2024-11-26 2 1 0 House of Reps 0 1

Tuesday, 26 November 2024

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

DELEGATION REPORTS 1 DELEGATION REPORTS Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly and Bilateral Visit to France 1 12:01 The SPEAKER 53517 I present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, and bilateral visit to Paris, France, from 13 to 18 October 2024. I'm pleased to present the report of the Australian Parliamentary Delegation to the 149th IPU Assembly held in Geneva and the visit to France. It was an honour and privilege to lead the delegation, which comprised Senator the Hon. Linda Reynolds CSC, Senator Deborah O'Neill, the Hon. Warren Entsch and Mr Graham Perrett MP. The theme of the 149th assembly was harnessing science, technology and innovation for a more peaceful and sustainable future. Senator O'Neill and I contributed to this debate. The delegation was particularly active during the assembly, and the highlights of our contribution at the assembly included my appointment as chairperson of the Sub-Committee on Finance and Senator O'Neill's appointment to the bureau of the Standing Committee on Democracy and Human Rights, as well as her appointment as president of the committee. The advancement of Senator Reynolds's work on orphanage trafficking included securing the agreement of the Standing Committee on Democracy and Human Rights to debate implementation of the 2023 IPU resolution on orphanage trafficking at the next assembly. I congratulate and thank Senator Reynolds for her leadership. The assembly held an emergency debate on the theme 'Response by parliamentarians to the urgent plea by the UN Secretary-General to recommit to multilateralism for global peace, justice and sustainability', with the debate culminating in a resolution on the same theme, which calls on the international community, including the IPU membership, to end the appalling impact of conflict on children and take other action to protect vulnerable persons. During our visit to France, the delegation was officially received by the Madame Yael Braun-Pivet, President of the National Assembly, at Palais Bourbon. I presented the official guest-of-parliament invitation to the President. The delegation met with Madam President, along with Ms Eleonore Caroit MP, the vice-president of the foreign affairs committee at the National Assembly. The delegation was able to meet with Senator Loic Herve, Vice President of the Senate, as well as Senator Florence Blatrix Contat, chair of the France-Australia friendship group, and Senator Georges Naturel, senator for New Caledonia. The delegation also met with Pierre Rabadan, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of sport, the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Seine, as well as Mr Etienne Thobois, general director of the Paris Organising Committee for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Finally, the delegation travelled to the Arc de Triomphe, where I was able to lay a wreath on behalf of the Parliament of Australia at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was an honour for me to then participate in the rekindling of the flame ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on behalf of Australia. On behalf of the parliamentary delegation, I'd like to thank those who supported the 149th IPU Assembly and our bilateral visit to France, which was accompanied by the Clerk of the parliament, including the arrangements by staff of the International and Parliamentary Relations Office and staff from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. A final special thank you goes to our committee secretary, Dr Jane Thomson. I commend this report to the House. DOCUMENTS 1 DOCUMENTS Australian Public Service Commission 1 Presentation 1 12:04 Mr GORMAN 74519 Perth I present the Australian Public Service Commission's State ofthe service report for 2023-24. BILLS 2 BILLS Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024, Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024, Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024, Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024, Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024 2

Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024

Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024

Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024

Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024

Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024

Reference to Federation Chamber 2 12:04 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor I declare that, unless otherwise ordered, the following bills stand referred to the Federation Chamber for further consideration: (1) Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024, Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024, Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024, Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024 and Competition and Consumer Amendment (Australian Energy Regulator Separation) Bill 2024, at the adjournment of the debate on the motion for the second reading of each bill; and (2) Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024 and Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill at the adjournment of the debate on the motion for the second reading of the Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 2 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS Macquarie Electorate: Pitt Town Public School 2 12:05 The SPEAKER 53517 I'm pleased to advise the chamber that in the gallery today are students from Pitt Town Public School in the electorate of Macquarie. A warm welcome to Parliament House to you all! BILLS 2 BILLS Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024 2

Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024

Second Reading 2 12:06 Mr FLETCHER L6B Bradfield I rise to speak on the Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024. This bill relates to information obtained in the course of Operation Ironside, which was conducted by the Australian Federal Police between 2018 and 2021. As of June 2024, Operation Ironside has resulted in 392 alleged offenders being charged with 2,355 offences. These offences include crimes such as trafficking in illicit drugs, money laundering and dealing in the proceeds of crime. One of the central features of Operation Ironside was the use of a dedicated encrypted communications application, the ANOM app, which allowed surveillance of alleged organised crime networks. Relevantly, the bill before the House clarifies certain aspects of the operation of Australia's Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 and other relevant legislation as they apply to information obtained during the police operation. The use of information obtained through the ANOM app has been challenged on at least two occasions in courts. The central basis for those challenges has been a claim that the information was obtained by 'intercepting' of messages sent through the ANOM app. Section 7 of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act prohibits the interception of communications passing over a telecommunications system, except where certain criteria apply, such as where the interception is authorised by a warrant. You cannot intercept communications unless authorised. However, the word 'intercept' is not defined in the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act . Instead, section 6 of that act explains what is meant by the phrase 'interception of a communication passing over a telecommunications system'. It says that interception 'consists of listening to or recording, by any means, such a communication in its passage over that telecommunications system without the knowledge of the person making the communication'. It is clear that, under the law, for there to be an interception, there must be a communication which is listened to or recorded 'in its passage over the telecommunications systems' and 'without the knowledge of the person making the communication'. Both the Supreme Court of South Australia and the South Australian Court of Appeal have considered how these concepts apply to information obtained through the ANOM app. The South Australian judiciary, which at appeal stage relevantly included the Acting Chief Justice, has made clear that the use of the ANOM app does not involve an interception for the purposes of that act. Instead, the ANOM app sends a completely separate message, comprising a copy of the original message and some additional data, to a server. The information on that server can then be lawfully accessed by police if authorised by a warrant under the Surveillance Devices Act 2004. This distinction is technical but important. What this bill does is clarify the operation of the law in a way that is consistent with the position taken by the courts to date in relation to a limited number of specified warrants. This certainly is welcome and no doubt will assist in the continued investigation and prosecution of criminal organisations which profit from harming the Australian community. I thank the House. Debate adjourned. Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024 3

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024

Second Reading 3 12:11 Mr TAYLOR 231027 Hume I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024 and associated bills. It's important to set out the circumstances under which these bills were introduced. They have been introduced to address a historic issue in the authorisation of surcharges charged by Commonwealth entities. Since surcharges were established and regulated by the Reserve Bank in 2003, Commonwealth entities such as the Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia have charged surcharges for using certain payment methods—for example, credit cards. The practice enables Commonwealth entities to provide a range of payment options for customers who are paying fees and charges to the Commonwealth, and it's consistent with how surcharges are used, of course, in the private sector to make payments. While there was no standardisation or whole-of-government approach to the application of surcharges by Commonwealth agencies, they have been generally accepted as an appropriate tool to cover the cost of these Commonwealth agencies using payment platforms that often charge merchant fees—or, in this case, government fees. On 23 October 2024, the New South Wales government announced that, following advice from the Auditor-General, it had concluded that the New South Wales Department of Customer Service had been unlawfully charging surcharges. The opposition has been advised that, following the announcement by the New South Wales government, the Commonwealth Treasury and Department of Finance commenced work to ensure that Commonwealth entities charging surcharges were doing so with an appropriate authorisation. Treasury and the Department of Finance, in consultation with the Reserve Bank, the Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia, concluded that it was likely there was no appropriate authorisation for the charging of surcharges by many Commonwealth entities. The opposition has been advised that this analysis is supported by legal advice from the Australian Government Solicitor; however, the opposition has not seen this advice. We were advised by the government on Friday that the government intended to progress legislation urgently through the parliament to authorise the historic use of surcharges going back to 2003, as well as going forward, and this legislation was introduced into parliament on Monday. The bills formally authorise Commonwealth entities to collect surcharges for payments that have legislative authority. The formal authorisation is both retrospective, from 1 January 2003—that is the date that surcharges were first established and regulated by the RBA—and prospective. The bills also create a power for the Minister for Finance to make legislative instruments, which are subject to sunsetting and Senate disallowance, that set whole-of-government payments surcharging policies for Commonwealth entities. The scope of this power is important. Under the legislation, Commonwealth entities must take all reasonable steps to comply with the surcharging policies when deciding to charge or collect a surcharge. This is intended to ensure consistency of surcharging practices across the Commonwealth and alignment between Commonwealth practices and broader reforms being introduced across the whole of the economy. However, under the legislation, a Commonwealth entity's failure to comply with the surcharging policies does not invalidate its decision to charge a payment surcharge. Furthermore, there is no obligation on Commonwealth entities to refund a payment surcharge where the entity has refunded in full or part the base payment. The opposition is concerned, therefore, that there are not appropriate incentives to ensure compliance with the surcharge policy, if and when one is made. We will work with the government on this and related issues while acknowledging the context within which this legislation was introduced. We will therefore not oppose the bill in the House and will finalise our position in the Senate based on our ongoing discussions with the government. I take this opportunity to thank the finance minister and her office for making her staff and officials are available to the opposition for a briefing and for the continued good-faith engagement with her and her office. Debate adjourned. Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 4

Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024

Second Reading 4 12:17 Mr COLEMAN 241067 Banks The coalition will be supporting the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. Back in June, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, stood up in Sydney and committed the coalition to implementing an age limit of 16 for social media in Australia within 100 days of the election of a future coalition government. He did that because he believes passionately in protecting Australian children from harm. He has done that all his career, whether as a police officer, as the Minister for Home Affairs or in so many other roles in this place. When you think about it, what is more important than protecting children from harm? It is one of our very highest responsibilities in this place. I'll come to the specifics of the bill in a moment, but first I want to note at the outset that the coalition has negotiated two significant improvements to this bill with the government. These have been agreed with the government and will be presented in the final version of the bill to be presented in the Senate. Firstly, the legislation will include a specific provision that nothing in the bill allows a social media company to compel the provision of digital ID or government issued identity documents such as passports or drivers licences. This is an important addition and further strengthens the privacy provisions in the legislation. Secondly, the government has agreed to a coalition request to provide the minister with a clear power to specify steps that are not required to be taken by social media companies to comply with the legislation. While the eSafety Commissioner will be responsible for formulating guidelines on what constitutes 'reasonable steps' under the bill, the minister may that direct that specific actions are not required in order for the platforms to satisfy that 'reasonable steps' test. This is also an important addition as it allows the minister to ensure enforcement of the legislation is always appropriate and proportionate. These are both significant, and we look forward to their inclusion in the final bill to be presented to the Senate. Now, I come to the bill and the issue at its core. It's been my view for a long time that the protection of children from social media is one of the defining issues of our era. Every parent worries about this. We worry about what our kids are seeing. We worry about what they're exposed to on platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. And we're right to worry about them. The data is clear: the mental health of Australian children, especially girls, has deteriorated badly in the past decade. For instance, self-harm hospitalisations by girls aged 10 to 14 have increased by more than 300 per cent over the past decade. Leading psychologist Dr Simon Wilksch, a strong supporter of setting an age limit of 16 for social media, said that the 200 per cent increase in 10- to 14-year-olds experiencing an eating disorder over the last 12 years strongly overlaps with the rapid growth in social media use by children. And it was the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, who made the important point that the mental health crisis among young people is an emergency, and social media has emerged as an important contributor. I want to come back to some of the families that have spoken out passionately on this issue. Some people say that the precise correlation between the rise of social media and the rise of the mental health crisis amongst Australians is just a coincidence. That argument should be treated with the absolute contempt that it deserves. We would expect social media platforms to make that argument, and I'll come back to them. But, in my view, it is shameful some of the so-called experts, lobbyists and other groups make that same argument too. They should have the courage to make that argument to some of the courageous parents that many of us have met, people like Wayne Holdsworth, who lost his son, Mac; people like Mat and Kelly O'Brien, who lost their daughter, Charlotte; people like Robb Evans, who lost his daughter, Liv. I have been privileged to meet with many parents over the past months, and, when we come together today to vote for this legislation, they're who we are fighting for. We're fighting for every child who has been devastated by social media, we're fighting for the children who are still too young to have experienced these toxic environments and we're fighting for the children who are yet to come. The key provision in this legislation is a requirement on social media companies to take reasonable steps to identify and remove underage users. I want to say this is a very similar provision to what we see in similar legislation in the United States, in states like Florida and Utah and Louisiana. Those states use terms like 'reasonable steps' or 'reasonable endeavours' and then empower a regulator to oversee the process. It's the right structure. And it's the right structure because it requires social media companies to actually do something to remove underage children from their platforms, as opposed to what most of them do now, which is nothing. If they don't take reasonable steps under the legislation they can be fined up to $50 million, so this will get their attention and will require them to take action. We know they can do it now. One of the reasons we know is because TikTok has told the Australian parliament that it can do it now and does do it now. TikTok gave evidence to a parliamentary inquiry—this is a very important point—of this place saying that in 2023 they removed 76 million underage users from their platforms, including one million in Australia. They did that without requiring any provision of documents by adults or any digital ID or any of these sorts of things that they're seeking to talk about now. They did that by using their technology. These are the most sophisticated technology companies in the world, except when it comes to protecting children. Meta is worth A$2 trillion. Imagine if they got $1,000 every time they identified an underage child. Do you think they'd get pretty good at it? I do. And we know from TikTok's own testimony that they can do it now and they do do it now. But the industry does not want to be placed under any obligation to do this, and we know why. Because it's going to cost them a lot of money. The reason it will cost them a lot of money is because there are a lot of underage kids who shouldn't be on these platforms and these platforms are able to monetise those underage kids by selling advertising to those accounts. It's somewhat ironic that I find myself having such a strong view on this and pursuing this issue, as we have for such a long time. I spent my whole career in technology. Before I was elected to parliament, I was head of digital for Nine Entertainment Co. I've worked in many digital businesses over the years. Digital has been overwhelmingly a positive thing for our country. Ninety-nine per cent of the digital revolution has been a good thing. But this one per cent is an evil, dark part of the internet that we have to take on head-on, and this legislation helps move in that direction. The companies are going to say, 'It's all very complicated and it's all very hard,' and of course they would say that, because they're trying to defend their position. But once this law is in place, their incentive is to make this process as smooth as possible, and that's what they'll do. That's what we've seen TikTok has already been doing. To briefly go back to the amendment, there's a lot of discussion about privacy. On another bill, the misinformation bill, you'd be aware, Deputy Speaker Vasta, the coalition passionately opposed that bill. I think I could fairly say that I led that fight on behalf of the coalition. We were very pleased when that bill was withdrawn. It was an appalling piece of legislation that would have compromised the free speech of Australians. This bill is not that. This bill is about saying, 'We don't want young kids in unsafe environments.' For decades we've had rules about classifications for movies and TV shows. Presumably nobody is suggesting we should allow children to attend X-rated movies. I don't see anyone putting their hand up and saying, 'It's a terrible restraint on the rights of children that a 10-year-old can't attend an X-rated movie.' We're not saying that, because it would be absurd and ridiculous. In my view, it is equally absurd and ridiculous to say that these digital platforms should have no requirement to identify and remove underage children who should not be in those environments. That's what we have to tackle with this legislation. Imagine if we went back 15 years and said: 'Look, here's what we're going to do. We're going to create this thing called social media and we're basically going to allow any child on Earth to enter into that environment. We're going to have adults in there. It's going to be anonymous if you want it to be. You will be able to provide that child with any information, images or videos in that environment. You will be able to bully that child, harass that child or provide material to that child that is entirely inappropriate for them at that stage of their life development.' Imagine if we went back and said we were going to do that. Imagine if there was a bill in this parliament that said, 'Let's do that.' We would have said: 'That's outrageous. You can't do that.' But that's what's happened. So what we need here is the intellectual clarity and strength to see through that and to act upon it. This legislation is not perfect. Nothing in this space will be perfect. People can talk about each case and ask, 'Could someone do this?' or 'Could someone do that?' or 'Could it be evaded in this circumstance or that?' Those things will happen. But they happen with every rule or regulation we put in place. We have an alcohol rule for kids under 18, but we don't say, 'Some kids are going to drink under age, so let's just not have a rule.' We don't say, 'Some people are going to speed, so let's just have no speed limits.' It is an argument that, frankly, doesn't make a lot of sense. But the tech platforms are very smart and very sophisticated and they will continue to pursue that. I want to thank a few people. Until recently, I was just an occasional listener of Nova 96.9. I want to thank Michael 'Wippa' Wipfli, Rob Galluzzo and the whole 36 Months campaign. They have acted with incredible integrity, passion and drive. They have had a significant influence on this national debate, and they can be very proud of what they have achieved. I want to thank Jane Rowan from Eating Disorders Families Australia, a courageous person speaking up for the rights of children in this space. I also want to thank some courageous academics, Dr Danielle Einstein of Macquarie University and Dr Simon Wilksch of Flinders University, who have spoken with exceptional passion on this issue. Dr Wilksch and Dr Einstein have called a spade a spade. Dr Wilksch organised a letter signed by more than 100 of Australia's top mental health professionals and professionals dealing with eating disorders that basically said: 'Enough. We've got enough research. We've got enough experience. We've got enough of a record of the horrendous data that we're seeing. Enough. It's time to act. Put in place an age limit of 16 for social media. It won't be perfect, but it will be infinitely more perfect than what we've got now.' Dr Simon Wilksch is worthy of immense respect for his work. Equally, Dr Danielle Einstein of Macquarie University has very much lived up to her name. She has shown immense ability to marshal the research in this area, to demonstrate the appalling statistics that we are seeing on the mental health of Australian girls and kids more broadly and to say, 'The time for action is now.' So I want to thank Dr Einstein and Dr Wilksch. I also want to thank Dany Elachi and the Heads Up Alliance in Sydney. They have done a lot of work in this area, speaking up for parents and saying, 'We need action.' They did something very similar on the mobile phone ban in New South Wales, which has been very successful and the Minns government deserve credit for that. They have also spoken out very clearly on this issue as well. They are concerned that this legislation doesn't go far enough. I respect those concerns. I deeply appreciate all of their work and believe they should be honoured for the efforts that they have made in helping to put in place this national debate and to create this legislation. I want to thank the government. We have obviously had a lot of discussions about this issue. I am pleased that the Prime Minister has supported this move and that this legislation has come forward. But, most of all, I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition. You might say that I would do that as he is my boss, after all, but this is a leader with guts. This is a leader who says what he believes and takes action. He knows, like I think almost all Australian parents know, that what's going on right now in social media is utterly unacceptable. Small measures and incremental steps are not enough. We need to take a stand and say we're going to impose age limits. Knowing that there will be immense opposition from the digital platforms, that not everyone would agree and that the digital platforms would seek to weaponise this debate, he did it anyway. That is a mark of his leadership, and it's very consistent with everything he's done throughout his career in standing up, fighting for children, protecting them and giving Australian families comfort that this parliament is on their side and is going to work very, very hard to protect them and do everything it can. I thank the Prime Minister for his involvement in putting forward this legislation as well. In closing, this is a significant piece of legislation. The coalition has negotiated some very important protections on privacy. They strengthen privacy protections. They ensure that no platform can compel the provision of digital ID, drivers' licences, passports or anything like that. That's not what this is about. This is not about political communication in Australia; it's about protecting our kids. It won't be perfect, but it will be infinitely more perfect than what we have now. When this legislation passes, I believe we can all be very satisfied that we've done something meaningful, real and that will help Australian families. It shows us united in standing up against the tech platforms who for too long have shown no regard for the mental health of Australian children. We need to stand up to that and put in place this legislation to help support that effort. 12:36 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina Twice I have been interviewed in the ABC studio by Greg Jennett opposite the Assistant Minister for Trade, Senator Tim Ayres, when the topic of child safety and the internet arose. On the first occasion, the South Australian Labor premier, Peter Malinauskas, announced that he was going to put forward a bill similar to this in place in his state. I was asked off the cuff what I thought about it. Sometimes you get blindsided in a media conference about things that have just arisen. Yet, when it's good legislation and good for society, you don't mind backing it in, even though it might come from the other side. I know Mr Malinauskas reasonably well, and I know he was concerned enough to put forward this particular motion at the time for South Australia. I welcomed it and said that, when it is good legislation, it should be supported. I am sure the South Australian Liberals will give it the credit it deserves. Just yesterday, again I found myself in the studio. I was asked a question about this particular federal legislation before the House today. Put on the spot, I said: 'Don't necessarily ask me this question; ask the parents of those young people who have been bullied to point where they felt it necessary to take their lives. What would they think? What would those families think?' To that end, I have to give credit to the Daily Telegraph and its editor, Ben English. They have been campaigning on this for some time. I know the shadow communications minister, the member for Banks, has just praised the opposition leader, and I share that praise. I know that the member for Dixon announced in June 2024 that a coalition government would implement an age limit of 16 for social media within 100 days of being elected. That's what he said at the time. I'm in the chamber at the moment opposite the member for Richmond—another Labor member. She served as a police officer on the Gold Coast for seven years. That's not an easy beat. She would know, as we all do—I look around this chamber and every one of us is a parent—that the first order of being a parent is to look after your kids and the first order of being a police officer is to protect your community. That is what this legislation is about. Is it perfect? No. But sometimes you have to let the perfect go to achieve the good, and there is a lot of good in this legislation. I am not being political, but, to be honest, I am a little surprised and disappointed that the speakers list is full only of coalition and crossbench speakers. I would have liked, expected and hoped that government members would have come in to speak about this, because this is too important to not get up on your feet, go to your microphone and talk about—not just for yourselves and not just for your own families but for the communities you serve. It is important legislation. I mentioned before the campaign that the Daily Telegraph has been running. In particular, they have been doing a documentary following a campaign called Charlotte's Wish. You can watch the video and read about that poor little girl, Charlotte O'Brien, who, at 12 years young, asked that her story be told to stop bullying and save lives. In a two-month investigation, the Daily Telegraph interviewed eight families who've lost children to suicide in the face of bullying and dozens of other people whose lives have been ripped apart by its devastating impact. So, to all of those people who will contact our offices and say, 'You're siding with Labor,' and that children who are aged 14 or 15 should be able to have social media: think of Charlotte O'Brien. Think of those parents who, particularly this Christmas and every Christmas from now on, will have an empty chair at their table. They will never, ever be able to live their lives as they would otherwise have. They will always have that hole in their heart and that emptiness in their soul because they have lost a child. In the English language, there is the word 'orphan'. It is a word to describe a child who's lost their parents. There is 'widow' and 'widower' for a spouse who's lost their loved one. There is no word in the English language for a parent who has lost a child. Do you know why that is the case? The reason that is so is that parents should not lose a child. They should not lose a child. It's not nature's way. It's not the normal thing. But the O'Briens and so many other families interviewed by the DailyTelegraph are people who belong in that category of parents who've lost a child. The investigation that the newspaper undertook uncovered a disastrous patchwork of school based policies, skills and enforcement to support families as bullying evolves and a tech driven wave leaves victims with no escape. And there is no escape. It's been a long, long time since I was at school—more years than I care to remember. But, when I went to school, there were bullies. There were bullies in the schoolyard and in the classroom. We were strapped to within an inch of our lives by the Christian Brothers. I probably deserved every one that I got, but that's by the by. I think I grew up okay. Once we got on the school bus and arrived at the front gate at home, however, the bullying stopped. There was no bullying. These days, a lot of kids have iPads, laptops and computers, and the bullying never stops. It's ceaseless. Whether it's bullying about how you look, what you wear, what your body shape is or just the fact that someone doesn't like you, it continues. I have to say, the member for Forrest has been a champion at having conversations and conferences about bullying. I say to every school group whose classroom I visit or who come into parliament: when you get social media, don't write something you wouldn't like to have said about yourself. Don't do it. It's wrong. Some kids cope better than others. Some kids are more resilient than others. Sometimes it's more than just friendship issues or exclusion issues, but it's those things and so much more. When we look at little Charlotte O'Brien, we see what a beautiful young girl she was. What a happy soul she seemed to be. Then, of course, Dolly Everett was just 14 when she took her own life. They were so young. Tilly Rosewarne was just 15. Lauren Rafferty took her own life on Mother's Day in 2021 at just 12 years old. The list goes on and on. The Telegraph came across helpless girls and boys who were told by their tormentors that they should kill themselves. They were told they were fat and ugly. They were called rats and monsters. We sometimes are unkind to one another in this parliament. There has only ever been one parliamentarian who has, sad to say, taken their own life, out of the more than 1,200 who have sat in the House of Representatives. We should be better, but this is a robust chamber of debate. The schoolyard is not. It is a place where kids should be nurtured and loved. They should be kids. I grew up reading Enid Blyton, playing with Matchbox cars and playing cowboys and Indians, and that's how I remember my childhood. Mr Wallace 265967 And that was at uni! Mr McCORMACK 219646 I didn't go to uni, thanks very much, member for Fisher. It's probably true to say I played with them for longer than kids would these days, but that's how I remember my life, and it was great. I try to instil that upon my three kids and my soon-to-be two grandchildren. That is what being a parent is about. These days, because of the fast-paced world in which we live, parents can't always monitor everything their kids are doing on their phones and on the internet. There are dreadful predators out there preying on these children. I think 16 is an adequate cut-off point. Yes, kids are very mature—much more mature than I ever was at 14 or 15. I think 16 is a good starting point. As I said, there is a bit about this legislation that can be improved and, hopefully, will be improved. I appreciate that, once the bill is passed—and, let's be honest, it will be; it may be modified in the Senate, but it will be passed—it could be updated as we go on. Rest assured that whatever we decide in the House of Representatives—or later on in the Senate—is calling these big tech companies to account. They make trillions of dollars off the back of our kids, our young ones and vulnerable people in society. They should be answerable. They should be accountable. As the shadow communications minister quite correctly pointed out, they'll say, 'It's all too hard; identification is all too difficult,' and all these things. But I tell you what: they can do a whole lot of other things with their technology, and I think it's just the right and proper thing to do. Like I say, they'll make all sorts of excuses, but they're making a lot of money. Going back to little Charlotte, she sent a photograph of herself crying to a friend and she wrote, 'I'm sorry.' Her friend, who knew Charlotte was distressed and being bullied at school, was frantic. 'Sorry for what?' she messaged before calling her repeatedly. 'Answer, please. Are you all right? Please tell me you're all right.' But Charlotte wasn't all right, and she ended her life that night. Many photographs of Charlotte have been published with her parents' consent, and, when you look at the photos of her, you just wonder why that life has been extinguished. Kelly O'Brien said her daughter will be with us wherever we go. Her parents have set up an online fundraiser for Kids Helpline, and that is a very good charity. If you can donate to it, please do. Her parents said they would never want us to be broken, in the wake of her 12-year-old daughter's suicide. At her funeral service, she was remembered as beautiful and kind. Of course she was. Every kid is. Even kids who are doing the tormenting and the bullying just need to be put on the straight and narrow. They need love like anybody else, but they also don't need to be subjected to what the internet often offers, and that is predators—people who would seek to do harm to them and who will groom them—and all sorts of nefarious websites and the like. I know that, even on some of those gaming sites, there is a messaging service. We need to look at all of these aspects of the legislation. It's pleasing too that Snapchat will be included, as it should be, because, in the wrong hands, all of these social media platforms can lead to tragedy, be it Instagram, Facebook, X—formerly known as Twitter—or whatever the case might be. We do not want to see the sorts of tragic circumstances that the Daily Telegraph has so profoundly and alarmingly published in recent weeks and months. I say again that this is important legislation. Not everybody will agree with it. People say that governments shouldn't be parenting our kids, and, in some aspects of that, I understand fully those parents' concerns, but our first priority as parents is to look after our kids and to provide a safe and healthy environment in which they can grow up. The first order of business for government is to protect Australian people per se and make sure they have the best possible society in which to live. This legislation helps to provide both. 12:51 Mr WALLACE 265967 Fisher I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 with a mix of relief and frustration. I'm relieved that this Labor government has finally legislated what the coalition, the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Flinders and I have been fighting for over a very long time, and I include in that the member for Banks, the shadow communications minister. I'm relieved on behalf of the desperate parents who have called for the government to step up on this issue, but I'm frustrated that it has taken so long, I'm frustrated with the lack of conviction from this government and I'm frustrated with the way that ill-informed proponents are seeking to conflate this legislation with other issues, such as parents' rights and privacy, which are, of course, very important. The member for Flinders and I, along with others, have just concluded an historic inquiry into social media through the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society. Over the course of almost a year, the committee heard testimony from over 200 families, experts, some so-called experts and victims-survivors, the majority of whom support age assurance as one tool to help keep kids safe online. The fact is that children should not be required to keep themselves safe on platforms which are inherently dangerous and which they lack the developmental capacity to navigate safely. We know that parents are the best judges of how their children should be raised. But what parents told us throughout the course of the inquiry is that they are at a loss as to what to do and how to navigate their parenting through this journey. It is plain to see from the evidence provided to the committee that big tech cannot be trusted to self-regulate in the interests of Australian users, particularly Australian children. The eSafety Commissioner said: 'Harder edged regulation is what's necessary. I don't know that there's anyone that can credibly say self-regulation has worked.' Reset Tech Australia warned that harm happens as governments wait for self-regulation and co-regulation to fail. The simple fact of the matter is that what we have been doing is not working. We need change, we needed change and we needed it yesterday. Now, those that would say that the status quo should continue are either living in a delusion or they are complicit. Research highlighted in the roadmap for age verification showed that nearly half of all 16-to-18-year-olds first encountered pornography before the age of 16, over a third of them through social media feeds, ads, messages and group chats. This is not the pornography of yesteryear; this is hardcore, violent, misogynistic pornography which is impacting upon what young people consider constitutes a normal sexual relationship. Early exposure to pornography can significantly harm a young person's sexual development and their mental health. In a public hearing on 28 June 2024, Tiktok representative Ms Woods-Joyce claimed that there is no pornography on Tiktok. On the same day, Ms Antigone Davis appeared on behalf of Meta as its vice president and global head of safety. She said, 'We don't have pornography on our site.' Let me just correct that statement. It is not just pornography. Paedophiles, predators, criminal gangs are using social media to sexually exploit and abuse young Australians, especially our young boys. In the 2022-23 financial year, the ACCCE, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation, received over 40,000—40,000!—reports of child sexual exploitation. The AFP charged 186 offenders with 925 child exploitation related offences. In the first six months of 2024 alone, the ACCCE received 560 reports of sextortion. These are just the reported cases. What about the thousands of cases where young men, young Australians and families who were too embarrassed to report them to authorities? The AFP shut down over 1,800 bank accounts linked to offshore organisation sextortion gangs. Evidence supplied to the committee named Meta, Snapchat, Tiktok, WhatsApp, Skype, Discord, telegram and so many other social media and digital platforms as facilitating abuse by predators. When asked how many child sexual abuse material reports were made by Australian end-users, platforms redirected their answers, proving adept at the politicians' pivot. The obfuscation and opaque responses to questions from this parliament showed that you cannot trust big tech to keep kids safe from sexual harm. At the same time, the use of algorithms is driving mental and physical ill-health. These social media companies advertise alcohol and vapes with targeted advertising. They exacerbate eating disorders and body image issues through fitspo and fad diets. They market gambling products, promote radicalisation and extremism, and facilitate foreign interference and antisemitism. We heard from the parents of eating disorder survivors and victims. We heard from recovered alcoholics and from the loved ones of those who had simply drunk themselves to death. And we heard from our intelligence agencies about the role of social media in amplifying and enabling foreign interference and social discord Heartbreakingly, we heard from the loved ones of those young Australians who took their own lives as a result of cyberbullying. We heard from Ali Halkic, whose son Allem tragically took his life after relentless cyberbullying by an adult perpetrator. Mr Halkic felt that, had he known more about the online danger his son was facing, he would have behaved differently in how he allowed his son access to a phone and to social media. We heard from brave mum Emma Mason, whose daughter Tilly Rosewarne took her own life at just 15 years of age, following a relentless campaign of bullying which catastrophically escalated on social media. I spoke about Tilly during the course of the inquiry into social media, highlighting her case as an example of avoidable harm. We've all heard the story of Dolly Everett. After a chilling and tormenting campaign of cyberbullying and physical violence, this promising 14-year-old student, who had the world at her feet, tragically took her own life. Dolly's brave parents, Tick and Kate, have worked hard through the Do it for Dolly initiative to raise awareness around cyberbullying. After Dolly's death, I convened a meeting of the Digital Industry Group, or DIGI, the peak body for these online platforms. I left that meeting feeling like I'd just met with big tobacco last century. The platforms have consistently refused to acknowledge their role in the harm perpetrated against young Australians. I promised then that I would be a thorn in their side. Since then, I've pushed for age assurance, restrictions, transparency and liability for these big tech companies. Australians can depend on one thing, and that is that the Leader of the Opposition and this opposition's shadow communications minister, I and the member for Flinders and all members on this side of the House will hold big tech to account. The question many have asked is: will age assurance fix these problems? Australians should be under no illusion: there is no silver bullet; there is no panacea. Keeping kids safe online will require a multipronged approach. However, we know that age restrictions and age assurance will slow down and deter some users who would otherwise have a free pass to inappropriate content and contact. There are elected parliamentarians, corporate shills and misinformed public spokespeople who continue to spout untruths about this issue. Let me remind Australians: just because you see something on social media—even from a trusted source—doesn't mean it's true. You have been misled by vested interests at the big end of town. Age assurance is not identity assurance. It is not new. It is a tool for parents; it is not a substitute for parenting. When you prove your age to purchase alcohol, access a discount or enter an adult store, your data is not stored. You are age-verified, not ID-verified. I want to send a huge shout-out to the member for Banks, the shadow opposition minister for communications, who secured an incredibly important amendment to this bill which means that no government can, under this bill—and nor can any social media platform, under law—require a user of a social media platform to provide digital ID or provide government ID in the form of a passport or a drivers licence. That will be expressly prohibited under this bill, and the member for Banks should receive a huge bouquet for securing that amendment to this bill. In her statement to the US Congress, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said that social media companies want you to 'believe that the problems we're talking about are unsolvable'. She said: They want you to believe in false choices. They want you to believe you must choose between connecting with those you love online and your personal privacy. The age-assurance trial should examine all options available to address privacy concerns and protect kids online. It is a balance which can be struck without Labor's dangerous digital ID proposals. The member for Banks, who has just walked into the chamber, has done just that. He's secured that amendment, and he should be applauded. The degree of self-interest from social media platforms that want us to think this is all too hard, the degree of self-interest from mental health groups that have been receiving money from social media platforms and that came into the social media inquiry, saying, 'It's all too hard; there's nothing to see here' is unbelievable. It's unbelievable that mental health groups who purport to look after the welfare of Australians could be bought with 50 pieces of silver. It's an absolute disgrace. Shame on you. Frances Haugen also said: When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms it caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seat belts, the government took action. We know the harm caused by social media companies as a facility for foreign interference, as a platform for predators and as an amplifier for extremism and psychological distress. It is time for government to intervene, because industry has proven to be complicit, complicit in perpetrating and perpetuating harm upon our most vulnerable. As Collective Shout put so well: We cannot allow large-scale reform to be scuttled by disagreements about the technical aspects. I congratulate the shadow minister and I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition for their leadership on this issue. And I commend the bill to the House. 13:07 Ms McKENZIE 124514 Flinders When I got to my feet in this place for the first time two years ago I talked about the trauma my electorate, my community and, indeed, my family had just come through. Between 2020-22 Melbourne endured 262 days of lockdown and 36 weeks of homeschooling. In my maiden speech here I said: My kids' generation is intrinsically digital. …   …   … Their access to information is limitless. …   …   … The 262 days of lockdown in metro Melbourne … embedded their generation's relationship with screens, social media and other online content. Whatever systems our households had in place to balance online time with offline time in the form of study, sports, sleep or social activity collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worse still, the school system became the dealer of the digital drug, putting laptops and tablets into every lounge or bedroom. I said: … data shows us that today's adolescents—24/7 connected to devices, addled by algorithms and autoplay—are showing signs of stress and, indeed, in some cases, distress. Self-control difficulties, impulsivity, family conflict, sleep disturbance, inactivity, concentration impairment and poor language development are often observed among those children whose technology use is above the recommended two hours a day. Of highest concern is the well-documented epidemic of anxiety and depression in teenage girls, which we know correlates with high use of social media. When I gave this speech in this place in 2022 I admit there were few fellow travellers on this topic. Now, there are so many—the Leader of the Opposition, who has been so clear, so determined and so persistent in relation to this issue; my friend the member for Fisher, who has carried his determination to see proper age verification for online gaming and pornography into age verification for social media, which we know, of course, is a means for sharing so much pornography and child sexual abuse material; and, finally, in the last month, the Prime Minister, who has met our demand to act to address the harm that social media is doing to young people. We know Australian children consume nine hours of leisure based screen time every day. That is the figure that the Australian Gaming and Screen Alliance will shortly publish—nine hours a day! Based on US studies, we estimate that half of that is dedicated to social media. That should come as no surprise because social media is designed for addiction, a feature which no-one has made much of an effort to hide. Indeed, Facebook's first president, Sean Parker, said in an interview with Axios in 2017: "The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'" "And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you … more likes and comments." "It's a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology." Earlier in his interview, he said: "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains." University professors and researchers started studying the effects of social media on our children in the early 2010s, shortly after this dopamine loop was embedded into the platforms. In their 2015 Atlantic essay 'The coddling of the American mind' Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff started to identify the behavioural, societal and cultural changes of the generation which had grown up with a smartphone in their back pocket. Chief amongst them was an obsession with safety—that is, physical and emotional safety, which included safety from people who disagreed with you. In their later book of the same name, they referred to the work by Jean Twenge—iGEN—which connected 'safetyism' to two attributes: the extension of childhood and the delayed transition into adulthood manifested in young people not getting their drivers licence or a job or a first boyfriend or a first girlfriend, not even drinking alcohol or having sex until well into their 20s. She also remarked an explosion in rates of depression and anxiety, which were first identified in 2012, especially for girls and young women. Jean Twenge's book iGEN, published in 2017, served as the first real scientific study of the impact of technology and specifically smartphones and social media and what it was doing to young people worldwide. Jean Twenge has visited Australia twice this year, the first to talk at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, where I spent a couple of hours with her talking through her work, and the second to talk at the Social Media Summit, hosted by the governments of South Australia and New South Wales last month. At these events she explained that psychological distress more than doubled in young Australian women aged between 16 and 24 between 2013 and 2020, and the percentage of Australian girls who feel lonely at school has almost quadrupled between 2003 and 2022. Similarly, boys have increased markedly from around seven per cent to a high of 17 per cent in 2018. In her presentation to the Social Media Summit, which you can watch on YouTube, she goes through the evidence proving that this plummet in wellbeing is directly related to social media and harm online. Her data was brought to life in the hearings of Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society. We heard testimony of parent after parent of how their confident, sensible, sporty, popular, hardworking, balanced, wise kids had gone down the social media slide into misery as a result of scamming, sextortion, bullying, ostracism and abuse. These were not inattentive parents. They had talked to their children about social media, tried to engage schools and other parents in addressing its worst effects, but no meaningful measures were taken to address it and these parents and the hundreds of thousands of silent parents that stand behind them are begging us for a solution. The question is: is this bill the right solution? Let's look at what the bill does. It refers to age-restricted social media platforms, social media platforms being one to facilitate social interactions online between two or more users, but with scope to reduce or expand the scope through legislative rules. At a minimum it will capture TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram and X, formerly known as Twitter. These services will now be obliged to take reasonable steps not prescribed by government to prevent persons under 16 years of age from creating or holding an account on the platform. The government has announced it will use rule-making powers to carve out messaging services, online games and services that support the health and education of users. And while I strongly support the latter, I'm not yet convinced about the former, but in the interests of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, this is a sensible starting point. It sends a clear message to the market that if you want to find a way to reach teenagers, you'd better find a better design for safer platforms with which to do it. Other platforms that will be exempted include Facebook Messenger Kids, WhatsApp, ReachOut PeerChat, Kids Helpline, My Circle, Google Classroom and YouTube. We will all need to keep a keener eye on the extent to which some of the most harmful behaviour on social media moves to these exempted platforms. For that reason, as well as others, it is sensible for there to be a two-year review of the whole scheme. The coalition's additional comments to the joint select committee report released on Monday recommended the establishment of a Joint Standing Committee on Online Safety, Artificial Intelligence and Technology, tasked with investigating the strengths and weaknesses in Australia's regulatory framework, legislative tools, industrial base and technological capabilities. This regulation cannot be set and forget, and the advent of generative AI will create new risks. In February of this year, a 14-year-old boy took his life after forming a deep emotional attachment with an artificial intelligence chatbot created on the character.ai website. Sewell knew that the chatbot wasn't a real person and that he was interacting with a large language model, but over months that LLM had become his best friend. 'Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love,' the chatbot, called Dany, wrote to Sewell. 'What if I told you I could come home right now?' Sewell replied. He picked up his father's handgun and pulled the trigger. From here it just gets worse. Today this parliament sends a big signal to big tech that it will not accept reckless damage being done to our young people. Could the bill be better? It is no doubt the case that the bill could be better. We on this side have been calling for this legislation for over six months, and at five minutes to midnight, two or three months from an election, the government brings in a bill with great haste and expects us to improve it. But, thanks to the deep industry knowledge and engagement of our shadow minister for communications, we will indeed improve it, removing concerns that this is a backdoor for the ubiquitous use of Digital ID, which the coalition opposed when it came through the parliament earlier this year. Equally, our shadow minister has ensured that no government issued identification, whether passports or drivers licenses, can be demanded. Furthermore, through that vigorous discussion, it has been confirmed that reasonable steps to ensure under-16s do not have accounts on platforms will not be targeted at 20-year-olds, 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds, 60-year-olds or 70-year-olds. Do not think the platforms do not know your age. By golly, they do. TikTok admitted this year it had removed 78 million accounts for under-13-year-olds, of which a million were in Australia. Instagram launched Instagram Teen Accounts overnight. Mind you, they didn't mention that they were going to do that at any time during the inquiry's hearings, but overnight they moved Australian teens under 16 to their teens platform. You see, it can be done. Additional privacy measures include preventing any material used for age verification being retained by the entity that does the verifying. Finally, I want to address what I feel has been the best argued point among those who have raised concerns about this bill and one with which I have enormous empathy: the question of whether this bill usurps parental authority. To this point, I have received many sensible contributions. One was from a constituent in my electorate of Flinders with whom I've been corresponding all weekend. I found her approach to this issue inspiring. I have edited her comments to protect her identity and for brevity, but she describes with such care the efforts she has made to protect her child from the perils of social media. She wrote to me: One of the rules for having this phone is she is not to join any social media groups like Facebook, TikTok or Instagram and I have taken the time to sit down with my daughter to explain my reasoning behind it. My daughter very eloquently had relayed back to me why it is not the time for her to access it and understands that she is not yet ready to be exposed to it. When it is the right time for her will (CURRENTLY) be my decision! The right time for her will NOT be the same time as the right time for my younger son. Right now, I do however sit with her and go through my own social media pages with her and discuss with her the elements of my feed. This has been enormously beneficial because it has shown her what she needs to look out for, the pitfalls, but also the benefits. The key is learning how to navigate it, what the pitfalls are and what to watch out for. This cannot be achieved without the conversations and without the access. Remove social media from their hands and they will get it anyway! But without the guidance from the parents, without the support, without the teachers from school teaching them how to properly navigate it. They will be ON THEIR OWN and will be prone to all the pitfalls, they won't have anyone to discuss this and very unlikely to seek help out of fear of getting into trouble. It is my responsibility to ready my child for this world. I have unbridled admiration for this mother, her patience, her diligence and her kind exploration of these issues, not to mention the remarkable presence of mind of her 12-year-old daughter. I recognise that parents who have made real and enduring efforts to control technology and guide the use of social media have a reason to feel frustrated with us. But this experience from my Flinders mum is the exception and far from the rule. The experience of most parents was beautifully put in a post by Heads Up Alliance, one of the many organisations and people, including News Corp's Let Them Be Kids and Melanie Pilling from the Courier-Mail, who have expressed so beautifully what parents have demanded of us. Heads Up Alliance said in a post: As a general principle, except in cases of neglect or abuse, it isn't the role of government to interfere in everyday parenting decisions. …    …   … Isn't allowing your 14-year-old access to Instagram just another of those parenting decisions that families should be free to make without government interference? This question sounds fair enough, but it rests on two significant assumptions … Firstly, it assumes that parents allow their tween and early teen children on social media of their own free will. In reality, most parents have serious reservations about social media use for their children. They feel pressured to allow it too early … …   …   … Case in point: a recent survey of over 20,000 parents conducted by the NSW government revealed that parents believe social media should only be given to children at 16.2 years of age. And yet, how many parents are able to actually follow through with that? This law won't take away parental autonomy. It would strengthen it because it aligns with what most parents already feel is right but find almost impossible to enforce. Secondly, the question assumes that social media is a healthy or at least benign activity, like playing piano or basketball. It isn't. Whereas music and sport nurture growth and development, social media is inherently harmful for the vast majority of children for the vast majority of the time. It disrupts brain development, interferes with sleep patterns and negatively impacts psychological well-being. It is addictive by design, exploiting vulnerabilities in young minds, pitting them against some of the most cunning and manipulative corporations the world has ever known. That survey surveyed 21,000 people, and 87 per cent supported implementing age restrictions for social media use, but that rose to 91 per cent when you limited respondents to parents of children aged five to 17. This week, in this place, we give parents what they have been asking for—something, anything, to strengthen their arm around the dining room table, a judgement call, a line in the sand, a clear signal that at 15 and below you do not have the mental wherewithal to resist the addictive qualities of the platforms and that the impact of social media harms can be so great and so resistant to reversal or a fix that, on balance, a ban until age 16 is the most reasonable option to mitigate its detrimental effects and to help build peer and cohort support among the parent community to disconnect from social media at this most pivotable time for brain and social development. I commend this bill to the House. 13:22 Ms TINK 300124 North Sydney In the 2½ years I've been in this place I have learned good government policy is created collaboratively, while poor policy is developed 'for others' through a top-down approach that does not involve those who stand to be most affected. Policy developed this way is frequently a recipe for disaster as unintended consequences swamp a good intention. I fear that's exactly what we are seeing in this Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, a piece of legislation that may be well intentioned but ultimately fails to deliver on its promise. Rather than you taking my word for it, I want to share with you the words of one of my youth forum participants. He compared this ban to a mayor of a city who, in response to high rate of car crashes, decides to simply ban cars rather than fix the potholes, make seatbelt laws or provide more driver education. In his exact words, he said: While that probably sounds silly, to young people like me, the government's plan to ban social media for under 16's applies the same logic—it doesn't fix anything and fails to recognize the benefits of social media for my generation. With those words ringing in my ears, then, I stand today to put forward a contention that the policy that the government is moving appears to be more about quick political wins than doing something meaningful for our kids. They are not fixing the potholes; they are just telling our kids there won't be any cars. In pushing this legislation, the government has shown it's not prepared to listen to the voices of countless human rights groups and mental health experts who are concerned that a social media ban will not only be ineffective but will be harmful to many young people. They are also indicating that they do not care that this reform threatens to stop young people accessing much-needed mental health services and information and to isolate them from social community, all while driving them to less-regulated services. Perhaps even more galling, the legislation relies on the promise of an age assurance that would be unenforceable and could require all users, including adults, to share highly confidential and private information with platforms. While this legislation claims to be about protecting young Australians, it doesn't hold platforms to account to make their systems or their content safer for younger people. It is not just the contents of this bill that is problematic, however; my community of North Sydney is equally frustrated by the government's determination to rush this legislation through parliament without proper scrutiny, particularly as this idea of a social media ban for under 16s was originally a thought bubble offered by the Prime Minister during a press conference where he was being peppered with criticism on why we are seeing inaction around the legislation for a ban on gambling advertising. While this legislation was rushed into the House last Thursday, was referred to a one-day Senate inquiry and will be pushed through the Senate this week, the gambling reform legislation is still nowhere to be seen. Insultingly, those who wished to make a submission to the inquiry were given just 24 hours and a two-page limit. Despite this, media reports today suggest over 15,000 submissions were received. But with just three hours to hear the evidence, even if just one per cent of the people who submitted were invited to give their evidence, they would have just two minutes to speak. That's not a proper inquiry; it's a tick and flick. The whole process around this legislation is disrespectful to the community and the experts in this space, and with more Australians than ever saying they do not trust our government, processes like this will not help. Trust is restored when you earn it by enabling transparency, deliberation and due process—all ideals from which the basis of a healthy democracy stems. I turn to the bill itself. This bill sets a minimum age of 16 for social media users. It defines an 'age-restricted social media platform' as one where a significant purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more users, where users can link to or interact with other users, and where the service allows users to post material. The bill gives the minister the power to create additional conditions that could narrow the definition of an 'age-restricted social media platform', and the government has proposed using this power to exclude services such as WhatsApp, YouTube, certain educational and mental health services, and online gambling services, yet the reasons these platforms are exempt are opaque. The bill establishes an obligation for providers to take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from holding an account, with platforms expected to introduce systems and processes to meet that standard, while the eSafety Commissioner will be given powers to obtain information about compliance, with penalties of up to $49½ million for noncompliance. The ban will commence no sooner than 12 months from royal assent, while the government continues to fund an age-assurance technologies trial. The bill aims to prohibit platforms from using information collected for age assurance for any other purpose. Finally, it will be subject to an independent review within two years of the ban taking effect to consider necessary changes. As the mum of three young adults, I'm very aware of the negative impacts of social media and the challenges of parenting in this digital world. However, I also recognise my children are digital natives and are very literate about how these platforms work. For this reason, I encourage everyone involved in this debate to ensure they are listening to the voices of young Australians when it comes to this decision-making process, rather than assuming that the grown-ups in the room know best. Prevention United's recent news survey found that young Australians rated fears about the future and cost of living as the largest negative influences on their mental health, while social media was ranked only 12th out of 20 factors evaluated. For this reason, I fear we are grabbing at this as the simple answer to a challenge that is far more complicated. After all, young people understand the good and the bad of social media better than anyone. Surely the issue here is not that social media as a whole is harmful but that these tools are designed to be addictive and that young people can be exposed to inappropriate content. If we want to solve that issue, then we need to do more than just impose an age ban. Ultimately, the addictive nature of social media platforms, coupled with the fact that there's no regulation governing their content, means that inappropriate content, harmful body images and mis- and disinformation will still be dished up, whether someone accesses that platform when they're 14 or 17. We also can't ignore the fact that social media is being used by young people in positive ways, including to help them find community around shared interests or problems in fostering belonging. In fact, a recent study by the Black Dog Institute found these platforms offer adolescents opportunities to enhance wellbeing by strengthening existing relationships and reducing loneliness. Crucially, social media is also increasingly being used as a gateway to access mental health services and information, with research conducted by ReachOut finding that nearly half of their youth service users access their services via social media, while the same number of young people use social media as a substitute for professional support. In this context, I can understand why many from the mental health sector are alarmed by the proposed ban. The truth is that the demand for these types of services already far outstrips supply, and closing an important substitute pathway could be disastrous. As the bill's own explanatory memorandum says, young people 'vary substantially in how they use social media'. I ask, then: why is the government introducing such a blunt instrument that fails to differentiate between positive or problematic uses of social media? It's difficult to see this bill as doing anything other than avoiding dealing with the problems of social media head on, as it ultimately fails to hold platforms accountable for their online environments. Separately, the government has announced plans to develop a duty-of-care framework to keep users safe, prevent online harm and hold platforms accountable. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The member will be granted leave to resume speaking when the debate is resumed. STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS 15 STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS Petrie Electorate 15 13:30 Mr HOWARTH 247742 Petrie I stand here today to say thanks to my electorate of Petrie. To all the men, women and children in my electorate: thank you. It's been an honour to be your federal MP once again in 2024. It has been my privilege to serve our community. I want to wish every single one of you a very merry Christmas and happy holiday season. I hope that over this period you're able to spend some time with your loved ones and your family. After all, life is about relationships, and the time spent with our family and friends is so important. I want to wish you well for that time. Cherish those people. As we head into the final sitting weeks of 2024, I hope to see you around the electorate in the next few weeks after this. Whether it's at local Christmas carols, twilight markets, school awards, church services, aged-care centres, local coffee shops or other businesses, I look forward to seeing you all. Please come up and say g'day. I look forward to coming back here in 2025 to work hard and advocate for the people of Petrie, the people of our community, on what matters most to them. I know that it's been tough over the last two-and-a-half years, with cost-of-living and homelessness issues. I'll continue to raise those issues for you here in this place. From my family to yours, and from me to you: merry Christmas and a very happy new year. Type 1 Diabetes 15 13:31 Ms MILLER-FROST 296272 Boothby I would like to give a shout-out to Ethan Greenfield and Hayden Supple, the JDRF ambassadors for Boothby, who are here in the gallery today along with their parents, Kylie Greenfield and Andrew Supple. They're here, along with hundreds of ambassadors from across Australia, on behalf of JDRF's Kids in the House program to advocate turning type 1 diabetes into type 'none'. They are campaigning for ongoing support for research into finding a cure for type 1 diabetes and into early diagnosis and intervention, so that when people find out for the first time that their child has type 1 diabetes it isn't when they are already in crisis in a hospital with a critically ill child. More than 130,000 Australians live with type 1 diabetes and eight more are diagnosed with it every day. Just over an hour ago, I was with the JDRF Blue Army in the Great Hall to hear Minister Butler make a fantastic announcement. The Albanese government is supporting the next phase of the search for a cure for type 1 diabetes, through a $50.1 million investment in the Australian Type 1 Diabetes Clinical Research Network. This investment will accelerate clinical research for prevention, treatment and a cure for type 1 diabetes. It will also establish a prevention screening pilot program, to test children for early-stage type 1 diabetes before the symptoms begin. This is a fantastic announcement. I thank Minister Butler—this really will change lives—and well done to the blue army. Infrastructure: Regional Australia 15 13:33 Mr JOYCE e5d New England Every now and then, I revert back to my accountancy days and try to get some details on numbers that the Labor government provide. They've given us an astonishing figure for the Inland Rail, which has blown out to $31 billion. I've asked them to give me some veracity for these figures, and I've received a beautiful document, which, on page 6, says 'is now about $31 billion'. That's about as far as we get. I asked Minister Rose Jackson, who said that the Dungowan Dam project had blown out to $1.1 billion, and what did I get? The same thing—one line, '$1.178 billion'. There was nothing around it. These figures have all the veracity of ambit scratchings on the back of a lavatory door. They are nothing. They will never, ever pass muster. Yet we're told to believe it, and when we ask for details that's what we get. It's not only about the big, but also the small. The $8.7 million that was going to go to the New England rail trail has been taken away. Tens of millions of dollars in capital investment has been revoked. Mayor Margot Davis has brought this to our attention. The Armidale Regional Council is gutted by the withdrawal of $5.41 million of funding, which could have gone into their tourism precinct. The Labor government has got to stop treating regional Australia as a joke. They have got to actually put their money where their mouth is and invest in this nation and in this infrastructure. Jacomb, Jennifer 15 13:34 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills Today I honour the life and legacy of the late Jennifer Jacomb, a relentless advocate, determined reformer and champion for the voiceless. Jennifer was a constituent of my electorate of Wills and served in the ADF. She passed away last month after fighting courageously against cancer, displaying her characteristic fight right to the end. Jennifer made it her life's mission to bring fairness and dignity to the most vulnerable individuals in her role as the Secretary of Victims of Abuse in the Australian Defence Force. Whether it was challenging institutions, calling on policy reforms or informing the wider community about the importance of an issue, Jennifer remained steadfast in her fight for change. She understood the power of listening and creating safe environments where victims-survivors could seek refuge and strength. She was their warrior, motivator, confidant and beacon of hope when hope did not seem possible. Jennifer was a proud member of the Labor Party since 1999. She contributed to our great movement for over 25 years, most recently based at the Broadmeadows branch. Before she passed away, she passionately spoke at the municipal forum held for Labor council candidates. She shared remarks about the hallmark of the party: working together as a team, not as individuals. She called for solidarity and collective action. I will miss her passion, energy, advocacy for members of the ADF, commitment to the party, wonderful insights, advice, support and, most importantly, all her friendship. I'll make sure her battle for integrity and equality lives on in her life's work and legacy. Vale. Rest in peace, comrade. Calare Electorate: Girl Guides 16 13:36 Mr GEE 261393 Calare Today I recognise the Orange Girl Guides, who are celebrating their 100th birthday. I had the honour of attending the Orange Girl Guides centenary celebrations at the Orange Guide Hall recently. Girl Guides offer girls aged five to 17 access to a great variety of activities and the chance to develop skills which last a lifetime while making new friends and having a whole lot of fun. It was terrific to be joined by Senator Jacqui Lambie at this wonderful community celebration. To make it an even more special occasion, we recognised some incredible leaders within the organisation for their outstanding contributions to guiding. Congratulations to Kathryn Anderson on receiving her Banksia Award and to Jessica Keppie on receiving her Boronia Award. Congratulations also go to district manager Yvonne MacRae, known by her guiding name, Possum, and Judy Hansen, who both received Flowering Gum awards for service to guides. All of these awards are very high honours. Patron Shirley Evans cut the 100th birthday cake, and senior guides Siam Elkington, Lily Wright and Akasha-Rei Taylor did outstanding work assisting with the serving of the centenary lunch. I'm sure all members of this House join me in congratulating Possum and everyone who has contributed to the wonderful success of Orange Girl Guides through the generations. As Girl Guides Australia founder, Betty Clay, once said, 'A girl can do anything she sets her mind to.' Here's to another century of empowering young women. 13:37 Mr GOSLING 245392 Solomon Paramedics are on the frontline day in and day out, responding to medical emergencies around our communities. St. John Ambulance (NT) have been taking care of Territorians for over 70 years, always ready to respond. Last night in Darwin, St. John Ambulance (NT) had their annual awards at the NT parliament. I want to congratulate NT paramedic of the year, Tarja 'Taz' Dick—no relation to our great Speaker! Taz is based down in Alice. She's an excellent leader, going above and beyond, and has a remarkable ability to connect with individuals in distress, providing comfort and reassurance during their most challenging moments. I met another fantastic Territorian today: Sharron Stewart, who is here with us today in the gallery. Sharron has been crowned Surf Lifesaver Volunteer of the Year. I thank her for her volunteer work in Darwin and in the Northern Territory more broadly. And I want to thank all of the volunteers. Whether they be ambos or surf lifesavers, volunteers are the mainstay of our nation, and, certainly in the Northern Territory, we really respect them and want them to have the best support possible. Our first responders are dedicated to caring for our country and making sure our Australians and Territorians are safe. Thank you all very much. Housing Affordability 16 13:39 Mr KATTER HX4 Kennedy We all know the Robert F. Kennedy quote: 'Some see the world as it is and say, "Why?" I see the world as it might be and say, "Why not?"' The abolition of all regulatory and legislative impositions upon land subdivisions would solve the problem of our housing costs, which the Treasurer in his first budget said were 'driving up affordability in Australia out of the reach of people'. In Charters Towers, my home town, under the mining act you simply went into the clerk and said, 'Can I do the subdivision?' and he said yes or no. That was all; there were no regulatory impositions whatsoever. Caveat emptor, which has been the law in the British-speaking Western world for the last 600 to 800 years, says: you buy it, you check out whether it has the services on it. They might sign a document saying, 'I know that there's no water or electricity connected to this block,' but that is the only regulation that you need to do a subdivision. At the present moment it's taking four years at a cost of $150,000 or $200,000 to process— (Time expired) Nurses 16 13:41 Mr 299174 Bennelong LAXALE () (): Nurses and midwives are the beating heart of our healthcare system. They're the ones we trust to care for us in our most vulnerable moments yet in New South Wales they are some of the lowest-paid in the country. That's just unfair and unsustainable. We are seeing too many of New South Wales nurses leaving for other states that offer better pay and working conditions. With two major public hospitals servicing Bennelong, this is a loss that my community cannot afford. Back in July I had the privilege of standing with nurses at Ryde Hospital, supporting their fight for better pay and conditions. Nurses at Ryde Hospital and Royal North Shore Hospital have contacted my office to tell me the same thing: they are stretched thin, they are working long hours under immense pressure and they deserve pay and conditions that reflect the critical role they play in our healthcare system. After the cruel wages cap of the former Liberal government in New South Wales, we have now seen meaningful pay rises for teachers and police officers, but now is the time to deliver for our nurses and midwives. A pay rise for them will be an investment in our future and in the future of our healthcare system, and into the wellbeing of everyone who needs it. I stand with Bennelong's nurses and midwives, because they stand with us every single day. Cook Electorate: Infrastructure 17 13:42 Mr KENNEDY 267506 Cook The lighting at Gwawley Park in Taren Point is substandard. I am very pleased that the AFL Sharks and the AFL Southern Dingoes have received a grant for new lighting on the AFL fields, which will bring it up to where it should be so they can train at night-time. They are very well-run clubs. They've got a great community and great spirit. It's not uncommon to go down there on a weekend and see multiple generations of families playing and training together, parents and kids, with a very well-run club under Mark Wilson. Unfortunately, on the other side of Gwawley Park, the Taren Point Titans are training under very poor lighting, which has not been upgraded. I am going to fight for the Taren Point Titans to also get their lighting upgrade funded. They are a proud and thriving community with 25 teams and 470 registered players, including 214 male players and 152 female players. I am committed to fight for this great club and to improve their conditions so the fields can be better utilised. I would like to recognise their executives: their president, Jay; secretary, Adam; senior vice-presidents, Craig and Leah; Treasurer, Julie; assistant secretary, Kim; and Brett Robinson. I will fight for you. Please sign my petition to upgrade the lighting at Taren Point Titans, so we can make Gwawley Park great again. Albanese Government 17 13:44 Ms LAWRENCE 299150 Hasluck ():  The people of Hasluck and Australia expect us to stand up for them here. They expect probity in politics. The Albanese government has created the National Anti-Corruption Commission, introduced significant reforms to privacy and electoral laws, and created a new Administrative Review Tribunal. They expect us to stand up for the preservation and protection of our fragile natural environment; the coalition opposes Australia's first environmental protection agency. They expect real action on climate change. We have delivered emissions targets in law, a safeguard mechanism with teeth, emissions reporting by our largest companies and the greatest investments in renewables in our history. Integrity, environment and climate change were some of the very real concerns that people in Hasluck raised with me on their doors during the last election, and I'm glad to be a member of a government, the Albanese Labor government, that has taken solid action across each of these portfolios—real action that is now bearing real fruit. In the coming months when I meet constituents in Hasluck and when my Labor colleagues meet with their constituents, we can hold our heads high and tell them that we have stood here for them, unlike the Liberals and Nationals. We have voted in their interests, and we have delivered. Capricornia Electorate: Infrastructure 17 13:45 Ms LANDRY 249764 Capricornia This year, 2024, has been a stand-out year for Capricornia. We began the year advocating for a PET-CT scanner at Rockhampton Hospital. Despite resistance from Labor, Central Queenslanders will soon have access to this essential health service. The shovel has hit dirt on other critical pieces of infrastructure this year. Work has begun on the Rockhampton Ring Road and the Rockhampton-Yeppoon Road upgrade, both former coalition government projects. These road infrastructure projects will ease congestion and ensure freight, travellers and industry can commute safely. Additionally, the Walkerston bypass is almost at completion. This $251 million road project will take heavy vehicles out of Walkerston and away from the local primary school, ensuring the safety of our schoolchildren. The Eungella and Pioneer Valley communities have triumphed in the fight against Labor's reckless rush to renewables with the axing of the flawed Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project. Meanwhile, Collinsville is set to benefit from improved telecommunications, with two new mobile towers on the way to ensure locals enjoy the same reliable services as those in metropolitan areas. Representing Capricornia is an honour, and I'm proud of the vital improvements that have been achieved this year. I wish the hardworking families, business owners and frontline workers of Capricornia a happy and safe Christmas, and I look forward to continuing to work hard for Capricornia in 2025. Workplace Relations: Amazon 17 13:46 Dr MULINO 132880 Fraser For many, Black Friday is a chance to find a great bargain. It has become the starting gun for Christmas shopping. But it's also a time when we should reflect upon the many people who work hard to make our Christmas shopping possible. These often-forgotten people work long—often unsociable—hours while multinational corporations like Amazon reap billions in profits. Amazon's workforce is highly casualised as the company emphasises efficiency and cost savings over security for its workforce. Amazon has been resistant to unionisation efforts, but the SDA and TWU have been fighting for workers rights ever since the business opened in Australia. These unions have received many reports of unreasonable target expectations and intense surveillance, prompting workers to skip bathroom breaks and to have to deal with heightened stress. These cases highlight the company's poor record on working conditions. Moreover, the SDA has given evidence to parliamentary inquiries that union officials and their members were surveilled when visiting sites. Amazon cite their advances in technology and innovation, yet they appear to have an antiquated approach to worker participation and worker voice. This government has backed in these campaigns with reforms to gig work, labour hire and casual arrangements. I support the SDA and TWU's actions in representing Amazon workers in warehouses and on the roads. This Black Friday weekend, keep in mind their campaign, Make Amazon Pay. Diabetes 18 13:48 Mr LLEW O'BRIEN 265991 Wide Bay My mate Sydney Ziebell is one of more than 13,000 young people in Australia who live with type 1 diabetes. I first met Sydney in Murgon in 2018. He's a bright, talented, intelligent young man and a strong and passionate advocate for juvenile diabetes awareness and research. Over the six years since I met him, Sydney has grown. He uses his unique lived experience to work with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to build relationships and advocate for more government investment into type 1 diabetes research, treatment and support programs. In the time since I first met Sydney, there has been good progress with government funding and strategic programs, like the Morrison government's 10-year National Diabetes Strategy, but there is still so much to do. That's why the work of the JDRF is so important. They have been instrumental in raising awareness, supporting research and advocating for new treatments and more government investment. Sydney's in the House today, in the gallery, and is a part of the JDRF's Kids in the House program. I'm pleased to continue to support Sydney in his fight to find a cure for type 1 diabetes. Great work, Sydney. Keep up the great effort, mate. Cryptocurrency 18 13:49 Dr CHARLTON I8M Parramatta Cryptocurrency is no longer just an emerging technology; it's an asset that is valued by millions of Australians. It represents a new frontier in finance, enabling innovation, efficiency and opportunity in ways we could not have imagined just a decade ago. The Australian government values this sector too, recognising its potential to drive economic growth, attract investment and cement our place as a leader in the digital economy. Digital assets are more than a tool for transactions. They're an asset class in their own right, offering new avenues for wealth creation, financial inclusion and secure decentralised systems. Australians have embraced these possibilities, with millions already investing in or using cryptocurrency in their daily lives. Our government is committed to getting this sector right. We're working to create a regulatory environment that on the one hand supports innovation but on the other manages risks and protects consumers. By collaborating with industry leaders, researchers and global partners, we aim to establish Australia as a safe, transparent and thriving hub for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. This is a critical moment for this sector, and together we can harness the value of digital assets to build a resilient, inclusive and innovative future for our economy. Nicholls Electorate 18 13:51 Mr BIRRELL 288713 Nicholls One of the bittersweet parts of being an MP is the process of AEC redistribution, and, in my case, a boundary redraw has occurred leading to losses and gains. At the next election, Nicholls loses the region of Rochester and its surrounds, as they'll become part of the Bendigo electorate. It has been an absolute honour to represent the people of Rochester and that region. It's a wonderful farming community producing a lot of milk and tomatoes. In 2022 the Rochester region suffered from terrible floods. Many lost their homes and their businesses, but the way the community rallied together and came back from the floods was emblematic of what makes regional Australia great. Also leaving Nicholls in the south are Nulla Vale, Pyalong and Tooborac. It's been wonderful to work with those people, particularly on land care initiatives. But for what Nicholls loses, it gains Kilmore, Kilmore East and the surrounds from the electorate of McEwen. The region of Kilmore is particularly close to my heart as I spent four of the best years of my life as a boarder at Assumption College, a school in Kilmore. It was a great time of sport, music, looking out at the rolling green hills and experiencing the occasional cold winter. To what Nicholls has lost: I have been so proud to represent you. To what it has gained: I will ask for your vote at the next election, and, if I'm fortunate enough to win, I really look forward to working together to build our communities. Hunter Electorate: Local Sporting Champions 19 13:52 Mr REPACHOLI 298840 Hunter The Hunter has produced a remarkable stack of professional and elite athletes, and I want to make sure we support the next crop of our sporting talent so our next generation of superstars can also come from the Hunter too. Participating in high level sport comes at a cost that most of the parents put their hands in their pocket for to get their kids to competitions. The Local Sporting Champions program provides financial assistance for young people to compete, coach or umpire in their chosen sport. The small grants make a significant difference to athletes and their parents, enabling them to see how far they can go. I want to congratulate our recent local champions: Zane Wilkinson, who competed in Wollongong at the National Youth Championships for soccer; Tyson Williams rode at the Fox Australian Supercross National Championships. Eli Slomka competed at the Judo National Championships. Keira Carlson will compete in the Chemist Warehouse Australian All Schools Athletics Championships in Queensland next month; finally, Jed Louis, who will ride at next year's bLU cRU Oceania Junior Cup Motorcycling Championships. Congratulations to all these local sporting champions from the Hunter. Sport has always been a massive part of the Hunter, and it's amazing to see so many young people from the area still competing at a higher level. Stay committed, train hard, try your best and you never know how far sport will take you. Bell, Ms Isla 19 13:54 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer Yesterday, I stood here in this chamber to mark the start of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and spoke about the horrific murder of Isla Bell. Isla Bell was just 19 and had her whole life ahead of her. It is alleged she was bashed to death at an apartment in Melbourne. It's also alleged her body was loaded into a fridge and moved several times before being dumped. On the day that Isla should have been celebrating her 20th birthday, it is alleged that her body was being hidden from view by men seeking to hide their crimes. Yesterday the man who allegedly moved Isla Bell's body in that fridge, to help conceal her death from police, was granted bail. He is out, in the community, today. Isla Bell deserves better, and, as political leaders, we cannot be silent when we see decisions like this. How can bail laws allow someone accused of such a serious crime to be out in the community? It is totally unacceptable and reflects weak bail laws, which Jacinta Allan's Victorian Labor government weakened even further in March this year. The Victorian Liberals have been rightly calling for stronger bail laws for months, and I back their calls today. Protecting women demands that we empower our justice system with stronger laws. Isla deserved better than this, and my heart breaks for her family and her friends today. Leader of the Opposition 19 13:55 Ms SITOU 298121 Reid The Leader of the Opposition has been in this place for more than two decades. He has had a variety of roles, and in those roles he has been a complete and utter failure. This is not my assessment; this is the assessment of experts. When he was health minister, he cut $50 billion from hospitals and tried to introduce a $7 GP tax. Australian doctors voted him the worst health minister in living memory. As home affairs minister, three independent reviews found that the Leader of the Opposition oversaw a migration system that was failing. His migration system was so riddled with holes that known criminals were allowed in, including Binjun Xie, who lived in my electorate. He ran a sex-trafficking ring, exploiting vulnerable women, for years. And what is extraordinary is that Binjun Xie was jailed in the UK for committing the same crimes. The UK authorities were stunned that the Liberals let him into the country. And it took a Labor government to kick him out. The Leader of the Opposition was the worst health minister, the worst home affairs minister and the worst Liberal leader. His own party room rejected him as leader, twice. He is divisive and extreme and we cannot let him run this country. Albanese Government 19 13:57 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina In May 2022, there were so much hope and expectation in this country. They had just elected a new government and they thought that nirvana was on the horizon. How disappointed they must now be! Buyer beware. They must regret putting in a Labor government. But, you know, only 32.5 per cent of first preference votes went to Labor. Conversely, 35.7 per cent voted for the coalition. It was one of the worst results for decades for Labor, but yet there they are: sitting opposite, governing this country—and governing this country very badly. But don't take my word for it; just ask any farmer—the farmers who then have to pay for foreign biosecurity for products to go on the shelves of Australia's supermarkets. Just ask the truckies, who are being burdened with yet another tax. Labor loves taxes! Government members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my right. Mr McCORMACK 219646 And then you have the farmers who are having their irrigation water taken away from them. How the hell are we supposed to grow food and fibre when you don't have water flowing down those irrigation channels? Ask any small-business person—and you've got time. After this week, you can go home and you can walk down your streets and you can ask any small-business person or any householder: 'Are you better off now than what you were before May 2022?' 'No,' will be the answer. Government members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order. Members on my right, there's far too much noise. The member for Higgins, the member for Boothby, the member for Gilmore and the member for Robertson, interjecting like that is highly disrespectful. Liberal Party of Australia 20 13:59 Mr BURNELL 300129 Spence We have builders on this side of the chamber and we have bulldozers across from us, in the form of the Liberals. My electorate of Spence alone showcases what everyday Aussies stand to lose through the destructive, divisive agenda of the opposition leader. The Liberals can't stand the fact that 91 per cent of taxpayers in my community are earning $1,217 more each year, on average, through Labor's tax cuts, because, to the Liberals, that's money which should have gone to the top end of town. The Liberals are breaking education in my community, wanting to shut down 100,000 fee-free TAFE places for everyday Aussies, because, to them, something that's affordable for families has no value. The Liberals are trying their hardest to block fixes to Australia's housing crisis, because, to them, an Aussie family keeping a roof over their heads is a vote lost. The Liberals want to blow up more than 70 per cent of energy generated in South Australia, importing a nuclear culture war that will make prices higher, because, to them, an Aussie who can't pay their bills is a political football in the making. This destructive behaviour from the Liberals is a trademark of this opposition leader. He will stop at nothing to divide Australians and take away support from those who need it most. But Labor will never stop fighting, and I will never stop fighting for my community. The SPEAKER 53517 In accordance with standing order 43, the time for members' statements has concluded. CONDOLENCES 20 CONDOLENCES Hodges, Hon. John Charles 20 Reference to Federation Chamber 22 14:12 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I declare that the resumption of debate on the Prime Minister's motion of condolence in connection with the death of the Hon. John Charles Hodges is referred to the Federation Chamber. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 22 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Economy 22 14:12 Mr TAYLOR 231027 Hume Prime Minister, after 2 ½ years of this Albanese Labor government, Australians have seen their standard of living fall off a cliff, with the biggest reduction since records began in the 1950s. We've been in a household recession for a record six consecutive quarters. This is worse for households than Keating's 'recession we had to have' and the disastrous Whitlam government. This weak Prime Minister is taking our country in the wrong direction. How can Australian families afford another three years of Labor? 14:13 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I'll ignore the rhetoric in that question from the shadow Treasurer. We came to office in 2022 with a number of challenges that we were facing. Global economic uncertainty was there, and a worldwide surge in inflation and energy prices. Inflation, when we came to office, had a six in front of it and was rising. Productivity was going backwards. Wages were going backwards, in real wages—and that was a deliberate design, of course, from the former government. Interest rates began to rise on the former government's watch as well. When it came to energy prices, we know that the person who asked the question hid the fact that there was a considerable increase on the way. We had TAFE and skills hollowed out. We had housing shortages. We had aged care at near breaking point—a crisis in aged care. We had bulk billing degraded. These are the challenges that we've had to face—the mess that we've worked to clean up. Now, instead of a six in front of it and rising, inflation has a two in front of it and is falling. Now, a million jobs have been created on our watch; the gender pay gap is at a record low; we have back-to-back budget surpluses for the first time in nearly two decades; and, instead of a $78 billion deficit, which was projected by those opposite, we've delivered a $22 billion surplus followed by a $15 billion surplus, making sure that we made a difference in putting that downward pressure on inflation. At the same time, we had cost-of-living relief, all of which was opposed by those opposite. Whether it be energy bill relief, cheaper medicines, free TAFE, cheaper child care or a tax cut for every Australian taxpayer, they were all opposed by those opposite—all opposed. Certainly if they had had their way, this reckless and arrogant opposition, things would have been worse. Things would have. People would have been in a much more difficult position if they didn't have their wages going up, their costs going down and inflation coming back to where it should be. The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Macarthur will just have a quiet question time. Housing 23 14:16 Mr LAXALE 299174 Bennelong My question is to the Minister for Housing and Minister for Homelessness. How is the Albanese Labor government working to get more Australians into housing, and what obstacles stand in the way? 14:16 Ms O'NEIL 140590 Hotham I really want to thank the member for Bennelong for this question. He is an absolutely staunch advocate for housing in his community, and he has runs on the board. While the member for Bennelong was a local councillor, he approved 17,000 new homes in his local area and 11,000 as mayor, and it's fantastic to see him here, bringing that advocacy to the national stage. Today is a good day for aspiring homeowners on low and middle incomes right across the country— The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Deakin will cease interjecting. Ms O'NEIL 140590 I'm really pleased to inform the House that our government's Help to Buy Bill has just passed the Senate. I want to acknowledge the work of my predecessor, Minister Collins, who developed this policy and set the stage for its passage through the parliament. This is good policy in a proud Labor tradition. The Help to Buy legislation will help 40,000 low- and middle-income Australians get into homeownership. We're talking about cleaners, childcare workers, nurses and disability workers—hardworking Australians who are right in the guts of our economy, who we in the Labor Party believe should get the keys to their own home. And that's what Help to Buy will do. We appreciate the support of those who have voted in favour of this bill, including the Australian Greens. I've had a little bit of constructive criticism to offer the Greens in recent days, but let's all agree: at least the Greens are showing a modicum of interest in housing policy in this country. The people who have really tapped out of this debate—the people who have gone completely missing—are those opposite. We see barely a flicker of interest from those opposite in housing policy. Now, this is not a new approach. I want the parliament to remember that, for the almost-decade that those opposite were in power, for most of that time they didn't even have a Commonwealth housing minister—that's how much they had retreated from this discussion. We have made a number of attempts to brief the shadow housing minister on the policy offerings that we've brought before this parliament. It's not that he can't find the time to come to the briefings; he won't even respond to our requests for a discussion. Those opposite— Mr Sukkar 242515 I don't need to be briefed on your disastrous policy! The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The minister is going to pause. The member for Deakin, I thought, was turning the corner, so we're just going to cease interjecting. The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The minister doesn't need to comment when I'm addressing the House—and that includes now; otherwise, I'll sit her down. The member for Deakin was interjecting on you, so I was trying to bring the House to order so that we can hear your answer. Ms O'NEIL 140590 Unfortunately, those opposite have blocked every initiative that we have brought forward to address the issues that Australians are experiencing with housing, but I'm particularly upset about what has happened with Help to Buy, because the coalition have said for a long time that they care about homeownership but just an hour ago in the Senate they came forward and voted against tens of thousands of cleaners, carers, nurses and teachers being able to own their own home. There is going to be a really clear choice at the next election on housing between a reckless, arrogant opposition of pessimism and a party of progress that is making a real difference to Australians' housing opportunities. Economy 24 14:20 Mr TAYLOR 231027 Hume Prime Minister, Deloitte Access Economics is forecasting the worst budget collapse in 50 years outside the pandemic. Last week, the Treasurer announced that Labor would raid the Future Fund to top up Labor's reckless spending. This week the Albanese Labor government is taking our country in the wrong direction. How can Australians possibly afford another three years of Labor? 14:20 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the shadow Treasurer for his rhetoric— Dr Chalmers 37998 And for just being you! The SPEAKER 53517 The Treasurer will cease interjecting. Mr ALBANESE R36 and, as the Treasurer has indicated, for just being a delight for the Treasurer to have as shadow! We do have a plan. Those opposite had a plan to take wages backwards. That was a key feature of their economic architecture. We have a plan for getting wages up, with increases, three of them, for people on the minimum wage. Remember back to the election campaign when I took out that $1 coin and argued that a $1 increase per hour was something that we would support if the Fair Work Commission chose to do so, and those opposite said it would wreck the economy and the sky would fall in if that occurred. That's the reckless arrogance from those opposite. What happens with workers isn't just their wages, but there's a range of ways in which we have put them up, whether it be the 10 per cent increase that early educators will get on 1 December, not long away now—from next week—the increase in aged-care workers to make sure that the system can continue to function or the lowest gender pay gap on record as a direct result of the fact that we have targeted feminised industries to give not just our thanks to those people who got us through the pandemic but a proper, decent wage and decent conditions. Then there are people I have met who have benefited directly from 'same job, same pay', including a miner who benefited by $34,000 and another by $27,000, meaning they are earning exactly the same as the people they are working side by side with. But it's not just that. As well as that, they are getting to keep more of what they earn, because we changed the tax cuts to make sure that every taxpayer, all 13.6 million of them, not just some, got a tax cut. In addition to that, we are bringing costs down through cheaper medicines but more bulk-billing, energy rebates and cheaper child care. All of that was opposed by those opposite. Inflation had a 'six' in front of it; now it has a 'two' in front of it and is going down. And, on top of that, we have delivered back-to-back budget surpluses, something those opposite couldn't possibly recognise. (Time expired) Housing 24 14:24 Ms COKER 263547 Corangamite My question is to the Prime Minister. How is the Albanese Labor government working to comprehensively address housing issues in our country, and has there been any opposition to this? 14:24 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the member for Corangamite for her question. Indeed, we have a comprehensive plan. Our $32 billion Homes for Australia Plan is about increased supply of social and affordable housing and about increased support for people who are renting, with increased rental assistance in the last two budgets. In addition to that, of course, we want more Australians to own their own homes. We have a plan to build 1.2 million homes by the end of the decade. We're training more tradies, we're funding more infrastructure and we're delivering more social housing, and we are seeing results. We have helped 120,000 people into homeownership sooner, twice as many as occurred under the former government. And this week two of our most important measures will be voted on in the Senate. Just before, Help to Buy passed the Senate with the support of everyone except for the coalition and One Nation. We think this will help 40,000 Australians on low incomes to buy their first home, getting more affordable rentals on the market. We would have helped those 40,000 Australians a year ago if those opposite weren't standing in the way, and now they have promised to get rid of it if they are elected to office. So first they stood in the way, and now they say they'll take it away. That's their approach to increased homeownership. Australians could have been in those homes right now, but they just said, 'No, no, no,' like a broken record. Opposition members interjecting— Mr ALBANESE R36 The Labor government that I'm proud to lead is turning promises into progress, delivering for every generation and delivering for every Australian. Those opposite just want to get in the way. I'll give you the big tip for those interjecting. Being reckless builds nothing. Being arrogant gets you nowhere. My government is determined to get things done. Those opposite, on the very day that the Senate has passed Help to Buy, are promising to take it away. They not only don't want to progress; if they ever occupy the treasury bench, what they want to do is to actually take Australia backwards and undo progress which is made, even though we know that shared-equity schemes have been successful in states and when carried out by other governments overseas. It's based upon a program that has operated effectively in Western Australia for many, many decades. The SPEAKER 53517 Before I call the member for Brisbane: the member for Deakin needs to cease interjecting, because he is now on a warning. I want to make sure he stays for question time, so he can work with me on that to make sure he remains, or, if he wants to interject, he won't remain. Climate Change 25 14:27 Mr BATES 300246 Brisbane My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, why are climate emissions higher under your government than when Scott Morrison left office? Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Order! Members on my left. The SPEAKER 53517 No, the member for Fairfax is warned. The member for Brisbane is entitled to ask his question, just like anyone else in the chamber, and he's going to be heard in silence. So no commentary for any questions when they're asked, no matter where you sit in the chamber. 14:28 Mr BOWEN DZS McMahon The answer to the honourable member's question is that they're not, and there'll be further evidence of that this week when we release the latest forecasts and projections and the quarterly inventory, as well as the Annual climate change statement, which is world's best practice when it comes to accountability on climate change. Our Climate Change Act institutes procedures both for setting targets and for reporting progress on targets, and we'll see that later this week. I'll tell you what does bring emissions down: it's governments implementing policies to see the right rollout of renewable energy, cheap and clean, across our country, and to bring emissions down in transport, as the minister for transport and I have done, with zero support from those opposite. We legislated that through the parliament because addressing transport and working with industry and electricity and agriculture is how you get emissions down in a meaningful sense. This is a government actually setting a clear policy agenda from the beginning, set by the Climate Change Act and supported by the safeguard reforms, by the new vehicle efficiency standard and by our Capacity Investment Scheme, all of which has been done by this government and all of which has been opposed by the opposition, who want to stop all that while they wait for their nuclear fantasy to become a reality. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS 25 DISTINGUISHED VISITORS Bradshaw, Ms Olivia Rose, Carey Baptist College, Kids in the House, Solomon Islands: Parliamentary Delegation 25 14:29 The SPEAKER 53517 I'm pleased to welcome a delegation from the Solomon Islands led by the Hon. Jimson Tanangada, Minister for Police National Security and Correctional Services, and the Hon. Clezy Rore, Minister for Justice and Legal Affairs. I notice we have students from Carey Baptist College, from the electorate of Burt, and also the winner of this year's My First Speech competition for year 12, Olivia Rose Bradshaw. And I'm very pleased to inform the House that present in the gallery today are the many participants of Kids in the House, who are here today with their parents and representatives from JDRF, a leading supporter of type 1 diabetes research in the world. Welcome to you all. Honourable members: Hear, hear! 14:30 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler on indulgence—It was absolutely delightful to welcome these fine young Australians from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in the Prime Minister's courtyard earlier today, their parents and also those people from the foundation. These young Australians are an inspiration. I've been meeting with them since it was instituted 20 years ago; we instituted a process in this parliament whereby they would meet with their local members either here or in their electorate and educate us about the experiences that they have in dealing with diabetes and the courage that they show. Every one of them never tells you a hardship story; they're always up beat. It's always a pleasure to meet with them. I'm very proud that my government announced $50 million in funding for the foundation today to coincide with their visit. It's an important research area. I know one member of my staff has been in that situation and is dealing with diabetes and leading a very fulfilling life. I did want to join with the Speaker in welcoming particularly the young Australians but also their parents and carers and others who are here today. 14:32 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson on indulgence—I join with the Prime Minister in welcoming all of those participants in the JDRF program who are in the House today. As the Prime Minister says, we've been meeting with people, particularly children, effected by type 1 diabetes for many, many years in this place. I want to give a shout-out to Alyssa and her mum, Linda, from my electorate. I saw them on the plane on the way down on Monday. As members of parliament, we have had engagement with young advocates, as they refer to themselves, who are really telling us about what it is to live with type 1 diabetes and what it means for their parents—the uncertainty, particularly as the kids get older, with the complications of life and sport and being away from home and wanting to go to parties, travel et cetera. I just encourage all Australians to jump on the website to understand the differences between type 1 diabetes and type 2 and understand the real concern that every Australian should have with making sure that we can find a cure for type 1 diabetes. I say thank you very much to everyone for being in the House today. We welcomed and supported and announced our commitment to the $50 million worth of funding as well. One of the pleasures I had as health minister was to put a lot of money into medical research for type 1 diabetes. We absolutely must work with all of the leading collaborators around the world, the best researchers, to make sure that we can find the cure to change the lives for those young people in the House today, in Australia and right across the world. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 26 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Housing 26 14:34 Mr BURNS 278522 Macnamara My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government investing in building more homes and making housing more affordable for Australians, and what obstacles are standing in the way? 14:34 Dr CHALMERS 37998 Rankin The member for Macnamara is a real champion for renters and first home buyers in his beautiful, vibrant part of Melbourne. I thank him for the question. Housing is one of the defining challenges in our economy. It's one of the substantial pressures on people right now, and that's why it is a big priority of the government to address this challenge. When we came to office, as the COVID report laid bare, the housing construction pipeline was a mess. The report that the health minister and I released made really clear that HomeBuilder was pulling demand forward and adding to inflation while supply chains weren't up to scratch. Partly because of that and partly because of other pressures, we just don't have enough homes in our communities, and that is putting pressure on costs and it is putting pressure on those communities. Rents have been one of the biggest drivers of inflation but they would be higher still were it not for the two substantial increases in rent assistance that we have delivered as a government. These challenges in the housing market didn't just pop up in May 2022 and they will take time to sort out, but we are doing our bit as a government. We are investing more in housing than any government ever has, more than 10 times what those opposite invested in almost 10 years. This commitment to investment in housing is a tribute to ministers O'Neil and Collins, the Prime Minister and others. In our first budget we had the Housing Australia Future Fund, Help to Buy and the housing accord; in our second budget, tax breaks for Build to Rent; in our third budget, tackling infrastructure bottlenecks; in the last two budgets, increases to rent assistance, and big investments in skills at every opportunity. That is because we have an ambitious target to build 1.2 million homes in five years. It will be hard but we can get there if everyone does their bit, and we are doing our bit. The states need to do their bit, as do the local governments, the peak groups, the builders, the investors, and there is a role for the Senate as well, as we know, this week. We call on the senators to pass our Build to Rent changes this week. If those opposite really cared about housing and the cost of living they would support this investment. But we know they are a risk to housing because we know their record. They made a mess of the pipeline, they voted against more homes and they cut investment in housing at the worst possible time. We know from their behaviour today and in the Senate this week that the biggest risk to housing and the biggest risk to household budgets is a coalition government. This side of the House is getting inflation down and wages up, we are strengthening Medicare and building more homes, and we welcome the progress made in the Senate this week in that light. Economy 27 14:37 Mr DUTTON 00AKI Dickson My question is to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister promised before the last election that Australian families will be better off under a Labor government. But under Labor, groceries are harder to buy, rents and mortgages are up, and energy is more expensive every month. Now with Labor's attempt to raid the nation's piggy bank—the Future Fund—this week, an incompetent government is taking Australia further in the wrong direction, looking more like the Whitlam government every day. How can Australian families and businesses possibly afford another three years of Labor? The SPEAKER 53517 Order! The member for Fremantle is warned. I don't know how many times I have to tell people, but we are going to keep doing it the right way. 14:38 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler Well, that wasn't the tightest question that I have heard in this place but I will do my best and I am sure that it will be relevant. The fact is, when we came to office, real wages were going down and now they are going up. Four quarters in a row they have gone up, not by accident but by design, just as they went down by design as a key feature of the economic architecture of those opposite. Under this Labor government, wages are going up as a result of our deliberate design, our policy, our legislation. Whether it be same job, same pay or whether it be specifically dealing with those sectors that were struggling to keep workers—let alone attract workers—such as early childhood education and aged care workers, we have made a substantial difference. In terms of the question that was asked about costs and cost of living, the fact is the measures that we have introduced have all been opposed by those opposite. Whether it be cheaper medicines, more bulk-billing, energy rebates, cheaper child care, tax cuts for every single Australian worker and taxpayer, they have all been opposed by those opposite. We know people are under pressure. We know there's more to do. The difference between us and them is that they acknowledge that people are under pressure but want it to be worse. They want no support for them and no cost-of-living relief. They want lower wages and higher inflation. Those opposite also wouldn't have assisted by producing budget surpluses. How do we know that? Because there projections were there—a $78 billion deficit. They produced a budget in March, just two months before the election, which just showed red ink forever, with no budget surpluses. We have worked hard through the Expenditure Review Committee to make a difference—to bank any of the upward figures being forecast, but to make a difference. The real question those opposite have to answer is: how would any Australian have been better off under them? Would they have been better off with lower wages under them, more expensive medicines, less bulk-billing, fewer houses, less rent assistance, no free TAFE, no HECS debt relief and a privatised NBN? Those opposite have no positive plans whatsoever—just reckless arrogance in their approach to the pressures that Australians are under. We're about acknowledging it but doing something about it. (Time expired) Housing 27 14:41 Ms TEMPLEMAN 181810 Macquarie My question is to the Minister for Social Services. What impacts are the Albanese Labor government's back-to-back increases to the maximum rates of Commonwealth rent assistance having on rents? What alternative approaches are there? 14:41 Ms RISHWORTH HWA Kingston I would like to thank the member for Macquarie for her question. Of course, our government recognises that Australians are doing it tough, with Australia's housing challenges having been decades in the making. That is why our government is responding with a $32 billion housing plan, which is building more homes, helping people to buy homes and getting more social and affordable homes into the system. As part of this plan, we've acted immediately to deliver significant increases to Commonwealth rent assistance, providing more support to manage rental pressures. We have delivered substantial back-to-back increases to the maximum rates of rent assistance for the first time in more than 30 years. When combined with indexation, this means that our rent assistance has increased by 45 per cent since the Albanese government was elected. Importantly, our rent assistance increases have had a positive impact on moderating rents across the board, with the ABS data showing that rents would have been higher without our measures. Our increases to rent assistance are making a real difference to people on the ground. Take Debbie from Tasmania, who said that her rent assistance increases were making her rent more affordable for her as a single pensioner, allowing her to spend less on rent and be better off, or Belinda, a carer from Seaford in South Australia, who told me that the extra rent assistance had come at a very good time to help her with her rent increases. She said it was making a big difference, along with everything else our government was doing. I've been asked about alternative approaches. While our government is investing in rent assistance to help with cost of living, those opposite have no plan to help with the cost of rent and housing. Of course, those opposite had almost 10 years in government and made no substantive increase to rent assistance and took no action on housing in this country. Now we have the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer declaring that our government spending on rent assistance is reckless and wasteful spending. Well, I'll tell you what's reckless and wasteful: it's this Leader of the Opposition, who has a plan for $315 billion of cuts. That's cuts to rent assistance and cuts to housing. This Leader of the Opposition is a risk to living standards in this country. When it comes to housing, we are building and they are blocking. Only Labor—and they don't like to hear this—has a plan to build a better future for this country. Opposition members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 Member for Hume, I'm just going to ask you to cease interjecting, as you are responsible for the MPI proceeding. We're going to make sure that there are no more interjections because I'm sure the parliament does want the MPI today. Business Insolvencies 28 14:44 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer My question is to the Prime Minister. Last month saw the highest number of Australian business insolvencies of any month on record, with 1,364 businesses going bust. Since this Prime Minister took office, over 25,000 Australian businesses have gone insolvent. Behind every one of those 25,000 businesses is an owner who has gone broke and workers who have lost their jobs. This weak Albanese Labor government is taking our country in the wrong direction. How can Australian families possibly afford another three years of Labor? 14:45 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler The facts are just wrong that the deputy leader has put forward. It is half the level it was under John Howard's government, and the minutes of the RBA's monetary policy meeting from 24 September said this: The cumulative level of insolvencies was still below the pre-pandemic trend … Mr ALBANESE R36 Who was in government pre pandemic? Those opposite. So go and have a look. The RBA governor, appearing before the House Standing Committee on Economics in August, said, 'It's not at historical highs.' She said it very clearly. The SPEAKER 53517 The Prime Minister is answering the question. He couldn't be more direct with information to members. I was careful to make sure the Deputy Leader of the Opposition was heard in silence, so how about everyone gets a fair go? The deputy leader can help the House by ceasing interjecting. The Attorney-General can add to that cause by ceasing interjecting so we can listen to the Prime Minister. Mr ALBANESE R36 I was quoting Michele Bullock and her appearance before the House Standing Committee on Economics. She said this: In fact, if you look at the trend of insolvencies over time, we're not even back to where we were pre-pandemic, trend-wise. That is just the RBA governor—just someone fact-checking the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. But I'm asked about the last month. Well, I'll tell you what we've been doing in the last month and, indeed, in the last two weeks that this parliament has sat: free TAFE legislation, opposed by those opposite because apparently they don't value it, which explains why they don't support Medicare, TAFE, public schools or public hospitals; fixing HECS indexation for a fair go for young people; the most significant aged-care reform in a generation; Future Made in Australia, with production tax credits introduced to make a difference; and protecting our children with the social media reforms. We are delivering for every generation of Australians: for older Australians, by strengthening aged care; for families, with more housing and more help to buy a home; for students, with free TAFE and HECS debt relief for students; and for our children, by protecting them from the harms of social media. That's what we've done in just this fortnight. What did those opposite do? They support privatising the NBN and won't support it staying in public hands; they want to increase migration and won't support the sensible measures put forward; they want to stop free TAFE; they want to protect dodgy private education providers, when they're not going to fundraisers for them; and they want to prevent Australians buying homes. Compare the pair, because next year that's what Australians will have the opportunity to do—an optimistic government, working for Australians to make life easier, or those opposite, working every day to make things harder because they think that advantages them. (Time expired.) Education 29 14:49 Dr GARLAND 295588 Chisholm My question is to the Minister for Education. How is the Albanese Labor government providing cost-of-living relief and building a better and fairer education system, and what's getting in the way? 14:49 Mr CLARE HWL Blaxland I thank the champion member for Chisholm for her question. Tonight the Senate will vote on three important education bills—bills that will make our education system better and fairer, and bills that will provide real cost-of-living relief for early educators, for students and for three million Australians with a student debt. The first of those bills will deliver a 15 per cent pay rise for some of the most important workers in this country, and some of the most underpaid: our early educators. As the Prime Minister said, that will start rolling out from next week—just ahead of Christmas. Guess what the Liberal Party said about a 15 per cent pay rise for some of Australia's lowest-paid workers? They called that 'dodgy'. The second bill that will be voted on tonight increases funding for our public schools. That'll help to turn around the drop in the number of kids finishing high school by tying that funding to real and practical reforms like phonics checks and catch-up tutoring. Guess what the Liberal Party says about extra funding for public schools and those reforms? They say that is the wrong priority. The third bill the Senate will debate tonight will provide real cost-of-living help for nursing students, for teaching students, for midwifery students and for social work students by providing them with a bit of financial help while they do their prac. That same bill will wipe $3 billion of student debt for more than three million Australians. If we win the next election, we will cut student debt even more—by 20 per cent for every one of those three million Australians. Guess what the Liberal Party think about that? They say that's unfair. They say that would be a terrible thing to do. There's a bit of a pattern here. The Liberal Party hate everything that's going to make our education system better and fairer. They attack every bit of help that we're giving Australians with the cost of living. The Liberal Party might not want to give early educators a pay rise, but we do. The Liberal Party may not want us to invest more money in our public schools, but we do. The Liberal Party may not think it's a good idea to provide financial help for teaching students, nursing students, midwifery students and social work students, but we do. And the Liberal Party may not want to reduce the student debt of three million Australians across this country, but we absolutely do. Cost of Living 29 14:52 Dr WEBSTER 281688 Mallee My question is to the Prime Minister. Foodbank's Hunger report 2024 has found two million Australian households are experiencing severe food insecurity. This means they skipped meals or ate less because they could not afford enough food, and the situation has deteriorated compared to the 2022 results. This weak Albanese Labor government is taking our country in the wrong direction. How can Australian families and businesses possibly afford another three years of Labor? 14:53 Ms RISHWORTH HWA Kingston I thank the member for her question. Of course we have been very focused on the cost-of-living pressures that Australians are facing. We understand that people are doing it tough, and we are responding with cheaper medicines and cheaper child care. When it comes to supporting those particularly doing it tough, we have had a base rate increase to JobSeeker, we have record increases in Commonwealth rent assistance, and we have extended the single parenting payment to those with children up to age 14. When it comes to food relief, we really appreciate the work that our non-government sector does right across the country. We have actually provided extra funding in this budget to support emergency relief and other important support—financial counselling. I was very proud to deliver, for example, the industry funded model—something that those opposite couldn't deliver. I was able to deliver the industry funded financial counselling model, which we now have organisations contributing over $30 million to. We will keep looking at all the ways that we can support people with cost of living, whether that's through emergency relief, food relief or, importantly, the cost-of-living measures, including tax cuts, to every single taxpayer—something that those opposite were never going to do. Aged Care 29 14:54 Mr LIM 300130 Tangney My question is to the Minister for Aged Care and Sport. How will the Albanese Labor government's historic aged-care reforms deliver dignity and quality to aged care? 14:55 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley I thank the member for his question and for the way he never stops fighting for older people in his electorate. The royal commission found that previous governments had brought an appalling level of ambivalence, timidity and detachment to their approach to aged care. That ended with the election of the Albanese government. From day 1, we took action. The very first act of the 47th parliament was passing aged-care reform legislation, beginning the process of putting security, dignity, quality and humanity back into aged care. Because of these reforms right now, there is a registered nurse onsite in aged care 99 per cent of the time, or 23½ hours out of 24 in Australia. Older Australians are receiving an additional 3.9 million minutes of care every single day, 1.7 million of which are delivered by a qualified and registered nurse. There have been statistically significant decreases in the proportion of residents experiencing polypharmacy, antipsychotic medication use, falls that result in major injury, use of physical restraints, significant unplanned weight loss and consecutive unplanned weight loss. For the first time, the prevalence of one or more pressure injuries is declining over time. We have made aged care more transparent, with star ratings for residential care empowering older people and their families to make informed decisions. We have increased government investment in residential aged care by 58 per cent, and we've delivered a $15.1 billion pay rise for aged-care workers. The addition of the Dollars to Care program to start-rating profiles hold providers accountable for the way they spend their budgets. Of course, this week, the parliament passed our historic, rights based Aged Care Bill, the most significant aged-care reform in 30 years. From 1 July 2025, the new act will create a rights based, person-centred aged-care system. The Albanese government will deliver 107,000 packages in the next two years, a record number and the largest-ever release of home-care packages. Here's how the industry has responded. The Council on the Ageing has said that the act will deliver long-awaited rights for older people that put their voices front and centre. The Older Persons Advocacy Network said that this act will build a safe, high-quality, financially viable aged-care sector for generations to come. RSL LifeCare said the new act is a pivotal moment for veterans and seniors in Australia, ensuring the care of providers not only meets expectations but empowers individuals to live with greater choice. Catholic Health welcome the seminal reform, which will help deliver quality and sustainable aged care for all Australians. Health Care 30 14:58 Dr SCAMPS 299623 Mackellar My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. My community of Mackellar is served by the only public-private partnership hospital in New South Wales. Healthscope, which runs the Northern Beaches Hospital, has recently terminated the contracts of the private health insurers who they believe are failing to adequately reimburse patients for their care. This means my constituents will either have to pay significantly more for their private care or travel to other hospitals. Will the government support the AMA's call for a private health system authority to resolve such disputes and ensure my community is not left in the lurch and paying big bucks for their health care? 14:58 Mr BUTLER HWK Hindmarsh I first of all add my welcome to the Blue Army kids in the House, particularly to Theo and his mum, Julie, from the Western Suburbs in Adelaide. Theo is a terrific soccer player. He plays midfield right. He played for the blue team this morning against the parliamentarians. It pains me to say that some of our parliamentary colleagues are particularly dirty players! But still the kids won, and so they deserved to win. The member asked a very important question. I want to give a bit of background to a situation I know is concerning a number of members, about the insurance funds that she mentions. We have a mixed system here in Australia, as the member knows, where Medicare sits alongside a private system, with private hospitals funded in large part by private health insurers. They conduct about 70 per cent of surgery in this country and a range of other very important services. That system essentially functions through contracts negotiated between the insurers and the hospitals, on the other hand. That commercial tension has for a long time delivered competition and efficiency, which, ultimately, has been to the benefit of patients. But, like many sectors, this sector has suffered a price shock from COVID, and there are a range of other changes happening. There has been a shift away from overnight stays to more day surgery, which impacts the business model of many hospitals, and there have been other things as well. As a result, I asked the secretary of the department to conduct a health check on this sector. Insurers, private hospital operators, the AMA and patient groups were part of that. It was very constructive. I've published a version of that health check, and I've asked the secretary to keep that forum going. It will discuss some short-term options for reform of this sector very soon, as well as some long-term ideas that include the AMA idea that they have been touting for some time now: a different regulatory system. In the meantime, I will say this: both these two companies, Bupa and Healthscope, are large multinational companies that receive, either directly or indirectly, billions of dollars in taxpayer support through the insurance rebate and other means, as well as hard-earned money from fund members. They've got their commercial interests, but I make the point again that, given that level of support and the privilege of operating as part of Australia's healthcare system, I expect them to put patients first. Healthscope has given 90 days notice of an intention not to be part of Bupa's operations. They need to get back to the table. They need to fix this because the ultimate losers are going to be members of those funds who would be left having to pay vast out-of-pocket expenses. So I say again: get back to the table and fix this. Economy 31 15:01 Ms MASCARENHAS 298800 Swan My question is to the Treasurer. How is the Albanese Labor government's responsible budget management helping in the fight against inflation and easing the cost of living? How does this compare to other approaches? 15:02 Dr CHALMERS 37998 Rankin Thanks to the member for Swan for her question but also for the really quite remarkable representation she provides to her community here in this place. As the Prime Minister has pointed out a couple of times today, when we came to office, Australians were going backwards due to a combination of higher and rising inflation and falling real wages. We inherited huge deficits and a trillion dollars of Liberal debt, and we've been working hard to clean up the mess. Inflation has more than halved, and real wages are growing again. We've recorded two consecutive surpluses for the first time in almost two decades. The Governor of the Reserve Bank said that that's helping in the fight against inflation, and we've also shaved off $150 billion in Liberal debt. But we know that people are still under pressure, and we know that the pressure on the national budget is intensifying rather than easing, and these are the points made by the Deloitte report which was released overnight and which talked about the impact of a slowing Chinese economy, for example, or a weakening in our labour market and what that means for the budget. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Casey is warned. Dr CHALMERS 37998 It remains the case that this government has overseen the biggest positive turnaround in the budget in a parliamentary term in Australian history. We have turned two big Liberal deficits into two big Labor surpluses, and that is a powerful demonstration of our responsible economic management. That's why Deloitte made two points. First, Deloitte acknowledged our fiscal discipline and said we deserved credit for banking upward revisions to revenue. They also said in their report that the soft landing that we are seeking is looking likely in our economy. Those are two points that Deloitte made in their report. We have made it really clear that there are pressures on the budget that we are working in a responsible and methodical way to deal with. Opposition members interjecting— Dr CHALMERS 37998 I wanted to give those opposite, who are chirping away, an example of these pressures on the budget. When the mid-year budget update is released in December, one of the biggest increases in spending will be for veterans. That's because of the work that we have done to make sure that veterans are getting their claims processed and getting the support that they need and deserve after a lifetime of service. So what you'll see in the MYEFO is a big increase in funding for veteran support. Those opposite describe looking after veterans as 'wasteful spending'. They think it's wasteful spending. This shows us, once again, what a risk they are to the household budgets of people right around this country. We are increasing support for veterans. That will be one of the reasons why there's a deterioration in the budget. Those opposite don't support it, and that shows again what a risk they are to the budget and to household budgets right around Australia. The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Herbert was continually interjecting during that answer. He will leave the chamber under 94(a). I simply can't have non-stop interjections in an answer. It's ridiculous. The member for Herbert then left the chamber. Cost of Living 31 15:05 Mr PIKE 300120 Bowman My question is for the Prime Minister. Julie from Macleay Island, in my electorate, has told me, 'I can't get past the expense of food and just how quickly the price of two bags of groceries has risen. I didn't feel so poor a few years ago, and I could save for items I needed for the house, not now.' This week the Albanese Labor government is taking our country in the wrong direction. How can Australian families and businesses possibly afford another three years of Labor? The SPEAKER 53517 The Treasurer is warned. It's the same rule for everyone about interjecting before someone starts. 15:06 Mr ALBANESE R36 Grayndler I thank the member for his question. I'm asked about two things: what we're doing this week, in the last week, but, also, about cost-of-living pressures, which we understand. Julie, along with a lot of Australians are under financial pressure. We understand that. That's why we're acting. But, what I hope you said to Julie, when she raised it with you, was that you voted against her getting—if she's from Queensland—from $1,000 between the federal government and the state government of Steven Miles in energy bill support. I hope you said that you voted against it. I hope you explained to Julie, if she's a worker on a low income, that you opposed her getting a tax cut. Not only did you oppose it but you also then said you'd reverse it. Then your leader said there should be an election on the basis of it—that's how hostile you were to tax cuts for Julie, if she's a worker. If she is not a worker, and she's on a payment, as the Minister for Social Services just outlined, we have supported increases that those opposite have also said are wasteful. I hope you have said, 'I'm sorry that my side of politics thinks there is $315 billion of waste that we wouldn't have undertaken.' I hope that you've explained to Julie, if she buys any medicines, that you wanted medicines to be more expensive rather than cheaper, because Julie might be one of the people who have benefited by $1 billion. I hope, as well, that the member has said that he's been opposed to, and has voted against, affordable housing. Honourable members interjecting— The SPEAKER 53517 The member for Groom is warned. Mr ALBANESE R36 I don't know if Julie has kids, but you voted against child care being cheaper. Those opposite have also voted against a pay rise for childcare workers, a pay rise for aged-care workers, and you voted against, of course, free TAFE. Your deputy leader explained why you're opposed to free TAFE, because if things are free, apparently, according to the Liberal Party philosophy, they're not valued, which explains why you don't support Medicare and never have. It explains why you don't support public schools and why you continue to just say what you're against and not put anything forward constructively that will help Julie. (Time expired) The SPEAKER 53517 I remind the Prime Minister and all members to direct their remarks through the chair. I didn't want to interrupt the Prime Minister during his answer. Cybersafety 32 15:09 Mr ROB MITCHELL M3E McEwen My question is to the Minister for Communications. Why is it so important that the Albanese Labor government's proposal to establish a minimum age for social media passes the parliament this week? 15:09 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway I thank the member for his question. The Albanese government takes seriously its obligation to online safety and the reduction of harms facing Australians. We know that parents are rightly concerned about these harms, as they impact upon their children, and we've taken a decision to support them. We also want young people to imagine a world where social media does not have to constantly fuel their thoughts, drive their anxieties or determine their sense of fitting in. There are enough pressures already in the teenage years, and the Albanese government is taking a stand to say that access to social media does not have to define connection in this country. I say to Australia's young people that your voices are important and that we have been listening. One of the key features of our legislation is its implementation time frame. We are committed to using this time to engage with young people and the organisations that represent them, and I thank the many young people who have engaged already for outlining their concerns. I say to them that we will work with you over the next 12 months and beyond to ensure that wraparound supports for young people remain accessible. The SPEAKER 53517 I don't know why the member for Fisher feels the need to continually interject with his rolling commentary with every answer, but it's completely unacceptable, and he more than anyone in the parliament should know that. He is warned. If anyone wants to get a fair go here, you've got to treat everyone fairly as well. The Minister for Communications has the call. Ms ROWLAND 159771 I will turn to the importance of this bill. The legislation allows for rules to be made for definitional carve-outs for messaging and gaming. We want young people to remain connected to their family and friends and to be able to participate in digital environments that are age appropriate. The rules will also allow for educational and health apps that function in a similar way to social media to remain available for connection to young people. The aim here is to drive innovation and digital connections in spaces that are designed for the needs of children, because their education, health and wellbeing are paramount for this government. This work is not constrained to the communications portfolio. We are working collaboratively across government, and I acknowledge the contributions of many colleagues, including the Attorney-General, the ministers for education, health, youth and social services, and the Assistant Minister for Mental Health. They have worked hard to consider policies that complement our bill and build support for young people where and when they need it. Collectively, we are continuing to ensure the views and perspectives of parents, young people and communities remain central to the policies we take forward to support them through the implementation phase and beyond. Allowing this time for the law to come into effect will strengthen how it operates in practical terms and enable us to continue working with young people and the sectors that represent them. Escaping Violence Payment 33 15:13 Ms CHANEY 300006 Curtin This is a question for the Minister for Social Services. A crisis payment is meant to be available for women escaping domestic violence, but the conditions exclude half the women who apply. The payment is only available if a woman can show she fits the narrow criteria within seven days of leaving. This is an unrealistic expectation for women whose lives are in chaos. Will the government review the conditions of the crisis payment so that it actually helps women when they need it? 15:13 Ms RISHWORTH HWA Kingston I'd like to thank the member for Curtin for her question and for her longstanding advocacy for women and children escaping family and domestic violence. We know that the time when a woman is leaving a violent relationship is a very difficult time, and our government has made a number of changes and investments to try and support women at that particular time when they are leaving a violent relationship. For example, we have brought in 10 days of family and domestic violence leave to allow someone in that circumstance to attend appointments or court or to see police. We've also made permanent the escaping family violence payment, which is not administered by Services Australia but by a non-government organisation that has the expertise. The payment provides people with $5,000 of support to set up a new home or to get things that they may need. In addition, there is the crisis payment, as the member has identified, which is another plank of support. While legislation requires that that person has seven days from the traumatic event to lodge a claim for crisis payment, there is flexibility to support people in this circumstance. Services Australia provides an additional 14 days after contact to lodge a claim if they've experienced family and domestic violence. Notwithstanding that, we know, as a government, too often perpetrators of family and domestic violence can exploit and manipulate government systems to control, harass or threaten a current or former partner, and we have continued to look at government systems across the board through some of the work we're doing. Most recently, the officials undertaking this whole-of-government systems abuse review in the Commonwealth have met with their National Lived Experience Advisory Council to talk with them about their interactions with the social security system, but also the Australian tax system and the child support system. We will continue to look across government systems at how we can best support victims-survivors of family and domestic violence, but it is not the only plank. We have a number of measures in place, and we will continue to look at what more we can do. Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme 33 15:16 Ms STANLEY 265990 Werriwa My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How is the Albanese Labor government making medicines cheaper for all Australians, including new medicines being added to the PBS? How do cheaper medicines help strengthen Medicare after a decade of cuts and neglect? 15:16 Mr BUTLER HWK Hindmarsh I thank the member for Werriwa for her question. She is such a strong supporter of our work to strengthen Medicare and make medicines cheaper. It's something we talk about constantly. And she knows that, in just over two years, we've made more than 260 new or expanded listings on the PBS, providing Australians with access to the world's best medicines at affordable PBS prices. This month, we've expanded access to Evenity, a leading treatment for severe osteoporosis. Up until now, Evenity has only been available after a patient, usually an older woman, has suffered not one but two separate fractures, but now it will be available as a first-line treatment immediately after a diagnosis of severe osteoporosis. This is going to benefit more than 9,000 mainly older Australians every single year. And instead of those older Australians paying almost $5,000 for a course of treatment, it will be available at affordable PBS prices. At the same time we've been making those PBS prices cheaper. In the first three months of our time in government, we slashed the maximum amount that pensioners would pay each year for their medicines by 25 per cent. Last year alone that meant an additional 22 million free scripts for Australia's pensioners—22 million! We also delivered the biggest cut to the price of medicines in the 75-year history of the PBS and we finally allowed doctors to prescribe common long-term medicines for 60 days supply, not just 30. And as the Prime Minister said earlier in question time, these measures have saved Australians more than $1 billion in co-payments at the pharmacy counter, making a real difference at a time of cost-of-living pressure. We know Australian households are still doing it tough. That's why we're also freezing the price of medicines next year for up to five years, which will save them another $500 million. But we also know that all of this progress on making medicines cheaper is under threat. It's under threat from a Liberal Party that voted against those measures in the first place and under threat from a shadow Treasurer who continues to describe our investments in Medicare as 'wasteful'. They'd be lined up for the chopping block if the shadow Treasurer ever got his way on this side of the House, God forbid, but they'd also be under threat from the Leader of the Opposition who, when he was health minister, only ever tried to push health prices up rather than down. I said we've already saved patients more than $1 billion at the pharmacy. In his first budget as health minister, the Leader of the Opposition actually tried to force medicine prices up in a way that would have cost patients a billion dollars more, not a billion dollars less—proving yet again that you can't trust this man and you can't trust the Liberal Party on Medicare. Mr Albanese R36 On that note, Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. STATEMENTS 34 STATEMENTS Personal Explanation 34 15:20 Ms ROWLAND 159771 Greenway Mr Speaker, I wish to make a personal explanation. The SPEAKER 53517 Do you claim to have been misrepresented? Ms ROWLAND 159771 Most grievously. The SPEAKER 53517 You may proceed. Ms ROWLAND 159771 This morning in the Sydney Morning Herald there is an editorial by Bevan Shields, which says the following: TV and gambling executives met with Communications Minister Michelle Rowland in August … That is false. Personal Explanation 34 15:20 Ms LEY 00AMN Farrer Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a personal explanation. The SPEAKER 53517 Do you claim to have been misrepresented? Ms LEY 00AMN Yes. The SPEAKER 53517 You may proceed. Ms LEY 00AMN In question time today I asked the Prime Minister about the more than 25,000 businesses in Australia that have gone insolvent since he became Prime Minister, with 1,364 going bust in the last month alone. In response the Prime Minister said, 'The facts are just wrong that the deputy leader has put forward.' The data I was quoting from is ASIC data. It is not my word or the Prime Minister's word; it is not Labor's word or the Liberals' word. It is ASIC data. It is not wrong; it is correct. The Prime Minister should now update the House at the first available opportunity to correct the mistake, as standing orders prescribe. To help the Prime Minister, I seek leave to table the ASIC data, which spells out the numbers for every quarter on record. Leave not granted. Mr Burke DYW It's available on the internet if it is what she says. COMMITTEES 34 COMMITTEES Government Response to Report 34 15:21 Mr BURKE DYW Watson I present the status of government responses in the House of Representatives to parliamentary committee reports as at 30 September this year. MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE 35 MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE Economy 35 15:21 The SPEAKER 53517 I have received a letter from the honourable member for Hume proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely: The Government's economic mismanagement resulting in the longest household recession on record. 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— 15:22 Mr TAYLOR 231027 Hume After nearly three years of this Albanese Labor government and its economic mismanagement, Australians are poorer. The truth is that we know that, historically, what happens is Australians become poorer under Labor. The Treasurer doesn't accept this. He thinks that they've never had it so good, and the biggest concession he could make in the papers this morning was that they are 'feeling' worse off. Those damn ingrates! How can they 'feel' bad about things when he's the Treasurer? The reason is simple: because they are worse off under Labor. It's worth going to the facts, because the Treasurer doesn't rely on the facts very much. But I think we're going to spend a little bit of time on the facts, because this is more than feelings. This is way more than feelings; these are facts. The Employee Living Cost Index—this is what people who are in working families are paying for their cost of living—is up 18.9 per cent since Labor came to office. That $1 coin that we heard the Prime Minister talking about earlier today is worth close to 80c now, having fallen 18.9 per cent. Interest rates have gone up 12 times. We know a typical family living in South-Western Sydney—in my electorate—are paying $35,000 more than they were just a couple of years ago in after-tax income. But they're only 'feeling' worse off after that $35,000! Meanwhile, interest rates are coming down in the US, the UK, Canada, Europe and New Zealand—not here. We are absolutely at the back of the pack in fighting and beating that underlying inflation, which is hurting families so much. Personal income tax payments being made by Australians are up 25 per cent since Labor came to power. Meanwhile, labour productivity in this country has fallen by 6.3 per cent. Actually, the member opposite wrote a book on this—the three Ps—and he made the point that productivity is the most important of the three Ps. It's 6.3 per cent down. It's in absolute freefall under this government because this Treasurer is hopeless and hapless, and all he is prepared to acknowledge is that Australians are feeling worse off under him. We also know—and we heard today—that business insolvencies are at a record high. Opposition members: Shame! Mr TAYLOR 231027 And it was shameful the way the Prime Minister dealt with the facts that were outlined by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. The truth is—and it's worth going through these facts again because the Prime Minister is in denial; those opposite love a bit of denial—that there were 1,364 insolvencies in the last month alone. That is a record; that is not ambiguous. It's ASIC data. It comes out each month. That is the highest that number has ever been, and that now gets us to a total of 24,700 businesses that have gone under. Australians who run small businesses are the hardest-working Australians around. There is nothing tougher than running a small business. It is a tough game, and they are in enormous pain. This Treasurer and this Prime Minister will not even accept that there are record levels of insolvency. Sitting underneath this is something truly calamitous, and that is a collapse in Australians' standard of living. The real disposable income per person in Australia has collapsed under Labor—8.7 per cent since those opposite came to power. I have an apology to make to the House because a couple of weeks ago we had a little bit of an interaction with the Speaker over whether or not this was the worst Labor government since Whitlam. And the Speaker pointed out that this maybe is something we shouldn't be saying. It turns out he was right because this is the worst government since records began on real disposable income. An honourable member: Never! Leave Whitlam alone! Leave Whitlam alone! Mr TAYLOR 231027 It is worse than Whitlam's government. It is worse than the absolutely disastrous Whitlam government, which I remember. I am old enough to remember standing on the polling booths to get rid of that government, and I'll be standing on the polling booths to get rid of this government, as will everyone here and all good Liberal supporters across the country, because this is absolutely disastrous. It's worse than 'the recession we had to have' in the early nineties. We didn't see anything like this collapse in living standards at that time. But we've also broken another record, and it's not a record we want to break. There have been six consecutive quarters of household recession. A household recession is GDP per person going backwards. We have never since records began seen six consecutive quarters of household per person going backwards. The Treasurer of course, as he likes to do, spins it. He doesn't worry about the economics; he just focuses on the spin. He says that it's all okay because immigration has been at record levels. It's all okay. We've had a million people, as the shadow minister here knows, in two years, so it's all okay. A household recession is not okay. It is one of the reasons why Australians are hurting. He loves to talk about a soft landing. The only landing I see under this Treasurer is a crash landing. What we are seeing is completely unprecedented—an 8.7 per cent reduction in standards of living with no pathway to restoration of that standard of living any time soon. We have a household recession with six consecutive quarters, and, sadly, we see Saul Eslake saying today he expects another quarter of that as well. It's going to keep going as their record levels of immigration continue, and we of course see a sclerotic economy with a collapse in labour productivity and a Labor government and a Labor Treasurer that simply have no idea how to deal with these ailments. Now, we also learned today that there are deficits coming as far as the eye can see. We have seen that in their budgets, but it's getting worse. Despite personal income taxes going up by 25 per cent, Deloitte Access has told us that the Treasurer is presiding over the biggest slump in the budget, outside of COVID, that we've ever seen—$49 billion. It's no wonder that he is raiding the nation's nest egg. It is no wonder he's decided to become the investment-allocator-in-chief for this country. He's coming after the Future Fund. And it's no surprise that the founder of the Future Fund, the first chairman of the Future Fund, the most recent chairman of the Future Fund and former prime minister John Howard have all come out saying that this is truly disastrous for this nation, as this Treasurer, as he runs out of money, raids these nest eggs. But we know where he's going next. He'll be going to the industry super funds and saying, 'I want your money too.' It's not Australians' money, as far as he's concerned; it's his money to allocate and spend as he sees fit. This is a guy who spent six months in the private sector and says it was the worst time of his career! But he wants to become the investment-allocator-in-chief. Even the member for Parramatta has spent a lot more time in the private sector than that. An opposition member: He should be Treasurer! Mr TAYLOR 231027 Maybe he should be their shadow Treasurer. This is a Treasurer who has no idea. Now, there is a better way, and that's getting back to basics; that is getting this country back on track, with outcomes, not gestures; delivery, not meetings; actions, not just promises; fighting inflation, not just alliteration. With this guy, it's three Rs, two Fs, four Ds—you know, he thinks he can fight inflation with alliteration! Well, you can't. You've actually got to do the real work. That means getting rid of the reckless spending. That means making sure we're investing in the supply side of our economy and getting more houses built—500,000 houses; we've laid out how you can do it. It means getting rid of the bloated bureaucracy that is driving up inflation and making it harder for businesses to do what they want to do, making it harder for businesses to invest and grow and create jobs, which we know is the key to prosperity in this country, not sending more of them broke. Australians cannot afford another three years of Labor. 15:32 Ms THWAITES 282212 Jagajaga What a wander through some of the pathways of the shadow Treasurer's mind that was! Certainly, in our 2½ years in office, our government has been laser focused on supporting Australians. We do know that times are difficult in Australian households—that people are under the pump from cost-of-living pressures and from higher interest rates. It is important to look at the facts, because, when we came to office, inflation had a six in front of it and it was rising. It now has a two in front of it. That is not an accident. It is a result of very deliberate policies that our government has crafted, to support Australian households with cost-of-living relief without adding to inflation; to ease cost-of-living pressures; to help people earn more and keep more of what they earn. And, while times are difficult, we are seeing progress. Real wages are now growing again, and they have grown for four consecutive quarters. The gender pay gap is at its lowest level on record, and that is a result of deliberate government policies: the pay rises that we have provided to aged-care workers, the pay rises that we will provide to those in the early education sectors—highly feminised workplaces where women, for too long, have been underpaid and underappreciated. Our government has provided cost-of-living relief: a tax cut for every taxpayer—everyone, not just the wealthy; energy bill relief for every household; cheaper medicines and cheaper child care. We're cutting student debt. We are introducing fee-free TAFE as a permanent measure. And of course—unlike the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, who, when opposing this policy, said: 'You don't value things if you don't pay for them'—on this side of the House, we see education as a pathway to prosperity, and we want everyone to be able to benefit from it. We've been rebuilding our health system—and didn't it need rebuilding after the almost-decade of those opposite! Once again, as we know, this is their track record when they get into government: they try and rip out the heart of Medicare. We have been doing the work to rebuild our health system to make sure Medicare is strengthened and sustainable into the future. We have opened 75 new Medicare urgent care clinics around the nation, including one in Heidelberg, in the heart of my community. We have been boosting bulk-billing so more people can see a doctor for free when they need to. We have made sure our health system is based on having your Medicare card, not based on having your credit card, which was the policy under those opposite. We do know that without the tax cuts, without the investments we were putting into our health system, without all of the ways that we are supporting Australians with cost-of-living help, Australian households would be much worse off. Every single one of these cost-of-living measures that we have brought to this place has been opposed by those opposite. They even suggested we go to an election over our plans to deliver tax cuts. That is why it is such a risk for Australian families, for Australian households, to look to those opposite to get us through these difficult times. They are not the people who will support households, who will support these pressures. We have seen their record—falling real wages, much higher inflation, huge deficits and much more debt—and that is what makes them risky. We will continue to do the responsible work to support Australians with cost-of-living measures and we will do it in a way where we are not adding to inflation so as to make Australians' lives easier not harder. It has been a bit of a slog for our government because those opposite have opposed us at every step of the way. They opposed the tax cuts; they said they would reverse them. In fact, they threatened an election over tax cuts for every taxpayer. If I look at the impacts in my electorate, there are 77,000 taxpayers just in Jagajaga with an average tax cut of $1,762 who stand to lose under those opposite. Those opposite voted against cheaper medicines. There have been 601,528 prescriptions in Jagajaga so far as a result of that policy. Those opposite voted against cheaper child care, which is providing savings for 6,600 families in my community of Jagajaga. They voted against increasing the maximum rate of Commonwealth rent assistance, which is benefitting 3,285 households in Jagajaga. They voted against debt relief for students, which is benefitting 22,263 people with a HELP debt in my community. They voted against power bill relief and of course they are voting against our fee-free TAFE measures. They voted against a Future Made in Australia. They voted against the HAFF; they don't want Australians to have houses. Every step of the way those opposite have tried to block our government's efforts to make life easier for Australians. And while they have done this, they haven't really given us much of a sense of what they would actually do in government. We haven't seen their positive vision for how they would support Australians at this difficult time. One small piece we have, I suppose, is the fascination with nuclear energy, the plan to install nuclear plants in communities that don't seem to have been consulted at a cost of $600 billion to produce just four per cent of Australia's energy by 2050. This is pretty much just climate denial wrapped up in yellow cake. This is not policy. This is not something that is going to support Australians with the cost of electricity. This is a folly and that is pretty much it when it comes to policies that aren't just saying no. Their track record of the Liberals and Nationals is to block and cut. They want to cut what is helping; they want to punish people who are struggling. They want to claw back the tax cuts we have delivered, close the Medicare urgent clinics we have opened. They want to stop the housing projects we have started, push up the price of medicines, and take away the increases to rent assistance we have provided to Australian renters. Today we have again had confirmation from the shadow minister that they will remove the Help to Buy scheme, the scheme that will help 40,000 Australians into homeownership. At this time, after all they failed to do when they were in government to solve the housing crisis, after the work they failed to do to make sure that we have the housing supply this country needs, they are looking to rip away that support from 40,000 Australians and to rip away the pay rises and improved conditions of Australian workers. In the absence of them putting positive policies on the table, I suppose we have to look to those opposite's track record from when they were in government over that very long nearly a decade. If we look at the 2014 budget, I am not sure if we would call it the golden years. In fact, it's widely regarded as the worst budget this country has ever seen. After then prime minister Tony Abbott promised Australians no cuts to education, health and other areas on the eve of the 2013 federal election, what did he then want to deliver? An $80 billion cut to health and education spending and a $7 co-payment for visiting the doctor, a special straight from the then Minister for Health and now the Leader of the Opposition. Particularly, at that time those opposite went after older Australians. They went after older Australians and those who rely on the pension. They wanted to increase the pension age to 70. They wanted to cut $1 billion from pensioner concessions. They tried to cut pension indexation. They axed the $900 seniors supplement to self-funded retirees receiving the Commonwealth seniors health card. They reset deeming rates thresholds, a cut which would have seen half a million part-pensioners made worse off. Then, just a year later, the Liberals and Nationals shamefully did a deal with the Greens to cut the pension to around 370,000 pensioners by as much as $12,000 a year by changing the pension assets test. Older Australians have not forgotten that record. They have not forgotten that those opposite looked to cut the pension and that older Australians would be worse off under those opposite. They would not be supported with the cost-of-living relief they need and which this government is delivering. This government will continue to do the important work to support Australian households. We know that Australians cannot rely on those opposite, who just continue to block, to oppose and to fail to put any positive proposals on the table when it comes to delivering for Australians and our future. 15:42 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina Whether it's households, whether it's farms, whether it's factories, whether it's small businesses, right across society Australians are worse off now than what they were prior to the election in May 2022 with the Albanese government. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition and member for Farrer asked a very good question in question time today when she queried the Prime Minister about the record number of Australian business insolvencies of any month ever. There are 1,364 businesses going up the spout. Since this Prime Minister took office, more than 24,700 Australian businesses have gone insolvent. The Prime Minister disputed those figures, even though they were the Australian Securities and Investment Commission's figures, even though they were the official statistics. We have a government that is promising to build 1.2 million Australian homes. Amongst those insolvencies, the second-highest sector is the construction industry. If you look at the figures—and this again is ASIC data—for construction companies going insolvent, and these are for the first time a company enters external administration or has a controller appointed, in 2021-22 there are 1,284. In the following year, there were 2,213, and then there were 2,977 for the financial year 2023-24. Those figures come on the back of Labor saying that they're going to build 1.2 million Australian homes, come on the back of the Victorian government trying to shut down the timber industry, coming on the back of the Victorian government, where the member for Jagajaga lives, telling new homeowners that they can't put gas appliances in their homes. How, in goodness's name, are we going to get that number of houses built? They did a cosy little deal yesterday with the Greens. Love is back in the air when it comes to Labor and the Greens. The romance never really browned off. They just— Ms McBain 281988 Wrong. Mr McCORMACK 219646 No, it's not wrong at all, Member for Eden-Monaro. It was always there. They just feigned: 'Let's have this little lovers' tiff so that everybody thinks we're not together anymore, but you know what? We'll still accept your preferences and, just in the death throes of the parliamentary sitting schedule, we'll reunite. We'll get back into bed.' That's exactly what happened yesterday: Labor and the Greens back in cahoots. Ms McBain 281988 Liberal preferences. Mr McCORMACK 219646 Yes, I hear 'preferences' from the member for Eden-Monaro, the regional development minister. That is so true. It's all about preferences, because that is how Labor will get back in. Rest assured: if we are in a minority government situation after the next election, the figures on insolvencies, energy costs, grocery prices and bowser costs for everybody who ever goes to fill up their car, their ute, their truck, their motorbike or whatever are going to be up and up and up. Let me tell you: if the Labor government is going to be led by the nose by the Greens political party then we are all in trouble, because the Greens don't just have an environmental agenda. That'd be fine if they did, but they have an economic agenda to dismantle the traditions of this nation. That's before they even start on social norms and fixing up everything they think is wrong with society. But don't just take my word for it on the construction side. Look at CreditorWatch chief economist Ivan Colhoun, who said: On the construction side, interest rates do reduce construction, and there's the well-publicised cost pressure that businesses in the building industry have faced for a number of years now. Construction had the second-highest business failure rate, with a 12-month average of 5.3 per cent, and it is a terrible indictment on this government that hospitality and construction have the largest number of businesses with debts to the tax office and the largest number of businesses failing. That leads to pressures on households, which are already crippled with debt, are already wondering how they're going to put Christmas presents under the tree for the kids come 25 December and are under pressure because of this government, which in its first few months did nothing but worry about a divisive referendum that failed. They didn't look at cost-of-living pressures at all. (Time expired) 15:47 Dr MULINO 132880 Fraser Mark Twain once said, 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.' Mark Twain wasn't saying we shouldn't look at statistics, of course, but, in a typically beautiful turn of phrase, what Mark Twain was arguing against was the use of statistics without understanding, without interpretation and without context. I think that, if Mark Twain had heard this debate today, he would have said, 'I've heard a lot of statistics from one side of this debate, but a lot of those statistics haven't been given the proper context.' Let me give you just one example. One of the statistics raised in the first speech of this debate was that the $1-an-hour increase in the minimum wage would be worth less than a dollar now; it would be something more than 80c. We all understand the way that inflation works over time in terms of purchasing power, and I haven't gone and double-checked those statistics, but let's take that at face value. But, of course, what that statistic doesn't tell us is that that $1-an-hour increase in the minimum wage was stridently opposed by that same person. So, of course, we get this partial statistic, but it's almost meaningless without the full context. When that $1-an-hour increase in the minimum wage was put forward by those on this side, and in particular by the Prime Minister when he was opposition leader, those opposite described it as reckless and said that it would ruin the economy and that the Prime Minister was, in the words of Scott Morrison, a 'loose unit' for supporting an increase in the minimum wage. The abuse kept coming and coming, but now the shadow Treasurer wishes to complain because that dollar isn't worth exactly a dollar now, without conceding the fact that, if he were in charge, that dollar would have been 0c, not something a bit more than 80c. That's a classic case of a statistic that means something totally different when you look at it in the full context. Similarly, those opposite relentlessly complain about where wages are at. Real wages now increasing, and those opposite will constantly say, 'But not by much.' But, then, when it comes to each individual case of wage rises, when it comes to every single case before the commission, when it comes to the 15 per cent increase for aged-care workers and when it comes to the 10 per cent increase for early educators, which will come about in December, those opposite oppose. So, again, when you look at statistics in context, they mean something totally different. Those opposite complain about taxes, but what they don't say is that 87 per cent of the taxpayers in my electorate are better off under the tax plan that we put in as opposed to the one that they wanted to have continued to be legislated. If you look at a household earning $45,000 in my electorate—and there are many in my electorate and, indeed, many in the electorates of people right across this chamber—they are $804 better off because of the tax changes that we put through and that those opposite complained about bitterly all the way through the debate in this chamber. So those opposites will say to a household earning $45,000, 'You're paying too much tax,' but what they won't say is, 'But we would have had you paying $804 more tax.' Similarly, somebody earning $73,000 received a tax cut of $1,504 compared to $800 under them. Again, those opposite will say: 'We think you're paying too much tax. Income tax is too high.' What they don't say is the next part of that sentence—'But we would have had you paying an extra $700.' This is another case of those opposite cherry-picking their statistics or giving a statistic without its real meaning. What's probably worse is when those opposite go on and on about wasteful spending. They say that there's hundreds of billions of dollars of wasteful spending. Here is where there is a real intellectual dishonesty that is going to be found out at the election. When they say there's hundreds of billions of dollars of wasteful spending and they're asked, 'Are you going to cut payments for veterans, are you going to cut the pension or are you going to cut basic government services?' they obfuscate. They never answer the question. When we get to the election in the first half of next year, those opposite will have to answer at some point. That's when statistics will become reality. They will have to give the full answer, and that's where their hollow rhetoric will become all it is. 15:52 Ms WARE 300123 Hughes I note that the member for Fraser started with a quote from Mark Twain. Mark Twain, of course, had a number of quotes. He also had one that said, 'It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you're a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.' Similarly, when the member for Fraser is saying we are somehow talking about statistics, I will tell you right now, Member for Fraser, there is a difference between numbers and statistics. There's a difference between facts and statistics. These are two facts. These are numbers— Ms Swanson 264170 He knows statistics. Ms WARE 300123 I note the interjection from the member for Paterson. I wonder how many of the 1,364 insolvencies we have had in a month were from the electorate of Paterson and I wonder how many of the 24,700 businesses that have gone under under this government were from the electorate of Paterson. Quite a lot of them have been from my electorate in Hughes in the south and south-west of Sydney. That is because, in my electorate, there are a lot of construction companies. There are a lot of tradies, and they have been doing it very tough under this Albanese Labor government. This government talks about its bold, ambitious plan to build 1.2 million houses, but, underlying that, they have not provided any avenue. I have not heard one member on that side talk about how they are going to get more roofers, more tilers, more electricians, more plumbers and more bricklayers. Ms McBain 281988 Fee-free TAFE. Ms WARE 300123 'Fee-free TAFE' I hear from the member for Eden-Monaro. Fee-free TAFE, Member for Eden-Monaro, does not even go partly towards addressing the massive skills shortages that we have in the construction trade. I know it. Go out and speak to some of the construction companies in your electorate— Ms WARE 300123 Deputy Speaker, could I be allowed to finish? Go out and speak to some of them in your electorate— Ms McBain 281988 My husband's a plumber. Ms WARE 300123 Yes, and my son's about to be a plumber, but what are you doing about getting more roofers? The DEPUTY SPEAKER 248181 How about you direct your comments through the chair, and I'll ask the minister at the table not to interject, and, if you don't keep responding and you talk to me, we should be able to knock this on the head, so let's go. Ms WARE 300123 Deputy Speaker, as always, I'm guided by you. There are other issues that I'm hearing about in my electorate. I'm hearing from government members that they are doing a lot for families, but I'll tell you what the presidents of the sporting clubs in my electorate are telling me. They are saying that the families can't afford $1,000 in registration fees, whether that was for soccer, rugby league, netball, softball or cricket. They come up quietly to these presidents because they are embarrassed because, for the first time in their lives, families and parents are saying, 'We can't afford to pay for our kids to play sport because we've just had to pay'—for example—'an energy bill.' We're hearing that renewables are the cheapest form of energy. I'll you what: in my electorate, they don't believe it. In the south-west of Sydney, they know it's not true, and they know it's not true on your side as well. They are saying the same things to you in your electorates that they are saying to me. When families in Australia can't afford to be putting their kids into sport, they can't afford to be putting their kids into child care. They are taking them out of child care in my electorate. They are begging grandparents to look after them. They are trying everything else because they can't afford childcare places. When I hear members on this side talking about statistics, it's simply not true that we are just talking about statistics. We are talking about real people, we're talking about real families and we are talking about a Labor government that is the worst this country has ever seen—not just the worst Labor government but the worst government full stop. We must get this country back on track under a Dutton-led government. 15:57 Dr I8M Parramatta CHARLTON () (): The shadow Treasurer is so desperate to talk down the Australian economy that he is even making up things that don't exist. Friends, his favourite imaginary calamity at the moment is something that he calls 'a household recession'. There is such a thing as a recession, but there's no such thing as 'a household recession'. The thing is that you can't just take anything that has been declining over time and put the word 'recession' in front of it to make up a new term. When migration falls for two quarters, we don't call it a 'population recession'. When it's been raining for two weeks, we don't call it a 'sunshine recession'. When we go two days without his colleagues backgrounding against him, we don't call it an 'Angus recession'. Friends, you can't just make up any kind of recession you feel like, although I do quite like the idea of an 'Angus recession', to be honest. I like it. I would define it, if I had to, as 'a significant lack of economic imagination going for over two quarters'. Or maybe an 'Angus recession' would be two months in which Angus doesn't get a question in question time or two months without dodgy, made-up statistics about Clover Moore. That could also be an 'Angus recession'. The more I think about it the more I think we should be creating this. So, friends, when the shadow Treasurer says that we're in a 'household recession', I say: 'Great work, Angus! Great creativity! A+ for making up something, but unfortunately, it doesn't exist.' This is relevant for the following reason: even though a 'household recession' is not a defined concept, I'll tell you what is a defined concept: a recession. A recession is a defined concept, and there are many countries around the world that have experienced a recession over the last two years when they have been battling against exactly the same challenges that Australia has been facing. Think about Britain. Think about Japan. Think about New Zealand, Finland and Ireland. All of these countries have faced rising global inflation and the challenge to get that inflation down, and every single one of those countries went into recession as part of that battle. I don't know if those countries have been in a household recession or not, because, once again, as I said before, it's not a thing and, unless they have an imaginary shadow Treasurer in those countries making up that concept, we'll never know. But they have been in an actual recession and, friends, that is what distinguishes them from us. Despite how much the shadow Treasurer might want Australia to be in a recession, despite how much he might think it's in his political interests for us to be in a recession and despite how much he's desperate to talk down the Australian economy, the truth is that the Australian economy has been one of the more remarkably resilient economies around the world. We have halved inflation without a recession. The Reserve Bank has brought interest rates up by 400 basis points, and there has been no recession in Australia. The problem is that the shadow Treasurer has been poor this term and has been unable to lay a glove on the government. He has delivered two years of franchise-killing performance in the course of this parliament, so now he's desperate to make up for it with a win. Unfortunately, the record speaks differently. The record speaks of an economy that has halved inflation without a recession by maintaining record levels of employment. If you had gone back two years and you'd lined up a group of economists and you'd said to them, 'What do you think Australia's chances are of bringing inflation down from something with a seven in front of it to something with a two in front of it while maintaining employment at the current levels?' let me tell what you those economists would've said to you. They would've said 'Good luck! It's never been done before.' Never in Australian history have we managed to slow the economy in a way that brings inflation out of the system so quickly that it brings inflation down by 500 basis points without a recession while maintaining a robust labour market. That is what distinguishes Australia from other countries. That is what is the defining feature of these last two years. You can make up a household recession, a population recession, a sunshine recession or an Angus recession, but the reason you have to make up those things is that we're not in an actual recession, much to your chagrin. That is the record of the Labor government. It's a record that is unparalleled in Australian history. That achievement has never been delivered before, and that's a record— (Time expired) 16:02 Mr VAN MANEN 188315 Forde I admire the member for Parramatta's attempt to defend the indefensible. Maybe, for the benefit of this discussion, it's worth the member for Parramatta looking at some other indices. If we look at the Selected Living Cost Indexes for the last quarter—this is an ABS figure—we see that there was an annual rise in the employee living cost index of 4.7 per cent. Yet at the same time wage growth was at 3.5 per cent. So, on average, employees in this country over the past 12 months have gone backwards by 1.2 per cent. That's in addition to all of the other quarters and all of the other months where the cost of living has far exceeded any wage growth that has eventuated. Therefore, households in real terms have gone backwards. That is exactly the point the shadow Treasurer is making. Households in this country have gone backwards over the past 2½ years of this government. Those opposite seem to forget that they took from the Australian people the low and middle income earner tax offsets. They promised the Australian people that they would take $275 off their power bills, yet their power bills have gone up by well over 10 per cent. They have said, 'Well, we've given you back some tax relief.' That's fine, but your mortgage repayments have gone up in total by some $35,000 a year, so you're well underwater on your mortgage repayments. There is not a single piece of economic data other than the broad economic context which maybe provides some fig leaf of cover for the government. But the real everyday Australian people that the member for Braddon spoke about yesterday are feeling the pinch. They are not feeling better off under this government. Why is that? Because for three years we've seen this government make poor decisions and have wrong priorities. At the last election, the Labor government, led by the Prime Minister, promised that under them Australian households and businesses would have cheaper energy, cheaper mortgages and a better life. Instead, we have seen the Labor government consistently make a bad situation worse. Over three budgets we've seen the government keep inflation high and for longer. As the shadow Treasurer has well pointed out, we have seen that GDP per capita has gone backwards for six consecutive quarters. That's reflected in the figures I just read out. This is now the longest GDP per capita recession on record. I say to those opposite, when I'm speaking to households and to small businesses across my electorate, they are feeling the pinch; they are definitely feeling the pinch, and they are feeling the impact of the government's failed decisions and failure to deal with these issues. That's what we mean by a household recession—people are feeling worse off, because, in reality, despite the government's attempt at spin, they are. Australian families have seen their living standards fall off a cliff. Families have seen the cost of essentials go up and up not just for the big ticket items like mortgage repayments but for basics. Food, energy and household goods have all increased. For many families, they feel like they are going backwards—and, sadly, in many cases they are actually going backwards. And the latest data confirms this. Over the last two years, Australians have seen their real disposable income and their standard of living collapse by some 8.7 per cent, the largest collapse in living standards since records began in the 1950s and bigger than any other developed country. Australians are not better off under this government; they are worse off than they were 2½ years ago. 16:07 Ms LAWRENCE 299150 Hasluck More in sorrow than in anger I have to report that the member for Hume apparently can't count or read, unless it is an article in one of his favourite newspapers. Perhaps he could benefit from a back-to-basics course. Let's examine the problem. We need to look at the balance between the costs people face and their ability to pay for them. The Liberals are fond of blaming all economic problems on the Australian people, the Australian Labor Party, the unions—or all three. They see a rise in wages or salaries, unless you are a CEO, as a disgraceful thing to be opposed. Let me explain something to you. When wage and salary earners call for a rise in their pay, it's almost invariably because they're resisting a decline in their living standards. They see the cost-of-living rises and they understandably want to ensure their standard of living doesn't fall. That's when the unions and the Australian Labor Party go into bat for them, because we get it. And that's when the Liberals and the Nationals scream no. They use the word 'inflation' like a magical word from a children's tale. Inflation is a big hairy monster created by bad or thoughtless people who have incomes under $100,000, and then they have the nerve to want higher pay! Top executives can and should have whatever pay they want, plus the bonuses on top of that, especially if they reduce the size of their workforce—that is, to sack people. When prices go up, inflation occurs. It is never, never the fault of the Liberals and their friends. It was under the Liberals that income inequality soared in Australia. Let's look at the time the Liberals don't like to talk about—the nine years they were in power federally between 2013 and 2022. Just to be fair, let's concentrate on their last full financial year in office: 2020-21. Average incomes fell. The poorer you were the higher the percentage of the fall. The average income of the 20 per cent at the lowest income level fell by 3½ per cent. The average income of the 20 per cent at the highest income level fell by 0.1 per cent. When we came to office in May 2022, the 20 per cent at the highest income level held 82 per cent of the value of all Australian investment property and 78 per cent of all the shares and financial investments. Their average wealth was $3,240,000. The average wealth of the 20 per cent at the lowest income level was $36,000. When costs rise for them, life is hard, and I mean frighteningly hard. That is why the Albanese Labor government is fighting inflation,. That's why we have gone into bat for ordinary Australians. That's why we are taking action on the cost of living by getting inflation down and with a rise in the minimum wage, tax cuts for all taxpayers, cheaper medicines, cheaper child care, more support for bulk-billing, Medicare urgent care clinics, free TAFE, better pay for childcare workers, better pay for aged-care workers, significant reductions in student debt, paid practicums for teaching and nursing, indexation of pensions and benefits, record increases in rent assistance, better funding for government schools and energy bill rebates. At the time of the 2022 election, real wages had also been falling substantially for five consecutive quarters. Inflation was over six per cent. We are working to clean up a decade's worth of your mess, and it's not easy. You did quite a job of neglecting infrastructure of all sorts and ignoring anything that looked like a problem. You do, however, have answers. Here they are in a nutshell: according to the Liberals, the Australian people should work longer hours for less pay. We take a different position. We want Australians to earn more and keep more of what they earn. We want that to happen while we're building a strong, resilient nation that will be able to provide good, secure lives in a world undergoing rapid change, and it's starting to work. That's why the Liberals are becoming more and more shrill and more and more desperate. Inflation is less than half what it was when we came to office. That's called 'bringing prices under control'. Perhaps the member for Hume hasn't noticed. In less than three years, we have $150 billion less debt and $80 billion less in interest repayments, and in today's world that is outstanding. I'm proud to stand with those who stand up for Australians and their future. 16:12 Mr HAMILTON 291387 Groom Before I turn my full force to this excellent MPI, if the rumours are right, this is my last chance to speak before you, Deputy Speaker Andrews, so I will take the opportunity to say what a pleasure it has been to serve with you and how well you've done in the chair. The longest household recession on record—goodness me, how did we get there? I want to take you on a journey back in time to what I will call 'the golden age' of the Albanese government. It lasted about 18 months. The golden age was right at the start, about January 2023, and things were great. The blue carpet was still fresh with new shoes running over it. The Voice was there to be won. Remember when the No. 1 focus of this government was the Voice for 18 good solid months. Polling was about 70 per cent for it. That was a good time. That must have felt fantastic. The misinformation bill hadn't been withdrawn twice at that point. It was still there to be won. They were going to tell us how to talk. This was the honeymoon period; it was a great time. It was during this time that the Treasurer of this great nation decided to bestow on us a 6,000 word essay on how he was going to remake capitalism and reshape our economy. It's 6,000 words. It's interesting reading, if you can chug your way through it. I wouldn't recommend it unless you're without sleep and at a desperate point. Mr Conaghan 279991 I'll take your recommendation. Mr HAMILTON 291387 Do take the recommendation; it's good. It's all about values based capitalism. There's a great line in that article:'2023 will be the year we build a better capitalism'. How did that go? Let's have a look. It was a big claim. It was a mighty claim. It is a claim you can only make when there is so much hubris and arrogance in that honeymoon period that not a single journalist will actually hold you to account for the claims you make. But let's look have a look now with some runs on the board and see how this played out. It's the longest GDP per capita recession since we've recorded these figures—the worst performance we could possibly have. That's not a great start. Real disposable income has collapsed by 8.7 per cent. As the member for Hume pointed out, that dollar coin that the Prime Minister held up during his campaign is now worth about 80c—great job! Remaking capitalism really worked. Household savings have collapsed 10 percentage points. What does that mean? It means that 21- to 29-year-old kids who are looking at the price of housing go through the roof have no ability to save for that deposit. There was a great cartoon early in this term of government. There was a young child chasing a balloon in the shape of a house as it was blown away from her. That's exactly what remaking capitalism has done for us. We have the highest number of business insolvencies on record, and I'm happy to say that. It's a number from ASIC. I know the Prime Minister didn't like that number. Unfortunately, it's just a fact. The highest number of business insolvencies on record: remaking capitalism. That's what they meant. This is on purpose. This is what they were trying to do. Labour productivity has fallen 6.3 per cent. We're producing less, we're less effective and, incredibly—think about this—there is a productivity fall in a skills shortage. So we have people who could be doing more while we have a shortage of people and there are more skills that we need. Fantastic! What a remade capitalism! Mr Wallace 265967 It's a double whammy, isn't it? Mr HAMILTON 291387 It's a double whammy—fantastic! Energy prices have increased by 30 per cent: remade capitalism. Enjoy that one. The highest immigration ever in the middle of a housing crisis: remade capitalism. I thank the Treasurer on behalf of my kids for the world that has been created for them. Here we are with the best bit of the whole lot. This is the one that's really going to hurt: the soft landing that we were promised. We were promised that all of this was worthwhile because of the soft landing. I will read the headline of today's AFR article by Michael Read: 'Chalmers presides over $49b budget slump, biggest outside the pandemic'. This is the worst turnaround in a budget ever. We got two surpluses and then we read in the budget papers hidden away in the details that we won't return to a structural surplus until 2035. Who sells you two surpluses for 10 years of deficit? That's remade capitalism. We're not here by accident. We're here at the direction of our Treasurer and his 6,000 word treatise on how to treat a nation with disdain. 16:17 Dr GARLAND 295588 Chisholm Member for Groom, I'm sure the Treasurer will be thrilled to hear that you read his essay. Let's be honest: that speech was full of mixed metaphors and cynical politics. I'm personally really sick of cynical politics, and I think Australians are sick of it too. Certainly people in my community can see right through it. Let's be real here and understand what those opposite have done with the opportunity they've had to support meaningful cost-of-living relief. We've seen those opposite oppose pay rises for the lowest-paid workers in the country. We've seen those opposite say no to packages to deliver cost-of-living relief. We've seen those opposite say no to housing and say no to opportunities for young people through free TAFE and through easing pressures on young people by making changes to the way student debt is calculated. It's time for those opposite, instead of coming in here and behaving in such a base manner, to get serious and to support sensible policy that supports our communities, such as energy bill relief, which they had the opportunity to support and did not. We know households are feeling pressure. We are focused absolutely on fighting inflation without ignoring the risks to growth. In fact we want to grow our economy and grow industry. That's why we're putting forward a plan for the Future Made in Australia after we saw the decline of manufacturing under the watch of those opposite. We know inflation was higher and rising under the Liberals and that it's lower and falling under Labor. Interest rates started rising under the watch of those opposite. Our economic plan is all about easing cost-of-living pressures for Australians. We know that, even with the quite remarkable progress that has been made in the national data, it does not always immediately translate to how people are feeling and faring in the economy. That is why it is important to come in here to the chamber and, instead of these cheap stunts we see every day with these MPIs, actually seriously talk about what we can do to improve the lives of Australians who live in all of our communities that we are really privileged here to represent. We know that real wages have been falling substantially under those opposite, so we are working really hard to ensure people's wages increase. In fact, one of the very first things our government undertook was to increase wages for some of the lowest-paid workers in the country. We have lifted the wages of aged-care workers, lifted the wages of early childhood educators and ensured there is a tax cut for every taxpayer by reforming a pretty dreadful plan that had inequality at its heart. We are making sure we entrench free TAFE, and we are doing what we can to grow our economy and industry through our plan for a Future Made in Australia. In my electorate, 23,000 people with student debt will be better off under our plan. People in my electorate have already saved over $7 million because of our intervention with prescriptions to offer 60-day prescriptions. We fought hard for and we won an urgent care clinic in my electorate, which means more people can go to the doctor when they need to and do not have to think about how much it will cost them. We know there is more to do. I am out every day, as I'm sure my colleagues on this side of the House are, talking to people in our communities about the issues that matter to them. We know that people are still under substantial pressure. We know we have a lot of ground to make up. I wish we did not have the 10 years of waste and neglect that we saw when those opposite were in power. But we are doing what we can in responsible ways to help everyday Australians in our community. We know the enormous risk that exists if those opposite, heaven forbid, ever sat on the Treasury benches again. We know there will be billions and billions of dollars in cuts. We know what happened when Peter Dutton—sorry, the Leader of the Opposition—was our health minister. He was rated Australia's worst health minister in the history of this country. We know that he proposed to increase costs to people receiving health care. We cannot risk it in our community of Chisholm and I don't think anyone in any of our communities in this country can risk the Leader of the Opposition ever becoming Prime Minister. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230886 The discussion has concluded. BILLS 44 BILLS Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024, Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024, Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024 44

Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024

Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024

Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024

Reference to Federation Chamber 44 16:22 Ms RYAN 249224 Lalor I declare that, unless otherwise ordered, the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024, Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024 and the Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024 stand referred to the Federation Chamber for further consideration. Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023 44

Help to Buy (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2023

Returned from Senate 44 Help to Buy Bill 2023 44

Help to Buy Bill 2023

Consideration of Senate Message 44 Aged Care (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 46

Aged Care (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024

Second Reading 46 16:24 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley This bill establishes a clear pathway to enable the sector to transition smoothly from the Aged Care Act 1997 to the new Aged Care Act 2024. We recognise that the transition process is of particular concern for aged-care providers, workers, older people and their families. That is why we've established the transition taskforce to work with the sector in preparation for 1 July so that we can all make the necessary changes to deliver better aged care. I thank the members for their contributions to the debate on this bill. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Consideration in Detail 46 16:26 Mr CONAGHAN 279991 Cowper At the request of the member for Farrer, I move opposition amendment (1) as circulated in her name: (1) Schedule 2, item 65, page 60 (line 3), omit "may", substitute "must". 16:26 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley The government does not support this very technical amendment. I can confirm for the member for Farrer that the government is drafting rules related to this bill which will be released for consultation next year. The SPEAKER 53517 The question is that the amendment be agreed to.    

The House divided. [16:30]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

 54 AYES Andrews, K. L. 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. Entsch, W. G. Fletcher, P. W. Gillespie, D. A. Goodenough, I. R. Hamilton, G. R. Hastie, A. W. Hawke, A. G. Hogan, K. J. Howarth, L. R. Joyce, B. T. G. Kennedy, S. P. Landry, M. L. Ley, S. P. 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) 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. 84 NOES Albanese, A. N. Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Bandt, A. P. Bates, S. J. 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. Coker, E. A. Collins, J. M. Conroy, P. M. Daniel, Z. Doyle, M. J. J. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Georganas, S. Giles, A. J. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Haines, H. M. Hill, J. C. Husic, E. N. Jones, S. P. Keogh, M. J. Khalil, P. King, C. F. King, M. M. H. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Le, D. 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. (Teller) 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. Shorten, W. R. Sitou, S. Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Steggall, Z. Swanson, M. J. Templeman, S. R. Thistlethwaite, M. J. Thwaites, K. L. Tink, K. J. Vamvakinou, M. Watson-Brown, E. Watts, T. G. Wells, A. S. Wilkie, A. D. Wilson, J. H. Zappia, A. 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.
Bill agreed to.

 Third Reading 47 16:38 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2024 48

Migration Amendment (Prohibiting Items in Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 48 16:44 The SPEAKER 53517 The question before the House is that the bill be read a second time.    

The House divided. [16:44]
(The Speaker—Hon. Milton Dick)

44 AYES Aly, A. Ananda-Rajah, M. Belyea, J. A. Burney, L. J. Byrnes, A. J. Chesters, L. M. Conaghan, P. J. Doyle, M. J. J. Dreyfus, M. A. Elliot, M. J. Fernando, C. Freelander, M. R. Garland, C. M. L. Gee, A. R. Georganas, S. Gorman, P. Gosling, L. J. Hill, J. C. Lawrence, T. N. Laxale, J. A. A. Leigh, A. K. Lim, S. B. C. Miller-Frost, L. J. Mitchell, B. K. Mitchell, R. G. Mulino, D. Neumann, S. K. O'Connor, B. P. J. Payne, A. E. Perrett, G. D. Reid, G. J. Roberts, T. G. Ryan, J. C. Scrymgour, M. R. Sharkie, R. C. C. Sitou, S. Smith, D. P. B. (Teller) Stanley, A. M. (Teller) Swanson, M. J. Vamvakinou, M. Watts, T. G. Webster, A. E. Wells, A. S. Zappia, A. 13 NOES Bandt, A. P. Bates, S. J. (Teller) Chandler-Mather, M. Chaney, K. E. Daniel, Z. Haines, H. M. Ryan, M. M. (Teller) Scamps, S. A. Spender, A. M. Steggall, Z. Tink, K. J. Watson-Brown, E. Wilkie, A. D. 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.

 Third Reading 48 16:46 Ms WELLS 264121 Lilley by leave—I move: That this bill be now read a third time. 16:46 Ms TINK 300124 North Sydney My understanding of the process of consideration in detail is that this is a stage of the legislation progressing through the House where I can ask questions of the minister about the intention behind the bill, but I note that the minister is not currently in the chamber, so I'm just looking for direction on how that stage of consideration in detail may proceed. The SPEAKER 53517 Consideration in detail will be, obviously, when the bill is considered in detail with amendments before the House, just as we just did with the Aged Care (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024, where the amendment had been circulated by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and moved accordingly and then we had a vote on that. So, unless there are detailed amendments being put forward before the House, the way the process works is that I was very clear about seeking leave and the minister did formally ask leave of the House, and then the opposition or any member can deny leave. It doesn't necessarily have to be an opposition member; it can be another member of the House who can deny leave for the third reading to be moved immediately. So we went through that stage. Obviously, if there were detailed amendments in that stage, that's where we get into the nuts and bolts of the consequential amendments. Question agreed to. Bill read a third time. Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 49

Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024

Second Reading 49 16:49 Dr WEBSTER 281688 Mallee I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, which addresses a serious concern in our communities, and I thank the many constituents who have contacted me about this bill. As the member for Mallee and as the shadow minister for regional health, I want to work through this debate, on a principled basis, as to the concerns parents have raised about social media and their authority to determine what their children do, and the concerns constituents have raised about digital security. When I was elected as the member for Mallee in 2019, I never imagined that, five years later, we would be fighting to save our children's childhoods. As a mother and grandmother, I see how pervasive devices and electronic entertainment have become in children's lives. I was out for one of my daughters' birthdays earlier this year and saw a woman with her young children and her own mother, with both children's eyes glued to two large iPads. Just metres away, other children played on large indoor playground equipment. We cannot simply stand by and watch our children's childhoods being stolen. Imaginative play, physical activity and fitness are slipping away. As I said at a consumer health forum this morning, regional Australians have poorer health indicators relative to the rest of our population when it comes to their weight and exercise. Children are coping with boredom by using a digital device. We in the older generation must take responsibility for what our own device-behaviour models around our children and grandchildren and give those children the love, time and attention they crave and deserve. In Canberra recently we debated the influence of tech giants in Australians' lives and the impact that negativity on social media is having, particularly on children. The cyberbullying, body-image messaging and lurid pictures are bad enough, let alone the psychological disorders that the tech platforms fail to address—or even promote, through their algorithms. For centuries in Australia, our children's values have been formed by mum and dad and grandparents, the extended family and the community. Now, in the parenting hierarchy, some governments want to control what people believe and think, and they are positioning themselves at the top of that ladder, and, whether we intended it or not, tech giants—like Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Snapchat and Apple—are fast pushing family and community values into oblivion. If government and tech giants are the new gatekeepers of values, we have a volatile and destructive mix. I want to focus—as I did as a member of the parliamentary committee I was on in 2019-20—on Protecting the age of innocence, the title of our February 2020 report. We recommended then age verification for online wagering and online pornography. As the tech giants design their apps and devices to be addictive, the age verification debate has broadened to social media. I digress for a moment to highlight the comments I made earlier this year about the systemic, multinational tax-avoidance of the tech giants. It is hard to bend an ear to their concerns, given the harms they bring to our society and given the way they don't pay their fair share in this country. The Leader of the Opposition committed, in his budget reply speech, that the coalition would, within 100 days of taking office, require an age limit of 16 for social media and other potentially harmful platforms. Today, we are debating how we implement that initiative, after the government accepted the coalition's position. The coalition tried to legislate for an age verification trial in November, but the Albanese government opposed it and are still months away from any real action. The coalition has been at the forefront of advocating for this crucial change, because we believe it is essential for the safety, health and wellbeing of our children. There is growing evidence that social media is having a serious negative impact on the mental health of young Australians. Over the past decade, mental health conditions among children, especially girls, have significantly increased, and social media is a key contributor to this distress. On these platforms, children are exposed to unfiltered content from anyone, anywhere—often, anonymously. Much of this material is inappropriate and unhealthy for young audiences and their developing brains. Children frequently encounter bullying, harassment and other harmful behaviours. Additionally, these platforms are designed to fuel addiction, and we don't yet fully understand how the algorithms employed by social media companies work, and how, or by whom, they can be influenced. As a society, we would never have intentionally allowed our children to be exposed to such dangers, yet this is happening every day on social media. This is unacceptable. Again, as shadow assistant minister for regional health, I want to pick up on a comment an Optometry Australia representative made to me about the way devices are affecting children's eyesight, with a distinct increase in myopia attributed to devices. Banning social media access for children under 16 won't fix that directly, but indirectly removing one of the reasons to be on the devices will certainly help. I come now to a very important subject. There is arguably no more important subject in public policy. That is respecting and preserving parental authority. Where we need to draw a distinction is between permanently undermining parental rights and giving effect to the collective will of parents through this parliament to help protect our children and their children. That line of distinction is less a line and more of a smudge, a grey area, which is why this debate is so important. As a member of the National Party, I champion individual responsibility and therefore understand concerns about government interfering in parental decision-making. But it is clear to me that this is a public health issue, where nuanced policy-making is required to protect children from all walks of life, including those whose parents are not aware of, are not concerned about or don't have the digital skills or capacity to control their child's use of social media themselves. Let me be clear: I respect and support parents' wishes to have primacy in determining what they allow their children to do. I also respect the democratic view of parents represented in this place to show the parliament has their back. A good example is where state governments have helped parents of teenagers in another way: restricting their rights for a limited and vulnerable time in the driver's seat. States control the hours that provisional drivers licence holders, or P-platers, can drive, how many people can be in their car and even in some cases the power of the engines those young people can drive. Too many parents have lost a child. Too many communities, many of them regional communities, have endured the heartache of a tragedy from young people not being ready to drive responsibly. The tragedy is not the same, but it's equally tragic when it comes to young lives lost to the negative impacts of social media. Just as P-plater restrictions save lives, this reform will save lives as well. P-plater restrictions help parents who in some cases struggle to control or know what their children's behaviours are. A control on when and how children under 16 can use social media helps parents who can have greater difficulty exercising their authority over teenagers. Similarly, as the shadow minister said earlier in this debate, state governments have imposed mobile phone bans in schools to keep schoolchildren focused on their schooling. The dominant feedback from teachers, as I understand it, has been overwhelmingly positive about the impact these bans have had in the classroom and around the school grounds. The coalition strongly believes that protecting online privacy is fundamental to the successful delivery of this ban. That is why we opposed the Albanese government's digital ID laws earlier this year, citing concerns over privacy implications. It is crucial that any social media regulations safeguard the privacy of Australians. Some in the community have tried to politicise this issue and whip up hysteria about it. In reality, that's not what this legislation is about. While this bill is not perfect, it's another tool to support parents in their challenging role. We should not conflate this with digital ID. In her second reading of this bill, the Minister for Communications, the Hon. Michelle Rowland, said, 'The bill makes it explicit that platforms must not use information and data collected for age assurance purposes for any other purpose unless the individual has provided their consent.' I would say, 'Watch what you tick.' Also, she says that, once the information has been used for age assurance or any other agreed purpose, it must be destroyed by the platform or any third party contracted by the platform. The minister told question time on Monday: … we have made clear the digital ID framework is not in scope and would not be used for age assurance. As an opposition and prospectively the next government, we will hold the minister accountable to that pledge. I highlight again that earlier this year the coalition opposed the government's half-baked Digital ID Bill. The key principle here is protecting children from harm while ensuring privacy is protected. That said, I am critical of this government for limiting consultation on this legislation so tightly and preventing adequate community input and debate in the Senate. Only 24 hours were provided for public submissions on this bill, and a turnaround time of three business days was imposed on the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee to report on this bill. There were a mere three hours of public hearings held yesterday. These impediments to parliamentary process are unnecessary and unhelpful in finding the right balance between health and safety, supporting parents in their authority and privacy. Labor have been driving with the handbrake on when it comes to this bill, taking their sweet time to get moving and take steps towards tangible action. Now we are in the final sitting week of the year, the brake has suddenly been taken off and the pedal is flat to the floor and Labor is racing to get this legislation to the finish line with limited due process. The inevitable result will be unintentional consequences and that improvements will need to be made by the next government. I must reiterate that this is Labor's bill. The coalition acknowledges the imperfections in this bill but remains keen to see parents provided with support to protect their children from the harms of social media. 17:02 Ms TINK 300124 North Sydney This is exactly what many have been calling for. I therefore encourage the government to focus on the duty-of-care legislation rather than rushing this blunt bill, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. After all, there is a positive precedent for a duty-of-care approach, with the EU's digital safety act obliging companies to design and operate their platforms to ensure people aren't harmed. Likewise, the United Kingdom legislation prevents access to content that promotes eating disorders or suicide. Here, I want to acknowledge the work of the member for Goldstein, who this week introduced her Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill 2024. In stark contrast to what we have in front of us, this alternative bill has been developed over a period of 18 months in consultation with experts, carers and young people. Importantly, the member for Goldstein's bill addresses the underlying issues relating to online harm. I therefore thank her for her work and urge the government to withdraw their bill and bring hers on for debate. To proceed with the legislation as it currently stands sets us up for failure, as evidenced by the failure of bans in other jurisdictions, including France and Canada. Concerningly, a ban has the potential to create a false sense of security for parents and complacency for platforms, leaving children who circumvent it with no protection against harmful content. Even if a ban could be enforced, there is a real risk it would drive young people to less-regulated services where adults or regulators have less oversight. The government has also indicated online gaming services would fall beyond the scope of this legislation, despite games displaying many of the features cited as the core problems with social media, such as addictive features and potentially harmful content on social feeds. I can't let that exclusion go unchallenged as I have personal experience with friends who have had their kids refuse to go to school because of their gaming addiction. Beyond concerns around the potential impact of an age ban on access to useful information, some of my community have also raised concerns on the bill's implications for privacy. The age-assurance trial is set to examine methods from estimation and inference to full-blown identity verification. With the former, we risk false positives as systems approximate a potential user's age. With the latter, users may be required to upload personal ID documents that many will rightly feel uncomfortable sharing. Ultimately, the more rigorous the test, the greater the risk that the right to privacy will be infringed. This is something my community of North Sydney cares deeply about. More than a decade ago the then Attorney-General, who also happens to be the current Attorney-General, instructed the Law Reform Commission to conduct an inquiry into serious invasions of privacy in the digital era. Since then, academics and independent bodies like the Law Council have continued to call for action, arguing there is an urgent need for reform to strengthen protections for citizens and align Australian law with law in Europe and parts of North America. This government then conducted another Privacy Act review, with the report offering 116 recommendations tabled in February last year. In it's response, the government agreed fully to 38 proposals, agreed in principle to 68 and noted 10. According to the Attorney-General's website, 'The government is committed to introducing legislation to protect the personal information of Australians in 2024.' Yet we have not even seen a draft of the new legislation. Instead, we have this bill which does nothing to offer any greater protection to anyone including our children. Rather, this bill will likely require personal identification or biometric data from all Australians to be gathered by the platforms. So, like many in my community, I'm confused by the government's priorities. Other concerns related to this bill include the sharing of data with third-party verification services, the creation of databases linking real identities to online accounts, requirements for platforms to track Australian user location and the creation of infrastructure content monitoring—not to mention the potential for commercial surveillance of Australians. With all of that said, I also think it's unacceptable that the government is using its concern for the potential harms of online content to ban social media for the under-16s but won't ban online gambling advertising, despite the overwhelming evidence of the good an advertising ban would do. Rather than pursue the bill in front of us, I urge the government to focus on empowering young people to curate their feed and ensuring parents feel comfortable having conversations with their children about the use of these tools in their day-to-day lives. I also encourage them to force the platforms to give users the ability to reset their algorithms and ensure they are held to account for providing broader education on what is possible, because we can already restrict the time a young person spends on their devices, we can already restrict the type of content someone sees and we can already implement strategies that provide a trusted source with an oversight on how a young person is engaging online. As a 12-year-old told me confidently just last week, 'It's all in the settings, silly.' Ultimately, while I agree we need to ensure our kids are safe, this bill simply doesn't do that. Rather, this bill offers a blunt instrument that fails to meaningfully address the real problems of social media or hold platforms accountable for making their services safe for young people. For this reason, I move the second reading amendment as circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "the House declines to give the bill a second reading, and notes: (1) the concerns raised by the mental health sector that a social media ban for children under 16 could: (a) limit young people's access to important online mental health services and positive social connections; (b) disincentivise platforms from offering child safety features for younger users that will inevitably circumvent the ban; and (c) push younger users onto less regulated platforms; and (2) that a one-day window for submissions to a Parliamentary committee inquiry is insufficient given the potential magnitude of these risks, and a robust inquiry process should instead take place". The DEPUTY SPEAKER 74046 Is the amendment seconded? Ms Steggall 175696 I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak. (Quorum formed.) 17:11 Mr JOYCE e5d New England In a time when we are moving towards nanobots with recursive self-improvement, a time when AI has the capacity to bring a whole new dimension to how we analyse what happens, I believe—or at least I've always hoped—that there would be the wit and the capacity for multibillion-dollar companies and multibillionaires to incorporate that technology into how people speak to one another. This is not so much person to person; this is person to phantom. There is an evil, insidious nature to what happens online. I know this is a contentious issue for many, but I have incredibly strong views about why we should have the protections in this bill, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, for the vulnerable, who are getting into this online environment as they come home from school. I'll be honest, if you have girls who are around about 14 years old, they haven't developed a sense of proper agency in what's happening around them. A person—not a person; an evil thing, a phantom—has the capacity to come into that young person's life and completely turn it upside down, playing with their personality, playing with their ego like a cat plays with a ball of string and destroying that person. They really can. Many parents have lived through this incredibly evil and destructive experience. A person who's happy and fun-loving is taken to the edge of death. Whether it's an issue such as anorexia, we stand back and say, 'What can we do?' Would you allow them to play with firearms or to play with dynamite just because it was free? I really mean it. It's as dangerous as that. It is not dangerous for everybody, but it is for the vulnerable, the person who starts competing with this unknown entity and tries to justify their position and tries to get a form of self-worth against—we don't know what. Is it another person, either named or unnamed? We've already seen the tragedy of a young lady from near Strathfield—I think she was from Santa Sabina—who committed suicide the other day. We've seen other young girls who've taken their own lives. We have a responsibility to do something about this. It might not be perfect, but we've got to do something. You can't just sit back and say, 'Oh, this is too hard.' I have been on this case for years. People say, 'We need more time.' I've been pursuing this for years. I remember going to the United States of America and seeing Senator Ted Cruz on one side and a Democrats senator from the state of Washington on the other. They're a lot more forward leaning than we are. I don't think you'd find that they're some sort of socialist cabal; they are a lot more forward leaning. I watched them with a sense of real encouragement and with a real sense of purpose as they absolutely eviscerated people from Facebook and from Instagram. They were basically saying, 'Either you fix this or we will take your licence off you.' We haven't even gone partway down the path that that invective has. We have got to clearly understand that these companies could have done something. It's not as if they haven't heard about this. They choose not to. That is the problem: they choose not to. They choose not to because they make an incredible amount of money from advertising while having this group of people as part of their cohort. This is not the misinformation and disinformation bill. That one has been parked. It's gone into oblivion, and I have not heard an obituary raised by those in the Labor Party and the Greens, saying they're sad about the misinformation and disinformation bill being buried. It went without a whimper. It died a miserable death, and it was carted out. But there's a fundamental difference here. That bill was about your right, in passive observation, to assess information that is before you and make your mind up as to whether you believe it or not, as to whether you absorb it and as to whether it informs you or not. Even if it's on criminality, it can't inform you to murder someone. It can't inform you that there's some sort of differentiation in DNA amongst humankind. That information does not talk back to you. You observe it, and then you make up your mind about it. When you read a paper, the newspaper does not talk back to you. When you watch television, the television does not talk back to you. You make your judgement about what you are seeing. But social media is entirely different. It talks back. It talks back, and it says the most vile, horrendous things to beautiful, young people, who, at that point in their life, are looking for self-affirmation, who are looking to see themselves amongst their peers and who get sucked into this vortex that destroys lives. And it really does. This bill is supported by some media houses not because the media houses believe it's a winner but because mums and dads think it's a winner. It's mums and dads who want this dealt with, and we have a responsibility to do something about it. Is this bill the perfect solution? No. Nothing that goes through this chamber is a perfect solution. It's the best attempt. It's us trying to do what we can, but it's not perfect. The great thing about the parliament is that, if something's not perfect, we can fix it. It is not beyond our wit to say, 'Oh, well, if in the future changes need to be mad, we'll make them.' Hopefully, we'll make them in the same bipartisan way as we are doing this, because I don't believe for one second that people on either side, in the majority, believe that this is a tenable situation. What we are attempting to do with this bill is find a way to start the process to alleviate the problem that we have before us. We have made vastly more contentious moves in the past. Obviously one that comes to mind was after Port Arthur, with the control of firearms. I acknowledge that the member for Solomon and I have had quite a bit to do with firearms. I don't think any of us would go back now and say, 'You've got to have semiautomatic weapons in your cupboard and take them out for a run in the park.' No-one believes in doing that. Yet at the time there was tremendous uproar, a massive uproar. I live on the land. I own rifles. But if someone said to me, 'I want a Kalashnikov,' I would say: 'Why? You don't!' 'I need an F88 Steyr.' 'No, you don't, not unless you want to join the Army. Then you could be issued one from the armoury and trot around with it and the full kit.' I believe in the future people will say, 'Why didn't you do that earlier?' It is something that is before us now. Before we go into the next year, where it will be the fog of the election, this is something we can deal with now. I pleaded with the then Prime Minister Scott Morrison that we had to do something about this. It was one of the things I brought up continuously, saying, 'When are we going to do something about Mr Zuckerberg and Mr Bezos and their cohorts that are capitalising on the misery of so many families?' It's an amazing thing. People say, 'You just tell your kids to get off it.' If that was the case, there'd be no-one who smokes. You'd just say to them, 'Don't smoke.' But 10 per cent of people do, and I'd say that 99 per cent of that 10 per cent know it's no good for you, but they do it. When you see a child on their tablet, they swipe right and swipe left and bang, bang, bang and their fingers move so quickly and they're all across it. You can see that interaction and it is the most amazing, scary thing from a very young age. Then they start Minecraft. When they wake up early in the morning, go to the side of your bed and take the charger off you, sneak off, get on your phone and do all those tricks—just wake you up slightly with a phone in front of you. You look at it: 'Facial recognition. Thank you.' Off they go, back on to it. They can actually download programs. That's starting at a very young age. What's in the back of your mind? 'It's Minecraft; it's passive.' They're engaged with the thing, but it's the start of the process. In the end you say: 'I know it's coming, Instagram. I know it's coming, TikTok. I know it's coming where they'll engage in that swill.' There are some nice things, but there's that swill of those evil people looking for vulnerable people. They get a kick out of hurting people. They get an endorphin kick; it makes them feel good. They don't care. In fact, some of this total and utter filth hold it as a prize if they kill you. It's a win. It is the crime you can get away with. You're out there as 'Rooster123' or 'Prince Charming' engaging with Jane Smith, 13 years old and at the local high school. 'Jane, you're fat. Jane, you should lose some more weight. Jane, you're a loser. Jane, you should kill yourself. You're nothing but rubbish.' Is that mythical? Is that overstating it? No, it's not. That's how it works. And then there's the terrifying outcome that so many families have felt when they finally find out what's going on and they're having to engage the psychologist or the psychiatrist to try and deprogram this insidious programming that has happened. To get to that point in your life where you say to another person, 'What are you doing to yourself?' You get to the point where they have no control over their life anymore. It has been rewired by this engagement with a multibillionaire's money-making machine that makes them one of the richest people in the world. Whilst they acquire that massive wealth, and sit there in their T-shirt and parade like some sort of quasi-god on the stage in front of the adoring fans, they don't have the capacity to quietly stand back and contextualise all the mechanisms and all the attributes of how they made that money. They don't say to themselves in a quieter moment: 'Under my principles, under the rules I live by in my life, under the things that guide my compass, is what I am doing right? Is this good? Is this right? Is this just? Have I created harm? Am I responsible for hurting someone?' The answer to that last question is, yes, you are. But they don't do anything about it. So we have to do what is second best. We have to make our best attempt. We have to try to do what is right. This bill is our best attempt to do what is right. 17:26 Dr SCAMPS 299623 Mackellar I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. I'm a mum to three teenage children, and I know that parents across Mackellar find themselves in a similar predicament to me: trying to help our children navigate their childhood and teen years in the digital era—not an easy task. I'm also a member of a generation which is so pleased to have lived through its formative years without a screen, and without social media in particular. Social media encourages us to constantly compare ourselves to others and can serve up unsolicited, harmful content, neither of which are conducive to good mental health. It's difficult for everyone. Technology changes far more quickly than policy, academic analysis, legislation and governments do. It's hard for everyone to keep up, but federal governments are elected to do hard things, and this should be no different. Before getting to the bill itself, I would like to commend the government for tackling this challenging but incredibly important topic in its first term, as the need is urgent. I think it's important to recognise that the intention here is to protect our children and young people from harm. This, of course, is commendable. Let's be clear: there are significant harms being dished up to our children every day as they scroll through social media. There is eating disorder content, violent pornography, the normalisation of misogyny, and gambling, alcohol and junk food promotions specifically targeted to them. A 2023 eSafety Commissioner report found that 75 per cent of all 16- to 18-year-olds surveyed in Australia had seen online pornography, and almost one-third of those had encountered it before the age of 13. It found that 60 per cent of young people were exposed to pornography on social media, often unintentionally, on popular sites such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat   . All the while, young peoples' online activity and data is being harvested by these large corporations, with thousands of labels being attached to them, and this data is sold to innumerable companies for the purpose of targeted advertising. I recently conducted a social media survey in the electorate of Mackellar to get a feel for what people were thinking about this social media ban for those under the age of 16. It was split down the middle for and against, but basically everyone agreed on one thing: something must be done to protect young people online. However, many felt that the ban that we are debating today was too blunt an instrument, would not be effective and could be easily circumvented. Some argued that, rather than introducing a ban, other measures should be introduced to make the online environment safer. One constituent summed up this issue by writing: Nice idea in principle—but would more likely ending up cutting off vulnerable youth from support services. Unfortunately, there are some mental health and medical resources that only exist on social media. The EU is considering legislation that would prohibit algorithms dictating your feed, instead having social media only give information from users you actively follow. This may be a better compromise. I now seek to introduce the second reading amendment circulated in my name. This second reading amendment highlights the problems with this bill. They can be summarised quite easily. Firstly, there are no grandfathering provisions. It is entirely unclear how platforms will be required to manage the many millions of existing users who are now set to be excluded and deplatformed—those children under 16 who are already on the designated platforms, who have been on them for years and who will now, in theory, be required to step away from them. Secondly, the legislation is far too vague in stipulating how social media platforms are to comply with their obligation to prevent under 16s from having an account, stating only that it will likely involve: … some form of age assurance, as a means of identifying whether a prospective or existing account holder is an Australian child under the age of 16 years. For what is supposed to be world-leading legislation, this doesn't seem adequate. Thirdly, under-16s will still be able to watch videos on YouTube and see content on Facebook. The ban is only designed to stop them from creating an account. Without legislation in place that imposes a duty of care on social media platforms to ensure that harmful content cannot be shared, young people will still be at risk of harm whilst supposedly relaxing in their bedrooms. I do acknowledge that work has commenced to create duty-of-care legislation to compel social media platforms to prevent harm from occurring on their sites. But, of course, as with all things political and legislative, there is no guarantee that this legislation will come to fruition for years, if at all. A case in point is the gambling advertising ban bill, which, despite being so urgent and necessary, has been kicked off into the long grass by the government this week as being all too hard and all too scary with the looming election. In much more general terms, however, I remain concerned that this bill has the potential to actually negatively impact children, by severing their access to vital mental health resources and social supports, which are critical for the very large number of young people already experiencing mental health challenges. There are also significant privacy concerns. Population-wide age verification raises serious concerns about data security and privacy, affecting both minors and adults. We also know that age bans trialled in 10 other countries have failed. I acknowledge that technology has moved on since many of these trials were conducted, but it is also inevitable that many children under 16 years old will be able to bypass the age restrictions, thereby finding themselves inhabiting unregulated, darker spaces that they would otherwise not have found themselves in. This may have a chilling effect on young people. They may find themselves in even more harmful spaces than they would otherwise have been in, were it not for the ban. Being on these platforms illegally may mean they don't seek the support and help they need because they're worried about the legal repercussions—that is, getting into trouble. Fundamentally, though, the problem with simply evicting children from the platforms is that it absolves the social media companies of their responsibility to create safe, well-designed services for young users. Our laws should demand that platforms take reasonable steps to resolve issues of safety and addictive design while also offering better experiences for children. That's where the danger of the superficial appeal of this legislation becomes most clear. Basically, this legislation, which simply bans those under 16 from using social media, means that social media companies won't be compelled to address and solve the actual causes of harm on their platforms—both the algorithms that serve up harmful content to teenagers and the design principles which ensure addiction. According to Daniel Angus, a professor of digital communication and director of the Queensland University of Technology's Digital Media Research Centre, there are several things that the government should be doing to better avert harms that I have listed. The first recommendation is to impose a duty of care on digital platforms. The government has announced they're looking into this, which is welcome news. My crossbench colleague the member for Goldstein introduced a private members bill just this week which would establish a digital duty of care. I commend her for doing this. The member for Goldstein's contention, which many digital experts agree with, is that rather than age gating, we need safety by design. That means, instead of simply shutting kids out, we need to address and prevent the harm being caused in the first place. This is especially important when the government is far from clear on how age gating will work. This leads to the second recommendation from Daniel Angus, which is to enact regulations which will require platforms to give people more control over what content they see. Users should be able to change, reset or turn off their personal algorithm. The third recommendation is to create a children's online privacy code to better protect children's information online. This could be administered by the Children's Commissioner or the eSafety Commissioner or both. These issues were comprehensively canvassed by a group of over 140 Australian and international experts who wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister last month. The view of that group is that an age based ban on accessing social media is too blunt an instrument to address the risks effectively. I understand that this bill has been referred to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. In my short time here, I've always found Senate inquiries, which provide the opportunity for further expert scrutiny, inevitably result in improved legislation and outcomes. I particularly hope that the committee is actively seeking input from the children this bill seeks to regulate. The experts are telling us that children want safe online environments in which to socialise and be entertained. I look forward to reading the committee's report, which is actually due out today, and I will carefully review their recommendations as well as the input from my community of Mackellar, as ever, in making my final decision about whether to support this bill. I move: That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "does not decline to give the bill a second reading and notes: (1) the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society tabled its final report on 18 November 2024 and carefully considered, but did not recommend, an age ban on social media; (2) the Australian Human Rights Commission has serious reservations about the ban; (3) in October 2024, over 140 Australian and international experts wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister and State and Territory leaders explaining their view that an age-based ban on accessing social media is too blunt an instrument to address the risks effectively; (4) an aged-based social media ban could have unintended consequences including increased isolation and children being pushed to unregulated and dangerous platforms; and (5) the imposition of a 'duty of care' on digital platforms is more likely to reduce online harm for all users regardless of age and should be implemented as a matter of urgency". The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 Is the motion seconded? Ms Le 295676 I second the motion and reserve my right to speak. The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for North Sydney moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The honourable member for Mackellar has now moved an amendment to that amendment, that all words after 'House' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Mackellar to the amendment moved by the honourable member for North Sydney be agreed to. 17:38 Ms WARE 300123 Hughes I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, and it is a great pleasure for me to do so. At the outset, it's important to start with how we have landed here. We have landed here because we have had social media, in some form or other, for around 20 years. Successive governments have given social media platforms the opportunity to self-regulate. They have failed to do so. I heard the honourable member for New England draw the comparison with the gun legislation that was rightfully brought in by the Howard government and led by former prime minister Howard after the dreadful massacre in Port Arthur. That was nation changing and changed the way that we as a country looked at possession of guns. That was the right decision for our nation. The social media platforms have proven to be completely recalcitrant on this. Four decades ago, when we didn't have seatbelts in cars, the legislators in those days had a similar problem with car manufacturers, who said: 'It will be too expensive to put seatbelts into cars. It is not really that much of an issue. People are dying from other injuries, not just from not wearing seatbelts. It's too hard to regulate. It's going to make cars too expensive.' Thankfully, the parliament of those times had the courage to stand up to the car manufacturers and say: 'No. In the national interest, we must prevent people from dying from chest injuries or being rendered permanently paraplegic or quadriplegic through their injuries in car accidents.' We regulated it. The sky didn't fall in, and now our cars are safer than they have ever been. Indeed, cars are now sold on the basis of safety features. This is legislation that is completely necessary for us to change the course for our young people. This legislation broadly aims to set a minimum age of 16 for Australians to hold social media accounts. It requires age-restricted social media companies to take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users from having an account with their social media platform. The entire objective of this legislation is to reduce the harm that social media is causing to young people. When we hear reports of 11- and 12-year-olds taking their own lives because of bullying or because of some of the material that they are being subjected to on social media, it is time that we said, 'We as the adults in this place, as federal legislators, must say no. We must stand up for our children. We cannot allow what social media platforms have allowed onto their sites to continue.' This is, at first breath, about protecting our children going forward. Secondly, this empowers parents. I know, as a parent, the hardest word to say to your children is no. But when it is the hardest to say is also the time when it is the most necessary to say it. Some of the arguments that have been put up against this legislation, to me, simply don't make sense. I'll say this particularly. I was here for the member for Mackellar's speech. I have a lot of respect for the honourable member, but a couple of the arguments that have come about have been around children with disabilities or cutting off vulnerable youths from supports that are only on social media. Don't we then have to change it so that those supports are available in other forums? This is not a ban on the internet; this is a ban on social media platforms for children under the age of 16, because they are children. We have various other laws for our children. We say to them, 'You cannot drive a car under the age of 16,' because we know that that is too dangerous. We say, 'You cannot smoke cigarettes.' We say, 'You cannot drink alcohol.' We say, 'You should not be having sex under the age of 16.' These laws have all come into place over a period of time where our society has come to a point where it has been necessary to bring in prohibitions. I am not usually a person who wants prohibitions brought in, but they must be brought in when the danger of prohibition is far less than the danger that the activity that is to be prohibited is currently causing. I can't recall, at the age of 11 or 12, knowing what suicide was. The fact that Australian 11- and 12-year-old boys and girls now not only know what suicide is but know how to take their own lives, and are taking their own lives, is an absolute tragedy, and we are in a place now where we can do something to prevent it, so we need to do something to prevent it. In response to the argument that some kids are still going to get onto social media, I say: okay, but why are we making the perfect the enemy of the good in this? Some kids under the age of 16 still drive cars. Some kids under the age of 18 still drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or do other things that we do not want them to do. But this legislation gives parents back control. They can say: 'No, you cannot be on this. You can't be on Instagram or Snapchat, because it is against the law.' My boys now are 18, and I just wish that this law had been in place when my husband and I were grappling with this when they were younger. We tried everything to keep them off social media, but parents these days are working. Their kids come home and are on their phones, and parents cannot be sitting there with their children 24 hours a day looking at what they are watching. Indeed, they shouldn't be. So this gives parents the ability to say no. The other argument that I just cannot accept is: 'But what about the 13- and 14-year-olds who are currently on social media? We're now going to have to say to them, "You have to come off it."' Yes, that's exactly right. We're the adults. We're the parents. We have to say, 'Yes, 14-year-old, it's now the law; you have to come off it.' Then they can go and whinge to all of their friends, because this is a time when parents have to have the ability to unite and say, 'No, we are all, as a wall here, saying no.' That's what it gives parents. It gives parents back control, and it gives parents the ability to not be the only parent in the group who says, 'No, you cannot be on social media.' That's why this is important. I will just go back to how we got to this place. I want to commend the member for Banks, the shadow minister for communications, on this. He introduced a private member's bill back in November of last year, and it's now up for its first anniversary. I am very glad to see that the government, including the communications minister, have after 12 months decided to now come on board with a policy and legislation that initially originated from the Liberal Party and particularly from the shadow minister for communications, the member for Banks. While we are there, the other members on my side who have been instrumental in getting the legislation to the place where it is today are the member for Flinders and the member for Fisher—both of whom have been tireless advocates in this place for reducing the harm of social media on our children. I thank all of those members. I have been inundated by emails from my electorate about this issue. Parents are crying out for assistance with this. Most times in your life when things go really pear-shaped, you can usually trace it back to when you haven't gone with your instinct, and parents have the correct instinct on this. They know that their kids are seeing things on social media and are being subject to bullying and subject to various sights and other graphics that they do not want their children to see. In the normal course, for example—back before social media and before the internet—very few children under the age of 18 were viewing pornography. There were a few. There always are. But it was very different to what is now available these days. I hate to think what my kids have seen on social media. I really do. That is not good. It is bad for both young boys and young girls. It is saying to young girls: 'You have to look this certain way and you have to perform this certain way.' It is similarly saying to young men: 'You have to perform this certain way, and by the way it is okay to treat girls in this way.' A lot of that is being circulated through social media. One of the other issues that I know a lot of us have grappled with is about the protection of privacy. It is very pleasing to see that the government has agreed to amend the legislation to include a clear provision stating that a person cannot be compelled to provide digital ID or other personal identity documents, such as passports. I know this was a big issue for some of my coalition members, particularly in the other place. It also prohibits platforms from using information collected for age-assurance purposes for any other purpose unless explicitly agreed to by the individual. What this means is that, once information has been used for age assurance, it must be destroyed unless the individual agrees to it being retained. I am quite comfortable that those privacy amendments do provide adequate privacy and address the concerns that have been raised by some of my colleagues here and also in the other place. To conclude, this is good legislation. This is legislation that has been well thought through. Again, I thank the government for coming on board with the initiative that was originally proposed by the member for Banks. I commend the bill to the House for all of the reasons I have outlined. 17:53 Ms SHARKIE 265980 Mayo This bill seeks to provide to protection for children under 16 years of age from the harms associated with social media. It does this by requiring social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children under 16 from opening and maintaining social media accounts. In principle I do support this bill. The ubiquitous use of social media apps among teenagers and children has created an environment that no other generation has had to encounter. We know that we—and that includes every living person—now live through our phones, our tablets and the news they provide, don't we? There's the envious review of a friend's photos from an overseas trip or the quick text chat with a friend or acquaintance. Sadly, this easy access has also robbed us of more personal and meaningful communication—the stuff we once enjoyed. One only has to look around in a restaurant to see couples of all ages heads down in their phones, scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, at the expense of their dinner companions. The thing that I've seen too often in my community and in other places around Australia is mum or dad sitting in the park on their phone while their children are on the equipment. As a society, we're losing the ability to communicate. As for the young, many are missing out on the opportunity to develop the very communication skills that are so necessary for social, physical and mental wellbeing. It is ironic that social media, the very tools that enable us to communicate more easily with others, and other technological advancement before it, has in many respects, I think, had the opposite effect. Not too long ago, those aged 64 and older had the highest reported rates of loneliness and feelings of isolation. Social media opened up the world for older people to communicate directly with friends and family at their whim. However, the loneliest cohort now is the 16- to 24-year-olds, a complete inverse of historical loneliness records. The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey, HILDA, which collects data on personal wellbeing, labour market dynamics and family life, provides an important insight into the lives of 17,000 Australians over the course of their lifetime. The HILDA Survey found that, between 2011 and 2021, the rate of psychological stress among 15- to 25-year-olds increased by 120 per cent. The Australian Psychological Society advises that psychologists report that teenagers are determining their self-worth on the number of likes they receive and are left feeling rejected if they don't receive instant approvals for their posts. In a recent media statement, the society stated that more than four in 10 Australian teens now suffer mental health distress, with experts drawing a link in the rise of cases with the use of social media. The rate of hospitalisation for intentional self-harm surged to 70 per cent in young women aged 15 to 19 between 2008-2009 and 2021-2022. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that digital platforms were not toxic in their original formulation, but that everything changed at the beginning of 2009 when Facebook added the 'like' button and later the 'share' button. The adoption of social media and the introduction of engagement tools such as 'like' and 'share' functions demonstrates a disturbing correlation. It is a correlation which appears to specifically affect the younger generation. But, as I asked in my speech on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2024, is legislation always the best form of action? If we are going to legislate, I think it's really important that we don't rush it. While acknowledging the negative aspects of social media and its indiscriminate effect on the young, there are many positive aspects. Social media provides opportunities for young people to digitally socialise and find people with shared interests. Importantly, it has become a useful communication tool among peers and parents alike. There is a concern that removing under-16s from social media may have the adverse effect of further isolating a generation. Worse, it may drive children to unregulated web channels and social media services. This was raised in several submissions to the bill. Unregulated platforms offer minimal or no safeguards and pose greater risks from bad actors. If we think children won't find a workaround, we are kidding ourselves. They are, after all, digital natives, and, really, none of us in this room could argue that we are digital natives. The merits of protecting our children are not up for debate; protecting them is a must. What is up for debate is how we achieve this, and I think we need to do this very carefully. Rushing legislation has been demonstrated time and time again to be a futile exercise; in fact, you could even say it is a dangerous exercise. We know from past experience that good legislation, particularly on major reforms such as this, requires extensive consultation and sufficient time for due diligence by members. Yet here we are with a bill on which the government gave a mere 24 hours to the public for feedback—24 hours! This is the antithesis of good legislative practice, and I think that is where my real concerns sit. This feels so incredibly rushed for legislation that's not really supposed to be in operation for more than a year, perhaps two. It is a bill that requires age verification to be undertaken by social media platforms but is silent on how this occurs. We're told these details will be worked out later. I can't recall a single piece of legislation being passed where the details of operation were not known. My concerns reflect those of many in my community. Yes, parents want a safer digital environment, but they're also adverse to tech giants having even greater access to personal data than they already have. The suggestion that these companies will only hold data for 24 hours provides no comfort, nor does the thought that these companies are mining our social media accounts to guess what age we are. These intrusions are deeply problematic and simply do not address the underlying issues; they just delay the inevitable. The statistics on mental health deterioration, psychological distress and self-harm don't magically stop at 16. This bill doesn't necessarily make social media safer. It simply delays the danger until a young person turns 16. Good policy identifies a problem and, where appropriate, identifies a legislative fix. This bill suggests children are the problem and delaying their access is the fix, and that just can't be so. It does nothing to protect children 16 years and over, and, in doing nothing, it actually creates data risks that were previously not there. We know in the business world that data is gold, and it appears we're going to be gifting it to the social media monoliths by the pallet load. I've circulated amendments, which I'll speak to later, to provide necessary personal identification protections to the millions of social media users that will potentially require age verification if this bill passes. I'm pleased to hear that apparently the government will be putting forward amendments in the Senate that pretty much mirror the amendments that I am putting to this House. I'm not sure why we couldn't support it in this House and somehow try and improve this bill that's going to inevitably pass in this House before it gets to the other place. I, like every other Australian and every other parent, want to protect children—our children, our nation's children—from the harms caused by social media. However, I am very much concerned about not only the privacy aspect but also that this legislation is very rushed, is insufficiently consulted on, fails to address human rights concerns and, consequently, perhaps may not achieve the desired outcome. I just fail to understand why we are in such a hurry to do this in the last days of this year's parliamentary term. Why could we not have seen this bill months ago? Why can we not come back and look at this next year if it's not actually going to be in operation for a very long time? Since the minimum-age obligation will not be activated for at least 12 months, there really is no justification in rushing through this bill. I think it's just here to serve a political imperative rather than a safety imperative. So, at this point, I'm very vexed on how I should vote on this bill—I really am. It's a flawed bill. The principle is great. I understand the principle. My community understands the principle, but this legislation appears to be incredibly flawed. 18:04 Dr RYAN 297660 Kooyong The question of an increase in the age threshold for the creation of social media accounts from 13 to 16 has been brought into political consideration over recent months because of concerns regarding the impact of social media on the mental health and wellbeing of Australian children. The advent of social media has fundamentally transformed how humans spend their time and communicate. The repercussions of the changes are profound. Accumulating research has linked the amount of time children spend online and excessive and addictive use of digital media with adverse physical, psychological, social and neurological consequences. Researchers acknowledge a link between mental health disorders and social media usage. But it is important to note that relationship does not confirm causation. The thesis of parents groups and a recent pretty strong campaign by the Murdoch press is that increasing the age of those allowed on social media from 13 to 16 years would protect vulnerable young people from the dangers of social media. It is true that if age verification could be comprehensively and effectively enforced, children and young people would be better protected from risks like cyberbullying and online predators. Limiting social media access might increase time for children to make other more healthy lifestyle choices, like exercising or socialising in person with others, and that could improve their mental health, sleep and academic performance. Restricting access to the digital world might empower parents and guardians to better guide their children's online activities. A complete ban, were that possible, might also help with online privacy concerns. Social media platforms collect vast amounts of personal data from users. Children and adolescents simply don't simply understand how their data is collected, used and monetised. Banning access for younger users might mitigate privacy violations and limit the exploitation of personal data by large technology companies. Each of those concerns does carry some truth. We do need to address the harms caused by social media platforms. However, the overwhelming weight of expert evidence in this area is against this government's simplistic proposal of a blanket ban for young people aged less than 16. This country has a confusing array of laws around young people. You can be criminally responsible at 10, you can join the Labor Party at 14, you can join the Liberal Party at 16, you can work full-time from 16 and you can vote at 18. The fact is that digital media are vital for young peoples' civic, social and cultural participation. This is a point which is often stressed in qualitative research involving young people. How can we tell growing adults that they need to hold off becoming fully-fledged citizens and contributing members of society until they are 16? Young people have a right to freedom of expression and access to information. They also have an implied right to political communication, which has been flagged by some tech platforms as a possible basis for legal challenges to this legislation. Social media is a vital information source and a means of expression for many members of the LGBTQIA+ community, for Indigenous Australians, for young people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, for children who live in isolated areas, and for children and young people with a disability. This bill would block young people from the channels and the groups that are their public spaces, which are the forum for their everyday communication with their people. Young people access their news via social media. They know legacy media doesn't reflect their interests. Legacy media makes little effort to engage with them and it doesn't afford them the opportunity to communicate with each other in the way that they want to—IRL. The only exception of which I am aware to that rule in this country is that of 6 News, the streaming channel founded in 2019 by Kooyong resident Leo Puglisi. Leo has employed a number of young Australian journalists, some as young as 13, in growing the only news and current affairs channel which presents the perspectives of people their own age. Young people conduct their businesses via social media. They use it to engage with other platforms' digital services, products, apps and sites—for example, YouTube compilation videos of TikTok content, sharing a story on Instagram which then goes to Facebook and to X. It is not easy to disentangle social media from other platforms. This is most obvious with the Chinese platform Weibo, which is integrated as a matter of course with multiple functions like posting, group chats and a digital wallet. Australians, young people, know what they don't want to experience online. They don't want to experience unwanted content or contact, or unwanted surveillance and use of their data. But they tell us they would like to see better guidelines and boundaries and to understand the acceptable use of online spaces. They want better education and training on online safety, so that they can identify, recognise and thoroughly understand potential harms. Young people have told us that, instead of reforming age-verification laws, protection should be improved, with stronger technology such as digital passwords and secure apps. They want improved monitoring and swift action, and they want accountability regarding online safety practices, rather than reversing the onus and placing it purely on the user—a user who is physically and neurologically immature. The advice of academics and other experts has been largely ignored or misinterpreted in the framing of this legislation. The bill even misrepresents the literature it cites about developmental ages and risks. It has dismissed the literally hundreds of Australian and international experts who have raised serious concerns regarding lack of benefit and potential harm resulting from the bill. It ignores the more than hundred submissions to the ridiculously, inappropriately brief, tick-a-box Senate inquiry into the bill which was held earlier this week. The legislation is going to rely on effective age assurance or verification processes being adopted. That means that all Australians will be required to prove their identity to access social media. Exactly how that is going to happen is completely unclear. The minister has claimed that we won't be compelled to hand over our personal identification, but I note that that statement is at odds with the explanatory memorandum for the bill. The government has committed $6.5 million to a study of new age-verification technology. That study is due to report in 2025. But now the government proposes to give responsibility for the process over to the digital platforms. Even Google and Meta say that they think it would be better to wait for the result of the review. Age verification is rife with privacy and digital-security risks, as well as critical effectiveness and implementation issues. It is not a cure-all safeguard for children and for their data protection. Children's location data is extremely sensitive. There is significant potential for more, not less, data harvesting from children, if we hand over to the platforms the power to verify and assure children's age. Meta has already told us that it will undertake age assurance using facial recognition, digital ID and other forms of software. The international benchmark for digital governance, the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, clearly defines individuals as the owners of their data. It states that consent for data use has to be freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous. In Australia, the lack of transparency of international digital platforms regarding how they collect, share and use data leaves individuals exposed to algorithms which are based on their online habits. Protections for children are dependent on different rules on different platforms. There is a perception that regulating the collection and use of data collected by digital platforms is complex, but this is not the case. Digital platforms are predicated on rules and processes, and they can be amended accordingly. Mind you, those rules can be evaded by those children who lie about their age online and are then targeted with content for older age groups. Experience overseas, and previous experience in this country, suggests that a blanket ban will last about five minutes. Ask Stephen Conroy. Technological workarounds, such as VPNs, and false age declarations will inevitably undermine the effectiveness of this ban. The government has admitted that already. As the Tech Council of Australia has said, this bill will only add to the existing perceptions internationally that the Australian technology sector operates in an uncertain regulatory environment which can be subjected to rapid legislative change without due consideration. This legislation does not inspire confidence in this government. Regardless of how it's done, a ban is not going to address the root causes of online risks, and it's not going to make platforms safer for everyone. Age-gating will not make unsafe products safe. Bans could well create more risk for those children who still use those platforms, because they will remove the incentives to ensure robust child-safety features for young users who evade the age-assurance measures. Bans will not improve those products that children will still be allowed to use. What is the problem here? Is it the fact we are letting billion-dollar companies market unsafe digital products in Australia, or is it the fact that some of the Australians using those products are children and teenagers? There are much less restrictive alternatives available which could achieve the aim of protecting children and young people from online harms. An appropriate starting point to better protect child rights online would be implementation of the recommendations of the Privacy Act review and the Online Safety Act review. Both of these looked to tackle concerns linked to the digital environment pragmatically rather than prohibitively. To that end, yesterday I supported the member for Goldstein's private member's bill for a digital duty of care. Her proposal to amend the Online Safety Act to impose an overarching standard of care for large providers would mandate risk assessments and risk mitigation plans, mandatory transparency reporting, and stringent enforcement mechanisms. It would require the platforms to take reasonable steps to make their products safe for children and young people. It would improve online safety for everybody. Other measures to improve online safety could include regulating to limit notifications, autoplay, low default privacy settings, weak age gating for adult products, and the infinite scroll feature which is designed to promote user engagement. We need to also help children and young people better navigate online spaces by ensuring that the national curriculum includes a specific focus on digital literacy and online safety. Young people should be taught to think critically about what they see online and how they engage with social media. Parents and teachers also need better tools and resources to help them provide appropriate guidance and support. This work will take time and effort—the sort of time and effort that the government has not put into this legislation. But that time and effort would be worthwhile. We all know and acknowledge that social media carries significant risks for children and young people. As a parent, as a paediatrician and as a politician, I know that those risks need to be addressed by this government. We do have a duty of care: to make changes in this important area carefully and judiciously but with a mind always to the rights and the needs of young people. In this last sitting week of 2024, with no apparent cause and no rational justification for their unseemly haste, both major political parties in Australia are rushing to ban social media for young people. Their proposals are broad in scope, but they are short on detail. They abdicate all responsibility for the program to digital providers. They are not evidence based. They risk being ineffectual, and they risk potentially significant unintended consequences. They will drive cynicism in young Australians, who will see that this government hasn't got the bottle to take on online gambling advertising but is happy to rush through this legislation without appropriate consultation or thought. Systemic regulation would drive up safety and privacy standards on all platforms, for all children. This approach is supported by the experts—experts in mental health, digital literacy and child psychology. This approach will protect our children. Age assurance is rife with privacy and digital security risks. It's rife with critical effectiveness and implementation issues. It is not a cure-all safeguard for children and their data protection. It could well increase risk for young Australians in the digital space. Something worth doing is worth doing properly, carefully, judiciously and in an evidence based way. We have a duty to protect the best interests of all Australians, but most particularly our young and our vulnerable. This bill will not do that, and for that reason I cannot commend this legislation to the House. 18:18 Mr TEHAN 210911 Wannon I want to start by highlighting what the coalition has negotiated when it comes to the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. It has negotiated some incredibly important amendments which we expect to see reflected as amendments in the Senate debate. These were important changes which all members in this House should note. In our view, they have significantly strengthened this planned piece of legislation. The first area where we have improved this legislation is in relation to privacy, and I can't be clearer as to how important this is. There will be new provisions stating that people cannot be compelled to provide digital ID. That's worth repeating. People cannot be compelled to provide digital ID. They cannot be compelled to provide government-issued identity documents such as a driver's licence or a passport. Under this legislation, you cannot be compelled to provide a driver's licence or a passport, and you cannot be compelled to provide digital ID, full stop, period. That is what the legislation will say when it is amended in the Senate. Secondly, following our discussions with the government, changes will be made so that the communications minister will be able to make rules specifying actions that social media platforms are not required to take in order to comply with the legislation. The minister can make sure that they can set rules that will dictate to the social media platforms the things they do not have to undertake. This means that these rules and the person who governs these rules will not be the eSafety Commissioner. It will be the minister. The minister can be held to account by the Australian people, and, if the minister doesn't do the right thing and doesn't instruct the social media platforms accordingly, then we have a way to deal with that, which is an election. If the minister cannot justify what they've done, then the minister obviously will be held to account by the Australian people. These are incredibly important changes to an issue which is incredibly important. It's one that goes back a long way. It's not like we've come to this chamber today dealing with this issue for the first time. When I was education minister, now some six or seven years ago, Jonathan Haidt from the US, a well-known and well-regarded professor, came to this country, detailing the issues that he was already starting to see that social media was having on young people. He started talking about the harm that it was causing, in particular the mental health issues—the anxiety, depression, bullying and all sorts of other issues that were the impact social media was having on young people's minds. The statistics then were so staggering that it led me to push at an Education Ministers Meeting with all the state and territories for them to ban phones at schools. Sadly, it took many years after that for that to occur. But even then the data was so compelling that it became obvious that we had to start taking action to protect children. We've gotten where we are today because of the evidence base that has been presented about the harm being caused. We've seen it in newspaper articles in the last five to six years or more, whether it be regarding the impact of bullying, youth suicide—young people, sadly, taking their lives—eating disorders or anxiety. Through all these things, we've seen that there is harm being caused. The question that we all have to answer is: why would you give young people under the age of 16 access to information and sites that we prevent them from having in the real world? Why would we allow them a mechanism where they can see child pornography at the age of 16 or below when you can't see that in the real world—when it's banned? Child pornography is obviously banned full stop—illegal. Pornography is only available to those over 18, yet we're providing the mechanism for those under 16 to see it. Parents absolutely have a role to play, but parents also need help and some guidance from lawmakers—from us, a lot of whom are parents. We have to play our role to support parents. Parenting is critical in this. Parenting has the primary role, but we help parents by saying, 'The law backs you in saying that your child, if they are under 16, shouldn't get access to social media.' Let's not fool ourselves. The big social media companies can put in place the mechanisms to deal with this, and to deal with it in a way that doesn't mean you need to provide digital ID or government sanctioned ID. We have the tools to deal with this. As with any law, what we also need to do is to assess its impact over time and to modify and change it over time—as we do with all laws. That is what this will enable us to do as well. We will be able to have committees look at it; have further advice given to us as legislators; and continue to take steps to keep children safe—to make sure that we're doing everything we can to stop the bullying and the eating disorders, and to basically make sure that young kids aren't getting access to gambling or pornography, which they shouldn't be getting access to. Will it be perfect? No. Is any law perfect? No, it's not. But, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people's lives. It will make a huge difference to the lives of families and to parents in how they're parenting their children, because if they're able to say, 'The law is on our side,' then it will help them to enforce the guidance that they want to give their children. While we're on the subject of the large social media platforms, I want to talk about the impact that they're having more broadly on society, particularly when it comes to how news is generated in this country. Last week we had the very, very sad news that the Hamilton Spectator, the Portland Observer and the Casterton News will be closing down. To give you a sense of the history that we are losing in western Victoria as a result of this, the Hamilton Spectator was first published in 1859. It is definitely one of the longest-running newspapers in this country. There are many reasons why it is closing, and my hope is that someone might still come along and purchase it, but I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Richard and Nola Beks for everything they've done to make sure that the newspapers, since their first time taking over the Hamilton Spectator—which was in 1985—have been the distinguished newspapers that they are. As we all know in this place, newspapers sometimes give us as MPs a good, positive run. At other times, they'll ask serious questions about why we've voted this way or that way. But I have always found the Hamilton Spectator, the Casterton News and the Portland Observer have had absolute integrity in the way they've gone about their journalism. They've done the best they possibly can to make sure they've advocated on behalf of their local communities, and have ensured that those communities have a voice. I want to thank the Beks family, and can I take this opportunity to thank, in particular, Richard Beks, for his stewardship of these newspapers, as well as all the journalists that have worked for the newspapers over a long period of time. I was in Casterton recently. They were hit by a huge hailstorm. Who was there? The local journalist, making sure that the reporting of what was happening was accurate and that the community was being heard. Thank you, Kristy. The Hamilton Spec has always done that on behalf of their community, as has the Portland Observer. I was in Portland recently with the head of Alcoa. There was wonderful reporting on what was happening out at the smelter—an incredibly important business for Portland and its future. In the same way, the Spec has done it year in, year out for all that time, dating back to 1859. Thank you to the Beks for what you have done. Thank you to all those journalists who have worked for those three newspapers over this long and distinguished period. It is a sad day for our community and, as I've said, my hope is that someone might step in and purchase them so that that community presence that those newspapers represent can continue. Debate adjourned. Leave granted for second reading debate to resume at a later hour. Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024 62

Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 62 18:32 The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230531 The question is that the amendment made by the Federation Chamber be agreed to. Question agreed to. Bill, as amended, agreed to. Third Reading 63 18:33 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. Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024 63

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 63 Third Reading 63 18:33 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. Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024 63

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 63 Third Reading 63 18:35 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. Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024 63

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024

Report from Federation Chamber 63 Third Reading 63 18:36 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. Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 63

Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024

Second Reading 63 18:36 Mr BATES 300246 Brisbane Prohibition doesn't work. Prohibition is not how you make social media platforms safer or empower young Australians to navigate the online world in a safe way. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill is not going to resolve the root causes of online harm. It's simply not going to work. All of us want to see more accountability for social media platforms and greater transparency for users, but this bill provides neither. Let's not forget how rushed the process has been. The government allowed for a consultation period on the bill for 24 hours. The Senate hearing for the bill was only three hours, and young people were essentially locked out from having their voices heard because of this process. We absolutely need to protect young people online, especially against the targeting, harvesting and selling of their data. A blanket ban, though, is not the way to do it. The recent parliamentary inquiry into social media heard over and over that an age ban will not make social media safer for anyone. It's complicated to implement, and it will have unintended consequences for young people. Yet here we are again, with the government and the coalition teaming up, ignoring the evidence and ramming this bill through in the final sitting week of the year. Why won't it work? This bill inserts a new definition of 'age-restricted social media platforms' which effectively puts a blanket ban on all social media platforms. The government has indicated that some platforms will be exempt, but we don't have the detail before us that we need to properly scrutinise this legislation. Leaving exemptions to regulations puts a lot of trust in the follow-through, and I'm not confident that it's going to be done effectively. The government themselves acknowledge this is not a perfect system. The Prime Minister has said: We know some kids will find workarounds, but we're sending a message to social media companies to clean up their act. The reality is that many kids, not just some, will find a way to access these platforms anyway, and social media companies don't actually have to change anything about how they apply their algorithms as a result of this bill. The bill also doesn't prescribe how platforms will monitor and enforce an age ban. We expect this will require some sort of age assurance, not just for young people but for everyone. The government already announced funding for an age-assurance trial in the budget but has only just awarded the tender. Essentially, the trial on a fundamental aspect of this bill has not even started yet. The idea of sharing important data with these platforms whose profit model is built on selling data profiles to advertisers is a very popular idea among not just young people but across my entire community! Let's not pretend that young people aren't going to find a way to access these platforms. They are smart; they will figure it out. I actually think of a time when I was 13, and I would come home from school and spend too much time playing on my computer; I wouldn't finish my homework. My dad installed a timing program on my computer so it would switch off after an hour, and I couldn't play The Sims for too long. It took me 10 minutes to figure out how to get around that. The answer there was to work with me to do my homework, not just ban the game that I was using. A blanket ban on social media also runs the risk of driving young people into even less safe online spaces. When that happens, it becomes impossible to know what is going on and how to help those who need help when something goes wrong. Many young people can have positive online experiences as well. Young people get a lot of good information and valuable social networks and support from social media, especially isolated young people or young people from marginalised backgrounds who may rely on it for their social contact. Why punish young people for the inaction of publishers and tech companies? This ban will create an Australia that says young people can go to prison at the age of 10 but can't go on Instagram until they are 16. What should we be doing? Experts are actively calling for alternative solutions to address the root causes of the problems of online safety, regulating the platforms themselves. The government has committed to legislating a duty of care, but that is not part of this legislation. If the government can rush these laws through, why can't they implement the duty of care they promised or take measures that actually make platforms safer for everyone, like banning platforms from collecting, selling and exploiting young peoples' data? The EU has the Digital Services Act which has a number of protections for young people, including banning the use of profiling for ads on children and implementing obligations for children's safety that providers must abide by. There are practical solutions here that we should be looking at, such as a ban of the targeting, harvesting and selling of young peoples' data, a digital duty of care platform, EU-style guardrails to limit the toxicity of algorithms and extreme content, the ability for users to turn down and opt out of unwanted content, the full release of the online safety act review and investment in education for young people and their families to help develop digital literacy and online safety skills and equip them with the tools and resources they need for positive and responsible online use. These actions would help tackle the root issues of social media. This is what we should be doing, not legislating a ban on access with the apparent expectation that everything is magically okay online the second you turn 16. An age ban alone will not make the platforms safer or age appropriate, nor will it change the culture that informs unsafe behaviours that people are targeted with on these platforms. Instead of banning young people altogether, we need to tackle the predatory business models of the tech giants. That includes the algorithms that fuel extremism and mental health issues. The government's own online safety expert, the eSafety Commissioner, has recommended a multipronged approach that encourages platforms to be safe by design. Australia's Human Rights Commissioner has voiced concerns about these restrictions in the legislation and the rushed time frame of this legislation as well. If the government wants to protect the safety of young people, they should be looking to stop platforms harvesting young peoples' data and targeting them with algorithms and advertising to make massive profits. All users should have the ability to switch off, reset or turn down the algorithms that push unwanted content into their feed. Privacy reforms are long overdue. The protection of users' data is vital to keeping people safer on- and offline. There is growing concern about the unabated use of users' data by tech companies to train their AIs without consent, knowledge or compensation. In the EU, the likes of Meta have been forced to provide an opt-out option for users, at a minimum. Australia must force companies to do the same here, because prohibition doesn't work; it hasn't before, and it won't now or into the future. If we are serious about addressing the issues that have arisen because of social media, then we must tackle them at the source. Guardrails, digital duties of care, stopping the targeting and harvesting of young people's data—all of these are far better approaches than a blanket ban. Young people will find ways around a ban, and then what? We may create a situation where young people are driven into even worse online spaces, and that is something that nobody wants. As the youngest person in this chamber and one of very, very few people in this place who grew up with this technology and with social media, I can say that change is needed but this bill is not it. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works and how young people engage with the internet. So my message to the government is this: bin this bill, talk to young people and come back. Young people are painfully aware of how algorithms work and how they impact them and their social circles. Listen to young people. Listen to the experts. You would come back with a much better bill. 18:46 Ms WATSON-BROWN 300127 Ryan I know we all worry about what kids are exposed to on the internet. Extreme content is everywhere, online bullying is worsening and kids can gamble with the click of a button. I get it; I'm a grandparent. I want to protect my grandchildren too, and I understand why so many people would think a social media ban would be a good idea. We all want to protect our kids, to shield them from harm and to keep them safe from the dangers of the world for as long as we possibly can. It's natural. The internet is a wild and often unregulated place. We feel we have very little control of what our children see or do online. But the unfortunate reality of this flawed bill—the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024—is that it won't actually do that. It won't protect our kids. It likely won't even stop them from using these platforms or seeing the harmful content we so desperately want to shield them from. What it will do, dangerously, is create the illusion of action while not addressing the real dangers of the online world. I know many parents want something—anything—to be done, but this bill is just not the solution. This bill shifts the blame. Instead of holding billion-dollar tech giants accountable for their harmful practices, it targets kids and families. It says to parents, 'You figure it out,' while these corporations keep profiting off the harm that they do. Banning young people from these platforms doesn't stop them from accessing harmful content, it doesn't stop tech giants from exploiting their data and pushing toxic algorithms, and it certainly doesn't fix the root problem. The government claims this legislation is world-leading. Yes—but, embarrassingly, what it is leading the world in is poorly thought-through legislation. It is leading the world in legislation uninformed by evidence. It is leading the world in legislation so riddled with privacy and safety risks that it'll likely do more harm than good. The minister herself seemed underwhelmed by her own legislation when trying to defend it in a response to a question in question time this week. The joint select committee inquiry into social media heard months of evidence from experts, parents, young people and organisations, and their overwhelming majority recommendation was not to impose an age ban. Other countries have tried similar measures, and they've failed abysmally. South Korea, for instance, rolled back their shutdown law in 2021 because it simply did not work. The government's response? Ignore the experts and the months of evidence, and instead rely on a 16-page evaluation report by the Office of Impact Analysis—a report widely criticised as thin on evidence. It even cites a study that doesn't support banning children under 16. In fact, the study's co-author has publicly stated that the government has misunderstood the findings, which is completely unsurprising from a government that has made a name for itself comprehensively misunderstanding the real needs of everyday Australians, hanging them out to dry while corporations are continuously let off the hook. This proposed 'fix' to online harms for young people is just more of the same. I have heard from many Ryan parents who, of course, want their kids to be safe online; we all do. But they know, as do the experts, that banning kids from social media is not the answer. Kids are smart. They're smarter than most of us in this place when it comes to navigating social media. They will find ways around these bans. One of the most glaring issues with this bill is privacy. While the legislation prohibits platforms from using data collected for age verification for other purposes, it doesn't change the fact that it requires young people and everyone else to share sensitive information with platforms that have a long history—a bad history—of exploiting user data for their own profit. Really, who trusts social media companies with their data? Few do, and that's for very good reason. Platforms like Facebook have repeatedly shown that they will prioritise profit over privacy, often at the expense of their most vulnerable users. Yet Labor proposes we hand them more of our personal information. It's insanity! Prohibition isn't safe. Prohibition is a bandaid that fails to address the fundamental problem, which is the toxic business models of tech giants. These platforms profit from harmful algorithms that push extreme content, exploit personal data and target young people with predatory advertising. It's their business model. Experts have made it clear that these are the root causes of online harm. The government has promised exemptions for services like headspace, Kids Helpline and Google Classroom, but these exemptions rely on future regulations; they're not even in this bill. If those regulations aren't passed in time or if a new government chooses not to follow through, kids could lose access to online spaces designed to actually help them and educate them. The loopholes in this bill are so huge you could drive a truck through them. Kids will always find workarounds; the Prime Minister has already admitted as much. So what are we really achieving here? We're not protecting kids. We're driving them towards less regulated, more dangerous corners of the internet. What about the unintended consequences for young people's mental health and wellbeing? Cutting them off from social media doesn't eliminate the challenges they face. It isolates them from their peers, their communities and vital support networks. Online spaces can be dangerous, but they can also be lifelines. Rather than banning young people from these platforms, we should be empowering them with the tools to navigate these spaces safely and confidently. We need education. The government should fund programs that teach digital literacy and online safety skills to young people and their families. Prohibition doesn't teach kids how to be safe online. It just sort of pushes the problem out of sight. Social media platforms have become breeding grounds for harmful content, predatory advertising and unsafe practices. This flawed bill doesn't solve those problems. It's being rushed through, and its consequences will be far-reaching and deeply harmful not just for young people but for everyone who uses the internet. 18:53 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah I rise to speak on the government's Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024. While I accept that there is a goal of dealing with online harms and protecting young people, I think this is incredibly misguided. It is a window-dressing attempt by the government to look like it is doing something about harm without actually doing anything that is going to be meaningful. I am concerned this legislation will backfire by driving underground the harms of social media, ultimately not preventing how young people access social media; they will find a way. What it will do is fail to hold social media companies accountable for moderating harmful content, which will still proliferate on these platforms. The potential dangers of social media are undeniable. We're all concerned. I think we've all, in this place, been exposed to the darkness and the black hole of negativity that can exist there, and the anonymity of people dealing through social media, thinking that it's a platform on which they can speak and behave in the most atrocious way. But that doesn't get solved by just banning young people under 16 from these platforms. That gets solved by imposing a duty of care on these platforms, making them responsible for harmful content. That is where the government should be stepping up to the plate and actually doing what may be hard but is necessary to be done if you want to be a government that is taken seriously on protecting young people and all users from harm. There's no doubt we need to get the balance right. Of course, protecting children is so important. But let's get real about the average age in this place. We are in a whole different age category. Young people have grown up online. For many, social media is not just a pastime; it's an important communication tool that connects them with peers and the wider community. It's been really interesting to listen to some of the justifications by members of government—and the Prime Minister has done it—talking about how they want to see kids back on the footy field and playing and all of those things. Of course, we want them to be active. But the suggestion that somehow banning social media is going to immediately result in this uptick in physical activity or social interaction without additional measures or any real research in how that's even going to happen is just taking Australians for fools, I think, in how this legislation has been drafted and presented and the time in which it has been put forward. We also know that young people find their communities through social media. It's been fascinating for me as a mum of young adults now watching them being online and being concerned about the harms and influences but also then observing the benefits, seeing how through certain mediums they have had the opportunity to find their peers, find their tribe and feel connected. They are all the things that are at risk of being lost. Young people don't just access services through what the minister is indicating will be some exceptions. They actually also access information and services through their peers and friends relaying their experiences. That will all be lost. I don't dispute there is a dark side to the internet and social media that urgently needs to be addressed. But we also need to be really clear. Young people tell me about the positive ways they engage on these platforms. They build their communities, they explore creativity, they start businesses, they learn, they get an opportunity to see beyond the boundaries of just the national issues or legacy media's take on events and they can connect with young people all over the world. This is something that has been unique to their generation. We know it also allows them to stay connected with family and friends. As a grandparent, how do you stay connected with a young person? Actually, it's through social media. It gives you a window into their world that you don't have in any other way. Sadly, the government is not respecting the voices of young people here. I think it's telling to see just how little that's really being reflected in the government speeches. Instead, it is people in this place imposing their will on young people. Rather than representing them, they are imposing their will on them. It's a blunt policy tool that ultimately punishes young people while letting perpetrators of harmful content and the platform that hosts it completely off the hook. The bill seeks to restrict users under the age of 16 from having a social media account by relying on social media companies to take reasonable steps for the age assurance of their users. In all my queries to the minister and the government as to what those reasonable steps are and how this age-assurance process will work, they've said they don't know. This is a complete unknown. This legislation is completely putting the cart before the horse. The government has no idea how this is going to work and yet it is taking up valuable time. The bill's intervention is well meaning, as I said, and acknowledges the very real harm of online platforms. I do have concerns about that. But the effectiveness of this bill is highly in doubt and there are serious concerns about unintended consequences from this bill. I move: That all words after "not" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "desire to give the bill a second reading and notes: (1) the Age Assurance Technology Trial, conducted by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, and the Arts, has not yet been finalised and further debate on the bill should only occur when a comprehensive report has been presented to Parliament with the results of the trial; (2) that the government is wasting the Parliament's time on a bill where the implementation is unclear and the effectiveness remains disputed by experts; and (3) that the government is being selective on the harms they wish to protect young people from by prioritising the valuable resources and time of Parliament to pass a Bill that is not coming into effect until 2026, instead of introducing and progressing legislation that would restrict gambling advertising, despite having committed to do so, and having being unanimously recommended by a multipartisan House of Representatives committee and having overwhelming public support". This bill should not be rushed through this parliament the way it has been. We should have a comprehensive understanding of how the measures can be implemented and the unintended consequences of the legislation. We know that the government has just awarded a tender for the age-assurance trial which will inform advice to the government and eSafety Commissioner on the implementation and enforcement of the bans. I ask the government to not call a vote on the second reading until the final report with the results of the age-assurance trial has been presented to parliament, so that parents and users can be informed. The government is being selective on the harms that it wishes to protect young people from, and it is prioritising a blunt social-media ban over protecting young people from the harm of many real things, such as gambling advertising and the algorithm and how it works. Gambling advertising poses a significant concern for young people, and there are well-documented links to increased gambling participation. So the government is absolutely being selective about which harm it is choosing to prioritise, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it was when the government was under the pump about introducing a ban on gambling advertising that, all of a sudden, we got the posturing and the big announcement around an online age ban. The ban on gambling advertising was unanimously recommended by a multipartisan committee following an in-depth inquiry into the harms of gambling. The government has accepted that recommendation, and, yet, to date, has refused to take action. On top of this, we know that polling shows that over 70 per cent of Australians want a ban on gambling advertising. If you want to win the favour of voters, act on banning gambling advertising. The message couldn't be any clearer. Instead, the government is focusing on a minimum-age bill, which was originally drafted, as I said, just in September. It's a distraction from their promise to ban gambling advertising. It ultimately won't be implemented until 2026, so why is this being rushed through without proper scrutiny, with only a couple of days in this parliament? This is bad government and bad governance. When the bill was introduced last week, it was the first time we were able to read and understand the details of the proposed legislation. Now, in the last week of parliament, the government's expediting this bill and limiting the availability of parliamentary scrutiny and oversight of its effects. We have serious concerns around privacy consequences. Ultimately, this bill will impact all users. It's not just the under-16s that will be banned. All users of social media will, to some extent, have to be assessed by those platforms as to whether or not they fall foul of it. What we know is that this bill requires much more scrutiny. Last week, the bill was sent to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. The committee accepted submissions for only 24 hours. If that is not a joke when it comes to public consultation, I don't know what more can be said. In that time, the inquiry was inundated with over 15,000 submissions. Clearly the public feels strongly about this issue—even more reason the bill should be subjected to proper scrutiny. Only yesterday morning were the committee able to hear from the community on the wide-ranging impacts of the bill. The committee will publish their recommendations today, but here we are debating the bill and shortly we'll be asked to vote on it. This is all only five days after the bill was sent to committee. The government has even acknowledged that this is a short-term approach to protect young people whilst they continue to work on longer-term solutions for protecting people from harms online. The member for Goldstein has already introduced to the parliament her private member's bill that addresses much of those harms. If the government is not capable of coming up with proper legislation, then let's adopt the work that the member for Goldstein has done and get on with the real protection of people online through a duty of care. There are no details from the government about any of their plans to legislate further protections. It's, 'Trust us; we've got this. We'll get to this.' But all we've got is a bandaid solution of just imposing a ban on under-16s. If the government were serious about safeguarding young people from harms online, they could have introduced a temporary ban or fast-tracked work to implement a statutory duty of care for online platforms. Start dealing with bots online. Start dealing with anonymous accounts. Force some accountability and some monitoring of harm. Do something about the algorithm. So I ask the government why it's prioritising this legislation, rushing it through parliament, knowing that it won't be implemented for a time and it doesn't even have a proper process. In contrast, gambling advertising is something that needs to be done. When we talk about harm from online platforms, we know it's ever present, and certain groups, such as children and young teenagers, are at greater risk of this harm. Young people more than ever are feeling isolated and excluded, and some teenagers who use social media platforms have regularly reported finding lower life satisfaction than those who don't use online platforms. But we also know that others who feel isolated find their tribe and find great comfort in social media. We know that online platforms enable young people to endure cyberbullying, hate speech and online abuse, as well as harmful content. All these potential harms are not to be understated, and they create a real and ongoing threat to their mental health. I agree that online platforms must be made to be responsible and to keep everyone safe on their platforms. They should be forced to promote respectful, honest, authentic content, a responsibility that these platforms often fail to fulfil. But nothing about this proposal does this. A blanket ban on social media is not the answer. In fact, the Butterfly Foundation, who represent Australians impacted by eating disorders and body image issues, have stated that a blanket ban takes the onus off platforms to do better and that it could negatively impact people looking for help who are socially and physically isolated. In restricting access for those under 16, the government has neglected the opportunity to regulate platforms to materially improve online safety for everyone. So I really ask the government to do better. Surely you can do better than this—than trying to just grab a headline and look like you're doing something about online, when really you're not. I appreciate that for young parents this is incredibly distressing, and it's easy to think that banning it will be the solution. The reality is that it's just going to push it underground. It's still going to happen. I have a modern family of five. They're all adults now, but I know how tech savvy they are and what they do. For me, what is needed is legislation that would allow them to reset their default settings and that would make sure that the algorithms are much safer and that there is a responsibility and a duty of care. These are all things that would make a difference. Of course, we also need greater education. Young people, and all users, need to understand how to be safer and more responsible digital citizens. This is an important piece of the puzzle to keep young people safe, but the government is not focusing on that—on what could actually be done. I think of where kids have found their tribe online—for example, School Strike 4 Climate. Young people's lives have been online, and social media has played an important role in amplifying young people's voices when they might otherwise have been excluded, with their voices not being reflected in mainstream media. For example, Lucy Flynn is a 14-year-old from my electorate who, after recovering from an eating disorder, decided to make her own petition to call on the government to provide more public hospital beds for treatment of those with eating disorders. She harnessed the power of social media to tell her story and amplify the issues in eating disorder funding. So online platforms can provide a platform to reach people outside their geographical communities, provide an avenue for youth leadership on issues that matter to them, and provide the ability for young people to feel that they have control over their future. The government don't even want to be saddled with a duty of care to young people when it comes to the environment, and now they want to take away their capacity to mobilise and to have a voice when it comes to climate issues. School Strike 4 Climate is a classic example where thousands of young people came together to march on the environment minister's office and demand real and substantive climate action. This provided an invaluable opportunity for young people to have a voice and be heard in a way— (Time expired) The DEPUTY SPEAKER 74046 Is the amendment seconded? Mr Wilkie C2T I second the member for Warringah's amendment and reserve my right to speak. 19:09 Ms DANIEL 008CH Goldstein This legislation, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, is a bandaid to fix a wicked problem. It's neither the systemic nor the structural reform the Australian public needs. I can well understand why parents like it, and I especially acknowledge those parents who've lost children, whose loss is attributed to social media harm—including those who testified, bravely and powerfully, to the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society, which I was a member of. I also acknowledge Robb Evans, father of Liv, who I've spoken of before in this chamber. Liv took her own life due to an eating disorder, and social media was a contributor. I convened a working group on eating disorders and social media, which, in many ways, has been the genesis of my policy work in this space and I think has also captured the government's attention in a positive way. I absolutely acknowledge the connection between various harms and social media. So I don't deny that something needs to be done. The platforms have powerful underlying systems that actively and knowingly influence kids' social lives, play kingmaker in online public debates and run a data free-for-all in the name of advertising. And it's self-evident that these platforms are motivated by profit, not community benefit or safety. However, my issue is that this legislation will make zero difference to the harms that are inherent in social media. It will not force the platforms to manage their algorithms, it will not force the platforms to identify and manage risk, and nor will it force transparency. So what to do? Social media gives us many great rewards: connection; information; business opportunities. It opens up the world. For young people, it's a social space—the 2020s equivalent of sitting on the landline phone on the hallway floor for hours, as I did in the 1980s. It's a source of mental health support for many, and University of Canberra research shows that it's where the vast majority of young people get their news and current affairs. But the sheer scale of the risk it concurrently poses to individuals and our society demands a regulatory response that is proportionate in urgency and in ambition. This is particularly the case given the power of the social media proprietors, who've operated and grown their platforms largely uncontrolled until now. Additionally, in Australia they operate under a toothless self-regulation model, and they place the bulk of their profits and management offshore, out of reach of Australian tax and legal systems. As a member of the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society, it's fair to say that I've been thinking about all of this a lot of late. The committee had a wide remit but took substantial evidence regarding age assurance. Certainly there were opinions that it was a good idea, but there was no substantive, evidence based, expert testimony that stacked up if, or how, it would actually work. One of the recommendations the committee did agree to in its final report was that the government should report the results of its age-assurance trial to the parliament. The trial is only just underway, and it won't be complete for at least six to 12 months. Meanwhile, we're debating—and presumably the parliament will be passing—this legislation blindly, because the idea is somewhat popular. Worse, it potentially allows big tech to tick a box, without actually doing much at all. And what that even is, is unknown. The bill, which was introduced just last week and sent to committee for one day, despite more than 15,000 submissions, contains no provisions on how the platforms are to keep the kids out. They're expected to take 'reasonable steps'. What those are will be worked out by the platforms, with regulatory input from the minister later. It's backwards. In many ways, this is policy that is also looking back to a bygone era, when we all played street cricket until dusk, instead of looking at our phones, and found out where our friends were by riding around the neighbourhood until we found the house where all the Malvern Stars were lying on the front lawn. I get it. We all want that life back for our kids. But our societies have become digitised over the last 2½ decades. The entrenchment of digital communications platforms and technologies has been gradual, but it is enduring. We cannot look back to the technological challenges and solutions of last century and apply them to our contemporary context, as the Online Safety Act does and age-gating social media would. This mindset cannot continue to guide contemporary Australian policymaking. It is time to think forward, not back. In my engagement with the Goldstein community on this legislation, the feedback has been varied. I've heard from some parents and, as a parent, I understand the uncertainty and feeling of lack of control over what our children can be exposed to online. These parents observe their children taking to the intentionally addictive qualities of social media and digital platforms, and I deeply understand the desire to solve this problem. I, like these Goldstein parents, wish that this legislation was the silver bullet we wish for to comprehensively protect our kids from online harm. If it was, I would be its strongest advocate. But, unfortunately, this legislation is nowhere close to what's needed to meaningfully protect our kids in their online experiences. The true objective of the legislation is not to make social media safe by design but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it. There's a reason why the government parades this legislation as world leading. Its because no other country wants to do it, and for good reason. Modern policy problems require modern solutions, and, obviously, solutions that will actually work. Of all the many pitfalls in this legislation, at the core of arguments put forward by those who oppose it is this: age gating is, quite simply, not the appropriate mechanism to use in this context. In fact, there is little evidence at all to suggest that an age based regime of this nature could be effective. Instead of protecting our children from social media, it may also expose them, and, possibly, Australia's adult population, to additional risk. The bill does not specify how digital platforms will be expected to verify an individual's age, leaving open the possibility that Australians of various ages may be forced to hand over sensitive personal information to keep their accounts. I note the opposition amendments, apparently negotiated with the government, on limiting the requirements to hand over things like passport details, and this is a good step. But according to Digital Rights Watch, the information required might still range from birthdates all the way to face prints. I note that the legislation mandates the destruction of such information, but as so many Australians deeply understand, our nation doesn't have a strong track record of late in protecting the privacy of its citizens. I note the member for Mayo's consideration-in-detail amendment in relation to the provision of personal information, which I will support. It would be remiss of me not to point out the stunning irony of the coalition's sudden reluctance to support this legislation following a tweet by one of big tech's oligarchs, Elon Musk. Misinformation spreading online sought to make the curious link between this legislation and the government's Digital ID Act as part of a conspiracy to shut down free speech on the internet. This bill—one that ostensibly claims to challenge the awesome and concentrated power of big tech—was close to the chopping block via a simple tweet sent from those who stand to be regulated by it. Go figure. Perhaps, though, this is more than simple irony. Perhaps this is testament to the disproportionate political and cultural power that big tech have been allowed to accumulate and the set of circumstances which have led us to this point—the point of debating legislation which even the Prime Minister himself describes as potentially unenforceable. The power of the platforms and the importance of making them accountable leads me to what we could be doing—should be doing—instead: something that is actually meaningful and will stand the test of time. The government have lots of policy options to choose from here. One only needs to look overseas to see online safety regulatory regimes that are working. But—on brand for this government—once again, their chosen policy was just the lowest-hanging fruit: the path that is simple and political, not the one that will actually make social media safe for our children by design. Yesterday I tabled, as a private member's bill, a five-pillar regime which amounts to a digital duty of care. If the government wants to make social media safe not just for children but for everybody, then let's take that to a vote right now. This model of legislation has broad support across the parliament and in Australian civil society. It is supported by organisations ranging from the Foundation for Social Health and the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education to the Human Rights Law Centre and Reset Tech Australia, amongst others. A fully implemented digital duty of care is what will make social media safe for all Australian kids and adults. Rigorous age verification technology may one day be a supplementary component of such a duty of care, but the age-gating model as proposed in this legislation alone will be starkly inadequate. This is why I move the second reading amendment circulated in my name: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House: (1) notes that: (a) Australia was once an international world-leader in online safety regulation when the previous Coalition Government enacted the Online Safety Act 2021; (b) Australia's existing content-based model of online safety regulation was inspired by what was once effective during the era of Broadcast television, newspapers, and radio last century, and that technology has fundamentally changed this information landscape; (c) Australia has lost its status as a world-leader in online safety regulation following the enactment of ambitious 'systems'-based laws in the European Union and United Kingdom respectively; and (d) whilst age assurance as a tool for regulators may have some capability to contribute to safer Australian online spaces, it does not change how algorithms operate in any fundamental way; (2) recognises the promising recent public statements of the Prime Minister and the Minister for Communications expressing the Government's intent to implement a 'Digital Duty of Care' if elected to a second term of Government; (3) notes that a Duty of Care: (a) alone is insufficient to meaningfully hold digital platforms and their algorithms to account and make social media safe by design; and (b) is just one of five necessary elements of equal importance if Australia is to meaningfully make digital spaces safe for Australians of all ages; (4) calls on the Government to re-claim the mantle of our nation as a world-leader in online safety regulation by enacting a comprehensive 'systems-based legislative framework, this being: (a) a Duty of Care; (b) risk assessments; (c) Risk Mitigation Plans; (d) genuine transparency measures for the Australian public and our research community; and (e) enforcement measures proportionate to the risk algorithms pose to Australian society". Australia was once a world leader in online safety regulation, and we can achieve the government's aim to reclaim that mantle—just not with this bill. Only with safety by design, a duty of care, risk management and mitigation, and a solid incentive to comply will we make digital platforms safe for our kids, ourselves and our communities. Online safety regulation cannot truly be safe unless it's systemic. It is the systems that must be made to change, not the people. We need to reshape our vision of what online safety looks like and follow the models that are achieving meaningful behavioural change, namely the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act in Europe, that impose a duty of care on the companies to do no harm. We won't achieve that by passing a bill that just makes us all feel better. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 74046 Is the motion seconded? Ms Chaney 300006 I second the motion and reserve my right to speak. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 74046 The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for North Sydney moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The honourable member for Mackellar has moved, as an amendment to that amendment, that all words after 'House' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The honourable member for Goldstein has moved as an amendment to that amendment that all words after 'House' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment moved by the honourable member for Goldstein be agreed to. 19:22 Mr YOUNG 201906 Longman I rise to speak on the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 before us today. Let me say from the outset I fully support the intent of this legislation, which is to protect our young people from the harms of online bullying—a scourge not only in our society, but globally. I'm sick and tired of hearing of another teenager who has taken their life due to online bullying. I'm tired of watching grieving parents plead for action on this serious issue. It is a common belief amongst those of us who have the privilege of being elected to serve that our first duty is the protection of all Australians. My issues with this legislation are, as I said, not around intent, but I do have a problem with the mechanics and the rushed manner in which it is being rammed through. I suspect that it's for vote-grabbing reasons. Why else would you rush legislation through that doesn't take effect, if passed, until 2026? Could it be that there's an election in the first half of next year? The Leader of the Opposition first announced this as coalition policy over 12 months ago, saying we would implement it within 100 days after the election should we have the privilege of winning government. This government have latched onto the Leader of the Opposition's initiative, but, as usual, they have done the headline vibe thing but haven't thought through the process. In contrast, the coalition have been methodically working through the many inevitable questions that arise from proposed legislation like this so that, should we win the election, we'll have a sensible, well thought out methodology that addresses all aspects of the bill, including keeping children safe as well as parents, social media and device hardware supply roles in the initiative while also considering protecting Australian citizens' privacy. I was pleased to see that the government agreed to the coalition's amendment where social media companies cannot force people to upload their digital ID, driver's licence, passport or other government issued identification to verify their age. This is definitely a step in the right direction. However, I wasn't pleased to discover that some of the proposed methodology to age-verify users relies on social media companies effectively using data they accumulate on us by using algorithms and the like, such as determining that someone is under 16 from their posts for something as simple as having a 13th birthday party. The retort to this, of course, is that they already do it. By the way, I hate the fact that they collect all this data on us. But knowing about, condoning and even being complicit in encouraging their use of AI to monitor and collect data on us is something I simply cannot in good conscience support. There is also talk of using facial recognition software for age identification. I know about this, but the thought of these companies capturing images with goodness knows what in the background doesn't inspire me with great confidence either. The other issue is that these social media companies can—and, I suggest, will—simply change algorithms so they begin to miss people's ages, as, make no mistake, they will lose revenue and profits if this legislation passes through, as they will enjoy a smaller market and customer base. We haven't even spoken about the parents' roles in this. Why can't we legislate that the manufacturers of devices of anyone under 16 have to be tethered to their parents' device, through their Apple ID, family sharing, iCloud or other forms, so that the parents have the final say on what apps their kids can use? This also removes financial incentives for social media platforms, who, from what I can see, don't currently make the hardware that people use. No solution is a silver bullet, and people always find ways around laws when they really want to. But that's no reason governments should not pass laws intended to protect people. Otherwise, we might as well have no age restrictions on alcohol, tobacco, gambling or movies. As we know, most Australians are law-abiding citizens and will comply with the laws of the day. Having a legislated age restriction also gives parents the added ammunition to say to their kids when they inevitably ask, nag or beg to have a social media account: 'Sorry, it's against the law.' Sure, there are those who would say, 'That is weak parenting,' but not all families with children are the same for myriad reasons, and governments must try to consider all family dynamics and personalities when they are legislating, knowing full well that we will never be able to appease everyone or receive everyone's approval. But we must attempt to address the concerns and needs of as much of the population as possible. As a father of four and a grandfather of five—I've got some boys, some girls, some under 16 and some over 16—I've seen firsthand the trauma and harm that social media does to our youth. My personal observation has been that, generally, once people reach the age of 16, they have the emotional stability and maturity to make better decisions about what they put on social media and what they read on social media. There are exceptions both ways, of course, but this age seems pretty right for most. As I said at the beginning of my contribution, I absolutely support the intent of this bill in protecting and in some cases saving the lives of our young people, but I have reservations due to the rushed manner and lack of detail and methodology that is currently proposed in enforcing the legislation should it become law. I believe that the lives and mental health of our youth outweigh any possible implications around privacy, but I would much rather see this legislation be postponed until a full and proper process has been able to be completed, when we can actually see the detail of how the ID process will be enforced. It is far too important to be rammed through willy-nilly to try and win a few votes. 19:28 Mr PITT 148150 Hinkler The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 is a piece of potential legislation on which I find myself torn in terms of taking a position. For those who know me, that is pretty unusual! I can usually form a view pretty quickly and make a decision. I want to give you an example of some of the correspondence, calls and emails that my office has been getting, and this is only a very small selection. 'Don't ban kids from the ocean; teach them to swim.' 'What is the rush?' 'This is a backdoor to the Digital ID Bill.' 'Will it stop the bullying?' Several callers have said they will close all digital accounts if they're asked to prove their identity. 'Parental rights should not be taken away. This is a decision for the parent, not the government.' 'It will force everyone onto dodgy apps that don't have any moderation.' 'Making people create a digital footprint increases the information available to hackers.' 'Many workplaces, small businesses, sporting groups and community groups have social media pages to engage with their members, and these will be reduced if these bans come in.' 'What are the consequences for parents who allow their children on social media?' 'There is not enough information about this bill or how will this will work.' 'Will this put DV victims at risk if they are forced to have real-name accounts?' This is a small sample of what is coming to my office and I suspect many others, because people are concerned, and I absolutely recognise their concerns. One of our roles as members of parliament is to put their concerns on the record in regards to legislation like this. ADJOURNMENT 73 ADJOURNMENT Fowler Electorate: Infrastructure 73 19:30 Ms LE 295676 Fowler Bonnyrigg High School Parents and Citizens Association wrote to me last week expressing their concern over the ongoing infrastructure crisis at their school. Bonnyrigg High School is a wonderful pillar of my electorate of Fowler. Built in 1961, the school has not received significant infrastructure funding in decades. The school was designed for 950 students, yet currently it has about 1,700 students. They are burdened with more than 40 portable classrooms, a sinking canteen and inadequate toilet facilities. The overcrowding and lack of modern educational spaces are major barriers to delivering high-quality education. With a new housing estate being developed around the corner from the school, they will be facing long-term infrastructure challenges. They desperately need $25 million in federal government funding for a new three-storey building. This facility would replace ageing demountable structures, provide much-needed classroom space and ensure our students have access to a learning environment that supports their academic and personal growth. Since my election to this House as an Independent member for Fowler, I have continually spoken about my forgotten community that has long been overlooked by the major parties. It's a community made up of hardworking people and young talent, entrepreneurial spirit, resilience, strength and a rich tapestry of cultures, languages and history. But it has repeatedly been ignored when it comes to critical investment in many areas, like education, health, manufacturing and infrastructure. Over several decades, I have witnessed the government's failure to deliver for the people of Fowler, particularly when it comes to infrastructure funding. I can just hear it now. Election promises of the past will be trotted out over and over again in the next few months in the lead up to the next election. But the tangible actions and investments that our community desperately needs have not materialised, as highlighted in the case of Bonnyrigg High School. This neglect is not just an inconvenience; it is a barrier to our growth and prosperity. Anyone would think that this government wants the people of Fowler to be disadvantaged, vulnerable and reliant on government handouts. Well, we are not. We're not asking for handouts; we are asking for our fair share. What we ask is that the government, whether it be Liberal or Labor, meets us halfway. One of the most important issues we are facing is the need for a metro link between Western Sydney airport and Parramatta running through Fowler. This infrastructure project is incredibly important, yet this government and the New South Wales Labor government cancelled it when they got into power. The Western Sydney airport is set to become a hub of economic activity and, without a direct and efficient transport link, the people of Fowler will be cut off from the opportunities it will bring. Imagine the benefits of a metro link—reduced travel times, less congestion on our roads and greater access to jobs and services. It would open up new possibilities for our residents, allowing them to connect with the broader Sydney region and beyond. This is about equity and ensuring that all communities have the chance to participate in and benefit from growth. It is about making our community a great city in which to live, work and raise a family. This is not just about transport. The metro link is a clear and tangible way to begin this process, but it must be part of a broader commitment to our community. Our community needs comprehensive investment in infrastructure across the board. We need better healthcare facilities, investment in our schools and improved public amenities. These are the building blocks of a thriving community, and they are essential for our future. I call on the major parties to recognise the importance of Fowler and to invest in the infrastructure that we need. At the last federal election, the people of Fowler made their voices heard loud and clear. They demonstrated their frustration with being ignored and taken for granted by electing an Independent representative. This was a powerful message to the major parties: the people of Fowler will no longer accept being sidelined and treated as second-class citizens. They demand and deserve better. The people of Fowler can no longer be ignored. Parliamentary Friends of Albania 74 19:34 Mr GEORGANAS DZY Adelaide Tonight I'd like to speak about an important event that I was proud to co-host together with the member for Nicholls last night. We celebrated the launch of the Parliamentary Friends of Albania group. The co-chair, the member for Nicholls, has a very significant number of Australian Albanians in his community, in and around Shepparton, and it is the same with me in the western suburbs. This important celebration was held to highlight the strong relationship between Australia and Albania, recognising the rich cultural heritage found in communities across Australia. Members may be aware that Australia established diplomatic relations with Albania in 1985. We enjoy longstanding people-to-people links, with an Albanian presence in Australia dating right back to the late 19th century. The first Albanians, in fact, were recorded in the 1850s in Queensland. Then there was the second wave after World War I in the very early twenties, then there was a wave again after World War II, and then there was a small wave after 1991 once communism collapsed in Albania. The first recorded Albanian to settle in Australia was Naum Konxha, who arrived in Brisbane in 1885 with his English wife and decided to stay permanently. However, the first significant Albanian migration to Australia, as I said, started in the 1920s after the United States of America placed migration quotas and restrictions on southern Europeans. Many who arrived in the 1920s settled in rural areas or areas where there were market gardens. In my electorate in the western suburbs, there were lots of market gardens, and many of them settled around there. The next wave was after World War II. Many were escaping communism for a better life, and many ended up in Australia. Of course, they went on to establish businesses, they worked in all sorts of industries and they established themselves and their families. I'm very proud to have a large Albanian community in the western suburbs of my electorate. In the 2021 census, 20,686 Australians declared an Albanian ancestry, and besides those 20,000-odd there would be another at least 10,000 to 15,000 who, for whatever reason, didn't declare their background but are children of the many Albanians who have settled here in Australia. The Albanian embassy in Australia is headed by His Excellency Mr Adrian Mara, the Albanian Ambassador to Australia. His Excellency has been a very active ambassador, and last night's event was a testament to his hard work and the tremendous efforts and celebration of our Albanian Australian community. We were graced by the attendance of the Prime Minister and a large number of ministers and members of parliament, and it was tremendous to have that presence there. I know that His Excellency Ambassador Mara and everyone present were delighted to meet the Prime Minister, whose surname, which is originally Italian, translates to 'Albanian', in reference to the Arbereshe people, or Italo-Albanians of southern Italy, or someone of Albanian origin. So they were delighted to meet the Prime Minister last night. There were many others in attendance, including: Her Excellency Jetmira Berdynaj Shala, the ambassador of Kosovo; my good friend Judge Rauf Soulio from the District Court of South Australia; Mr Reg Qemal of the Shepparton Albanian Society; Mayor Shane Sali of Greater Shepparton; Mayor Jim Memeti from the City of Greater Dandenong; Mr Chesk Jakay and Agron Zenuni from the Albanian Australian Association of South Australia—and our South Australian Albanian community is particularly proud that the Adelaide Eagles, a soccer club based in the Adelaide electorate in Renown Park, won the Albanian Cup this year; and Ms Karen Resul from Stanley's Cafe, who was the wonderful chef who did an amazing job feeding so many people last night. I look forward to this being the first of many Parliamentary Friends of Albania functions, and I congratulate His Excellency the ambassador, Adrian Mara, for his great efforts and work and for his initiative in arranging this inaugural event. I'm sure that, if you did not attend last night, the next one will happen next year—if we're all here—so please come along and enjoy some Albanian culture. Rare Foods Australia 75 19:39 Mrs MARINO HWP Forrest Congratulations to Brad and Jodee Adams on their company, Rare Foods Australia. Not only is it producing the only ocean-grown green-lip abalone in the world where two oceans, the Indian and Southern oceans, meet around Cape Leeuwin, off Augusta in my electorate of Forrest; in another world first, they're also producing Southern Hemisphere subsea wine, the first in our open ocean waters, over a kilometre off the coast. Following a three-year successful trial period,    Brad Adams, who has always pursued innovation and opportunity at Rare Foods, is now investing in Australia's first subsea wine production through ocean cellaring. Brad and his team are both fermenting and maturing wine in the ocean, using 22 subsea vats tethered to the ocean floor with specialised sea anchors that don't disturb the sea grass at around 20 meters in depth in the Rare Foods ocean lease zone. Each vat contains around 300 litres of wine maintained in suspension. At this depth, the fermentation takes on a different aroma and flavour than wine produced using traditional land based methods. It takes around nine to 12 months but tasting starts at around six months. I'm sure there are plenty of volunteers for that! It's the ocean current that naturally provides the refrigeration and movement, the gentle sway providing the constant movement needed in winemaking. It is in low light and in a consistent temperature and pressure environment under the ocean. Following the company's subsea wine trials, Rare Foods is now partnering with the French company Winereef International. Brad brought to this arrangement the boats, the experience, the divers and the infrastructure, and he has a very dynamic 'have a go' approach as well as very sharp business and commercial acumen. Rare Foods has another ace up its sleeve, with access to the world-renowned premium Margaret River wines, and they will be branded as Ocean Signature. This is a match made in heaven and a totally new offering for the market and for the region. Brad has told me that Rare Foods will produce a limited vintage pure ocean wine, which will be their 100 per cent product. But there will also be a 50 per cent blend with traditional land produced wine as well—chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon and a sparkling wine. They will all be marketed in unique bottles with remnants of natural coral, similar to the wine bottles found in historic shipwrecks. Some of those shipwrecks have been found many years, sometimes hundreds of years, later, but the bottles have been found intact and well aged. This is an exciting concept and a new experience for those who live in, or visit, our south-west. It is another innovative product from Brad, Jodee and the Rare Foods Australia team. Rare Foods started off as ocean-grown abalone, and this was a groundbreaking initiate in our south-west. I saw the early reefs that Brad and his team constructed. They were then placed into the ocean lease area that Rare Foods have, and that was their ocean-grown abalone—beautiful baby abalone. Having tasted many of these at different occasions I can really recommend their ocean-grown abalone. To think that we will now see ocean produced wine—this is a world first. It's something that the region is very proud of. Brad has always been an innovator. He loves the ocean. He's a fisherman, a surfer, a diver. Recently, I met his son, and his son is very much in the same space. I'm looking forward to what Rare Foods will do next. I think this is the next of many more adventures and innovation for Rare Foods. To everyone who sees this particular wine on the shelves, why not try it and experience wine that's been fermented in the two oceans off Augusta by Rare Foods. Gender Based Violence 75 19:44 Mr KHALIL 101351 Wills Monday marked the beginning of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. My home state of Victoria has made its theme for the 16 days 'Respect is…' As they say, not all disrespect leads to violence against women but all violence against women begins with disrespect. It is a big question but how do the seemingly harmless attitudes, behaviours and social pressures that men engage in and experience influence and lead to negative and potentially violent behaviour towards women? I wanted to share a story from a young woman in my office that goes towards the theme of respect. She is nearing 30 now but remembers clear as day this incident from when she was 17. On a walk after school she waited at a traffic light to cross. A middle-aged man in his car wound down the passenger window, leant across a primary-school-aged boy—perhaps his son—to wolf whistle at her before laughing and driving off. In an instant she felt unsafe, uncomfortable and disrespected. And what of the young boy? What was going through his mind? In a country like ours where one in two women will have experienced sexual harassment since the age of 15, her story is not unique. Anecdotes like this go to the fundamental idea of what respect towards women and girls should be, or is, and what it clearly is not. On that day, that primary-school-aged boy was being sent a clear message, having behaviour modelled to him that says a woman's right to peace, safety and to respect comes second to a man's desire to harass her. These attitudes of disrespect, if learnt young and not stopped, do grow over time and reinforce the cycle of harassment and abuse that women and girls face each day. We cannot let this cycle continue. The cycle must be reversed. The boy in the car should have had respectful behaviour modelled to him. So the question becomes what can we and what are we, as a government, doing to break this cycle? What are we all doing? I genuinely believe that the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children in a generation will help this process to end this national crisis. It centres the experience and needs of victim-survivors and, importantly, it looks towards genuine measures for preventing the cycle of violence before it can start. It promotes respectful relationships and consent training in schools, employer led workplace initiatives to embed equality and support for men and boys to develop supportive and healthy relationships with their male peer—behaviours that send a different message to that boy in the car. But there will be challenges we will face along the way. Some men—very loudly—have come to the view women's equality is akin to a zero-sum gain. Funnelling themselves into extremist views, misogynistic online spaces and spurred on by the Andrew Tates of the world, these men and boys have concocted the idea that, if there is a winner through equality, there has got to be a loser and they are the loser. Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth. But unpacking and reframing these attitudes and men's understanding of them, especially young boys, is the key part of driving long-lasting behavioural and cultural change. Long-term behavioural change is, unfortunately, by its very nature, not immediate. When a woman is being murdered on average every three days in this country, the idea of a consistent but ultimately generational change in men's behaviour doesn't provide much solace, or I assume it wouldn't provide much solace to the women and girls who are unsafe today. It is why the Albanese Labor government is investing in family, domestic and sexual violence response for frontline services, funding the escaping violence payment for those fleeing domestic and family violence, and rolling out education programs today to stop violence before it starts. Where there are areas we can do better on, I commit, and I assume my colleagues here in this place will commit, to championing these solutions within government as well as locally in my community. Disrespect towards and violence against women and girls is a national crisis that needs to be on the agenda every day, not just during the 16 days of activism. It won't end by politicians stepping into this space and making statements once a year, patting ourselves on the back and then going on our merry way. We must look at the ways to break the cycle of disrespect and violence in the short, medium and long term, and ensure victim-survivors are heard and believed. For me personally, it means proactively having conversations with the men and boys in my life, in the community that I represent, calling out harmful attitudes towards women and girls wherever I see them, and modelling respectful behaviours to boys and men. That is what respect means to me and what I commit to do every day. Centrelink, Brisbane City Council 76 19:49 Mr 300121 Griffith CHANDLER-MATHER () (): If you have ever been on Centrelink or the NDIS or dealt with the aged-care system you might relate to this story. My office was recently contacted by a paraplegic man in my electorate who for this speech I will call 'Michael' who had been receiving an aged-care home package for the last eight years. His provider had been, until recently, managing his important care needs diligently. But one day Michael's aged-care provider number changed by a single digit. This small, seemingly insignificant change in the system has unfortunately had massive consequences for Michael. The department of aged care treated this as though Michael had switched providers entirely, erasing all his previous history. His care plan, which had been in place for years, was wiped out. He even got levied with an automatic debt of $13,000 which he could never repay. Michael's wife discovered the issue in April and she's spent countless hours trying to resolve it. She has been in contact with Services Australia and with the aged care department and has been passed from one department to another. Every time she called she received a different reason as to why they could not help. There was no resolution and no-one seemed to be able to offer any concrete assistance. Eventually, Michael sought help from my office and, with a single phone call to Centrelink, the issue was resolved entirely—one call from my office. It should not have taken that. It should have taken one call from Michael. Years on from robodebt, this is still happening in our welfare system. It's a punitive system which we should be able to trust in to make sure everybody has the essential care and dignity that they need to live a good life but, instead, often treats welfare recipients or recipients of social care or social services as suspicious and punishes them for failures they have nothing to do with. This is a problem because a lot of the time the people accessing these services are incredibly vulnerable and, despite doing everything right, are often on the wrong end of bureaucratic decisions that they struggle to understand and that often take months or sometimes years to resolve. We deal with these issues almost every day. I am sure a lot of members' offices deal with similar issues. Why is it that the most vulnerable in our society are often treated with suspicion, second-guessed and forced to jump through countless hoops when, on the other end of the spectrum, we have massive multinational corporations paying no tax at all? It's desperately unfair and a question of broken priorities when we know that the real culprits of our cost-of-living crisis and the people that get away with breaking the rules are those large multinational corporations that often end up paying zero dollars in tax by using big, expensive corporate lawyers to get around loopholes in our tax laws. I think those are the people that should be treated with suspicion. Those corporations are the ones that should be cracked down on, not people like Michael. This week we found out that the LNP are making cuts to the hugely beloved rhyme time and storytime programs for babies, toddlers and children in Brisbane libraries. This is the Brisbane City Council LNP administration. These popular programs are often booked out, but the LNP have proposed cutting them by 25 per cent. In my community in Griffith, Bulimba Library will lose its children's storytime entirely and the babies' program will be cut in half. Carindale Library will have half of its programs cut. Holland Park Library will have its babies' program cut in half. Mount Gravatt Library will have its children's storytime cut in half. To know what these programs mean to people you can look no further than the over 4,000 signatures in just a few days on the Greens petition to save these programs. Any parents of young kids know how crucial programs like these are for young families in Brisbane. Programs like these are not only valuable to babies' and children's early learning in helping to make reading a part of children's daily lives; they are a sanctuary for new parents adjusting to parenthood and create a community in a time and place where it is sorely needed. My own family loves our rhyme time group at our local library, and I know we are not alone in appreciating the amazing work of our local librarians. These are, frankly, modest programs that provide a huge social benefit. Across all of Brisbane, this entire program costs the Brisbane City Council $780,000. This is in the context of a $3 billion council budget. The LNP are cutting a $780,000 program that is often oversubscribed for families, particularly young families with babies, toddlers and children, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. How could they possibly justify that? You can still sign the petition online or contact your local LNP councillor and tell them what you think of cutting these precious programs for young families across Brisbane in the middle of a massive cost-of-living crisis. Domestic and Family Violence 77 19:54 Ms BURNEY 8GH Barton The theme of this year's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is simple: 'No excuse'. Last Saturday, Bayside Council in the electorate of Barton held its annual walk against domestic violence. Residents came out in force to say there is no excuse for violence. I was proud to join them alongside Mayor Ed McDougall; Steve Kamper, the New South Wales Minister for Multiculturalism and member for Rockdale; and St George Police Area Command Detective Superintendent Paul Dunstan. This is something deeply personal to me. So many women and children have experienced violence in the places where they should be safest: in their homes and in relationships. It breaks survivors and their families. In New South Wales, one in four women have experienced violence by a partner or another known person since they were 15. Yesterday, the government tabled the response to the report of the missing and murdered First Nations women and children inquiry. The inquiry heard from survivors, and families made submissions on behalf of their relatives. First Nations women are 33 times as likely to be hospitalised due to family and domestic violence. Aboriginal women in New South Wales are eight times as likely to be recorded as victims. Of the 26 women killed nationally in intimate partner homicides since January, seven were Aboriginal women. Events like Bayside Walk demonstrate the important change in our society around domestic and family violence. This change is an important piece of the puzzle in preventing violence and ensuring survivors know their community is behind them. But prevention and proper support are also essential. The Albanese Labor government has made addressing gendered violence a priority. The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children sets out what governments and wider society will do to end gender based violence in one generation. Four point four billion dollars in Commonwealth funding commitments will support that work. The government's response includes a standalone action plan and $194 million to support First Nations women's safety; improving criminal justice reforms to sexual violence; and other pieces of the puzzle. Last week, the nation's Attorney-General agreed to the terms of the new National Access to Justice Partnership. It is the biggest ever boost in funding to legal and community legal services, totalling $3.9 billion. It includes $838 million for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services. This investment and strategy also focuses on prevention. We have committed $104 million to Our Watch, and the plan supports early intervention efforts to address and prevent violence in men. Ending the scourge of domestic and family violence in a generation is an ambitious goal, but investments by government and the community working together will take us a long way. I will finish up by saying that we very often hear the shocking statistics of how many women are murdered, but we should also remind ourselves that there are thousands and thousands of women who are maimed, often for the rest of their lives, with brain damage, smashed jaws that mean you can't eat, broken limbs, and scars that are both physical and mental. We can never forget the intergenerational effects that domestic and sexual violence has for the children of those women and those men. This is an issue that we all must face together. It is not a women's issue. It is not a children's issue. It is a societal issue. The House transcript was published up to 20:00 . The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Payne ) took the chair at 16:00.

Tuesday, 26 November 2024

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

 

CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS 79 CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS Raise Our Voice in Parliament 79 16:00 Mr CHANDLER-MATHER 300121 Griffith I'd like to read a speech prepared by a young person in my electorate of Griffith named Hayden as part of our raise our voice program: Hello, I am Hayden from the Griffith electorate and I'm currently 17 years old and in year 12, and as I see it, the next event as a pivotal moment in Australia's national journey. To seize the opportunity of creating a national community envied by the world, comprehensive social reforms must be achieved by future national parliaments. As a young person myself, I look to the future with hesitation and a sense of fear that the current government of Australia is not doing enough to create a better nation for the people. Housing and education are issues that terrify the young people of Australia. How will we cope? At this current trajectory set by the two major parties, we won't. The introduction of further rental caps and limitations on property ownership, coupled with an ambitious housing construction program reminiscent of the 20th-century housing commission, is essential to combat the housing crisis that's already passed dangerous levels. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, around 28,200 people aged 12-24 years were estimated to have been experiencing homelessness and the scary part is how fast that number is growing. We must also prioritise the abolition of higher education fees, providing free further education for the nation's citizens and undergoing the harmful reforms of John Howard. With HECS debt having increased by a further $1723 to an outstanding $26,494 over the last financial year. It is not a great ask, nor is it radical, to give the citizens of Australia the right to be housed affordably and have the opportunity of higher education for all. The people of Australia have had enough and as a representative of democracy, the parliament of Australia should mirror these outcries and work to create and envisioned and desired Australian community that focuses on the greater benefit of our fellow citizens. I couldn't agree more, Hayden. Higgins Electorate, Cybersafety 79 16:02 Dr ANANDA-RAJAH 290544 Higgins In 2022, through a lionhearted Labor effort, I became the first Labor member for Higgins in the seat's 75-year history. My campaign was powered by the energy and commitment of Labor members who doorknocked, staffed the prepoll and polling-day booths, phone banked and supported my 2022 campaign in a multitude of other ways. Parliamentarians are the vanguard, but powering us are the people—the Labor people, young and older, regional and metro, from all walks of life. For us, it is about 'no-one held back and no-one left behind'. We are here to roll up our sleeves and challenge the status quo that is leaving people behind or holding them back. On housing, job security, health care, education, discrimination and of course tackling climate change, we are the reformers. It is a great source of pride to me that Higgins supported an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, when Labor people again came out in support of justice and progress. To all Labor members, but in particular those of the Malvern, Oakleigh, Prahran, Ashwood and Hawthorn Labor branches: my sincere thanks. While the electorate of Higgins may not exist from 2025, our great achievement in 2022 will stand in the history books—a legacy we own. It has been my great honour to have served and to continue to serve this community and to work with my Labor warriors and friends. Ryan, a year 9 student from Higgins, has written about our social media age limits bill: As a teenager who grew up in the presence of the internet his entire life, I feel that more often than not, social media has been a burden on the wellbeing of myself and many others. Giving children unrestricted access to social media does irreparable harm. I personally accessed social media platforms such as Discord and Snapchat at an age as young as nine years old. I have witnessed the tremendous harm that platforms like Instagram have inflicted upon many young people I know. Cultivating an unhealthy standard for one's appearance destroyed the self-image of many young people, including some of my closest friends. This fosters unhealthy habits in young people, such as constant comparisons, the constant need for validation and a heavily skewed sense of identity. Allowing children unrestricted access to social media platforms without any age verification at all exposes them to risks they cannot handle. Risks such as cyberbullying, exploitation and grooming have harmed too many Australian children. Thank you, Ryan, for your heartfelt words. I agree with them wholeheartedly. You have wisdom beyond your years as a child who has been part of this grand experiment, and I believe, like you, it is failing our young people. That is why this Labor government is doing something about it. Dawson Electorate: Schools 80 16:05 Mr WILLCOX 286535 Dawson The class of 2024 is celebrating after graduating from high schools across the electorate of Dawson. Students have given their all over the past 13 years from prep through primary school and finally finishing their schooling in high school. They have all worked so hard. School leavers are celebrating as we speak at schoolies before they embark on the next journey in life, whether that be enrolling into university, getting a full-time job or trade or taking a gap year to travel the world. Each year, I sponsor the Dawson award for a student selected by their school who fits a set criteria. This award takes its name from my electorate, which is named in honour of a former Queensland member of parliament who served as Premier of Queensland from 1899 to 1903. The student recipient demonstrates leadership and motivates others. They demonstrate a selfless commitment to their community, have a passion for social issues and want to make a difference, are kind and have a true desire to help others. So far, students from 15 high schools in my electorate have been awarded the Dawson medal: Jacob Machin, from Home Hill State High School; Verity Whelan, from William Ross State High School; Eliza McNee, from Bowen State High School; Eleanor Baldock, from St Catherine's Catholic College, Ronald Norris, from Southern Cross Catholic College; Nicole Cervoni, from Burdekin Catholic High School; Amy Bower, from Calen District State College; Brent Dingle, from Burdekin Christian College; Dallas Mitchell, from Holy Spirit College; Domonik Battersby, from Mackay Christian College; Amy Williamson, from Mackay Northern Beaches State High School; Olivia Murphy, from Proserpine State High School; Kayla Woods, from Mackay State High School; Megan Heald, from Annandale Christian College; and last, but not least, Jackson Riley, from Whitsunday Christian College. With the huge array of talent that I've witnessed, I'm very confident our future is in good hands. I would like to congratulate each Dawson award recipient and wish them all the best in the future. Whatever your chosen path, it's yours for the making. You may not stay on that same path, as life throws different choices, different opportunities and different curveballs, but what you make of your own pathway is all yours. The choice is yours. I wish you all the best. Go forth. Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence 80 16:08 Ms BELYEA 309484 Dunkley Yesterday was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, marking the start of the 16 days of activism against gender based violence. In the first month of my role as an MP, I was asked to speak in the chamber on my lived experience of domestic, family and sexual violence. I have many colleagues in this chamber and family members, friends and local constituents who have experienced domestic family and sexual violence. In Dunkley we have some of the highest rates of domestic and family violence. It is a blight on our society and our community. To support the women, men and children experiencing violence, we have many incredible organisations and professionals doing amazing work in this space, supporting those in crisis: Anglicare, Family Life, Good Shepherd, OzChild, the Salvation Army, the Orange Door, Community Support Frankston, Mums Supporting Families in Need and Women's Health in the South East. The list of organisations is deep and long, and thank you to all of the staff for all you do for the women, children and families in our community. Your dedication is commendable. Too many women live in fear every day, unable to leave home, or too scared to go home, because the person that professes to love them is the greatest threat to their life. I've heard many stories of horrific violence during my career in the community sector and have my own lived experience. I know how totally paralysing domestic, family and sexual violence can be. Often, these women turn the most horrific experiences into action and advocacy. I would like to give a shout-out to some incredible women from Dunkley: Kathy Heffernan, Melissa Flores, Justine Lenart. You are some of the amazing women I know who have endured the scars of violence and are making incredible contributions to the lives of other women and families in our community. I am inspired by all of those women and their supporters, and to them I say: this government is committing to ending violence. It's why, since coming to government, we have made record investment into ending violence. We've invested $4 billion into this important task—investments to prevent violence, to intervene where it happens and to respond and support victim-survivors to recover and heal. This is on top of $3.9 billion for legal assistance, announced following National Cabinet's historic meeting to end violence against women and children. These investments also include extra funding for housing. This includes specific investments targeted at women escaping violence, which also will include—as of today—the Help to Buy initiative. South Coast Marine Park 81 16:11 Mr RICK WILSON 198084 O'Connor I rise today to inform the House of the lengths to which a WA Labor minister will go so as not to be seen announcing a divisive fishing ban. On Melbourne Cup day, while the people of Esperance were watching the races, WA environment minister Reece Whitby touched down in a chartered aircraft. He'd blown into the seaside town to reveal the configuration of his so-called 'South Coast Marine Park'. Previously, thousands of Esperance people had taken to the streets to protest the widespread fishing bans that the park will entail. Rather than walk through the airport terminal like everybody else, Mr Whitby was whisked from the tarmac by a car to beautiful Twilight Beach, where he'd arranged a press conference. But according to the Esperance Weekender, he suddenly pulled the pin on Twilight Beach after receiving a tip-off that opponents of his fishing ban were there. In reality, a handful of supporters had gathered. I can confirm that those who Mr Whitby left in the twilight zone are indeed small in number. Of 6,000 respondents to my recent survey on the marine park, more than 90 per cent oppose it. After his unscheduled U-turn, Mr Whitby eventually unveiled his unpopular measure—not at one of the jewels in WA's dazzling crown of beaches, as he'd planned, but back in town behind a barren garden bed outside a government office block. We now know Mr Whitby wants to lock up 20 per cent of the fishing waters along a 1,000-kilometre stretch of ocean, from the border town of Eucla, west to Bremer Bay. If his red tide of regulation is not resisted, the fishing communities of Albany, Peaceful Bay, Nornalup, Walpole, Windy Harbour and Augusta could be next. That's why I'm heartened to hear that my WA Liberal colleague Neil Thomson MLC has moved to disallow the marine park. Mr Thomson's motion is likely to be debated in state parliament this Thursday. Although Labor will probably use its numbers to ram the fishing ban through, Mr Thomson's motion will put the strong objections of the south-coast locals on record. Mr Thomson plans to commission an urgent review on all marine parks imposed by Whitby and his WA Labor comrades. The draconian south-coast fishing ban follows WA Labor's decision to shut down the famous Horizontal Falls in the Kimberley. These blunt-edge bans are bludgeoning WA tourism and fishing businesses. By contrast, Mr Thomson's review will aim to maintain access for commercial and recreational fishers to their coastal waters. The Liberals know that fishing is fundamental to the Western Australian way of life. Unlike Mr Whitby, we are not ashamed to show our faces in Esperance or anywhere else along the south coast. His fishing ban is not based on science. It will imperil livelihoods and lifestyles. This is the fishing ban that the south coast rejects. Eden-Monaro Electorate 81 16:14 Ms McBAIN 281988 Eden-Monaro With Christmas less than a month away, I've got the perfect Christmas present idea just for you. The Goulburn Monopoly game is now available for purchase, showcasing local heritage, recreational, cultural and environmental features of the Goulburn community, whether that's roses in Victoria Park, barefoot bowling at the bowlo, the town's heritage buildings or the roar of cars at One Raceway—whatever you do; just try not to go straight to Goulburn supermax! The limited-edition Monopoly game is raising money for Southern Tablelands Community Foundation and can be purchased online or at the Goulburn Visitor Information Centre, Top Shot photography, Bi-Rite or the Big Merino. And keep a lookout for Bungendore's Monopoly game, which is also being released in time for Christmas—launched by and raising money for the Bungendore Rotary Club. Well done to all involved in these brilliant ideas, and happy Christmas shopping. I'd like to celebrate Cindy Chawner from Cobargo, who has been named to represent Australia at the Invictus Games in Vancouver next year. Growing up, Cindy loved getting active, participating in swimming, running and a number of team sports. She joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1999, initially as a Reserves operation officer and later serving most of her career as a personal capability officer. She was deployed to the Middle East in 2010 and was medically discharged in June last year. Despite facing a range of physical and mental health challenges, Cindy has demonstrated her remarkable resilience and will be competing in a number of events in the Invictus Games. Well done. We look forward to you representing our community and our country on the world stage. I want to congratulate Charlotte Wood, originally from Cooma, on her outstanding literary achievement. Charlotte has become the first Australian since 2014 to be shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, for her novel Stone Yard Devotional. The novel follows an unnamed woman who leaves her marriage and city life to live in an enclosed religious community on the Monaro plains, near where Charlotte herself grew up. Charlotte completed much of her first draft whilst in lockdown. After that, she and her sisters were all diagnosed with breast cancer within weeks of each other. I'm happy to report that they've all beaten that. Although Charlotte didn't come away with the Booker Prize, her resilience and talent have resonated deeply with readers from across the world. I'd like to congratulate Eden-Monaro's Cooma Monaro Race Club on receiving, for the second year in a row, the Racing NSW award for outstanding achievement. The club began in 1856, when its first members finally gained a licence to meet and race horses at Ti Tree flat. Although the location, the members and the names have all changed over time, the core idea of fostering camaraderie through the excitement of horseracing remains. The club has consistently hardworking members who deliver high-quality competitions and race meetings. Their efforts draw thousands of people to our community, supporting local business. It is such an excellent standard at the Cooma racecourse, too, for the Cooma Cup. I extend my congratulations to all involved. Finally, a congratulations to Merimbula-born Jem Ryan, who has been selected for the Prime Minister's XI squad to play India in Canberra this weekend. Well done, Jem; we're still claiming you as ours, even though you're in Ipswich now! (Time expired) Menzies Electorate: Greg Sher Memorial Award 82 16:17 Mr WOLAHAN 235654 Menzies Australia's Jewish community are not just a part of Australia; they helped build it, and many lost their lives defending it. One of them was a good friend of mine, Greg Sher, who died in Afghanistan on 4 January 2009—almost 15 years ago. The community gathered on 14 November to acknowledge him, to be with his family and to award recipients of the Greg Sher Memorial Award in Caulfield North. It was my great honour to be there for the third year in a row. Briefly, Greg was curious, kind, loyal, selfless, resilient, fearless and a hero to this nation and to his community. He didn't just serve in the ADF; he was also a key member of the Community Security Group, who were there to host the event. I thank them, their volunteers, their donors and Justin Kagan, who leads it. Greg's parents, Felix and Yvonne, were there. I also want to acknowledge his brothers, Steven and Barry, and their partners, Ronit and Nim, and their children—many, many children whom Greg never got to meet, but I know they're proud of him. I can't list all the winners, but I'll list the schools. Beth Rivkah Ladies College had four students, two from year 5 and two from year 11. Bialik College had four—again, two from year 5 and two from year 11. The King David School had two from year 5 and two from year 11—and you see a pattern here; those are the key years that have been acknowledged. Leibler-Yavneh College had four students, again, from each of those year levels; Mount Scopus Memorial College had four—two from each year level; Scholem Aleichem College had two from year 5; Yeshiva College had two from each year level; and, finally, United Jewish Education Board in their various campuses had three from year 5 and two from year 11. At this moment in time, I know that Greg would probably be doing two things. He would still be a reserve commando, serving his nation and prepared to go to war. He would also be giving up his time to help the Jewish community, whether it be in front of places of worship, on campus or at events, because Greg exemplified the very definition of someone who gives of themselves for others. To the students who received an award in his name, I know that you are worthy winners. I know that you, too, will be people who are curious, kind, loyal, selfless, resilient and fearless. You have an award that is in his name and you do him a great honour. As Barry Sher said to me, 'Wherever you can, say his name.' I always will. Spence Electorate: Curtis Road 82 16:20 Mr BURNELL 300129 Spence In case you missed it, the federal Labor government, in partnership with the South Australian Labor government, is fixing the dangerous intersection of Curtis Road and Heaslip Road just outside Angle Vale, with a brand-new dual lane roundabout. Our community has spoken and we have listened. Now we're getting a game-changing outcome. But that doesn't I'm going to stop listening. I say that because many members of my community, upon hearing this announcement last week, wanted to know why we can't fix the rest of Curtis Road. They're asking that because, at certain times, the entire road can become impossible to navigate due to congestion. I agree that they should know why this is the case and I'll gladly answer their question. In order to fix Curtis Road, the city of Playford, who are the local government exclusively responsible for maintaining it, need to come to the table and apply for relevant funding to get that work started. Other levels of government can't do it for them. I point this out because a few people have said to me—including some Playford council members—that either the state or federal government need to take the first step fix Curtis Road. This simply isn't true. That can't happen because Curtis Road is a local government road. More importantly still, this blame game needs to stop altogether. Curtis Road won't get fixed if council continue trying to pass the buck to the state or federal governments for a road change that they're in charge of. We need to collaborate, and we can do that already through grant opportunities like the federal government's Housing Support Program. The Heaslip Road and Curtis Road roundabout, for example, is being funded through that program, with the federal government providing 50 per cent of the cost through one of these grants. That's because the state government, who are covering the other half of the cost, did actively pursue a solution to a dangerous intersection that they maintain. Good on them, too. This same grant was available to council, but they chose not to improve Curtis Road with it; instead, they applied for federal money to spend on an ice arena in Elizabeth. I'm not suggesting that every grant Playford have applied for which doesn't improve Curtis Road is a waste of money. Throughout my term, Playford have applied for federal funding for a variety of projects that benefit my community, and I acknowledge that wholeheartedly. But I do want Curtis Road to be the City of Playford's highest priority. I also want the City of Playford to actively approach and work with other levels of government to fix it, rather than suggest that a road which is their responsibility is for someone else to look at. I want these things because they're the only way we're going to fix Curtis Road. That is something I will never stop working towards until it's done. 16:23 Mr WOLAHAN 235654 Menzies by leave—I table the names of winners of the Greg Sher Memorial Awards for this year. La Trobe Electorate: Summer Community Festival 83 16:24 Mr WOOD E0F La Trobe I recently had the great honour of attending the world-renowned Summer Community Festival at St Mina and St Marina's Coptic Orthodox Church in Hallam. This festival, which has been a cherished tradition for nearly 30 years, continues to grow bigger and better each year, bringing joy and unity to our community. I attended this fantastic event alongside Zahid Safi, the Liberal candidate for Bruce. It was truly heartwarming to see so many families and children enjoying the fantastic community market stalls, indulging in traditional Egyptian sweets, savouring Mediterranean-style foods and participating in a variety of kids' activities. I extend my deepest gratitude to the much-loved Father Abanoub Attalla and Father Michael Galli for their kind invitation and warm hospitality. Can I say they are absolutely loved and admired by all their worshippers. Father Abanoub, you knew everyone's name and it was grade to go around with you. I also hit it off with Father Michael, being a former detective for Victoria Police. Their dedication was truly inspiring. The biannual festival is not just a celebration; it's also a significant fundraiser for the church's Sunday school and childcare centre. The funds raised during this event will play a crucial role in supporting these vital programs, which provide invaluable services to the children and the families. The congregation were washing cars and buying food; they were doing incredible work. I also congratulate Father Michael Galli at the church for his efforts in running Manna4Life LTD, which was established in Melbourne in 2012 and works with volunteers to support and provide relief for underprivileged youth and the elderly through humanitarian services. Today Manna4Life focuses on alleviating poverty amongst underprivileged communities and the homeless, supporting youth and adolescents, providing financial assistance to low-income families and promoting basic health and hygiene standards within the communities. Hard work and commitment are what make the Summer Community Festival event and relief support for the community possible, and these efforts are deeply appreciated by the Egyptian and wider communities. The St Mina and St Marina Coptic Orthodox Church is a shining example of what can be achieved when we all come together as a community. I again thank all those who were there on the day when we attended—a very exciting time for those at the church. As I said before, the way the congregation and those there support their church, from washing cars to providing funding to the stalls, all to help other people is a great achievement for them. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 16:27 to 16:49 Banking and Financial Services 83 16:49 Mr HUSIC 91219 Chifley In this modern day and age, it's easy to forget the heavy reliance many in our community place on bricks and mortar bank branches. The fact is that conducting bank business over the internet is difficult for some of our citizens, technology may not always be available and there will be fears about the safety of electronic payments, and those shouldn't be sneered at. There is the simple convenience and the reassuring face-to-face contact at a branch which are a big deal for a large number of customers. That's an undeniable fact. It was recently brought to the fore in the electorate that I am proud to represent, Chifley, with the amazing announcement that the Commonwealth Bank is planning to close its Doonside branch. This move has attracted much local concern, leading to a united call from our community for the bank to reverse its decision. In my capacity as the member for Chifley, I was asked to relay these concerns directly to the senior management of the Commonwealth Bank. I emphasised that closing the branch will have very negative consequences for the people who can least afford it. Senior citizens, pensioners in particular, have a heavy reliance on the face-to-face banking that's provided, and there's an understandable unwillingness to give up the standards of customer service that they are accustomed to and, frankly, have paid for. Additionally, the branch at Doonside affords many small-business owners a safe and convenient way to conduct their cash banking on which they have come to rely. The closure of the Doonside branch will mean a trip to the bank will take longer and impact unfairly on loyal CBA customers who are already dealing with rising expenses. If the closure goes ahead, they'll be forced to travel to branches in Blacktown, Mount Druitt and Plumpton to conduct passbook transactions and the like that are currently available in Doonside. These same customers—pensioners, older citizen, small- business operators—are on fixed or limited incomes, with little or no capacity to absorb extra costs. While, of course, it's necessary for any business to review its operations, I've impressed on the Commonwealth Bank the need to be conscious of the bank's universal service obligations and reminded them of the impossible situation in which the decision is placing many in our community. I've followed this up with written representations to the bank, asking them for an urgent discussion of these issues, and I'm calling on them to defer, at the very least, until such time as myself or the community has had a chance to discuss the impact of this closure face-to-face with the Commonwealth Bank. On behalf of my community, I am insisting on a commitment by the bank to ensure maintenance of customer service standards, especially for older customers. Banks have a responsibility to engage with customers in a way that customers feel comfortable with. For many, of course, that will be by digital means; for others, it's face-to-face. They've got a right to expect that wish will be respected and facilitated in a way that doesn't impose costs on those who cannot afford them. The DEPUTY SPEAKER F2S In accordance with standing order 193, the time for members' constituency statements has concluded. BILLS 84 BILLS Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024 84

Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024

Second Reading 84 16:52 Mr CHANDLER-MATHER 300121 Griffith The Greens will support this bill here but reserve our position in the Senate. We do that simply because this is another apparently urgent bill from the government that we were provided with no notice and without the benefit of a government briefing despite requests. It's disappointing, once again, to have a bill sprung on us by the government to fix a legal issue that, on the face of it, should have been identified many years ago. The Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024 will provide that information received under warrants issued by the AFP was 'not intercepted while passing over a telecommunications system and was lawfully obtained under those warrants, consistent with the parliament's intention'. This bill will retrospectively state that these warrants were not intercepts but were instead valid warrants under the Surveillance Devices Act. It only applies to 11 warrants issued by the AFP and does not change the law going forward. Essentially, this will retrospectively validate the collection of information relating to Operation Ironside, which was an FBI-initiated drug crime investigation taken on in Australia by the AFP. This, in turn, will be relevant for current cases on foot against those who have been charged as a result of the information gathered during Operation Ironside. The AFP Commissioner announced the results of Operation Ironside on 8 June 2021. It is now 26 November 2024, and the government is legislating about the warrants used in that operation. This is another case of the AFP being better prepared for their media releases than they are for the basic police work needed to stack them up—in this case, ensuring the warrants they issue are valid for the information they are seeking to obtain. Ensuring the rule of law is complied with and that police and other security agencies are acting within the law is essential work for the Greens. The Greens do not want to stand in the way of the prosecutions for Operation Ironside, but we do want answers about why this legal impediment was not uncovered many years ago if this operation was properly considered and passed through legal channels in the AFP. 16:55 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs I thank honourable members for their contributions on the Surveillance Legislation (Confirmation of Application) Bill 2024. This bill makes clear that information collected under specified warrants independently issued to the Australian Federal Police under the Surveillance Devices Act 2004 and the Crimes Act 1914 in connection with Operation Ironside was not intercepted while passing over a telecommunication system within the meaning of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979. The bill is consistent with the decisions made in the Supreme Court of South Australia by a single judge and by the South Australian Court of Appeal. The bill is targeted in its scope, dealing only with warrants issued in connection with Operation Ironside. The bill does not affect any other previous, current or future AFP operations. I thank the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Consideration in Detail 85 16:56 Mr DREYFUS HWG Isaacs I present a supplementary explanatory memorandum to the bill. I move the government amendment as circulated: (1) Clause 4, page 3 (line 20), omit "SDC003", substitute "SDC0003". Question agreed to. Bill, as amended, agreed to. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House with an amendment. Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024, Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024 85

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024

Second Reading 85 16:58 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner I'm pleased to sum up the debate of the Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Bill 2024, the Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024 and the Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024. I thank those members who've contributed to this debate. These three bills formalise longstanding Commonwealth practices by providing express, modernised and consistent legislative authority for Commonwealth entities to continue to charge and collect payments surcharges where the entity has legislative authority to collect a payment. The package of bills does not impose new surcharges on those interacting with the Commonwealth but instead formalises the existing practices of Commonwealth entities under a new, modernised whole-of-government framework. To that end, the bills authorise the collection of surcharges by Commonwealth entities from 1 January 2003 to align with when the Reserve Bank of Australia first regulated payment surcharging as part of the then broader payments reforms. The bills will also enable the responsible minister to make Commonwealth surcharging policies by legislative instrument, to support moving forward a consistent whole-of-government approach to surcharging, including ensuring that any surcharging is applied on a cost recovery basis only. This will also facilitate adoption of any changes to whole-of-government surcharging policy by Commonwealth entities quickly and efficiently. This package of bills supports the government's broader commitment to reviewing and reforming the imposition of card payment surcharges. The government is prepared to permanently ban all surcharges on debit cards from 1 January 2026, subject to further work by the Reserve Bank of Australia and safeguards to ensure both small business and consumers can benefit from lower costs. While the Reserve Bank of Australia completes its important work on the surcharging review on how payment fees can be reduced economy wide, we will stop passing on debit surcharges from the Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia from 1 January 2025. I commend these bills to the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024 86

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024

Second Reading 86 17:02 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner The Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) Tax (Imposition) Bill 2024 is the second bill of a package of three bills, and the remarks that I have made on the first of the bills apply equally to this bill. I commend it to the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024 86

Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024

Second Reading 86 17:03 Dr LEIGH BU8 Fenner The Commonwealth Entities (Payment Surcharges) (Consequential Provisions and Other Matters) Bill 2024 is the third of the package of three bills. My remarks on the opening bill apply equally to it and I commend it to the House. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024 86

Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024

Second Reading 86 17:05 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack The Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024 will address the gap in the professional indemnity insurance market. This gap has prevented eligible midwives from accessing insurance when attending homebirths for Australian mothers. The uncertainty that this has created with regard to the exemptions to professional indemnity insurance for privately practising midwives has acted as a barrier for Australian women who wish to have a homebirth and uncertainty for the midwives who would like to provide these services. In response, this bill expands the MPIS to ensure professional indemnity insurance coverage for eligible midwives providing homebirth services and intrapartum care outside of a hospital and at birth centres. The coalition supports this legislation as it provides Australian women with the option to make their own supported and informed choices when it comes to homebirth. By expanding access to professional indemnity insurance, the bill supports eligible midwives in delivering safe and accessible care, including homebirths and intrapartum care outside of hospitals for non-complicated births. This will support greater choice for Australian women and families in their pregnancy journey and, particularly, assist mothers in rural and remote Australia, who face additional challenges in accessing maternity services within a hospital setting. It will allow Australian women greater choice to birth at home with their chosen midwife, with the security of knowing professional indemnity insurance is available in the case of an adverse event. In the midst of a serious workforce crisis which is impacting almost all facets of our healthcare system, supporting healthcare professionals to work to their full scope of practice is integral to ensuring Australians have access to the healthcare services they need. This bill places trust on eligible midwives to practise to their full scope by allowing them to provide homebirth and intrapartum care outside of hospital within the safety net of professional indemnity insurance. The coalition understands that Australian women need to be supported to be able to make choices about how they want to live their lives, and that starts with making sure governments are supporting women with their health. The coalition wants to ensure that women across Australia can access care and that we understand their needs and their experiences. Supporting the health and wellbeing of Australian women and girls is an absolute priority for the coalition, which is why we will be supporting this legislation. A division having been called in the House of Representatives— Sitting suspended from 17 : 08 to 17 : 14 (Blair) (17:14): Mr NEUMANN HVO I'm pleased to speak on the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024. The background to this is that the role of midwives and the issue of health funding and insurance became very obvious back in 2002—indeed, probably prior to that, after the insurance market collapsed after 9/11. The landmark obstetric birth injury case which resulted in a payout of about $11 million initiated a crisis of confidence in the industry with respect to midwives around the country. At that time there were around 200 privately practising midwives, and they were paying about $800 a year in insurance. That's simply not a big enough pool of funds to contemplate a payout of that magnitude, and obviously insurance for midwives was a longstanding issue. The coalition—then in government, by the way—had another six or seven years to resolve the issues but simply did nothing. In 2008 we directed the Commonwealth Chief Nurse and Midwifery Officer, Rosemary Bryant, to conduct a review of midwifery services in Australia. I and a number of my colleagues met with midwives and lobbied the government to resolve this issue. I met with midwives across Queensland and spoke at a number of events, including a forum that was held by a maternity coalition in the state of Queensland. There are a number of local advocates across South-East Queensland who push this issue. We brought three bills before the House in 2009 to support Australian midwives. Some anomalies emerged after this legislation. The purpose of the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Act 2010 and the associated Midwife Professional Indemnity (Runoff Cover Support Payment) Act 2010 was to support MBS and PBS arrangements enabling the establishment of a government supported professional indemnity scheme for eligible midwives by 1 July 2010. There was an unintended consequence in that the insurance seemed to cover in particular those who were dealing with private hospitals and large private obstetric practices as employers. But it didn't really cover midwives who were self-employed in private practice and in one-on-one settings or small settings. There were also some tax anomalies that weren't covered. So we brought forward a piece of legislation back in 2011, the Midwife Professional Indemnity Legislation Amendment Bill 2011, to fix some of those anomalies that had created a higher tax on insurers of eligible midwives. We fixed a lot of those problems, but this issue really continued for another decade. Despite meeting with midwives across my electorate and elsewhere in South-East Queensland, this continued. The Morrison, Abbott and Turnbull governments simply did nothing, frankly. It was a Labor government that attended to this issue previously, with prime ministers Rudd and Gillard. Then: crickets, under Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison. Now we've come in here, and I want to pay tribute to the fine work of the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, the member for Cooper, who's driven this inside our government. It might have had something to do with her previous vocation as a nurse and her advocacy in terms of her leadership at the ACTU as well. But I want to pay tribute to Ged. Thank you very much for the work you've done, Member for Cooper. At the outset, I want to say that we're committed to making sure midwives are empowered. We want to make sure we have a health workforce that is satisfied and retained. We want to enhance maternity care and ensure better health outcomes for Australian women and their families. And we want to improve choice. It's not all just about the medicalisation. Midwives have been around for millennia helping women, and we want to make sure women have the opportunity of choice. But we want to make sure those midwives are properly covered. If they're privately practising with the insurance system, if they're providing home births and intrapartum care outside of a hospital, they've got to have proper insurance coverage in today's world. So, we're acting to cover this gap by providing privately practising midwives with a temporary exemption from the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law of 2009 to ensure that they continue to provide these services and give expectant mothers choice in how they want the birth of their child to occur. The 2024-25 budget then provided a permanent solution to the Commonwealth covering the costs of professional negligence claims for eligible midwives providing home-birth services, eligible midwives providing intrapartum care outside of a hospital and eligible entities, including birth centres, employing or engaging eligible midwives to provide intrapartum care outside of hospital as part of the birthing-on-country models of care. It's my hope that, after having spoken on this type of bill before on multiple occasions in parliament and outside, this bill fixes the problem that's been ongoing for decades. This bill builds on the budget measures we have undertaken, amending the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Act 2010, which I referred to earlier in my speech. It ensures that eligible midwives practising outside of hospital settings have access to professional indemnity insurance. Tragically, there are some people in the medical profession and hospital administration that have an almost negative approach to midwives and who haven't understood that it should be up to women to choose. I believe it should be up to a woman to choose in relation to her pregnancy and the manner in which the birth should take place. The bill provides a framework under which the government will pay 100 per cent of eligible claims for relevant intrapartum services providers outside of hospital. The expansion of the act ensures the insurance coverage is there for home births and intrapartum care outside a hospital conducted in accordance with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia's safety and quality guidelines for privately practising midwives. That's really important. The bill provides scope for rules to be made to specify the intrapartum services covered by the scheme. It also extends 100 per cent coverage to eligible entities such as Aboriginal community controlled health organisations, or ACCHOs, that employ midwives as part of birthing-on-country models of care. That's particularly important and also very important in your electorate, Deputy Speaker Scrymgour. The bill will take effect from 1 July 2025 and provide a permanent solution to address gaps in professional indemnity insurance coverage for eligible midwives. The bill supports eligible midwives to practise their full scope of practice, giving women greater choice, and I think it's important, as I said, for that access to be done in culturally safe birthing-on-country services, which is not always the case. This approach supports the delivery of safe and accessible care and reflects consultation feedback that raises concerns in relation to previous proposals to develop a definition of 'low-risk home birth'. The bill promotes the rights of individuals to enjoy the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health as it improves economic access to maternity services. The bill provides certainty to the current professional indemnity insurer of the Commonwealth's ongoing commitment to subsidise the costs associated with professional negligence claims against eligible midwives and helps them manage claims with the government as insurer of last resort for those expanded services. Tragically, when I was a practising lawyer in my younger days, I did quite a number of medical negligence cases, some associated with the birth of children, and they were far more often in a hospital than in a home birth situation. The legislation addresses a clear market failure, as I alluded to before, and I think this is a very positive outcome for Australian women and their families. Women can choose to birth at home with their choice of midwife knowing that professional indemnity insurance is available in the case of an adverse event. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women or women pregnant with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander babies will have access to continuous, culturally safe birthing-on-country services with insured midwife. Eligible midwives will be able to practise their full scope of practice, offering home births and intrapartum care outside of hospital with the safety net of professional indemnity insurance. There's been so much consultation in relation to this. As I say, this is about choice and control. It's about empowering women. It's about making sure they can choose their birthing environment. It aligns to our broader goal of gender equality and fosters an inclusive healthcare environment where women can have access to continuous, culturally safe care. It aligns with Woman-centred care: strategic directions for Australian maternity services. Of particular importance to Australian families is the fact that they need that high-quality, respectful maternity care. It recognises the need for women to make those choices. We've made a number of reforms in this area to improve the space, to attract more people into midwifery and improve the financial viability of independent midwives. From 1 November this year, we removed the red tape that prevents endorsed midwives and nurse practitioners from operating their full scope of practice. Legislating to remove collaborative arrangements has meant that nursing and endorsed midwives will now be eligible to independently provide the full range of Medicare services and prescribe certain pharmaceutical benefits medications. This change empowers midwives to work to their full scope of practice, improving access to quality care, particularly in rural, regional and remote communities. We've invested in the Australian health workforce by upskilling the nation's nurses and midwives through a $50.2 million scholarship. And the Primary Care Nursing And Midwifery Scholarship Program provides 1,850 postgraduate scholarships over four years for registered midwives and nurses to become nurse practitioners and endorsed midwives in primary and aged care. That program strengthens the health workforce, particularly in rural areas. On top of this, the eligible students have access to $319.50 per week as part of the Albanese Labor government's establishment of a new Commonwealth prac payment for students to help them manage the costs associated with the undertaking of mandatory placements. This will support midwifery students to undertake their studies and, of course, address the cost of living. We have provided additional supports, but I've got to tell you, I am very pleased about this. This is a longstanding issue that I have been involved in for a long time and advocated for, along with some of my colleagues, some of whom are not still here in this parliament. This is about the Albanese Labor government improving women's health outcomes by listening to women and addressing systemic biases in the health system against women and taking important steps to build women's health into the foundation of a stronger Medicare system. I'm pleased to support this legislation. It's the culmination of a lot of work by a lot of advocates—too many to name. I think of the meetings I've had in my office and I think of the four that I've gone to. I want to thank all these advocates for what they've done. Know that this will help women who are fighting for greater choice in control of their bodies. 17:27 Dr HAINES 282335 Indi I want to acknowledge the words from the member for Blair. Thank you so much for stepping us through what has been a long and at times complicated labour in the birth of this incredibly important legislation. As many members of this House know, I am still a registered midwife but no longer a practising midwife. Time honours the brave. Many of us worked long and hard and fought for reforms such as this right back to the 1990s. I remember what the member for Blair was telling us about those reforms that started in 2002 and then legislative changes in 2011. I remember them all and I thank him for his contribution to making those changes then. He also acknowledged Rosemary Bryant, and I remember the work of Rosemary very well. I am just so pleased—thrilled, actually—to rise to speak to the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024. If that young midwife, back in the nineties, could have possibly thought that she would end up in the parliament on the day when this legislation was being debated, she certainly would not have believed it. Those lovely things that happen from time to time about writing a letter to your younger self—well, this is a letter I don't think I ever would have written. This is important. This bill will provide a framework which will allow the government to pay 100 per cent of eligible claims for relevant intrapartum services provided outside of a hospital. This aims to ensure professional indemnity insurance coverage for eligible midwives providing home birth services, eligible midwives providing intrapartum care outside of a hospital and eligible entities employing or engaging eligible midwives to provide intrapartum care outside of a hospital, including birth centres, as part of Birthing on Country models of care. These are fantastic models of care that are women centred, parent focused, baby friendly and evidence based. What that means in practice is that eligible midwives will have access to the financial protection they need to confidently practise the full scope of their skills, to exercise their work away from hospitals in places where women choose to birth and to do that safely and confidently with the full protection of indemnity insurance. Equally, mothers—parents—will now have full confidence in knowing that, in exercising their choice to give birth at home under the professional care of an eligible midwife, they have this insurance coverage. This is really important. Under current insurance arrangements, there's a significant gap in insurance coverage for midwives to provide intrapartum care outside a hospital, severely limiting access to homebirth and models of care so critical in our First Nations communities, such as the birthing-on-country models of care. The member for Blair outlined very clearly why that was the case: such small numbers of midwives would be unable to collectively contribute to the pool that would be required to get a commercially available insurance product. This has been a problem for a very long time. Basically, no insurers have been willing to provide the cover for intrapartum care outside a hospital, in part because of the small pool of resources but also because they are unable to accurately quantify risks. This is because homebirth in Australia is very small because of the barriers that we've had to exercising and offering that model of care to women. This situation has created a very real barrier for women who wish to homebirth and real uncertainty for those midwives who wish to respond to the choices of women. And that's what midwives want to do. They want to provide care that is evidence based, that fulfils their full scope of practice and that is what a woman wants, because if we combine those two things together we know we can get great outcomes. As a result, women were at risk of being transferred to hospital much earlier if they were in a homebirth setting—often much earlier than clinically necessary—and the continuation of culturally safe care and essential birthing on country, because of that, was in jeopardy as well. So we had some unintended consequences, with women having to enter the hospital system much earlier than ever they would have needed to had this insurance been available. The bill provides scope for rules to be made to specify the intrapartum services covered under the expanded Midwife Professional Indemnity Scheme, the MPIS. The government's broad intent is to cover out-of-hospital intrapartum services where they're provided in compliance with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia's Safety and quality guidelines for privately practising midwives. This bit is really important, because sometimes labours start to get a bit tricky right at the end, right before the baby is born. There has been some toing and froing in trying to work out the criteria for a homebirth that would be covered by this insurance, and I'm just so pleased that the government have decided to embrace the Nursing and Midwifery Board's safety and quality guidelines, because they lay out very clearly the criteria that are important for a homebirth. It is tried and true and evidence based, and that's what we want. So I'm absolutely delighted about that. Make no mistake: this change will allow more women and birthing parents greater choice to birth at home with their choice of midwife—and not only at home but with the person they want to have at home. I can't overstate how important this continuity of care is. It is really important that they can do this with the full confidence of knowing that, if on the rare occasion there is an adverse event, they're covered. All women pregnant with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander baby will have access to culturally safe birthing-on-country services. Deputy Speaker Sharkie, I know you know about this. I know you know what this means to First Nations women in Australia. Eligible midwives will be able to practice, as I said, to their full scope of practice, offering homebirths within the safety net of professional indemnity insurance. As I said, this legislation hasn't been an easy birth, and I want to acknowledge the decades of dedicated work from midwives, consumers, parents across Australia and the fantastic Australian College of Midwives to develop a fit-for-purpose private indemnity insurance product for individually practising midwives. The Australian College of Midwives has engaged for many years with government and with the Department of Health and Aged Care to seek to contribute to the planning for an insurance solution. They've done this in good faith, they've done it consistently, and they've done it successfully. I want to acknowledge the efforts of the Chief Nursing and Midwifery Officer, Alison McMillan, for her work in delivering this solution, which ensures public safety without imposing unnecessary restrictions. This is so important. Of course, I absolutely applaud assistant minister Ged Kearney, the member for Cooper, and I see her fantastic staff over here. I know how much work you've put into this. I know the way that you engage with the people at the centre of the decisions this government is making when it comes to evidence based, safe, affordable, high-quality maternal care. So, thank you so much for your work. You have championed this bill and then shepherded the bill into the House. Women all over Australia, at all stages of their lives—through access to long-acting contraception, to birth, to menopause—benefit from so much of the work of Minister Kearney in this short term of parliament. So, thank you very much to the member of Cooper, the Assistant Minister for Health. The current insurance exemption will be extended one final time to 31 December 2026, and I know how often midwives hang on this last extension, as we have been doing this for years. Any of them listening, please know: this is the final time, and this is to allow sufficient time to transition to these new arrangements and for regulation and policies to be amended and implemented. Let me just reflect a little on why this matters. Planned homebirth involves care from midwives, who are registered experts in childbirth, and they want to do so in a woman's home. These registered midwives working privately are often there from conception right through to six weeks postpartum. That familiar face and not having to retell your story are absolutely critical to a birthing woman. The research is absolutely clear on this. For women with low-risk pregnancies, planned homebirths attended by qualified midwives are safe and satisfying. They set people up for a positive experience of parenting. The research is absolutely clear, and we know that homebirths, when cared for by a highly qualified midwife, do result in less intervention than hospital births. Of course, there are a whole lot of parameters around that, if you want to understand the research in more detail. But it's really clear there's less intervention, and, equally as importantly, the women perceive their experience much more positively. Midwives provide safe and well-regulated homebirth care, and, as a former midwife, I really welcome this approach by the government to underwrite this insurance. I know this is being celebrated right around Australia, because many women, consumers, dads and midwives have contacted me about this legislation; I've sat down with a lot of them. Many of the mothers actually have shared with me, and we saw this in the New South Wales inquiry into birth trauma, some very deep, personal trauma that they have experienced through previous births. For them, the only way that they can truly feel in control and have a real say in their next birth is to have a homebirth. It empowers them, and it sets them up in a situation that they want to be in. One woman said, 'Being from a rural area with very limited continuity of care midwifery options, homebirth offers me the right to choose my place of birth and my care provider.' Another one said, 'My home is where I feel safe to give birth.' I was really pleased to meet with Louise Thornton, a registered midwife with more than 18 years experience—Louise is from Yackandandah in my electorate—along with Rhi from Your Birth Photography and others to talk about how important the reform is to them and so many. I was able to say to them, 'Don't you worry; I'm batting for this big time.' I want to acknowledge that there is a lot of fear associated with giving birth, and we can mitigate much of it by giving women control over the decisions that affect their bodies. And we know that much of the move of some women to taking choices around freebirth—where there is no professional care—is because of the issues they've had in accessing homebirth. This, again, is a fantastic remedy to address the trauma that many women have experienced and help them to utilise homebirth with a qualified midwife. In the few minutes I've got left, I also want to recognise the other significant reforms in the roll back of collaborative arrangements and the increased access to PBS listed medicines for endorsed midwives. This is a package that, again, Assistant Minister Kearney has worked so hard on, to make sure that we truly acknowledge that midwives are primary maternity care providers. With the reforms that we're seeing in this legislation and other legislation, we are finally recognising the essential role of the midwife and the need to remove the barriers which stand between the midwife, with their professional expertise, and the women they care for. As I said, a very long time ago, I worked as a midwife and set up a midwifery group practice with continuity of care under a known midwife. These reforms were part of our fight for achieving choice, control and evidence based care where the woman was at the centre. Back then, many women would have loved to have accessed a homebirth, but they could not—but maybe their grandchildren will be born at home, thanks to this fantastic legislation. It's deeply joyful to now be a member of parliament and speak on this bill. Finally, I want to acknowledge my Parliamentary Friends of Maternal Health co-chairs, the member for Canberra and the member for Wide Bay, and the work that they do alongside me and alongside many consumers across Australia in continuing to put forward the absolute essential that we get the care of women right—through pregnancy, birth and postpartum—because that's how we set up our nation to be healthy and to live the best possible lives that they can. Start early, start right—this bill really helps us achieve that. 17:41 Mr PERRETT HVP Moreton I rise to speak on the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024—an important piece of legislation because it extends the existing Midwife Professional Indemnity Scheme, a scheme that supports midwives to do their vital work with confidence. I chose to speak on this legislation for two reasons: because my mum started studying midwifery but didn't finish it—instead, she had 10 children—and because my neighbour Rachel is a midwife. In a nutshell, this legislation means that eligible midwives who work in out-of-hospital settings can access the same professional indemnity insurance as their colleagues who practise in hospitals. This underpins Labor's belief that women should be able to choose where they give birth and, wherever it is, be able to do so safely. If they choose not to deliver in a hospital, women should be able to trust that they will receive equally safe, high-quality, respectful and woman centred care. The Australian College of Midwives describes the role of midwife as a maternity care specialist with the knowledge and capability to ensure the best health outcomes for mother and baby; they are the mother's advocate, helping the mother to achieve the experience she wants. Midwives are acknowledged to be a critical part of our health system, and they are highly valued for their care, compassion and expertise. This bill amends the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Act 2010. Specifically, it develops a framework for the Commonwealth government to pay 100 per cent of eligible claims for intrapartum care outside of hospital. Intrapartum refers to the time period from the onset of labour until the delivery of the placenta, the critical period where the child is born. It is a crucial time of care for both the mother and the child, and the midwife is there for it all, using their expertise to support the mother and literally guide the child into the world. The framework stipulates that the homebirths and intrapartum care outside of hospital must be conducted in accordance with the best practice guidelines, namely, the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia's Safety and quality guidelines for privately practising midwives. The bill includes 100 per cent coverage for eligible entities which employ midwives for birthing on country, such as the Aboriginal community controlled health organisations. For numerous reasons, including maternal and community wellbeing, it is vital to safeguard access to culturally safe birthing-on-country rights for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, and this bill makes this possible. The legislation will come into effect on 1 July 2025 and will resolve the existing issues of gaps in coverage. It will also give the professional indemnity insurer ongoing certainty of the Commonwealth's responsibility for the costs pertaining to professional negligence claims. As the amazing assistant minister said, this bill is about empowering Australia's hardworking midwives, supporting women and mothers and ensuring equitable access to continuous, culturally safe maternity care. It is a testament to our commitment to strengthening Australia's healthcare system. It is that aspect that I would like to touch on now—the Albanese Labor government's extensive measures to improve the Australian healthcare system, especially for women. This year, the Women's Budget Statement highlighted the reality that girls and women experience gender bias in the health system. Unsurprisingly, this leads to poorer outcomes, such as delayed diagnoses and subsequent treatment and higher out-of-pocket costs. Girls and women may also be adversely affected by a lack of understanding and, unfortunately, sometimes even a stigma around women's health issues, such as menstruation, miscarriage and menopause. This is just one of the reasons behind Working for women: astrategy for gender equality, and the government has committed to the aims of that report. These include not only the recognition of gendered health issues but responsiveness to them with fewer barriers to information, diagnosis, treatment and services. The strategy ties in with the bill we're discussing today, with the commitment to women having choice and access to safe and affordable maternal, sexual and reproductive health care. This was the background to this year's budget announcement of nearly $50 million to not only enhance but revolutionise health services for women with complex gynaecological conditions. What this means is an additional 430,000 more services so affected women can receive longer consultations of 45 minutes or more. Medicare now pays the same fee to a gynaecologist for a long and complex consultation as it does for appointments for other specialities, such as cardiology and gastroenterology. This directly addresses the structural inequality that girls and women have endured for years. At the same time, this year's budget provided over $58 million of funding to establish endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics across Australia. The clinics provide expert multidisciplinary care, enabling more appropriate and more timely diagnosis and management. Endometriosis is a debilitating chronic condition that affects one in nine girls and women in Australia. These clinics are ensuring improved pain management for sufferers, as well as building an expert primary care workforce. We're also adding longer Medicare consultations for patients with suspected endometriosis and pelvic pain. Further measures announced in the budget include support for women who have suffered miscarriages and free period products via national Aboriginal community controlled health organisations, or NACCHOs. The budget also directed $57 million over four years from 2024-25 to promote high-quality and tailored maternity care. This applies to recommendations from the MBS Review taskforce for participating midwives. It increases the time for antenatal and postnatal consultations, more adequately reflecting the time that expert care actually takes—and then you set kids up for life. The funding covers the introduction of a six-week check-up after birth to help identify any mental health issues and ensures the all-important continuity of care with midwives. These wide-ranging reforms benefit girls and women in every community across Australia. The extension of the professional indemnity program for midwives working outside of hospital settings indicates Labor's commitment to women's health and women's choices. As the minister said, the Albanese government recognises that continuity of care in midwifery is incredibly important and has the best outcomes for women and babies and we will continue to work to make sure that it is accessible and supported. This was another failure of the former government in health care, but, as always, the Albanese government cleaned up the mess. Thank you to Ged Kearney for the great work that you do in this area, and I commend the bill to the House. 17:49 Ms STEGGALL 175696 Warringah I rise to speak on the Midwife Professional Indemnity (Commonwealth Contribution) Scheme Amendment Bill 2024. It sounds technical, but it is incredibly important to women in their birthing choices. Equitable access to midwifery services is an important step in ensuring Australia's maternal healthcare system meets the needs of expectant new mothers. This bill represents an important step forward, addressing critical gaps in care and providing necessary support to the vital work of midwives, who are essential to achieving better outcomes for both mothers and babies. The current scheme provides indemnity coverage for antenatal and postnatal care, but excludes intrapartum services provided by privately practising midwives outside of a hospital setting. This bill closes that gap, ensuring that government will cover 100 per cent of eligible claims for these services, no matter where the birth takes place. This change is a win for midwives and mothers alike, enhancing the safety and accessibility of birthing options across the country. I commend the minister for her commitment to improving maternal care and listening to community concerns. The decision to remove the term 'low risk' from this legislation is particularly significant. It ensures that all women, regardless of how their pregnancy or birth is classified, have access to the support they need. This change promotes equity, providing women with greater autonomy and choice in how and where they give birth, as well as recognising the role of midwifery care in all aspects of maternal health. Midwives play an invaluable role in supporting women throughout their pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum period. In fact, research from the Australian College of Midwives consistently shows that continuity of care with a known midwife improves the outcomes for mothers and babies, including reducing the need for medical interventions. Midwives not only ensure safe and positive birthing experiences but also provide vital postnatal care, including screenings for mental health concerns and domestic violence. They have that access to new mothers and are able to discuss any concerns and identify problems. Tragically—it's quite an incredible statistic—suicide remains one of the leading causes of death for postnatal mothers. It makes the ability of midwives to give that continuity of postpartum care so incredibly important. These services are critical for the wellbeing of new mothers. They put midwives in the position and with the ability, to identify and have discussions if there are concerns from a domestic violence point of view. We know statistically this is the time when women are often most at risk because there's been such change to the relationship, so it is vital for mothers to have access to that care. I also very much want to thank the minister for her engagement on the issue. Earlier this year, Assistant Minister Kearney visited Warringah to announce additional funding to support midwives in providing longer postnatal consultations. Again, that is really important because the longer consultation allows for that discussion to identify all those risk factors around domestic violence or the mental health of mothers. Those consultations allow time for comprehensive birth debriefings and mental health screenings, which are so essential for early intervention. These were key changes that I, like many others, advocated for alongside the Australian College of Midwives, who have worked tirelessly to bring about these changes. I commend them for their hard work. This bill presents the next step in improving accessibility to midwives for young mothers. As we move forward, we must remain focused on addressing broader systemic challenges, though, particularly improving health outcomes for First Nations women. We know that unfortunately the statistics are not good and there is not equitable access to health care. This bill will help provided greater access to birthing-on-country programs which assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women to give birth in a more culturally safe way, surrounded by family and community. The research indicates that this is important. Birthing on country provides better mental health outcomes, strong connection to cultural heritage and improved physical outcomes for mothers and babies. Again, those longer consultation times mean those screening factors can be present all the more. In fact, Charles Darwin University's Indigenous Birthing in an Urban Setting study, to help close the gap in Brisbane, found that birthing on country reduced First Nation preterm births from 14.3 per cent to 8.9 per cent. That is a significant improvement. It shows the importance of creating and maintaining a maternal care system where women have greater choice, respect and support. Women must be at the centre of the system. The absolute priority must be greater options and choices in where birth can take place, how it can take place and especially that it be culturally appropriate. This bill brings us closer to achieving that vision. I commend the minister for her leadership in this area. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024 93

Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024

Second Reading 93 17:56 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack The Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024 removes the fees imposed on the pathology sector for pathology applications. The bill responds to the findings of the 2022 health portfolio charging review by addressing the misalignment of fees charged under the Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) Act 1991 with the charging framework and providing fee relief and reducing administrative burden on the pathology sector. The bill will maintain a high level of confidence in the accuracy of Medicare-eligible pathology services by continuing to require service providers to meet requisite accreditation and quality-assurance standards. Importantly, the bill has the support of Australia's pathology sector, having been welcomed by stakeholders such as the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, Australian Pathology and Public Pathology Australia. As such, the coalition will support this bill. We understand the importance of providing fee relief to the pathology sector and providing assistance to health providers, who are also dealing with Labor's cost-of-living crisis. Pathology is an important part of the health system, but, as we all know from experience, you generally require a referral from a doctor to get a pathology test. That is why the coalition, while supportive of this bill, is calling out the Albanese government for the fact that it has never been harder or more expensive to see a doctor than right now under Labor. Labor promised to strengthen Medicare, but it has only been weakened. Bulk-billing has dropped 11 per cent under the Albanese government to 77 per cent, whilst out-of-pocket costs have increased by 11 per cent in the past year alone. To put this into perspective: when the coalition left office, the bulk-billing rate was 88 per cent. When Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, was health minister, it was 84 per cent. In fact, Medicare is currently covering the lowest percentage of GP fees on record. On average, Australians are being forced to cover 45 per cent more of the cost to see a doctor—that's if you can see one—from their own pocket, in comparison to under the former coalition government. Even more concerningly, the total number of GP visits declined by 2.4 million in the period 2023-24 because Australians are having to make the difficult decision between paying the bills and seeing their doctor. This means people quite simply are getting sicker and ending up in our already-overstretched hospitals. These figures make a mockery of Labor's claims regarding a proposed decade of cuts and neglect. The government is not providing the reform needed to ensure Australians have timely and affordable access to a doctor, which will in turn only put further pressure on Australia's struggling hospital system as this primary care crisis pushes patients towards emergency departments. This is shameless. The coalition has put forward our plan to incentivise more junior doctors to pursue a career as a general practitioner and safeguard Australians' healthcare access. The package will invest $400 million to provide junior doctors with direct financial incentive payments, assistance with leave entitlements and support for pre-vocational training. This will ensure that junior doctors who pursue training as a GP in the community are not financially worse off compared to doctors who remain in the hospital environment. A strong pipeline of home-trained GP graduates is critical to deliver essential health care to all Australians. And might I say, as a regional and remote MP, nowhere is it more needed than in the parts of Australia that I represent. It will help to ensure that Australians have more timely and affordable access to see their doctor, so that they can access essential services like pathology tests. So, once again, the coalition will support this bill to provide fee relief to the pathology sector. However, I will be moving an amendment to highlight this government's concerning record on Medicare. Thank you. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 282237 Can I confirm with the member for Durack, do you propose to make the amendment now or later? Ms PRICE 249308 I might give way to the next speaker and I will return to the lectern. Thank you. 18:01 Ms WATSON-BROWN 300127 Ryan Our health system's in crisis, and it's actually crumbling under the weight of government neglect. It's underfunded, it's under-resourced and it's overworked. Around a decade ago, the then LNP government cut bulk-billing payments for pathology and diagnostic imaging as part of their infamous Medicare co-payment reforms, a widely unpopular policy from the then health minister, now the Leader of the Opposition, that forced families to pay more for essential care. And for 24 years both Labor and the Liberals have failed to index Medicare rebates for pathology. Rebates haven't increased since 1999, even as costs have absolutely skyrocketed. Pathology clinics are telling us they just can no longer afford to provide bulk-billed tests at the current rebate rates. We've seen what happens when Medicare rebates fail to keep up with the cost of care. GP bulk-billing rates have plummeted and patients are being forced to pay that price. Add the cost-of-living crisis, and Australians simply cannot afford to see the doctor, the dentist or a mental health professional. The bill before us today, the Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024, will make pathology cheaper—as it should be, because Medicare is broken in Australia. We don't have a universal healthcare system. Instead, we have thousands of Australians choosing between paying their rent and seeing a dentist or a psychologist. Almost 40 per cent of young Australians experienced a mental disorder in this last year. Almost a quarter of people who need mental health support are delaying or just not seeing a psychologist because of the cost. Forty per cent of Australians avoid the dentist because it costs too much. That is hundreds of thousands of people suffering. The major parties tell you that putting mental and dental health coverage in Medicare costs too much. They cry poor about funding the things that Australians need to be healthy—to actually live a good life. Miraculously, they have the funding to spend billions on fossil fuel subsidies and tax handouts to property developers. That's a rip-off. It shouldn't be this hard to make the health and wellbeing of Australians an absolute priority for Australia. Just bring mental and dental cover into Medicare; make it affordable and accessible for everyone. The same will happen with pathology if the government continues to merely tinker around the edges of healthcare reform. The Labor government has promised that some pathology items will be indexed, but that doesn't start for another year—a year too late. And the majority of the tests, including some of the most commonly provided ones, won't even be included. This bill goes a small way to relieving administration costs. Really, the government should do more right now, because accessible pathology tests are vital to the functioning of our healthcare system and to Australians' health. Thank you. 18:04 Ms PRICE 249308 Durack Now that I have confirmed the procedure, I seek leave to move an amendment to the Health Insurance (Pathology) (Fees) (Repeal) Bill 2024. Leave not granted. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. GRIEVANCE DEBATE 95 GRIEVANCE DEBATE Housing 95 18:06 Ms CHANEY 300006 Curtin Australians know we face a growing housing affordability crisis. Young Australians are struggling to afford to buy or rent a home, and homeowners can see how hard it is, or will be, for their kids and grandkids. At our housing forums in my electorate of Curtin, people said they want politicians and governments to stop the political point scoring and work together towards affordable and accessible housing. They said houses are homes, not just investment products. It has taken 20 years of policy from both sides of politics to get where we are. Housing is now half as affordable as it was when compared to wages. There is no silver bullet to solve this problem. It won't be quick or easy, but it can be achieved if we have the wisdom and the will. In Curtin, our 173,000 residents live in 76,000 homes across our 28 suburbs. We have about 7,000 vacant homes, 29,000 homes with more than two spare bedrooms, 2,000 social housing homes and 1,700 homes used for short-stay accommodation. About a third of our homes are owned outright, a third mortgaged and a third rented. My electorate of Curtin has substantially higher median house prices and rents in the Perth metro area. While some households are on high incomes and are able to afford these prices, younger households and essential workers are struggling to live close to their families, friends and workplaces. So what are governments doing now about housing affordability? Both major parties have found that it's politically advantageous for house prices to increase because two-thirds of households own their home. Successive governments have served the interests of these owners, and we now have a growing gap between homeowners and people who can't get on the property ladder. Current government strategies and policies to improve housing affordability are timid and slow. The National Housing Accord announced in October 2022 has not been fully implemented, and we're not on track to meet the targets for homebuilding. Direct government funded homebuilding under the accord is limited. There are 10,000 affordable homes to be built by state and territory governments. The WA allocation of this is just over 1,000 new houses. If this was distributed equally across WA, which is unlikely, that would only be 70 houses in Curtin. The WA state government has seized most planning authority from local governments in an attempt to drive more infill, but many communities are justifiably concerned about massive apartment blocks towering over quiet neighbourhoods. So which policies work? Effective housing policies can address two issues: how many homes are available, and who gets them. Right now, we need to increase the supply of available housing, but we should also try to make housing policy fairer. I would like to outline 13 policies that I think are most worth pursuing—seven that increase supply and six that make housing fairer. With some strong political will, we can make substantial inroads and improving housing affordability both now and for future generations. Firstly, here are seven policies to increase housing supply. One: we need more infill done in a sustainable way that builds communities we want to live in. This depends on consulting deeply with communities, so they are involved in the process. Two: we need to boost government investment in social and affordable housing builds. Social housing builds have not kept pace with demand. In WA, there is currently an unmet need of more than 39,000 social homes. The current commitment under the housing accord would equate to only 1,000 new social housing builds in WA. Three: we need to attract more workers to the housing construction sector. Construction trades should be prioritised in immigration, because strong employment conditions make it hard to expand the domestic construction workforce. Slowing down infrastructure spending would also reduce competition for the skilled workers we need to build houses. Four: we need to encourage smaller homes to better match population needs. The average house in Curtin has three bedrooms, but the number of single-person households is now 19,000 and growing. This trend will increase as the population ages. Smaller homes provide downsizing options and are more sustainable and manageable if you live alone. Five: we need to encourage better use of vacant homes. There are more than 7,000 vacant homes in Curtin, and some of these could add to housing supply quickly. This could be achieved through vacant-property rates, taxes or lower transaction costs. Six: we should replace stamp duty with a broad-based land tax. Economists recognise that stamp duty is an inefficient tax, because it discourages households from moving to more appropriate homes when their circumstances change. While this is a state government responsibility, the federal government could assist in the longer-term transition to a land tax. Seven: we need to reduce homebuilding costs through increasing construction industry productivity. Australian homebuilding costs are high, due partly to the fact that construction sector productivity in Australia has not improved in the past 30 years—partially driven by restrictive workplace practices and the failure to innovate. Industry and government should be looking for reforms to improve growth and speed up build times. Next, we need to consider further reforms to make housing fairer. Here are six ideas worth pursuing. One: we could create a level playing field for homebuyers by reforming negative gearing and the CGT discount. Reforming negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount could change the mix between owners and renters. At current affordability levels, two-thirds of young people now despair that they will never own a home. Modelling shows that tax changes could shift between 2½ and five per cent of Australians from renting to owning, as renters would be bidding against fewer investors at auctions. Two: we need to provide improved security of tenure to renters. More Australians are likely to rent for life and need secure tenure. Banning no-grounds evictions and limiting rent increases for existing tenants in line with local market changes would help. In Curtin, this would have particular impact in Scarborough, Subiaco and Wembley, which have the highest numbers of renting households. Three: we should encourage institutional investment in build-to-rent. The build-to-rent bill has been stuck in the Senate, passing only this week. I visited Sentinel's build-to-rent project in Subiaco a few weeks ago and saw what can be achieved if we attract foreign capital into stable, high-quality, long-term rental product. Four: we should increase the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance. Despite some increases in recent budgets, the rate of CRA has not kept pace with recent rental price increases. CRA should be increased for those in the greatest need while reforming the eligibility rules and improving targeting. Five: we should reinstate the National Rental Affordability Scheme. NRAS was a jointly funded scheme between state and federal governments, but it's coming to an end. It was a good policy but was burdened by administration problems that could be overcome. Six: we could encourage renting out spare bedrooms. There are more than 12 million spare bedrooms Australia wide and 29,000 homes in Curtin with two or more spare bedrooms, including 2,800 in Scarborough alone. Reviewing tax settings on renting out bedrooms and simplifying administrative arrangements could boost housing supply quickly. Which policies don't work? Many policies put in place in the past or proposed for the future do not meaningfully improve housing affordability and, in some cases, actually make it worse or have other consequences that create additional problems. This includes first homeowner grants, dipping into superannuation, rent freezes, regulating short-term rentals in most areas, wholesale cuts to immigration, and freezing building standards. Some of these, like homeowner grants and dipping into superannuation, just put more money into the system, driving prices up. These policies are politically cynical and economically irresponsible. Others, like rent freezes, may reduce the supply of rental housing. Cutting immigration has significant implications for our broader economy, and freezing building standards would create homes that are more expensive to run for the coming decades if they're not energy efficient. We need to act now. Many of the changes that I've outlined for consideration will take time to have an impact on housing affordability, but we need to get started. Implementing these reforms will require cooperation between different sides of politics and also between different levels of government. This will only be possible if political parties can put their differences aside and agree that long-term outcomes for the future of the country are more important than scoring political points. As an Independent, I'm open to ideas no matter where they come from. Right now, we need all the good ideas. Next week, I'll be hosting a housing workshop to test these ideas with my constituents as the next step in developing our Curtin housing policy paper. With some political will, we can work across politics and across different levels of government to fix this problem so young people and all Australians can aspire to secure an appropriate housing. Chisholm Electorate: Volunteering, Tertiary Education 97 18:16 Dr GARLAND 295588 Chisholm International Volunteer Day is 5 December, and I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about volunteers in my wonderful community in Chisholm. We recently held the Caroline Chisholm Volunteer Awards ceremony, and the ceremony is one of my favourite events of the year. It was such a privilege to be able to recognise volunteers from organisations right across my beautiful electorate, spend time together at the fabulous Box Hill Community Arts Centre and share some terrific conversations, connections and refreshments. These awards are really important in our community. There's absolutely no question that the work that holds communities together is so often undertaken by volunteers. Simply, things fall apart without them. I think it is absolutely the right thing to do to recognise their contributions and achievements and highlight the importance of volunteering right across the electorate, knowing that it will inspire others to also make a contribution and become a volunteer. The Caroline Chisholm awards continue a tradition started by the incredible former member for Chisholm and former Speaker of the House of Representatives, my friend Anna Burke. It has been terrific to follow her example of service to our fabulous community. It has been such an honour and privilege, and I've learnt so much from her. Caroline Chisholm, after whom my seat was named, was one of Australia's most famous volunteers and community activists. She worked hard particularly to further the cause of migrants, women and girls throughout the 19th century. So I think that this adds an additional layer of significance to the recognition of volunteers in my community. I was recently able to highlight the work of volunteers at the Whitehorse unit of the State Emergency Service, one of our terrific local SES teams. This is a really, really busy team working hard, and I was so pleased to learn more about everything that they contribute to our community when I recently visited with emergency services minister and Minister for Cities Jenny McAllister. The minister and I really do understand the hard work that needs to be supported, and we will work with our state and local government counterparts to emphasise the support that is needed. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the Whitehorse SES for everything they do in our community. I'm delighted that the latest round of the Volunteer Grants program has opened and that eligible local groups will be able to submit expressions of interest. Volunteer grants recognise the incredibly valuable role of volunteers in building more resilient and cohesive communities. Grants of between $1,000 and $5,000 are available to help community organisations to support the vital work of their volunteers. This year, some changes have been made to the Volunteer Grants program to better respond to the environment volunteer organisations are now faced with and to better reflect our government's commitment to children and young people. There are now two categories of volunteer grants which reflect areas of high demand for volunteer organisations. There is category 1, for communications and IT items—things like laptops; phones; payment devices and software—and for paying for insurance premiums; and category 2, for items and services that support the development and wellbeing of children and young people under 18. These changes mean that volunteer grant funding will be more targeted to where it is needed most. The volunteer grants will fund volunteer organisations for costs associated with any activity helping and supporting children and young people under 18, to help with the costs of modernising their operations and to cover key costs, including insurance premiums and internet bills. I am so pleased and privileged to be able to support the incredible work of the amazing volunteers and organisations in my electorate. I want to thank everyone for all they do to contribute to our beautiful, vibrant community and wish everyone a very happy International Volunteer Day on 5 December. I remember when I first became the candidate for Chisholm and how frequently, when I was out door-knocking, the issue of higher education came up in conversation. In many ways, this was no surprise. People in my electorate really do value education and understand that it opens the doors of opportunity. With two universities, Monash and Deakin universities in the local area, there are many students, graduates, academics and their families who call my beautiful electorate home. I am so pleased to have been part of a government that champions education—particularly higher education—and I will always be a champion for higher education myself. I spoke about this in my first speech and about my view that we needed to reform the sector so that more people had the opportunity to obtain an education and that the often anti-education, anti-university ideologies of the previous government needed to be rejected. Our government is leading an historic reform process of the university sector, and the Australian Universities Accord has provided a really important blueprint for ways forward to ensure that the sector is sustainable, accessible and excellent, providing high-quality education right across the country. I undertook a survey in my electorate a while ago now on this issue and received hundreds and hundreds of responses. This informed a submission that I then wrote and submitted on my community's behalf about the reform they wanted to see in the sector. Reducing debt, supporting students with pathways and improving safety on campus were a few of the hot topics that emerged. These are just a few of the areas that we are taking action on. We have changed the way debt is calculated and that means over 23,000 people in my electorate will never see their debts grow faster than their wages again. We're investing in opportunities so more young people can get to university. We are introducing paid placements, too, for eligible students, which I know is incredibly important to people in Chisholm. We have established a National Student Ombudsman to provide an important pathway for complaints to be handled and resolved and to provide an extra layer of accountability and process for students who might want to flag issues outside of their university processes. We're also working through our national plan to eliminate gendered violence in a generation. This is something that touches every portfolio in our government, and education is a really critical part of the delivery of this plan. These issues around higher education are all really near and dear to me and to my community. If I have the privilege to return here following the next election as a member of a Labor government, then we will wipe even more debt for people and continue to implement the really important reforms that we've started to strengthen our higher education system in Australia. I will always be a fierce champion for higher education and for my community, and I am looking forward to doing more work in this area and beyond with the government and in Chisholm. Aviation Industry, Agriculture Industry, The Greens 98 18:24 Mr McCORMACK 219646 Riverina Last night, Wagga Wagga City Council put forward a motion, which was passed unanimously, saying that the federal government should nationalise Rex. Rex went into voluntary administration at the end of July. I said from the outset of Rex's financial difficulties that all options need to be on the table. I've raised the possibility of the federal government having an equity stake in Rex to ensure the airline's future. That said, the federal government is not usually in the business of owning airlines, as important as that might be for many people. The crucial aspect of Rex's turbulence at the moment is the fact that they are the only ones who service many country towns. If not for Rex, those country towns wouldn't be able to get planes into their airports and, therefore, wouldn't be able to get doctors, nurses, vaccines and, most importantly, medication. People in those towns would also then not be able to make it to their capital city medical appointments. But it's more than just health, and we all know that. It's business. It's tourism. It's so many aspects of modern living. That's why regional people need, expect, demand and deserve to have air services. Certainly, for Wagga Wagga, we are the beneficiaries of not only Rex but also QantasLink, as are many other regional places. If Rex is not flying then that just leaves QantasLink as the only airline, and therefore prices go up. There would be no competition, and that would be a huge disadvantage for people who call the regions home. When I was the Deputy Prime Minister and we had the global pandemic I was proud of the assistance that I provided to not only Rex Airlines but every airline in Australia—certainly in Rex's case it was around $60 million of support—because I knew that planes in the air meant jobs on the ground. Labor often criticised me and yelled across the chamber during question time, 'You're the minister for Rex.' Well, I took that as a badge of honour, because in the rest of the world 26 national carriers, large airlines the size of, say, Virgin, went bankrupt during COVID-19. They're no longer operating. They're no longer flying. I well remember talking about aviation to somebody who would know, and that is Warren Truss, the former member for Wide Bay, the former transport minister, the former Deputy Prime Minister, the former Nationals leader. Warren told me what a volatile industry aviation is—and he was right, like he was about everything he set his mind to. He was one of the finest ministers I've ever seen. He was somebody who read every single line of every single piece of legislation that was ever put before him. He knew and he understood aviation. I will say—and this might come as a surprise to those opposite—that so too does the current Prime Minister, the member for Grayndler. I can well remember taking him into my confidence when I wanted to discuss with him matters of aviation importance, and on a confidential basis we talked about what the then opposition might agree to and what they might disagree with on matters of aviation and transport generally. They were good meetings. They were successful meetings. I respect his view, just like I respect that at the moment—and hopefully in the future—he is doing the right thing by Rex. I know the government is underwriting the tickets. I know they're underwriting the risk. I know they're underwriting regional express services for regional people. The government must continue to do this while Ernst & Young works through the process with potential buyers. It's a difficult process. I understand that. Getting a buyer for an airline that is experiencing tough times is hard. Wagga Wagga needs Rex. We've got the maintenance hangar at Wagga Wagga Airport. Those operations in Wagga Wagga alone employ around 170 to 180 people. It contributes $12 million to the local economy. It is too big an airline to fail. It was a folly—in hindsight, of course—that Rex took on the capital city to capital city routes. The Sydney to Melbourne air route is one of the busiest in the world, and to take on Virgin and Qantas on that route in hindsight was a mistake. Rex was making reasonable money. They were in the black year after year. They won many international awards for being the regional airline of choice—not only a regional airline that Australia obviously was very proud of but a globally recognised airline. I would urge and encourage any country commuter who is flying, if they have a choice, to fly Rex, because, if you don't use something, often you lose something—and we simply cannot afford to lose Rex. It is in voluntary administration. I appreciate the government is doing what it needs to at the moment. I would implore the government—through the Prime Minister, who, as I said, understands aviation, and through the transport minister—to do all it can to keep Rex planes in the air, because it's too important not to. Wagga Wagga City Council's letter will obviously be landing on the Prime Minister's, if not the transport minister's, desk—if not both—and I will certainly be following that up as well. I commend council for taking an interest in this matter. Rest assured that I've been on the case and I will continue to do just that. This is a grievance debate: grievances are obviously issues of concern. I am concerned, very much, about the parlous state of regional Australia at the moment under this government. You only have to ask any irrigation farmer—I appreciate I have the member for Nicholls behind me, and I'm sure he would appreciate this better than most—just how difficult it is under this Labor government for our farmers, who grow the food that feeds our nation and who grow the fibre that puts the clothes on people's backs, and many others besides. They are in there buying water, distorting the water market. We need that water flowing down those irrigation channels to ensure that our farmers can be the best they are in the world. I think our farmers sometimes get a bad rap. I think our farmers are sometimes not seen as the great environmental stewards that they are. Our farmers are the best environmentalists in the world—make no mistake about that. We should thank our farmers every time we tuck our knees under the table to eat. Three times a day, every day—breakfast, lunch and dinner—we should be saying to our farmers, 'Thank you for the job that you do.' Often at the vagaries of the weather, they work for 12 months and earn absolutely nothing. They need a better government. Hopefully, after the next election, they will have a better government who will treat their needs far more diligently and carefully and with far more considered action than this Labor government. There is something that I would really hate to see and that would be a real grievance for me. I will always say that the very worst Labor member is going to always be better than the very best Greens political party member. Honourable members interjecting— Mr McCORMACK 219646 I'm sure I will have a chorus of support about that. What I really don't want to see is a Labor-Greens, Albanese-Bandt, alliance after the next election. It just does my head in, because we saw just yesterday the all-too-cosy relationship between the Greens political party and Labor. The Greens have caved in on the housing. What was the cosy little deal, the little arrangement, they may have made? We'll find out. But the Greens stand for upsetting the rhythm of the traditions of this nation, turning society on its head—that's what the Greens stand for. If they were just an environmental party, it would be all well and good, but they're not. They want to change Australia. They want to rip down the flag. They want to end Australia Day. They want to ban horseracing. They stand for everything that the Nationals do not stand for. I tell you what: if Labor has this cosy relationship with them after the next election, God help Australia. Drug Abuse and Addiction, Gambling, Social Media 99 18:34 Ms BELYEA 309484 Dunkley There has been significant discourse around the issue of gambling harm over the last few months—an issue which I am naturally invested in as the member for Dunkley, as a former community sector worker and as a mother. But I might also touch upon the broad issue of harmful addiction, which remains stubbornly present in our communities, particularly in my community. Addiction is defined as being the state of being addicted to some habit, practice or substance. Substance and gambling addiction are a scourge on many families in my electorate, while addiction to social media is on the rise, particularly amongst our young people. Having worked in the community sector for more than 35 years, I've witnesses the impact of addiction to alcohol, drugs, gambling, online use, social media, cigarettes and now vaping. I see the impact on people's lives as I wander through Frankston, particularly around the station. It is a stark reality. These addictions lead to poverty and homelessness, mental health issues, loneliness and isolation, and, increasingly, suicide. I should note that there are many fantastic organisations in my community doing excellent work to help people through these issues. These include headspace, the Frankston and Mornington Drug and Alcohol Service, Windana, Alcoholics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous. Thank you for the incredible work you do, as workers and organisations, to support people in our community. My predecessor, the late and remarkable Peta Murphy, set out to investigate the scourge of online gambling addiction, along with many of my parliamentarian colleagues. This ultimately led to the You win some, you lose more report, which was finalised in June 2023. The report provides 31 recommendations that apply a public health lens to online gambling to reduce harms to Australians. The government has implemented a range of strategies to date, and we are now patiently waiting for the finalisation of the recommendations, after some significant consultation by the minister, on what will be implemented in the future. The measures that have already been put in place to reduce gambling harms include: launching BetStop, the national self-exclusion register; mandating customer ID pre-verification for all new online wagering accounts; banning the use of credit cards for online wagering; introducing mandatory minimum classifications for online gambling; replacing the ineffective 'gamble responsibly' message on wagering advertising with new evidence based taglines; introducing nationally consistent staff training; and requiring online wagering companies to send their customers monthly activity statements. We have a great sports culture in this country, and my view is that online sports gambling does not make sport any better to watch. We must and should do better to protect people, both adults and children, from the harms of online gambling, from accessing gambling apps online. As you might expect, as the member for Dunkley I get many constituents contacting me and encouraging me to finish the work Peta started on the You win some, you lose more report. This includes Carolyn, a local resident from Dunkley who continues to provide me with updates on why we need to reduce gambling harm. She knows full well the impact of gambling, after being incarcerated, partially due to her own addiction to gambling. Carolyn has been a fierce advocate, reaching out to ACMA to request a reduction in gambling advertising. She has asked me repeatedly to consider addressing this important issue for the sake of our children, who are blasted by gambling incentives on the television and social media. Nationally, Australians lose $25 billion to gambling each year. The majority of this is on pokies. Whilst this isn't online gambling, the real issue with online gambling lies in the fact that so many young people are engaging in it, which leads to a cycle of gambling later in life. As Peta said at the time: … simulated gambling through video games, is grooming children and young people to gamble and encourages riskier behaviour. The torrent of advertising is inescapable. It is manipulating an impressionable and vulnerable audience to gamble online. The Albanese government has been acting to address the recommendations in the report. I am aware that significant consultation has been undertaken as part of the process of developing the strategies that will be put forward. And these strategies go hand in glove with the work to place an age cap on social media, which is supported by the member for Flinders. In my time here, I have advocated for the adoption of the 31 recommendations included in the report. I hope that, sooner rather than later, these recommendations will be implemented. We need safety mechanisms to be implemented to keep individuals and families safe, now more than ever. Throughout my career in the community sector, I've witnessed firsthand the impact of addiction—working with adults and young people, watching families grapple with substance abuse and alcoholism. I have committed to work to address other harms that result in addiction, and as a member on the Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport I am engaged in the inquiry into the impact of alcohol and drugs. I'm looking forward to being involved in this in depth, and to the recommendations we develop thanks to the inquiry. Social media, like gambling, alcohol and drug abuse, is an addiction. Although obviously not on the same scale as gambling and alcohol addiction, it's still addictive. You only have to walk around the community to see how addicted to devices we are. Social media harm for young people is a seriously pressing issue that this government is acting to resolve with a ban on social media for young people under 16. Social media has many negative side effects—lack of self-esteem, constant anxiety of missing out by not getting enough likes, eating disorders, bullying and, in severe cases, sextortion. The effect of online sextortion is, unfortunately, something my community has had to deal with, with the passing of Mac Holdsworth, son of Dunkley legend Wayne Holdsworth, who is CEO of Frankston & District Basketball Association. Mac took his own life following attempts to blackmail him online with sexually explicit photos. In his son's honour, Wayne established the organisation SmackTalk. And there are many other devastating stories to be told about the impact of social media, such as the story of Charlotte, more recently, who was bullied and then took her life. Parents and young people have come to me with various views about the introduction of this legislation—some agreeing with it, others not. As a mum of a teenager, this has been an issue that we have discussed as a family—the benefits and the pitfalls. Wayne Holdsworth has been a key driver of a public campaign on the harms of social media and the need to disconnect. I am pleased the opposition have committed to support the bill and work to pass this legislation. Our role as MPs is to advocate for and to lead the development and adoption of legislation that ensures the best interests of Australia and its people. My role is to provide facts—what we're doing and why. I am committed to working to address addiction in its various forms, so that families in Dunkley do not have to deal with increasing rates of poor mental health, anxiety, depression, loneliness and isolation—and, in some cases, suicide. I have worked and will continue to work to understand, research and address these issues that create harm for children, young people and adults. That is my responsibility as the federal member for Dunkley. I will be a strong local voice for Dunkley on these issues—on gambling reform and social media reform—continuing to listen and consult on the mechanics of the legislation to ensure that what is delivered is informed by lived experience and makes a positive difference in the lives of those in my community and further afield. Australian Broadcasting Corporation 101 18:43 Mrs MARINO HWP Forrest The ABC plays an important role in many of our regional and remote communities, particularly in thin regional communication markets and during emergencies. Many years ago, I was proud to be selected as an ABC Rural Woman of the Year. Well, I'm actually not proud of the ABC anymore—I'm appalled and disgusted. The ABC has become openly Green Left, politically biased and, too often, totally inaccurate—representing, by majority, city-centric elite activists in its news and current affairs delivery. It's no wonder, because the majority of the ABC's staff are located in cities. The 2023-24 annual report shows that 4,520 staff are based in metro areas and that only 594 are in regional and remote areas. No wonder we've seen the direct attacks on rural and regional farmers in how the city-centric ABC reported on the live cattle and live sheep issues. It was reported in such a way that the then Labor government first shut down the live cattle trade, and this has now been followed up with the shutting down of the live sheep trade. In each case, in the initial reporting, the ABC told only one side of the story—and what appalling attacks on our farmers and our regional communities as a result! I believe and hope that some of our regional ABC journalists actually understood the damage that has been done. I have watched the bias and politicisation of city ABC news and current affairs for years, and it has progressively got worse. I will never forget some years ago, when we were in government, when in 2016 I read a terribly inaccurate ABC story about the sexual assault of a child in Nauru that proved to be completely false. The list goes on and on. I kept a file of those for so many years. But the final straw has come for me as a result of the ABC's sustained attacks on our Australian Defence Force over the last few years, culminating in the deliberate and calculated falsifying of video footage, which was literally doctored footage inserted by the ABC into a story that was clearly designed to provide 'live evidence' to validate the journalist's story. By adding the extra gunshots to this combat footage, the ABC was determined to provide evidence that members of the Australian 2nd Commando Regiment in a helicopter fired multiple shots at what the ABC claimed were unarmed Afghan civilians. There is no doubt the ABC has been determined to vilify the Australian Defence Force members for years, desperately trying to prove they were guilty of war crimes. In spite of the weasel words we heard at Senate estimates, and a pathetic and carefully orchestrated internal 'review' that in no way passes the pub test of any fair-minded Australian, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the ABC journalist and his team did indeed deliberately doctor, falsify, manipulate and distort information, material and evidence in order to mislead audiences, which was designed to substantiate that journalist's storyline that the ADF was guilty of and had committed a war crime. And, yes, ABC, if the gunshots had been added with the deliberate purpose of misleading the audience then, in the words of your own carefully selected internal reviewer, Mr Sunderland, it would have amounted to 'one of the most egregious and serious breaches imaginable of fundamental journalistic ethics.' But this is exactly what ABC did. It was in fact 'one of the most egregious and serious breaches imaginable of fundamental journalistic ethics', otherwise the shots would not have been heard in the audio at all—and if it had been an error the ABC would have corrected that fact immediately. The ABC cannot deny this. The evidence is clear. This if further proof beyond doubt that the ABC has not and will not meet its charter obligations, which state the ABC has to provide 'comprehensive broadcasting services of a high standard'. The duties of the board include: … to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the Corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognized standards of objective journalism; … Well, it's obvious that the ABC is not accurate and it is definitely not impartial. I am sickened by the fact that the ABC board and employees will all be probably smiling at how well they delivered their story that they wanted the public to believe. In spite of how deliberately egregious and wrong that story was, no-one has been held or will be held responsible or accountable. The board and the management and staff will carry on business as usual, and nothing will change at the ABC. This is just further evidence of the green-left ABC and that it s a law unto itself. But what is even worse is that, according to the 2024 ABC annual report, Australian taxpayers are paying a record amount of more than $1.1 billion for this. I understand that the ABC is asking for even more taxpayers' dollars at a time that its audience numbers are dwindling by 670,000 a week. No wonder the audience numbers are falling with stories like this. It is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, when you attack our Defence Force members. The ABC is determined not to represent broad Australian interests or views. There is a very clear lack of impartiality and balance, and there appears to be a consistent narrative for the green, left ABC to criticise defence. Editorial standards at the ABC require accuracy, impartiality, excellence and independence. The ABC has failed this test, as we've seen with this story, not only in the audio editing I talked about already but in defence industry coverage I've seen recently. The reporting showed a clear lack of balanced sources of information and featured those with known agendas who are keen to disrupt defence. It did not demonstrate any of the great achievements of the ADF, the other side of that story. This is information the Australian people have a right to and deserve to know from a media organisation they pay for; it is coverage which would give our serving ADF members pride in their achievements and would actually help the ABC meet its editorial standard of broadcasting programs that contribute to a sense of national identity. The lack of balance was clear in the ABC's Land Forces expo protest coverage. ABC news coverage was reported as 'People injured in the Land Forces expo protests this week are assessing their legal options, lawyer says'. There was little or no criticism of the violent protesters, and where was the reporting on the attendees, who were either attacked or had to seek alternate routes? Why was there no reporting of the fact that the ADF personnel were advised not to attend the workplace on St Kilda Road for fear of attack? Why was there no reporting that ADF personnel were strongly advised not to wear their uniforms to work in that area for fear of attack? Why was there little reporting of the fact that ADF personnel were harassed at hotels? The ABC article actually sought greater legal defence mechanisms promoting greater protection for the protesters who were violent—one side of that story only. I am sick of these attacks on defence. This lack of balanced reporting and the ABC's ongoing sustained attack on our ADF has to have a really dramatic and dreadful impact at a time when retention and recruitment are problems and given the findings of the royal commission into veterans' suicide. The ABC editorial standards state that it should be broadcasting programs that, as I said, contribute to a sense of national identity. How is tearing at our ADF adding to our sense of national identity? It actually undermines Australia's values, freedoms and democracy. That's in spite of our young people, who are in significant and impressive numbers participating at events such as Anzac Day. It's no wonder the ABC is losing its audiences. It is not providing comprehensive broadcasting and services of a very high standard. I'm presenting the editorial by the board and the duties of the board to ensure that the gathering and presentation by the corporation of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognised standards of objective journalism. I can't believe that this is what we're getting from what is supposed to be our national ABC. As someone who lives and works in regional Australia, for so long we relied on the ABC to be exactly that and to provide those of us in the regions not only with accurate reporting but with timely responses that we need whenever there is an emergency. I am so saddened at what the ABC has become. 18:53 Mr BURNELL 300129 Spence In my first speech in this place as the member for Spence, back on 1 August 2022, I said the following words which still ring true for me today: 'Strengthening our communities is the Australian way.' It is on these terms that I am guided in my effort to best represent the constituents of Spence, because, for our local community across the northern suburbs of Adelaide, which has within it some of the most disadvantaged areas of metropolitan Australia, people on the ground must be the front and centre of its representatives' priorities. With that ethos in mind, we've had some incredible outcomes under the Albanese Labor government since I was elected, which local voices helped to come to fruition. That's why I'm going to take the time to call attention to positive change we have seen under the Labor government in this term. The Albanese Labor government's No. 1 priority is fighting the cost of living. We know that families across the country are doing it tough. I know that things are especially hard in my electorate of Spence. The northern suburbs of Adelaide are already disadvantaged, and this is not news to any residents that are watching. They also know that, instead of seeing a guy in a suit talk at issues, you want a government that makes them better—and rightly so. The federal Labor government hears you, and we're taking action to do just that. We have delivered a bigger, better and fairer tax cut for 91 per cent of taxpayers in my electorate compared to liberal alternative. That 67,000 people in Gawler, Elizabeth, Salisbury and everywhere in between who will earn, on average, $1,217 more every year because of this change. Chances are that, if you noticed your pay getting bigger since July this year, it's because of these changes. And we aren't stopping there either, because more needs to be done. We're making housing more affordable for both buyers and renters throughout our Help to Buy and Build to Rent forms. They're providing significant financial support for 40,000 Australian families who are low- or middle-income earners to own their own home as well as taking pressure off the rental market by boosting affordable housing as part of our efforts to increase supply and drive down prices. We've also delivered $300 of energy bill relief for every single household in this country. We have boosted Commonwealth rent assistance by 40 per cent since 2022. We increased the low-income Medicare threshold last year to ensure over one million low-income earners either remain exempt from the Medicare levy or pay a reduced rate. We've overseeing a $54 90-a-fortnight increase to the JobSeeker payment. We've delivered a third consecutive pay rise for 2.6 million Australian workers. All the while, we've managed to put a lid on inflation, reducing it by over half its previous peak since coming to government. Labor is delivering outcomes through policy, influenced by your experience on the ground, but we know as a government that this work isn't done. I know as your local member for Spence that many families in the north are still living week to week, still struggling with their bills, still struggling to buy groceries. That's why we're committed to policies that bring your costs down. That's why we're delivering positive changes that directly affect your livelihoods, as I've mentioned. And I will never stop advocating to do that, because the cost of living is Labor's No. 1 priority. The Albanese Labor government is continuing to deliver local projects across the northern suburbs of Adelaide. This comes back to something I mentioned in my maiden speech: that strengthening communities is the Australian way. A Labor government is one that embraces the Australian way by ensuring that where we live continues to grow and remains up to scratch so that everyday Australian families can thrive in their communities. We have done that the city of Playford, funding a plethora of local projects in the suburbs of Elizabeth, Munno Para, Smithfield, Andrews Farm, Davoren Park, Angle Vale and more. These have included contributing over $1 million to upgrade and maintain sporting facilities in Kalara Reserve in Davoren Park as well as providing funding for works on the Mandeville and Willison-Goodman reserves in Davoren Park and Elizabeth South, respectively. That's come alongside nearly $10 million the federal government has provided to the City of Playford to fix and upgrade roads across our community since Labor was elected. With a multitude of projects either underway or completed, this funding includes over $5 million provided for Stebonheath Road upgrade alongside the $1.2 million contribution to fund a brand-new roundabout at the intersection of Dalkeith and Stebonheath roads and a complete overhaul of Kinkaid roads in Elizabeth East with an $800,000 contribution from the federal Labor government. Last but not least, there is a $15 million contribution for a dual-lane roundabout at the intersection of Curtis and Heaslip roads, fixing what the RAA called SA's riskiest intersection. We've also contributed over $3 million to fund infrastructure in Salisbury, with the federal government covering the total cost of upgrades for the Burton Community Hub, Twelve25 in Salisbury and the improvements to Church and John streets as well as funding a $1.5 million upgrade for the Salisbury recreation precinct on Happy Home Drive and providing funds for the planned pedestrian costing for the Salisbury North Primary School, which is due to be completed next year. Finally, let's talk about the town of Gawler. I'm so proud that the federal government has provided $400,000 to upgrade Dead Mans Pass and ensure this incredible amenity is safe for residents to enjoy. We have also provided over $1 million in funding to upgrade and maintain multiple roads in Kudla, Gawler South and Reid, alongside over $300,000 to construct playgrounds on Greenslade Boulevard, Calton Road and Julian Terrace. Across all the areas of the electorate I've mentioned, I'm just scratching the surface. We have provided tens of millions of dollars through Roads to Recovery funding, which you can see in action across our community as roads are maintained and improved. Our commitment to our community is matched by our actions, and the Albanese Labor government has no intention of taking its foot off the pedal. The Albanese Labor government believes in education. We believe in it because education is the master key to opportunity for Australians. It is the open door for people to create fulfilling lives individually, to thrive with their loved ones as a family and to build a community around them. But that key only works if all Australians can access it. That door slams shut if Aussies can't get to university or if they can't afford to access TAFE. Without that master key, our community sees existing disadvantage get worse. We see cycles of poverty continue which would otherwise be broken. It is a priority of our government to be that circuit breaker and lift disadvantaged Australians from committees like the north—from suburbs like Elizabeth, Salisbury and Gawler—into places of learning so they can thrive. This is something I have fought incredibly hard to achieve over the course of my term and I'm proud to say that this is what Albanese Labor government is delivering. If you're a current university student, I have some incredible news. You are going to have a brand new Suburban University Study Hub located right in the middle of Elizabeth, in the existing TAFE precinct, in 2025. This is going to slash your travel costs by bringing uni to your doorstep, turn your commute from a round trip of hours into a trip of minutes and help link you to the incredible opportunities to be had at TAFE—should you choose to pursue them—and vice versa for TAFE students. This is a massive outcome for our community, which currently has no university presence on this scale north of Mawson Lakes. It is an outcome the Albanese Labor government has delivered. The good news continues for TAFE too. A Labor government will make 100,000 fee-free TAFE places a permanent feature of our education system, building on what has made TAFE more affordable and more accessible for over half a million Aussies. Furthermore, if you've already completed your study, we're levelling the playing field for you as well. We will reduce existing student debts by 20 per cent, if re-elected next year. We are changing the system so you only pay your debts off when you earn enough to afford it, and we have reversed the massive indexation on your student debt, which you would have seen last year. We're doing this not just because former students deserve a fair go themselves but also to make the system fairer both now and in the future, because we want everyone to be able to access education, no matter who you are, where you are from or what you earn. This is what breaks down barriers for people, this is what creates livelihoods for families and this is what an Albanese Labor government is always going to do. Health is a huge priority for the Albanese government. We know that Australians need to be able to access our world-class health care affordably, whenever they need it. I know that in the north it has become harder to access that care, whether that's seeing your GP, receiving emergency health care or accessing mental health support. That's why Labor is pulling out all stops to make this easier. The DEPUTY SPEAKER 230886 Time for the grievance debate has expired. The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 192B. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the date for the next sitting. BILLS 104 BILLS Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024 104

Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024

Second Reading 104 (Bass) (19:04): Mrs ARCHER 282237 The coalition will not oppose the Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024 passing the House. However, while the coalition supports My Health Record and patients having more timely access to their records, the coalition will be seeking to refer the bill to committee in the Senate for further scrutiny. We want the committee to fully explore any potential issues related to the bill around privacy as well as to achieve a greater understanding of which other health providers will also be subjected to the new mandated requirements. The bill establishes a legislative framework for requiring key health information to be shared with the My Health Record system, which will be subject to exceptions. Under this legislative framework, corporations providing health services will be required to register and participate with the My Health Record scheme. These health services will also be required to upload specific health information to healthcare recipients at My Health Record. The bill's fact sheet states that key details will be set out in currently unseen rules, including which health services and what information about those health services must be shared under these changes. We understand that, initially, this will be limited to pathology and diagnostic imaging information. However, the committee will explore further details regarding what else will be contained in the rules and which other sectors may be impacted. Through a Senate inquiry, we'll also be seeking to explore the effect of this bill in making Medicare benefits conditional upon meeting these sharing-by-default requirements, as well as the fact that new civil penalties will also apply to corporations who do not comply. However, it's important to note that patients will continue to have full choice and control over what information is uploaded to My Health Record and who has access to this information. Prescribed information will only be required to be uploaded to My Health Record subject to the patient's consent. The patient holds full control over what records are shown to practitioners. Once again, the coalition supports My Health Record and patients having more timely access to their records. When last in government, the coalition significantly increased the number of Australians with a My Health Record from around 25 per cent to 90 per cent. The coalition also introduced a series of legislative amendments to significantly strengthen Labor's original legislation. This included increasing the penalties for improper use of a My Health Record, strengthening provisions to safeguard against domestic violence, prohibiting an employer from requesting and using health information in an individual's My Health Record, protecting employees and potential employees from discriminatory use of their My Health Record and ensuring law enforcement agencies can only access a person's My Health Record with a warrant or court order. However, we do believe that this legislation deserves further scrutiny in the Senate, particularly around the details that will be contained in the unseen rules and how they will impact health providers. 19:07 Mr BATES 300246 Brisbane The Greens will be supporting the Health Legislation Amendment (Modernising My Health Record—Sharing by Default) Bill 2024 in the House of Representatives and reserving our position in the Senate. We are in support of effective care pathways to promote greater cooperation and coordination between health services and systems. Furthermore, the Greens believe that health information and data linked to identifiable individuals should be stored with the best up-to-date security systems and protocols. There have been considerations raised by advocacy groups about the potential effects of this bill on healthcare providers. There is a likelihood that not all practices that will be subject to this legislation currently have the technical capability for the relevant information sharing. Upgrading software systems can be a costly endeavour and could be a process that would delay compliance. The Greens want to hear from the impacted practitioners about the impact that this bill would have on them. Because of this, we would like to see an inquiry into this bill which will then inform opposition in the Senate. Question agreed to. Bill read a second time. Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced. Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment. Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:09