult consumer product, sold only by responsible retailers upon age verification.' Another constituent, from the centre of my electorate of Mallee—constituents from all around—said: 'We need a system that makes it easy for smokers to switch to vaping without having to jump through hoops. Adults also need appealing flavours to match the switch. The current nicotine products available in supermarkets taste horrific. The only way we can do this is by empowering responsible retailers to sell regulated vaping products.' Another constituent from the north of my electorate said: 'The complex requirements for buying vapes have created a black market'—Have we heard about that today? Yes—'where products are unregulated and easily available to children.' Another constituent from the south of Mallee says, 'Banning vaping will force people back to smoking, which will only fill your own pockets from the taxes and take more from the people.' Now, the thing that strikes me about all these emails that I've received this week, and more, is that they are all pro regulating vaping—having the controls that we need in order for people to be able to buy products that are known to be less harmful than the horrible products bought in some of our black-market shops. When it comes to my purpose in this place, I represent the people of Mallee, as I did with the government's wasteful referendum and as I have on Australia's future energy mix and in opposing the reckless railroading of electricity transmission lines through Mallee and the turning of my electorate into a wind-turbine pincushion. My constituents are on board with that representation, and hence it is utterly responsible for me to share their views on this bill. As shadow assistant minister for regional health, I refer back to one of the first quotes I raised from a constituent from the west of my electorate who can't even see a doctor. How on earth does Labor believe their prescription model will work if people can't see a doctor for shingles, vaccines or their myriad other health issues? Labor robs the regions to buy votes in the city, as they did in expanding the distribution priority areas for international medical graduates. In the first six months of that policy, there was a 56 per cent increase in those doctors leaving the regions for metropolitan suburbs. Labor has 'bled' the regions of doctors—that's the term used by the Rural Doctors Association, not me—and now they want to put more pressure on medical practices by requiring them to write new vaping prescriptions. Health department data indicates around 450,000 people are seeking vaping prescriptions under the current model, but, under what Labor is proposing in this bill, one million people more will seek those prescriptions. While Fred and Vera are holding hands in an overflowing regional Australian clinic waiting to see their doctor, they'll have to wait for Tom, Dick or Harry to get their vaping scripts. Theoretically, that could be managed in the city, but regional health is not on the same page. The bill is setting regional health up to fail further. The government's prescription model is failing, and they are simply doubling down and banning vaping harder. This comes as the black market in vapes is now estimated to be about $1 billion per annum through over 100 million illegal vapes per annum. In Melbourne, we have serious problems with crime associated with what police are allegedly saying is a battle between two Middle Eastern organised crime groups for control of the illicit tobacco trade. Police operations are seizing cigarettes, tobacco and vapes in significant numbers. There have been arson attacks on tobacco shops, vape shops, gyms, restaurants and private addresses. In opposition, it is our role to hold the Albanese Labor government to account, and what they have proposed in this prescription model is unseen anywhere else in the world. This week we saw the bravado of Minister Bowen evaporate as Australia was going to have the most aggressive vehicle emissions standards. Once again, the Nationals highlighted the problems imminent with yet another reckless rush posed to regional Australia and demonstrated the valid critiques of the automotive industry, and, voila, Minister Bowen has backed down—or, as the West Australian newspaper put it, the Prime Minister took the wheel. Indeed, the Prime Minister may be on the wrong side of the road altogether when it comes to vaping. Let's look at the overseas data. In the UK, where vapes are regulated for those over 18 years old and banned for those under 18, more than 50,000 smokers stopped smoking with assistance from a vaping product in 2017, with a 33 per cent reduction in smoking in the four years to 2022. In New Zealand, there was a 39 per cent decline in smoking, from 13.7 per cent to 8.3 per cent, over three years since vaping was legalised and regulated in November 2020. I am told the Maori smoking prevalence declined by 35 per cent. Canadian surveys have indicated a 15 per cent reduction in smoking for those aged over 15, and in the 15- to 24-year-old cohort there was a reduction of 32 per cent for males and 52 per cent of females. In the over-18 market, 14 per cent less men and 19 per cent less women were smoking. There are huge reductions in smoking rates in the 18- to 24-year-old age bracket: 42 per cent less for men and 53 per cent less for women. The opposition is holding this government accountable for this proposal, and we have concerns about the adequacy of funding to regulate and enforce laws to prevent the illicit tobacco and vaping trade. The fact is that, currently, their efforts to stop vapes at our borders have been ineffective. We've also seen the peculiar footage recently of Therapeutic Goods Administration officers with TGA emblazoned on their flack jackets—SWAT team or FBI style—raiding a smoking shop. Is the TGA really well equipped to run policing operations potentially in situations where organised crime might be involved? Labor is spending some $700 million to fight vapes as illegal products. Yet they are forgoing—potentially, if this where the public policy goes—$4.2 billion in annual tax revenue, if a regulatory model were adopted, which could go into regional health. What a great idea! All the alternatives need to be considered thoroughly and costed. So we take this moment to seriously address this public health issue. As the shadow assistant minister for regional health, I urge the government to consider the higher prevalence of smoking in the regions, the use of vapes to quit and the maldistribution of doctors away from regional Australia. The very overworked and under pressure medical practices in Mallee and across regional Australia are the very ones Labor is going to pile more pressure on, with potential tripling of vaping prescription consultations. Will Labor provide special funding to primary care providers in the regions for this burden? I won't hold my breath. The coalition wants this bill thoroughly examined by a Senate committee, and we will be moving to do just that in the other place. This is a very serious topic, and this government's crash-through approach on policy could yet again result in a backflip, a U-turn—a realisation that their bluster doesn't match the reality around the world. As an opposition, we will be holding them accountable for their missteps on this very serious public issue. 18:11 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie I've been listening to the comments that have been made around the chamber, and it is really disappointing to me that we are not putting health first. We are finding all sorts of reasons, on the other side of the chamber, for not taking strong action to put the health of young people, in particular, first. This is not just the health of kids who are 17, 16 or 15. This is the health of kids who are now only 10, and of those coming behind them—the seven- and eight-year-olds who, before long, will become part of the statistics of children using vapes. It horrifies me to think that this chamber would fall for a story from an industry which, we know, is so good at spinning a story. Vaping was originally sold to governments and the wider community, right around the world, as a therapeutic product to help long-term smokers quit, a help-people-to-quit product. It wasn't sold as a recreational product, especially not one targeted at kids—but that is what it has so quickly become. Unfortunately, there is absolute, consistent evidence that young Australians who are vaping now are three times more likely to take up tobacco smoking than young Australians who have never vaped—and this is in a country where we've been really proud to lead the world in tobacco control, in reducing the use of tobacco and in taking measures that mean there is less incentive to be a smoker. You know, I'm one of those people who grew up in the era of big big-tobacco ads, at the movies and on TV. How quickly it feels like we can go back to that state, where we thought it was okay—in that case, to have a cigarette, or, in this case, to say, 'Oh, we need to allow vaping to continue,' in spite of the things we already know, at this very early stage, about the impacts it has on our kids. It is creating a whole new generation of nicotine dependency. In fact, when I go to schools and talk to schools, it isn't just the principals who say to me, 'Oh, my goodness! Can you do something about vaping?' It's not just the teachers who can see the consequence of nicotine withdrawal and the need for a vape in their students. It's the students themselves who can see what it's doing to their friends and even to themselves. So this is a time for us to listen to the kids—not just to those who think it's going to be a little bit inconvenient to get along to a GP and get a script. Yes, it may be, and it may put more pressure on those systems, and we're doing everything we can to make that process as simple as possible. But I hope everybody here thinks about the seven-year-old who hasn't yet had a vape, but who might next week and then find that it's just something that they can't stop doing. Think about what that is, and—as if you were that child's mum or aunt or grandparent—just what our decisions here have a consequence on. The sooner this legislation is moved through this parliament, the better. That's why we are taking world-leading action to tackle vaping, and we're really proud to be taking it. These reforms are about protecting Australians, particularly young people, from the harms of vaping and nicotine dependence while making sure that those with an absolutely legitimate need to access it as a therapeutic device are able to continue to get it where it is clinically appropriate. The latest data from the Australian Secondary School Students Alcohol and Drug survey is very sobering. About one in eight 12- to 15-year-olds and one in five 16- to 17-year-olds have vaped in the past month. About 80 per cent of these young people are using disposable vaping devices. Nearly a third of students tried vaping for the first time when they were 15 or 16, while 23 per cent say they tried it before they were 13. They were 12 years old or younger, not even a teenager. We know that's because the vaping industry, which those opposite continue to defend and support, are targeting young people deliberately. Social media is awash with advertising for vaping products. Parents are telling me about the vaping stores opening right near their schools, and I see them in my communities. Young people are attracted to the illicit vapes because they are so readily available, and the vapes are deliberately designed by the industry to promote their uptake—their aggressive marketing, their outrageous packaging and their ridiculous flavours. If we look at the studies that have highlighted the concerns about potential adverse health effects of vaping—and I'm really conscious that these are studies that are happening in the very early years. It takes me to the sorts of studies that happened in the early years of the tobacco industry really getting a grip. There were studies, and they were suppressed. Thank goodness we know what the studies are saying. We can't pretend that we're ignorant. We absolutely know that there are effects like impacts on the developing adolescent brain. There are worse pregnancy outcomes. There is cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer, and a range of other health risks are also associated with vape use, including severe burns, poisoning and seizures. We're only just beginning to understand the long-term effects of vaping, and I think we all know that it is not going to be good news. This bill brings in both offences and penalty provisions designed to protect Australians, particularly young people, from the harms associated with illicit vapes. Principally, this is going to be achieved by banning the importation, the domestic manufacture, the supply, the commercial possession and the advertising of non-therapeutic and disposable single-use vapes. All vaping ads on social media and retail websites and the promotion of vaping goods by influences on social media are going to be banned. The enhanced quality and safety standards, which began earlier this month, have limited flavours to mint, menthol and tobacco, and further enhancements to the standards have been foreshadowed, which include requirements relating to maximum nicotine concentrations, pharmaceutical packaging and labelling. This suite of measures is really trying to take the holistic action needed to properly address the impacts of vaping being felt across our community. I want to commend the Minister for Education for the work he has done, alongside the New South Wales Minister for Education, Prue Car, in making sure our principals in our schools know what we're doing, why we're doing it and what we could do with them sharing that message. It is their teachers, their parents and their students who are actually going to benefit from this. I really acknowledge the work that you did at the start of the school year, Minister, to raise awareness about it. As I said, when I go to schools it isn't just principals who talk to me about this and it isn't just teachers; it's the students themselves. In fact, about 18 months ago, the student leadership at one school were so concerned about it that they reached out to have a meeting purely on that issue. They came to this place to ask what the government was doing about it. In fact, it was before we were elected, so it was before the last election. They was so concerned about it. This is something the previous government could have acted on. They could have seen what was going on and, rather than falling for the lines they were being fed, they could have taken action. Let's be clear about what this suite of measures involves. It doesn't ban all vapes. There are express exceptions to the offences and civil penalty provisions around the personal possession and use of legitimate patient access to therapeutic vapes being used to help you stop smoking or manage nicotine dependence. People will still be able to use vapes. Individuals will be able to access those products as part of smoking cessation treatments. But it is limited to the clinical context, with only therapeutic vaping products available at pharmacies via a prescription. The TGA has already published on its website a list of therapeutic vapes that have been notified as meeting appropriate quality and safety standards. Quality and safety aren't things that have gone with the whole vaping industry—there haven't been standards and there haven't been any quality provisions—but the TGA has determined which ones will be suitable. That list can be accessed by patients, prescribers and pharmacists. Between 1 January and 12 March 2024, so just a bit over two months, the TGA received 68 notifications of compliance with TGA quality and safety standards from sponsors who want to supply therapeutic vapes for smoking cessation or for managing nicotine dependence. The Office of Drug Control granted 19 import licences and 17 import permits in accordance with the new importation controls—so they are available. This ensures that Australians who are legitimately using vaping products to quit smoking will still be able to do so, while taking vapes out of the hands of our kids. We know that the community is awash with disposable vaping, and that's why we've taken the immediate action that we could, outside of parliament, to stamp out vaping. We've already banned the importation of disposable and non-therapeutic vaping products. Since the start of this year, the Australian Border Force and the TGA have jointly seized more than 360,000 imported vapes in operations across Australia. As these operations happen, we're also seeing reports of the links between vaping sales and supply and organised crime, which uses the easy sales to help fund other illicit operations. The Commonwealth has committed $25 million to the Australian Border Force and nearly $57 million to the Therapeutic Goods Administration over the next two years to work on this. The reforms to the regulation are supported by a commitment between the Commonwealth and every state and territory to collaborate on compliance and enforcement activities. The National Vaping Working Group was formed in November 2023. It has Commonwealth, state and territory health and police departments; the AFP; and the Australian Border Force. This working group is responsible for developing the national vaping enforcement framework, which will support the collaborative, coordinated, and nationally consistent approach that's going to be needed to enforce the regulatory controls. For too long nicotine vaping products have been freely available at stores due to a legal loophole, and that has been widely exploited. This bill will close that legal loophole and give authorities the power to take genuine enforcement action. Importers and suppliers of illicit vapes are now on final notice that the changes proposed to the TGA will enhance compliance and enforcement efforts. We know that this bill will help ensure that there's effective detection and seizure, by tightening the controls on the supply chain and removing the regulatory distinction between nicotine and non-nicotine vapes, to counter the existing widespread evasion. Vapes will not be lawfully available outside the pharmaceutical supply chain. We know that those addicted to smoking and addicted to vaping need additional support to quit, and that's why we've committed an additional $29.5 million in funding to increase vaping and smoking cessation support so the support is therefore the people who need it. The funding will improve access to Quitline services across the country, with a new dedicated online hub and mobile app. It was Labor back in 2012—12 years ago—that introduced the world-first tobacco plain-packaging laws, and now, 12 years on, in order to help a different generation of kids, we have an opportunity to lead the world again with these vaping reforms. I ask this parliament: please, do not miss this opportunity to allow this legislation to pass quickly so we know that there is less chance of kids becoming vapers over the next 12 months. This is something we can do really fast. In their hearts, I think everybody knows this is the right thing to do and this is the time to do it. 18:26 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo Many people in this place have spoken on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. We know that this bill will ban the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertising—other than therapeutic vapes to health practitioners—of disposable, single-use non-therapeutic vapes. I think the advertising is really important. The Therapeutic Goods Act will be amended to allow for vaping goods to be regulated whether or not they contain nicotine or claim to be therapeutic. The minister will have the power to determine whether or not specified goods are vaping goods to prevent sales of evolving products designed to evade regulatory reach. There is a huge concern in this place and across the nation with respect to young people vaping. I think that is a given. None of us want to see anyone under 18 either smoking, vaping or taking any illicit drugs at all. We did pass in this place some legislation that banned flavours and menthols and such, and I think that that will go some way with respect to the attractiveness of vapes. We know that, worryingly, one in seven children aged 14 to 17 were believed to have vaped in the month leading up to December last year, with these young people comprising eight per cent of all users. It is a big issue for young people, and I want us to do all we can to address that in this place, but I'm just not entirely sure that this bill will do that. I'm very conflicted on this legislation, and this is why: if this legislation is passed, I believe it will have a perverse outcome where anybody aged 18 or over can walk into a service station, a corner store, Woolworths or Coles—you name it—and buy themselves a packet of cigarettes, but if they want to vape, they will need to book in with their doctor. In my electorate, that's weeks away, in many parts. They'll have to visit their doctor, ask the doctor for a script—and that is, of course, if the doctor is willing to provide the script—then go to the chemist and get that prescription filled—provided that the chemist has that stock. In my electorate, you will largely be $80 out of pocket for that. It's an expensive thing to do to go and visit the doctor, particularly if you're not on a healthcare card. So this is what I think is going to happen: I think that we will see many people go from using vapes to going to the service station and getting a packet of cigarettes. I think that we will, potentially, see an enlarged black market for illicit vapes. One thing we do know is that banning something doesn't stop it being available—we just need to look at the illicit drug market for that. I have another concern that is not being considered, I think, in this debate, and that is regarding the effectiveness of vapes as a bridge away from cigarettes, particularly for long-term smokers. The 2022 Australian Journal of General Practice article 'An update on vaping and nicotine prescribing', by Dr Colin Paul Mendelsohn and Carolyn Beaumont, stated: Vaping … is the most popular quitting method in Australia. It is safer than smoking and more effective than— patches and other forms of— nicotine replacement therapy. Specifically, it was found that even 'long-term vaping is far safer than relapsing to smoking'. I have received many, many emails from constituents who say vapes have been the only way they've been able to get off cigarettes, and I believe requiring a smoker to get a GP prescription to help them quit is counterintuitive when we are also seeing huge costs to visit the doctor and when access to GPs in rural, regional and remote Australia is incredibly difficult. So, while I understand what the government wants to do and while we absolutely want to limit vaping, we also really want to limit cigarettes. I don't see why, from a public policy point of view, we are treating vapes so differently to cigarettes in this place. I'm sure would-be quitters are scratching their heads about why they're not going to be able to access this yet they can freely, day or night, go and buy a packet of cigarettes over the counter. We need to treat these the same. I think that we need to regulate vapes. We need to tax vapes. We absolutely need to ban the advertising of them, as we have banned advertising for cigarettes, and we need to regulate them and limit where they can be purchased—perhaps licensed tobacconists and perhaps chemists. There need to be strictly regulated conditions. But what I don't think we should be doing is making one product effectively unavailable or incredibly expensive to get while making cigarettes perhaps even more attractive to many people with a nicotine addiction. So, while I'm supportive of many of the measures in this bill, I think we need to have a far more measured approach to this. What the government is proposing has not been proposed anywhere else in the world. I think that it's a very radical move, and I think that it will have unintended consequences. So I would urge the government to perhaps have a bit of a rethink. If vapes are so bad that we need to make them available only by prescription—requiring people to go to the doctor and then, obviously, to the pharmacist—why isn't the government doing that with cigarettes as well? It makes no sense. They should be treated the same. Otherwise there will be perverse outcomes 18:33 Mr CLARE HWL Blaxland If you ask any parent of school-aged children—certainly children in high school and increasingly children in primary school—they'll tell you that they're worried about vaping. If you ask any principal or schoolteacher, they'll tell you the same. They'll tell you that it is fast becoming the biggest behavioural issue in their schools. This is what a New South Wales principal said last year: They're so desperate to have the next one or get money to have the next one that students have become more aggressive, more agitated, less cooperative, less engaged with their school work. This is—ask any fair-minded person—becoming a menace in our schools. The companies that make these things are targeting our kids. Evidence of that, if you need it, is the fact that nine out of 10 vape stores are within walking distance of our schools. If the purpose is to target our kids, it's working, because we now know that about one in six young people have used vapes recently. I want them out of our schools, and part of that is getting them out of the corner stores that are across the road from the schools. That's a big part of what this legislation, the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, will help us to do. If you talk to high-school teachers, they will often tell you that they feel like they're becoming de facto police. They can tell when young people are withdrawing from nicotine. They can see the behavioural change in the classroom. They can see which students aren't in the classroom because of the impact of the withdrawal from nicotine. They'll tell you part of their job has become search and seizure, in student's lockers or schoolbags, trying to find vapes which sometimes don't look like vapes; they are disguised to look like a highlighter or a USB. That, plus the flavours they come in—watermelon, bubblegum, cookies and cream—should tell you who the target market is here; it's our kids. The same sorts of companies that were getting kids hooked on cigarettes once upon a time are using the same old marketing playbook with a new millennial twist. Nicotine delivery devices are being pushed on kids by TikTok influencers. And all with one goal in mind: to get another generation hooked on nicotine. That's why this bill is important. It bans the importation, the manufacture, the supply and the commercial possession of disposable single-use and non-therapeutic vapes. That bit about non-therapeutic vapes is important, too. Vapes were originally conceived or marketed as a therapeutic—something to get people off the smokes. My view is: if they are therapeutic and designed to get people off the smokes, you should get them at the pharmacy. What's being proposed here to the parliament isn't prohibition; it's regulation—akin to what we did with codeine a couple of years ago. If you've got a prescription from a doctor, you'll be able to get it at the pharmacy. What you won't be able to do is go into a corner store opposite the local school and see them sitting there alongside a bottle of Prime. I congratulate my friend and colleague the Minister for Health and Aged Care for bringing forward this important legislation. I think that, if we do this, it will make a big impact in our local schools. That's why I urge all members to listen to parents and teachers, to what they're saying here, and to back parents, back teachers and back this bill. 18:37 Dr RYAN 297660 Kooyong From 1 July, the only vapes available in this country should be those prescribed by medical practitioners and dispensed by pharmacies. As a paediatrician, I wish that the government had had the courage to do this years ago. As a politician, I am watching with concern the pushback from the tobacco and vaping lobby, and the political parties they support. Vaping is a public health emergency. This legislation, the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, is long overdue. Let's be clear: vaping is highly addictive. It's an entry point to nicotine addiction. It's an entry point to the tobacco industry, which still kills at least 20,000 Australians every year. Children and young adults use vapes as their first nicotine based product. They're not trying to quit; they've never smoked before. The number of younger Australians who vape has increased 12-fold in the last four years. About one in six high-school kids are vaping, and about one in four young adults in Australia are vaping. We know that young people who vape are three times more likely to take up smoking than other people. Those kids don't understand that the vapes they are using are much stronger than cigarettes, that many of them are vaping the equivalent of three or four packets of cigarettes every day. In the process of vaping, those young people are inhaling toxic chemicals like diacetyl, formaldehyde, acrolein and heavy metals. In adolescence, vaping is associated with mental health challenges including depression and anxiety. Nicotine addiction is associated with cardiac and vascular disease. We don't yet fully understand the long-term side effects of vaping, but we know that this is not going to be good. This is a public health crisis. In my own suburb of Hawthorn and in other suburbs in my electorate of Kooyong, we've seen vape shops popping up like noxious weeds. Nine out of ten of those shops in this country are within walking distance of schools. Those vape shops are selling e-cigarettes in child-friendly packaging with attractive flavours and devices that look like bananas, jelly babies and unicorns. They purport to sell non-nicotine vapes, but we know that more than 90 per cent of the vapes on sale in those stores contain nicotine and are highly addictive. Those devices aren't just poisoning our young people; they're also poisoning our environment. Single-use vapes have been described as a strong contender for being the most environmentally wasteful, damaging and dangerous consumer product ever made. Those vape shops are hanging in there at the moment, in the hope that the current intense lobbying by the vaping and tobacco industry, and by the politicians that they fund to advocate on their behalf, will be successful and that the vaping laws before the House at this time will be weakened. This legislation could have been passed four years ago, when the former member for Flinders and the then health minister, Greg Hunt, first flagged it. At that time he caved in the face of opposition from big tobacco, fronted by people in his own ranks. We await their response to this legislation. But one suspects that the opposition will, as usual, be guided more by the dictates of its donors than by the best interests of its constituents. Australians deserve better. To be effective these laws are going to have to be enforced. For that we will need appropriate manpower and support at a state and federal level. The federal government tells us that it will work hard in tandem with the state governments, the TGA and Border Force to enforce these laws. If they don't, this legislation will not work. The Commonwealth must also work towards an effective national approach to ensuring that doctors and other healthcare providers have the funding, the capacity and the expertise to provide best practice support for individuals who are seeking to stop smoking. There are better ways to help people stop smoking than via vapes. It is up to us to provide those people with that support. Many people don't understand that the vaping industry is the tobacco industry, and big tobacco is going hard on this issue. Firstly, they're going hard on influencer marketing and product placement. Instagram alone is home to 18,000 Australian vaping influencer profiles, many of which link directly to online vape stores. They're also now hawking nicotine pouches—they call them snus—again, online and, again, via influencers. Who makes those snus, those pouches? Zyn is produced by Philip Morris. Velo, which was marketed just last weekend in Melbourne as the official snus of Formula 1, is made by British American Tobacco. Big tobacco has unhealthily close relationships with several large Australian retail associations. The Australian Retailers Association, the Australian Association of Convenience Stores, the Australian Taxpayers Alliance and related groups, Responsible Vaping Australia and Legalise Vaping Australia are all supported, directly or indirectly, by one or more of: Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco. It is no coincidence that they are pushing back hard against this legislation. Then there are the links between political parties and the tobacco industry. Researchers from the University of Sydney and the Cancer Council NSW have reported that almost half of the tobacco company lobbyists who are now in positions in those big companies previously held positions in state, territory or federal government before or after working in the tobacco industry. That relationship is particularly close between the tobacco industry and the Liberal and the National parties. Almost a fifth of the National Party's receipts in 2022-23 came from tobacco companies. Those donations give BAT and PMI foundation memberships with access to National members and events, lunches and budget dinners. Is it a coincidence that the member for Maranoa, Nationals leader David Littleproud, is now calling for regulation rather than prohibition of vaping in Australia? Senator Hollie Hughes joined with Senator Matt Canavan in a dissenting report to the Senate tobacco harm reduction inquiry in late 2022. Is it a coincidence that earlier that year Legalise Vaping Australia donated $44,000 to the New South Wales Liberal Party? Meanwhile the tobacco industry is actively promoting its own vaping devices. It's walking on both sides of the street. It's also cultivating medical professionals who are promoting vaping as being a better alternative to cigarettes via Orwellian organisations like the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, which is funded by Philip Morris International, and the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, which denies links to the tobacco industry but whose website's metadata has links to lobbying firms contracted to promote vaping. As described in the National Tobacco Strategy 2023-2030: Evidence from Australia and overseas … reinforces the need to ensure that efforts to protect tobacco control from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry also extend to the tobacco industry's practice of using individuals, retail groups, front groups and affiliated organisations to act, openly or covertly, on their behalf or to take action to further their interests. Unfortunately, this does include doctors who represent big tobacco—or, I should say, big nicotine. Those doctors should also be held to account, because they are astroturfing for the tobacco industry; so too should the doctors who provide vapes via telehealth platforms like medicalnicotine.com.au, myduke.com.au, quitmate.com.au and medmate.com.au. Some of those platforms have been investigated for unlawful advertising of vaping products. Some of them—and ostensibly, let us remember, they are telehealth platforms—have entered into commercial agreements whereby they dispense discounted vapes provided via commercial agreements with Philip Morris International. PMI is also supplying some large Australian pharmacy chains with its VEEV vaping products below cost, on the condition that they sign a supply deal with the tobacco giant. Those doctors who are lobbying on behalf of the vaping industry and those doctors who are working on those telehealth platforms should be careful about their prescribing patterns. They need to remember that every vape is doing their patients damage. If they value their professional reputations, they need to consider the potential damage to them as well. The opposition is now calling for regulation, rather than prohibition, of vapes. These calls are utterly disingenuous. This legislation does in fact regulate, rather than prohibit, vapes, but it limits the control of those regulations to medical professionals, not, as the opposition would like, to vape shops, supermarkets, milk bars and servos. Comparisons have been drawn with similar legislation elsewhere, but I draw the attention of the House, and of our constituents, to the fact that both the UK and New Zealand have recently backtracked on their earlier relatively permissive approaches to vaping regulation. Both the UK and New Zealand have recently banned disposable vapes, and they've legislated against the sale of vapes to children in the face of mounting evidence of young people experiencing nicotine addiction: kids sneaking vapes at school, kids vaping in the loos at lunchtime, kids getting up at midnight for a dose. The head of Quit Victoria recently reported that kids as young as 13 are calling the Quitline for help in getting off vapes. This legislation, the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, is overdue. It's important. It's going to be tough to enforce, but I congratulate the Minister for Health and Aged Care on having the courage to take on an industry which is a scourge to this country. Vaping is a public health emergency. We are looking at a tsunami, a generation of children hooked on nicotine. This legislation should be passed, and the federal, state and territory governments should work together to support its implementation. In the face of an unparalleled, unprecedented public health crisis affecting the young people of Australia, we need to act effectively, decisively and with integrity. I commend the legislation to the House. 18:48 Ms PLIBERSEK 83M Sydney I want to thank the member for Kooyong for that excellent contribution. Congratulations, Member for Kooyong. I'm very proud of the fact that the Albanese government has introduced to parliament world-leading vaping legislation. As well as complimenting the member for Kooyong and the many members who have made excellent contributions, I really want to pay tribute to the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler. This is legislation that will save lives. Without question this legislation, if passed by this parliament, will save lives. We know that vaping has already killed people. In the United States there are documented cases of people dying of lung disease. the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have pointed this out. Doctors here are already seeing significant lung problems from vaping, including what is colloquially called 'vaper's cough'. There are plenty of 14-year-olds and 16-year-olds who are turning up with vaper's cough, and with psychological problems. As the member for Kooyong said, there's anxiety when people—kids—can't get their vapes. They're waking up in the middle of the night, with the vape under the pillow, vaping in bed in the middle of the night because they can't get through the night without the nicotine. The Australian panel on tobacco reforms heard that these children were sleeping with vaping devices under their pillows because they are so addicted to nicotine that they can't sleep a night without vaping. It's a public health menace. We see vapes in stores, right across Australia, next to the chocolates, next to the soft drinks and next to the toys. There is absolutely no question that, in the sale of these products, the presentation of these products—the colours, the flavours, the unicorns—is absolutely designed to appeal to children, and also to fool their parents. We've seen vapes in the shape of highlighter pens or in the shape of computer data sticks that can be popped in the pencil case so you can vape at school without your parents and teachers knowing that you're doing it. At least 2,000 chemicals can be found in vaping fluid, according to Johns Hopkins University, and as additives in the plastic casings, including chemicals that are used in embalming, in nail polish remover and in weedkiller. How can we possibly know the extent of setting these chemicals on fire and ingesting them into our lungs? As health minister Mark Butler told the House this week, the Dental Association has warned about an alarming rate of increase in black gum disease in 12- to 15-year-olds, which the dentists connect to vaping. It is extremely disappointing that we have seen reports over the previous weekend that some in the coalition think that it is a good idea to entrench vaping and then milk it for the tax revenue that it can bring in. This is building our tax revenue on the basis of ignoring the impacts on our children's health. We need strong and decisive action to arrest and reverse the increase in vaping and to prevent the long-term adverse impacts on the health of the population, before it's too late. The latest national data showed that one in six high school students had recently vaped, a fourfold increase since the previous survey in 2017. This new law is not about punishing those young people who are vaping. It's about making sure that those who sell, manufacture and hope to profit from the vapes actually face the consequences. Of course, this is mostly about the health of our children. We know that people who start vaping are three times more likely to go on to be smokers. And, in fact, from the most recent year, we've got figures to say that, in New South Wales, there were 170 calls to the poisons line about children ingesting the solution in vapes. Seventeen of those calls were about children under the age of one. We will always act to protect the health of Australians, but I just want to conclude with a few comments about the environmental concerns related to vaping. There is no safe way of dealing with the waste that is created by these single-use vapes. The lithium-ion batteries and the chemical contamination of the devices mean that they can't be recycled. You'd need to manually disassemble them to remove the lithium-ion batteries. You can't do that. Without banning them, they will continue to end up in landfill. In landfill, the plastic will last for a thousand years. The toxic chemicals leach into the soil and the waterways, the devices degrade and microplastics enter the environment. The average Australian consumes a credit card's worth of microplastics every week. People 'wishcycle' the vapes into the plastic, thinking that they'll be recycled. Instead what happens is that they're compacted in the recycling equipment, the lithium-ion batteries explode and the recycling facility catches fire. In Canberra in 2022, a fire knocked out the recycling facility for a year—a fire that was caused by a lithium-ion battery. If they go into landfill, they're also under compression; they heat up, they explode and they cause landfill fires. The National Waste and Recycling Industry Council has indicated that an average of three fires per day in Australia are attributed to batteries being incorrectly disposed off. Lithium ion batteries create intense and persistent fires that are difficult and dangerous for firefighters to extinguish. I will finish by saying this: by 2025, it's estimated that 99 per cent of seabirds will have ingested plastics. In 2050, plastics in the ocean are expected to outweigh fish. When these items enter our environment, they are environmentally catastrophic. I commend the bill to the House. 18:55 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina This might come as a surprise, but there was a lot of content in the environment minister's speech with which I heartily agreed. Indeed, the contaminants in those single-use vapes are of danger, not only to the users but to the environment as well. The lithium ion batteries, as she mentioned, and the toxic chemicals contained therein are so harmful to the ground and groundwater. Goodness knows what they are doing to the young people and to the older people—to anyone actually using these vapes. That is why we need to do something about the manufacture of these vapes and do it very fast, because if anyone thinks that our Border Force, our border patrol and our authorities at the docks can in any way, shape or form manage the great influx of these in the containers that are coming in on the various vessels, well, they are just seriously kidding themselves. The minister was right when she said they come in all shapes and forms, such as USBs or highlighter pens, with the various flavours there not to induce but to seduce children, with unicorns and rainbows and all sorts of tropical and exciting-sounding flavours and colours. This is just an attempt to get people hooked on smoking. We know that, after vapes, it'll be nicotine, and it is dangerous. There is absolutely no question. But, if you suggest that we should then be getting our authorities, be they border control or be they state police, to try to limit the spread of these, I say: well, good luck with that. The genie is out of the bottle—some might say the puff is out of the vape. I went to a wedding not that long ago where just about every person was vaping. We know that currently the estimate is that 1.7 million adults in Australia are believed to vape. It's a big number. Ten per cent of those have a current GP prescription, as required by law, to vape. So that's a very small percentage of the number of people who are, in fact, vaping every day—as the minister said, almost every hour of every day. Labor has pushed ahead with doubling down on the failed prescription-only approach to vaping. I know former health minister Greg Hunt meant well—the intention was right—in doing what he did at the time. But what we've seen is a massive billion-dollar black market underpinned by more than 100 million illegal vapes every year, and these are being sold to children. Who is running this racket, largely? It's the bikie gangs, and bikie gangs are scum. With the number of molotov cocktails being thrown into legal tobacco shops and the bullyboy tactics that these bikie gangs bring to this, this is the new Underbelly crime series waiting and already unfolding, sadly, in our capital cities and perhaps, some might even suggest, elsewhere. The hypocrisy of banning a substance in one form while allowing the legal sale of it in a known, more harmful form cannot be overstated. To the Australian public, it just doesn't add up. It simply doesn't. We do need to address the realities of the current e-cigarette climate and the prevalence of usage in Australia, amongst all age groups but particularly amongst our young people. The minister mentioned schoolchildren and how they were defying their parents and fooling their teachers. Many of us will remember the kids who used to go and have a fag behind the school toilets and get in awful trouble for it. Back when I was at school, you used to get belted for it—not that I've so much as put a cigarette to my lips, I have to say. Some might say I'm very much in the minority there, but I saw the effects that smoking had on my father. It killed him. He went to an early grave because of the effects of smoking. I do not like vaping. I do not like smoking, although people have a legal right to smoke and I acknowledge that. People have a legal right, and it should be a prescriptive right, to vape, and I understand that too. But there are more than a million Australians who are vaping illegally. I want to commend the work done by the member for Cowper, who has looked into this and who has, I know, been torn, in his own conscience, as to what the best and right outcome is for all Australians. He has worked across the aisle, across the political divide, to try and bring about the best possible resolution. I know members come to the debate on this bill, the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, and this motion in good faith. I understand that people have different views and that people are very torn by what those views are. But I do want to commend the member for Cowper, because if anybody in this place, the House of Representatives, understands the significance of it, along with the legal implications, it is the member for Cowper. He's a dad and a former police officer who went undercover to attempt to flush out drug barons and the like. He comes to this place with a world of experience and a world of legal know-how behind him. I have to say that when he speaks on this topic I listen, because I know the time and effort he has put into reaching what he believes is the best conclusion. I know, too, that the Nationals are in a coalition. I respect that. But, with our individual right to look at policy and determine our position as a party, albeit a party in a coalition, we looked at this very early on because it was a massive issue in regional Australia. We believe the regulation and taxing of government-approved nicotine vapes should follow the same general principles as alcohol and cigarette sales. That includes licensed retail outlets, supply chains and manufacturing. I say manufacturing because, as even the minister acknowledged, this is an environmental disaster that, I would suggest, is not waiting to happen but happening. I know, having spoken to Jill Ludford and others in the Murrumbidgee Local Health District, in the electorate of Riverina that I represent, that there are tens of thousands of these vapes, many of which have been confiscated but many of which have been put in the recycling bin, in good faith by people who thought they could be recycled, and are now going to end up in landfill. In fact, nobody quite knows what should be done with them. This is a crisis, as I say, that is unfolding as we speak. There should be strict age verification requirements for vapes as part of what the Nationals believe should be the correct legislation. There should be plain packaging, mandatory health warnings, approved labelling with full ingredients—nicotine content et cetera—restricted flavours approved by the TGA, a subjection to excise, a properly funded and constructed compliance and enforcement regime, and harsh penalties for those who flout the law. But our state police can't be expected to go around and get the prescriptions from everybody who might be puffing away on a vape. The Nationals are proposing to continue a ban on single-use vapes, because of the availability of disposables presenting a low barrier for young people to enter into vaping, and the waste and environmental implications, as I said before, around the disposal of these units, which is complex, costly and poses risks with, as the environment minister quite correctly pointed out, the lithium battery contained therein. Germany and France have recently banned single-use vapes. That was in December last year. Vaping needs to be viewed in the full context of law enforcement and harm reduction. I do worry earnestly about what we are seeing at the moment with bikie gangs and others. It has become a great cash cow for them and their nefarious activities. Also, more locally—and politics is local—the environment minister talked about young people having to have a puff in the middle of the night because they couldn't get through the night. These are kids as young as 13, as the member for Kooyong mentioned. I would argue that some are even younger. At Young High School, in the Riverina, in 2022 a student was caught selling vapes to another student. The boy admitted to selling them and said he found them in a park. Police were contacted and a wellbeing nurse was contacted as well, and the student was rightly suspended. At Parkes High School—I don't want to be seen to be picking on these high schools but these are well-known and publicised incidents—a student was recorded as being absent the day he arrived at school to hand another student a vape. He left and returned again with another vape for another student. These are not isolated one-off incidents. It is not just happening at public high schools. It's happening at private high schools. It is probably happening at primary schools. You only need to walk down the main street of any town anywhere and you will see young people—way too young—on their vapes. It is a major, major issue. Vaping has just exploded, with teachers reporting students using classrooms, toilets and playgrounds to sell them. It is beyond belief, really. We know from good research that vaping is medically harmful, and we also know that people who are vaping are going to have the harmful effects come back at them later in life. I mentioned my father Lance earlier on. At the time he started lighting up in probably the late 40s or early 50s, there wasn't the knowledge. There was certainly the advertising then that told people that it was harmful but, on the other hand, there was all the advertising that was almost encouraging and enticing people by saying that it was the way to live your life—that it was a lifestyle choice that was going to make you more attractive and all the rest. Of course, we know that a number of people who are now in their elderly years are suffering emphysema and other ailments like cancer et cetera—and, dare I say, there are a number of people in cemeteries around the place who ought not be there—because of cigarette smoking and their use of nicotine when they weren't aware of the dangers. These days, people are aware of the dangers of vaping, of the companies selling them and the bikie gangs who are using these as a cash cow. This needs proper, tight legislation that is going to control the sale and usage and certainly put a thumb down on the bikie gangs' ability to reap rewards, ill-gotten gains, from vaping. The Nationals have, in good faith and led by the member for Cowper, put forward what we believe is a strong alternative to what the government is proposing to ensure that the manufacture of vapes is regulated, that it is Australian and that it is done with the best possible outcomes in mind. There's no easy answer to this. There's no easy fix. In my final few seconds, I would urge anybody who is considering either taking it up or doing it not to do it. It's not good for you and it will lead to an untimely death. 19:10 Ms CHESTERS 249710 Bendigo I acknowledge I am a late addition to the speaking list. I rise to speak strongly in favour of the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 to ban the importations, manufacture, supply and commercial possession of disposable, single-use, non-therapeutic vapes while preserving the legitimate patient access to therapeutic vapes through pharmacy settings for people who choose to use vapes as a way to try to manage their nicotine dependence. In my contribution I want to pick up on a few things that some of those opposite have said. One of the factors that has been missing from their contribution has been the acknowledgement that a lot of young Australians don't know how dangerous vapes are, and that is so alarming. Recently, I met with my local headspace—and I do that quite regularly—to find out what it is they're hearing from their leaders. I met with the leaders of this local headspace. Usually, when you meet, their concerns are around anxiety, post pandemic worries and the need for more support for mental health. For this meeting, the entire hour was taken up with vaping: vaping is causing us so many problems; vaping is leading to anxiety; vaping amongst young people is causing massive problems in our community. This wasn't the first meeting that I'd had with young people who had raised this issue. I also met with the leaders of the City of Greater Bendigo, and it was their No. 1 concern. When I spoke to them they, like many other young people, did not know what's in a vape. They did not know the damage. What struck me with those conversations that I was having with young people in my electorate was how identical that conversation was to one I had with my partner's mother about smoking. She took up smoking when she was young. She said: 'Leese, we didn't know. We didn't know how dangerous smoking was.' And here we are a few generations later and we've got another generation of young people saying to us, 'We don't know how dangerous vaping is.' This is on us. This is up to us to do something about it. I have to say to the members of the National Party: don't throw your hands up and say it's too hard. It's not good enough just to say we're going to regulate it and let people be addicted, vape for the rest of their lives, cause damage, and be that next generation that die early of heart disease, of lung cancers or nicotine-and-smoking-related disease. Don't say, 'We're just going to create the next generation of consumers and of cigarettes and vaping.' We can do something about it today because we know the science is in, we know how addictive these products are and we know the damage that has been done. I do feel fortunate that when I was younger I was part of a generation when the education was really strong. I would have schoolmates trying to tell their parents to give up smoking. They'd take their packets of cigarettes and they'd throw them out. I can remember the ads when I was a child. I can remember it. Both my grandfathers died of smoking-related diseases—I never met them. They died young. It is the story of so many Australians who didn't get the opportunity to meet their grandparents. They died young. As the member for Riverina said, far too many Australians died young because of the impact of smoking. And it's a legacy that we all have to live with, because people didn't know the science. But today we do. Today we can actually do something about it before that number is more than 1.7 million people and before it is more than one in six children. We have an opportunity to ban single-use vapes, to make sure that they're not in our schools and our playgrounds. I say schools and playgrounds, and this is something that I also want to put on the record tonight. There's not one high school in my electorate where this hasn't been raised by parents, by teachers and by students: Victory Christian College, Girton Grammar, Marist Catholic School, Catholic College, Bendigo Senior, Weeroona College, Bendigo Southeast and Crusoe. They've all said that this is a big issue—children selling other children vapes because they didn't know it was bad. It's only now that we're doing something about it that the reality is setting in for these young people that this is bad, that this is as bad as smoking, if not worse. And this product is more insidious because of the way it is being marketed to young people—the flavouring, the designs. This is a deliberate strategy by the manufacturers to get that next generation of people addicted. And once they're addicted, the solution from those opposite is to regulate and let this product be sold at supermarkets and service stations. That is not good enough. We can do better, and we must do better. The latest national survey data has shown that there's been a fourfold increase in the number of young people vaping, and one in six high school students have recently vaped. And what are those young people telling us? What are their parents telling us? They're doing it because they didn't know it was as bad as smoking. That is a real story, told to me by hundreds of young people: 'Oh, but vaping's not smoking. It's not as bad as smoking.' We've got to get in front of this, and we've got to get these products out of our schools and out of our community. That is why it is this government and a Labor minister that's continuing the tough line, because it isn't just about the impact of vaping today. It's about what happens to the health and the future of these young people, and the future burden on our health system. We cannot stand here and say that regulation is enough, that vaping is just like cigarettes and just like alcohol, because it's not. If it was just like cigarettes and just like alcohol there'd be more 30 -year-olds vaping, more 40-year-olds vaping, but they're not. It's being targeted at a younger audience who didn't grow up with grandparents dying young, who didn't grow up with parents smoking, throwing their parents' cigarettes away. Companies have targeted a new generation and are calling this a new product and saying it's not as dangerous when it is. Strong and decisive action is needed to make sure we arrest and reverse the increase in vaping, and it can be done. We should not throw our hands up and say that the vape is out of the bottle and we just have to let it go—no. We can actually do something to stop the proliferation of vapes in our community. We can do something to prevent the long-term adverse effects on population health before it's too late. I want to acknowledge at this point in the debate the bravery of some of the young people who have spoken to me, who have confessed: 'Yeah, I sold vapes. I made some money. I didn't know. What's going to happen to me now?' Well, nothing right now, because this bill targets the people who put the vapes into your hands. But don't do it again, because vaping will lead to harm, and we need to stop it. I've had parents reach out to me, desperate and anxious. Their young people are taking up vaping; what can they do? That's why I also commend the health minister for the package that has been put together to target and support and help to get these young people who are addicted to vaping off it. I never thought that I'd be standing here in this parliament in this debate—because 10 years ago vaping wasn't really a thing—and I can't believe there is this division in the parliament, with one side saying, 'Yes, we didn't do enough when we were in government, so now we're going to push for regulation, and let's just let an entirely new generation be addicted to nicotine products, knowing what we know about the damage they can do.' We are playing catch-up to get the information into our schools and into our young people so that they know how dangerous this product is. I have met with a number of retailers in my electorate and have had people reach out to me who do support vaping. I want to say to the people who support vaping who have reached out to me: we believe that if you have a medical script and your doctor agrees, you should still be able access products that can help reduce your dependency on nicotine. We support that being distributed through pharmacies in very controlled circumstances, and that is what this bill does. If it has worked for you, that is great. If it would work for others under that very controlled arrangement, we support that. But we have to do something to stop vaping and its proliferation into our schools. The nicotine companies have done it to the Australian public again, just as they did to our grandparents when they said it doesn't harm and isn't bad for you. It breaks my heart that young people tell me, 'But this isn't like smoking.' We have to get in front of this and we have to ban these products. We have to ban them and get them out of our schools. The only groups who really support regulation, apart from the members of the National Party, are those who want to sell vaping products, because they see the opportunity of a lifelong group of customers. That is what is really insidious about the idea that we can accept regulation. Some people came to me and spoke in good faith and spoke to me about their profits on cigarettes being down. I said, 'Look, I understand that your profits on cigarettes are down.' But I'm not going to agree that we should then regulate so that they can increase their profits through allowing vapes to be sold. It just isn't right and we have an opportunity to do something about it. Regulating vapes just condemns a generation of young people—a generation who may already be addicted, judging from the history and the science and what we already know. We can get in front of vaping and stop it, and stop a generation of young people becoming the next ones that find an early grave because of smoking related diseases. It isn't just smoking related diseases that they put themselves at risk of, and we all know what they are. There are high correlations between asbestos related disease and smoking. That is just one example and there are so many others. This is an opportunity for us as a parliament to get on the front foot and do something—not only educating—by banning the product that we know will create so much harm. This bill will ban the importation, manufacture, supply and commercial possession of disposable, single-use vapes and non-therapeutic vapes, while preserving the legitimate patient's access to therapeutic vapes through pharmacy settings for smoking cessation and management of nicotine dependency were clinically appropriate. This is the right bill and the right call for this time. We can do something to help that next generation. We want to see the figures reduced from one in six to zero. It is something we can do. I would like to get back to a conversation I'm having in my community where we are talking about education, leadership and opportunity, a conversation where the first sentence with every school leader, school principal, school teacher and parent is, 'What are we doing about vaping?’ When I spoke in local media about what we are doing about vaping there was overwhelming support for it across the generations. Let's not be a society and a parliament that condemns another generation to smoking related disease. We can do something about it. I commend the minister for health, in the grand tradition of Labor health ministers, for putting forward this bill—the centrepiece of our government's reform on stopping vaping and banning vapes. 19:25 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah I rise to speak to the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. As a sportsperson, I make no apology for being strongly against smoking and vaping. It is disappointing to see that the parliament is not united behind this ban and ensuring that it happens, because it is incredibly important. Vaping has become a real public health threat. I have been urging the government to take decisive action against vaping to reduce the increasing rates of vaping and prevent the long-term harm on population health. Any complacency from government and health officials will see the rate of vaping continue to climb, particularly amongst our young people. In my electorate of Warringah, parents, carers and educators are constantly contacting my office to express serious concern about the ready viability of and easy access to vaping products, particularly for young people. Insidious vape shops are popping up regularly all around Warringah. The appearance of the vape shops and the vapes they sell is truly disgusting, in my opinion; the products look and taste like the sweets and lollies that they sit alongside in these shops. As I've mentioned previously, local media in my electorate, including the Manly Observer and the Northern Beaches Advocate, provide ongoing coverage to this important issue. Young people do not understand or appreciate, or are not aware of, the insidious nature of vapes—that they are like smoking. We almost eradicated smoking in younger generations through strong public health campaigns and strong reforms. But now the tobacco industry has managed to ensnare children and young people through slick marketing of vaping products, specifically designed to appeal to young people. Make no mistake; it is big tobacco that is behind the vaping industry, and it's probably not surprising that the members in this place that are not supporting and opposing this outright ban are the members of the National Party. They are the one party that accepts donations from tobacco. It is incredibly disappointing that that, I would suggest, influences their position in relation to this legislation. A ban is the only way we protect young people from being at risk of this insidious product. If we fail to act now, the alarming rates of youth vaping will continue to rise. We need strong legislation to ban the importation, marketing and distribution of vapes, and we need public health campaigns to educate and help our youth. Vapes also pose an environmental harm. Many e-cigarette pods can't be recycled due to potential nicotine content. Discarded pods can also leak, creating contamination and plastic waste that takes centuries to degrade. For all our Clean Up Australia days and all those amazing groups around our communities, it is frightening how much vaping products now make up what is found in the environment. In the United Kingdom, the Guardian reported, in 2023, that disposable vapes are behind a dramatic rise in fires at recycling plants—raising the risk of a major blaze releasing toxic fumes and polluting air, industry experts warn. In fact, when I visited a recycling facility in Western Australia, as a member of the Standing Committee on Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, they showed just how many vaping products had been collected and the risks they pose. There are some truly disturbing statistics out there. Children as young as 12 find that vapes are accessible from their friends, siblings and businesses. Eighty-seven per cent of children said that accessing vapes was easy, and the majority said they were attracted to the fruity flavours—which is not surprising, given the strategic marketing of these products to kids. What starts as a social habit can readily become a severe dependency on nicotine. Kids start sacrificing their learning time, sleep and money to use and acquire vapes. It's happening in classrooms, school bathrooms and at home. Vapes have become part of children's lives, and it must be stopped. In Australia, the number of people vaping tripled between 2019 and 2022. Vaping is particularly endemic amongst youth, with one in six high-schoolers currently vaping and one in three having tried it. Ninety-three per cent of teachers are concerned about vaping in schools, and they report that children are distracted, stressed and anxious. These kids are often not aware that they're experiencing withdrawal symptoms and they turn to vaping to counteract those feelings, fuelling an insidious cycle. There's growing evidence that it poses significant risk to our health. These concerns on the impact of vaping absolutely also include the impact on adolescent brain development, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer. It's also linked to anxiety, stress behaviours and mental health issues. The list that justifies why this legislation is absolutely needed and why vapes must be banned is long. This bill bans the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertising of vapes. It's part of the second phase of the vaping regulation. I strongly support it. Following this bill passing, the provisions will regulate vapes, ban advertising and introduce new offences and civil penalty provisions in relation to importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertising of vapes. It bans the commercial possession of vapes, and all of this better regulates the vaping industry and will help deter the importation and commercial supply of vaping products. These vaping reforms are designed to protect the health and wellbeing of Australians and are based on extensive public health professional consultation, so I strongly support them. They establish a strong national framework to tackle the endemic levels of vaping in Australia, particularly amongst our youth. We must address this, and I congratulate the government for taking a firm stand. I urge all members in this place to get behind this necessary health measure. 19:32 Mr BURKE DYW Watson We are seconds away from a message being in front of us, so, rather than be in a situation where someone starts a speech and then is unable to finish it, what I suggest we do at the moment is that I move that the debate be adjourned. Then we sit here in silence for about 40 seconds, looking at each other, then the message will arrive—that may have happened—and then we will be able to deal with things in an orderly way. I move: That the debate be adjourned. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 I thank the manager of government business for moving the motion. With your oratory skills, I'm sure you could entertain the House for 40 seconds, given your time in this place! Maybe share with the House your comprehensive understanding of the standing orders or something—something most diligent! Question agreed to. STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE 107 STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE Parliamentary Business 107 19:33 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I've had conversations with the opposition and those of the crossbench who are here, just to explain what the process will be. There is one message which might result in a division, but I can't be sure. So once we deal with that, if there is no division there, I will then advise the House that we don't expect there are going to be any further divisions. Once messages have all been reported—because the others are just being reported—I will then at that point move that the House adjourn. Once I have moved that, rather than deal with it immediately, there are some people who have prepared adjournment speeches, so we'll let that run in the normal way for half an hour. The moment I move that, everyone can be very safe in knowing there will be no quorum or division calls for the rest of the night. But we're not there yet; we're still waiting for the message. We'll deal with the messages first, where I don't think there will be divisions but I just can't give a guarantee because it's not something I'm in complete control of. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 The standing orders are in place that if there is a division— Mr BURKE DYW It would be called. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 members would be required to attend the chamber. BILLS 107 BILLS Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share—Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023 107

Treasury Laws Amendment (Making Multinationals Pay Their Fair Share—Integrity and Transparency) Bill 2023

Consideration of Senate Message 107 19:35 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I move: That the amendments be agreed to. Question agreed to. ADJOURNMENT 121 ADJOURNMENT Senior Australians 121 19:36 Mr WALLACE 265967 Fisher Fisher is home to 38,000 locals over the age of 65, and I share their frustration with this government—not that I'm over 65!—which has shown nothing but utter contempt for older Australians and their families. If you needed proof, more than 900 questions from the Senate about the Health and Aged Care portfolio have been left unanswered since October, and that is just the start. Let's have a look at franking credits. Before the last election this Prime Minister promised no changes to super and no changes to franking credits, yet one of the first decisions of his government was to break that promise. Their decision stops shareholders from benefiting from the off-market buybacks of companies that they've invested in. Treasury confirmed that the measure was essentially a tax on incomes and retirement savings. These changes don't just impact the three million Australians who receive franking credits. As the 2023 Tax Expenditures and Insights Statements show, the majority of the franking credits inevitably flow to charities, super funds and Australian companies. This is not just a broken promise to senior Australians; it's a broken promise to charities and companies into the future. 'What about aged care?' I hear you ask. The Prime Minister promised to put the care back into aged care. Instead, he's broken his headline election promise to older Australians. Labor promised a registered nurse at every aged-care home 24/7 by July 2023. They had no plan or modelling to train the nearly 7,000 registered nurses required to keep that promise. The royal commission, the sector and common sense indicated that this would be unfeasible and would put a significant strain on aged-care service providers. And yet they've ploughed ahead, enforcing workforce standards which are simply not workable. As a result, facilities are falling over, and older Australians are forced back onto waiting lists. Now, it sounds good—greater care for older people. No-one could argue with that. It sounds good. It sounds good until we see a situation where nursing homes are having to close because they can't comply with the requirements that this government has placed on so many small operators. That has resulted in many people losing those opportunities of being cared for. It's tantamount to cutting off your nose to spite your face. Bulk-billing is in crisis, and older Australians are paying the price for Labor's primary-care crisis. Right now the GP bulk-billing rate is 77.7 per cent. This compares to 84 per cent under Peter Dutton as health minister and 88.5 per cent when the coalition left office just two years ago. In the last 12 months alone, Australians have lost access to more than 400 dedicated bulk-billing GP clinics. Anybody listening to this speech tonight probably needs another life, but anybody listening to this speech would know how impossibly difficult it is to see a GP. You can ring up your local GP and try to get a consultation and be left for weeks before you can get in. They are under the pump. Labor played politics with private health insurance premium rates, refusing to release the 0.6 increase until after the Dunkley by-election. No wonder they hid it! Fourteen million Australians who have taken out private health cover are now forced to pay more for their health and wellbeing. But, wait! There's more! They botched the shingles vaccine, they've slashed mental healthcare funding against experts' advice and public demand, they've driven up the cost of visiting a GP by up to $11. Remember all the arguments about copayments? Where are we now? They've stripped fast-acting insulin from the PBS, impacting up to 14,500 diabetics on the Sunshine Coast, and the list goes on and on. I could go on and on, but I won't. Blair Electorate: Veterans Hubs 122 19:42 Mr NEUMANN HVO Blair I take this opportunity to talk about some of the outstanding Albanese Labor government issues that are supporting local defence personnel and veterans in my community, and honouring their service. At the outset, the Albanese government is committed to providing the best possible care and support for our defence personnel veterans and their families, as well as recognising the service and sacrifice of our ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen. To that end, I was very proud to announce on 12 March, with the Minister for Veterans Affairs and defence personnel, that a $5.445 million grant was provided to RSL Queensland to lead the establishment of a new veterans and families hub in Ipswich in my electorate. The hub will be run in collaboration with veterans support organisation Mates4Mates and veterans health provider GO2 Health. This delivers on an election commitment of mine to establish an Ipswich veterans and family hub where services are tailored to the specific needs of the local defence personnel, veterans and their families—something that the local veterans community and I have advocated for, for several years, given Ipswich is a garrison town that's home to the largest Air Force base in the country in RAAF Base Amberley. The region has one of the largest defence and veteran populations in the country, with more than more than 10,000 veterans and their families calling Ipswich and its surrounds home. What's more, I know RSL Queensland and Mates4Mates have a proven track record in supporting veterans and families across the country, and in the development and management of veterans hubs, having worked with them. I visited a number of them when I was a shadow minister. The services offered at the Ipswich hub will include: a strong focus on medical interventions, thanks to the partnership with GO2 Health; physical and mental health rehabilitation, supported by Mates4Mates; and advocacy and social and emotional wellbeing support, facilitated by RSL Queensland. This is part of the government's $46.7 million veterans and families hub network and election commitment to establish 10 new veterans and families hubs across the country. I am so pleased to see these centres being rolled out now that we are in government, especially in my electorate, and I look forward to seeing the difference they will make in people's lives. While the minister and I were there at the Ipswich Memorial Gardens to announce the veterans hub grant, we took time to inspect the Ipswich RSL sub-branch's new memorial there. The sub-branch has installed nine new plinths in the memorial gardens to honour a range of veterans groups and conflicts such as Indigenous servicemen and servicewomen, and the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The project was funded with a $131,619 Saluting Their Service Commemorative Grant to the sub-branch last year. These grants help to recognise the service and sacrifice of those who've served our nation during wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations. Ipswich has a proud history of military service, and this innovative and inclusive memorial will help our local community commemorate those from the region who've given so much for our nation. Finally, in November last year, I was delighted to announce, with the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, that the Ipswich based Wounded Heroes Australia had received $1.1 million in funding, through the $17 million Veteran Wellbeing Grants One-Off Program, to improve veterans and family services supports and coordination where they are needed most. The grant will be used to upgrade the head office of their veterans centre in Bundamba in my electorate of Blair to provide additional private spaces for people to access services and supports, as well as to purchase a vehicle to assist with transporting veterans. The Veteran Wellbeing Grants One-Off Program was established to complement and build upon the government's existing Veterans' and Families' Hubs program, in support of the large-scale projects that can be rolled out quickly to deliver practical services on the ground in areas with large veteran communities like my own. The great thing about Wounded Heroes is that it fills a gap in the veteran service and support space, providing rapid crisis assistance for veterans and their families who are doing it tough, with things like financial assistance, food relief and emergency accommodation. It was terrific to take the minister on a tour of their drop-in centre, in June last year, to see firsthand the outstanding work that CEO Martin Shaw and his dedicated staff and volunteers do on the frontline, as well as their contribution to the wider community. Speaker, I think you are the actual patron, and congratulations for that. The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which Labor called for in opposition, made clear that there is no time to waste when it comes to improving services and supports for the veteran community. What these programs and grants show is that the Albanese Labor government is responding to this. We're not wasting a single day. We're delivering the kind of tailored services on the ground that veterans and their families need and deserve. Hughes Electorate: Sport 122 19:47 Ms WARE 300123 Hughes Sport is ingrained in our national identity. In Australia, it's part of our DNA, connecting communities, fostering camaraderie and promoting physical and mental wellbeing. From grassroots levels to elite competition, sport unites us, transcending boundaries of age, ethnicity and social status. Within the electorate of Hughes, sport plays a pivotal role in shaping our local culture and strengthening our social fabric. I take this opportunity to speak about some of the wonderful sporting groups in my local community and also to speak about the need to improve our local infrastructure; to fund grassroot sports, starting with clubhouses and change rooms, to increase participation in local sports for girls and women and for those with disabilities. I was privileged, last weekend, to launch the season of the Menai Roosters Junior Rugby League Football Club, a wonderful club with a sense of family, belonging and cohesion. I'll be proudly wearing my Menai Roosters puffer top this winter and watching as many games as possible. Also there's Bosco Braves Baseball & Softball Club. I was delighted to present my local Commitment to Sports Award to Scott Ingwersen, groundskeeper and gear-manager at the club for more than 20 years. I headed to the Bonnet Bay Baseball Club, which hosted the Little League majors baseball grand final day, where I was privileged to pitch the ceremonial pitch in the grand final between the Yarrawarrah Tigers and Eastern Suburbs Dolphins. And nobody was more surprised than me that it was a strike! I mention, also, the Sutherland Shire Softball Association, my old association, and my club, Monkeys Softball. Congratulations to Clare O'Brien, who, as well as being the club's president and founder, recently received her 200 caps. Now, here's a shout-out to all other recent winners of my local sports award: Aaron Poll from Heathcote Waratah Football Club; Joshua Hughes, Como Jannali Crocodiles rugby league; Joshua Fembock, Bardon Ridgebacks Football Club; John Liddicoat, Bundeena District Tennis Club; and Alice Viles of Heathcote-Engadine Hawks AFL. Soccer is a major sport in our community. The Sutherland Shire Football Association has over 19,000 members, one of the largest in the southern hemisphere, and the association has just elected its first female president, Laura Cowell. Our sporting clubs also serve as hubs of activity, bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds with a shared passion. Moreover, sport is not just about physical health; it's also a powerful tool for personal development and social integration. Through participation in sports, our younger Australians learn valuable lessons in teamwork, discipline and resilience, attributes that serve them well beyond the field or court for the rest of their lives. Our local sports are held together by our volunteers: the parents out at 6.30 on cold winter mornings setting up soccer fields; the clubs committees meeting after work to ensure the necessary though often tiresome administrative work is done; the umpires and referees; and those who organise uniforms, fundraising, the barbecue and the canteen. The list goes on. Our local clubs need funding assistance. Through round 8 of the Stronger Communities Program, I was very proud to deliver, among other things, a new basketball backboard for the Sutherland District Basketball Association, an upgrade to the women's bathroom facilities at Bosco Football Club, an upgrade to the basketball court at St Paul's Anglican Church in Menai, and socially inclusive facilities at Bonnet Bay Summer Sports Club. Unfortunately, though, the coalition's commitment to local sport has not been matched by the Albanese Labor government. Since coming to power, it has cancelled the Stronger Communities Program. This is money—$150,000 for each electorate—that is now being taken away from community sports. If Illawong and Districts Senior Athletic Club in my electorate wanted a new bench shelter or St John Bosco Baseball and Softball Club wanted clubhouse and canteen upgrades, things that were available under the Stronger Communities Program and were delivered, they would not now be able to secure them under this Labor government. Far more is needed in my local community for local sports. Many of our clubhouses are tired and not fit for purpose, with toilets that are not wheelchair accessible, showers without privacy, and inadequate storage space. All of these are detriments to increasing participation in local sport. I especially mention the home grounds of Loftus Yarrawarrah Rovers, Bosco Football Club, Akuna Avenue at Bangor, and Heathcote oval. We must do better. We must invest in these facilities. I am committed to fighting for better funding for these grounds and for others within the electorate to ensure local sport remains accessible, inclusive and thriving. I'm committed to fighting for local sport. I only wish this Labor government were similarly committed. Mallee Electorate: Jeparit Riverfront Project, Mallee Electorate: Karen Community 123 19:52 Dr WEBSTER 281688 Mallee Today I am speaking with a sense of pride to acknowledge and celebrate the milestones and progress that have been made within the Mallee community, highlighting the dedication and collaborative effort that have led to these achievements. I'd like to first focus on the Jeparit riverfront project, an initiative that transformed a key community space through a $750,000 grant from the former coalition government's Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program. This project, led by the Jeparit advancement committee and supported by long-term residents, has revitalised the riverfront area. It is a place of fond memories and community significance. The riverfront—once a humble swimming hole where schoolchildren, including Mr Wiedermann some 70 years ago, earned their Herald certificate—has been magnificently transformed. This transformation is not just about physical renovation; it's a celebration of shared history, connection to place and the natural beauty there but also the collective resilience of the community. I was proud to be down there a couple of weeks ago. The modernisation of the riverfront signifies the community of Jeparit's dedication to preserving and enriching the lives of community members and the generations to come. Today it boasts an elegant platform and steps leading down to the river, replacing the once sludge-laden banks with welcoming sand. Additionally, a new amenities block and outdoor kitchen have been installed. These work superbly with the existing two-bedroom units which overlook the river from the cliff above, enhancing the appeal of an already beautiful place. These improvements reflect a broader commitment to upgrading community facilities and promoting local heritage and recreational opportunities. The LRCI Program, initiated by our government, aimed to support communities in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. During my first term in parliament, I was part of securing more than $92 million in funding under this program, emphasising the importance of investing in local infrastructure across Mallee. It is crucial that the current government continue to support local infrastructure funding programs to maintain and expand on these advancements. Similarly, in Nhill, we have seen the positive impact of the Karen community's integration, growing from five Luv-A-Duck workers and their families in 2010 to around 200 Karen people there today. This integration has been beneficial for the whole community, culminating in the construction of Nhill's first purpose-built caneball court. This facility supported by the LRCI program and Hindmarsh Shire Council is the first of its kind in western Victoria. It caters to the traditional game of chinlone or sepak takraw, reflecting our commitment to cultural diversity and inclusion. I've long been incredibly impressed with the Nhill community and I also attended the Karen new year there earlier this year. This event, meticulously planned by the community, was attended by over 1,000 people from across Victoria and beyond. Among the attendees was Mira, who travelled from Perth with her family to join us. Mira, like many others, may have relocated, but continues to consider Nhill her Australian home. This sentiment underscores the deep connections formed within the community and highlights the inclusivity that defines those who live in Mallee. The impact of the Karen community on Nhill is significant and inspiring, with 18 per cent of the local workforce and more than 10 per cent of the population being Karen. Their contribution to the Nhill community is undeniable. Almost 60 Karen families own their own homes in Nhill and contribute to local businesses. These figures are a testament to the successful integration and mutual respect that exists in Nhill. The developments they celebrate today underscore the potential of government programs and community collaboration in fostering development and improving the quality of life in local regional communities. As we move forward, it's essential to continue supporting these initiatives, ensuring they have the resources needed to sustain and enhance their impact. In conclusion, I would like to thank all those involved in bringing these projects to fruition. Their efforts have significantly contributed to the development of the Jeparit and Nhill communities as a whole and add to the progress we continue to make in Mallee. House adjourned at 19:56 The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Archer ) took the chair at 09:29.

Wednesday, 27 March 2024

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Archer ) took the chair at 09:29.

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS 125 CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS Olympic Games: Infrastructure 125 09:29 Mr CHANDLER-MATHER 300121 Griffith For nearly three years we were told that the Gabba stadium demolition was a done deal, that there was no point fighting it; it's over. When this stadium demolition was announced, it was with the support of Labor and Liberal governments at every level. All signed on to destroy a public school and park for the sake of their Olympics vanity project. The destruction of a public school and hectares of public parkland—both precious and essential for a growing inner-city area like the one around the Gabba—are simply too high a price to pay for the Olympics, and it has never been acceptable to our community. When local Greens representatives stood up for our communities and pushed back against this demolition plan, Labor politicians, including the Premier and Prime Minister, mocked us for it. But, like our community, we never gave up. Now, finally, Labor has admitted what we have been saying from the very beginning: the Gabba demolition and rebuild was never going to work, and was a disastrous and destructive waste of public money. The cancellation of this plan means we have saved Raymond Park, a beautiful parkland which brings thousands of people in Kangaroo Point together every day. I want to congratulate and thank our amazing community leaders in this campaign: people like Austin Gibbs, Melissa Occhipinti yeah, Dan Angus, Haline Ly, Nicky Middleton, Paul Gollan, Cass Gaisford and many more brave people who stood up and turned into organisers and activists overnight. This is an historic victory, and you have all done an incredible job. And congratulations to my incredible Greens colleagues and councillors, like Trina Massey, Jonathan Sriranganathan, Senator Penny Allman-Payne, Kath Angus and Amy MacMahon, who have not only given an electoral voice to this fight but who have demonstrated so much leadership on the ground in backing this community. In particular, the people of South Brisbane could not have asked for a better local member than Amy MacMahon. This would absolutely not have been possible without her. The lesson here is that when our community is united and prepared to fight, and has a strong local representative in their corner, we can win. Raymond Park has never belonged to the Labor Party or to the IOC; it belongs to the people, to the community and to all of us. Today we celebrate having saved Raymond Park, but the fight won't end until we also save East Brisbane State School. Parents at East Brisbane State School are being dragged along further while Labor refuses to confirm if the school will be impacted by the new planned upgrades for the Gabba. Queensland Labor must now end the heartache it put this community through and commit to saving the school. If they're not prepared to ensure that this community can have a school, then the federal government should use its powers as a 50 per cent funder of these Olympics to finally put this mad plan to bed. We won't stop until we get there, and I hope it won't take another three years of campaigning for Labor to understand that they can't take this community for granted ever again. South Australia: Community Television 125 09:32 Mr BURNELL 300129 Spence Channel 44 is South Australia's local community TV station, with a variety of programming which caters to a diverse audience. One important aspect of community television is launching Australians towards successful careers within broadcasting and beyond. A couple of weeks ago, I caught up with Gawler local Jess McCall, who is launching her own TV show, BTS with Jess, or 'behind the scenes with Jess' in April on Channel 44. Jess is currently in her third year of studying film, TV and journalism at the University of South Australia. Jess approached Channel 44 with an idea for her own show, BTS with Jess. Supported by her university, Jess outlined her goal of producing a show exploring the work of young people in the arts sector, presenting the process of their creativity as well as showcasing the finished product—a behind-the-scenes experience. After receiving a pilot episode, Channel 44 gave Jess the opportunity to produce a full season of BTS with Jess, to be aired not just on the South Australian community station but also on Channel 31 in Victoria. As a result, Jess has had the opportunity to travel across the state, pursuing her passion and discovering a world of artistic endeavours. And she is now about to present that to a wider audience across two states. As we will discover in just under a week, this unique opportunity has provided Jess with a deeper dive into the community of Gawler as well. She has interviewed local musicians, dancers and visual artists within my electorate of Spence to bring their stories and experiences, both as artists and individuals living in the northern suburbs, to life on television. It's something that Jess should be immensely proud of. While Jess largely produces her show by herself, which is highly impressive as it is, she said that the highlight of her experience was comparing her first production to her most recent one, having seen the skills she has learned by creating for Channel 44. Jess also noted that Channel 44's assistance has proven invaluable to her profile overall. She said to me that, thanks to the opportunity provided through community television, she now has something to base herself on as a professional. As Jess herself put it, if someone wants to be a camera operator, an editor, a director, a producer or anything to do with on-screen media, they can get those opportunities by volunteering for Channel 44 or Channel 31. These opportunities can be very hard to access through commercial television, which underlines the importance of maintaining thriving community television services. I'd encourage everyone to tune in to Channel 44 next week, on Tuesday 3 April at 7.30 pm Adelaide time, and watch the first instalment of BTS with Jess. It promises to be an absolute cracker. Live Animal Exports 126 09:35 Mr WILLCOX 286535 Dawson I rise today to highlight yet another bad decision by the Albanese Labor government, and that is to phase out the live export trade for Australia. I say 'for Australia' because this will do nothing to the export trade throughout the world. The only thing it will do is highlight the fact that some of those other countries do not have the same stringent standards that we do when we export, and we account for about a third of the worldwide sheep trade. I don't understand why those opposite never support the farmers, the fishers, the miners and the foresters. They never ever do. This comes hot on the heels of the gillnet ban, which put 90 fisher men and women in my area of Dawson out of business, with no consultation whatsoever. I was very excited to join my parliamentary colleagues of the coalition ag committee on a tour of Western Australia, where we saw firsthand what the phasing out of the live sheep trade industry would do. Let me tell you: it's diabolical. There are farmers over there—third-, fourth- and fifth-generation farmers—in despair. They don't know whether to invest. Their families are walking off the farms. Their kids won't go back. It's absolutely terrible. Let's go straight to the facts. When the live sheep go onto the boat, they're monitored on the whole trip, from the start right through to the finish, and a lot of those sheep actually put on weight. It's a bit like us when we go on a cruise ship. If you're comfortable and you have some good tucker, you put on weight. That is certainly not what happens to anyone who's in despair. And have a look at the temperatures. It's pretty harsh country for sheep out in Western Australia and some of the areas in South Australia, but, when they're on the boat, the sea moderates the temperature. They're actually looked after really well, and their mortality rate is 0.2 per cent. They have a higher mortality rate when the sheep are out in the paddock. We're looking after the sheep extremely well. They are the scientific facts. Unfortunately, the decision to phase out the live sheep industry has not been made on scientific fact; it has been made on political fact. The Albanese Labor government is bowing down to the Greens, once again. I know they're in a coalition together, and I appreciated their position, misguided though it is. They're bowing down once again and they're trying to save these inner-city seats, but what about looking after the farmers of this country, who provide the food and fibre and who feed us? Without farms in this country, we would be naked, starving and sober. Housing, Grocery Prices 126 09:38 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley In recent weeks I have undertaken mobile offices across my electorate of Lilley, talking to locals about the Albanese government's commitment to an ambitious housing reform agenda and our promise to tackle the cost of living. Regardless of which suburb I am in, Lilley locals are telling me that they need help with housing affordability. One of my constituents, Andrew, who's 41 and lives in Nudgee, wrote to me to say: My family lives in Nudgee and our rents have been increasing with no end in sight. We want to buy a home but savings and pay rises are being eaten up by rent increases and we are as far off as ever. This is after being pretty well off on a combined income over $200k. I can only imagine how tough it for average Aussies on less income and of the verge of homelessness. Please do something to help now. I've heard you, Andrew, and the Albanese Labor government has heard you too. The Help to Buy shared-equity scheme will support up to 40,000 Australian households to purchase a home of their own. Under the scheme, the Commonwealth will provide to eligible participants an equity contribution of up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for new homes and 30 per cent for existing homes. This is along with Labor's tax cuts which will ensure that 82,000 Lilley constituents will receive on average an extra $1,632 in their pockets from 1 July. The government understands that affordable housing is crucial and critical to economic wellbeing, and the government is committed to supporting more Australians to access housing. As the member of the Lilley, another issue that's raised with me every single day is the cost of groceries. The weekly grocery shop should not be a luxury purchase, but Lilley locals are not paying fair prices at the till, and too many families are struggling to buy the essentials. To hold the big supermarkets to account, the Albanese government has directed the ACCC to shine a light on this sector. This inquiry is about making sure that our supermarkets are as competitive as they can be, to ensure that we get the best and fairest prices possible. The time to have your say on this issue is now. I would urge every affected northsider to share how the cost of groceries has affected your household budget and what your biggest concerns about the supermarkets are. Please make sure that you share your experience before the ACCC supermarket consumer survey closes on 2 April, which is Tuesday. And you can find the survey on the ACCC website. With my remaining time, may I wish the Brisbane Lions all the very best of luck against Collingwood tomorrow night. Bonner Electorate: Youth Mental Health 127 09:41 Mr VASTA E0D Bonner As I stand here today, an estimated 2.2 million Australians are living with anxiety, 1.5 million are suffering depression and, on average, nine Australians per day tragically take their own life. It is sad to see that, according to Beyond Blue, 75 per cent of mental health challenges start before the age of 25. Youth mental health is one of the most pressing issues of our time. That is why we're making sure there are appropriate and relevant supports that are easily accessible for those in need, and that's become a priority of mine. To make this happen, we need a youth perspective on youth issues, and I'm partnering with Tom and Wilson from youth mental health organisation You Are Not Alone to deliver my Bonner Youth Mental Health Forum. As young people themselves, Tom and Wilson have run mental health workshops with over 16 local schools and reached over 50,000 students in South-East Queensland. Each year, Tom and Wilson also organise the You Are Not Alone Fun Run, and I've had the pleasure of being involved in, supporting and attending this event since it started. Last year it was fantastic to see over 2,000 participants running to raise awareness for youth mental health, with over $37,000 raised for Lifeline Queensland. This year's run will be held on 16 June in Brisbane's CBD. The Your Are Not Alone Fun Run is a great day to shine a light on mental health and bring young people together for a conversation. I encourage anyone who lives in or around Brisbane to get behind this great cause by registering through the You Are Not Alone website. As much as I look forward to attending this year's You Are Not Alone Fun Run, I would like to talk a little bit more about my Bonner Youth Mental Health Forum. The Bonner Youth Mental Health Forum is an opportunity for the youth in our community to have their say on how to better support young people struggling with mental health challenges. It is putting the youth at the centre of decision-making and making sure that we develop solutions for young people by young people. It will be held on Saturday 4 May at Mount Gravatt High School. I urge all those in the Bonner community who are aged between 15 and 25 to RSVP for this event. This is your opportunity to have your voice heard, and I can't wait to see you there and have you share all your great ideas. Middle East: Occupied Palestinian Territories 127 09:44 Ms BYRNES 299145 Cunningham Today, Muslim constituents in Cunningham are marking the holy month of Ramadan. This weekend, people will mark the holy Christian period of Easter, and in April it will be Passover. These holy periods in all religions are times for reflection, peace and goodwill to others, but this year also brings pain, as many feel great sadness, anger and fear for their loved ones and the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Gaza. One member of a local mosque said to me that, each night when they break their fast, they feel anguish at the situation in Gaza—for families or children that have been killed, for those who are going without food and shelter. It brings great sadness and guilt. Our government and governments around the world continue to plead for peace, for civilian life to be protected and held paramount, for an immediate ceasefire now during Ramadan, and a lasting ceasefire—for aid to get into Gaza, for hostages to be released. What happened on 7 October was horrific, and our hearts go out to all of the families affected by the attack. There can be no excuse for such an attack. But Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price. Too many Palestinian families have been decimated and too many innocent lives have been lost. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the government of Israel's response, including over 13,000 children. This is unacceptable, horrific, and it must stop. Israel has a moral obligation, if nothing else, to stop. The restrictions on aid into Gaza to help the wounded, the starving and the trapped must be lifted. The stories of women undergoing caesareans, and children undergoing amputations, without anaesthetic are horrific. Innocent Palestinians do not deserve to suffer, and our hearts go out to them. Our foreign minister last night in the Senate called on all parties to the conflict in Gaza to comply with the UN Security Council's demand in relation to the ceasefire—that immediate action must be taken by Israel to remove all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance and that Hamas comply with the immediate and unconditional release of hostages. The world demands it, and I strongly support this call. I would like to acknowledge the members of the UNSC, along with other global leaders, including Minister Wong, for their advocacy, as I know how much work this requires behind the scenes. The catastrophe is complex and dates back many decades, but for me the answer is very straightforward: the lives of innocent civilians must be protected, and I urge the government of Israel and Hamas to work towards a pathway for peace and work towards a two-state solution. I urge the government of Israel and Hamas to agree to an immediate and lasting ceasefire, release the hostages and allow aid into Gaza. The innocent people caught in the middle deserve lasting peace. Casey Electorate: Cricket 128 09:47 Mr VIOLI 300147 Casey As the summer draws to a close, I would like to congratulate all the local cricket clubs in my community of Casey—those that play in the RDCA and the Ferntree Gully and District Cricket Association—on a fantastic season. In so many of our communities in Casey, our clubs really are the heart of the town. They provide a secure environment for young people to engage with one another and build that camaraderie and shared experience. Undoubtedly that has a positive effect on the wellbeing of the players and the supporters, and that transcends into all aspects of their life—their education, their work. It's so important. During the summertime in my early teenage years and early 20s I found solace and a sense of belonging at the Healesville Cricket Club and the Gruyere District Cricket Club, which are now part of the Seville Burras. Cricket has always been a special part of my life, and it was wonderful a few months ago to dust off the whites and play in the Jeff Long Memorial Match. I got to play for Powelltown against Yarra Junction. Jeff was a legend of Yarra Valley cricket, terrorising batsmen with the ball and with his witty sledges, so it was an honour to play in the game. It was a good-natured match played in Jeff's honour. He is sadly missed by many. The match highlighted the power of community and sport. Premierships are very hard to win. I know personally that cricket premierships, in particular, can be challenging. So I want to congratulate the Montrose Cricket Club first XI for winning the Lindsay Trollope Shield. It's the first time since about the seventies that Montrose have won the highest grades in the RDCA. It's a huge honour. It's a tough competition. So congratulations to the Montrose first XI. Congratulations also to their sixth XI, who won the John MacMillan Shield and would have enjoyed a big night. Congratulations to the Lilydale Cricket Club, who won the inaugural RDCA Community T20 Big Bash, and to Coldstream Cricket Club, who won the DJ Strachan Shield. The third XI of Seville Cricket Club—one of my old clubs, through Gruyere—with Matthew Tilney, who is still going around strong, won back-to-back premierships. And what I like to call the Yarra Valley All-Stars, the Twenty20 Vets Team, also won their premiership, so congratulations to them. I'm informed that I qualify next year, so I might dust off the whites and play with some of my old mates. Over at the Ferntree Gully and District Cricket Association, I want to congratulate the Monbulk Cricket Club on their fourth XI winning the community 3, but also the grand final teams, the first XI and the second XI. The Aura Vale Cricket Club's first XI won the Alan Bailey Shield. The third XI of the Belgrave Cricket Club, where I played a game last season, won the community 5 competition. At South Belgrave Cricket Club, congratulations to the first XI for winning the Bob De Coite Shield, and to Upwey-Tecoma Cricket Club's second XI for winning the Norma Reeves Shield Reserve. A lot of hard work went into that. Congratulations, all. National Day for War Animals 128 09:50 Mr GEORGANAS DZY Adelaide Last month I attended the war animals day, which is commemorated on 24 February. To commemorate it, we wear a purple poppy on that day. I attended the West Croydon and Kilkenny RSL, where we laid wreaths, remembering the animals that served in conflicts. The annual event is commemorated at the West Croydon and Kilkenny RSL. Among those who attended that event were my South Australia parliamentary colleagues Adrian Pederick, Reggie Martin, the Hon. Sarah Game and Frank Pangallo MLC, and RAAF dog handlers Brodie and Riley. The West Croydon and Kilkenny RSL has a memorial dedicated to a particular animal, a boxer-bulldog cross called Digger. He was a hero canine who served at Gallipoli, Pozieres and Ypres with his master, Sergeant James Martin, one of the first South Australians to volunteer for World War I. The story goes that Sergeant James Harold Martin adopted him when he was training at Broadmeadows barracks before they went off to Egypt and then to Gallipoli. Digger was a courageous dog who jumped trenches with the first line, and he dodged bullets on the front lines in Gallipoli. He was a morale booster for the troops at Gallipoli. After the December 1915 evacuation, he went from Gallipoli to the front in Belgium—to Pozieres and Ypres. In fact, he was awarded a leather collar, with his name, and when he returned he was given medals for that collar for the campaigns he had served in, together with his handler, James Harold Martin. Approximately eight million horses and mules died in World War I on both sides, and nearly a million dogs, all assisting troops in that war. Digger's hide has been preserved and is in the War Memorial at the moment. I'm trying to assist the West Croydon and Kilkenny RSL to have that hide brought to the RSL to be put on display, as they have adopted Digger as one of their members. They commemorate him every year. The family of Sergeant James Harold Martin, his descendants, are all members of the RSL, and I think it would be a great thing to have the hide of this dog that was an absolute hero on display, perhaps on the wall. Sometimes when we think about wars we forget about the animals that are involved. As I said, nearly eight million horses and a million dogs were lost on all sides in World War I, and on 24 February we commemorate those animals. Seafood Industry, Queensland Government 129 09:53 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler Recently the Queensland Seafood Industry Association had their awards night, and the recipient of the Queensland Industry Ambassador Award was Nicky Shulz from Hervey Bay. Nicky is a local legend. I attended his 80th birthday a couple of years ago—we won't be specific, Nicky! But he is very well known as a local fisherman, running a very substantial fishing business, with trawler operations and processing, and he's a large employer. I'm very pleased that he's still actually there in the local region, regardless of what the local state government is doing in Queensland. They continue to close gillnet areas. They continue to close fishing areas. Nothing is based on science. The biomass is actually increasing, and yet we continue to see, at both the state and federal level, Labor governments destroying the seafood industry and destroying the local fishing industry. What is wrong with the Australian people having access to Australian seafood? That can't happen unless we have an Australian fishing industry. So, if you want to buy more from Vietnam and you want to buy more from people who steal ours illegally, continue to support the Labor government. This is just how badly they are going in Queensland. Here are some of the local failures. Yesterday, I'm advised, the new Premier, Premier Miles, was in Bundaberg opening up some social housing. To give you an indication of how bad it is, the Social Housing Register in Queensland had 41,840 on the list in June 2023, and it was 43,782 in December 2023—they are the most recent numbers. How many homes did Minister Miles open? Two. You add that in to the debacle that's been the Bundaberg Hospital plan. That was promised as a level 5 service hospital, not five levels, as the current Labor member of Bundaberg tries to tell the local population. What have they done since the announcements at the last election? They built a road, and the road goes nowhere. It is just a road that stops and delivers nothing. In fact, it's not the only one. They've also built a road to the planned train manufacturing facility at Torbanlea. It doesn't go anywhere either. It comes off the highway and stops. At Paradise Dam they've just upgraded the road, but they've also announced that they're not actually going to do what they said would do. Now they have to replan it and consider building another wall because of Labor's previous failures, but they're not sure how much that will cost or whether they will have any money in the budget. But they're building a road anyway, so that's just fantastic! Lastly is the rehab facility. It was a 2020 election promise from the state Labor government, to be completed in 2022. And guess what? They started ground-clearing work last week; now it will be finished in 2025. Guess what's in between? Would you believe there's an election in October in Queensland! So they made a commitment at the last election; they didn't carry it out. Then they start just before the next election, and I'll guarantee you they won't do that either. Good luck to Bree Watson, the LNP candidate for Bundaberg, and to David Lee, the LNP candidate in Hervey Bay. The people should support them. Wightman, Mr Joel, Maher, Mr Daniel 129 09:56 Mr REPACHOLI 298840 Hunter I want to talk about two amazing people from the Hunter electorate. Singleton local Joel Wightman recently travelled to the United States to compete in six rounds of the 2024 AMA Supercross Championship. The Hunter has yet again produced another great athlete in Joel. The AMA Supercross Championship is a world-class event, where the best riders race. This trip fulfilled a lifelong dream of Joel's. What makes this trip extra special is the fact that Joel is a privateer, meaning that he has paid his own way to this event without big sponsors. Joel backed himself, but he has also had the backing of our entire community on the trip—getting up early in the morning to watch the coverage from the US. I'm sure that after this trip he also has many fans, not just around Australia but around the world. Every round of the AMA Supercross Championship is painstakingly important as riders compete under pressure for points that accumulate over each round. Joel competed very well and plans on returning to the US in May to compete in later rounds of the championship in Salt Lake City and Denver. In the meantime, he'll be helping other motorcycle riders in the Hunter at Pro-Moto Suspension at Singleton. He is a legend at home and a legend abroad. Congratulations, Joel, and good luck in May. I also want to recognise another Hunter local, Daniel Maher. Every minute of every day a child is admitted into hospital in Australia. In that moment, they often receive a diagnosis that turns their world upside down. Sadly, smiles disappear and life is filled with hospitals, doctors, needles and pain. Wanting to help make a difference, Daniel took part in the Starlight Super Swim, which saw Daniel swim an incredible 25.5 kilometres over 29 days to raise money for sick kids. I don't know about you, but one lap is a long way. But 25.5 kilometres is 510 laps of an Olympic-sized swimming pool; it's an amazing effort. Daniel hit up family, friends, his work colleagues and maybe even a local federal member for donations. He raised an impressive $1,509.87. The funds he raised directly support Starlight's vital hospital services, including the Starlight Express Rooms and Captain Starlight. But, not happy with this total, Daniel hit up his employer, QBE, and asked them to double it. They did, and it took his final tally to $3,019.74—an impressive effort. Well done, Daniel. To QBE and to everyone else that helped raise money for Starlight Super Swim: thank you, all, and thank you for what you do. We need to make sure that we continue to donate to charities like this to really make a difference in sick kids' lives. Petition: Gendered Violence 130 09:59 Ms SPENDER 286042 Wentworth by leave—I table a petition. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 282237 The document will be forwarded to the petitions committee for its consideration and will be accepted subject to confirmation by the committee that it conforms with the standing orders. Ms SPENDER 286042 Thank you to the Leader of the House for facilitating the tabling of this petition. Violence against women in Australia is out of control. It has become a national emergency. The statistics should be shocking, but they're not. We have heard them over and over— The DEPUTY SPEAKER 282237 Order! In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' statements has concluded. BILLS 130 BILLS Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024 130

Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024

Second Reading 130 10:00 Mr BRIAN MITCHELL 129164 Lyons I was quite happy for the member for Wentworth to speak so I could get my breath; I just rushed up here! The Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024 before the House today will help modernise Australia's healthcare sector, delivering better and more affordable health care to more Australians—like Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, urgent care clinics and cheaper medicines. What we do today is build on the proud Labor tradition of improving Australian health care. That is because better and more affordable health care is in Labor's DNA. We know how important it is for Australians to be able to access quality health care without it sending them broke. When we look at what happens overseas, we know that Labor's approach to health care is better than just about anywhere else in the world. We reject utterly the failed model that applies for example in the United States, where so many Americans on low and middle incomes have no way to access quality, affordable health care and where an unanticipated injury or illness can literally send you broke. In Australia, you should never have to put off getting health treatment when you need it. That is why, upon coming to government, we opened 58 Medicare urgent care clinics across Australia, including four in Tasmania. Those clinics are open extended hours and fully bulk-billed; all you need is your Medicare card. And they treat Australians for urgent, non-life-threatening health care. Hundreds of thousands of Australians have been treated at Medicare urgent care clinics, and that's hundreds of thousands of Australians who have not had to clog up emergency department waiting lines. This Labor government has made the largest investment into bulk-billing in the proud 40-year history of Medicare. In our first 20 months in government, we have tripled incentives for GPs to bulk-bill children, pensioners and concession cardholders, delivering direct benefits to 11 million patients. In our first 20 months in government, we have delivered the biggest reduction to PBS medicine prices in the history of the PBS, saving Australians $250 million in 2023 alone. We're also cutting the cost of more than 300 common medicines by allowing doctors to prescribe 60-day prescriptions. Today, we seek to expand the role that Australia's fantastic, incredible nurses get to play in delivering health care by allowing our most experienced and qualified nurses to work to their full scope of practice. In addition to about 35,000 midwives, Australia has 337,000 registered nurses, and amongst those are 2,250 nurse practitioners. A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse who holds a master's, who is highly experienced and who has undertaken extra training. It's a legally protected profession. Only people who meet the criteria and are dually registered with the appropriate agencies can call themselves a nurse practitioner. Nurse practitioners have the authority to practice independently in an expanded clinical role and provide Medicare Benefits Scheme and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme services. But, currently, they must be attached to a general practitioner. This legally required collaborative arrangement serves to limit the full scope of practice that nurse practitioners can offer the community. Instead of our medical system trusting that nurse practitioners know how to act within their scope of practice and education just like it does for general practitioners, it treats them with suspicion, requiring a GP to effectively look over their shoulder and tick a box on their work. Under the current system, a doctor in their first year on the job as a GP has more authority and is assumed to know more about a patient's health care than an NP with 30 years of clinical experience and a master's. When you consider that over 90 per cent of nurse practitioners are woman, you can see how patronising this has been and what a waste of time and resources it is. The bill before the House today is transformative. It recognises midwives and nurse practitioners for the highly trained, highly qualified healthcare professionals that they are. It will serve to see more health care delivered throughout our cities, suburbs, towns and regions. I see the member for Indi is here to speak on this bill. I'm sure she will have great pleasure in talking about the benefits this bill will bring to her region in particular. In response to a recommendation by the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce, the government commissioned an independent review of the collaborative arrangements that are currently legally required for nurse practitioners to provide services under the Medicare benefits scheme. The review included analysis of Australian and international literature and extensive stakeholder consultation on the efficacy and appropriateness of these arrangements. The findings of the review supported the need for ongoing clinical cooperation between all health professionals. We all know the importance of multidisciplinary teams and of health professionals talking to each other, but what the review found was that the legislated requirement for collaborative arrangements duplicates existing professional standards and guidelines and can indeed create barriers to accessing care. Removing this legislated requirement for an arrangement will assist in removing barriers to primary care for Australians, particularly in regional, rural and remote areas, where there are big challenges in attracting and retaining general practitioners. The bill has strong support from the nursing and midwifery sectors and is expected to result in very positive change for the Australian community. By supporting more effective use of the highly feminised nurse and midwife healthcare workforce—90 per cent of nurses and 98 per cent of midwives are women—this bill will improve gender equity and healthcare outcomes and access and take practical action to reduce the gender pay gap. I would like to briefly talk about the Cygnet Family Practice in the Huon Valley, which became the first general practice in Australia to implement an urgent and after-hours service from April 2023. It's run solely by the practice's nurse practitioners within a collaborative arrangement with a GP. I had the pleasure of being invited to the practice's official opening in August last year. While it's quite a few kilometres outside of my own constituency—it's in the heart of the Huon Valley, around 50 minutes out of Hobart and Franklin—I was keen to get along there because I'd heard about the Cygnet Family Practice and what an amazing difference it was making for people in the south of the state. Kerrie Duggan and her team are doing an incredible job. I was delighted to meet Kerrie again when she visited Canberra last week for the launch of the initiative that is before the House today. The Cygnet Family Practice gives a real insight into how health care could be serviced in our regions in the future. In the first 10 weeks of opening, the Cygnet Family Practice saw more than 300 people in the after-hours clinic alone. It's clear that they are reducing the impact on our emergency departments, just like the government's Medicare urgent care clinics are. This bill before the House today will pave the way for more regional practices like the Cygnet Family Practice to let our nurses and midwives do exactly what they need to do—help people in need when they need it and where they need it. We know in the care economy the highly feminised workforce is too often underpaid, undervalued and underutilised. I think we all remember those scenes during COVID. Everybody wanted to thank a nurse, But thanks only go so far. Nurses need support, they need pay and they need respect. This bill certainly delivers on the respect. A bill which empowers nurse practitioners and midwives is one that empowers women. By removing the requirement for collaborative arrangements, this bill also supports the implementation of the Women-centred care strategy by providing birthing women with greater choice and access to care and services. Removing the red tape that holds back our nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives from providing the high-quality care that Australians so clearly and dearly need will finally go some way to recognising this. It builds on other Albanese Labor government measures to recognise and support nurses and midwives, like more nursing and midwifery scholarships, opportunities for re-entry to practice, fee-free TAFE and higher Medicare rebates for nurse practitioners. Allowing women to choose to receive care by a nurse practitioner or midwife will go a long way to ensuring that women are always treated with respect and dignity in our maternity care system, whether they are the professional delivering the service or the person receiving the service. As the Albanese Labor government works to develop the National Strategy for the Care and Support Economy, we will continue to deliver practical and structural changes across our care workforce. As women make up the vast majority of workers in this sector, this bill will support women's economic equality. We said that we would strengthen Medicare and that's exactly what we're doing with bills like this one before the House today. I get great pleasure in commending this bill to the House. 10:11 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi I endorse the words of the member for Lyons in his contribution this morning. This Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024 is a very important bill, a timely bill, and one that gives me great personal excitement to see coming through the House. So I rise today in support of this bill. I do so with the confidence that comes from having worked alongside nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives for many years, both clinically and in a research capacity. And I do so as someone who led a rural cohort of nurses studying for their Masters Degree in Advanced Practice Nurse Practitioner 15 years ago. These nurses went on to deliver desperately needed specialised care across aged care, critical care, emergency departments, mental health, palliative care, drug and alcohol services and diabetes. The educational program they undertake is rigorous, difficult and comprehensive. Added to that, these nurses come with extensive clinical experience leading into that masters degree preparation. My first-ever published peer-reviewed journal article was about enablers and barriers to establishing a nurse practitioner model of care. My professional collaborations with local GPs and physicians during that time saw some fantastic teamwork, which has endured to this very day. I truly thank nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives for the extraordinary service and leadership they've given over such a long period of time, while being hamstrung by this particular collaborative agreement legislation that we're about to change. I thank the supportive general practitioners and medical practitioners who stepped up 15 years ago and who have championed and supported nurse practitioners and midwives over so many years. Our health service in Wangaratta produced Victoria's first-ever gerontic nurse practitioner, and many have followed since then. It wasn't easy; there were many barriers to getting this model of care off the ground. But, as they say, time honours the brave, and it kinda feels a bit special to be talking about this today. In addition to what I know about this, there has now been 20 years of Australian research accompanying this model of care. It has shown conclusively that nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives provide safe, satisfying and effective care. I want to speak briefly about my confidence too in the endorsed midwives. Prior to coming to this place, I worked clinically as a midwife for many years, including in caseload midwifery group practice, where, together with my team, we provided continuity of midwifery care for countless numbers of rural women. The evidence for this model of care is now overwhelming, from right across the world, that it reduces preterm and early birth, reduces the use of non-medical-required Caesarean sections and leads to great satisfaction—not just for women but for men too. It's important work, and I've been very proud to be part of it. The report Woman-centred care: strategic directions for Australian maternity services clearly showed that women want greater access to continuity of midwifery care and, in accessing that care, they need access to midwives who can provide that care under Medicare and prescribe under the PBS. Most critically, women from First Nations settings want to access continuity of midwifery care alongside the principles of closing the gap through birthing on country. It's an absolutely critical campaign that we need to get behind in closing the gap for women and babies from First Nations communities. The challenges facing our health system are enormous. We need only to look at the data to see that. The most recent ABS National Health Survey data from 2022 showed: 81.4 per cent of people in Australia had at least one long-term health condition; 49.9 per cent, so one in two people, had at least one chronic condition; mental and behavioural conditions sat at 26 per cent; back problems sat at 16 per cent; and arthritis, at 14.5 per cent, was the most common of the common chronic conditions. Many people with chronic conditions often have more than one condition, something we call multimorbidity. Then there are the almost one in three people living in areas of most disadvantage who have two or more chronic conditions compared to one in eight of those living in areas of least disadvantage. So the more disadvantaged you are the greater chance you have of chronic, long-term and multimorbidity conditions. Added to this is the seemingly intractable problem reported by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare time and time again that the number of employed full-time equivalent clinicians working in registered health professions decreases with increasing remoteness—a trend we've seen year on year. There are more registered clinical full-time equivalent health professionals in major cities than in all regional and remote areas of Australia combined. The single biggest group of health professionals, though, who are in rural and remote Australia are nurses and midwives. Right now, amongst these nurses and midwives are endorsed midwives and nurse practitioners who can only work to their full scope of practice if they have a collaborative agreement with a doctor. Patients cannot access their care and receive MBS and PBS rebates unless this collaborative agreement is in place. Nowhere is this more problematic than in rural, remote and regional Australia, where the needs are so great and where there is the greatest acute shortage of general practitioners and medical practitioners. The Australian Rural Health Alliance commissioned work showing each person in rural Australia is missing out on nearly $850 per head per year of healthcare access, which equates to a total annual rural health spending deficit of $6.5 billion. The burden of disease in remote areas is 1.4 times that of major cities. So, in short, there is more work than the current system can handle, and the people who are most likely to miss out are the people who need care the most. Nurse pensioners and endorsed midwives can contribute to bridging that gap, but right now we have built in redundancy to the capacity of our health workforce. Nowhere is this more evident than in rural Australia. This bill will help address that. The bill before us is sensible and timely because it enables two critical groups of highly trained and trusted health professionals—nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives—to put their considerable expertise to these health challenges without the handbrakes and hurdles that patients currently face in accessing their care. Currently these nurse practitioners and midwives are required to enter into a legislated so-called collaborative arrangement with a doctor to be able to prescribe under the PBS and to provide services funded for a Medicare rebate. They are the only health professions that have legislated collaborative agreements to enable them to access the MBS and PBS. If they can't find a medical practitioner to enter into this agreement, they cannot give their patients access to the MBS and PBS. The passing of this legislation will bring nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives into line with all other healthcare professions. This bill will amend the National Health Act 1953 and the Health Insurance Act 1973 to remove the legislated requirement for a collaborative arrangement in order for an eligible midwife or eligible nurse practitioner to prescribe under PBS and provide services under Medicare. It's so critical, so important and so timely. This bill recognises that nurse practitioners and midwives are autonomous professionals who deliver high-quality care to patients within their scope of practice. Importantly, given my introductory remarks, this bill will remove barriers to health care for Australians, particularly in rural and remote Australia. It will support more a effective use of the existing health workforce, which was recommended by the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce report and the Nurse Practitioner Workforce Plan. An independent review of collaborative arrangements was commissioned by the Department of Health and Aged Care, and this included an analysis of Australian and international literature and extensive stakeholder consultation on the efficacy and appropriateness of collaborative arrangements. The findings of the independent review supported the need for clinical collaboration between all health professionals. It's a no-brainer; of course you need to collaborate. However, it found that the current legislative requirements for these collaborative arrangements can create unnecessary barriers to care. There has been pushback from some professional groups who say this is not a good thing. However, again, if you look at the international research, local research and independent review you will see that there is indeed no evidence, not a scrap, to say that there is any danger, problem or reason why we would not get rid of these collaborative arrangements. The skills and experience of nurse practitioners have been leveraged across the world for over 50 years, with the role formally legislated in Australia in 1998. I remember very well when Nicola Roxon, the then minister for health, was at the forefront of introducing nurse practitioner legislation to this House. The only problem at the time was that there was pushback from some professional groups, and the collaborative arrangement was inserted into the legislation. So here we are now, ready to wind it back. The ability for nurse practitioners to work autonomously and collaboratively within a multidisciplinary health team, and their ability to undertake advanced clinical care, indicates they are well positioned to provide flexible and affordable health services to Australian communities, and we need them so desperately. Compared to the international experience, though, in Australia the roles of our nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives have been substantially underutilised, and this bill is going to help fix that. In her second reading speech, the minister said: Removing the legislative requirement for collaborative arrangements will not impede clinical collaboration or the delivery of care. These health professionals are already regulated by the professional standards for practice and quality and safety guidelines issued by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, which require collaboration with other health professionals. This is an actionable standard under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act as in force in each state and territory. In other words, the collaborative agreement is an add-on to what is already there under national law. It's simply not necessary. I'm really pleased to have read in the press that the coalition also supports this legislation, so this truly is a bipartisan reform, and that's really pleasing. Let me conclude by using the words of two nurse practitioners from my home town of Wangaratta. Both of them are pioneers and outstanding clinicians, and they've had their shoulder to the wheel for longer than I care to remember. The first experience is that of an endorsed gerontic nurse practitioner—in fact the very first one to be trained and registered in Victoria. He's now had more than 15 years in the role. In 2020 he was called to the very first COVID-19 outbreak in Melbourne, at an aged-care facility. These are his words: Everyone working together to achieve the best we could for our community, society and residents. From my medical colleagues, there was no prejudice towards me about being an NP and my qualification. Collaborative arrangements were not mentioned. There was nothing but respect from the doctors for my clinical input and decision making. There was no thought of having to supervise my work. It was simply a team who had mutual respect for each other and striving for the best outcomes for the residents. I have never seen a more streamlined and unfragmented model before. I dare say that the outcome would not have been the same if I had been hamstrung/restricted by doctors insisting on the full scope of CA's. At this time, although the normal GPs did not come into the facility, I made every effort to communicate and collaborate with the GPs about their residents. They very much appreciated this. It reinforced to me that collaboration is about communication and the rules around current CA's were superfluous and a barrier. A second nurse practitioner also caring for older people said: I've been a Nurse Practitioner, caring for the older person, for the past 13 years in a regional/rural setting. I work in an in-reach program which endeavors to support Residential Aged care Facilities (RACF) to provide acute care outside of hospitals as much as possible. Older people don't always do well in the hospital system away from the familiarity of their home, family and carers. We are able to attend to such things as infections, chronic disease, pain and falls to name a few. We are also able to provide palliative care with symptom support for the person dying and emotional support for their family. This is, of course, happening in complete cooperation with their GPs. My medical colleagues in General Practice are increasingly stretched and it is only through our continued relationships and communication that we are able to achieve responsive health care for our most complex and frail community members. Please bear in mind that there are a growing number of older people in RACFs who are not able to secure the services of a GP … And therefore no collaborative agreement can be reached, so they have no access to a nurse practitioner either. Nurse practitioners have a unique insight into the care of people across our community. In closing, this legislation is important and necessary, and the time has come for it to be passed. I want to thank Assistant Minister Kearney for all the work she has done on this; it's substantial, important and right, and I look forward to further work around the health professional scope of practice. I commend this bill to the House with great joy. 10:26 Ms STANLEY 265990 Werriwa All Australian citizens have access to what is arguably the best universal healthcare system in the world. It's called Medicare and it celebrated its 40th birthday this year. The green credit card sized piece of plastic is surely the envy of the world, and it comes as no surprise that it was a Labor idea. What other party in Australia apart from Labor could have possibly had the vision for Medicare? The simple answer is no-one. And what other party has continued to be committed to strengthening Medicare for the full 40 years? Again, no-one but us. Despite the constant attacks from those opposite, Medicare still continues to deliver for all Australians. This is particularly the case given the massive cash injections into Medicare announced by the Treasurer in the most recent budget, measures specifically aimed to bolster access to bulk-billing. Further, this government's changes to medicine, through the 60-day scripts, also strengthen our healthcare system, as does the recent, historic eighth Community Pharmacy Agreement. It all adds up to good news for Australians and our essential health services. But, like in all matters, there is always more that needs to be done, reforms to be enacted and changes to be made, and that brings me to the legislation before the House today. Australia is home to the world's most trained and highly skilled health workforce. Our standards for training, regulation and continued development are second to none. Essential to our highly trained health workforce are nurses and midwives. Quite simply, without either of them, there would be no Medicare or health system. Under current legislation, nurse practitioners and midwives are required to have a collaborative arrangement with a doctor in order to provide MBS services and prescribe PBS medications. The government commissioned the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce to conduct an independent review of these collaborative arrangements. The review was thorough and included a literature review and extensive stakeholder consultation. The review affirmed the need for collaboration between healthcare professionals, but it also determined that the need for collaborative arrangements was duplicating existing professional standards and guidelines of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. Further, the need for collaborative arrangements could indeed create any number of barriers to accessing care, especially for those living in regional, rural and remote areas. This is because there is a known challenge in attracting GPs to these areas. The professional standards for practice and safety quality guidelines issued by the NMBA already require registered nurses, midwives and nurse practitioners to engage collaboratively with other health professionals. These standards and guidelines are the most appropriate mechanism for the regulation of these health professionals, and they do it in a manner that does not impose the barriers to care that the legislative requirements for specific collaborative arrangements can create. Today's bill, therefore, is good news for all Australians, but especially for our nurse practitioners and midwives, as it further empowers them. Supporting these workers means that more may be encouraged to take up the professions and, in doing so, address some of the nation's workforce issues. The bill is also good for women. It strongly aligns with the recently released Working for women: a strategy for gender equality and supports the implementation of a women-centred care strategy, by providing birthing women with greater choice and access to care. I know from my own experiences that it was the midwives who made a difference when I had my children, and they are the ones that I remember. It is good that the government is going to better support their ability to help many more women into the future. There are a number of pillars to our healthcare system—Medicare, bulk-billing, research, quality hospitals, rigorous training and the PBS, just to name a few—but underpinning all these are the incredible staff that work in it. We see this every day in every clinical setting. This bill supports some of these staff—in particular, midwives and nurse practitioners—to do the very jobs they're trained to do, without the burdensome encumbrances. I commend the bill to the House as yet another significant step in ensuring that all Australians have access to the healthcare system they deserve. 10:31 Mrs PHILLIPS 147140 Gilmore Residents in Gilmore, and indeed all Australians, are experiencing the real benefits of seeing nurse practitioners who have the experience, skills, qualifications and, importantly, passion to provide holistic care for a variety of health conditions. This government's Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024, introduced by the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, will dismantle the barriers to healthcare provision, particularly in rural and remote areas, where there are workforce shortages and gaining access to GPs can be very difficult. Removing the legislative requirement for collaborative arrangements will enhance healthcare accessibility and autonomy for nurse practitioners and eligible midwives and will give patients greater control over their own care. Currently nurse practitioners and participating midwives are required to enter into a collaborative arrangement with a medical practitioner in order to prescribe Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines and to provide services under the Medicare Benefits Schedule. This requirement has complicated and hindered access to nurse practitioner care and restricted nurse practitioners' ability to provide well-rounded, immediate and affordable health care to people living in rural and regional communities like my electorate of Gilmore on the south coast of New South Wales. The changes proposed by the Albanese government will remove the shackles which for too long have prevented our highly educated nurses and midwives from operating to the full extent of their training, skills and experience, something that I know is front of mind for nurse practitioners and GP practices when I have visited local practices across my region. I want to be clear: nurse practitioners do not replace local GPs. However, they are able to offer services that complement their patients' existing health care. A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse with the experience, expertise and authority to diagnose and treat people of all ages who have a variety of acute or chronic health conditions. Nurse practitioners have completed additional university study at master's degree level and are the most senior and independent clinical nurses in our healthcare system. We see trusted nurse practitioners in our local GP practices, and they are absolutely vital to patient care. They are a vital part of our local GP practices. Local nurse practitioner Natalie Moore runs her own clinic in Milton, in the Gilmore electorate. A registered nurse of more than 30 years and a former decorated ambulance paramedic, Natalie has worked as a geriatric nurse, theatre nurse and director of nursing in both the public and private health sectors. Highly trained and highly experienced, Natalie has worked as a nurse practitioner since 2019, primarily in aged care, where she provided health care for elderly patients living in aged-care facilities and nursing homes when they could not be visited by their doctor due to COVID-19 restrictions. It was during this time that Natalie recognised the need for accessible and affordable health care in her community. Thirteen months ago, Natalie opened her own health and skin cancer clinic, Moore than Health. Natalie is passionate about her community and passionate about providing preventive health care, something she says GPs often overlooked because they were busy addressing acute medical needs. Natalie is understandably frustrated by the current collaborative arrangements, which require her and other nurse practitioners to be under the microscope of doctors in order to prescribe Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines to patients and to provide services under the Medicare Benefits Schedule. Having specialised as a nurse in skin cancer medicine, including skin checks and excisions, for almost 10 years, Natalie opened her own clinic and now treats around 40 patients per day. Since opening the doors to Moore than Health, Natalie has seen an increasing number of patients, particularly elderly patients, who have skipped their regular skin checks because they couldn't get in to see a doctor or couldn't afford to see one. According to the Cancer Council of New South Wales, Australia has one of the highest rates of skin cancer in the world, and about two out of three Australians will be diagnosed with some form of skin cancer before the age of 70. Non-melanoma skin cancer is the most common cancer diagnosed in Australia, so it is important that health professionals like Natalie are on the front foot when it comes to skin checks and preventive medicine. As a nurse practitioner, Natalie can conduct skin checks and excisions and refer patients to a specialist or plastic surgeon if required. The work she does is important. The work she does saves lives, but the current restrictions mean Natalie doesn't get paid by the government for providing longer consultations and services, including surgery to remove skin cancers, under the Medicare Benefits Schedule. Natalie chooses not to pass the full cost of her time on to her patients, because she wants to ensure their health care remains affordable. She doesn't want them to have to choose between having a skin cancer removed and buying groceries. This is outrageous. Here we have a trained, skilled nurse practitioner saving lives, treating patients for potentially deadly skin cancers, yet her expert services are not covered by Medicare. This bill will change that. Similarly, Natalie can prescribe skin cancer creams for her patients, but many are not available under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. However, those same medicines, if prescribed by a doctor, are covered by the PBS. Once again, it's the patients that are being hit in the hip pocket because of these legislative requirements. This bill will change that. Nurse practitioners like Natalie continue to practice collaboratively with other health professionals to improve access to health care for Australian communities through health promotion, disease prevention and health management strategies. They have the expertise and authority to diagnose and treat people of all ages with a variety of acute or chronic health conditions, yet their skills are not being recognised, because many of their services are not covered by the Medicare Benefits Schedule. Our wonderful nurse practitioners have completed additional university study at master's degree level and are the most senior and independent clinical nurses in our health system. In response to a recommendation by the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce, the government commissioned an independent review of collaborative arrangements. The review included analysis of Australian and international literature and extensive stakeholder consultation on the efficiency and appropriateness of collaborative arrangements. The findings of the review supported the need for clinical collaboration between all health professionals. However, it found that the legislative requirement for collaborative arrangements duplicated existing professional standards and guidelines and could create barriers to accessing care. Removing the legislative requirement for a collaborative arrangement will assist in removing barriers to primary care for Australians, particularly in regional, rural and remote areas, where there are known challenges in attracting and retaining GPs. The professional standards for practice and the safety and quality guidelines issued by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia require registered nurses, midwives and nurse practitioners to engage collaboratively with other health professionals. These standards and guidelines are the appropriate mechanism for the regulation of these health professionals. They do not impose the barriers to care that the legislative requirement for specified collaborative arrangements can cause for nurse practitioners like Natalie. The title of 'nurse practitioner' can only be used by a person who has been endorsed by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia. With strong support from the nursing and midwifery sectors, this bill will contribute to the long-term goals of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce and the Nurse Practitioner Workforce Plan. Changing this legislation and supporting our nurse practitioners and midwives to use their skills is good for patients. It's good for the health system and it will encourage more talented people to take up these professions and further their study in health care. It will result in positive change for the Australian community. This bill will not only bring about change for the nurse practitioners and midwives that are doing extraordinary and important work in our community; it will support women. This bill strongly aligns with the recently released Working for women: astrategy for gender equality. By supporting more effective use of our healthcare workforce, this bill will improve gender equity in healthcare outcomes and take practical action to reduce the gender pay gap. By removing the requirement for collaborative arrangements, this bill also supports the implementation of the women-centred care strategy by providing birthing women with greater choice and access to care and services. Allowing women to choose to receive care by a nurse practitioner or midwife will go a long way towards ensuring women are always treated with respect and dignity in our maternity care system. We know the care economy, a highly feminised workforce, is often underpaid, undervalued and underutilised. A bill that empowers nurse practitioners and midwives is one that empowers women. As this government works to develop a national strategy for the care and support economy, we will continue to deliver practical, structural changes across our care workforce. As women make up the majority of workers in this sector, this bill will support women's economic equality. As I said, our nurse practitioners and midwives are highly trained, highly skilled and extremely passionate about their jobs. Nurses have always been at the centre of health care, but under the previous government they had been significantly underutilised and undervalued. The Albanese Labor government has no higher priority than strengthening Medicare to make it easier and cheaper for Australians to get the health care they need when they need it. By removing the legislative requirement for collaborative arrangements, we will make it easier and cheaper for Australians to access health care. We will also unlock the full potential of our wonderful nurses and midwives. I commend this bill to the House. 10:43 Ms KEARNEY LTU Cooper I thank the members for their contributions to the debate on the Health Legislation Amendment (Removal of Requirement for a Collaborative Arrangement) Bill 2024. In conclusion, this bill will remove the legislative arrangement known as a collaborative arrangement between a nurse practitioner or endorsed midwife and a doctor. This bill recognises that nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives are autonomous professionals who can deliver high-quality care to patients within their scope of practice. This important reform recognises the important role nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives play in the delivery of healthcare services. It will support them to provide care to the full extent of their education and ability, allowing them to collaborate flexibly without limiting their professional scope. Removing the legislative requirement for collaborative arrangements means nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives will now be able to prescribe Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medicines and provide services under Medicare without having to get a doctor to sign off on it. This will not impede clinical collaboration or the delivery of care. These health professionals are already regulated by the professional standards for practice and quality and safety guidelines issued by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia which require collaboration with other health professionals. This is an actionable standard under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act as enforced in each state and territory. Currently, nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives are the only professions that have legislated collaborative arrangement requirements for MBS and PBS access. These changes today will bring them into line with other healthcare professions. The impacts of this bill will be profound for Australians being cared for by nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives. For women, it will make it easier to get access to care—particularly for women who have an established relationship with an endorsed midwife, and for other women who have been attending nurse-practitioner-led clinics. Their skills and empathy can be valuable for many women's health issues, from menopause to family-planning advice. We also know that people living in rural and remote area struggle to access health care. By removing the legislative requirement to have a collaborative arrangement, this will support more nurse practitioner clinics to have financial viability, and these increase access to high-quality health care. Fewer people will need to travel hundreds of kilometres to access a medical petitioner to secure a collaborative arrangement. Moreover, the bill will contribute to the long-term goals of the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce and the Nurse Practitioner Workforce Plan. This bill is good for nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives, it's good for patients and it's good for the entire Australian healthcare system. I thank all members of parliament. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending an appropriation announced. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024 137

National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024

Second Reading 137 10:47 Mr BRIAN MITCHELL 129164 Lyons I rise to speak on the National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024. Strengthening Medicare and improving healthcare services is an absolute priority for the Albanese Labor government. In our first 23 months in office, we've made huge strides in building back the healthcare system that was so sadly neglected by those opposite. We've opened 58 urgent care clinics across Australia for non-life-threatening urgent care, including four in my home state of Tasmania. We've made the largest investment in bulk-billing in the proud 40-year history of Medicare. We've tripled incentives for GPs to bulk bill kids, pensioners and concession cardholders, delivering direct benefits to 11 million Australians. We've made the biggest reduction to PBS medicine prices since the scheme was introduced; thousands of Australians had been putting off getting the medicines they need, simply because they couldn't afford them, but we've made medicines cheaper, saving Australians $250 million in 2023 alone. We're also cutting the cost of more than 300 common medicines by allowing doctors to prescribe 60-day prescriptions, saving patients money and time. And we've brought in other bills to strengthen our healthcare system, with a plan to reduce nicotine addiction for Australians and, just this morning I spoke on extending the scope of practice for midwives and nurse practitioners. When it comes nicotine addiction, our excise tariff amendments, which increase the tax on tobacco by five per cent for three years—in addition to the ordinary annual indexation—aims to reduce smoking rates to below 10 per cent by 2025 and, hopefully, to five per cent or less by 2030. And our government is tackling the insidious introduction and rapid rise of consumer vaping head-on. E-cigarettes and vapes have been sold to governments and communities around the world in the past decade as a therapeutic good; that they were a product that could help hardened smokers kick the habit. These are usually men and women in their 40s or 50s who are smoking a pack, or more than a pack, a day. Getting them onto vaping, e-cigarettes, instead was sold as a way to get people off the fags. But what we see now is a new generation taking up vaping up—kids. We see them every day in our streets, vaping, with lolly flavoured nicotine. It's an entirely new generation of nicotine dependency being born, and the biggest issue is absolutely with school-age children. If vapes are therapeutic goods, as they have been sold to us, then it is entirely appropriate that Australia should regulate them as therapeutic goods instead of allowing them to be sold in convenience stores, so often close to schools. At the same time that all of this is going on, our government remains focused on increased education and support, and the 2023-24 budget included $63 million for public health information campaigns to discourage Australians from taking up vaping and smoking and to encourage more people to quit. We don't do this for the hell of it. We know that, when you smoke or when you vape, you increase your likelihood of getting illnesses and cancer. A further $30 million has also been invested in support programs to help Australians quit. These measures aim to address the significant threat to public health that is caused by cigarettes and vaping. We want to do everything we can to avoid people suffering from preventable lung cancer. While advances have been made in the diagnosis, treatment and care of people with lung cancer, it remains the leading cause of cancer related deaths in this country. The 2023-24 federal budget provided $263.8 million for a new national lung cancer screening program, intended to commence in July 2025, to support earlier detection of lung cancer, when treatment is likely to be more effective. Compared to most other cancers, the survival rate of people with lung cancer remains poor. On average, only 20 per cent of people diagnosed with lung cancer survive five years after diagnosis, compared to a five-year survival rate of more than 70 per cent for all other cancers combined. Some of that's to do with the late diagnosis of lung cancer, when it has often spread throughout. But that's a big difference—a five-year survival rate of 70 per cent for other cancers and just 20 per cent for lung cancer. Indigenous Australians are twice as likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer, compared to non-Indigenous Australians. They're also twice as likely to die from lung cancer, compared to the general population. When you look at smoking rates among Indigenous Australians, you can see the correlations. In addition to Indigenous Australians, people living in remote and regional Australia and in areas of greatest socioeconomic disadvantage are disproportionately affected by lung cancer, with higher lung cancer incidence and mortality in these populations. I'll just briefly touch on my own electorate, which had the unenviable record of having the highest smoking rates in the country in 2020. In a suburb in my electorate, Bridgewater, which is very socioeconomically disadvantaged, it's estimated that 40 per cent of the adult population smoke daily, and they're 3½ times more likely to die from smoking related illnesses. That compares to 14 per cent of the national population that smokes daily. Some people have a cigarette at a party; they call themselves social smokers. But 14 per cent of the national population smokes daily, compared to 40 per cent in that suburb in my electorate. The estimated number of new cases of lung cancer in Australia in 2023 was more than 14,000, with lung cancer contributing to nine per cent of all new cancer cases diagnosed. We lost as many as 8,691 Australians to lung cancer last year, and, although age, working conditions and family history can contribute, smoking of nicotine products is the major contributor. On average, 350 Tasmanians a year are told they have lung cancer—not news you want to get—and Tasmania had the second-highest mortality rate in Australia for lung cancer in 2019. That's 33 per 100,000 people. The new screening program this bill enables is expected to prevent more than 500 lung cancer deaths every year. The National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024 amends the National Cancer Screening Register Act 2016, which provides the legislative framework for the operation of the register. Specifically, the bill before the House today adds lung cancer to the definition of designated cancer and into coverage by the register. Currently, the designated cancers in the act are bowel cancer and cervical cancer. This allows the register to support the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program and the National Cervical Screening Program respectively. This bill provides the legislative basis for the register to deliver the NLCSP, including handling of program participants' personal and sensitive information in connection with lung cancer screening and diagnosis. Adding lung cancer as a designated cancer will extend the existing protections in the act to lung cancer screening information held in the register. These protections include prohibiting the collection, use or disclosure of personal information in the register in connection with the NLCSP outside circumstances set out in the act. These limited authorisations ensure personal information is only collected, recorded, used or disclosed to or from the register for specific purposes. Adding lung cancer as a designated cancer in the act extends the existing data breach framework to an individual's lung cancer screening information held in the register. This includes requirements for notification and handling of contraventions and possible contraventions in relation to protected information. While the bill is small, containing just two minor amendments, its impact will be substantial for people with lung cancer. The National Lung Cancer Screening Program focuses particularly on First Nations people and priority populations, including those living in rural, remote and very remote areas; people with disability; and culturally and linguistically diverse population groups. I will certainly make the case to see a focus on the program in suburbs in my electorate. The program is intended to commence in July 2025, and its aim is to reduce the burden of lung cancer in the community, including incidence of death, morbidity and mortality. It will facilitate this by detecting lung cancer earlier than would be the case in the absence of screening, thereby improving health outcomes: the earlier you know about it, the earlier you can treat it. The program will target asymptomatic individuals aged 50 to 70 years who have a history of cigarette smoking of at least 30-pack years and if an individual has a history of cigarette smoking but has quit within the past 10 years. Inclusion of lung cancer as a designated cancer allows the National Lung Cancer Screening Program to be the third program to be delivered by the register, enabling the expansion of the purposes already in place for bowel and cervical screening programs. We have seen success with those programs, and we certainly hope to see that success replicated with lung cancer. As I said, the bill extends the protections in the act fo4r screening information. These include prohibiting the collection, use and disclosure of information. The Albanese Labor government is absolutely committed to strengthening Medicare and to strengthening and improving health care across our nation. We've introduced so many new measures since we were elected to office in May 2022. We've delivered cheaper medicines and urgent care clinics; we've invested more in bulk-billing; and we've increased the scope of practice for nurse practitioners. I'm so proud of the work we're doing in health care; we're making health care more affordable and more widespread so that more Australians can stay well, and, if they're not well, to get better quickly. The Albanese Labor government is absolutely committed to strengthening Medicare, and this expansion of the National Cancer Screening Register to incorporate lung cancer screening will absolutely help to deliver better healthcare outcomes for all Australians and will keep more Australians alive for longer. I commend the bill to the House. 10:59 Dr ANANDA-RAJAH 290544 Higgins I rise to speak on the National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024. A diagnosis of cancer is devastating, but a diagnosis of lung cancer is particularly bad. Lung cancer five-year survival rates are currently 24 per cent, which is woeful. Really, they haven't moved much in decades. Around 1990, the five-year survival rate was 10 per cent. It's bumped up now to 24 per cent. That's still very bad. Overwhelmingly, the biggest problem is a late diagnosis. Patients just present too late and they are diagnosed way too late. By then, the cancer has advanced. Eighty-five per cent of lung cancers are due to non-small cell lung cancer, things like adenocarcinoma. But then there is the much-feared small cell lung cancer, which affects 15 per cent of patients and has a propensity to disseminate, often at diagnosis. The treatments are no picnic. I have seen lots and lots of patients who have had lung cancer. In fact, I've diagnosed many cases myself. This has often been through incidental testing. A patient may come in through the hospital with an unrelated problem—say, pneumonia or chest pain—and they'll go through a battery of tests and a lesion, a spot, is found on the chest X-ray or the CT scan. Then one thing leads to another, maybe a fine-needle biopsy, where a needle is put in through the chest wall under CT, or it may be a bronchoscopy, where a camera is put down through the airway and then down deep into the lungs and a biopsy is taken. It's a fairly stressful period for patients when they know they may be walking around with a potential lung cancer. Then they have to undergo a series of tests and there is additional waiting. Then the histology has to be done and the pathology has to be looked at before a diagnosis is made. This is incredibly traumatic for patients. Then comes the sit-down with the oncologist, where the actual repertoire of tests and treatments are discussed with them. That may include surgery. Often surgery is required. It may include a lobectomy, where a lobe is taken out of a lung, or a wedge resection, where a piece of the lung is removed, or a pneumonectomy. I have seen that. That used to be done a while ago. That's where the entire lung is removed and essentially collapses down and that area becomes emptied and the other lung hyperexpands. Patients are not normal after this. They simply do not have the exercise and respiratory capacity. Then there's chemotherapy, there may well be radiotherapy and, nowadays, we also have access to immunotherapy. The treatments are pretty serious, and patients struggle even getting through the treatments. They may not even necessarily have access to any of those treatments if their performance status is not good at the very beginning. In other words, you have to be able to walk and be self-caring in order to even be considered for certain types of chemotherapy. If you are not—and this is the case with many patients with lung cancer because they present so late and, by then, they are emaciated, they've lost weight, they're breathless and they're unable to walk a certain distance—at that stage the clinician may make a decision that you are not fit to undergo chemotherapy and you are then shunted down the palliative care route. That is an all-too-familiar pathway for patients with lung cancer. We as a federal government want to change that. The Albanese government has an abiding commitment to pick up the baton that was passed to us from a previous government that took strong action on tobacco control. Australia once led the way on tobacco control. It was Nicola Roxon, a Labor health minister, who induced plain cigarette packaging in 2011. Then things went silent for a decade under the Liberals. We saw the ingress of vaping, e-cigarettes. We have seen a rise in nicotine dependency amongst particularly young people and some children as well. We currently have smoking rates that are stuck at around 11 per cent. We have adopted the National Tobacco Strategy. That was released in June of last year. That strategy lays out very clearly that we want to aim for smoking rates of 10 per cent or less by 2025. That's next year. Currently rates are 10.6, to be precise. We also want to get to smoking rates of five per cent or less by 2030. So we don't have a lot of runway, and we have a lot of public health work to do. One of the key things we want to do is save lives in the interim. We are going to do that by introducing the National Lung Cancer Screening Program. Screening is familiar for cervical cancer and for bowel cancer. Lung cancer will now be added to the national register. This has come about thanks to tobacco excise duties, which will be paying for this world-leading initiative. We have taken on board the advice from our medical advisory committee, so patients who have a long history of smoking, who have been heavy smokers—usually 30 pack years, which means one packet of cigarettes a day for 30 years—who are aged between 50 and 70 will have access to screening. That will be done through a low-dose CT scan of the chest. This is a non-invasive test. It is really no big deal. People lie in the machine, there is no contrast given, and they are in and out within minutes. There is no pain. It is very straightforward. In fact, it is easier in some respects than a chest X-ray, and it's a higher resolution test than a chest X-ray, so it will likely pick up any malignancies at an earlier stage. Why is that important? The five-year survival rate for stage 1 lung cancer which is localised to the lungs—in other words, it hasn't spread to the lymph nodes, to the adjacent organs or to distant sites in the body—is actually 67 per cent. It's very high. It's completely different to the current five-year survival rate of 24 per cent. So we do want to pick these cancers up early. The program will also be open to past heavy smokers—people have quit in the last 10 years. These patients will have access to a two-yearly—that's the recommendation at the moment—low-dose CT scan. We think that this will make a material difference. It will actually save lives. At the moment in Australia, there are around 15,000 new cases a year of lung cancer diagnosed, with a slight propensity towards men compared to women, and that results in around 8,700 deaths. So this screening program will save lives. That's the point of it. It will save lives and it will save patients from burdensome, toxic treatments, because it's so much easier to resect a nodule or blast it with radiotherapy than to go through arduous chemotherapy, which is pretty gruelling stuff. We estimate that this screening program will prevent more than 500 lung cancer deaths per year. This is particularly important for vulnerable groups, priority groups in our community. I speak particularly of First Nations communities. In First Nations communities, smoking prevalence rates are up to 60 per cent. That's six times the national average. And we already know that our Indigenous brothers and sisters die on average eight to nine years before the rest of the population. Much of that is being driven by the harms associated with smoking. Tobacco smoke contains over 7,000 toxins. Lung cancer is not the only health hazard associated with smoking. Smoking can actually trigger cancers in any part of the body. It is often seen in patients who are heavy smokers that they will have concurrent malignancies. They may have a head and neck cancer as well as a lung malignancy—or a bowel malignancy or a cervical malignancy and so on. It is incumbent upon us as a government to not drop the ball on this. I really hope we have bipartisan support on this, because it is in the interests of the nation that we drive down smoking rates. For those people who, unfortunately, have been entrapped by the scourge of addiction, we want to make sure that they have access to the best available technology and that, if they are at risk of lung cancer, we pick this up early and we save their life. I wholeheartedly commend this no-brainer bill to the House. I am so proud of this Albanese government having brought forth this world-leading lung cancer screening program, as it will save lives. 11:10 Ms MILLER-FROST 296272 Boothby The Australian National Cancer Screening Register is a world-first digital platform that saves Australian lives. Cancer is a sad fact of life and death in our modern societies, in part because we're living longer. We all know that, generally, the earlier a cancer is diagnosed, the more likely treatment will be successful. That can be difficult because cancer often doesn't become symptomatic until it's large enough to feel or of a size to start interfering with bodily functions, particularly for internal cancers such as lung cancer. In this country we are lucky enough to have world-class screening programs including the National Cervical Screening Program and the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program. Fifteen-and-a-half-thousand people are told they have bowel cancer every year in Australia. Around 850 people are diagnosed with cervical cancer every year—a number likely to continue to fall with the introduction of the HPV vaccine. Around 15,000 people each year are also diagnosed with lung cancer in Australia, and of those about 90 per cent are tobacco related. Lung cancer accounts for around 9,200 deaths each year in Australia—the highest number of deaths from any particular type of cancer. It has a 22 per cent five-year survival rate, which is really low. That means around one in five people survive five years, partly because it's diagnosed late with advanced cancer. Early detection can increase that five-year survival rate to around 67 per cent, and that's what we're trying to do. This is another step in the war on cancer—this time lung cancer. In 2020 Cancer Australia produced a report on the feasibility of implementing a national lung cancer screening program in Australia, which recommended a targeted screening program for those with a risk factor of over 1.51 per cent. Cancer Australia estimated that, in the first 10 years of a targeted and risk based national lung cancer screening program, over 12,000 lung cancer deaths would be prevented and up to 500,000 quality-adjusted life years—QALYs—would be gained. That brings us to the National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024. This bill will amend the National Cancer Screening Register Act 2016 to add lung cancer in the definition of 'designated cancer' and in the coverage of the National Cancer Screening Register. The bill will provide the legislative basis for the register to deliver the National Lung Cancer Screening Program, including handling of program participants' personal and sensitive lung cancer screening information. While the bill is small, containing two minor amendments, its impact will be substantial. The new screening program this bill enables is expected to prevent more than 500 lung cancer deaths every year. The program will target asymptomatic individuals aged 50 to 70 years with a history of cigarette smoking of at least 30 pack years, including former smokers who've quit within the last 10 years. The lung cancer screening program particularly focuses on priority populations, including First Nations people, people living in rural, remote and very remote areas, people with disability and culturally and linguistically diverse groups. They will be screened through a low-dose CT scan which will be non-invasive with no pain. The program is intended to commence in July 2025. The aim of the program is to reduce the burden of lung cancer in the community, including the incidence of disease, morbidity and mortality. The program will facilitate this by detecting lung cancer earlier than would be the case in the absence of screening, thereby improving health outcomes. Earlier diagnosis means earlier treatment and means you're more likely to be dealing with smaller cancers and cancers that are less likely to have spread. Earlier diagnosis means a higher likelihood of survivability. Inclusion of lung cancer as a designated cancer in the act along with the existing bowel cancer and cervical cancer designations will enable the National Lung Cancer Screening Program to be the third national cancer screening program to be delivered by the register. The bill will enable the expansion to the new program of the register's purposes that are already in place for the bowel and cervical screening programs. Importantly, adding lung cancer as a designated cancer will extend the existing protections in the act to lung cancer screening information held in the register. These protections include prohibiting the collection, use or disclosure of personal information in the register in connection to the National Lung Cancer Screening Program, outside of the circumstances set out in the act. These limited authorisations ensure that personal information is only collected, recorded, used or disclosed to or from the register for specific purposes. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 11 : 15 to 11 : 47 Ms MILLER-FROST 296272 Adding lung cancer as a designated cancer in the act will also extend the existing data breach framework to individuals' lung cancer screening information held in the register. This includes the requirements for notification and handling of contraventions and possible contraventions in relation to protected information. This government is committed to strengthening Medicare, and this expansion of the national cancer screening program will help deliver better health outcomes for Australians. While prevention is best—and we have strategies to reduce smoking, as we have a bill currently in the House to reduce vaping—early intervention is next best, and this National Lung Cancer Screening Program is early intervention and it will save lives. I commend the bill to the House. 11:48 Ms McBRIDE 248353 Dobell The National Cancer Screening Register Amendment Bill 2024 will amend the National Cancer Screening Register Act 2016 to add lung cancer to the definition of 'designated cancer' and to the coverage of the National Cancer Screening Register. The act provides a legislative framework for the operation of the National Cancer Screening Register, and it established the register as a repository of information about screening associated with certain types of cancer for the purpose of supporting cancer screening programs. The register commenced operation in 2017. Since its commencement, the register has facilitated delivery of the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program and the National Cervical Screening Program. The addition of lung cancer as a designated cancer in the act will enable a third cancer screening program, the new National Lung Cancer Screening Program, to be delivered through the register from the program's commencement in July 2025. Importantly, by adding lung cancer as a designated cancer in the act, the bill will extend the scope of the register to screening and diagnosis associated with lung cancer screening. By extension, the bill will enable healthcare providers to access patients' lung cancer screening information to assist in their clinical decision-making, contributing to cancer detection, treatment and prevention in Australia. As a repository of lung cancer screening and diagnoses, the register will support the monitoring of the effectiveness, quality and safety of lung cancer screening to improve service delivery of the new program. From a privacy perspective, by adding lung cancer as a designated cancer, the bill will extend existing protections for participants' personal and sensitive information to the lung cancer screening information that will be held in the register. This bill will serve to benefit the health of Australians by enabling support for lung cancer screening pathways, leveraged through the existing purposes of the register. The bill is small, containing two minor amendments. The program will have a positive impact on First Nations people and other priority populations disproportionately impacted by lung cancer, including those living in rural, remote and very remote areas, people with disability, and culturally and linguistically diverse population groups. Lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer related deaths in Australia and has a major impact on the Australian community in terms of morbidity and mortality. My nanna Elaine, who passed away 10 years ago, was successfully treated for lung cancer. With this new National Lung Cancer Screening Program, tens of thousands of Australians will benefit from early detection, treatment and, importantly, prevention. This bill, in supporting the implementation of the new program, is expected to prevent more than 500 lung cancer deaths every year. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024, Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024 142

Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024

Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024

Second Reading 142 11:52 Mr JOYCE e5d New England I rise because, although we support these bills, there are a few things that I think we have to be aware of in this parliament. You can't keep putting up the tax on cigarettes and not believe that you're going to get a movement from legal, regulated cigarettes to unregulated cigarettes, and that's precisely what is happening. Currently, 95 per cent of vapes are illegal and about 30 per cent of tobacco is illegal. You get to a point where there's nearly no elasticity of demand determined by price. All that happens is that you have to acknowledge there is a market out there, an illegal market. The reason I rise to speak on this matter is that I live in the areas where you see it. In this building we take this quasi-virtuous position of saying how evil cigarettes are, but we're quite happy to collect money from them. I believe there's an extra $3.3 billion in this. Let's be completely honest: it's $3.3 billion from killing people—that's what you're getting it for. If you believe it's not correct, don't take the money. Don't touch it, but you do touch it. Both sides touch it; I know that. These bills around about increasing the tax on roll-your-owns. Maybe you don't see them as much in city areas, but in country areas you most definitely do. People are poorer, so they roll their own cigarettes. When you jack up the tax, they don't stop smoking; they just go and buy chop-chop, which is abundant. If you can buy dope within about half an hour of arriving in any town, you can buy chop-chop; make no mistake about it. You buy it from the same vendor. Once upon a time, in the western suburbs of Sydney, people who were bringing this into the country would be driving around in flash cars; now they have Bentleys and Rolls-Royces. They're making an absolute killing out of it. We're not stopping it. We haven't stopped the sale of marijuana, or dope, and we haven't stopped the sale of any other drugs. The difference between these two, of course—and I don't draw, in any sense, a moral equivalence—is that, with a lot of illicit drugs, if you jump in a car you'll crash it, or, if you go home to your wife or your partner, the drugs can be an inspiration for violence, and you can't say that about cigarettes: 'Yeah, I'll kill you.' Once upon a time, I smoked. Once upon a time, I vaped. I do neither. I do neither now. But I'm not fool enough to think that in regional areas this isn't there in complete abundance. You can go to your tyre repair place and see someone having a durry, and it's the ever-filling bag of Drum. It's amazing. The bag's like a hundred years old, but it's chock-a-block full. What a wonderful trick! It's illegal. It's all illegal tobacco. It's coming in. So what are you going to do with this extra $3.3 billion? Are you going to go out and try and stop this trade? I bet you it'll be absorbed into the general coffers. Are you going to put $3.3 billion into education at school level? I smoked my first cigarette in year 6. That was an incredibly stupid thing. At the state school I went to, people smoked. They just did. Mr JOYCE e5d You bet. Mr JOYCE e5d I'll take the interjection. He asked if anybody smoked at boarding school. Absolutely, they did. We'd chomp through a packet on the train on the way home. But you would understand, Member for Moreton, with me coming from St George, that this idea that somehow we go back to St George and we're going to stamp out chop-chop and stamp out vapes—it's all marvellous stuff that we say in this crazy boarding school down here, the virtuous boarding school, but it's just not the reality. So what is the reality of what we're doing? We're finding the people who obey the law and making them poorer. That's precisely what we're doing. They're addicted to cigarettes. You're finding people who obey the law and making them poorer. And who are the people who smoke roll-your-owns? I tell you what, they're not at the royal cruising yacht club. I'll tell you where they are. They're in the weatherboard and iron, they're in the poor places, they're in the caravan parks, and they're struggling to pay for the milk, pay for the groceries and pay the rent. I'm not saying they're all wonderful people. Like all of us, there's the same disparity of character that you have in any group of people. But they don't have money. They don't have spare cash. So, if they obey the law, they become poorer, and today we are voting—and I acknowledge that I'm voting for it too—to make them poorer. Let's get that on the record. That's what we're doing. The other thing that worries me is this. I know and I've told the police—I won't put it on the record here—where they sell ice. I know the house. I know all about it. I know how it comes in. I live in a small regional town. I'm very aware of the so-called hillbilly areas where it comes in. I've told all this information. We know how this game works. What you're going to have now is that people are going to follow the market. Right now, a packet of smokes is about 50 bucks. A packet of illegal cigarettes—international cigarettes—is $15. Hard to get? Piece of cake—absolute piece of cake. And roll-your-own chop-chop is massively cheaper. So what are people going to do, unless they want to just give their money to the federal government, who they don't like? They're going to go to the illegal market to buy it. Now, here's the trick. People who sell illegal cigarettes are not sole traders of that product. They've got the whole suite of products. You'll find that the person who sells chop-chop sells dope and sells ice. Out in the country, coke's not the issue. Coke's an upper-class, inner-suburban drug. Here it's like picking your nose and eating it. It's ice. It's the disgusting destruction of so many families. At St George, I've been to the funerals of wonderful people. It comes to a pretty ordinary outcome. So why are we encouraging people to meet these people? Why are we encouraging them to get into their orbit? Do we think they have some sort of variant morality which, when certain people come to them, they won't try to value-add to the product they're selling to them? Of course they will! If we believe it's virtuous to put up the tax on this, why don't we just triple the price of cigarettes? Why not take it up by a thousand per cent, if it's virtuous to put it up, when the biggest beneficiary of the tax on cigarettes is us! It's this building, so we're part of it. We've all got the maligned outcome of what happens from this product in this building. We bank it in the budget and we laud its contribution to the surplus, or whatever it does. But we also know what we're doing: we're dealing with poor people with an addiction and we're using their money to prop up the books. What it costs them is completely the inverse of the incremental tax rate, because we're giving a greater proportion of poor people's money to those wealthier people who smoke and who probably can afford 50 or 60 bucks—it's not an issue. Yes, okay, I'm supporting this. But I'm flagging this: we've got to stop going back to poor people and belting them up even more, while still thinking it's virtuous to belt them up—that there's a morality in belting them up—and that it's probably A-OK to put that money in the sky rocket of the federal government. Where we are is that about 10 per cent of people smoke. That's not changing now; that's about it. That's about where it is. We'd probably find that it's pretty similar to a lot of other things, like drug-taking—and we know that when we test sewage. Think of all the laws that outlaw people's use of cocaine. Basically, you can go to any university student and they'll you how much it's worth and where to buy it. We know from the testing of sewage that it's everywhere—absolutely everywhere in inner-suburban areas. So we have Buckley's and none of stopping that, and it can actually do real damage, there's no doubt about that. Not that any drug doesn't, but you don't want to jump in a car and drive after taking it; we've seen the actions of people who have taken it. We just aren't going to wipe that out. We have to have a reality pill: cigarettes will kill you and vapes will kill you, without the shadow of a doubt. If you want to die earlier, then they're a great way to go about it. But we're not going to stop them, we're just not. When we say in this building that we are, we're just lying. We can bring the rates down—we've done that, and we've done a very good job—but they have now bottomed out. So what we have here is yet another bill where we're all, basically—including me—talking from both sides of our mouths, saying, 'Smoking is bad, but I want the money.' I just foreshadow that the day will have to come sometime when we say: 'Enough is enough. It's a really bad habit; you shouldn't do it, but I'm damned if it isn't the federal government that's going to be the beneficiary of the money you pay.' 12:03 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton The Albanese Labor government is committed to protecting Australians and their health, and we're taking strong action on the reduction of smoking and vaping through legislation, enforcement, education and support. I take comfort from the fact that the honourable member for New England has indicated that the coalition are also supporting this legislation. Smoking tobacco is the biggest cause of preventable death and disability in Australia. It takes the lives of around 20,500 Australians every year. The numbers are staggering and sobering: between 1960 and 2020, smoking tobacco is estimated to have caused the deaths of over 1.2 million Australians. The impact of tobacco use doesn't stop there. It also has substantial negative effects on the environment and the economy, and it compounds health and social inequities. Tobacco use is a major reason for poorer health status in socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. It's why the Albanese Labor government led the development of the National Tobacco Strategy 2023-2030. The strategy has 11 priority areas for action, including to continue to reduce the affordability of tobacco products. Despite comments from the member for New England, we know that is a clear way to stop the consumption of tobacco. So today I'm pleased to support the Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024. These bills will increase the excise and customs duty on tobacco goods by five per cent per year for three years, in addition to the ordinary biannual indexation. These amendments cannot come soon enough when it comes to the scourge of vaping. Labor is taking on the tobacco industry so it cannot succeed in getting a new generation addicted to nicotine. For the first time in decades, under 25s are the only group that are currently recording an increase in smoking rates. I know, as the father of an 18-year-old—and from the group research I did the other day watching the footy with my son's peers—that this is a significant change, even for my generation. Recent research from the Minderoo Foundation found that about one in three young people have vaped in the past 30 days. Young people who vape are also three times more likely to then take up smoking. We know that vapes also have widespread use amongst young people, and we know that marketing is directed specifically towards young people. We know it's a massive problem in schools, and parents across Australia are rightly worried. So the amendments in these bills are just part of our fight against vaping. This year, the Albanese Labor government has also banned the import of disposable single-use vapes and all non-therapeutic vapes, with therapeutic vapes being those used by someone who has made the decision with their doctor to transition away from tobacco. It's something I've got to say that I'm sceptical of, but I'll defer to those with better connections with the medical community. We'll continue to strengthen product standards for therapeutic vapes by limiting flavours, decreasing nicotine levels and applying pharmaceutical packaging—rather than vapes looking to be something like a child's toy that could be hidden in a pencil case. Labor will also be introducing legislation to make it illegal to produce, advertise or sell single-use disposable or non-therapeutic vapes anywhere in Australia. It's important to note that our legislation is being supported by $29.5 million in funding to assist people with quitting smoking and vaping. This includes allowing easier access to Quitline services, as well as a new online hub and a mobile app. These bills will also maximise the excise and customs duty on loose leaf and other tobacco goods that are subject to the per-kilogram rate, with the duty paid on tobacco goods at the per-stick rate. This means that whatever form the tobacco comes to Australia in, it will be taxed the same. We're taking these measures because we know they work. Making tobacco products more expensive is the most effective weapon in our arsenal to reduce the number of Australians who smoke. We know that both increasing the cost and using plain packaging work to deter tobacco users and make it harder for customers to access the tobacco. It means it's not just something that you can throw in the shopping trolley as it's now back behind the counter. Over a decade ago, smoking rates in Australia were about 16 per cent. The latest data has it around 11 per cent, which is the equivalent of about one million fewer Australians smoking. Increasing taxes on tobacco will help Australians reduce their smoking, with the ultimate aim being to stop smoking in Australia altogether. It's crucial to support these measures with public health initiatives both in education campaigns and with dedicated treatment enhancements— A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12:0 9 to 12:25 Mr PERRETT HVP The revenue raised by these changes will be $3.3 billion over five years. These funds will go to the healthcare system for ongoing support for current and former tobacco users. This includes the new National Lung Cancer Screening Program and improving First Nations cancer outcomes. Combining higher taxes on tobacco with support for people trying to quit is a proven strategy for decreasing the number of people smoking. It's a virtuous hypothecation almost. We are backing up these measures with $188 million committed over four years to bolster the Australian Border Force as it tackles the scourge of illicit tobacco. ABF will work in collaboration with the states and territories to strengthen our capacity to stop illicit tobacco at the border. In 2020-21, the size of the illicit tobacco market in Australia was estimated at nearly $1.9 billion, approximately 10 per cent of the market. Labor are committed to our goal of reducing smoking rates to below 10 per cent by 2025 and to five per cent or less by 2030. I know that the Australian Border Force will be an essential part of this process. Recently, as part of the public works committee, I saw some of the great they do on the front line in terms of inspecting cargo and the like up in Darwin. It's incredible. They have big X-ray machines to make sure that Australia's borders remain safe. I'll finish with a quote from the National Tobacco Strategy: Significantly reducing and eventually eliminating tobacco use in Australia would dramatically reduce illness, increase quality of life, and reduce health, social and economic inequalities for smokers, their families and the wider Australian community. It would prevent hundreds of thousands of premature deaths, reduce the burden of costly tobacco-attributable disease, increase workers' economic productivity and reduce the burden on carers. That's a vision worth fighting for, and I commend these bills to the House. 12:27 Mr WOOD E0F La Trobe I rise to speak on the Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024. This bill increases excise duties for all tobacco goods and customs duties for tobacco products by five per cent a year for three years, starting 1 September 2023. As previously heard from the government member, the funding is to go into health and supporting people in the health system. It's obviously been taken into account when it comes to Treasury estimates et cetera. The issue I have—I previously looked after this in Home Affairs as the assistant minister—is that, sadly, the black market when it comes to illicit tobacco is a growing market, and obviously we're now into the world of vapes. I go back to my time at the Organised Crime Squad, where work was done to take out those involved in illicit tobacco. In those days, there pretty much weren't actually laws to do much about it and so organised crime made a lot of money when it came to this. When I was elected in 2004, we actually took a visit down to Customs. At that time they would seize container loads of tobacco. When we asked, 'What happens after that?' they said: 'Organised crime is involved. We don't want to touch it because of repercussions.' So a lot of work was done when it came to law enforcement under the previous government to establish one of the strongest regulatory regimes for tobacco in the world, with reforms to the Customs Act 1901 implemented in July 2019 to deter illicit trade in tobacco and enable strong action against criminal actors behind this. I'm also very proud that the previous government in July 2018 established the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce. It was very much a coordinated approach to targeting organised crime groups when it came to tobacco. One of the issues which I've been greatly concerned about is the lack of input from state governments. At the Commonwealth level, we look after the borders. The ABF, can I say, have done a magnificent job when it comes to the borders. But when I've been taken through the mail houses by the ABF, it's like Santa's little factory. There's so much tobacco coming through that those involved in the security are picking out every third or fourth item which goes through the scanners as illegal tobacco. To be honest, it pretty much just gets put to one side—end of story. One thing we did do very well in the previous government was change it. I think it used to have stay there for three months. We got an immediate certificate, which could be issued by a court, to have that destroyed. Importantly, on 18 March 2022, the former Minister of Home Affairs chaired a national ministerial meeting for counterterrorism and transnational and serious organised crime. The state and territory ministers responsible were there, and I actually spoke at that meeting, as the assistant minister, about illegal tobacco, how bad it was going to get and what was required. One thing I will say back to the states is that they have to give law enforcement—the police—a penalty notice. It's a hell of a lot easier for them to go and hand out a penalty notice to someone dealing with illegal tobacco, because it's so difficult. Even those reporting it—those legitimate people selling tobacco—are just getting outplayed by the illegal operators and organised crime groups. We are seeing in Victoria at the moment, when it comes to bikies and others, fire bombings. It was all to be expected. Sadly, it wasn't listened to. Organised crime are running out the good guys and attacking each other, and it's an entire mess down there. If you took out those selling the illegal tobacco with a monster fine, where police could issue it, it would make such a big difference. At that meeting, ministers agreed to work together to consider coordinated efforts to combat illicit tobacco, including a response to recommendations of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement inquiry into tobacco. Ministers agreed to reconvene in six months. Sadly, the Albanese government came into play after that, and nothing has happened when it comes to doing more to target organised crime. I know in Victoria police have now launched Taskforce Lunar again. They've now investigated over 30 fires linked to the tobacco wars in Victoria—if I can call them that. Since October, the taskforce has executed 70 warrants in tobacco and seized 108,000 vapes and three million cigarettes. Can I just say: organised crime is involved in this. They always just follow the money, and the simple way to do it is to take the incentive away. You take the incentive away by going after those illegal operators with very tough penalties, then you take away the market. Sadly, that hasn't happened, and that's what we're getting down in Victoria. I'll leave it there. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024 146

Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2024

Second Reading 146 CONDOLENCES 146 CONDOLENCES Fitzgibbon, Lance Corporal Jack Patrick 146 12:36 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina Not far from here, just down the walkway, just down the line, is the Australian War Memorial, a place where those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation are remembered. There is a special place in that very special place with a plaque that reads: 'In memory of those Australians killed in military training. Forever remembered, having made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.' Lance Corporal Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon will soon be remembered alongside those others who lost their lives in military training. I was pleased that the shadow defence minister, the member for Canning, talked about the importance of parachute training and how it fits in with what our soldiers and, indeed, what those serving in the RAAF and Navy do in this regard to ensure that they are best of the best. As a member of the 2nd Commando Regiment, Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbons was one of the very best. You only need to see his face on the leaflet for the mass to know that he was a man of character. He was so fresh faced, very bright eyed, very full of life, full of vitality, full of more to give, and he's been taken way too soon. He died after sustaining dreadful injuries during that parachuting incident on 6 March at RAAF Base Richmond. At 33 years young, he had, as I say, so much more to give to the Australian Defence Force, to his regiment, to his family, to his community and to his nation, a nation he loved so much. He was and as has been described as a dedicated, highly skilled and courageous soldier. Jumping out of aeroplanes is dangerous; it is. But you have to do it because you have to train in all sorts of weather, day and night, and he had done more than a hundred jumps. He knew what he was doing. It's just so tragic that he has been taken so young. He graduated from Kapooka, Blamey Barracks at Wagga Wagga—home of the soldier—in April 2014. His dad was there, Joel—of course, the former member for Hunter and a former defence minister. Joel knew the dangers of soldiering and so did Jack's beloved partner, Kass. The story was told at Jack's farewell that they were planning to get engaged and planning to have a family. That has all been taken away. As I mentioned in my contribution last night, when I began this condolence motion, I know that his sister Grace, now a Channel 7 reporter, worked at Wagga Wagga for some time—a very, very good reporter. She took to Instagram to pay tribute to her brother. She shared photos from their childhood and adulthood, as well as a screenshot of the last message he sent her. She wrote, 'I love you, my darling big brother, I am so proud of you.' She said that Jack always had her back and then accompanied it with a photo of the pair as children, writing, 'From day one'. I know Gracie well; she's a beautiful, beautiful person and she was just heartbroken. I just can't even start to imagine the pain the whole family is going through. In one sense it's just so unjust, but Jack died doing what he loved doing: serving his country, wearing the uniform and doing something that's hard. It's easy to do things that are easy, but that's not the Fitzgibbon way. When he graduated from Kapooka, he won an award for excellence in physical training. He probably would have won the best soldier of the platoon but for what, as I understand it, was a spider bite. He spent a night where he was unable to be with his mates and doing what they were doing on that particular evening. But he excelled, and the people of Kapooka remember—they remember the good ones, and they honour them. He will always be remembered. I just want to read this poem. It's by an American, somebody who was a veteran—Charles M Province. It really goes to the nub and the heart of what soldiering is all about, and what we have lost with the death of Lance Corporal Fitzgibbon. Charles Province wrote: It is the Soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion. It is the Soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to protest. It is the Soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial. It is the Soldier, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote. It is the Soldier who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag, And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protester to burn the flag. Jack Fitzgibbons' casket was adorned, was draped, with an Australian flag. Our nation is much the poorer for his passing. His duty is done, his time has come and it is just so, so sad. Lest we forget. 12:43 Ms CLAYDON 248181 Newcastle I thank and acknowledge all of those who have spoken on this motion before me, and those who will come after. It's always a difficult job to rise on the floor of parliament and to speak on a condolence motion, but I rise to add my name to the many condolences that have been expressed, not just in this House but in my community and, indeed, across the nation for the tragic and untimely death of Lance Corporal Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon. He was, as we've heard, a very proud member of the Australian Defence Force, and loved serving his country. Jack served with the 2nd Commando Regiment in his dream job as a signaller in the Special Forces. Throughout his career, Jack was awarded the Australian Defence Medal and the operational service medal for counterterrorism, a testament to his dedication to serving his country. His courage, distinction and leadership skills saw him rise fairly rapidly, really, through the ranks as a respected colleague and someone who could be counted on. I think the funeral in his home town at an absolutely packed church, plus all of the people in the street outside the church, really was a testament to the love for not just Jack but his entire family, because, of course, those that are left behind bear the burden of grief. Jack was the clearly much-adored son of both Joel and Dianne. Joel is known to many people in this House because of his service and, indeed, his father's service in the Australian parliament. So they have given many, many decades of service to their respective communities. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 12 : 46 to 16 : 00 Debate interrupted. STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE 148 STATEMENTS ON INDULGENCE Petition: Gendered Violence 148 16:00 Ms SPENDER 286042 Wentworth Thank you to the Leader of the House for facilitating the tabling of the petition earlier today. Violence against women in Australia is out of control. It has become a national emergency. The statistics should be shocking, but they are not. We have heard them over and over again. We have become immune to them. We have heard too many stories of women like Samantha Murphy, Melissa Hoskins and Min Cho, stories which are deeply tragic and genuinely shake us but have not led to the changes we need. This is why the work Mel Arnost has done is so vitally important—work to galvanise the community against violence against women. I am very proud to have tabled her petition, which calls for sweeping national reforms to protect Australian women through better education, mental health support, treatment for substance abuse and reforms to our courts. Almost 25,000 people have signed this petition—25,000 people who support Mel's call for change and 25,000 people who expect action. I hope the government are listening. I will be pushing them to respond to Mel and her supporters, not with an acknowledgement of the petition but with a public commitment to back up words and policies with funding and determination. Violence against women doesn't exist in a vacuum. It thrives in environments where boys are taught to feel entitled. It thrives in a society that tolerates gender based inequality. Ending violence against women and children will take time and energy, but it is absolutely essential for a fairer, safer and more inclusive society. CONDOLENCES 148 CONDOLENCES Fitzgibbon, Lance Corporal Jack Patrick 148 16:02 Mr THOMPSON 281826 Herbert It's quite upsetting to speak on this condolence motion and talk about Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, or 'Fitzy', as his mates know him. Jack was a member of the Special Operations Command. He was a special forces soldier, and the 2nd Commando Regiment was his home. When I think about Jack, I think about his family, his loved ones, his mates and his service to this nation and I think about the unit that he served in. The 2nd Commando Regiment is a combat war-fighting unit within Special Operations Command. It operates alongside other SOCOMD elements. The role of 2 Commando is to conduct strategic strike, counterterrorism and special recovery operations. They are a war-fighting capability. 2 Commando focuses on advanced force operations, direct action missions. Self-contained, flexible and rapidly deployable, they are structured for both special operations and domestic counterterrorism, and they have quite a few specialties. One of those specialties is parachuting. Special operations do combat jumps. They jump behind enemy lines to disrupt the enemy movement, to take the fight to this nation's enemies. To do this, you must train how you fight. There is significant risk with the training that the 2nd Commando Regiment does, and tragedies, unfortunately, happen. Due to the actions of members of 2 Commando who were on this training parachute jump as well, they were able to get to the ground as quickly as possible, work on Jack and get signs of life back in him, and, in doing so, it led to the family being able to say their goodbyes, which is a great testament to the calibre of the members in the unit. To his mates that are watching back in the regiment, there's nothing I can say that will fill the hole and the pain that you're feeling right now. To Joel, Jack's dad, nothing we can say in this place can even come close to being able to help or fill the hole of pain as well, and, to the family, I'm so sorry for your loss. Jack's dad, Joel, in 2009, as the defence minister, came to Townsville to see me off on my deployment to Afghanistan. He sent me to war. We had conversations when he was the member for Hunter, and I thanked him for the deployment. People were killed on the deployment that I was on and have been killed on subsequent deployments. Joel Fitzgibbon, as the minister, spoke to families and attended funerals. He saw the sacrifice of our brave men and women that have deployed, and not once would he have ever thought that he would be receiving the call that he used to make. I'm sorry that he had to take that call. Defence and the members of defence put themselves at risk every day. Now the members of 2 Commando are training for how they would fight on operations, and they train hard so they can fight easy. Parachuting is not just inherently dangerous; it is a vital skill set of the 2nd Commando Regiment. Just last weekend, I hosted members of 2 Commando here in Parliament House. I gave them a tour, showed them around, had a chat about life, had a chat about the unit and spoke about Jack, and the pain that's going through every single one of his mates will be there forever. When we went out that night to another event, where there were another 30-odd members of 2 Commando, you could see it in their eyes, their voice and how they spoke to each other that the pain was real and the sadness was real. A friend of mine is a member of 2 Commando, and I had a long chat with him that night and the next day. The pain that he feels is reverberating through 2 Commando, Special Operations Command and the wider ADF community and it will be there forever because they lost a brother. They lost their family member—a person that they call family. I've lost friends of mine, and it stays. It's like losing a part of you, and it stays with you forever. My heart breaks for Joel and the family, his loved ones and his mates. My heart breaks for SOCOMD because they lost a fighter, a member of their family and a member of their tribe. They lost someone who would sacrifice everything in the name of service and who was a professional. I'm sorry that this has happened. Without our Special Operations Command, our members of the SAS and 2 Commando, training this way and training hard, they would lose vital skill sets to keep this nation safe. Second Commando will continue to jump, continue to train hard and continue to take the fight to the enemy when they're called. And the memory of Jack, Fitzy, will be forever with the unit, and his spirit will be on the shoulders of every soldier who finds themselves at 2nd Commando and every soldier who serves in the Australian Defence Force. We've lost too many people on operations, but we lose people in training as well, and we must honour them. We must honour them not just in condolence motions but in ways that are fitting for their unit, and for the wider Australian public to know that the risk is real. The risk is extremely real. So I'm very sorry for your loss. I'm sorry—to your brothers at 2nd Commando, who have lost a mate. And I know that they would be so proud to have called Jack Fitzgibbon, Fitzy, a brother. 'Without warning' is the motto of 2nd Commando. They are professional, we will see them in the fight again soon, and I'm very sorry for the loss. 16:11 Mr THISTLETHWAITE 182468 Kingsford Smith I pay tribute to Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon and thank him for his service to our nation. Lance Corporal Fitzgibbon passed away on 7 March after being injured during a training exercise at RAAF Base Richmond the previous evening. He was surrounded by his family and was just 33 years of age. Despite being so young, Jack had served with the ADF for over 10 years, six years in special forces. He was a qualified military freefaller within the Defence Force Special Operations Command's 2nd Commando Regiment, and he was an experienced parachutist, having done 106 jumps, 95 of them as military freefall. Jack was promoted from private to lance corporal last year. He had previously deployed to assist in the floods in 2022 and, prior to that, he was deployed to Papua New Guinea. Jack was awarded the Australian Defence Medal, the Operational Service Badge, the military and operational service medal and the counterterrorism/special recovery medal. Jack was, of course, the son of my good mate Joel Fitzgibbon, the former member for Hunter. The Fitzgibbon family is synonymous with the Newcastle and Hunter region. Joel's father and Jack's grandfather, Eric, was the member for Hunter in this place for many, many years. Our hearts bleed for the Fitzgibbon family. Jack was born and raised in the Hunter. He went to school locally and he personified the spirit of that region—a larrikin with a cheeky grin who loved his community. Like his grandfather and his dad, he played for the local rugby league team, the Cessnock Goannas, and they had a heartfelt tribute to Jack at a recent event. But, most importantly, Jack was a son, a brother and a brother-in-law and will be sadly missed by his family. There's no higher honour than serving the people of our nation, and Jack did that with dedication and distinction. To ensure that our Australian Defence Force is as best prepared as possible for a mission, they train in the most realistic conditions as possible. The special forces are the elite of the elite. They are the ones who we send into the most dangerous situations. On many occasions those special forces may be required to insert themselves in hostile territory, beyond enemy lines, in all types of conditions, and that includes parachuting at night. Jack was certainly experienced in this. As I said earlier, he'd done 106 jumps. He was well trained and very experienced. But, of course, with any style of exercise such as that, there comes risk. Jack accepted that risk and chose to serve. That takes selflessness, courage and honour, and Jack is that courage and honour that is so proudly represented by the men and women of Australia who wear the Australian Defence Force uniform. We in this place and the people of Australia honour Jack. We thank him for his courage and for his selfless service to our country. To the Fitzgibbon family, to Joel, Dianne, Caitlin, Grace and Maxine, I offer my sincerest condolences on behalf of the people of Kingsford Smith. We offer you our love and support. Life is not meant to be like this; you're not meant to bury your kids. The Fitzgibbon family are going through something that no family should have to experience, but they should do so knowing that everyone in this place and the people of Australia—and, most importantly, Jack's comrades, his brothers and sisters in arms—offer their love and complete support for the family. We also thank you, the Fitzgibbon family, for your courage and for your sacrifice through the service of your son to the Australian Defence Force. Vale, Jack Fitzgibbon. Thank you for your service to our nation. 16:16 Mrs MARINO HWP Forrest I rise to speak on the tragic death of Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon. Primarily I want to offer my deepest sympathy to his family—Joel, Dianne, Caitlin, Grace and Maxine—and his closest friends. Like so many others, I've worked with Joel in this parliament over the years. I'm not surprised that his son, from what we've heard, inherited so many of his characteristics from his dad, and I have no doubt that those same characteristics helped to make him the man that he became. As has been said here, with Joel as defence minister in 2009, I can only imagine how proud Joel and the whole family would have been when Jack enlisted. However, from a family perspective, none of us ever want to bury a child. It is every parent's worst nightmare, and when it happens it literally breaks your heart. It's a nightmare that the Fitzgibbon family now live with, every day and every night. The pride they have for their son and his military career will always be with them. Their love for him, as a son, a brother and a partner, will last forever, but so will their grief and loss. I acknowledge the enormous courage and personal strength of the Fitzgibbon family, who had the courage to be with us in the chamber last week. I can only imagine the emotional toll, on the back of what the family is already going through day and night, of being here in the chamber to listen to the incredibly respectful and caring speeches that were made for Jack and his family. I also want to acknowledge Jack's fellow Defence Force members, who also sat in the chamber on Thursday, and acknowledge those in Special Operations Command, who were his mates, and what they have gone through and will continue to go through. We know that they face daily the same risks as Jack in their training and constant preparedness to respond whenever they are called on. Thank you for what you're doing for this nation every day, and thank you to Jack for his service. These are the people who are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to keep Australians safe. I'm the daughter of a World War II widow, so I understand exactly what the sacrifice Jack has made means for his family. We've lived with it. My own sisters never really knew their dad. They were just babies when he was killed in Papua New Guinea in 1943. What I do know is that Jack Fitzgibbon's sacrifice is a sacrifice that is, and will continue to be, borne by his whole family and his friends and mates. I have spoken previously on behalf of the families of our fallen Defence Force members, both in my community and in this place. Given our family's experience, the following verse is actually for Jack's family: You thought of him with love today, but that is nothing new. You thought about him yesterday, and days before that too. You think of him in silence, you often speak his name. Now all you have are memories and his picture in a frame. His memory is your keepsake with which you'll never part. God has Jack in his keeping, but you have him in your heart. My heart goes out to his family and his mates. I want to finish my contribution today with a verse for the ages by Charles Bean, the official World War I historian. This is as true today as it was at the end of World War I: What these men did nothing can alter now. The good and the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand. Whatever of glory it contains nothing now can lessen. It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men; and, for their nation, a possession for ever. Rest in peace Jack Fitzgibbon. Lest we forget. 16:21 Mr KEOGH 249147 Burt It's an honour to be able to speak today in this place to honour the life of one taken too early in the service of our nation, Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon. I'm deeply saddened by the tragic death of Jack Fitzgibbon, and I speak here today in two capacities: one as the Minister for Defence Personnel and the other as a friend of Jack's dad, our former colleague Joel Fitzgibbon. Jack served a decade in the Australian Defence Force, a career he aspired to since being a child. Jack not only loved what he did but, by all accounts, he excelled. He was highly specialised and qualified. He was a leader. He was gold standard, it was said, by his colleagues. Throughout his service he was awarded the Australian Defence Medal, the Operational Service Badge—Military and the Australian Operational Service Medal—Counter Terrorism/Special Recovery. Jack did one of the hardest things there is to do in our Defence Force, and he died doing what he loved in our nation's uniform. The death of anyone in service is of the greatest regret; it's why, when it occurs, we speak about it in this parliament. These are individuals who have worn our uniform and done what we've asked of them, and they have made the ultimate sacrifice for doing it. It's a confronting reminder—but a necessary reminder—to us all of the risks that our Defence Force personnel take every single day in our nation's name. In my role as minister, I receive notifications of all sorts of things that afflict, injure or harm our serving members. But receiving the notification in relation to the injuries caused from the accident that Jack was involved in came with the added shock of knowing who this person was and knowing who his next of kin were as well. That's why I also speak here today as a friend of Joel Fitzgibbon. When I received that notification I reached out to Joel directly. It's not something anyone wants to do, but they have to do it in this role. But it's also the case that, even when you don't know the person involved, those of us in these roles—like me, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence and anyone involved in this area—will always think about the ramifications and reverberations, not just those in the instant but those that will continue to reverberate through time for that person's family, friends and colleagues. In this instance, I've not know Joel as long as some other members of this chamber have, but I've been very proud to have served two terms of the parliament with him. He was someone whose advice I deeply valued. In the time that I spent with Joel, though, he was someone, like so many people in this parliament, who was deeply proud of the achievements and exploits of all his children. And he certainly spoke about Jack. He spoke about Jack in terms of being deeply proud of his service. He was deeply proud of what Jack had achieved in the Defence Force and what he did. He was also a proud dad of the fact that Jack had a bit of Joel's larrikin spirit as well. Certainly it was a great honour to be able to join Jack's family, friends and colleagues at Jack's funeral in Cessnock. There are a few things I want to highlight from that service. It was a great military funeral. It had all of the appropriate trappings that should go with honouring somebody who died in service. It was a great honouring and celebration of Jack's life—the things he did not only as a member of our Defence Force but also over his entire life. There was no stepping away from his larrikin spirit and the things that he did that caused people to laugh with him and laugh at him, and that is a great thing. But what was also really important was that, while it was reported on the day that there were many dignitaries that attended that funeral—and that was a great thing for somebody in our Defence Force, but it was a great thing for the Fitzgibbon family—front and centre were Jack, Jack's family and Jack's colleagues. It wasn't about the people with titles who were there. It was all about honouring his service, celebrating his life and having an opportunity to stand with our friend and our colleague, to mourn with them and to support them. No parent should ever have to bury their child, and here in this place I want to extend my deepest condolences, thoughts and prayers to my friend and Jack's dad, Joel; to his mum, Dianne; to his sisters, Caitlin and Grace; to his partner, Kass; and to his colleagues and the broader defence family, who all feel his death as loss. Rest in peace, Jack Fitzgibbon, and thank you for your service. 16:28 Mr JOYCE e5d New England I rise today to, like everybody else, pay my respects to Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon, who, in serving his nation, was tragically injured and later died from his wounds. I know Joel very well and I know Dianne. They're in the seat next door to mine, and, as people know, Joel and I were on television together for years as sparring partners. As people probably understand, this is our football paddock. We play football hard on the paddock, but we don't play it in the corridors and we don't play it in the changerooms. Joel is a good fella, and the Fitzgibbons are a good a family. Joel's father served in parliament, Joel served in parliament and his son served in the Army. That's a family of honour. I've said that numerous times, and Joel's probably sick of hearing me say it. But that's a family of honour, and that honour remains with the family forevermore. Jack's service and the honour that that has brought to the Fitzgibbon family remains with that family and will remain with them forevermore. But, for Joel, Dianne, Caitlin, Grace and his partner, Kass, the sorrow will remain with them forevermore as well. Nothing is going to replace that. Every time this time of year comes around, there'll be thoughts about their beautiful boy, and you can just see from the photos that he was a fit, happy young man. As a lance corporal, they say he didn't chase being an officer. But he'd been school captain, so he obviously had leadership capabilities. I must admit that I'm proposing here that he enjoyed his time with his troops and enjoyed being with his men. He loved his life—that's what Joel said. We all, at some stage, come to our demise—we're all going to come to our end. It's not everything, but the form in which it comes to an end is a big part of it. Jack lived a very full life, for the very short time he had it, and died doing what he loved. But, in doing what he loved, he was also serving our nation. If we don't have people who sign on the dotted line—and, as soon as you do that, put your life on the line—then we can't defend our nation. It's so sad when you see someone with a smile on their face, a larrikin air, a beer in their hand at times, who has a bit of fun with people—in that same personality is the sense that 'I'm prepared to give my life in service to my country; I'm prepared and accept that it's absolutely in the realm that I may be killed in training or killed in service'. As soon as Jack put on the uniform, as soon as Jack signed the piece of paper, he would have known that. In recognising Jack, we've got to recognise the many people who have been killed in training—the Blackhawk disaster; we had the Taipan; we've had people throughout the history of the military who have been killed in training. Tragically, they're just as dead as anybody else, and that service should be recognised. I've spoken to other service personnel about how we actually recognise these people, who in service to our nation in the military, have paid the supreme sacrifice by the loss of their life. When we see a person who is so fit and they can do so many things, that's the type of person we want to go into the military. If Jack had a physical impairment, he wouldn't have got in. But, when you're in excellent physical condition and strong in mind like Jack, that's the person who puts their life on the line. I've spoken to Joel a couple of times. Vicky sent out her love to Joel. My heart broke at the funeral, just catching up with Dianne—how her only boy, her beautiful boy, has been taken from her. Her life has been turned upside down. And also to Caitlin and Grace—I only just met Kass—and to the Fitzgibbon family, I say: you're a family of honour. As shadow veterans' affairs minister, I also extend that to all families who have lost their son or daughter through service or through their contribution and participation in Australia's defence forces. Now, with the royal commission on foot, we're seeing the tragedy of so many others in other parts that have lost their life. I hope that this memory of Jack, as sad as it is, also recognises the celebration of an incredible life and the celebration of an incredible person. For my own part, when Jack was visiting he had rosary beads, so he was also a person who had faith. As a person of faith, I believe he's with our Lord and maker and his existence now is better than what he would have ever had on earth. If you believe that, you've got to have hope. You can't be totally morose and not accept that there is an afterlife—that this is it. I will close on this. I want to commend the military, for the precision and sharpness of that funeral was exceptional. It means something, and I know the member for Solomon has done much more military service than I have. I was in the reserve family for the military. You really do watch—drill. Those men and women were absolutely A1. And that's a sign of respect for the person—how you carry yourself, your dress, your drill, your cadence, your patience and your stillness. It's a sign of discipline and respect. I was thinking about this when the catafalque party came in and rested arms around the coffin of Jack. I was thinking, 'I don't think anybody understands how hard it is to stay motionless for that long.' Why do people do it? Because they are seeing off their mate. What are you going to do for your mate when it's probably innate in your feelings that you don't want to be overt with your emotions and lose your temperance? You say: 'I will do this job, and my job now is drill. My job now is the ceremonial, and I will do absolutely A1 perfectly to show my mate that he had a life well lived and to show my mate my respect for him.' 16:36 Mr GOSLING 245392 Solomon I want to associate myself with the words of the shadow minister and commend the military for doing what they always do so well. I pay that respect in the way that he relayed from Jack's funeral. I join with him and so many other members in this place in expressing my heartfelt condolences to the entire Fitzgibbon family for the loss of their only son and brother and for the loss of Cass's partner. I also express my condolences to all the mates of Lance Corporal Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon. Last Wednesday, the House came together offering comfort and love to our mate Joel, to his wonderful wife Dianne, to Caitlin, Grace and Maxine and to Jack's partner, Cass. I acknowledge all the tributes in this place today and over the last week or so. It was wonderful to meet Jack's sisters, to hug Joel and Dianne, to meet Cass and to pass on my family's love and deep condolences. He was most loved. It's so obvious to everyone, but he was an excellent special forces operator. When he joined the ADF in 2014, through mutual friends, I know that he was just getting after it. He served in the 2nd Commando Regiment. He was a proud special forces operator within that command and saw operational deployment to Papua New Guinea. He was awarded the Defence Medal and the Australian Operational Service Medal for counterterrorism. Belonging to that special forces family, and due to his own characteristic modesty, we'll never really know all the details of his service and everything he achieved during his service, but his mates do. His mates know what he achieved, as do his troop commanders and his company commanders. They all know what he achieved, and the great name Fitzgibbon will live on in their ranks, honoured by a grateful nation and supported by a whole community of ADF members, soldiers and veterans. We know from Joel and from the members of the unit that he was a very experienced parachutist, which is one of the most dangerous things that is done in special forces, as the member for Canning relayed in his contribution last week. So he was a highly skilled soldier, courageous and dedicated to his mates, to his unit and to his nation. As so many of his family members and mates have said, he was incredibly humble and not boasting about being in the special forces, always playing down his own incredible accomplishments and not seeking promotion, when he was obviously so deserving of it. But, as so many of our men and women in uniform do, he put his mates and the unit first. He was a soldier's soldier, not someone that's looking up to please the boss but someone that's looking out for their mates, in the best of our country's military tradition. He was a pride of the ADF and of our nation. At that packed service at St Joseph's Catholic Church in Cessnock last Monday—as a member relayed well—his mates remembered him, did him honour, and reflected on his infectious sense of humour and his laughter but also on him being as tough as nails and his loyalty, both to his country and to the Army. His commanding officer, his CO, said that Jack's example would inspire generations of soldiers to come. As the family, the Fitzgibbons, themselves said in a statement: Serving in the special forces was Jack's dream job and we take some comfort from the fact that he died serving his nation in a uniform of the ADF. To Joel and the entire family: know that this entire House, this entire place, shares in your grief. None of us can ever lighten your grief, but we are all here to support you in any way we possibly can. Although I didn't know Jack personally, I knew of him through mutual friends and people in the special forces. I can tell you that this loss was significant, a great loss, and it was felt like a shockwave by the members who wear the uniform. All the soldiers and special operators accept that there's a high risk to their own personal safety in doing what they do. They not only do it willingly; they do it gladly and they do it proudly. There is no higher honour than to serve your country in uniform and to defend the security of all Australians, of the men and women of Australia, whether that be in overseas service or during exercises, during training like Jack was undertaking. It's critical that everyone in this place understands that the ADF trains like it's going to have to fight so there's always a degree of risk. The ADF does as much as it possibly can to lessen that degree of risk. I pay my respects to all Australian soldiers who have lost their lives in training accidents. I have been a military parachutist. It's pretty scary, and there's that element of danger always. So I want to pay tribute to those who have been killed or injured in accidents, including the four aviators in Exercise Talisman Sabre last year. I send my and my family's love—and I think this whole chamber's love—to the Fitzgibbon family and to all of Jack's friends and comrades. We will remember him. Lest we forget. 16:44 Ms CLAYDON 248181 Newcastle by leave—I thank the House for granting me leave to continue to make comments on this condolence motion. It's always tough when you have a condolence speech interrupted midway, but we don't get to control the operations of this parliament, and I know that Joel Fitzgibbon, in particular, would understand that. When I left, I was just reflecting on what an adored son Jack was for both Joel and Dianne. He was of course also a loving brother for Caitlin and Grace, a darling grandson to Anne, a treasured nephew for Therese, Alison and Mark and the beloved partner of Kass. My heart and thoughts are with you all at this time. As tragic as it is to lose someone you love, the grieving rests with those who are left behind. It is that heavy heart we saw when we were really honoured to have the Fitzgibbon family join us on the floor of parliament just last week. We saw just how much grief is carried at times like this by all of those left behind who loved Jack so very, very dearly. Losing a child is of course every parent's nightmare, and no-one ever, ever expects to be burying their child. That unimaginable pain of burying a child may feel all too much to bear at times. It certainly felt like that when I was able to see the family last week. But I hope that the family and all of the people that they love who are still around them, and indeed the community in which they live, who turned out in force to celebrate Jack's life and to really wrap their arms around Jack's family—I hope that there is some comfort for the family in knowing that they are very much in the hearts and thoughts of our community, of our Labor family and indeed across the nation. We know that Jack's service meant that he had great camaraderie, great friendship, with so many people in the forces across Australia. We know his life was cut way, way too short. His father has honoured him in saying that he knew that his son died doing what he loved and that, as terrible as that accident was, it was in the service of his nation, something that he had quite consciously signed up for. The exercise that he was involved in was one that he'd done many, many times before. It is just an unbearable pain, really, that the family is left with, but there is some comfort to be gained in knowing that this was a pathway that Jack was fully invested in and had wanted to do. He was very, very proud of that service to our nation. My thoughts are with all his loved ones at this heartbreaking time. May Jack rest in peace. 16:48 Mr REPACHOLI 298840 Hunter In the serene landscapes where soldiers hone their skills, tragedy can strike unexpectedly, shattering the tranquillity and leaving behind a profound sense of loss. Such was the case in a recent training exercise where the Australian Defence Force faced the heart-wrenching reality of bidding farewell to one of its own. In the wake of a training exercise gone awry, the Australian military community found itself grappling with the devastating loss of a dedicated soldier. The circumstances surrounding the incident serve as a stark reminder of the inherent risks that come with the noble profession of defending one's nation. As details of the event continue to emerge, the collective grief weighs heavily upon the hearts of all Australians. The loss of a soldier is not just a matter of statistics or headlines; it's a deeply personal tragedy that reverberates through the entire nation. Behind every uniform lies a story of sacrifice, courage and unwavering commitment to duty. In times like these, it is essential to pause and reflect on the profound sacrifices made by those who serve in the armed forces. Each soldier represents a cherished son or daughter, a beloved sibling, a devoted partner or a proud parent. Their courage knows no bounds as they stand ready to defend their country, often placing themselves in harm's way without any hesitation. The outpouring of support from across the country serves as a testament to the deep sense of gratitude and respect Australians hold for their servicemen and servicewomen. Through the heartfelt tributes, candlelight vigils and messages of condolence flooding social media, the nation stands united in morning the loss of a true hero. As we mourn the passing of a courageous soldier in Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, our hearts also ache for his beloved family—Joel, Di, his sisters, Caitlin, Grace and Maxine, and his partner, Kass, their extended family and their extended friends. The Fitzgibbon family has been an indispensable pillar of the Cessnock community, and the loss of Jack will undoubtedly resonate deeply in our local circles, leaving a profound impact on us all. We must also acknowledge the inherent risks associated with military training exercises. Although every precaution is taken to ensure the safety of personnel, the unprecedented nature of warfare means that accidents can and do occur. It is a sobering reality that underscores the importance of rigorous training, constant vigilance and an unwavering commitment to safety protocols. In the aftermath of this tragedy, it is imperative that we honour the memory of Jack by redoubling our efforts to support and protect those who serve in the military. This includes not only providing them with the necessary training and equipment but also ensuring they have access to the mental health resources and support networks they need to cope with the unique challenges they face. Moreover, we must never forget the profound impact that the loss of a comrade in arms has on the entire military community. The bonds forged in the crucible of training exercises and deployments run deep, and the loss of a fellow soldier is felt acutely by all who served alongside them. It is incumbent upon us as a nation to rally around those who are grieving and offer them our unwavering support and solidarity during these difficult times. As we mourn the loss of Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, let us reaffirm our commitment to honouring his memory by upholding the values of courage, sacrifice and service for which he so selflessly gave his life. In his memory, may we strive to build a world where peace reigns supreme and the sacrifices of our fallen heroes are never forgotten. Thank you for your service, Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon. May you rest in peace. 16:53 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton Losing a child is every parent's worst fear. When such things happen, it is a fundamental tragedy. We can't make any sense of it. The loss is too great, it's inexplicable and it is raw. No parent should ever bury a child; it is against the rules of nature. Those of us on the sidelines cannot understand the depth of the pain and the grief, but as a fellow parent I have some inkling as to how it might affect Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon's loving parents and family. It can affect people differently, but, nevertheless, we ache alongside you. So I rise today with a heavy heart to join my parliamentary colleagues to honour Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, who died on 7 March in that horrific military training exercise. I, along with my wife, would like to offer my heartfelt condolences to my good friend Joel Fitzgibbon, his wife Diane and the rest of their lovely family on this incredible loss. I know that the Fitzgibbon family are justly proud of Jack's many accomplishments. After joining the Australian Defence Force in 2014, Jack served in a range of postings, including an operational deployment to Papua New Guinea and roles with his beloved 2nd Commando Regiment. Those who understand our ADF know that our commandos are some of the toughest, smartest, bravest and most resourceful people in the world—not just in Australia but in the world—because our ADF is the best military unit in the world, and our commandos are the best of the best. During Jack's time with the commandos, he was awarded the Australian Defence Medal and the Operational Service Badge—Military, as well as the Operational Service Medal—Counter Terrorism/Special Operations. To volunteer to join the ADF is to volunteer to serve your country. Jack, like his fellow members of the 2nd Commando Regiment, willingly and bravely took on the risks of specialised training and then deployment. As his father had been a defence minister, Jack well and truly understood the risks he was taking on when he signed up. But Jack was an experienced parachutist, with the majority of his jumps being high-altitude military freefall, requiring skill, an incredible amount of courage and commitment. I've heard Joel say that Jack's role in defence was actually Jack's ideal job. As the Prime Minister said in his moving statement in the main chamber: He was numbered among the extraordinary men and women who volunteer to serve in the Australian Defence Force and do our nation proud every single day. We thank them, just as we thank Jack for his courage, conviction and commitment to Australia. I didn't know Jack but I'm proud to know his father, Joel, and I know the strong tradition of service that runs through the Fitzgibbon family. Joel represented the people of the Hunter for 26 years, following in the footsteps of his father, Eric, who then went on to serve in various other roles, including in the high commission in London. Jack's continuation of this tradition of service must make the family so proud. In the aftermath of Jack's death, I bring them this poem: Not how did he die, but how did he live? Not what did he gain, but what did he give? These are the units to measure the worth Of a person as a person, regardless of birth. Not what was his church, nor what was his creed? But had he befriended those really in need? Was he ever ready, with word of good cheer, To bring back a smile, to banish a tear? Not what did the sketch in the newspapers say But how many were sorry when he passed away. Well, we know that for Jack Fitzgibbon St Joseph's Catholic Church in Cessnock was overflowing with those who wanted to pay tribute to Jack and to be there to support his family. And this parliament, a place for the worship of democracy, is also overflowing with tributes from both sides—from all sides—of the aisle. We know that Jack was well loved. We know that death shall have no dominion when it comes to Jack's legacy of love and loyalty. Those who knew and love Jack will hold special memories forever: memories of a cherished son, a loved brother and a loving partner, and memories of a loyal friend and loyal comrade, with an infectious sense of humour. I hope that being together and remembering Jack is some sort of balm or comfort in these darkest of times for Joel and Diane. I found it hard to put these words to paper, Joel and Diane, but my wife, Lea, and I are thinking of you all, of all your family, and hoping and wishing that you will eventually find comfort in these memories and these futile, but heartfelt words. Vale Jack Fitzgibbon. 16:59 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Lance Corporal Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon, a young, upstanding Australian who made the ultimate sacrifice while serving his country. His untimely passing at just 33 is a tragic loss for his family, his friends and his loved ones. It's also a tragic loss for his fellow soldiers. And it is a tragic loss for this country. Like his father, Jack respected and loved the Australian Defence Force. As Joel recently recalled, Jack's admiration for the Army dated back to when he was just three years old. Joel had brought Jack a shirt from a recent visit to the Lone Pine Barracks near Singleton, and it was a shirt he deeply treasured. No doubt it represented something bigger—an opportunity to give back to the country he'd watched his dad serve as a politician and one from which he had enjoyed tremendous opportunities. And so Jack's decision to enlist as a young man in 2014 actually seemed to be an inevitability. He served for more than a decade, most recently as a proud member of the special forces 2nd Commando Regiment. Lance Corporal Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon wore his uniform with pride. Australia is eternally grateful to all who serve in uniform. There really is no greater honour. For Jack's service and his ultimate sacrifice, his comrades and country stand proud, as does the greater community of the Hunter and, in particular, Cessnock, his home town. Of course, we saw an outpouring of grief from the community at his funeral last week. I knew Jack through his dad, Joel, whom I at least met in 1996, when he was elected to this place and I was a staffer. When I was elected in 2010, he, from memory, was the Chief Government Whip. I'm so pleased that my colleague the member for Paterson is here and also the member for Shortland because, representing the Hunter region, you would have known Jack and you would have known, of course, Joel even better. I think it's fair to say to the member for Paterson that Joel and I agreed on just about everything. I think it is pretty certain that Joel and I agreed on everything, and the biggest thing that we agreed on was that, for Labor governments to obtain the honour of being elected and be long-term Labor governments, we have to govern from the centre. We have to appeal to and we have to understand people who have aspiration, and there are different forms of aspiration, depending on where you live and what your circumstances are. And you have to respect that aspiration, even when it is different from your ideology, from your point of view, from where you live or from your vantage point. It has to be respected. I am pretty certain the member for Paterson will agree with me that that is exactly what Joel instilled in all his kids, including Jack—that respect for other people. Joel and his whole family, Eric—right through—are part of Labor royalty in New South Wales. We talked about Jack's funeral in Cessnock; Eric was suitably sent off as well, from the same church, and we acknowledged Eric's tremendous role here. But it is for me—in the number of hats that I wear—as president of the New South Wales branch to demonstrate and to articulate in this House what a loss this is for the New South Wales branch and how much respect we have as a party for the Fitzgibbon family, and I think that that was demonstrated in Jack's send-off as well. I'm reliably informed that in 2006 Jack even became a member of the Bellbird branch, which I'm sure was the case. Growing up—I know this for a fact—he played for the Cessnock Goannas. He was school captain at St Patrick's primary, and, I'm also reliably informed, that's where Anne, Joel's mum, once taught as well. Lance Corporal Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon's name has been inscribed on the school's honour board, and it's a place for distinguished alumni. While his life was cut short, his achievements were immense. For this he will be remembered not only by his former school but by this country. To this end, on behalf of the people of Greenway and on behalf of the New South Wales branch, I offer my deepest condolences to Joel and Dianne, to Caitlin and Grace and to Kass. We extend those condolences to members of the Second Commando Regiment, who are coming to terms with their great loss. Let the memory of Lance Corporal Jack Patrick Fitzgibbon live on forever, and may he rest in peace. 17:04 Ms SWANSON 264170 Paterson It's with a heavy heart that I deliver this speech on the condolence motion for Jack Fitzgibbon. Jack is the son of Joel Fitzgibbon, who is the person that brought me to politics, and I will be forever indebted to Joel for that. But my association with the Fitzgibbon family goes back a long way further than that. My uncle, Owen Partridge, was a stalwart in the Cessnock Labor Party. He was a branch member for many years, and I'm sure he was a pain in Joel's behind on many occasions, as well, being a staunch leftie. Uncle Owen recruited me, at the tender age of 12 or 13, to hand out for Eric Fitzgibbon to become the member for Hunter. I can still remember handing out for Eric. We had posters of Eric in the garden and posters of Bob Hawke in the hallway of the house. It was from that time that my association with the Fitzgibbon family really came about. My next major milestone with the Fitzgibbons was when I was on my honeymoon. I got a phone call from Joel, who said: 'You've been working with my brother Mark, through the Hunter Regional Organisation of Councils. He rates you, so I want you to come and work for me. I've just been elected.' I said, 'Thanks very much, but I'm on my honeymoon. I'll ring you in a few weeks.' I came to work for Joel in 1996, at the tender age of 25, when he replaced his father, Eric, as the member for Hunter. I remember working from the electorate office in Cessnock, and I also travelled here to Canberra with him. In that office, I met Dianne, his wife, and their three young children, and I can still remember those kids coming to the office. Jack was a full-of-energy, fantastic little boy. Caitlin, his older sister, was always there trying to pull him into line, and Gracie just tagged along as the third. I remember thinking to myself, 'How are they going to do it, with young kids?' It was so difficult, but they did do it, and they did it well. My relationship with this family grew over the years. The next major milestone in my life was when Joel phoned me again and said: 'Mate, I want you to run for the seat of Paterson. You probably won't win, but I know you'll give it your best.' So I did, and I then became the member for Paterson. In this speech on the condolence motion for Jack, what I'm trying to display is that the things I say about the Fitzgibbon family don't just come from working with Joel or perhaps something I've read in the paper. I've known them and worked with them for over 40 years. I feel as though, whilst they're not my blood relatives, they're as close as I could get. When I go to their home and spend time with them, I always feel so welcome, so I can't tell you the pain I felt, going to Joel and Di's place on the Monday after we lost Jack and seeing their faces. Seeing that torture, that pain, on a parent's face when they lose a child—it's indescribable. It goes against everything that we know to bury a child. I can't begin to express my heartfelt grief and condolence for that family, who in their own way have served our nation so well, whether it be here in parliament, battling it out, or, like Jack, putting on the uniform. There is no greater service to your country than potentially laying down your life. Although Jack was a commando, it still came as such a shock. People talk about the risk of service. Of course jumping out of an aeroplane comes with risk, but you never think that anything terrible is actually going to happen, and when it does it is still so shocking. I also went to Holsworthy to visit the commandos, the special forces of the 2nd Commando Regiment, and let me tell you: they are outstanding, stellar human beings. The men and women that pull on that uniform, just like Jack did, to serve us all and keep us safe are special human beings. Then I had that out-of-body experience, being in St Joseph's at Cessnock for Jack's funeral, and I was sat behind a wall of khaki. These enormous men were standing in front of me and each of them had a look of pain and horror on their face. It was just an incredible moment in my life that I will never forget. But each of them bravely listened to stories of Jack, knowing that the next day they would take off the ceremonial uniform, pull back on the khaki and go back to work for each one of us again. That's what Jack did. He wasn't really like his dad or his grandfather in that he wasn't an out-there, public person. He loved a drink, like his dad and his grandfather, and he loved a joke and he loved a dance. He was a really funny, good guy. But he wasn't a public person like his grandfather and father. He was a far more private person. He didn't want to be promoted; he just wanted to do his job. And he did that every day in that uniform. I know Joel and Dianne, his parents, were incredibly proud of him, and so was Anne, his grandmother. I thought about her a lot during this time as well because I know she always had a special soft spot for Jack. I know grandparents can't have favourites, but I know Anne always had a special soft spot for Jack. So I have thought a lot about that. As the member for Greenway pointed out, that family have contributed so much to Australian politics and Australian life and given more than any family should have to give in the life of their son. But I want to thank them for that, and I want them to know that Jack's memory and his contribution will never be forgotten. I suspect that the people who worked with him will be forever compelled to give their best, as Jack did, and will be forever indebted to his memory, as we all are. On behalf of the people of Paterson, on behalf of the broader Hunter community and on behalf of our Labor family, I commend Jack's memory to the history books and to Hansard. I hope that he finds eternal peace, and I hope that his family find some peace in these words too. 17:12 Mr CHESTER IPZ Gippsland It is with great sadness that I join the debate to express my condolences on behalf of the people of Gippsland. In doing so, I want to associate myself with the heartfelt comments the member for Paterson just delivered in this chamber. The member for Paterson's right: there is no greater service that anyone can give to our nation than to put on the uniform of the Navy, Army or Air Force and potentially place themselves in harm's way to help Australians or our compatriots who can't necessarily help themselves. Putting on that uniform is a sign that you love your country, you love your mates and you are prepared to do whatever it takes to protect this extraordinary country that we all live in. Jack Fitzgibbon served in the Australian Defence Force for over 10 years, with six years in the special forces 2nd Commando Regiment. As we have heard, he was the son of Joel—a great friend of many in this place—and Dianne, brother to Grace and Maxine and partner to Kass. He deployed to assist his fellow Australians in the floods in 2022 and prior to that was deployed to Papua New Guinea. Amongst his many skills we've heard about in this place was his experience as a parachutist, having done 106 jumps, with 95 into military freefall. He was a reluctant leader. He was certainly identified as a leader by men and women in uniform alongside him. He was promoted to lance corporal in 2023. Last week I think we saw the federal parliament at its best when the Fitzgibbon family was here for the condolence motion, when the Prime Minister, the opposition leader, the defence minister and the shadow defence minister spoke so eloquently not only about Jack Fitzgibbon but about all the men and women who serve, thanking them for that service. It was an important moment because we had our friend and former member of parliament Joel Fitzgibbon in the chamber to hear the words. Joel was one of those unusual characters in this building who had friends on both sides of the House. He was able to cross the political divide, not unlike the members opposite here today. He had the capacity to reach out across that political divide, to put away any false enmities and to focus on what was good for the future of Australia. And, like the member for Paterson, I was shocked and appalled to hear of Jack's death. I didn't know Jack—clearly, she did—but to think of a father having to bury their own son is tragic. Obviously, Gippslanders understand the nature of military service. We have RAAF Base East Sale, which has been an incredible and important training base throughout our nation's history. RAAF Base East Sale is home to the magnificent RAAF Roulettes, and has also known tragedy in its time. Sadly, we had six people killed with the Red Sales aerobatic team in 1962—it's a long time now—when those aircraft went into the ground in Gippsland. I was reminded of that when the shadow minister for defence talked about the fact that, as much our Australian Defence Force personnel are incredibly professional and skilled, training accidents do happen. Training accidents are rare, thankfully—thank God that they're rare—but, tragically, they do happen. And they happen because our Australian Defence Force has to train at the edge to make sure they're ready in times of crisis. So if they're to be deployed, they need to be able to demonstrate that they've learned the skills, that they trust those skills and that they trust their mates. They practice those skills so they can deliver them at the time they're required. We heard last week that Jack Fitzgibbon died doing what he loved. In truth, our Australian Defence Force personnel don't really have one family: they have two families. They have their actual mum and dad and siblings; that's one family they have. But they have their family at work, in uniform. I have been privileged over the last 10 years to spend some time with a lot of Australian Defence Force personnel. For someone who had never had the capacity or the willingness—perhaps not even the courage—to serve in uniform, to spend time with the men and women of the Navy, Army and Air Force as a minister and assistant minister has been an extraordinary privilege. But I also had some time with 2nd Commando Regiment during my time as the veterans' and Defence Force personnel minister. In fact, they provided the protection detail for me in Afghanistan, and I felt to be in very safe hands for the time that I was in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were some in my own party who would rather that they didn't bring me back safely but, thankfully, they did! But what I can say from the time I spent alongside these men and women—often very young men and women—is that whether they're deployed in a conflict zone, or in humanitarian aid and disaster relief, or whether it's in defence assistance to the civilian community in the Asia-Pacific region, they are so highly regarded around the world. They are respected, acknowledged and recognised for their professionalism, their capacity to get the job done and their leadership—often in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. I have to say, without any shadow of doubt, that the finest leaders I have met in my time as a member of parliament have been those young men and women in uniform. They're highly skilled, they're patriotic, they're determined, they're passionate and they don't let their mates down. So my heart goes out to the Fitzgibbon family, and also to Jack Fitzgibbon's other family: the men and women in the Australian Defence Force. Lest we forget. 17:18 Mr CONROY 249127 Shortland It's a privilege to contribute to this very sad debate, and I want to echo the fine words from the member for Gippsland, who demonstrated the respect for public service that this House holds and the affection we hold for Joel Fitzgibbon in this place. The member for Gippsland spoke about the connections through his electorate, but also about his service in a ministerial role here. I think that, for me, that's one of the things I want to reflect on: the tragic interaction of those two things which, in this particular case, makes it even more poignant. It's a rite of passage for Australian schoolkids, certainly for New South Wales schoolkids, to go on an excursion to Canberra. They visit parliament, but the most important building they visit in Canberra is the War Memorial. They inspect the Roll of Honour that lists the over 100,000 Australians who've died fighting for our country. They fought and died for many reasons, but one of the most common was the fight for democracy both here and around the world. That is a theme—the Democratic tradition—I will come back to in my remarks. I wanted to start with that rite of passage to Canberra to see the Roll of Honour and then the parliament to see the heart of Australian democracy. I had the privilege of being one of the mourners at the memorial service last week in Cessnock. I think it was a real privilege. I know that I can say that every member of the Labor family would have liked to have been there to pay tribute, but there were limited numbers. It was a privilege to be there to pay tribute to Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon. One of the things that struck me at that service, although I knew it intellectually, was that you cannot have Cessnock without the Fitzgibbons. Cessnock is the heart of the Hunter Valley, and there is no Cessnock without the Fitzgibbons. Their fingerprints are indelible. If you think about where we were at St Joseph's Catholic Church, it was the heart of the Catholic community of a proud Irish Catholic town, to some extent, although that is being contested by the Scots and the Welsh as well. But St Joseph's Catholic Church is one of the landmarks of Cessnock. You've got the football team that three generations of Fitzgibbons played for, the Cessnock Goannas, who are part of the real NRL, 'Newcastle rugby league'. You can't have an NRL without the Cessnock Goannas and the three generations of Fitzgibbons who've played there. Then you have the Fitzgibbon family. For me, without trying to be disrespectful, they are the sort of holy trinity of Cessnock—St Joseph's Catholic Church, the Cessnock Goannas and the Fitzgibbon family. That struck me on that day. There were hundreds of people in the church. There were hundreds of people outside the church trying to view proceedings remotely. When there was the march behind the gun carriage, people came out from their houses to pay their respects on their front verandahs. Such was the legacy of Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon and the respect for him and his family. Jack was continuing the noble tradition of his family's public service. It's been remarked upon, I daresay, by every speaker the role of Eric Fitzgibbon as the member for Hunter. He won that seat in 1984, succeeding Bob Brown, and then obviously Joel Fitzgibbon became the member for Hunter in 1996, only retiring from that seat at this election after decades of service, including ministerial roles. Jack was continuing that family tradition not in politics but in serving the country through being part of the Australian Defence Force. His comrades talked about his passion at that memorial service and the fact that when Jack joined up he had one goal, which was to be the best soldier he could be and to be part of the special forces and to join the 2nd Commando Regiment. His commanding officer, in his eulogy, talked about how Jack was a gold standard signaller. Signalling is a military specialty that's essential. It's very hard for the other arms of the military to work without having signallers by their side, and he was a gold standard signaller for the 2nd Commando Regiment. He was also a natural leader, as has been remarked upon. He was not someone who put himself forward for formal leadership roles, but people looked to him to lead and he always stepped up. I pass on my condolences to all of Jack's comrades in the 2nd Commando Regiment. I am dreadfully sorry for your loss. I know you are all feeling it. To lose someone in a training accident is just heartbreaking. I think part of the tragedy of this is that, while we have lost over 100,000 Australians in war, we have lost many more in training accidents as the ADF work very hard to maintain that level of readiness and that level of capability that you can only have by embracing risk in peacetime to minimise risk in wartime. That's unfortunately the circumstance in which Jack was training and where he tragically lost his life. I think another part of why this is so particularly sad is the resonance with Joel Fitzgibbon's former role as Minister for Defence. I worked alongside Joel when he was Minister for Defence while I was a staffer for Greg Combet, the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement at the time. The tragic irony abounds that one of the hardest parts of Joel's job was ringing families when they had lost a family member in the ADF. And so for Joel—and the Deputy Prime Minister remarked upon this in his contribution—to be on both ends of that phone call, to have made that call to ADF families and to receive that call as an ADF family, is particularly poignant. I think the character of the pain for this place is particularly resonant. I think it's particularly personal here. Every loss of an ADF member is tragic. It's the loss of someone's son or daughter, brother or sister, mum or dad, and it leaves a vacuum. It leaves a massive hole in a family. But we almost feel like—and, hopefully, I'm not being too forward here—it has left a hole in the parliamentary family, such was the affection for Joel in this place. That affection is important, as it's held by many people who didn't always agree with what Joel stood for. He had his blues, both across the aisle and also within the party room. It's well known that Joel and I had a few disagreements in our time here, but they all came from a good place—that we all wanted the best for the country and, certainly within the caucus, we wanted the best for the Labor Party. After all those things we had a beer and we all worked for a common direction, which was the election of a Labor government to improve Australia. But I think no matter whether you disagreed with Joel on any particular issue, you always knew that he was passionate about improving this country. That's why the loss here was so particularly poignant. If I can reflect on parliament last week: we saw it at its best, with a condolence motion led by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. And it continued with the Deputy Prime Minister, the defence minister and the shadow defence minister. To have Joel, Di, Caitlin, Grace, Maxine and Kass there was just heartbreaking, but really, really important. I'll return to my first point in conclusion: it's why I think there's a symmetry in what we're talking about here today. There are school excursions to see the Roll of Honour, a reminder of the loss of life of people who have made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve democracy. They then visit the heart of democracy, which is the Australian Parliament House. Last week we saw on a very personal level the service in Cessnock to commemorate the life of Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon, and then we saw the parliamentary condolence motion in front of Jack's family, continuing and ending today. I say on behalf of the 150,000 constituents of Shortland, who I have the honour to represent; on behalf of the members of the Hunter Labor caucus, who are very close and who work very closely together—and I have the member for Paterson sitting behind me; on behalf the broader Labor family; and on behalf of all of the parliament that I pass on my condolences to Joel, Di, Caitlin, Grace, Maxine and Jack's partner, Kass. We are dreadfully sorry for your loss. We are incredibly grateful for the service of Jack and the service of your family. But, please, may Jack rest in peace. Vale Lance Corporal Jack Fitzgibbon. 17:29 Mr HUSIC 91219 Chifley Deputy Speaker Chesters, I'm very grateful for your forbearance in allowing me to add some words here. The Fitzgibbon family, as everyone well knows, are a very close-knit, tight family. Having known Joel Fitzgibbon, not just as a parliamentarian but well before my time as a parliamentarian, I know how strongly he felt for all his kids, but that particularly he felt a deep pride about their achievements and accomplishments. I think it's a truism for anyone who's a parent that no parent should be put in the position that both he and Di have been put in. They had great hopes, obviously, for Jack. I know, from times speaking with Joel, how deeply proud he felt of his son. The member for Paterson and I were reflecting on this just in the last 24 hours. In the member for Paterson's case, she got to see all those kids grow up and was very close to them. As much as it deeply impacted on many of us, I do particularly feel for the member for Paterson, given her close relationship and friendship with Joel Fitzgibbon. I take on board what has been expressed by a number of contributions, regardless of politics, that have been made in the course of this debate. In particular, the words expressed by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence weighed heavily, talking about the invidious position in which ministers for defence are sometimes placed, where they're required to call on the families of those who have served in deep sincerity to the nation and have lost their lives in the course of that service. I know that Joel had to make those calls in times past. I'm also aware that the families, as heavy as those calls were, greatly appreciated the words expressed by Joel and, more importantly the sentiments that underpinned them and the sincerity with which they were delivered. Joel would never have expected to be in the position where he was receiving that call himself, and I do recall the Deputy Prime Minister expressing that during his contribution to this condolence motion. As I said, I'm very grateful for the indulgence, Deputy Speaker Chesters, but I did want to express to the entirety of the Fitzgibbon family—not just to Joel as a deep friend, a great friend, of mine but to his whole family—that we feel the weight of what they've gone through, as we do with everyone who serves the nation in the ADF who does not get to continue that service due to their life being shortened prematurely. To the Fitzgibbon family, we extend our deepest condolences, but, just as much, we extend our deep gratitude for the service of their son, Jack. Debate adjourned. CONDOLENCES 160 CONDOLENCES Hand, Hon. Gerard (Gerry) Leslie, AM 160 17:33 Mr HUSIC 91219 Chifley I rise to join those offering condolences on the passing of a great Labor servant in Gerry Hand last November. Gerard Leslie Hand—a true believer through and through, his convictions never wavering and energy never faltering. He started as a textile worker, a union organiser, who grew up in Warrnambool. The guiding light throughout his life was this simple motto: 'Never forget the poor'. Famously, he came agonisingly short in his first tilt at a seat in parliament, losing preselection to a fellow called Bob Hawke in a seat of Wills in 1979. But, as we saw over and over Gerry's political life, he just kept fighting. Not only did he win the seat of Melbourne for Labor in the 1983 election that swept Hawke into power; he also then went on to become a trusted and respected voice to his formal rival, a new Labor prime minister presiding over the dawn of a new political era. He spent the next decade representing the electorate of Melbourne in that government, six of them as a member of both the Hawke and Keating cabinets. He took on hard portfolios and never shrank from difficult decisions. He wore the criticism that came from those decisions with great grace, later describing that period of his life as 'turbulent', but never spoke a word of regret, only gratitude for the opportunity to serve—not hollow words. I do recall his service, in particular, being remembered fondly in our part of Western Sydney. As minister for immigration, he helped support the Blacktown Migrant Resource Centre, with an icon of that centre in Pat Johnson, who was someone that I had great dealings with. I enormously respected her contribution to the settlement process for people that had made Australia their home in a variety of different ways. Gerry Hand visited Blacktown a number of times and set up an ongoing dialogue with people in the community. He would call them from time to time to get their reflections on policy—to get soundings from people on the ground in communities about policy that worked or, in some cases, did not work as initially intended. I very much respected him for that. That tendency of Gerry Hand's to reach out, to talk with people and to lend the benefit of his advice is something that I was enormously grateful for. His life in politics had never been really free of trials and tribulations, but his advice was sage and his observations astute. I was always grateful for him sending the odd text message from time to time after hearing me in the media or for being able to speak with him and learn from his experiences as well. His determination to pass on lessons or offer a listening ear showed the importance he placed on parliamentary politics and his regard for those who were called to serve in this place. As I said, I'm enormously grateful for the fact that someone with his experience took the time to message and call and to be there to talk to from time to time. I want to offer my sincere sympathies to his wife and children, of whom he spoke so lovingly and so often. I say to them: thank you for sharing him with us. Together we all grieve his passing. Vale, Gerald Hand. 17:37 Ms PLIBERSEK 83M Sydney I want to say a few words about Labor great Gerry Hand. Lindsay Tanner wrote of him, 'They don't make them like Gerry Hand anymore,' and that certainly is true. As a union organiser who grew up in Warrnambool, in south-west Victoria, Gerry Hand was known to be an energetic fighter for workers and for disadvantaged communities all through his union life and his political career. He didn't just fight for the Labor Party; he occasionally had fights inside the Labor Party. He did fight Bob Hawke in the early 1980s, when he stood as the Socialist Left candidate against Bob Hawke in what was by all reports a brutal contest for Labor preselection for the federal seat of Wills. He lost, but three years later he won Labor preselection for the neighbouring seat of Melbourne, and we got both Bob Hawke and Gerry Hand. He went on to work closely with Hawke at an extraordinary time in the party. In the decade that Gerry Hand held the seat of Melbourne, he was a passionate and unflagging fighter for disadvantaged groups of people, including Indigenous Australians, low-paid workers, public housing tenants and recently arrived migrants. From 1983 to 1993, including the time he served as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and then Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs, what we saw from Gerry Hand was distinction and passion. He became a leading light of the ALP Left, and he re-energised it with his commitment to social justice. He's credited with bringing the Left in from the cold. Gerry Hand was also a link between Labor's traditional blue-collar working-class union base and the rapidly growing progressive middle class. He was able to incorporate the wishes, desires and world views of both groups, and, in his various roles, he brought those views to cabinet. He was a vital part of the Hawke government, working behind the scenes to achieve agreement and support for some of the more difficult and controversial policy initiatives of the time. And, of course, he had a deep commitment to improving the lives of Indigenous Australians, including in the establishment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. He prepared much of the ground for the work that has come after, when it comes to political moves to benefit First Nations communities around Australia, and his early work went on to pave the way for the 1993 native title legislation and, later, the Bringing them home report on the stolen generations. We are, all of us in the Labor family, sending our deepest condolences and deepest sympathies to Gerry Hand's family and many, many friends. We farewell a giant of the Left and a Labor legend. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 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 Federation Chamber. 17:41 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton by leave—I move: That further proceedings be conducted in the House. Question agreed to. Federation Chamber adjourned at 17:42