DOCUMENTS

2020-11-30 46 1 4 Senate 0 1

Monday, 30 November 2020

The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Scott Ryan) took the chair at 10:00, read prayers and made an acknowledgement of country.

DOCUMENTS 1 DOCUMENTS Tabling 1 COMMITTEES 1 COMMITTEES Meeting 1 10:01 The PRESIDENT I0Q I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION 1 PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION Western Australia 1 Senators Sworn 1 MOTIONS 1 MOTIONS COVID-19: Parliamentary Procedure 1 10:03 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia by leave—I move: That the rules for remote participation of Senate proceedings recommended by the Procedure Committee in its first report of 2020 have effect during the sittings of the Senate from 30 November to 10 December 2020. Question agreed to. NOTICES 1 NOTICES Presentation 1 10:03 Senator GRIFF 76760 South Australia I seek leave for an additional motion, for which notice has not been given, to be considered at formal motions today. The motion has been circulated in the chamber, and I understand that I have the agreement of the whips. Leave granted. BUSINESS 1 BUSINESS Rearrangement 1 10:04 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia by leave—I move: That consideration of the business before the Senate on Wednesday, 2 December 2020 be interrupted at approximately 5 pm, but not so as to interrupt a senator speaking, to enable Senator Thorpe to make her first speech without any question before the chair. BILLS 2 BILLS Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020 2

Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020

Second Reading 2 10:04 Senator GRIFF 76760 South Australia The title of the interim report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety said it all: Neglect. That simple word cuts to the bone and speaks to the fears that we all share about aged care in Australia. It's not easy when a parent or a friend moves into care. It's a conversation many of us put off time and time again. We put it off because it is difficult to give up the care of someone we love to people we don't know, and we put it off because we don't know how to respond to the fears that are felt: the fear of abandonment, the fear of abuse, the fear of neglect. We want to believe that residential aged care in particular will be like home. We want to believe our loved ones will receive the attention that they need and the care that they deserve. The royal commission was gutting, because it showed comprehensively the standard of care we expect, and we should be able to expect, was often not being delivered. Some facilities were not like home. Some of our loved ones were not being cared for. And some of our fears were well and truly justified. Aged-care providers have argued that they do their best with the limited financial resources available to them. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. It's hard to know, because we don't have the information to judge their claims. The current reporting systems are totally inadequate. Some might argue that these are private businesses and they should be able to disclose as much or as little as they like, and normally I would agree. But these are businesses that are receiving over $21 billion in Commonwealth funding every year for residential and home-care services—$21 billion. For that sort of money you would expect real accountability, you would expect providers to show what that money is being used for, and you would expect the government to know how much is being spent on care. You would be wrong. This bill amends the Aged Care Act. It will require residential aged-care providers to submit an annual report to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner. That report will show us how much income each provider is receiving and the sources of that funding. It will also show how much every facility is spending: how much they are spending on food; how much is being spent on medicine; how much is being spent on medical supplies; and how much is spent on training. It will also show us how many staff are employed for each classification and how much the executives are being paid. Financial transparency is a reasonable requirement for any sector receiving tens of billions of dollars of public funds, and the cost of compliance will be trivial. Providers already collect this information and no private information will need to be disclosed. For every honest operator in the sector, financial transparency will be a godsend. It will show the facilities where residents are receiving the most care. For others, for those who take public money but neglect their residents, financial transparency will be a nightmare—a nightmare that I am pleased for them to have. It will show exactly how much money is being spent at each facility and how much is being siphoned off to other corporate entities. It will show their residents, their families and the community the types of facilities they are operating. It will show where they are spending and where they are investing. It will show us their priorities and what they value the most. This will allow residents and families to make informed decisions when choosing a facility. It will help us understand how far these dollars are going and whether we need to invest more so that good providers can do more. This is information that the public deserves to know. It is information that senior Australians deserve to know. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for keeping this information secret or for allowing providers to remain unaccountable. The inquiry into this bill is ongoing. Twenty-two submissions have been received to date, and they have been overwhelmingly supportive of financial transparency. I am grateful to everyone who took the time to share their experiences and their views, including care providers. But I do wish more had taken the opportunity to engage with the inquiry. All who made submissions made important, valuable contributions. In their submission the Australian Medical Association said: … any older person entering aged care, including their carers, has the right to know how their chosen provider of aged care services spends the funds they receive from the Government on the consumer’s behalf and the co-funding provided by the consumer themselves. This was a fundamental premise of the Aged Care Roadmap adopted by the Government in 2016. In their submission, Aged Care Crisis Inc said: The absence of data has made it impossible to formulate policies that are based on evidence rather than wishful thinking. It has been impossible to make informed choice and has exposed many vulnerable citizens to the risk of exploitation by profit-focused operators. On behalf of care providers, Aged and Community Services Australia said: Transparency in reporting is important, but we must avoid duplication in reporting requirements or adding new reporting requirements that will not materially improve information for consumers, the regulator or Government. I do understand the point that they are making, but if care-focused financial information was already reported then there would be absolutely no need for this bill. The royal commission showed a clear need for better information, better decision-making and better policy-making. Consumers, regulators and government all benefit from transparency. Finally, the Aged Care Guild, who represents care providers, said it was: … fair and reasonable to expect providers share information demonstrating how financial supports contribute to care services. We are in wholehearted agreement with this. They go on to argue that regulatory requirements and costs are constantly increasing while overall funding has not kept pace. I don't know whether this is true, but that's not the point. The point of this bill is to give us the transparency we need in order to monitor costs and funding. It will give providers the statistical evidence they need in order to make the case for increased funding. And it will give the government the information they need in order to evaluate whether more funding is truly needed. I would like to thank the groups who have expressed strong support for this bill. They include the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, the Council of Trade Unions, the Health Services Union, National Seniors Australia and the Aged Rights Advocacy Service of South Australia. I thank them all for their support, particularly the ANMF, for their input into drafting this bill. The inquiry on this bill will report at the end of March, after which I will bring this bill to a vote. I hope every senator will support it and I hope any senator who has concerns about the bill will come and discuss these with me. If you believe that financial information should not be reported, if you have concerns or if you have some suggestions, I will hear you out. But I hope you will hear me out, too, and I hope you will seriously consider whether the current approach is delivering for the residents of these facilities, for their families and for taxpayers. The royal commission demonstrated that problems in the aged-care sector are systemic, and that the aged-care system is designed around transactions, not relationships or care. No single piece of legislation can transform the sector or solve all of its problems but there are things we can do, and things that we can very much do better. Financial transparency is well and truly one of them. My bill provides for a simple and fair change that will drive providers to do better. It will make a difference to the lives of aged-care residents. And it will help us be a little more certain that our loved ones are going to a good place: a place that they can call home, a place where they will truly be cared for. 10:15 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria It's my great pleasure to rise and speak on the Age Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020. Looking after our senior citizens is one of the most important responsibilities we have as a nation. The Morrison government's track record in continually improving aged care is extensive, and we are very proud of many of our key initiatives, many of which have been incorporated into the 2020-21 budget. Before I outline those and speak about the details of this bill, I just want to take issue with Senator Griff and the comments that he made about aged care being centred around transactions and not care. I know Senator Griff comes into the Senate with a lot of good intentions, but I really do take issue with that statement, because so many residential aged-care providers do an incredible job. I don't want to stand here and allow the misdeeds of a number of residential providers who are not doing the right thing to cast aspersions on the sector as a whole. So I want to reject the premise on which Senator Griff made that comment. Under our budget we've provided $1.6 billion more for another 23 home care packages. This builds on the $325 million investment for 6,000 or so packages announced by the Prime Minister on 8 July 2020. There's another $11 million to ensure ongoing, face-to-face video and telephone interventions for psychosocial support through the Dementia Behaviour Management Advisory Services and Severe Behaviour Response Teams. There's just over $10 million over three years to support the recently established Aged Care Workforce Industry Council to take a major role in implementing the 14 strategic actions outlined in A matter of care: Australia's aged care workforce strategy. There's $10.6 million over three years to establish a national network of system coordinators to help younger people find age-appropriate accommodation which supports them to live independently in the community. There's $91.6 million over two years to support potential implementation of the Australian National Aged Care Classification funding model in residential aged care. This funding builds on previous investments of $167 million announced in the July economic and fiscal update. We continue to improve the aged-care funding model, bringing the total investment to some $258 million. In the budget also is $35.6 million over two years for the Business Improvement Fund, which provides targeted grant based assistance to residential aged-care providers experiencing viability concerns—and that is a key issue of the sector. There's $125.3 million for the replacement of the Commonwealth Continuity of Support Program with the Commonwealth Disability Support for Older Australians Program, to continue to support older people with a disability who are not eligible under the NDIS. There's also $4.6 million to expand the single in-home support program to support older people remain in their homes. So that's a huge raft of investments in aged care that just have been announced in our most recent budget. Of course, every year under the Morrison government home-care packages are up and residential-care places are up, and every single year aged-care funding goes up. The Morrison government—and these are the facts—is delivering record investment across the aged-care system over the forward estimates, growing from $13.3 billion in 2012-13 under the previous Labor government to $21.3 billion in 2019-20. We estimate that funding for aged care will grow to more than $27 billion in 2023-24—that is, on average, $1.1 billion of extra support for older Australians each year over the forward estimates. The government spent over $13.4 billion in 2019-20 on residential care, up from $9.2 billion in 2012-13. In 2023-24 this will grow to over $17.1 billion. We are seeing massive increases in investment by our government. I will make this really important point: making improvements to aged care for all senior Australians continues to be one of the Morrison government's most important priorities. That is precisely why the Prime Minister called for the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, and that is precisely why we are acting. As Commissioner Briggs stated, as part of the final hearings of the royal commission: I have had, however, detected over the last year, counsel, a growing determination among officials, and on the government, to fix the problems of the aged care system and to pursue a genuine reform agenda. We are committed to providing that genuine reform agenda to provide senior Australians with support to live in their homes longer. New home-care packages have increased from $60,000 under Labor in 2012-13 to $185,000 in 2023-24. That's an increase of 208 per cent. Over the same period, funding will increase by 302 per cent, due to growth in high-level packages. In stark contrast, at the last election Labor provided no additional funding in their costings for home-care places or any additional funding for quality aged-care workforce or residential aged care. So it's pretty rich for those opposite—and I don't include Senator Griff, who is sitting opposite me at the moment, but I do include Labor senators and Labor members in the other place—to stand up on aged care when Labor so failed Australians at the last election. In fact, in the budget reply speech that the opposition leader, Mr Albanese, made just a few months ago, aged care did not even get a mention in the entire half an hour. That is really shameful on the Labor Party. I make that very strong point. This year has been a year like no other. The COVID-19 response, of course, has been incredibly challenging. Since the beginning of the pandemic our government has invested more than $1.6 billion specifically to deal with the response to the pandemic. This includes boosting quality and safety monitoring, supporting retaining of the care workforce, providing an additional surge workforce, assisting the sector with accommodation costs, providing resources to COVID-19 impacted facilities and funding more Australians to stay at home. As we know, we had a very serious situation in Victoria as a result of the hotel quarantine program, which allowed community transmission of the virus to run out of control. We always knew that if that happened it would get into the most vulnerable of the community: aged-care homes. As a result, extra funding resources were delivered for the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre. I want to turn to the bill before the Senate today which proposes amendments to the Aged Care Act and the Corporations Act, which would have the effect of requiring that aged-care providers report certain financial and cost information to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner, including income and subsidies received from care and the amount spent on staff. It also provides that the commissioner will publish reports received from providers and, if an approved provider received more than $10 million in Commonwealth funding in a financial year, there will be greater financial reporting requirements under the Corporations Act. I will make the first point in response as to why the government is not supporting this bill. The usefulness of the proposed public information is not clear, because it has the potential to be misleading to consumers. For example, in some instances there may be reasons why the itemised cost of medical products—for example, incontinence aids—would vary between residential aged-care services such that the information would not necessarily assist transparency for consumers. The amendments are also not supported by the government—and this is a really important point—as they pre-empt the final report of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which is due in February of next year. In its interim report the royal commission has been critical of constant change and moving targets. Embracing these proposals or amendments on their own in a piecemeal fashion would not reflect the importance of the government ensuring that our reforms are integrated, cohesive and solutions driven. We don't want to pre-empt the royal commission. That would be most inappropriate. The reforms at their heart, as we recognise, must deliver the best care for all senior Australians, and that's got to be, without exception, putting the care of seniors at the centre, and if we do so in a piecemeal way we may in fact err in not addressing other really important issues in relation to transparency. Senator Griff's proposed amendments also raise issues for the fiscal impact on the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission. While not directly relevant to parliament's consideration of Senator Griff's proposed amendments, the Australian government does need to be cognisant of these issues. While no costing of the resourcing implications has occurred at this stage, the proposed amendments are likely to have resource implications in the form of report collection activity. This will require additional staff and/or IT systems resources to collect the required reports from providers. There will also be, we expect, additional costs in compliance and enforcement activity to respond to providers who fail to report by the required time frame or who give an inadequate report to the commissioner. There will also be report-publishing activity costs. This will also require additional staff and/or IT systems resources to publish these reports, whether they are on the commission's website or on My Aged Care. There's also a resources issue in relation to data incorporation activity. So further resources would be required to build these reports into the commission's risk-profiling IT systems. I do want to say that there are very important existing requirements for aged-care providers to report annual financial information under the Aged Care Act. This requirement includes the provision that all aged-care providers are to provide an Aged Care Financial Report, the ACFR, to the secretary of the Department of Health. Within the residential income and expenditure statement providers are already required to report on the sources of the funds they receive—that's from the Commonwealth, the state, the residents themselves and other sources—and then explain how these funds were expended against the categories of care; accommodation; hotel expenses, so things like catering and cleaning; and administration finances and other non-operational expenditure. There is also the requirement that all residential aged-care providers must give an aged-care prudential compliance statement to the secretary, and all non-government residential aged-care providers must provide an independently audited, general-purpose financial report, prepared in accordance with accounting standards, as if the approved provider is a distinct reporting entity. The department is currently working to expand the requirements of the ACFR and expects revised reporting requirements will be in place from 1 July 2021. So it is important to know that that work is underway. The revised requirements will introduce more transparency around the operational results of the facilities that a particular provider operates. This expansion will cover some of the additional reporting requirements proposed under clause 9-2A(2) of the bill as well as new information related to parent entity finances. The department will also undertake sector consultation before these requirements are introduced. All of these changes are being considered in terms of the royal commission and the prudential standards review to ensure they are integrated with other reforms. Of course, we recognise they have the potential to increase administrative burden and that these matters need to be appropriately balanced. So we're very proud of the support our government is providing, including in these important reforms, but we await the final results of the royal commission— (Time expired) 10:31 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania I rise to speak on the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020. This bill amends the Aged Care Act 1997 to require residential aged-care providers to provide an annual financial transparency report to the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner, who would make the information publicly available. It's always interesting to follow Senator Henderson. Obviously, she's had a lapse in memory and she's trying to rewrite history. Her government have now been on the government benches for seven years and, during that seven years, they have not had one capable minister who has sat around the cabinet table and had the authority to support older Australians in this country. They should be ashamed of their record. But, to get back to this bill, it requires aged-care providers to disclose their income, their spend on food and medication, the amount spent on staff and staff training, accommodation and administration and how much they pay out to their parent body. The Labor Party believe that we need better transparency around funding. In fact, when I was the shadow assistant minister for ageing I spoke about this issue on numerous occasions, advocating for much-needed reform. People in aged care have been turned into commodities. We have extensive waiting times for people waiting for their approved home-care packages. People in residential aged-care facilities are malnourished, overprescribed drugs and neglected. Yet, at the higher levels of these corporations, we have managers and executives paying themselves excessive wages. This system is broken and in dire need of reform. I have lost count of the number of times that I have stood here and said these very words. It's clear that the aged-care funding instrument is broken, and we have known that for quite some time. The tool which assesses the needs of residents is the largest source of revenue for residential aged-care providers. It's based on dependency. So there are limited incentives for aged-care providers to actively encourage reablement and rehabilitation in residents. At the same time, many aged-care providers are not commercially viable and many are struggling, particularly in the not-for-profit sector. More transparency and accounting for public funding—that is the system that must be forthcoming. It's not an option. The time for delay is over. We need that action now. We need better transparency around funding. We need to know that the funding that goes into aged care is actually improving the quality of care and ensuring older Australians can live out the rest of their lives with dignity, proper high-quality care and comfort. Over $20 billion a year is going into the aged-care system to support older Australians to stay at home and in residential care. We need more accountability about where that money is actually going and more oversight of how that money is being spent, because, I can assure you, Australians are not getting value for money. I and many others, including the shadow minister, Julie Collins, have been banging the drums for years, saying that there needs to be more transparency so that older Australians and their loved ones know what is happening. We don't only need greater financial transparency; we need better access to information on a number of measures—for example, on the number of complaints residential aged-care homes receive, the amount and type of accreditation failures they receive, and the processes to deal with these issues that may arise. We also need the staffing levels and the skills mix of aged-care providers to be publicly available information. Information is power and will lead to better care. This information needs to be easily accessible and in a format that is easy to understand and interpret. Often, when it comes to the decisions to put a loved one into residential care, it's at a time of high emotions and great stress, so people need to be able to make an informed decision about which aged-care home will best suit their loved one. Making this information readily available will ensure that informed decisions are made in the best interests of individuals and their families. As I said, it's such an emotional and highly charged situation, because most people going into residential care now go in with high-dependency needs. So families need to know that their loved ones are going to have support and care and staff around them to ensure they have the best quality care available. Disappointingly, conservative Liberal governments have failed to improve transparency, even though they know that older Australians, their loved ones and carers struggle to navigate their way through the complexity of assessing services. They're unable to gain enough information about aged-care service providers that will engage with their needs and ensure they have certainty that their loved ones will be treated with decency, great care and respect. There have been many reports and inquiries into the system—all returning similar themes and issues. The Morrison government have now sat on their royal commission interim report into aged care for over a year and have not enacted any reform. It's time to stand up and say, 'Enough is enough.' Issues around neglect, malnutrition, lack of staff training, overmedication, and sexual and physical abuse have been well documented issues for years and years. Enough is enough. To sit on the interim report and say, 'Well, we have to wait; we can't pre-empt the final royal commission report' is absolute nonsense. We have had three failed aged-care ministers. We have had countless reports. Senator Siewert, who is in the chamber, and I have sat around the table and taken evidence day after day, year in, year out. We all know what the issues are around aged care. We know about the neglect. The interim report was titled Neglect. If that doesn't give a hint to this government that there's a crisis in aged care—after all, they did call the royal commission into their own failings—I don't know what will. We also know that, once you have a diagnosis of dementia in this country, to a great extent, you become invisible. The carers of people living with dementia become invisible. If it weren't for Dementia Australia and the fantastic work that they do, those people would be forgotten completely by this government. We saw the huge impact the pandemic had on aged care, particularly residential care. It was evident that those people living with dementia in residential care became invisible. For those living with dementia at home, their carers became invisible. I say: enough is enough. We all know the issues. We all know what's been happening over the last seven years in aged care. We know that those on this side of the chamber have been calling for years now to have some reform and to look at the real issues, the broken system around how we fund aged care and the lack of transparency. We know that the aged-care system under this Liberal government is broken. There has been one failed minister for aged care after another—and the current one is certainly not up to the job. Older Australians are waiting for high-level home-care packages for almost three years so they can get the care they have been approved for. Aged-care staff have been stretched to their physical and emotional ends trying to provide the care that these residents deserve. People are tragically dying of neglect, but we have no action from the Morrison government. More than 30,000 older Australians have died over the last three years waiting for their approved home-care package. It's a disgrace. More than 32,000 older Australians, over two years, entered residential aged care prematurely because they couldn't get the care they needed, the home-care packages they had been approved for. Waiting times for aged care grew by almost 300 per cent under the Liberals, with older Australians across the country forced into lengthy queues, waiting for care. Finally, 23,000 home-care packages were announced in the budget. But it's a different story in terms of how many have actually been delivered thus far—that is, a big fat zero. Once again, Mr Morrison is there for the photo opportunity but not for the follow-up. Only 2,000 of these packages are level 4—the highest level of care. Compare that to the number of people currently waiting for their approved level 4 package—15,873 older vulnerable Australians. There has been inaction on hundreds of recommendations from more than a dozen reviews, reports and inquiries. Complaints about aged care doubled to almost 8,000 in just one year, but the Prime Minister has failed to properly resource the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to handle these complaints. The Morrison government has failed to fully implement even one aged-care recommendation from a landmark report to stop elder abuse in aged care released in 2017. More than 110,000 calls for help went unanswered by the My Aged Care call centre over the last three years. The Morrison government delivered just 38 emergency food packages to older Australians isolating because of COVID-19—after announcing they would deliver 36,000 packages with funding of $9.3 million. Once again, they are there for the photo opportunity but there is no delivery. The list of overpromising and underdelivering goes on and on. We know that the Morrison government did not have a plan for COVID-19 in black and white. This was stated in the royal commission's special report into COVID-19. We know the Morrison government was not prepared for COVID-19 in aged care. Despite the early warnings, it didn't do enough early enough. It's clear that the Morrison government has no idea how to fix the aged-care sector. We know what is happening and what we are seeing, and we have been saying it over and over again, year in year out, since this government came to power: they have done nothing. Well, the buck stops with you, Mr Morrison; it's time to take some action. Mr Albanese has laid out an eight-point plan as a starting point for this government. We say: take up the challenge, take up our ideas and start putting Australians first. But be assured that Labor will continue to hold the Morrison government to account, both in the parliament and publicly, on the thousands and thousands of Australians who are waiting for home-care packages. Australians generally are very concerned about the aged-care sector, because the majority of Australians will end up using residential aged care at some stage in their lives or have to rely on and wait for the home-care packages. Older Australians deserve so much more. This Prime Minister, at the last election, promised to prioritise aged care and older Australians and he has failed to do that. We do need transparency in aged care and we do need financial transparency, but we know this is a Liberal government that could not be any less transparent in all their dealings across government. The Morrison government is failing older Australians. They are very transparent, because they're not doing what they gave a commitment to do at the last election—and that was to prioritise the care and support for older Australians. They have failed those people working in this sector, who give their hearts and souls without the resources that they need. We need a minister in government who has some power, has some commitment and has some interest in aged care. Then we might see a change of heart by this government, if we have someone in the cabinet room fighting day in, day out for older Australians, because that's exactly what older Australians need. They need a champion. We will do our job on this side of the chamber, and it's about time Scott Morrison and his team did theirs. 10:46 Senator SIEWERT e5z Western Australia I rise today to make a contribution to the Age Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020. This bill addresses significant shortcomings in our current aged-care system by requiring aged-care providers to publicly report on financial information, including spending on food, medical products, accommodation, salaries, wages, administration and staff training. You wouldn't think this was too much to ask, given that we pay about $21 billion a year for provision of aged care. It should be common sense that this is the sort of transparency that's expected for that expenditure of resources on some of the most vulnerable members of our community. By requiring providers to report such information, we would have a much better understanding of how well facilities are resourced and what they're doing with that funding. Is it going where it should be going? We would get a better understanding of any possible gaps in care, quality and safety. For example: just what are residential aged-care facilities spending on clinical care? We know from the recent pandemic that they have significantly let down residents and their families across the country, but particularly in certain states—like in Victoria, where what the deficiency in aged care has meant for residents is there for all to see. If they were practising better infection control right from the start we wouldn't have been in the situation we found ourselves in in aged care in Victoria. In 2019-20 the Commonwealth spent, as I said, around $21 billion on all types of aged care, yet there are no requirements for providers to disclose how much money is actually spent on care. Our aged-care system fundamentally lacks transparency in communication, reporting and accountability. One of the major systemic failings of the aged-care system is the lack of transparency and accountability about how providers disclose the way they use government funding to deliver services. This is a regulatory failure that I'm sure has contributed to providers getting away with providing inadequate care to older Australians, and it galls me to have to have to sit here and listen to the excuses from government about why we don't need this and how good our aged-care system is when we've got a royal commission into it, for crying out loud! We've got a royal commission because of inadequate care in this country—account after account after account of the failure of the system. Ants in wounds, for crying out loud! We haven't gone far from the kerosene baths episode. We still have not banned physical and chemical restraints. They still don't have to get permission when they use those restraints. I'm still getting complaints from constituents, saying that they've that found their loved ones had been physically and chemically restrained. We have to ask: how can older people and their families make informed decisions about aged-care services if they can't understand how much a facility spends on items such as food, staffing costs and other critical care elements? I think we would all agree that residents and their families have a right to know what the facility spends on basic care needs such as food, medicines, medical products, continence aids, management wages, staff wages, staff numbers and categories. We have had a debate for so long in this country about minimum staffing levels. We still haven't got there. We still don't require a nurse to be on duty 24/7 for crying out loud! Nor are our staff in residential aged-care facilities getting paid enough; hence, they have to work across multiple facilities. Of course, we realise what that means, don't we? Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety recommended the need for more stringent financial reporting requirements. They recommended: 104.1. From 1 July 2023, the Australian Aged Care Commission should be empowered under statute to require approved providers to submit regular financial reporting. 104.2. The frequency and form of the reports should be prescribed by the Commission. I think that needs to be done well before 2023. This bill also raises bigger questions about the role of for-profit aged-care providers. The devastation that ripped through aged-care facilities in Victoria put for-profit facilities in the spotlight. We saw some terrible examples of for-profit providers failing to meet basic standards of infection control procedures and clinical care, and having to be rescued by the government. No-one should be making such huge profits from the provision of essential services to Australians. In the meantime, this bill would introduce a new level of transparency and accountability when it comes to reporting how aged-care funding is spent by providers. We hear the excuse: 'We've got a royal commission coming; we shouldn't be doing stuff that pre-empts the royal commission.' This place is going to debate two bills on aged care in the next two weeks, so we can make changes before the royal commission reports—in fact, we need to be making changes The government acknowledges that themselves with the bill being around the different funding and the way we're going to go to a reimbursed approach instead of up-front funding for home care, and also with piloting and doing the comparison process for the funding instrument. Both of these bills will go through here because they're sensible, as is requiring a greater level of transparency from our aged-care sector. They have got away with not doing the right thing for far too long. I do agree with Senator Henderson: there are some very good providers in this country; but there are some very bad providers in this country too, as has been well displayed over this year. We need reform, we need it urgently. We've already seen the two interim reports from the royal commission. We have seen the counsel assisting's comment to the royal commission. The final report, that very substantial piece of work, is due in February next year. We've known for a long time that we need to have transparency. We know we need a better understanding of how money is spent. We need to be paying the staff in aged care better, and we've known that for a very, very long time. It's time for some better transparency. We support this bill. 10:53 Senator McLACHLAN 287062 South Australia I rise to speak to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020. This private member's bill does not find favour with the government. The honourable senator who brought this bill to this place, in his explanatory memorandum, states: The Bill seeks factual information from providers so we will have a clearer picture of how their facilities are resourced. This will be crucial if we are to engage in sustainable reforms to the sector that will improve the experience and treatment of vulnerable elderly people living in residential aged care. These are noble sentiments, and ones which cannot be resisted; however, it is the view of the government that the path it has taken will be more effective in assisting with the regulation of this very important sector. I was minded, when listening to this debate, of one of my more favourite poems on growing old. The opening stanza goes like this: What is it to grow old? Is it to lose the glory of the form, The lustre of the eye? Is it for beauty to forgo her wreath? —Yes, but not this alone. The aged-care sector is critically important, and the government has an excellent record and, in more recent times, has a minister who has pursued reform of the industry and, indeed, assisted in its navigation through the more difficult parts of this year with the impacts of the virus, and I take this opportunity to congratulate him. He has answered a barrage of questions in this place with a great deal of verve. We discuss and we debate in this place much about our youth—this was also my experience in the state parliament—and it is heartening that we are now having a similar debate with a great deal of enthusiasm on how we handle and care for our elderly. Archaeologists have found remains from up to 500,000 years ago. They are the remains of those who were considered old in their communities, and there is clear evidence they were cared for. So how do we find ourselves in this place, with regulated care and government funding? Well, in Greek and Roman times, it was the requirement of the family to look after those who were the aged and the elders in their community. In the early 1800s institutions were created, but they were not happy places. Later in the 1800s friendly societies and benevolent institutions moved into the space and provided care. And we now find ourselves with a great deal of government interest, and rightly so, given that we have given a large degree of funding, as has been pointed out by members on all sides in this chamber. I've often thought that the care of the elderly is certainly a mirror to our society. A wiser mind than my own said: … morality consists in large part in learning to deal with the unwanted and unexpected interruptions to our plans. This is where caring for the elderly can often be the case. I would like more debate on the role of the family and community in caring for our elderly. There seems to be an increasing practice in our society to pack our elderly away into institutions. We're not incorporating them in a caring way; rather, we're simply visiting them as they have been packed away. Perhaps that's where the debate should ultimately be going, as a reflection on our societal norms, which, in many ways, are unpleasing. But this is not to distract from the requirements and expectations we have that those who seek, in an institutional way, to care for our elderly, who have our elderly in their daily care, are regulated, and rightly so. There are providers whose actions have led to significant disappointment in our community, and they should rightly be condemned. The government is responding to the findings of the aged-care royal commission. It is a wait, but the industry does need to be consulted. We do need to understand the ultimate impacts of any regulation that comes through this place. The department is, as I understand it, currently working on requirements in relation to what is disclosed to our aged-care regulator, particularly through aged-care financial reports, the ACFR. Providers are already required to report the sources of funds they receive, and then explain how these funds are expended against the categories of care, accommodation and hotel expenses, administration and finances. All residential aged-care providers give an aged-care prudential compliance statement to the secretary of the department and all non-government residential aged-care providers must give an independently audited general purpose financial report, so there is a flow of financial information. I appreciate that the senator putting forward this bill feels that there should be more financial information, but simply requiring more data does not necessarily alleviate the problem. As I said, the department is currently working on expanded requirements for the ACFR and expects revised reporting requirements to be in place on 1 July 2021. There is a drive, through this initiative, to introduce more transparency around operational results of the facilities that the provider operates, but just because you have more data doesn't mean you can compare like with like, in any industry. The expansion will cover some of the additional reporting requirements proposed in this bill as well as new information related to parent-entity finances. As I indicated, consultation is underway. All changes are being considered in the terms of the royal commission and the prudential standards review to ensure that they are integrated with other reforms and potential for an increased administrative burden is appropriately considered and balanced. It would be very easy for us to put in place greater regulation that does not produce the effect that we all desire. The expanded ACFR will also play a key role in the residential aged-care funding model the government is currently exploring. In essence, we have a model that is going to be revisited and renewed. Whilst the government provides the cost, a key decision provides underwriting of the cost. The key decision for government after implementing a new funding model will be setting the price, so in essence we have government intervention in a market, which in this case is appropriate. With an intervention of this manner not only does the right data have to be provided but we have to have a proper ability to analyse it. When the new model is implemented it will support annual costing studies and pricing work on cost data, so the government will be in a position to see the viability of the industry and where its funds are going, and therefore to make the appropriate policy responses and adjustments. Having said that, it will still be critical that facilities are audited for the level of care that they provide. Those providers that take a less-than-charitable approach to those in their care will be moved out of the marketplace and their operations terminated. It's easy to say, 'Let's bring on more transparency.' The government is taking that approach, but the transparency has to be effective. Having reams of data does not assist in the decision-making of families when circumstances require the family to move a family member into a place of care, which often is a very emotional time. That decision-making is not necessarily facilitated by this bill. I return to the fact that, whilst I find great nobility in the sentiments of the senator who introduced this bill, the government's position is that it is taking into account those matters in its road to reform. I point out, in response to some of the contributions from the other side of the chamber, that the government did, to its great credit, call the royal commission, and it is responding to its findings. I also reiterate my confidence in the minister. I'll conclude with a stanza from probably one of my favourite poems by Dylan Thomas, in relation to his father: Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 11:05 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales I rise to speak in support of the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (Financial Transparency) Bill 2020, put forward by Senator Griff. Labor supports transparency in aged-care funding and service provision. We did so when we voted for Senator Griff's amendments to the Aged Care Legislation Amendment (New Commissioner Functions) Bill 2019 to achieve these goals and we do so in supporting this bill. Senator Griff's amendments last year were defeated by the government teaming up with One Nation to vote against transparency in aged-care funding and in how aged-care providers spend—or pocket—the money they get from the government, from their residents and from the residents' families. It's hard to understand how anyone, including One Nation, could oppose Australians having more information about how the more than $20 billion a year of taxpayers' money that goes into the aged-care system to support our older Australians to stay home or go into residential care is spent. When Senator Griff put forward his amendments to achieve just that, in December last year, it was already clear that there were serious problems in aged care. We'd already had the interim report of the royal commission into aged care. It was titled simply Neglect. There was one word to condemn the Morrison government for its administration of the aged-care system in Australia, one word to indict the Prime Minister for his failure to keep safe our parents and our grandparents, one word that should be shameful to this government, and that word was 'neglect'! 'Neglect' was the word the royal commission used to describe this government's care for older Australians. The commission detailed the shocking failures in individual aged-care homes; it outlined the structural weaknesses in our system. To quote the commission itself: … the aged care system fails to meet the needs of our older, often very vulnerable, citizens. It does not deliver uniformly safe and quality care for older people. It is unkind and uncaring towards them— older people, and— In too many instances, it simply neglects them. I don't know how members of the government can sit there and listen to those words from the royal commission and not hang their heads in shame for the way they are treating older, vulnerable Australians. The commission says there was 'serious substandard care and unsafe practice' and there was an 'underpaid, undervalued and insufficiently trained workforce'. That was before COVID-19! It has been frequently said that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn't created weaknesses in our society; it has exploited the ones that were already there. That was certainly true in the aged-care sector. Even before COVID-19 hit, the Morrison government was responsible for an aged-care system in crisis. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and his Minister for Aged Care and Senior Australians, Richard Colbeck, did very little in the already broken aged-care system to deal with COVID-19. We saw coronavirus tear through aged-care homes. We saw it tear through aged-care homes in New South Wales and then, months later, in Victoria. The Dorothy Henderson Lodge report was handed to the Morrison government in April. Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, and his minister for aged care, Richard Colbeck, did nothing. They knew aged-care facilities would struggle to find staff during a coronavirus outbreak, and they did nothing. They knew about the potential for a disastrous withdrawal of staff at an aged-care home because of coronavirus, but they did not do enough to prepare for it. Six hundred and eighty-five Australians in residential aged care died—died! We know that the Morrison government did not have a plan for COVID-19 in aged care. It is right there in black and white in the royal commission's special report into COVID-19. Despite the early warnings, the government didn't do enough or act early enough. They didn't make sure all aged-care workers had easy access to personal protective equipment, didn't make sure aged-care workers had proper quality infection control training, didn't prepare a surge workforce strategy and didn't have any idea how many aged-care workers were working across multiple sites, let alone formulate a policy about it and implement a strategy to make sure that that risk was mitigated and managed. We know that aged-care homes were underprepared when it came to PPE and PPE training. We know it not from the government being transparent and accountable—no, because they refused to be—and not from aged-care providers making their spending and investments transparent, because they don't. We know it because of staff who blew the whistle and because of families and residents who spoke out. They deserve better. They deserve transparency. I applaud the staff who spoke out. I admire the family members who, in their grief and distress, spoke out. But in a democratic, accountable society such as ours—an open and transparent one—it should not take them speaking out. We should have this type of transparency when it comes to funding in aged care. How much do aged-care homes invest in their staff? How much do they spend on making sure all their staff have PPE? We simply do not know. We would know if the government and One Nation hadn't got together last year to block Senator Griff's amendments. We'd know how much aged-care providers spend on things like food—food! I am telling you, this royal commission report talks about our parents and our grandparents starving in their beds—neglect: disgraceful. We don't know how much aged-care providers spend on food. We don't know how much they spend on medication. We don't know how much they spend on staff wages or how much they spend on staff training. And how much do they pocket as profit? Older Australians need—no, they deserve—to know the answers to these questions so they can make informed decisions about the services they want or the services they need. Labor supports greater financial transparency. We also believe that Australians should have better access to a broad range of information, including the number of complaints a residential aged-care facility receives, any accreditation failures, the types of accreditation failures, and staffing—the ratio of staffing to residents at various levels of training—as well as measures service providers put in place to deal with accreditation issues. Some of this information is currently provided on the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission website, but it needs to be in a more readable and accessible format and should be on the My Aged Care website. Australians shouldn't have to search for the information they need in order to make informed decisions about their care or the care of their relatives. This is especially true as the world battles a deadly pandemic. But instead the government has withheld and hidden information about COVID-19 in aged-care facilities that this very government is responsible for. It's just not good enough that failures relating to outbreak preparedness have not been made public. Families, loved ones, deserve transparency. Residents deserve transparency. Staff deserve transparency. They deserve to know whether a nursing home or a home-care provider is safe. They need to know so that they can make those informed decisions. Labor support this bill because we support better access to more information for older Australians and their families and loved ones. Better access to more information can only be to their benefit and to the benefit of the public, so that all Australians can have confidence that taxpayers' money is going to improve care. The government's failure to improve transparency is one more in a long list of aged-care failures by the Morrison government. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, because this is a government led by a Prime Minister who, when he was Treasurer, cut $1.7 billion from the aged-care budget. Across this chamber we see a minister for aged care who has shown that he is not up to the job. He has lost the confidence of the Australian people—and the parliament, after being censured. One would think that after he let 685 Australians die on his watch the Prime Minister would also have lost confidence in the aged-care minister. But what we've learnt from this parliamentary term is that there is no end to the incompetence you can show as a minister in the Morrison government and still keep your job. Ministerial accountability does not exist under the Morrison government—not for the Leppington Triangle; not for the robodebt, which saw people take their own lives; not for using forged documents to attack a lord mayor; and not for incompetence in and indifference to protecting Australians in residential aged care from COVID-19. And let's not forget that, for over two years, more than 32,000 older Australians entered residential aged care prematurely because they could not get the home care that they needed. Over the past two years, more than 100,000 older Australians have consistently waited on the Morrison government's never-ending waiting list for their approved home-care package. These are our parents, these are our grandparents—neglected in their own homes; forced to enter a residential aged-care system which is demonstrably broken. 'Neglect'—one word of shame that should hang around this government when it comes to aged care. Older Australians waiting for high-level aged-care packages are waiting for almost three years—three years!—to get the care that they need and that they have been approved to receive. More than 30,000 older Australians have died over three years waiting for their home-care package. Thirty thousand people have died waiting for their home-care package—another sign of neglect from this Morrison government. Waiting times for aged care have grown by almost 300 per cent under the Liberals, with older Australians across the country forced into lengthy queues just to get care. The government announced 23,000 home-care packages in the budget. That's better than nothing but a lot less than what is needed. And only 2,000 of these packages are for level 4, the highest level of care. Right now, there are more than 15,000 people waiting for their approved level 4 package—15,873 people waiting for a level 4 aged-care package. And what does this government do? It tosses 2,000 out there, like it's The Hunger Games, and says: 'There you go. Just be happy we're doing something.' This government has done nothing on the hundreds of recommendations from more than a dozen reviews, reports and inquiries. The Morrison government has failed to fully implement even one aged-care recommendation from a landmark report, released back in 2017, to stop elder abuse in aged care. More than 110,000 calls for help went unanswered on the My Aged Care call centre over the last three years. The Morrison government delivered just 38 emergency food packages to older Australians isolating during the COVID-19 lockdown—after it had announced it would deliver 36,000! That's a big difference, between 36,000 and 38—just 38. In the time I have remaining I could probably read out loud every name of those who got one. It's the same old pattern we see over and over from this government: big announcement; little or no delivery. All photo op; no follow-up. In August this year, the leader of the Australian Labor Party set out the eight steps the Morrison government could take right now to address the issues in aged care. They included: have minimum staffing levels in residential aged care; reduce the home-care package waiting list so more people can stay in their homes for longer; ensure transparency and accountability of funding to support high-quality care; implement measurement and public reporting, as recommended by the royal commission this week; ensure every residential aged-care facility has adequate PPE; have better training for staff, including on infection control; have a better surge workforce strategy; and provide additional resources so the aged-care royal commission can inquire specifically into COVID-19 across the sector while not impacting or delaying handing down the final report. We know that Australians are angry. They are upset. And they want aged care fixed. How can we so neglect the older generations of this country—the ones who've fought in world wars, the ones who stand up for their communities, the ones who've raised children and built businesses? In their final years of life, when they are sick, when they are vulnerable, they should not be left in their beds, hungry, and, as the aged-care royal commission Interim report:neglect points out, with maggots and ants crawling through their wounds. This is the great shame—it should be the great shame—of the Morrison government and should be the great shame for Australia that we have allowed this to happen. We know that the people of Australia don't trust the current minister for aged care, Senator Colbeck, to fix these problems. We know that this Senate does not trust that minister, because we have already censured him. Be assured that Labor will continue to hold the Morrison government to account, both in parliament and publicly, on the issues that hundreds of thousands of Australians are concerned about. We will continue to support transparency and accountability in aged-care funding and service provision, and we will support this bill. Older Australians—our parents, our grandparents—their families, their carers, and the staff who work in residential aged care deserve so much better than Scott Morrison's neglect. Debate adjourned. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e4t Senator Roberts, can I thank you for your understanding and indulgence in what appeared to be a little bit of a misunderstanding in relation to timing. Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020 12

Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020

Second Reading 12 11:21 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I proudly ask for the Senate's support for this bill, the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020. It's commonly called the 'no bail-in bill' or the 'anti-bail-in bill'. Its purpose is to keep people's money safe and to keep the banking system safe. Let me first explain what is a bailout and what is a bail-in. Bailouts have been used during financial crises when banks get into trouble and are a lifeline of money from taxpayers to banks to keep banks afloat. Governments act as a conduit from taxpayers to corporate banks, even when the banks get into trouble due to their own greed, recklessness or stupidity. In times of profit, it seems, banks are capitalists; and in crises banks are socialists. However, International Monetary Fund and G20 rules now prevent taxpayers' money being used to save a bank, instead requiring that rescue funds must come from shareholders and from depositors: a bail-in. And here's how it works. Literally, banks steal the money in retail deposit accounts and use that to save themselves. In exchange, depositors get shares in the bank. The shares are then suspended from trading because the bank's shares are worthless pieces of paper and will remain so for many years. Retail deposit accounts are the bank accounts of everyday Australians and small and medium-sized businesses. This is money, taken from these accounts, which people need to pay bills, buy stock, pay the rent and pay staff—gone. This is money a couple is saving to buy their first home—gone. This is money retirees cashed out of superannuation and need to live on, to buy food and clothing and pay bills—gone; gone overnight. Reserve Bank figures now show that $1 trillion is available to be taken in a bail-in. That's what the Liberal, National and Labor parties defend when opposing my bill. They defend stealing depositors' money. I'll share a letter from a constituent, Peter Thompson, last week :'As a self-funded retiree, I shouldn't be lying awake at night worrying how to safeguard my deposits from bail-in by predatory and profligate banks; however, I am. I have Greek friends who lost most of their savings in the Greek bank bail-in. I don't trust APRA nor the Treasury to protect my interests and certainly don't trust any bank. We need a people's bank now. What can I do to protect my bank deposits? Withdraw cash, which by design is getting harder and harder to do, and take the risk it will be stolen by more obvious thieves? One can't buy property or land with the Australian real estate market in radical downturn. I want my deposits in a bank. Your Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill is a vote winner. It will give Australians, many of whom have no idea of what bail-in entails, an opportunity to understand and take action to prevent their savings and create confidence in the system.' Thank you very much, Peter. Creating confidence in the banking system is exactly why I have proposed this bill. By the way, the public understand that the government's cash ban bill is designed to force everyday Australians to keep all of their money in the banking system to make a bail-in much more effective. Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals passed the cash ban bill through the House of Representatives and are now terrified of the public and backbench backlash if it enters our Senate. The next point is that the public understand our real estate prices are the third highest in the world. The public understand that the government's COVID restrictions are destroying small and medium businesses and the ability of those business owners and their staff to service their mortgages, loans and credit card debts. In fact, there is sleight of hand going on here. A handful of large retail businesses, telcos and internet based companies are doing better than ever, while hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses are doing much, much worse. The effect on the economy of the government's COVID restrictions is much worse than the headline figures, yet state governments recently doubled down with more lockdowns, more restrictions, more destruction of wealth and more unemployment amongst small and medium businesses. So the public are responding by removing cash from the banking system at an alarming rate—$20 billion in notes have gone missing in calendar year 2020. Cash is being stashed under beds. It is being taken out of banks, out of the system, and stashed under beds. My bill is an opportunity to restore confidence in the banking sector. It is an opportunity to attract deposits from other countries where bank deposits are less secure than ours. We could be a safe haven for legal investments in our banking sector, money that for once is not coming from the taxpayer. Why shut that down and make banks even more reliant on the government for funding? What a missed opportunity that will be for our banks and for their customers. The Liberal, National and Labor parties now have a chance, though, to stand up for everyday Australians and to protect bank deposits from being bailed in. The response from these tired old parties is denial. We are told that this bill is not necessary. We are told that the law does not allow for a bail-in. I ask all Australians to listen more closely. Listen for their proof. Listen: there is none. There's no legal opinion. There's nothing but bland assurances from self-interested public servants hoping that constant repetition will fool the public. Here's my argument: the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Act 2018 that was passed in the dead of night, with just seven senators present, uses weasel words to hide the reality. The wording does allow for the banking regulator, APRA, to instruct the banks to bail in retail deposit accounts. The protections that the tired old parties are relying on for the supposed opposite case are contained not in the crisis resolution powers act but in the Banking Act. That is what they're relying on. Their argument is a nonsense, because the emergency provisions powers in the crisis resolution powers act override the everyday protections in the Banking Act. That's why the government has an emergency powers act—to provide extra powers in an emergency. This is not just my opinion; it's the International Monetary Fund's opinion. The IMF said that the new 'catch-all' directions powers in the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Act 2018 provide APRA with the flexibility to make directions to the banks 'that are not contemplated by the other kinds of general directions listed in the Banking Act'. That's it. It went on to say that APRA's direction powers are 'a key element in the resolution process' for a distressed bank and that APRA could order a bank to recapitalise using the funds of unsecured creditors. The IMF went on to define unsecured creditors as shareholders and retail depositors. Liberal MP Tim Wilson, Chair of the House Standing Committee on Economics, has admitted the crisis resolution powers act does allow for a bail-in. Liberal senator Amanda Stoker in a letter to a constituent admitted that legislation allows for a bail-in. Yet their party bosses say the complete opposite. Why would they do that? The answer, yet again, is: because of our international obligations. The G20 and the IMF have dictated that taxpayers' money can't be used to rescue a bank. The tired old parties know that letting unelected bureaucrats in New York, Brussels and Geneva tell Australians what to do in a crisis does not pass the pub test, so the tired old parties hide the facts and contradict reality using weasel words. It's instructional to note that New Zealand's response to the same IMF and G20 instructions is to do the opposite of what our government has done. The Kiwis dutifully wrote their bail-in laws and made them honest and transparent. If a bank fails, it closes, pays off its debts using depositor funds and then reopens the next day. Depositors can then access what remains of their money, if there is any. I am not suggesting that the New Zealand model is better. More honest? Yes. Better? No. There is a simple solution for bank failures. When a bank fails, the government could issue bonds. Currently we're offering just one per cent interest on bonds, so it's not a costly option. We would then use that money to buy shares in the failing bank. That injects enough capital for the bank to survive. We'd then invest those shares with a future fund, who pay that small interest payment on the bonds. In a few years those shares will be worth money again and the future fund can sell them back into the market in an orderly fashion. In this simple One Nation bank survival plan, taxpayers' money would not be used to save the bank, so our IMF and G20 masters should be pleased. Nobody in our process loses money. Depositors keep their cash. Banks keep trading. Mum-and-dad shareholders retain the value of their shares over the medium term. What is the Labor and LNP track record on corporate bailouts? Both gave foreign car companies billions and then watched them shut up shop as soon as the money tap was turned off. If we'd been asking for shares for that money, we would now own the car company and we would still have a car-manufacturing sector. We would still have all those wonderful breadwinner jobs for workers. Prime Minister Gillard gave ABC child care $120 million, not in exchange for shares; it was another gift from taxpayers. If we'd asked for shares in ABC child care in return for the bailout, those shares would be worth $250 million today—double what Julia Gillard, as Prime Minister, gave them. Our response to a bank failure should not be, 'Go and steal it from customers.' Our response should be to use capitalism to fix crony capitalism. Labor have a lot to say about their Financial Claims Scheme guarantee. The Financial Claims Scheme guarantee will advance up to $20 billion per bank to protect deposits if a bank fails. Let's take a closer look at the Financial Claims Scheme guarantee. The vast majority of the $1 trillion in retail deposit accounts is held by the big four banks, and $20 billion times four is only $80 billion, so the Financial Claims Scheme guarantee will save less than 10 per cent of bank deposits. The Financial Claims Scheme guarantee is not active and is not funded. There's no money sitting there ready to go—not one cent. Should a bank fail, the Treasurer must issue a notice to activate the scheme. Yet the Labor scheme uses taxpayer money to bail out banks, so the Treasurer will not issue the notice, because the notice would breach IMF orders. In the unlikely event of the Financial Claims Scheme guarantee being activated, there's a second problem that Labor never discusses. Once the Financial Claims Scheme guarantee is activated, APRA must liquidate the bank to get taxpayers' money back. How much does anyone think will be available to retail depositors if the bank is liquidated? And how long will taxpayers have to wait to get their money back from the liquidator? The Financial Claims Scheme guarantee is worse than a con job. It will make things worse. Earlier, I said that once a bank fails, whether that failure is public or known only to the regulator, the Financial Claims Scheme guarantee can be activated if the Treasurer so chooses. The whole point of a bail-in is to prevent a bank failing. This means the bail-in can only come first and will come first. Then, if the bail-in doesn't work, the Financial Claims Scheme guarantee is triggered and 10 per cent of bank deposits are saved and the bank is liquidated. This is what the Liberals, Nationals and Labor are relying on to falsely tell everyday Australians that our money is safe. Yet the reality is that it's not safe. Following the dictates of unelected globalist masters yet again is more important to them than looking out for the interests of everyday Australians. The government has advanced a criticism of my bill that the definition of 'retail deposit account' introduces a different definition than is contained elsewhere in the Banking Act. This argument fails because the only place the phrase 'retail deposit account' appears in the Banking Act is in my amendment. We did that deliberately so as not to interfere with the rest of the act. Criticism dismissed!—but questions about the government's competence and level of integrity asked. In conclusion, at no time has the government, the Treasurer or APRA actually said they will not order a bail-in. These government agencies duck the question and say, 'APRA doesn't have the power'. Well, my bill clears that up. My bill adds one clause to the Banking Act which simply says that APRA does not have the power to order a bail-in. No other powers are affected—none! Passing my bill ensures that everyone will read it the same way. Fellow senators: let Australians know that their money is safe in a bank. Let Australians know that there's no need to stuff cash under the bed. Even the Australian Banking Association said in its submission that if there's any confusion about what the law actually says then consider passing my bill. What a great idea! Let's pass this bill to keep people's money safe. Let's pass this bill to keep people's confidence in the banking system. But, above all, let's pass this bill to keep people's money safe. 11:36 Senator BROCKMAN 30484 Western Australia I too rise to speak on the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020—a private senator's bill introduced by the One Nation party. At the outset I'll start with the area where we can agree, and that is that our banking system is vital to a strongly functioning economy and that confidence in our banking system is vitally important. But I think the history of the last few decades—certainly, going back to well before my memory—is that we do have a strong and well-functioning banking system in Australia. In fact, I would contend that the Australian banking system has been the envy of much of the world over a sustained period of time in terms of its stability and in providing a service to the Australian people. Personally, I would like to see much more competition in our banking sector but I think that, overall, and certainly within my lifetime, we've seen a banking system that has been very safe and secure, and it has underpinned a very strongly performing Australian economy. The economic shock brought on by the current pandemic situation has been a significant and fundamental economic shock which has reverberated right around the world. We've seen many jurisdictions with significant recessions and significant declines in GDP—some in the double digits. And we've seen not just the Australian banking system but also the international banking system stand up remarkably well. The pandemic was, in a sense, a left-field event. It wasn't caused by an underlying structural problem within the financial system as, for example, the 2008-09 global financial crisis certainly was—so there are different drivers. But in the face of a significant economic shock in the last 12 months we've seen a very strong, reliable and well-trusted banking system. Senator Roberts—through you, Acting Deputy President Polley—some Australians do choose to keep a store of value in cash. I think that linking that to a fundamental distrust of our banking system is simply a misunderstanding of why those Australians choose to do that. Certainly, it's a gross simplification of the reason some Australians choose to keep a store of value in cash. The central premise of this bill is that there is an underlying ambiguity introduced into the banking act by the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Act 2018. In this understanding of the crisis powers act, the conversion and write-off of normal deposit accounts in the event of a banking failure could be allowed. This is what people mean when they talk about a bail-in. In part, this is based on section 11CAA of the crisis resolution act, which added a number of definitions relating to the conversion and write-off provisions, including the following: … conversion and write ‑ off provisions means the provisions of the prudential standards that relate to the conversion or writing off of: (a) Additional Tier 1 and Tier 2 capital; or (b) any other instrument. It is contended that the 'any other instrument' phrase is open-ended and creates a bail-in opportunity. In looking at this bill, the Senate Economics Legislation Committee took extensive evidence from members of the general public who expressed the views that Senator Roberts expressed here today, but we also took evidence from experts, including the RBA, Treasury and APRA. Senator Roberts spent some time dismissing their views, but we do have a trusted banking system. We have a number of independent regulators within the system, and I think we need to consider their words very strongly when we are talking about making changes to legislation in this area, and their evidence was very clear that there is no ambiguity in this space in need of rectification. Under current laws and regulations, it is not possible for APRA to require banks to bail in deposit accounts. The Reserve Bank, APRA and Treasury all agree that the Banking Act does not imply that losses could be imposed on deposit holders or give APRA any additional powers that could be used to the detriment of retail depositors. Depositors are in fact safeguarded under a range of protections. There is the Financial Claims Scheme, which the Treasurer may activate in the very unlikely event that there is a bank failure. Upon activation, APRA provides depositors with access to their deposits, up to a $250,000 cap, within seven days. This covers 99 per cent of deposit accounts in full and around 80 per cent of household deposits by value. We also have the depositor preference system, which applies to deposits above the Financial Claims Scheme cap. It means that in the event of a bank failure—again, a very unlikely event—the claims of depositors rank above those of all equity holders and creditors after the government has been reimbursed for any amounts paid out under the Financial Claims Scheme. There are also, of course, numerous layers of prudential regulation and interventions APRA can make to resolve financial institutions in distress, such as recapitalisation, statutory management and transfer powers. I wish to go into a bit more detail on this issue of 'any other instrument', as set out in the crisis resolution powers bill. As a matter of law, the reference to 'any other instrument' in that act, under subdivision B, conversion and write-off provisions, cannot be interpreted to include bank deposits for the following reasons. It refers to provisions of prudential standards relating to the conversion or writing off. APRA's prudential standards do not require such provisions to be included in bank deposits. The prudential framework cannot be altered to include bank deposits, because APRA is constrained by the objects of the Banking Act and any such attempt would be found to be invalid. Principles of statutory interpretation would require a court to view the general words to be limited by the specific reference to additional tier 1 and tier 2 capital, and only instruments of a similar nature would fall within the general definition. Retail deposits are fundamentally different to additional tier 1 and tier 2 capital. I wish to quote from a letter from APRA on this issue—for those members of the public who are listening to this debate—to demonstrate the level of confidence that they express in their position and the position of the government on this issue: … it might be helpful to clarify a recent public misconception about the interaction between APRA's twin objectives – to protect depositors and financial system stability. Following my previous response to this committee of 15 July 2020, APRA's financial system stability objective has been characterised as an alternative to depositor protection that could be used to implement measures contrary to depositor protection (such as bail-in of deposits). This characterisation is incorrect. As the Banking Act 1959 (Banking Act) makes clear, APRA's twin objectives are complementary. This is evident when considering 'depositor bail-in'. A 'bail-in of deposits' would offend both APRA's depositor protection objective and its financial stability objective. A bail-in of deposits would not only cause depositors at the 'bailed-in' institution to lose a portion of their deposit funds, it would reduce the confidence of depositors across the banking system thereby reducing financial system stability. It would also starve authorised deposit-taking institutions of the stable deposit funding on which they rely to provide credit to the economy. This is why APRA has described depositor protection as a paramount objective—it lies at the heart of both of our statutory objectives under the Banking Act. As such, APRA has never sought, nor supports, a 'bail-in of deposits' power. That's a very clear statement of principle from the regulator, and I think makes it very clear that there is no conflict within the Banking Act. In fact, the twin purposes of the Banking Act are complementary. APRA would never act in this way because it would cause the depositors at the bailed-in institution to lose a portion of their deposit funds. On the other hand it would also reduce financial system stability because it would undermine confidence in the sector and it would starve those same institutions of the deposit funding they use to provide credit within the economy. Australia has not legislated for the bail-in of deposit accounts because it is contrary to APRA's purpose and objectives. The objectives of the Financial Stability Board bail-in reforms have been achieved without needing to do so. Instead of legislating for deposit account bail-in, APRA requires authorised deposit taking institutions to maintain higher levels of equity than most peer jurisdictions and hold additional loss absorbing capacity, which uses contractual conversion provisions in financial instruments that will convert into equity at a specific trigger point if an entity gets into financial difficulty. These are known as the additional tier 1 and tier 2 capital which can be bailed in or converted. An additional matter is that terms and conditions of deposit accounts cannot be changed to allow bail-in. Approved deposit-taking institutions are prevented from unilaterally changing terms and conditions for customer deposits to facilitate a conversion or write-off because it would be inconsistent with unfair contract terms legislation under the ASIC Act. We see there that for a variety of reasons this legislation is unnecessary. It seeks to solve a problem that does not exist. As he finished up there Senator Roberts said, 'If there's nothing to fix then why not pass the legislation?' We shouldn't, in this place, pass legislation to fix a problem that does not exist. I think the very clear words that I have quoted today from APRA, from the Treasury, from what we heard in the Senate Economics Legislation Committee and from the Reserve Bank of Australia all indicate that this is a solution for a problem that does not need fixing and, in fact, does not exist. 11:48 Senator McALLISTER 121628 New South Wales The Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020 amends the Banking Act to ensure that bank deposits cannot be converted to shares by the holding bank—a process that has become known as a bail-in. It would further prevent Commonwealth laws from authorising bail-ins of deposit accounts. It's quite a technical bill and it's unusual for technical amendments to banking legislation to become matters of public interest. It's true that both this bill and the issue that it seeks to deal with are probably not on the radar of most ordinary Australians. But it's impossible to speak about this bill without noting the extraordinary interest in it by a section of the Australian community. Like most of my colleagues, my office has received a significant volume of calls about bail-ins from people who are highly motivated an engaged about this issue. We have sometimes heard from individuals four or five times over the course of the past few years. Regardless of the issue, it is always great to see community members engaging with the work of the parliament—whether it is signing a petition, calling their MP or making a submission to an inquiry. I would encourage anyone who has taken an interest in this issue to continue to engage with these and the other issues that come before this place. We benefit from an engaged and interested citizenry. But, as I began by noting, it is unusual for a technical banking issue to receive this much attention. I think it is due in large part to the Morrison government's failure to reassure people about the safety of their retirement savings. The government's mishandling of its own communications about this and other banking related matters has given Australians unnecessary concern about the safety of their savings. It's worth considering the history of this issue. Concerns about bail-ins came to prominence during the global financial crisis. The events in Greece deeply unsettled many people, and Australians wanted to know that their life savings would not be used to underwrite mistakes made by financial institutions. Australia's financial system made it through the GFC largely unscathed, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Rudd-Gillard government, efforts that often were not supported by those opposite. And there were no bail-ins in Australia. So why are we talking about it now, more than a decade later? The current set of concerns about bail-ins seems to have come following the introduction of the Financial Sector Legislation Amendment (Crisis Resolution Powers and Other Measures) Bill 2017. That legislation gave APRA the power to allow financial instruments known as hybrid securities. I think the government mishandled its own legislation in the debate about this legislation. It failed to properly engage with the concerns that many Australians had about the operation of that bill, and I think that was a mistake. People are of course justified in wanting to have confidence in the banking system and in the security of their deposits. The callers to my office about this issue are not wealthy people. Many are Australians with modest backgrounds who have worked hard and lived careful lives so they can enjoy some measure of economic security as they get older. They are entitled to expect that the government provide them with that confidence. Unfortunately, the government's own actions mean that many Australians do not trust them to do the right thing when it comes to the banking sector and retirement income policy. People can be forgiven for being suspicious of the Morrison government's approach to the banking sector given its history on the issue. The government voted against the establishment of a banking royal commission not just once but a staggering 26 times. This was while Mr Morrison was the Treasurer and nominally responsible for Australia's banking and financial system. There has still not been a compelling or credible explanation proffered by those opposite for their opposition to the establishment of this royal commission, and it is certainly not justifiable in light of what came out during the course of the commission. People across the country told devastating stories about mistreatment by the banks causing physical, psychological, social and economic harm. The evidence provided to the commission was overwhelming and Commissioner Hayne noted that members of the public submitted more than 10,000 complaints about financial services entities by using the committee's webform. In addition, there were many thousands of telephone calls and emails to the office of the royal commission. It's understandable, then, that people may be suspicious of this government's bona fides on banking policy given the length they went to in this parliament to prevent this commission from being established. What have they done since the royal commission ended and handed down its report? After receiving the banking royal commission's final report the Prime Minister and Treasurer Frydenberg took six months to release an implementation timetable. One year after the report was on their desk, the government had completed just six of the 76 recommendations made by Commissioner Hayne. Labor was disappointed by the government's decision to further delay implementation of the banking royal commission's recommendations. These are important reforms and they should have been prioritised by this government. Not only has the government dragged its feet in implementing the recommendations of the royal commission; it has now broken a promise. Responsible lending laws are a key part of the protection for consumers in our financial system. They help ensure that people are not taken advantage of by predatory lenders and saddled with debt they cannot possibly repay. Retaining responsible lending laws in their current form was the royal commission's first recommendation. The government agreed to this recommendation, and Commissioner Hayne himself described them in his report as critical in ensuring good-faith negotiations on loan products between banks and customers. The Morrison government has announced its intention to repeal responsible lending provisions. Let's be clear: there is no good evidence that repealing responsible lending provisions will help boost our economy. There is plenty of evidence that this will harm vulnerable consumers. Financial Counselling Australia are on the record as saying that removing responsible lending obligations will free banks up to aggressively push credit onto their customers. And they're not alone in having that concern. Recently, more than 200 community groups and financial experts wrote to parliamentarians arguing against the repeal of responsible lending provisions. So we have Mr Morrison opposing the royal commission as Treasurer, delaying implementation of the recommendations as Prime Minister, and now backflipping and removing key consumer protections, having been re-elected. You can understand why people might be suspicious of the Morrison government's banking policies. You can also be forgiven for being suspicious about the Morrison government's approach to retirement savings, given its history on the issue. Australia's retirement system is often described as having three pillars: superannuation, the pension and independent savings. What has this government done to each? The coalition has a long track record of undermining Australia's superannuation system. In parliament back in September 1995, then backbencher Mr Abbott described compulsory superannuation as 'one of the biggest con jobs', and the coalition is still at war with the superannuation industry. Part of the government's response to the coronavirus induced recession was to encourage workers to withdraw from their superannuation. This has come at a real cost to young workers. Workers aged 30 who withdrew $20,000 from their superannuation could be $69,000 worse off in retirement, and the consequences for younger Australians could be much, much greater. And for what? Analysis suggests that large amounts of this super was spent on discretionary spending. At the same time, the government has been suggesting that it may not proceed with the legislated increases to compulsory superannuation. So we have this government telling people to run down their super while at the same time backing away from legislated increases to the super rate that would help restore and rebuild those balances for a secure retirement. What about the second pillar of the retirement system—the pension? In the 2014 budget, the coalition government announced changes to the pension, with the pension age to be raised to 70. There are also changes and cuts to supplements, and since then pensioners have had to fight for the government to use fair deeming rates to account for the value of their other assets. So we've had this government reducing eligibility for the pension and proposing to cut the rates for those who remain on it. Given the government's assault on two of the pillars of Australia's retirement system, it is not really surprising that people might be suspicious of their intentions in relation to the third: independent savings. As I said earlier, there are countless Australians who have come from modest backgrounds and worked hard and lived careful lives so that they can enjoy a measure of economic security as they get older, and they do deserve confidence that the banking and financial system will not take advantage of them. Unfortunately, the bill before us today is not the solution to these concerns. There are real and credible concerns that this bill may undermine existing banking regulations. Australian banks are supported by a strong system of prudential and other regulation that should avoid the need for any such measure outlined in this bill. APRA and Treasury have stated it is not possible, under current legislation, for banks to bail in deposit accounts. The legislative certainty on that question already exists. Every bank deposit in Australia is protected from bank failure by the Financial Claims Scheme, which was established by Labor in 2008. This means that every deposit in a bank, credit union or building society is guaranteed up to a value of $250,000 per account holder. This scheme means that account holders are protected against bank failure, even in the worst-case scenario. APRA regularly conducts stress testing of banks to ensure that they are ready for a potential crisis. Treasury has also expressed concerns that the bill introduces a definition of 'deposit account' which is not then used consistently in potentially relevant places throughout the Banking Act—for instance, in the depositor priority provisions in section 13A. This would introduce multiple definitions to capture a single concept in the Banking Act, which would risk introducing uncertainty regarding the interpretation of the Banking Act. In addition to this, the measures outlined in the bill have not been a feature of previous responses to financial crises in any major country. The government does need to do a better job of responding to people's financial concerns. Our financial system depends on confidence, and the measure of interest in this bill shows that a portion of the Australian community does not have confidence that their savings will be protected. It's understandable that people are suspicious, given this government's track record on retirement policy and banking policy, and it's not enough to say that things are just fine. The government needs to show that it has ordinary Australians' financial futures as its core priority. 12:00 Senator BRAGG 256063 New South Wales I rise to address this bill, the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020, as well. In doing so, I think it's always good to reflect upon what my good friend Mr Paul Keating has said when he has said that banking is the artery of the economy. It is very important that we get banking and financial sector policy right, because, ultimately, the flow of capital and credit into Australian businesses is something which underpins our prosperity. Of course you can't have a fair society unless you have an economy upon which to build it. Over the long run of history, our contribution to banking and financial sector policy on this side of the chamber is absolutely assured. The Menzies government established the Reserve Bank. This Banking Act we're referring to today was an act of the Menzies government. And, in the years beyond the Menzies period, there were the financial system inquiries that led to, in a large degree, the modern banking and financial sector architecture in Australia. They started with the Campbell inquiry, commissioned by John Howard and Malcolm Fraser. A lot of the recommendations from that inquiry, to be fair, were implemented by the Hawke government, to their great historical credit. The entry of foreign banks and the like ensured that there was more competition in the eighties, and then, fast forwarding into the nineties, there was the Wallis inquiry. The Wallis inquiry, which was commissioned by Peter Costello and John Howard, looked at the standing of the financial sector in the mid-nineties. It recommended the creation of APRA and ASIC to form the twin-peaks regulatory framework that you now see in Australia. We had the financial crisis in 2008-09, and that was effectively a stress test for our banks and our financial sector. I have to say, just as we have seen in this coronavirus recession, that Australia's institutions held up very well. That is partly because of the twin peaks authority, or the breakdown of responsibilities between a conduct regulator and a prudential regulator. It is also that APRA was established as a standalone prudential regulator, a regulator that was to focus on risk and focus on governance. Also, as my colleague Senator Brockman mentioned, it is a regulator which really has two key objectives. One objective is to assure financial stability; the other objective is to protect depositors and policyholders. That really takes us to the core of this bill today and reminds us again of what APRA is there to do every day as the prudential regulator. APRA administers the Financial Claims Scheme, and we all recall the way that the Financial Claims Scheme was legislated by the Rudd government. It was, for a time, the Rudd government's policy that there would be an unlimited bank guarantee. That caused enormous concern in financial markets and led to the freezing of non-bank investments virtually overnight, because you had a panicked response from an inexperienced person who claimed to be providing the world's biggest deposit guarantee—unlimited. That was then scaled back to $1 million, because the huge financial disruption that had caused to cash management trusts and cash-like investments was known. Ultimately, the Financial Claims Scheme has been scaled to a quarter of a million dollars, and that is limited to an institution. The Financial Claims Scheme exists in case there is a major dislocation and a failure or a partial failure of an ADI or a bank. There is a very important seal that can be used by ADIs, which allows them to assure Australians that their money is secure. I don't doubt the sincerity of Senator Roberts and others who have brought forward this bill today. They have said that there is a genuine concern in the Australian community about whether or not people's money is safe. I understand that, and one thing that I think we can do better in the future is ensure that people are aware that we have the Financial Claims Scheme to protect people's money. The seal, which can be used by banks, probably should be more widely used. Currently, this is not compulsory; a bank doesn't have to use a seal, because it is voluntary. But, if people saw that their bank had the Commonwealth coat of arms on the seal, they would perhaps have more confidence that their deposits would not be affected should there be a major financial dislocation and a failure of financial institutions. As I said, the financial crisis was a stress test for our institutions, and none of our major financial institutions failed. Yes, there was a retail deposit guarantee, which, as I said, was shambolically announced by the Rudd government as an unlimited guarantee but ultimately landed at $250,000. There was also a wholesale funding guarantee, which I guess provided more money for banks that were struggling to secure credit on the wholesale funding markets. But the financial crisis tested these institutions and they stood up pretty well, and during the COVID crisis we've seen a similar pattern being repeated. On one side you've got depositor protection, which is part of APRA's mandate and comes to life through the Financial Claims Scheme, and on the other side you've got financial stability and APRA deploying capital adequacy requirements. APRA said in March this year: Over the past decade, the Australian banking system has built up substantial capital buffers. The highest quality form of capital, Common Equity Tier 1 … reached $235 billion at the end of 2019. As a result, banks are typically maintaining capital levels well above minimum regulatory requirements. For the four majors, APRA said that you've got a common equity tier ratio of more than 10½ per cent of risk weighed assets, which is, by global standards, quite a high level of capital. As I said, on one side you've got the claims scheme and on the other side you've got very strong capital adequacy requirements for banks. Of course, I should reflect on APRA. I think APRA has been a good banking regulator. The fact that it has presided over multiple crises in the finance sector without a banking calamity, in the form of a run on the banks or a major dent, is a good thing. There was, of course, a royal commission into the banks a couple of years ago. That profiled, for anyone to see, the foul and disgusting behaviour, particularly in the wealth management sector where we repeatedly saw super funds putting the interests of shareholders ahead of the interests of their members. A large part of the government's plan to adopt the Hayne royal commission recommendations really does go to tidying up a lot of the cowboy behaviour that we saw in that wealth management sector. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 Senator Gallacher, a point of order? Senator Gallacher 204953 Senator Bragg started off with a statement about his good friend Paul Keating, and he's now has gone on to mire the superannuation industry with untruths. I would suggest that he's misleading the Senate— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 Thank you Senator Gallacher. They are debating points. Please resume your seat. Please resume your seat. Continue, Senator Bragg. Senator BRAGG 256063 Yes, APRA has done a good job on banking stability, but I don't think APRA has done a good job in superannuation. It is disgusting, the scale and degree of the waste of money that you see in the superannuation industry. APRA has proven, at successive Senate estimates, that it won't enforce the laws that this parliament gave it to enforce. There is a law called a 'sole purpose test', which means that the super funds are only supposed to spend money on their members' retirement outcomes. But they're setting up boondoggle propaganda outfits like The New Daily and they're putting Greg Combet's head on TV, spending millions and millions of dollars advertising during football grand finals and the like. All of this is vanity and power when their job is to actually be there for their members. Their job is not to run an agenda for the Labor Party, or the trade unions, or the banks or any other interests. The job of super trustees is to work for the workers of Australia who put their money into these funds and who have been treated very poorly for 30 years. So, yes, APRA has done a good job on banking, but APRA has done a terrible job when it comes to enforcing the superannuation laws. It's very important that this chamber, when it considers the budget reforms that our government is pursuing, does give APRA more power, because they're not using the fiduciary duty they already have to protect members' savings. We're now going to give them a best financial interest test so that the super fund members know that their money is not going to be wasted on stupid things like newspapers which are used to attack political opponents or opponents of the super industry, or endless vain advertising, as we've seen with Greg Combet putting his own face on TV, not to advertise the product but to advertise politics and a brand. Who can think of any other lobby group that has spent $40 million advertising, as we've seen in the past few months? It is really disgusting. It shows the largesse of the super industry comes about because it is compulsory, and because for 30 years they've opened the door and money has just fallen in. It's not good enough. I look forward to APRA becoming a much better protector of members' savings once this parliament gives it better powers. 12:13 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland I move: That the question be now put. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that the Banking Amendment (Deposits) Bill 2020, as moved by Senator Roberts, be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [12:17]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)

12 AYES Faruqi, M Hanson, P (teller) Hanson-Young, SC Lambie, J McKim, NJ Rice, J Roberts, M Siewert, R Steele-John, J Thorpe, LA Waters, LJ Whish-Wilson, PS 32 NOES Askew, W Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Chandler, C Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Gallacher, AM Gallagher, KR Henderson, SM Hughes, H Lines, S McCarthy, M (teller) McDonald, S McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Patrick, RL Payne, MA Reynolds, L Ruston, A Scarr, P Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA Stoker, AJ Van, D Watt, M 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 21

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021

Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021

Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021

Second Reading 21 12:21 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I rise to make a contribution on the 2020-21 appropriation bills being considered by the Senate today, Appropriation Bill (No.1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021. Put simply, the budget contained in these bills is emblematic of the coalition government's abject failure of economic vision and of its fiscal management over its entire time in office. Years of Liberal economic mismanagement and inaction on reform meant that Australian households, our economy and the federal budget confronted the very serious challenges and uncertainties of the fire season and the COVID-19 pandemic from a position of weakness, not strength. The facts here cannot be disputed. Even before the virus and the worst of the fires hit, under the Liberals' watch Australian families were struggling and the broader economy was floundering. The national accounts, prior to the unprecedented events of 2020, exposed the full extent of the Liberals' failure. Quarterly growth had slowed to 0.5 per cent in the December quarter, down from 0.6 per cent in the previous quarter. Annual growth was well below trend, at 2.2 per cent, and was already a full percentage point below what it was before Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg took over. The private economy did not grow at all in the quarter and had stalled for the entirety of the preceding year. Growth in annual consumption had declined to its slowest pace since the global financial crisis. Total private business investment was in reverse, having now declined for three consecutive quarters, and was down 1.4 per cent over the year. As a percentage of nominal GDP, it's around the lowest level since the early 1990s recession. And wages growth had been stagnant for some time. Quarterly growth in average compensation per employee had slowed even further in the December 19 quarter, despite Australians already experiencing the slowest wage growth ever recorded. The nation's finances had not fared any better under three Liberal prime ministers and three treasurers. It cannot go unremarked upon that Mr Morrison, in the other place, was the Treasurer for three of these years and the Prime Minister in the lead-up to the pandemic arriving on our shores. For the last seven years, the coalition government promised to deliver surplus budgets and to pay down debt. In reality, this government has broken its promises to the Australian people every single year. Instead, they had doubled debt and delivered six budget deficits, even before the pandemic hit. This is the context in which the Morrison government's 2020-21 budget must be considered. Turning now to the budget presented in these appropriation bills: the government has delivered a budget that, despite containing record levels of spending and charting a course to more than $1 trillion of debt, fails in its most pressing duty. It fails to create jobs for Australians and fails to build for their future. It does contain a lot of headline-grabbing names, as we've become used to during this pandemic, like JobMaker and JobTrainer, but the problem is that not many jobs are being created. In fact, the latest labour force figures out of the ABS told quite the opposite story—the story that Mr Morrison and Mr Frydenberg didn't want you to hear. The story was that 25,000 more people actually lost their jobs in October, taking the unemployment rate to seven per cent. Put simply, this is a budget that focuses on announcements for the Prime Minister but which, in reality, leaves way too many Australians behind. As I just noted, not only will this budget deliver in excess of $1 trillion of public debt and $98 billion in spending but it keeps the amount of people without jobs too high for too long. It contains record levels of expenditure but leaves so many Australians behind without the support they need to make ends meet, without certainty and without any hope. Perversely, it prioritises the funnelling of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money into funds specially set up for the coalition government to rort and pork-barrel at the expense of hardworking Australians. And it ignores the enormous social and economic opportunities of addressing key policy areas, such as child care, aged care—in desperate need of reform—and, of course, social housing, a great way to drive jobs and to provide a lasting social benefit for so many Australians who are doing it tough. This year's budget demonstrates a staggering lack of ambition on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. If we look at the numbers contained in these bills—and against the backdrop of the memorable lines from this lot, lecturing year after year about debt-and-deficit disaster and a budget emergency, and who promised a surplus every year, to pay down debt and to get debt under control—they show that we'll have a deficit of $213.7 billion this year, the largest dollar-value deficit ever. There will be almost half a trillion dollars of cumulative deficits over the forward estimates, deficits as far as the eye can see, with the deficit never getting below $50 billion in any year over the median term—that is, up to 2030-31. We see debt rising to $1 trillion and net debt this year at $703.2 billion, growing to $966.2 billion by the end of the forward estimates. This is after this government inherited net debt in the order of $180 billion when it came to office. Gross debt this year will reach $872 billion, growing to $1.1 trillion by the end of the forward estimates and peaking at $1.7 trillion over the median term. There's also $98 billion in new spending in this budget, all of it structurally built into the budget—not offset, but contributing to spending as a proportion of the size of the economy being higher in every year of the forward estimates and the highest in nearly 40 years. The staggering figures in this bill don't stop on the fiscal side of things. The economic numbers are deeply concerning reading too: record low wages growth set to continue, stagnating below two per cent until at least 2023-24; and high and worsening unemployment heading into Christmas this year, peaking at eight per cent in December 2020 and falling to 6½ per cent at the end of 2021-22 but not falling below six per cent until the end of 2023-24. It's at this point that the government has signalled it will begin its job of budget repair. Time will tell what this really means, but I do think it's interesting that it seems the government has decided that a six per cent unemployment rate—or comfortably below it; we tried to get to this in estimates—is the point where significant budget savings will be made to return the budget to order. That will still leave hundreds of thousands of people sitting on the unemployment queues. In addition to these figures, the Reserve Bank has recently said in its Statement of Monetary Policy that GDP won't reach its pre-pandemic level until at least 2021, that wages growth will be low for a considerable period and that employment won't return to its pre-pandemic levels until 2022. When we consider the budget and the wider economy in these terms, the picture is definitely a sobering one. Quite often we have these economic discussions in terms of numbers, using numbers to tell the story, but the story for so many Australians at the moment is one of worry, of hardship and of a very, very difficult year, and of concern that next year is going to be just as hard, if not harder. It's the human story behind these numbers that really should focus the mind of the government because it's about the people who are relying on JobKeeper and on JobSeeker, and about the two million Australians relying on the coronavirus supplement to help them get through. It is about young people leaving university and school and wondering how they are going to start their careers with the impact of high levels of youth unemployment. It is, for older workers who have lost their jobs, the thought that they won't be able to get into new employment or that new employment opportunities won't be for them. It's the worry of people who have been living on the pension as they raise children. It's the ones whose rent is more than they can afford and who are at risk of losing their house and can't afford the mortgage. It's all of these stories that should focus the minds of us in this place and that we should all commit to caring about and tailoring solutions for available to the national government to make sure that their needs are supported. You would think that with all of this economic data, with the story that's provided through the economic forecasts and with the policy response from the government we would see more of an effort being made to battle some of these serious system failures that we have, particularly in aged care. We would use this opportunity where we are spending billions of dollars to try to leave a lasting legacy for those who will have to pay down this debt. It is about making sure women are able to return to the workforce and that they're not prevented by policy settings which discourage them from working or make it impossible for them to take on an extra shift or an extra day. If we look at what the Department of Social Services were saying when they updated a recent committee hearing—I think it was at estimates—they are expecting 1.8 million Australians to be relying on unemployment support by the end of the year. This is happening at the time that the government has decided to reduce financial support to this group of people and, indeed, end financial support through the extension of the coronavirus supplement in March 2021 at a time when we have millions of Australians relying on those payments. Labor have been clear from the beginning on the economic response. We are not criticising the government for spending money where it is needed, but we have been critical about the quality of the spending. We have been critical of the government setting up these funds. Depending how you count it, between $5 and $7 billion worth of funds have been established for ministers to allocate expenditure from. Many of these funds in history have conveniently preferenced coalition seats, either targeted or marginal, and we are concerned about money being funnelled that way without proper scrutiny, with ministerial pens approving large amounts of taxpayers' funds to go to particular projects for particular parts of Australia at a time when every dollar spent is a borrowed dollar. So we will continue to focus on the quality of the spend and making sure that every dollar that is borrowed is being used to support Australians, whether it's to create jobs, protect jobs or support families to put food on the table and pay bills. That is the focus we want the government to have, because it's Australians that deserve their priority attention, not their political outcomes. This budget has finally put some flesh on the bones of the JobMaker plan. This was announced, as people might not recall, months ahead of the October budget, but no-one seemed to know what it was meant to do, how it was meant to do it or who was in charge of it. It took about four months for the detail to be provided and $74 billion of the measures out of the government's expenditure in this budget focused on the JobMaker plan, whether it be through the hiring credit or some of the other initiatives, such as to try to increase business investment, infrastructure spending or the manufacturing strategy. Time will tell whether this emphasis through JobMaker actually delivers the outcomes we need to see. We know that they've been dodgy on the numbers in the past. We saw the Prime Minister on the weekend again saying that HomeBuilder had supported a million jobs in the construction industry. But we know the Treasury has a very different view of the jobs numbers that you can attach to the HomeBuilder program. For the JobMaker hiring credit, again, the government used the figure in their budget of a million new jobs, and 450,000 of them were supposedly created through the JobMaker hiring credit. When proper scrutiny was brought to this number, the Treasury admitted that, in terms of additionality, they thought the JobMaker hiring credit would create approximately 45,000 new jobs. That's just 10 per cent of what the government has detailed in their budget papers. From the opposition's point of view, we will be closely watching this. We'll be closely watching the quality of the spend and the government's claims about the number of jobs that these programs funded by taxpayers actually deliver. We will be making sure that the government is not withdrawing support too early from too many Australians who are relying on it. If we think of the 1½ million Australians receiving JobKeeper, the 1½ million Australians on JobSeeker and the two million Australians who are getting the coronavirus supplement, I think that sends a pretty strong message that there are millions of people in Australia relying on this government to do the right thing by them and not withdraw the money too soon. I move: At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate: (1) notes the 2020–21 budget: (a) will deliver a decade of deficits and accrue one trillion dollars of debt, (b) spends $98 billion but keeps unemployment too high for too long, (c) continues to leave too many Australians behind without support, (d) fails to address key policy areas such as childcare, aged care and social housing, (e) fails to outline a vision for the country, and (f) prioritises the funnelling of billions of taxpayers' dollars for the Morrison Government to rort and pork barrel at the expense of hard-working Australians; and (2) calls on the Government to provide appropriate levels of resourcing to the Australian National Audit Office so that they can maintain audit scrutiny throughout the economic crisis." 12:36 Senator SHELDON 168275 New South Wales I rise to speak on the government Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021. At a time when our economy and the working people of Australia face a crisis on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, the once-in-a-century pandemic has very quickly become a once-in-a-century employment catastrophe, with nearly one million unemployed and another two million underemployed. Australian households, in the hundreds of thousands, have no-one in work or do not have enough work to pay even the basics of rent, mortgage, food and bills. The government expects that tens of thousands more will lose their jobs before Christmas and thousands more businesses are still at risk of going under. It's a deeply anxious time and, for many Australians, 2020 will be a deep scar. The scarring began with the 2019-20 bushfires and will end with a COVID Christmas. Christmas, hopefully, will be spent with family and friends. Nevertheless, there will be deep uncertainty for many as to whether they'll have a job or business in 2021. However, there is now some hope on the horizon. State borders are opening and vaccines are looking promising, but the reality is that this recovery will not be painless. For many Australians, there will be a recession in the economy for years to come, if we don't act. The truth is that this government had to be dragged to put in a wage subsidy at all. Labor and the trade union movement were urging them to look at the wage subsidies in the UK, Europe and elsewhere. They made the case that keeping people connected to their jobs through the crisis was the No. 1 priority. Remember in March when they introduced the JobSeeker supplement but no wage subsidy and the mass lay-offs began? It was not until the Prime Minister and the Treasurer saw those Centrelink queues that they began to move. With the hardline ideologists and the coalition caucus pushing against government expenditure on JobKeeper and JobSeeker, the government ended up with a JobKeeper package that left out more than a million casuals, gig workers, workers in the arts, university workers and aviation workers. All these Australians work hard and pay their taxes. Many have families to support. Many are not eligible for JobSeeker either. They're abandoned by this government. Their jobs were considered not worthy of keeping. So, as our borders reopen and businesses start to consider hiring again, the question now becomes: what sort of recovery are we going to have? At the heart of these appropriation bills is how effective this government's spending will be to revive our economy not just in the short term but also so we can have strong secure jobs for the future and the support and policy settings for industries that will be creating these jobs. Will the recovery be a short-term sugar rush of money thrown at some businesses to get them to employ people on a casual or temporary basis only to churn them out for new workers? Will it be a high-profile announcement from the Prime Minister designed to look at if unemployment and sluggish economic demand is being tackled, with little strategy and even less follow-up? Or will it be a government who faces up to the deep structural problems with employment and opportunity in this economy? Problems that we have already seen before the pandemic hit. Problems that are likely to be cemented by this pandemic. Of course, talking about endemic insecure work, growing underemployment, the crisis in skills training and the record low wages growth brought on by the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government's policy of wage suppression is where the appropriations bill comes in. The Australian government has a historic opportunity, in this once-in-a-century crisis, to refashion and rebuild the skills, infrastructure, energy policy and social safety net that all of us need to succeed in the next 100 years. How is the Prime Minister and his government deciding to spend our money? Will people be left behind? Will money be spent on rorts or recovery? The nearly $1 trillion in debt that they have racked up should be expected to get us a long way to tackling the root causes of what was a very sluggish, underperforming economy before COVID. Well, the signs aren't good. Firstly, they're clearly pulling the JobKeeper and JobSeeker supplement out of the economy well too soon. For the 1.5 million Australians still reliant on JobKeeper, the cuts to this subsidy come at the worst possible time. Overnight the Treasurer has been spinning the reduction in people on JobKeeper as a positive story. The numbers are welcome but given the border restrictions easing and the tighter eligibility that is not a big surprise. The real question we should be asking is: why commit to spending hundreds of millions on a wage subsidy if you wrench that money out of the economy before there are viable businesses and jobs to replace it? Why, when we know that low-income people spend pretty much every dollar they get, would you take away the JobSeeker supplement and both injure the bottom line of local business when they're desperate for customers and cruelly drop tens of thousands of families back below the poverty line? Secondly, the government's own estimates have employment staying below pre-COVID levels for at least four years. And what is the government's jobs plan? Well, there isn't one. Of course, one of the centrepieces of their spending is the $4 billion so-called JobMaker hiring credit. But on closer examination this scheme proved not to be the huge support to the economy that was first promised. This is a scheme designed to replace JobKeeper when it ends in March. While JobKeeper was flawed primarily because it left so many workers out, this new scheme will leave even more Australians behind. This morning on ABC TV, one of Australia's most loved stars, Bernard Fanning, from Powderfinger was interviewed about the band's new album. He had an important shout-out for Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister, about the treatment by his government of our arts industry. He said of the government that there have been a lot of announcements but little action. When it comes to supporting the arts industry this isn't the first time he has spoken out. For months he has been saying that the highly-trained professionals in arts and entertainment may be lost for the industry forever. In his words, they have been: … forced to completely change careers because there has been no work and if they don't come back, there may not be enough behind-the-scenes people to support tours when they get back up and running … That means devastation to the industry. My colleague in the other place—the shadow minister for industrial relations and the arts—has been relentless in his support for arts industry. The industry, along with aviation, was hit first and hardest. Aviation and the arts will also be the industries that will have the restrictions on them removed last. Aviation workers who used to work for Qantas but, after a sale allowed by this government, became employees of dnata had to watch while other workers in the industry got JobKeeper, but the ownership structure of their company saw the government deny them a connection to their jobs. Many of these workers live in the shire, in the Prime Minister's own electorate, but still they're shut out—the tin ear of the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, more than a million casuals and gig workers were also shut out, creating a double blow for their families and for the local businesses that rely on their spending. University workers were punished for ideological reasons, forced to rely increasingly on income from overseas students because of government funding cuts. When this revenue dried up the government denied the sector JobKeeper. They are literally letting universities bleed out staff and courses at a time when Australians have no jobs and many want to get a tertiary education. Now we have JobMaker, which is also defined by who in Australia's workforce it leaves out. The Prime Minister, with his usual fanfare, claimed that JobMaker would support 450,000 jobs. That sounds good, except you always have to read the fine print with this mob. In this case, a Senate estimates hearing saw bureaucrats admit that only 45,000 of those jobs would actually be new jobs—only one-tenth of what was claimed would be created. Forty-five thousand jobs is not much of a dent in one million unemployed. Meanwhile, when we saw who was actually eligible for this new $100- to $200-per-week subsidy, the alarm bells started ringing. It became clear that, rather than JobMaker, what they'd created was 'JobTaker', 'JobChurner' or 'JobDestroyer'. In fact, if you wanted to create an incentive for businesses to replace their existing staff with younger workers who would get a short-term job and then be churned for another short-term worker, this is the scheme you would design. Not only will your existing staff on JobKeeper not be eligible for the subsidy when JobKeeper winds up in March; to be eligible for JobMaker you have to be aged 18 to 35 years, and the full subsidy goes only to those aged up to 30 years. So there was a trillion dollars of spending by this government in the October budget but nothing for workers over 35. That's 928,000 people who are on unemployment benefits but cannot benefit from the scheme—no matter that they are experienced and qualified and the employer wants to hire them. Even if you're under 35 the subsidy is for only a year, so it's very unlikely that this scheme will create long-term, secure jobs for young people in the recession. In fact, it's aimed at people who work as few as 20 hours a week. The government has already gutted apprenticeships, cut billions from TAFE, hiked university fees, taken away penalty rates and, in the middle of a pandemic, told people that if you're without work and cannot get JobKeeper then you'll have to raid your own superannuation retirement nest egg just to pay your bills. Nothing in these appropriation bills shows any real desire to tackle our job crisis. This is our money, and it's right that, in a recession, the government uses the budget to step in when the private sector cannot support jobs. But the public money should be used for long-term investment in infrastructure, education and skills, not as a short-term political fix that looks suspiciously like a pre-election pump of the economy. This government's recent record on spending does not inspire confidence. Last month it was revealed that the federal government spent $30 million on land near Sydney airport at Leppington, only to see it valued at $3 million. Of course, that's now being investigated by the AFP for fraud. The government also hopes COVID-19 will provide cover for the $100 million sports rorts scandal. We know that this is standard operating procedure of the Liberal-National party. Just last week, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian was questioned about the ever-growing scandal of her office's involvement in a $140 million scheme that gave 95 per cent of sports and community grants to Liberal, marginal and targeted seats. She flat out admitted that pork-barrelling was common practice and that it was okay because it was not illegal. When the federal government's sports rorts were uncovered by the Australian National Audit Office earlier this year, the Prime Minister acted the way we have come to expect when he is caught spending public money to further his own political interests; he announced a sham investigation, a self-investigation by his former chief of staff and now head of the Prime Minister's department. As I mentioned before on the aviation industry—and I heard an announcement today—money was spent to keep people connected with their jobs. But this government doesn't connect them with their jobs. They've not only allowed 6,900 workers to be thrown out of Qantas; they've also just announced they won't take a bid from the 2½ thousand workers that have been replaced by lower-paid workers. It has the same ring as JobMaker—all talk, no action, and people get it in the neck. We see this government not hold Qantas to account, right on the verge of where so many of these workers reside in the Prime Minister's electorate. We have hundreds of thousands of people needlessly left behind. We have spending on rorts, not recovery. We have a government that doesn't hold to account those to whom they give hundreds of millions of dollars to keep people connected with their jobs. Appropriations in this government seem to be indistinguishable from misappropriations. 12:52 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No.1) 2020-2021. These bills propose appropriations that broadly cover five months of funding for the 2021 financial year as funding for 2020-21 and in the 2020 budget. Bill No.1 would appropriate $36.8 billion, bill No. 2 would appropriate just under $14.9 billion and the parliamentary departments bill would appropriate $141.7 million. While there is a larger advance than usual to the finance minister's provisions in these bills, the Labor Party recognise the extenuating circumstances presented by COVID-19. We do not oppose the bills, as they're important to facilitate Australia navigating our way out of this crisis. This bill is being handed down in unprecedented times. The bushfires, which devastated so many regions, were the largest in recorded history and had already presented unprecedented disruptions to our lives and to the economy. These have since been overshadowed by a once-in-a-generation pandemic. As COVID-19 hit our shores, it quickly exposed structural weaknesses within our economy. The Morrison recession is the deepest and darkest recession in over 100 years, and our recovery will be protracted for too long. Australia is now heading very quickly to a national debt record of $1 trillion under this Morrison government. According to research undertaken by the Grattan Institute, our recovery should be occurring much quicker. Unlike previous recessions, this one was brought on by government restrictions and not financial crashes or conflict. That is why the recession is dubbed the Morrison recession. Now that the government is turning things back on, the economy has undergone too much mismanagement over the past seven years to respond to the significant fiscal stimulus the government has announced. Recovery is projected to be sluggish and reflective of the slow job market and lack of business investment which already plagued in our economy well before COVID-19 hit our shores. The Liberals have been in power for seven years now and they have established a legacy of subdued economic growth, soaring power prices, a lull in apprenticeships and traineeships, and an increase in the price of university degrees. And now our trade relationship with China seems to have hit rock bottom, thanks to the incompetence of the Prime Minister and the trade minister, Senator Birmingham. The fact that 82 ships carrying coal are sitting in the South China Sea unable to dock into Chinese ports is a significant diplomatic and international trade disaster. And it's not just coal. Tasmanian produce is not getting to China because this government does not understand the word 'diplomacy', and now our wine industry is being caught in the firing line because of those opposite. This has the potential to decimate Australian winemaking companies. Late last week, China announced a 212 per cent tariff on wine entering China. That's right: Australian winemakers will now be forced to pay China a 200 per cent tax for the privilege of selling our wine in China. These tensions must ease, or Australia's economy will continue to deteriorate under this government. And it isn't just wine, as I stated before. So many of our industries have been affected, including beef, barley, seafood, sugar and timber. My home state of Tasmania relies heavily on exporting our world's-best products to China, and so Tasmania can't afford this government continuing to stuff up our relationship with China—because that's what they're doing. This economic neglect has been exposed in this moment of crisis and, unfortunately for many Australians, they will have to deal with the blunt nature of this political ineptness as well. From a national economic perspective, the government has now begun to withdraw support from the economy, and households will begin to feel the sting of this recession. The International Monetary Fund has warned that support is being withdrawn too soon and that this will result in unemployment remaining too high for too long. But the Morrison government is fixed on their plan, regardless of what happens, because—as we know—they're not very good at taking advice. The stimulus is made up of measures which will not necessarily produce jobs. The income tax cuts will more likely result in money being saved and not spent. According to the government, the tax cuts will cost $16.9 billion in the next financial year alone and create 50,000 jobs. But if this money was invested in other sectors such as university education, child care, health care, aged care or creative arts, modelling from the Australia Institute predicts that this could generate up to 210,000 jobs—a significant amount more than the government has indicated. This has been mentioned to those opposite, but do you think they would listen? Of course not. They only listen to their rich mates. Those opposite are not fans of independent research or, one could say, facts. The Liberals road and transport infrastructure projects also create fewer jobs per dollar spent than other industries. The Treasurer is content with unemployment remaining high and thousands of jobs being lost. But this comes as no consolation to the millions of Australians who will now face undue hardship because of a lack of leadership from those sitting opposite. Australia is at a crossroads. We are at a pivotal point in our recovery. We could rebuild our nation and ensure a more resilient and robust economy into the future—but all this budget is doing is handing down a one-year, short-sighted response with no guarantee of any meaningful reform. As Anthony Albanese outlined in his budget-in-reply speech, the Labor Party has a plan and a vision for Australia that are supporting the rebuilding of our economy and that will work well beyond the next 12 months. We have a plan that creates jobs, enhances our manufacturing self-sufficiency, considers the disproportionate impact on women and, most importantly, makes sure that it doesn't leave anyone behind. The $4 billion JobMaker initiative completely excludes older workers. The Labor Party has been campaigning for years to address Australia's high levels of youth unemployment and underemployment. This group of young workers have been suffering from low wages and difficult labour markets since the GFC. But all this policy does is ensure that the 928,000 people aged over 35 and on unemployment benefits are deliberately excluded from hiring subsidies. This policy divides Australians and is creating tensions within our community when we can least afford it. This subsidy will predominantly target low-skilled industries, which were the hardest hit throughout this recession; however, it will likely entrench the structural issues which younger people were already facing prior to the pandemic. As older people are being excluded from this wage subsidy, the Labor Party fears that this will result in older workers, and in particular older women, facing a higher likelihood of homelessness and joining the group of long-term unemployed. I urge the government to rethink this decision as we head into Christmas. I want those opposite to think about how this policy, and their policies generally, are hurting Australians. I urge those opposite not to pit Australians against one another, but at the moment that's exactly what their policies are doing. Policy must be based in evidence. When evidence based policy is implemented, it often succeeds. Labor are doing the important policy work necessary for success. We are ready to govern. Ahead of the next election, Labor will bring forward a comprehensive plan for the repair and construction of social housing. Data shows that Australia has a social housing shortfall of about 433,000 properties, and up to 116,000 people are homeless on any given night. This crisis has made it ever more clear how essential safe and affordable housing is. We have a housing crisis in Australia and there needs to be investment in this essential service. Public housing more than pays for itself: for every $1 million of residential building construction output, it has a multiplying effect of $2.9 million throughout the industry and broader economy. This stimulation must boost the post-crisis economic recovery and reduce homelessness. Repairs could start almost immediately, providing work for local plumbers, chippies, sparkies, plasterers and painters, as well as companies that manufacture building supplies and materials. Access to appropriate support with secure long-term housing provides the stability required to break the cycle of homelessness. This housing-first principle is known to improve prospects. It has yet to be adopted by the Morrison government. Construction jobs are always welcome in an economy that requires it. Under the childcare policy proposed by Anthony Albanese in his budget reply speech, it would mean that working mothers would be able to afford child care for their kids. It's as simple as that. Women will not be let down by Labor's plan to kickstart the economy and get Australians back to work. Modelling from the Grattan Institute has indicated that this reform would work. It would boost workforce participation, and families will be better off as more parents are encouraged to work more hours. As we are currently experiencing a service-led recession, it is imperative that we boost the discretionary spending in the economy, and this reform would do just that. Childcare fees in Australia are some of the highest in the world. Australia can and should be a country that makes things. We currently have one of the lowest manufacturing self-sufficiencies in the developed world. A strong local manufacturing sector can deliver world-class goods incorporating the best technology and provide the good, secure jobs our workers need and deserve. We need to see more trains, buses and boats built in Australia by local workers, and ensure every dollar of federal funding spent on these projects boost their local jobs and industry. In my home state many companies have the know-how, skills and professionalism to get the job done right there in Tasmania. I have spoken many times about companies such as Definium Technologies and Incat, two world-leading companies that deserve the backing of state and federal governments to ensure local manufacturing continues to happen in Australia. Why won't those opposite jump on board? They talk a lot about 'Team Australia', but when it comes to actually backing local manufacturing they are all hat and no cattle. It's time to start backing locals to locally manufacture—no excuses anymore. Anthony Albanese's defence industry development strategy will leverage a $270 billion investment pipeline and develop sovereign industrial and research capacity. We cannot enact this reform without a skilled and appropriately qualified workforce. Therefore, an Australian skills guarantee will give apprentices and trainees an opportunity to work on major Commonwealth projects by ensuring 10 per cent of workers on federally funded projects are apprentices. The Liberals have a plan to boost apprenticeships by 100,000, but this doesn't make up for the loss we have experienced in the past seven years, nor does it account for the predictable drop in involvements as a result of COVID-19. This budget put us in trillion dollar debt. That is a remarkable amount of money, but it doesn't offer any guarantee of ensuring a strong economic future for Australia. We are certainly in unprecedented times and, as many countries begin to experience a second and third wave, I am thankful for our swift response to COVID-19 which has meant that we have performed relatively well, thanks to our state and territory leaders. However, we need strong leadership and a long-term vision for Australia. This country is screaming out for leadership at the federal level. It can't rely on Scott Morrison and his team to deliver that certainty. We cannot rely on the Morrison government to lead us out of the economic circumstances that we are in. They have delivered a trillion dollar debt. They can talk about being good managers, but we know we were heading for disaster before COVID-19 hit. We knew that there was a hit to the national economy, and they have done nothing in this budget to actually steer us out of these troubled waters. 13:06 Senator AYRES 16913 New South Wales Madam Acting Deputy President Stoker, I think the last time I was in this position while you were in that position I was a little hot under the collar and you invited me to withdraw a remark and I remember declining to withdraw it. On reflection, I will just say that I am listening and learning every day and that I regret putting you in a difficult position on that afternoon. So I thought I would start out that way with a slightly conciliatory tone and end that there. It's been almost two months since the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, announced the 2019-20 budget. It looked pretty weak on the day and the last two months haven't strengthened the perceptions of the community about the government's capacity to manage its way to economic recovery. Two months later, the budget still looks like the cheap, weak document that it was on the day that it was announced. It is pretty hard to imagine a circumstance where you could navigate up towards a $213 billion deficit this financial year and still have most people in the community unable to say what the budget has actually done. There's $480 billion worth of cumulative deficits over the forward estimates, with deficits projected for the next decade. Our net debt is to peak at $966 billion, 43.8 per cent of GDP, in 2023-24. The Labor critique of this budget is not about the debt itself. I remember being on my feet in this place at the beginning of this year and passionately arguing that the Australian government should deliver a wage subsidy to support jobs and businesses through this recession. I argued it passionately because I could see in the faces of those opposite that their stoic refusal at the time to do that—their decrying of anybody who made an argument that the Australian government should be stepping in to support businesses, wages and the jobless through this crisis—would lead to a terrible outcome for the Australian economy. I remember that very well, and I remember the government's welcome backflip a week later. Our critique is not of the debt itself. Our criticism is that very little has been achieved with it. Our criticism is that it's inexplicable, really, that you could shovel this much money out the door and have nothing to show for it. The largest deficit delivered by the previous Labor government was $54.5 billion in 2009-2010. It was a budget deficit that was the result of effective stimulus during the GFC period. What did that deliver? It delivered Australia as the only country in the OECD that did not fall into recession. That's a pretty bland assertion on the face of it, but for me on this side, growing up in a country town and spending most of my working life in and around the manufacturing industry, I know what a recession delivers in terms of long-term unemployment, social dislocation and misery. But that $54 billion deficit prompted so much opportunistic hand-wringing, complaining, bleating, moaning, groaning and propagandising. I'll never forget the budget deficit bus that some of the characters opposite used to ride around in through regional Queensland and regional New South Wales, and bothering people in every little country town in Victoria. You could not deliver a budget debt truck big enough to put the numbers on it for the kind of deficit that the characters opposite have delivered. It would need to be in 12-point font in order to get all of the digits onto an ordinary bus or truck. People are entitled to ask what is being delivered in terms of lasting infrastructure for this trillion dollars. Is it lasting social reform, lasting economic reform? The answer is, 'Not very much'. This was supposed to be a budget that created jobs. By the government's own estimates it will take four years for unemployment to return to pre-crisis levels. That's four years where some people who are unemployed today will still be unemployed, presumably in our outer suburbs and presumably in our regional towns. There's no plan for child care. There's no proper plan for aged care. How you could get to a point where there's a trillion dollars in debt yet not have lifted a finger in the face of the Neglect report that the government received about aged care is beyond me. There is no plan for energy. The government is entirely isolated on energy policy. Now the New South Wales Liberal government has had to step in to do what the Commonwealth government should always have done and lead the way. Every state and territory has a plan on energy policy. This lot, constrained by outdated and, mostly, pretty dopey ideology around energy policy, is unable to act in the national interest. A trillion dollars has gone but there is no outcome on energy policy. There is no plan for social housing. It has taken the Victorian government to announce it's spending around $5 billion on much-needed social and public housing. I think it was Mr Wilson, the member for Goldstein, a place where there's probably not much need for social housing—no, actually, it was Mr Falinski, the member for Mackellar, who said, if I recall correctly, that he'd prefer it if people just went out and bought their own homes. What an extraordinarily narcissistic, out-of-touch sort of proposition! Does he know there are a thousand people in Mackellar on public housing waiting lists? Perhaps he should go and meet them. There's no plan for the future of JobKeeper recipients. Instead, we've just got a grab bag of announcements and marketing programs. It didn't take long—there was not a cent out the door of the Emergency Response Fund as bushfires started to rage around the country last week, and there was nothing out the door of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund—to get the marketing machine going for this budget. The ads for the budget were up on billboards within days—focus group tested and ready to roll—in supermarkets and shopping centres, in ethnic media and right across our newspapers. The advertisements were ready to go. The economic recovery plan ads were on TV with the tagline 'Our Comeback'. I asked in estimates how much the government planned to spend publicly congratulating itself on its budget. The answer was 'nobody knows'. 'You can only know the full cost of a campaign once it has started,' I was told. So we will have to wait for this government come back and tell us in future estimates how much the Our Comeback campaign really cost. What we do know from estimates is that it has involved millions of dollars going to Liberal Party mates to conduct thinly disguised political research for the benefit of the Prime Minister and his political party—millions of dollars to their focus group research mates in an unprecedented venal attempt to make sure funds that should properly be spent by political parties doing their research have instead been expended by the Australian taxpayer in the interests of the Prime Minister and his political party. It's a budget of blank cheques—blank cheques to government ministers, blank cheques for the private sector, especially the extraordinary write-off provisions, and blank cheques to the advertising industry. It's a complete failure of imagination to deliver spending and projects that will benefit Australian taxpayers. How did we get so little? If you want an answer to that question, have a look at the JobMaker program—poor planning, no accountability, wilful ideological blindness leaving hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Australians behind. It is a $40 billion wage subsidy program that you could not have designed to be less effective. It seems to be wilfully designed to be ineffective, to be incapable of delivering. The program itself is almost as large as the second Rudd stimulus package and twice as big as the Building the Education Revolution program. On budget night—you can see the punchline coming here from miles off—the government promised 450,000 jobs. As soon as the words come out of their mouths, you know it is not credible, not achievable, marketing spin, an announcement with no delivery—450,000 jobs. It didn't take long for that to fall apart. In budget estimates, Treasury officials, no doubt used to enduring this sort of nonsense from their political masters, had to explain why it wasn't true. They said 450,000 was an estimate of the take-up of the program given the current outlook. 'It's not the same as 450,000 jobs being created,' they said. So the claim is a distortion. They went on to say: In costing this, we have made a conservative assumption that about 10 per cent of employment in these firms is genuinely additional, it wouldn’t have happened were it not for the hiring credit. The government announced that it was creating 450,000 jobs. The actual figure is 10 per cent of that—45,000 jobs. In reality, it is a statistical blip. It is not 450,000 jobs; it is $90,000 per actual job created. According to Treasury, and indeed the Grattan Institute, the average full-time wage is $81,000, the average wage for all workers is about $62,000, the median wage is about $55,000, the median tax-file income is $45,000 and teachers earn on average about $70,000. The government could have hired 45,000 nurses and it would have spent less money and created the same number of jobs. Research out this week has shown that New South Wales students have fallen three to four months behind in key areas such as reading and numeracy over the course of the pandemic. Effects have been worse for the poorest 24 per cent of families and particularly those in rural Australia. Meanwhile, the same pandemic has left many casual teachers unemployed. The Grattan Institute proposed a six-month tutoring blitz to help one million disadvantaged school students recover learning that was lost during the COVID-19 lockdown, but there is no announcement on that scale, no capacity to deliver the kinds of reform programs that the country needs. It was an extraordinary decision to spend $40 billion in a way that most perversely excludes almost a million unemployed workers—you see, the program leaves out people over the age of 35; they are stone-cold left out of the labour market stimulus program. There are 928,000 Australians over the age of 35 on unemployment benefits—that is, 57 per cent of people on unemployment benefits. The Morrison government has those 982,000 people over the age of 35 now competing with Australians under the age of 35, whose wages will be subsidised. If you're in a country town and you can't find a job, if you're in the outer suburbs and you can't find a job, if you're over the age of 35 and you can't find a job, it's pretty clear where the finger of blame should point: squarely at the Morrison government. The Morrison government is a government without the capacity to imagine or to deliver reasonable reform. (Time expired) 13:22 Senator PRATT I0T Western Australia Today we debate the appropriation bills before us, in which we've seen a lot of big numbers representing lots of spending promises. Unfortunately, this budget from the Morrison governments also contains a lot of hollow promises and missed opportunities, which will be particularly difficult for the country at this time. We've seen net debt reach $703 billion, an extraordinary level, and it's set to grow to over $966 billion—eye-watering numbers—at the end of the forward estimates. This takes us to a trillion dollars of debt. Gross debt, currently over $800 billion, is forecast for get to well over a trillion dollars over the forward estimates, peaking at $1.7 trillion over the decade. As we debate these budget bills today, we know that we remain in very uncertain times. In addition, we know that this difficulty has been exacerbated by the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, a response that has simply been too slow, too reactive and too uncoordinated. The government failed to make the tweaks that could have reined in some of that eye-watering debt and failed to target measures more specifically to drill down into parts of our economy. These issues have been evident in every step of the government's response. There can be no doubt, of course, that the government had to stimulate the economy and that parliament had to act to save Australian jobs and keep the economy ticking over. I would have to say that this task would have been made much easier if they hadn't taken their eye off the ball in terms of economic management before the pandemic even arrived on the shores of our country. It's important to recognise that in the initial response by the Prime Minister to the initial suggestion of a wage subsidy—a wage subsidy that, I might add, has been the cornerstone to preventing economic collapse—the Prime Minister said no. He said no to that wage subsidy. He said there was no need for a wage subsidy. And then of course we found that the government had closed parliament and that it was to be closed for five months. They postponed the budget. Then, as the country moved into necessary lockdowns, we saw extremely long queues in our Centrelink offices as thousands and thousands of Australians lost their jobs. Parliament was reconvened, and the government finally accepted the proposition that a wage subsidy was critical to saving our economy in order to save thousands upon thousands of businesses and to support millions of jobs. I have to say I wasn't surprised at the government's slow response on these issues. After all, they very strongly opposed state border closures. They were slow to support lockdowns that have prevented the spread of the virus and have essentially been at the heart of our economic resilience. In this respect there's nothing more telling than their support for Clive Palmer in his fight against WA's border closures. Four months ago Prime Minister Morrison said that trying to eliminate the virus was not the right strategy. Yet today we find that the states with the most economic resilience are the ones that have been able to virtually eliminate the virus—bar its existence within hotel quarantine, as we quite rightly and properly invite people back to our shores after their struggle to get home. Happily, our state premiers did not listen to the Commonwealth railing against state border closures. As we know, Western Australia closed its borders on 5 April. They've stayed closed and are just starting to tentatively reopen now. As we reflect on this in the context of this federal budget, I highlight the critical role Western Australia has played in keeping the national economy going. Iron ore exports are at a record high. As we know, our major trading competitor in iron ore has not been so lucky. Brazil under-recognised the significance of the impact COVID-19 would have on its society and its economy. It is experiencing escalating levels of death and impacts on its health system and economy. Inevitably, that has had a very large impact on Brazil's iron ore exports. But, even with WA's iron ore exports propping up our national economy, the Prime Minister and many of his Western Australian Liberal colleagues sided with Clive Palmer in a blatant attack on WA's safe and strong border closures, putting at risk the health and economic wellbeing of Western Australians and in turn the nation. Today we find that Australia is in a much stronger position than that of other countries across the world. Nations that failed to shut borders and put in place lockdowns to suppress the virus are today in social and economic crisis. We in the Labor Party certainly recognise that lockdowns would have been impossible without both JobKeeper and a big lift in JobSeeker payments. People would have simply had to go to work to make ends meet, and with that would have come the inevitable contagion, from people being unable to adhere to the requirements of the lockdown. As I drill down into the budget measures further in this speech, let's remember that in this year it is the Australian people who have done the economic heavy lifting here. They've done the heavy lifting in adhering to coronavirus restrictions. Indeed, our nation and its citizens will have a lot of heavy lifting to do in the future to repair the economic damage that has been done to our country in the context of needing to pay down that escalating debt in the long term. The Australian people have made great sacrifices to keep Australia in a safe and strong position and, on that note, Commonwealth budgets should be documents that outline positive strategic direction for the country. They should be about people, not dollars. For the leaders in our parliament, budgets should be about providing an opportunity to give a strong vision for the country; a vision for Australians and a vision for Australia. But this budget is indeed a big missed opportunity. It represents, yes, pulling a bunch of macroeconomic levers to keep the economy from collapsing and to support people's livelihoods and incomes. But it doesn't do nearly enough to create jobs. I can see this very clearly in the context of my own portfolio areas within the jobactive networks, where the government has been wholly unprepared and disorganised in working out how to triage hundreds of thousands of unemployed people into the jobactive networks and to reform the services that they provide in order to provide people with meaningful support as the economy restructures. In our country we expect unemployment to remain high for just far too long; another 160,000 Australians are expected to be unemployed by Christmas—a trillion dollars of government debt and yet, still, many Australians are being left behind. In the government's policy announcements we've seen how 298,000 people over the age of 35 were left behind by their deliberate exclusion from the JobMaker hiring subsidies. We have seen no plan for child care and the role that improved equity in child care could provide for our economic recovery. There's no plan for a fix to our aged-care sector. The extra home-care places in this year's budget, as we know, are but a drop in the ocean compared to the waiting lists today. And we also know that the crisis in our aged-care system in respect of COVID-19 was made much worse by this government's neglect of the sector for too long. The low wages in this sector have certainly contributed to the circumstances of the virus being transmitted. There's no plan for the future of JobSeeker recipients—1.4 million people have a very uncertain future as to whether they will go back to the old rate of $40 a day and, as we know, the government seems to be planning to deliver just that. There's no plan for energy security and certainty coming from this government, something that has long beleaguered our country and impeded its economic development and progress. That's because of that policy uncertainty. It's most definitely not an uncertainty that we can take forward with us into the future as we try to work as a nation to emerge out of the economic impacts of COVID-19. Let's not forget how this government has put the boot into future university students and young Australians when you absolutely took the scissors to our university sector via your so-called funding reforms. At a time when you said you wanted to support young people and their mental health, a time when universities were encouraged to make early offers to students, it's particularly galling that students accepted places at universities without knowing about the astronomical fee hikes they would face. Somehow it was okay to do that to the young people of today. This government has absolutely failed to understand that our nation needs to be a smarter nation and a stronger nation on the other side of economic recovery. You failed to recognise that the aspiration of young Australians to seek better opportunities through education should be absolutely core to this recovery. In closing my remarks today I really want to give a positive nod to our Labor leader, Mr Anthony Albanese. In his budget reply, he outlined a really positive vision for Australia, a vision that acknowledged the significant hardships that many Australians are facing. He recognised their aspiration to emerge stronger from this economic recession and outlined the critical role that an Australian government can and should play in economic recovery. It's a plan that I'm proud of, and it's a plan that holds true to the values of the Australian Labor Party. As I reflect on the missed opportunities of this year's federal budget, I look forward into the future to the Labor Party's role in continuing to support the economic wellbeing and social wellbeing of all Australians. 13:37 Senator BILYK HZB Tasmania [by video link] There's no bolder expression of what vision and priorities the government has for Australia than a budget. But when you look at this year's budget it reveals a government that stands for nothing. The Morrison government is bereft of ideas. It has no plans for the future. It's got no plan for early childhood education and care, no plan to fix Australia's broken aged-care system and ensure quality care for older Australians, no plan to create jobs and support jobseekers through the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. I could mention a myriad of other failings by this government, but I do have limited time today, so I'll focus on these areas, as well as the Morrison government's ongoing ideological attacks on the ABC. This government cannot be trusted to steer Australia through the COVID-19 pandemic or out of the Morrison recession. This is a budget that leaves Australia in $1 trillion of debt for the first time in our nation's history, but with nothing to show for it. The hypocrisy of those opposite on fiscal management has been laid bare. Years ago they declared that Australia was in the midst of a debt and deficit disaster. If you mention debt and deficit now they run for cover. You don't see them for dust. Debt has more than tripled since they came to office. The 'back in black' mugs that celebrated their artificial surplus have vanished from the Liberal's merchandise store. This is also a budget that delivers no plan for recovery from the Morrison recession—Australia's first recession in 30 years. Of course the government would like to blame this recession entirely on the COVID-19 pandemic, but they are nowhere near blameless for the dismal state of the economy. Australia went into the pandemic in a position of weakness, not strength. Before the pandemic hit, the Liberals and Nationals had already doubled government debt since coming to power. Australian workers were already experiencing wage growth at record lows. Households were already worse off than they were in 2013. Before the pandemic hit, business investment was down, consumer confidence was down and labour productivity was declining. So, on almost any measure, Australia's economy was weak under the management of this government before COVID-19 was even heard of. There's no argument that the pandemic has been a significant economic challenge, but this does not give the government a free pass for their economic failings. Even in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, this government has failed to get its economic management right. Despite the Treasurer's pronouncement that 'Australians know that their government has their back,' millions of Australians have fallen through the gaps in economic support, especially with the JobKeeper scheme. This includes workers in charities, universities and the arts sector and many casual employees. These gaps, combined with the rise in insecure work, have exacerbated the economic impact of the pandemic on Australians and undermined the health measures needed to keep us all safe. It's worth remembering, too, that the government only introduced a wage subsidy because of political pressure. It was Labor that initially called for a wage subsidy, and, at the time, the government ruled it out, only to backflip once again a few weeks later. The one measure that the government have introduced to support jobs and the economic recovery, the JobMaker hiring credit, is not the saving grace they claim it to be. We heard those opposite proudly boasting that their scheme would create 450,000 jobs, but then, in estimates, Treasury officials confirmed that it would only create 45,000 jobs—one-tenth of the figure the government had initially claimed. When the JobMaker legislation was going through parliament, Labor tried to put in place protections that would stop employers from sacking workers and replacing them with cheaper, subsidised workers. But then, in a grubby deal, One Nation teamed up with the government to remove this safeguard, even though they had voted with Labor and the crossbench to maintain this protection the day before. Not only does this threaten the job security of every worker aged over 35; it also excludes over 900,000 people aged over 35 on unemployment benefits from the hiring subsidy. To illustrate this point, Labor produced 16 examples of job ads where employers were specifically advertising for employees that met the scheme's criteria, including a requirement that applicants are aged under 35. We've warned the government that JobMaker does not go far enough in helping soften the blows from COVID-19 and that a lot more needs to be done. If the government are serious about creating jobs, they would do well to look at Labor's proposals, outlined by the Leader of the Opposition in his budget reply. Labor's Rewiring the Nation initiative would invest $20 billion to rebuild and modernise the energy grid. The blueprint for this has already been completed by the Australian Energy Market Operator and signed off by all governments. This will provide thousands of new construction jobs, particularly in regional Australia. We have also proposed a National Rail Manufacturing Plan, to have more trains built in Australia, boosting local jobs and industry. Our Defence Industry Development Strategy will leverage $270 billion in investment, develop sovereign industrial and research capabilities and build skills and expertise within the Australian workforce. We've also announced an Australian Skills Guarantee, ensuring one in 10 jobs on major Commonwealth projects will be given to apprentices, trainees or cadets. We've called on the government to deliver a plan to repair social housing—something we would do if we were in government right now. Around 25 per cent of Australia's social housing stock is in urgent need of repair and maintenance, and this plan would create jobs for local tradies. If the Morrison government want to lift labour productivity and create jobs, they also need to address the ability of families to balance work and family responsibilities. As a former early childhood educator, I understand and value the quality of early childhood education and care, not just for helping parents to participate in the workforce but also for the incredible contribution it makes to early childhood learning and development. We know those opposite don't appreciate the value of child care. It's why various government frontbenchers have described subsidised early childhood education and care as 'a money pit' and 'communism', and one particularly backward senator in this place called it 'the hand of government reaching in and taking away our children's youth'. This attitude goes some way to explaining why the government introduced a childcare fee system that left one in four families worse off, and why Australians pay some of the highest childcare fees in the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government were very proud to trumpet their temporary free childcare policy, but it was never properly funded. It put many providers at risk of closure, and it closed the door on a number of childcare places for many families. And, if that weren't bad enough, the government broke their promise to early childhood educators and ended their eligibility for JobKeeper payment before any other profession. In contrast to those opposite, we understand the value of subsidised quality early childhood education. We understand the big difference it will make to helping millions of Australians enter the workforce, particularly those who want to take up new job opportunities and increase their hours as Australia recovers from the recession. We know that child care helps women in particular with workforce participation, which is important, given women have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. And that's why a Labor government would scrap the childcare subsidy cap, a cap that would see some women losing money by taking on additional hours of work. Labor would also increase the maximum childcare subsidy to 90 per cent, which will cut costs to 97 per cent of all families in the system. While budgets are an important mechanism for creating jobs and driving economic prosperity, they're also a means by which governments look after their most vulnerable citizens. Older Australians deserve a secure and dignified retirement. Of all the failures of this government, there's few so monumental and so tragic as the disastrous failures in aged care. In September it was revealed that 50,000 Australians in residential aged care were abused each year. I've got to say that, when I heard that, I felt physically ill. The aged-care royal commission heard that one in five aged-care residents was receiving substandard care. Complaints about aged care doubled in one year to 8,000, yet the Morrison government has failed to properly resource the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission to handle those complaints, and more than 110,000 calls to the My Aged Care hotline went unanswered over the past three years. There are 102,000 Australians on the waiting list for home-care packages, and 30,000 Australians were moved into residential aged care prematurely over the last three years because they couldn't get their home-care package soon enough. Another 30,000 died over the past three years while waiting for their approved home-care package. This year's budget provides funding for another 23,000 home-care packages, which is not nearly enough to address even the backlog. Only 2,000 of these are level 4 packages—the ones which provide for the highest level of care—and the number of people waiting for a level 4 package is close to 16,000, or around eight times that number. One of the most tragic outcomes of the government's failure in aged care is that three-quarters of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in that sector. To date, there have been 685 COVID-19 deaths in aged care. And the aged-care royal commission has directly attributed this to the Morrison government's failure to plan properly for a COVID-19 outbreak in aged care. And they've already pointed out this tragedy could've been prevented had the government acted upon previous aged-care reviews and addressed persistent problems in the sector. There are about a dozen reports into aged care, containing about 150 recommendations that the government have done nothing on. They haven't acted on them. A final failing of this year's budget that I would like to mention is that it locks in existing cuts to the ABC. Calling this a failure is too kind to this government, given their approach to the ABC is more of a deliberate ideological attack. Those opposite, we know, have never liked or supported Australia's independent public broadcaster. If there's one thing they hate, it's being subjected to independent public scrutiny. That's why they continue to attack Australia's public broadcaster, undermine its independence and cut its funding. We know that they would privatise the ABC if they had the chance, but they can't, because Australians love and value their ABC and wouldn't have a bar of it. Survey after survey has shown, overwhelmingly, the support for and trust in the ABC, even from coalition voters. So, instead of doing away with the public broadcaster holus-bolus, the Libs and the Nats chip away at the ABC bit by bit. The Prime Minister has the hide to deny that there have been cuts to the ABC, but previous years' budget papers have specifically referred to 'savings'. ABC Managing Director David Anderson confirmed the cuts in addressing a Senate estimates hearing in March. He said: … the ABC will have to absorb cumulative budget cuts that amount to $105.9 million per annum by the time we reach the 2022 financial year. In New Zealand they added money to the public broadcaster through COVID because they understood that most people would listen to or watch their public broadcaster. I just don't understand how, in Australia, the Morrison government and previous governments can be so pig-headed about funding cuts to the ABC. Since the horror Abbott government budget of 2014, the ABC has suffered cumulative cuts of $783 million, despite Mr Abbott having promised no cuts to the ABC the day before the 2013 election. The Press Council's founder, Ranald Macdonald, said in an opinion piece that this year's budget delivers a further $67 million in cuts on top of the $87 million in cuts delivered by the government's three-year funding freeze. On 29 June, the ABC's Media Watch outlined the full impact of the cuts so far. They explained that shows like Four Corners, Media Watch, Australian Story and Foreign Correspondent would have to cut the number of episodes made and would have less money to travel to produce episodes. They said 74 jobs would be lost from ABC News and a further 53 jobs from the Entertainment & Specialist team, impacting dramas, kids programs and shows such as Gruen, The Weekly and Mad as Hell. (Time expired) 13:52 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland I'd like to join my colleagues in speaking to Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 and associated bills. A number of Labor colleagues have already done so, and, like them, I indicate at the outset that Labor will be supporting these bills but not without reservation and not without making some comments about this year's budget and, most importantly, what it does not do. As my colleague Senator Bilyk just outlined, even before the COVID pandemic hit our shores the Australian economy was performing below par. If you speak to any Australian worker they will tell you that their wages have not been growing in recent years, and the data backs that up. The data backs up Australian workers' experience, which is that under this government wages have grown at a lower rate than we have ever seen. I've seen many graphs indicating that while some in the economy are doing well, particularly corporate Australia, those benefits have not been shared equally with the working men and women who actually drive and achieve profits. In recent years we've seen significant growth in corporate profits. They are being shared with shareholders, in the form of dividends, and with executives, in the form of bonuses, but they are not being shared with the working men and women whose daily work produces them. It's about time this government took some action to make sure the economic benefits that some in this country have received in recent years are more fairly shared. One reason for the inequity is that there is far too much insecure work in this country. This is something which we've been talking about at length for a long, long time over here, and we continue to see this government fail to take any action to ensure that Australians' work is more secure and that they have a more even bargaining position when they're trying to achieve wage rises. It's no surprise, therefore, that wages continue not growing in this country in the way that they should be. Of course, that situation is only being exacerbated now that we've had the pandemic hit, wreaking havoc across the economy. Again, it's working Australians who are bearing the brunt of the recession that this government has overseen. It's working Australians who are losing their jobs, whose wages are still not growing and who remain in fear of hanging onto their jobs if, indeed, they have so far been able to retain them. Even in the time today since I agreed to speak on this bill, we saw another announcement from another big Australian company indicating that more jobs are going to go. Of course, I'm talking about Qantas. I'm pretty disgusted, frankly, with the actions of the Qantas management, who themselves receive salaries in the millions of dollars, along with bonuses, but who continue to strip jobs and to outsource jobs from their own company. Senator Polley e5x It's outrageous! Senator WATT 245759 It is outrageous, Senator Polley. It's another example of what I was talking about earlier, which is that we're not seeing an even bargain between working people in this country and high-flying executives on their high high-flying salaries. Again, we've seen Qantas say today that they'll outsource 2,000 more jobs—particularly amongst ground staff and baggage handlers. That of course comes on top of the thousands of redundancies that Qantas has already announced. No-one is denying that Qantas, along with other aviation companies and anyone exposed to the tourism industry, is doing it tough right now. But why is it always working people who have to pay the price of this? Qantas's motives can be seen quite clearly in the statements they've made today, which indicate that the reason they've made this decision to outsource 2,000 more jobs is to cut costs, which can only mean that those workers end up being paid less. Again, we have this government standing by and allowing corporate Australia to take these kinds of actions at the expense of working people, and this is going to make the recession worse. Just as the government's own decisions to exclude over a million workers from receiving the JobKeeper payment made the recession worse, and just as the government's decision to reduce the JobKeeper payments and to reduce the JobSeeker payments are making this recession worse by taking money out of the economy at the wrong time—at too early a time—just as those decisions by the government are going to make this recession worse, the government's inaction when we continue to see big corporate players in this country lay off thousands of workers or come up with tricky contracting arrangements which will cut people's pay, will make the recession worse. The reason is that if these workers from Qantas are outsourced—and it does appear that that's going to occur—then they'll be paid less. They'll have less money in their pockets to spend in local businesses, which means that those businesses will themselves have to lay off more people. Again, that's going to make things worse. Obviously, it's going to be bad for those individual workers now, but it will actually mean less money flowing through the economy and more people losing their jobs. I don't know how often we have to raise these issues with the government before they're prepared to take action and before they're prepared to stop withdrawing financial support in the form of cutting JobKeeper, cutting JobSeeker and letting corporate Australia lay off thousands of people, or cut their pay, because these things are going to make things worse. We've seen over the course of today various ministers, from the Treasurer down, starting to crow about what they think the national accounts figures might have in store for the country this week. You can see them already preparing to tell us that everything has turned the corner and that everything is getting back on its feet. Well, if that's not a sign of how out of touch this government is then I don't know what is. If you talk to any Australian, they'll tell you that they're in fear of losing their job, if they haven't lost it already, and that they're in fear of being unable to meet their mortgage payments. Only last week I was at my kids' sport, talking with parents there who have been stood down for months and who are very worried about what this government has in store come March in the form of JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments. So if we see any attempt from this government this week to crow about the economy turning the corner because of some data that we might get from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, that will be another sign that this government has completely lost touch with ordinary Australians who are doing it really tough right now because of the decisions that this government is making. The most recent unemployment data shows us that there are seven per cent unemployed— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator Watt, you will be in continuation. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 35 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Pensions and Benefits 35 14:00 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham. Can the minister tell the Senate who was the social services minister in 2016 when the robodebt scheme was first introduced? 14:00 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I don't have the precise dates of various ministerial arrangements committed to memory. However, I am willing to assume—particularly given, I assume, that this is meant to be a clever set-up of the next question—that Mr Morrison would have been the minister at the time. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, a supplementary question? 14:00 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia Can the minister advise who was the Treasurer that bragged that robodebt was proof of the social welfare system being 'better managed'? 14:00 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Unsurprisingly, I don't have the quotations of every single individual committed to memory. But I am again willing to assume, in terms of clever Labor Party tactics, that Senator Wong already knows the answer to that. Senator Wong is assuming that the answer to the question is Mr Morrison. In fact, she already knows that that is probably the answer to the question. Senator Wong and, I expect, everybody in this place would believe that debts ought to be recovered. Obviously, there have been issues in relation to this matter; the government has worked through those matters, including repayments in relation to it. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, a final supplementary question? 14:01 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia Can the minister advise who was the Prime Minister in 2020 when $1.2 billion was used to settle the claims of victims of this government's illegal robodebt scheme? 14:02 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia As I just said, repayments have been made in relation to this program; a process has been gone through and repayments have been made. In no way should that take away from the fact that, where claims are made and repayments ought to be recovered, governments ought to find ways to undertake to recover those funds. That's an important principle that ought not be lost, notwithstanding the challenges in relation to this program and the fact that those repayments have had to be made. China 35 14:02 Senator BROCKMAN 30484 Western Australia My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Will the minister provide a response to the Senate on the Twitter post issued today by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs? 14:03 Senator PAYNE M56 New South Wales I thank Senator Brockman for his question. Senators will have seen that the Prime Minister has this afternoon made a public statement in relation to the social media post by the Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. Let me be clear that the Australian government has called in the Chinese ambassador and sought an apology from the ambassador in relation to this tweet. It is an appalling, disgusting and outrageous piece of social media. It is a tweet which illustrates the absolute scourge of disinformation and misinformation in social media and it cannot be justified on any basis. As well as the secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade conveying that message to the ambassador here, we will be conveying that message directly in Beijing through our ambassador. We have also asked Twitter to remove the tweet as an example of disinformation. I echo the Prime Minister's expression of pride in all Australians who serve in uniform and who have served in uniform. They do not deserve to be treated in this manner. It is the most egregious example of this sort of harmful conduct that I have seen in my time in the parliament, in my time in a ministerial portfolio and, in fact, in anybody's viewing of social media in any context. We have very clearly rejected the premise upon which the disinformation in this tweet is based. This government has invited the review of the Inspector-General of the ADF. We are dealing with these issues openly, transparently and in a way which you would expect in a liberal democracy like Australia. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Brockman, a supplementary question? 14:05 Senator BROCKMAN 30484 Western Australia Thank you, Minister, for that answer. Will the minister explain why this tweet constitutes disinformation? 14:05 Senator PAYNE M56 New South Wales I thank Senator Brockman. The Australian government do not resile at all from our responsibilities and our obligations regarding our involvement in Afghanistan. It is not that another country is commenting on our conduct in Afghanistan. Australia is a robust liberal democracy more than capable of dealing with commentary of that nature. We are accountable for our actions, and that is why we called for and held the inquiry at the highest levels. We are taking unprecedented and difficult steps to hold those responsible to account, a small minority of Australian Defence Force personnel who are the subject of these serious, credible reports. Our response has been welcomed by the government of Afghanistan, from the president to his ministry and others within the Afghan system. This image, however, is an absolute affront to common decency and to our entire Defence Force. It is grossly offensive and it should be removed. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Brockman, a final supplementary question? 14:06 Senator BROCKMAN 30484 Western Australia Will the minister update the Senate on how Australia is working with international partners to combat disinformation? 14:06 Senator PAYNE M56 New South Wales The relationship among responsible international partners around the world in combatting disinformation, particularly during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, is a very important one. Just this week we will be co-sponsoring an event at the United Nations in New York on misinformation, with partners such as Latvia. Latvia led a joint statement in June, which we signed with 131 other countries. It warned that COVID-19 had 'created conditions that enabled the spread of disinformation, fake news and doctored videos'—and, in this case, I would say photographs—'to foment violence to divide communities'. We committed in that statement to fighting the so-called infodemic. I can assure you, Mr President, and others in this chamber that Australia will resist and counter efforts of disinformation. We will do so through facts and transparency underpinned by liberal democratic values that we will continue to promote at home and abroad. 14:07 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia I seek leave to make a short statement. Leave granted. Senator WONG 00AOU I thank the Senate. In the circumstance, I thought it would be useful to express support for the comments made by Senator Payne. I make clear on behalf of the opposition that we condemn in the strongest terms the action taken by the Chinese government. It is gratuitous, it is inflammatory and it is deeply offensive. We say that this is not the action, not the behaviour, of a responsible, mature international power. These tactics will be met with unified condemnation in the Australian community and they will be judged harshly by the international community. The men and women of the Australian Defence Force serve with honour. They deserve our respect and the respect of our allies, friends and partners around the world. The allegations in the Brereton report have horrified Australia. What sets us apart is the dignified, transparent and accountable manner of our response. That is what happens within the Australian democracy. I thank the Senate. Pensions and Benefits 36 14:08 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Government Services, Senator Ruston. In 2015, then social services minister Scott Morrison targeted vulnerable Australians through his illegal robodebt scheme in an attempt to achieve $4.7 billion in savings to bolster the budget bottom line. Why? 14:09 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia I thank Senator Gallagher for her question. Clearly, there were decisions of many previous governments to make sure that, where Australians had received money from the taxpayer to which they were not entitled, the government would seek to recover it. There is an expectation by the Australian public that the government will seek to recover that debt. One of the measures which was put in place by the previous government and subsequently undertaken by the government of which I am now a member was to use a form of determination called income averaging. We subsequently know and acknowledge that that method by which we determined debts was deemed not to be valid. We acknowledge that it was determined not to be valid. I believe that the Prime Minister has actually apologised to those people who have been impacted by that form of debt collection. Senator Keneally interjecting— Senator O'Neill interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order, Senator Keneally! Order, Senator O'Neill! Senator RUSTON 243273 However, as soon as we became aware that that method of debt collection was not valid, we immediately ceased collecting funds by that means and put in place a very, very quick and responsive program— Senator O'Neill interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator O'Neill, I have called you to order on numerous occasions. Senator RUSTON 243273 by which we would pay back Australians who had received debt notices as a result of using income averaging as a means by which to determine that debt. We are not the only government to have used income averaging as a means to determine debt. In fact, I can actually give you a number of quotes from people that still remain in this parliament that are members of the opposition party who made comments in relation to it. I might wait to give the examples after the next question so I have more time. The PRESIDENT I0Q I am going to insist that when I call a senator to order they at least count to 10 before they completely disobey the standing orders again. It is the first day of the last fortnight. It is going to be a very long one if people continue to behave like this. It is going to make it hard for me to rule on points of order when I can't hear an answer. So I ask for a little bit of self-restraint on this first day. Senator Gallagher, a supplementary question? 14:11 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory The government was warned 76 times over a number of years by the AAT that its robodebt notices were not legally enforceable. Why did Mr Morrison and the government ignore these warnings? 14:11 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia Thank you, Senator Gallagher. First of all, the government does value the role that the AAT has in providing independent merits reviews for a wide range of administrative provisions but noting in each case that they are unique and they turn on the absolute facts of that case. There have been decisions by the AAT that have upheld decisions and there have been decisions of the AAT that have not upheld decisions. To suggest that every single case that goes before the AAT is the same as the last one fails to understand the process that exists at the AAT. So I would draw to the attention of the senator who asked the question that, as I said in my answer to the previous question, as soon as this government became aware that using income averaging was not a valid means by which to collect a debt it ceased that program and immediately commenced a program of repaying that money to people— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Gallagher, a final supplementary question? 14:13 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory As social services minister, Treasurer and then Prime Minister, Mr Morrison has continued to persist with this illegal scheme. Why did he just ignore not only the warnings but the painful consequences for so many Australians? 14:13 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia I would put on the record that the Prime Minister has expressed his regret to those people that have been impacted by this particular activity which we have acknowledged has been deemed as not being a valid means by which to collect debt. We don't shy away from the fact that it has been found that this is not a valid means by which to generate a debt. There is no argument, and we have apologised and shown regret for the consequences of doing that. But let me remind everybody in this chamber that this method of determining debt is not something that we came up with. In fact, it was under the opposition's watch. A Minister for Human Services in their government, Tanya Plibersek, from the other place said: … if people fail to come to an arrangement to settle their debts, the Government has a responsibility to taxpayers to recover that money. We support Ms Plibersek's view on this 100 per cent. (Time expired) COVID-19: Economy 38 14:14 Senator McLACHLAN 287062 South Australia My question is for the Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, Senator Cash. Can the minister outline for the Senate how the Morrison government's record economic support has kept Australians in jobs and connected to their employers, helping to drive our comeback and build a stronger Australia after the COVID-19 pandemic? 14:14 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I thank Senator McLachlan for his question. There is no doubt that the economy is still recovering from COVID-19 and, as the Prime Minister has said, there is still a long road ahead. In fact, when you look at some sectors, such as tourism and aviation, they are still facing significant challenges. But, when you look at JobKeeper and the purpose of the JobKeeper payment, it has kept and it continues to keep so many businesses in business and so many Australians in jobs. In fact, the RBA has said JobKeeper saved at least 700,000 jobs, and, if it weren't for the JobKeeker payment, the unemployment rate in Australia would have been five percentage points higher. That's right, five percentage higher. With the recovery now underway, what we're now seeing is that fewer businesses are actually in need of JobKeeper. That said, of course JobKeeper continues to support the sectors of the economy that do need it the most. Following a retest of business eligibility for the second phase of JobKeeper, for the two JobKeeper fortnights in October around half a million entities had applications processed, covering more than 1.5 million employees or eligible business participants. The preliminary data indicates that around 450,000 fewer businesses and around two million fewer employees qualified for JobKeeper in October as opposed to September. These preliminary October JobKeeper figures suggest an improvement on the 2020-21 budget assumption of 2.2 million recipients for the December quarter, with around 700,000 fewer employees or eligible business participants covered by the payment in October, due to their employer no longer needing the payment. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator McLachlan, a supplementary question. 14:16 Senator McLACHLAN 287062 South Australia In addition to the job-saving support of JobKeeper, how have the government's economic support measures assisted businesses with their cash flow, kept Australians in training and supported Australians with the cost of living? 14:17 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia Of course our No. 1 priority, as a government, is to protect the health of Australians, to protect their jobs and to protect their livelihoods. We've put in place, and delivered, the policies that are supporting this. For example, in addition to the $70 billion JobKeeper payments to date, our Supporting Apprentices and Trainees wage subsidy has now delivered over $723 million to keep more than 103,000 apprentices and trainees in training, and that's where we need them. We need them training on the job, and that is what we are doing. We also have the cash flow boost. That has delivered over $32 billion to more than 800,000 employing small and medium businesses, giving them that vital cash flow when they need it most. The Coronavirus SME Guarantee Scheme has now delivered more than 21,000 underwritten loans to small and medium businesses. We are putting in place the policies to keep businesses in business and Australians in jobs. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator McLachlan, a final supplementary question. 14:18 Senator McLACHLAN 287062 South Australia With encouraging signs that the virus is now being contained across Australia, how will the government's economic recovery plan support Australians back into jobs and businesses to invest and grow and deliver a new generation of economic success? 14:18 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia As the chamber would be aware, COVID-19 has been an economic and health crisis unprecedented in the last century. In Australia, we took early and comprehensive measures, of course, to stabilise our economy in the face of lockdowns, and the enormous health uncertainty that we were faced with earlier this year. The JobKeeper program, which is actually Australia's largest wage subsidy program, has been critical to keeping so many Australians in jobs, and building the foundation of what is now our economic recovery. Encouragingly, with the economic recovery now underway, we are seeing fewer businesses in need of JobKeeper. In October, with the labour force figures coming out, over the last five months we've seen around 650,000 jobs return to the labour market. This includes almost 344,000 jobs for women and around 226,600 jobs for young Australians. Climate Change 39 14:19 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland My question is to the Leader of the Government in the Senate, representing the Prime Minister. A new raft of temperature records were broken over this weekend, with an intense and prolonged heatwave in spring. The Bureau of Meteorology has previously advised that your 2030 targets have Australia on track for upwards of four degrees of warming. So, even if you meet and beat your targets, Australia will experience heatwaves growing in frequency and intensity every single year, destroying crops, killing more coral, shutting down workplaces and claiming lives. Will the government lift its 2030 target in order to meet what the science requires? 14:20 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I thank Senator Waters for her question. Initially, let me just make the observation, which is always important in terms of considering climate policy, that single weeks, or a single weekend, or a single weather event shouldn't, of course, be conflated immediately as a matter of climate change. That is not dismissing at all the longer-term trends and issues that are reported and forecast by different agencies. In relation to emissions reduction in Australia, I think it is important to remember the relative success Australia has had in reducing our domestic emissions here in Australia, when compared with other countries around the world. Senator Watt interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X I hear Senator Watt's comments. Australia's emissions are down 16.6 per cent since 2005. Across comparable countries, across OECD nations, they've fallen by around nine per cent. We're running at nearly twice the rate of reduction compared with comparable countries. Indeed, other countries—allies and friends like Canada and New Zealand, who are often cited by the Greens or others on these matters—have barely shifted the dial in relation to their emissions, whilst Australia has seen a reduction of some 16.6 per cent. Australia has delivered, is delivering and will continue to deliver when it comes to emissions reductions. Our country will beat our Kyoto-era targets by some 459 million tonnes, in relation to abatement targets. That is a huge overachievement relative to the commitments we've made. Our ambition is well and truly not only to meet our Paris commitments but to repeat our trajectory of meeting and beating targets, as we did with Kyoto 1 and Kyoto 2. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Waters, a supplementary question? 14:22 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland Noting your reference to that 16.6 per cent figure, the quarterly emissions report released today shows that, when you take out land use, which no other country uses in their figures, Australia's pollution is still higher than 2005 levels. The government's very proud of its figures today, but a pandemic is not a climate plan. Given gas is the main driver of pollution and risks our precious groundwater and farmland, will you dump your failed gas-led recovery? 14:23 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Gas plays a very important role in Australia's economy and in other economies in terms of enabling the transition from some fuels, such as coal—which the Greens used to come in here and routinely talk about—to other fuels. Gas, indeed, has been a very important driver in transitioning our economy and enabling stability and reliability in an energy system more reliant on renewable energy, which comes with less reliability and needs to have dispatchable energy that can be scaled up when necessary, and gas plays a key role in that. Gas has also increasingly played a role in relation to our other major trading partners being able to shift their emissions intensity in their economies as well. Gas plays a role in relation to Japan's emissions profile and to Korea's emissions profile. All of these key trading partners see gas as a crucial part of their own transition too. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Waters, a final supplementary question? 14:24 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland Eight out of every 10 major businesses in Australia have said today that your 2030 target is inadequate and needs to be lifted. These are your people. Will the government attend President-elect Biden's promised climate summit, to be held within a hundred days of his swearing in, and lift Australia's ambition, or will you push those businesses to, instead, invest outside Australia? 14:24 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia We might wait for invitations before we decide what we're going to attend or not in relation to President-elect Biden. But we do very much welcome the fact that the President-elect has indicated a strong commitment to invest in technology that fuels and powers change in relation to climate change. The President-elect's commitment in relation to technology investment is consistent with our own commitment of a $1.9 billion technology investment package in low-emissions technologies. We see enormous complementarities between what President-elect Biden and our government are seeking to pursue in relation to how you achieve transformation in emissions and how you get improved outcomes in that regard. These are the crucial things that we will work and cooperate with the Biden administration on, and indeed we look forward to that engagement, particularly the complementarity with our largest investment partner and the ability, in pursuing those technologies, to cooperate at a private level as well as a government level. (Time expired) COVID-19: Income Support Payments 40 14:25 Senator KITCHING 247512 Victoria My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham. There are nearly one million Australians unemployed, 1.4 million underemployed and 2.8 million relying on government support, and unemployment is on the rise. How many of the 25,000 Australians who recently joined the unemployment queues were forced there because of the Morrison government's withdrawal of support? 14:26 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Our government, through this crisis period of the pandemic, has sought not only to respond to the health crisis and to achieve what are global-leading results in terms of protecting Australians from the health risks of COVID-19 but also to respond in unprecedented ways in terms of support for the Australian economy. Just as the health results are amongst the best in the world in terms of the resilience that Australia has shown, so, too, are our economic results amongst the best in the world. That is not to say that there aren't Australians doing it very tough. There clearly are. Today we note the announcement by Qantas in relation to job losses that will be sustained at Qantas and changes that company is making to try to ensure its resilience into the future. Opposition senators interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X I hear the interjections from those opposite, who seem to pretend that, in a world where global aviation has been battered to its core, there is some easy solution in relation to these matters. There's not. You can't live in the fantasy world of those opposite. The reality is that we have put in place, through the JobKeeper mechanism, the single largest intervention in the Australian economy by a government in our peacetime history ever, and in doing so we have helped to sustain and save many thousands of jobs, and we have helped to sustain and save many thousands of businesses. But we said at the outset it was never going to be possible to save every single business or every single job, given the nature of the crisis that we face. But we are continuing to invest, having created JobKeeper and extended JobKeeper, and of course now pursuing, through our budget, a range of policy measures designed to drive jobs growth in the economy, to help with the recovery and to get people back to work as quickly as possible. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Kitching, a supplementary question? 14:28 Senator KITCHING 247512 Victoria Last week the deputy governor of the RBA warned the government to, 'be careful of removing the stimulus too early'. What is the economic impact of the Morrison government's decision to withdraw JobSeeker and JobKeeper in March? 14:28 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia We outlined at the beginning of the pandemic, in our economic response, that what we sought to apply were measures that were temporary, targeted and proportionate. They have been the principles that have guided the government's response through this crisis, with some $507 billion in financial support for the Australian economy, representing some 25.6 per cent of GDP. That record level of support has provided a lifeline to so many individuals. But, in terms of the temporary, targeted, proportionate nature, we have also been taking careful steps and decisions in relation to JobKeeper. Those careful steps and decisions have seen JobKeeper go through a number of steps and iterations that do see eligibility— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator Wong on a point of order. Senator Wong 00AOU In the eight seconds the minister has left I wonder if he could be directly relevant to the question, which was the economic impact of the decision to withdraw JobKeeper and JobSeeker in March. We've had a lot of process, a lot of rhetoric, but there was a question which Australians are deeply interested in. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, I have allowed you to remind the minister of the question which followed a quotation regarding stimulus broadly, from the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank my notes reflect. I am listening carefully to the minister. In my view, if he is talking about that policy—you can debate the answer after question time—he is being directly relevant to the question because of the use of that quotation. Senator Birmingham. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Mr President, as we've said at every step of this crisis, we will continue to monitor the impacts at each step of the decision-making and we will make decisions accordingly. That's why we created JobKeeper. It's why we— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Kitching, a final supplementary question? 14:30 Senator KITCHING 247512 Victoria In addition to the Reserve Bank, the OECD has also warned the Morrison government to avoid withdrawing vital support from the economy too early. How many Australians will lose their jobs as a result of the Morrison government ignoring these warnings? 14:31 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia In the last five months we have seen some 650,000 jobs recreated across the Australian economy. This has been a result of the types of measures that our government has put in place to give the economic stability and lifeline that Australia needed. The senator referenced the OECD and their different analysis in her question. Mr President, if you want to look at the global comparisons, you see that economic growth in Australia did indeed in the June quarter contract by seven per cent. However, if you look across comparable nations, we saw that in Germany it contracted by closer to 10 per cent, in Canada by closer to 11½ per cent, in the US by more than nine per cent and in the UK by more than 20 per cent— Senator Gallagher interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X I hear Senator Gallagher say, 'Well, that's comforting for the Australians who've lost their jobs'. As I said in the primary question, we acknowledge this is difficult for many people, but this is a global pandemic we are responding to and our government is applying unprecedented support to get Australians through it— (Time expired) Trade with China 41 14:32 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland My question is for the Minister for Finance, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, Minister Birmingham. Australia has no market other than China for 30 per cent of Australia's exports and no alternative source for 20 per cent of Australia's imports. We have put too many eggs in the China basket with 40 per cent of all export dollars earned in China. Now we're subject to import bans on a range of Australian commodities, including Australian coal, barley, wine and lobsters. These restrictions are designed to hurt our economy until we make change to a raft of policies, according to documents leaked by the Chinese embassy in Canberra to news outlets. Australian businesses are suffering. When will the government admit its mistake and change course? 14:33 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I thank Senator Hanson for her question. These are very difficult times for many Australian businesses who have trade relations with China. The Australian government has expressed deep concern at the fact that China, through a series of actions, particularly through the course of this year but some of them dating back over a couple of years, has taken adverse action against Australia and Australian exporters. We absolutely oppose the actions that China has taken. We have sought, very clearly, to engage China, both in terms of the detail of the actions they've taken and to urge them to the table. As the Prime Minister, Senator Payne—and with bipartisan support—and Senator Wong have indicated today, we're also grievously offended by the actions of the Chinese foreign ministry in relation to the image and words they have posted on Twitter today. Our government has not just fostered open trading relations with China, we have equally fostered them through a range of agreements struck with Japan, with the Republic of Korea, with Canada, with Mexico, with Peru, with Vietnam and with Indonesia. We have opened the door for trading relations for Australian businesses right around the world. We pursue similar trade agreements with the European Union, the United Kingdom and deeper trade relations with India and a range of other countries and markets. Ours is a market economy, in which Australian businesses and companies make decisions about with whom they trade and where they trade—who they sell their goods to and from whom they buy; what they choose to do. Under those agreements, and under the terms of our economy, we encourage businesses to get out there, because what that has achieved is 33 consecutive months where Australia has exported more than we've imported as a nation. That's good news for Australia; it's been good news for businesses— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Hanson, a supplementary question. 14:35 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland Minister, this morning you refused to acknowledge that China was engaged in economic coercion against the people of Australia. Was this because you are afraid to stand up and tell the people of Australia the truth, or are you afraid of standing up to China? 14:35 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Mr President, I think you have heard in this chamber earlier today, and from the words, indeed, of Senator Payne, Senator Wong, myself and the Prime Minister, most importantly, that the government is well and truly happy to stand up to China in those terms. I have, for a long period of time, been expressing our concerns—firstly, about the individual actions that China has been taking and, more recently, about the cumulative effect of those actions. But it is important to note the statistic, as I said before, that month after month after month, Australian exporters and Australian businesses have been getting out to the world, selling more to the world and exporting more to the world than we have been importing. They've been doing that under the network of trade agreements that our government and, indeed, previous governments have negotiated. It is important that our businesses are able to continue to do that, because one in five Australian jobs depends on trade, and we want to help to support those jobs to continue to grow in the future across a range of markets. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Hanson, a final supplementary question. 14:36 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland China is boycotting our products, with 80 ships full of coal lined up off their shores. One Nation and many Australians believe that Chinese products should be boycotted over the Christmas period. Will the government lend its support to the boycott push or keep letting China push Australia around? 14:36 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I think there are a range of implications that China faces from a number of its actions it's been taking of late. The fact that China has created such a high-risk environment for businesses trading and working with them doesn't just reflect poorly on China in the eyes of Australians; it is a point being noted around the world. Indeed, China's actions around the world—not just towards Australia but towards other nations—in terms of trade sanctions and other sections are being noted and are reflecting poorly upon China. That reflection will be seen in the eyes of both governments here and around the world and, no doubt, Senator Hanson, in the eyes of consumers, who will make their choices about the products that they buy and the countries that they buy them from. No doubt, consumers will be mindful of the types of actions we've seen today in terms of those terrible, appalling and shocking images. I'm sure those will reverberate in their minds as they make those purchasing decisions. National Security 42 14:37 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia My question is to the Minister for Defence, Senator Reynolds. Can the minister update the Senate on how the government is building a more secure Australia and preserving our regionally superior Collins class submarine capability? 14:38 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia I thank Senator O'Sullivan for the question, and also for his support for our defence forces in Western Australia and for welcoming HMAS Arunta home—thank you. Australian submarines remain one of the most important capabilities in our Defence Force. The Collins class submarines are only halfway through their life and they are now very, very capable. They're capable of shaping, capable of deterring and also capable of responding to Australia's complex and very rapidly changing strategic environment. To preserve our Collins class submarines, the Morrison government is very carefully considering the management of our entire submarine fleet over the next 50 years. We are ensuring that the Collins class continues to remain regionally superior and in service well into the 2030s. We will continue to ensure that they exceed international benchmarks, again, for decades to come. This is achieved through planned and technological upgrades done in both Western Australia and South Australia, implemented during full-cycle, mid-cycle and intermediate-cycle docking. With Australian industry, we will grow our submarine capability ahead of the Attack class submarines transition in the 2030s and out into the 2040s. Good management of this fleet has not always been the case. Never forget, when we came into government in 2013 we inherited low submarine availability, and Navy often struggled to get a single boat operational out to sea. There was no plan to upgrade and extend the life of our Collins-class submarines, no decision had been made on the future submarine sustainment and there was no naval shipbuilding and sustainment plan. But this government has turned the shipbuilding and sustainment industry into a truly national sovereign capability. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator O'Sullivan, a supplementary question? 14:40 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia Can the minister advise the Senate of what shipbuilding benefits the coalition government has delivered to Western Australia since 2013? 14:40 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia Under this government's plan, naval shipbuilding has gone from zero to booming in seven years. We are committed to building 45 vessels at Henderson, worth around $16 billion. Already, about $3 billion in contracts have been signed with WA shipbuilders, a $1.5 billion transformation of defence infrastructure at Henderson and at HMAS Stirling is well underway and we are investing more than $300 million in new maritime tracking ranges off the coast of Perth. Hundreds—in fact, thousands—of new multigenerational jobs are being created across these programs throughout the supply chain in Western Australia. I can assure all Western Australians that all shipbuilding and sustainment decisions will be made for the right reasons at the right time in the national interest, and all Australians would expect nothing less. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator O'Sullivan, a final supplementary question? 14:41 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia I thank the minister for that update—good news for Western Australia. Can the minister advise the Senate of what shipbuilding benefits the coalition government has delivered to South Australia since 2013? 14:41 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia Under this government's plan, the coalition government's commitment to shipbuilding in South Australia has once and for all ended Labor's valley of death. Our record investment is building 23 of the world's most advanced naval platforms at the new digital shipyards in Osborne. We have delivered the Hobart-class Destroyers and have laid the foundations for continuous shipbuilding in Australia for many, many generations to come. This astonishing achievement in just seven short years has created thousands of jobs, has created new business opportunities in South Australia and has helped reinvigorate Australia's industrial landscape. These are jobs that the great-grandchildren and the great-great-grandchildren of the workers in South Australia will be working in, in these industries in South Australia. The people of South Australia can have confidence that they are at the forefront of this government's plan to ensure that Australia has the maritime capability that we need. (Time expired) Cormann, Mr Mathias 43 14:42 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham. Former Minister for Finance Mathias Cormann has been jetting across Europe in an RAAF plane to the tune of $4,300 an hour to interview for his next job. What does the minister say to the nearly 37,000 Australians stranded overseas who are watching a former minister of the Morrison government fly around at taxpayer expense while they remain stranded overseas and are likely to miss Christmas with their families? 14:43 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Let me firstly deal with returning Australians, and then I'll return to the issue of Mr Cormann and the OECD. In relation to returning Australians, it is well known that the prime constraint in relation to getting more people into Australia is the quarantine facilities and their availability within Australia. Our government thanks the states and territories for working with us in relation to increasing the numbers of quarantine places. We are thankful for the fact that, working with the states and territories, we've been able to grow the number of returning Australians on a regular basis. And we welcome the fact that when Victoria is able to again welcome returning Australians and house them in hotel quarantine then we will be in a position to see a further growth, from 5,600 currently processed to around 5,700. This is about— Opposition senators interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Those opposite seem to think hotel quarantine is an easy, safe thing and we can just pile more and more and more and more people in and there is no consequence to it. Well, I think the people of Victoria have seen that there is a consequence to it and the people of South Australia have seen that there is a consequence to it. There are absolutely real issues when it comes to how we safely return Australians to Australia. Senator Wong interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X In no way do we wash our hands of it, Senator Wong. Senator Wong interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong! Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X We are absolutely working closely with the states and territories. We've put ADF troops on the line to work with them. We have grown the number of places. We're getting more Australians home. We're doing that as quickly as possible while keeping Australians safe from COVID at the same time. Senator Wong interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, on numerous occasions there I was calling senators to order. This will become a very miserable two weeks if people don't have some basic decency so that I may hear answers for inevitable points of order. You're quite right, Senator Wong; Senator Birmingham does have a very strong voice. I still had trouble hearing him. Senator Keneally, a supplementary question? 14:46 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales Mr Morrison defended the $4,300 an hour spent on a private plane, saying: If Mathias was flying around on commercial planes, he would have got COVID. The risk of that was extremely high. Can the minister explain to the nearly 37,000 stranded Australians why Mr Morrison believes it's acceptable for them to fly commercially, at hugely inflated prices, and face the extremely high risk of contracting COVID-19 but it's not okay for a former member of his government? 14:46 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Not only do those opposite seem to think there's some magical solution to be able to increase the availability of safe entry points into Australia, not only do they ignore the fact that there are— Senator Keneally interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator Keneally. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X charter flights and supported commercial arrangements that our government has put in place; they also bring the most small-minded 'Little Australia' attitude to our candidacy for the OECD. Having come out in support of the candidacy initially, they now seem to want us to run a campaign in a half-baked way intending to somehow lose. Having decided to field a candidate for this position, Australia intends to campaign to win. That's what's important—to actually make sure that, having put Australia out there to win, we get on and do so. We are supporting this candidacy. We are doing so because it will help Australia in the long term to influence the result— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Keneally, a final supplementary question? 14:47 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales Last week, stranded Australians appearing before the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19 referred to the Morrison government's decision to fly Mathias Cormann in an RAAF plan as 'appalling' and 'an old mates club'. Are they wrong? 14:48 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia We have absolute sympathy for the plight of many Australians overseas, and it is why we are working to increase those quarantine places, put in place more supported fights and provide targeted assistance in a range of different ways. In relation to support for candidacies, we think this is a thing Australian governments consistently should provide. Indeed, if we look back, I can see that Gareth Evans was provided with some $250,000 of support, in 1999 dollar terms, for his candidacy, by the Howard government, for UNESCO— The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Keneally, a point of order? Senator Keneally LNW My point of order is relevance. At no time did I mention 1995 or Gareth Evans. There are 37,000 stranded Australians. That number has doubled, and he hasn't— The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Keneally, resume your seat! If you want to keep showing this amount of disrespect to the chair on the first day of the final fortnight, it's going to be a very slow question time as I constantly interrupt questions and answers. I do ask, while it is a very vibrant chamber, for people to at least heed me and pay a little bit of respect to the chair when I'm calling people to order. On the point of order, Senator Keneally, your question contained a number of pejorative phrases in terms of quoting people. When questions contain pejorative phrases, I'm listening carefully. In comparison, for example, the first question asked today was very specific and there was no latitude for the minister to stray. But, when questions contain politically loaded phrases, I don't think it's out of order for a minister to be able to respond in kind. That said, this was a quotation and not an assertion on your behalf. I accept that. I'm listening carefully to the minister's answer. He has 15 seconds remaining to address the question. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X We absolutely are giving all the support we can to get returning Australians home safely whilst not jeopardising the safety of people in Australia or our economy, in terms of the number of places that are available to get people back safely and securely. (Time expired) Child Abuse 45 14:50 Senator ASKEW 281558 Tasmania My question is to the Minister for Families and Social Services, Senator Ruston. Can the minister update the Senate on how the Morrison government is ensuring survivors of institutional child sexual abuse are able to receive redress? 14:51 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia Thank you very much, Senator Askew, for that very important question. It's particularly timely since the government—Assistant Minister Seselja and I—announced on Friday that we would be introducing legislation and regulatory reform to strip institutions who fail to accept their responsibility to join the redress scheme of their charitable status. This was a commitment that the Prime Minister made earlier this year to survivors and it is one that we are absolutely determined to fulfil. So, once the legislation and the regulations have gone through this place, no charitable or religious organisation or institution will be able to benefit from taxation concessions while victims and survivors of child sexual abuse continue to be denied the redress that they so rightly deserve. To date, 129 charities have been identified as being named in applications in the scheme that have not yet joined the scheme. Whilst I acknowledge that many of those organisations are currently in the process of onboarding, we already know that there is one charitable organisation that was named in the July statement this year that has absolutely refused to accept its responsibility for the abuse that was undertaken in the institution. The Prime Minister has been absolutely clear in his statement that anybody who is named in the royal commission or who has an application lodged against them must do everything in their power to join the redress scheme so that we are in a position to provide the redress to survivors that they so justly deserve. I'd like to take this opportunity to remind the 80 charitable institutions who are currently in the process of onboarding and who gave a commitment that they would onboard by 31 December 2020 that they have until 31 December. If they do not join in that time, they will be named and shamed and full sanctions will be taken against them. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Askew, a supplementary question? 14:53 Senator ASKEW 281558 Tasmania Minister, how do the changes assist the government in signing institutions up to the redress scheme? 14:53 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia We know this is a particularly complex area, and I'm very pleased to be able to say that we've taken a two-pronged approach to ensure that we are able to get access to survivors and make sure that no survivor is left behind. Firstly, we'll be amending the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission regulatory framework to require all charities to participate in the scheme if a claim has been made against them or is likely to be made against them. Should that charity fail to take reasonable steps, that will mean that they have not met their requirements and they will be subject to the full suite of existing compliance powers, which includes deregistration as a charity. This would mean that they would no longer be able to get access to favourable taxation concessions on income tax, fringe benefits tax and direct recipient status. This, I hope, will make those charities think twice. Further, we will also be making sure that basic religious charities are put into the same bucket as other charities. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Askew, a final supplementary question? 14:54 Senator ASKEW 281558 Tasmania How does this important change add to other measures that the government has implemented to ensure institutions do not shirk their moral obligations? 14:54 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia We have already been able to make 4,200 payments, but we understand that more needs to be done. That's why we are putting in place these very strong sanctions. If just the thought of being named and shamed isn't enough then hopefully the financial penalty will make sure that people understand their responsibility and that this government is absolutely serious. We have made it clear that we expect any institution that was named in the royal commission and any institution that was named in an application from a survivor to join. We want them to join the scheme and we want to make sure that we have every power to compel them to do so. We've also made it very clear that any institution receiving government funding that fails to join the scheme will no longer be eligible to receive that funding. I remain absolutely committed to naming and shaming every single institution that does not accept their responsibility to survivors of child sexual abuse and give them the redress that they deserve. Pensions and Benefits 46 14:55 Senator McCARTHY 122087 Northern Territory My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Government Services, Senator Ruston. Can the minister confirm the government received 14 official reports of robodebt victims threatening self-harm: on 7 January 2017, 13 July 2017, 1 August 2017, 8 August 2017, 28 August 2017, 30 August 2017, 6 October 2017, 23 October 2017, 26 October 2017, 6 November 2017, 7 August 2018, 24 September 2018, 6 November 2018 and 11 December 2018? 14:56 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia I thank Senator McCarthy for her question. I do not have with me today the information that you require. However, I will take the specifics of the detailed question that you asked in relation to each and every one of those individual instances that you have just quoted. I make the point that this is a very delicate and sensitive area and that we need to be mindful of how we handle these issues. I would warn everyone opposite that talking about this issue requires great sensitivity and I caution anyone reaching unfounded conclusions that continue to perpetuate the upset and trauma that is inflicted on the loved ones. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator McCarthy, a supplementary question? 14:57 Senator McCARTHY 122087 Northern Territory Has the minister asked the department for a report on how many Australians died by suicide as a result of the government's illegal robodebt scheme? 14:57 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia As I said, we need to be very careful and very sensitive because any death by suicide is a tragedy—I say that upfront. Senator McCarthy, I reject the premise of your question, because I believe it is incorrect for you to interpret Centrelink customer death statistics as suicides. These are all individual cases and all these individual people deserve respect and not to be spoken about as just a statistic. We know that there are a number of deceased customers of Centrelink whose estates are entitled to a refund under the Income Compliance program. Those estates will receive those refunds, as will everybody in the Income Compliance program. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, on a point of order? Senator Wong 00AOU Mr President, the question was asked with the sensitivity that the minister is urging. My point of order goes to direct relevance. Senator McCarthy asked whether the minister had sought a report about those who might have died by suicide as a consequence of being pursued under the illegal scheme. We haven't asked about refunds; we've asked whether or not a report around the effects of the scheme has been asked for. The PRESIDENT I0Q I've allowed you to restate the question, Senator Wong. While the minister was talking about this sensitive matter in substance, I do consider her to be directly relevant. Senator Ruston has concluded the answer. Senator McCarthy, a final supplementary question? 14:59 Senator McCARTHY 122087 Northern Territory Minister, why did the government persist with the Prime Minister's robodebt scheme when it knew it was illegal and there were reports of self-harm and suicide? 14:59 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia As I said to a previous question that was asked of me by those on the other side, when we became aware as to the income compliance program, which used income averaging as the sole determining factor for determining a debt, we ceased that program and we commenced immediately putting in place a program to repay those debts. We have nearly completed that program, and we are just working through the final stages to make sure that anybody who had a debt that was raised as a result of income averaging is now in the process of receiving that refund. Senator Birmingham H6X Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on notice. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS 47 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS Pensions and Benefits 47 15:01 Senator O'NEILL 140651 New South Wales I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Birmingham) and the Minister representing the Minister for Government Services (Senator Ruston) to the questions without notice asked by Senators Wong, Gallagher and McCarthy today relating to robodebt. In a feat of contortionism I don't think I've quite ever witnessed in this place, Senator Birmingham was unable to answer any of the three questions asked by Senator Wong with the truth. So let's just get it on the record. Senator Wong did ask: Can the minister tell the Senate who was the social services minister in 2016 when the robodebt scheme was first introduced? For those want to know the truth, the answer is: Mr Scott Morrison. The second question that was asked of Senator Birmingham by the Leader of the Opposition here in the Senate, Senator Wong, was: who was the Treasurer in 2016 and bragged that robodebt was 'proof of the social welfare system being "better managed"? And the answer to that question is: Mr Scott Morrison. Finally, Senator Wong asked Minister Birmingham: Can the minister advise who was the Prime Minister in 2020 when $1.2 billion was used to settle the claims of victims of this government's illegal robodebt scheme? Again—the trifecta—the answer was: Mr Scott Morrison. And Australians should never forget that the Prime Minister was the man who cooked up the robodebt scheme. He was the Treasurer who bragged about using robodebt to reduce Australia's debt, preying on very vulnerable people in the most egregious way. And he is the Prime Minister right at this moment, when the biggest payout for a failing of a government is making history—$1.2 billion was assigned by the courts to give compensation for people who were caught up in the scheme of Mr Morrison's design, of his implementation. And now there is a very, very belated clean-up. I want to deal with the constant mistruth that we keep hearing from Senator Ruston with regard to this robodebt scheme being a common practice and the absolute untruth that she told when she said that this was a practice established by the Labor Party. I want to make it very, very clear that the Labor Party did check to see if there was a signal of a mismatch between what was on the record in the Department of Social Services and in the ATO. And, if there was a mismatch, the public servants then absolutely did the work to confirm the facts. The reality is that there were 20,000 Australians per year who were investigated using that scheme. But, the minute Mr Morrison got his hands on it, let me tell you how many illegal debts were being delivered to Australian people per week: 20,000 Australian people were served a debt from their own government—an illegally constructed debt. That lie that is constantly being told—that it was once the same under a Labor government—must end. It is nowhere near the truth. Mr Morrison is responsible for the construction of the robodebt debacle. He is the Treasurer who banked the savings at the expense of the Australian people, and he is the Prime Minister who must be held responsible for the impact on the great Australian nation. Senator McCarthy asked Senator Ruston a very sensitive question. Senator Ruston's response was to lower her voice and talk about suicide and self-harm as a sensitive and delicate matter. It is, indeed; it's a very sensitive matter. It matters very much to people who've lost loved ones because they couldn't stand the pressure of the debt notices and the debt collectors that were sent upon them by their own government. The government has continued to deny that people self-harmed and, in desperation, took their lives, because of Mr Morrison—because he cooked up the scheme, because he delivered it as Treasurer and because he backed it in as Prime Minister on at least 76 occasions when the AAT knew that they were doing the wrong thing and told the government. This is a government that must hang its head in shame. The Australian people should kick them out on this matter alone. (Time expired) 15:06 Senator CANAVAN 245212 Queensland Thank you for this opportunity to contribute to this important issue. The conclusion to Senator O'Neill's speech indicates the objectives of the other side here. Senator O'Neill was most passionate when she was accusing the Prime Minister of certain ills, not when she was seeking to defend or pursue the interests of average Australians. Clearly, the objective of the opposition is not to help people but to hurt the Prime Minister. That is the approach they have taken here. In fact, in her very first contribution, Senator O'Neill accused the government, the Prime Minister and others of being untruthful. Then she went on to make clearly untruthful statements at the very time she herself was accusing others of being untruthful. Senator O'Neill mentioned that, in her view, Minister Birmingham did not provide truthful responses to the questions given today. One of the questions that she claimed there was no response to was: who was the social services minister in 2016? Despite a simple Google search being able to provide the answer to that, Minister Birmingham did mention Mr Scott Morrison in answer to that question. Despite the heckling from the other side—it was often hard to hear half of what was being said by ministers this afternoon—I did distinctly hear Minister Birmingham, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, say that, yes, Mr Morrison was the social services minister in 2016. That was a very useful part of question time this afternoon. Unlike the opposition, the government's focus now is on helping those that have been put in this situation. The Prime Minister has apologised for the hurt and harm that has been caused by the issues with this program. The government's focus now is on ensuring that people receive the relief as soon as possible. We know and have been transparent about the fact that around 525,000 debts have been wholly or partially raised using income averaging. The total amounts of the refunds being provided because of these debts sit at around $741 million. Around 430,000 Australians will have their debts zeroed through this process. Of those, approximately 378,000 will receive a refund. The balance hadn't actually made a repayment, so there'll be no direct refund, of course, but the debt will be wiped. As of 27 November, just over 406,000 people had had their refunds completed, with a total of $707 million paid. While not mentioned here in my notes, by my math, that leaves around 23,000 to 24,000 people that are still to process their debts. But the vast majority, about 95 per cent of people and 95 per cent of refunds by value, have now been processed. That's going to remain as the focus of the government, including through the settlement that has been reached in the class action with Gordon Legal. And that should be the focus of any government, because if the opposition were true to their claims to care about the impacts of these issues on people then what they should focus on now is that relief—be focused on providing that assistance to people in this circumstance. It's still very important, of course, that we continue to maintain the integrity of our welfare system. The Australian government spends $180 billion a year on welfare, and support for such welfare programs is reliant on making sure that the money is spent on those who truly need it. Of course there are those who do seek to defraud the Commonwealth and it is important that there are compliance activities to stamp out and penalise such fraud when it does occur. For decades, all governments have pursued such anti-fraud programs. I'm confident that all governments in the future, including if there is to be a Labor government in the future, will continue to do so, because we support our welfare system and we support its integrity. We'll continue to operate it in the best way we can. 15:11 Senator BILYK HZB Tasmania [Appearing via video link] I want to speak about the ministers' completely underwhelming response to questions about robodebt today. We all know that robodebt has been an unparalleled disaster. It was illegal and it was executed atrociously. Hundreds of thousands of Australians had to go through the unnecessary stress and heartache of disproving their liability for debts that they didn't even owe, and while governments have previously matched ATO data with Centrelink data, this government automated it, taking out the human oversight element and moving from 20,000 cases a year to 20,000 cases a week. I'm a member of the Community Affairs References Committee. We've handed down Centrelink's compliance program: Third interim report on robodebt, as it's known. We heard evidence and read submissions from witnesses whose lives were completely devastated by this program. Let's remember that the government's intent was to rip hundreds of millions of dollars out of the pockets of people who have been on extremely low incomes. They wanted to do everything they could in the hope of getting cash for their fantasy surplus, no matter how dubious the methods were. Instead, they've now been ordered to drop the debts, to repay discredited debts which were already paid and to pay millions in compensation and legal fees. This has resulted in a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars in government legal and administrative costs. Robodebt was illegal; it was against the law—there are no ifs, buts or maybes about it. It wasn't just 'legally insufficient', as a government official tried to tell me in a hearing into robodebt, it was plain illegal, and the government's explanations today just weren't good enough. People were treated as cheats and debtors by their government. In fact, 430,000 people were treated like this—430,000 people repaid the government when they didn't owe them a cent. This is money that they usually use to pay for rent, electricity, food and other daily basic living expenses. These people went through enormous stress and suffering. People died; people committed suicide. Lives were ruined by this program and now, today, in question time, the government were warning us about speaking about it with a sense of respect. Well, it's a shame they didn't have that same sense of respect when they were harassing people. We all know whose brainchild robodebt was and who the Treasurer was who announced it and who the Prime Minister now is who didn't stop the implementation of his own botched policy. Yes, it was Mr Morrison in all three positions and that probably explains why we can't find out what the government knew and when they knew it. Personally, I think there's a fair bit of protecting your own backside going on on that side of the chamber, and maybe in the Prime Minister's office too. This should never have happened. It shouldn't have taken a class action on behalf of thousands of people to rectify the mistakes of this government. The government dragged their feet on the class action for months and have spent years trying to defend the program, even though they were warned 76 times over the years about their actions. What I really don't understand is why the government had to get to the point of settlement instead of listening to the victims concerned. I'll say it again: this must never be allowed to happen again. The government settled on the cusp of the trial without admitting any liability, but obviously knowing they were wrong. The Australian people really need and deserve to know who was responsible. We need to determine how it happened that ministers of the government either knew that the law was being broken and did nothing about it, or never bothered to find out if the law had been broken in the first place. We need to discover how we got into this situation with senior public servants authorising a scheme which was illegal, because if we don't do that, if we don't find out how this disaster occurred, how can we ensure that it won't happen again? Labor will continue to push for a royal commission into robodebt. It's the only appropriate outcome. The government unjustly enriched itself with $720 million-plus of people's money. It did so at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in administrative costs and legal fees, before having to hand all the funds it raised back and pay compensation. This process, this policy and this program were incompetence at the highest level. Australian taxpayers and robodebt victims deserve an explanation for this— (Time expired) 15:16 Senator RENNICK 283596 Queensland In regard to Senator Bilyk's comments, it was certainly not the intention of the government to take money out of people's pockets. The government pays out about $180 billion every year in social welfare payments. We have a responsibility to the taxpayer to ensure that those dollars are spent properly and that they get to the people who need them. There is a need for compliance in the system to make sure that payments are made properly. It's a bit hypocritical for those opposite us, the Labor Party, who were responsible for over a thousand deaths at sea, a problem which cost billions and billions of dollars to overcome, to start accusing us of being malicious. In their own time in government they were very, very inept at protecting the lives of people. Indeed, many of the opposition who are on the front bench today, have actually come out and supported the idea of recovering overpayments. I will quote a couple of these people. Tanya Plibersek, the member for Sydney, said: If people fail to come to an arrangement to settle their debts, the government has a responsibility to taxpayers to recover that money. We've also got the member for Maribyrnong, Bill Shorten, saying: The automation of this process will free up resources and result in more people being referred to the tax garnishee process, retrieving more outstanding debt on behalf of taxpayers. Finally, there was Mr Bowen saying: It is important that the Government explores different means of debt recovery to ensure that those who have received more money than they are entitled to repay their debt. As Ms Plibersek and Mr Bowen said, the government does have a responsibility to recover debts where people have been overpaid. And, as Mr Shorten said: 'The automation of this process will free up resources.' I also should say, of course, that the government recognises the recovery of debt has to be done in a way that is lawful. That is why the government has made decisions to make repayments. I should also note that on 11 June the Prime Minister apologised in parliament for any hurt and harm caused through the way the government has dealt with this issue. Department officials have also come out, at recent inquiries, and echoed the sentiments of the Prime Minister. There is no doubt that errors were made in relation to the automation of the income compliance program. These are being addressed, and we will make the repayments to make sure that just cause is served. However, we shouldn't shy away from the importance of technology. As I said earlier, we pay over $180 billion every year in social welfare payments. Over 1.2 million people receive income support. As the population grows and as payments get more complicated—I work on the tax side of things, and I must admit that I've always found that easier than actually trying to understand all the different social service payments—I can understand that if you're trying to do it manually over time then these things get more and more complex. So, I think the fact that we are trying to automate the process is something that should be applauded, and I ask you: would we go back and turn off internet banking, for example? I think we all enjoy the benefits of automation in return for internet banking. Unfortunately, we've made mistakes this time but we are working to improve that. One of the things I would like to see—and I've mentioned this on many occasions—is parallel runs when we implement new systems. I've discussed this many a time with other departments, about the need to make sure we double-check things. (Time expired) 15:21 Senator McCARTHY 122087 Northern Territory This government's robodebt scheme is a travesty and a tragedy. The government knew the damage that this illegal scheme was doing to the people. The Prime Minister was forced into an apology and now there has been a last-minute pre-trial admission conceding that the government owes robodebt victims their money back, plus compensation. This is likely to total more than $1 billion that the government owes victims of the robodebt scheme. A settlement for approximately 400,000 class action members is both the most costly and involves the most people of any settlement by an Australian government. But it is some form of justice for victims, who have been treated terribly by the Morrison government. For years the Morrison government has been in denial about robodebt's fairness and legality, even after the defective robodebt system had wreaked a trail of carnage across the nation, resulting in anxiety, poverty and even suicides. This dodgy scheme is more than what Christian Porter now calls 'legally insufficient'. It has cost countless Australians their livelihoods and in some cases their lives. It's only after the prospect of coalition ministers such as former Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge having to take the witness stand to answer questions about what they knew that the government has agreed to fairly pay back victims. There are so many dirty hands involved in this dodgy scheme. Scott Morrison, once the social services minister and then the Treasurer, was a key architect of robodebt. Christian Porter, who became social services minister, was also involved, and Mr Robert. This government, the minister and this Prime Minister will not even answer the most basic questions about how this illegal robodebt scheme was designed and implemented. The minister has dodged and ducked and thrown up flimsy claims of public interest immunity time after time after time and has just plain refused to answer questions about robodebt. The Prime Minister needs to step up and answer the questions about how robodebt came into being and when the government was first made aware that what they were doing was actually illegal. He needs to answer the question about exactly how much this botched scheme cost the country. And he needs to make it very clear what they knew, and when, about the devastating impact that the robodebt scheme was having on individuals and about the reports that were received about threats of self-harm. What is it about robodebt's origins that the government does not want anyone to know? Were they told it was illegal and ignored the advice? Or did they not check its legality at all before unleashing it on an unsuspecting public? How much extra in taxpayers' money has the Morrison government wasted fighting this unwinnable case? Only a royal commission into robodebt will give the public the answers they deserve, and only a royal commission will give the families of those who took their own lives after falling victim to robodebt some answers. This government has not even bothered to find out how many people have threatened self-harm or how many victims of robodebt have tragically taken their own lives. You cannot refund the debt. The government must immediately allow such an independent inquiry into the robodebt scandal. Sunlight on how these hidden decisions were made is vital. It's needed to ensure the Australian public is never again exposed to whatever has gone horribly wrong here. It is extremely offensive to the Australian public that no-one in this government is taking any responsibility for this $1.2 billion scam on the Australian people. Every day that no minister is stood down over this theft from the public is another argument for a robodebt royal commission as the only route to accountability. In the meantime the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, must explain what the consequences will be for ministers for their involvement in the single greatest social security scandal in this nation's history and the subsequent cover-up. Question agreed to. Climate Change 50 15:26 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Leader of the Government in the Senate (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator Waters today relating to climate change. I asked about the climate emergency we're in, given that we've just had the two hottest November days and had record-breaking temperatures across the country. A heatwave is due to move across this continent over the coming days. I mentioned that the Bureau of Meteorology have advised us, on the record in Senate estimates, that in fact the targets that this government have set for 2030 would have Australia on track for a four-degree rise or upwards of temperatures. I think perhaps people don't appreciate the extent of devastation a four-degree rise would cause. The Paris Agreement commits us to two degrees, with aspiration of it being 1½ degrees, and yet this government's policies have us on track for more than double that. That's a recipe for not just economic destruction and an awful lot of human misery but also mass crop failure and the rest of the reef bleaching—after half the coral cover has already died from mass bleaching events, of which we've now had three in the last five years. It's a recipe that we should be avoiding at all costs. So I ask the minister: will the government be reconsidering its 2030 targets in light of what the science says is necessary to keep us all safe and to retain a liveable society and natural world? What I got were the talking points. Emissions data released today shows that Australia has dropped its emissions by 16.6 per cent. I asked the minister about that very point because, in fact, when you take out the land-use emissions that Australia uses but no other country uses, our emissions are higher than they were in 2005, so, in fact, there has not been a reduction at all. Once again, we see this government using dodgy accounting tricks to disguise what is patently obvious to most Australians: that this government has no climate plan. It is completely in bed with the coal, oil and gas sector. And we know the extent of donations that flow to the coffers of this government and, sadly, also to the opposition party. We're up to, I think, $9.2 million from the fossil fuel sector. And look what that buys. It buys inaction on the climate crisis. It buys that devastation that we could so readily avoid with a rapid transition to 100 per cent jobs-rich, affordable, clean energy. We could be running that manufacturing on clean renewable energy. We could be exporting that renewable energy, and that renewable energy technology, to the world. This is a recipe for us addressing the climate crisis, creating jobs, helping to rebuild after a pandemic and helping to do our bit globally. We see many of our trading partners are actually setting much stronger targets than we are. In fact, many of them have set dates to exit fossil fuels. But this government has got its head completely in the sand. We've got that climate summit coming up soon, just ahead of the Glasgow climate summit, where 2030 targets need to be spoken of, and this government has given no indication whatsoever that it will listen to the science and increase its targets. We are likely to be amongst folk like Saudi Arabia and Russia when it comes to our climate ambition. Now, that's embarrassing. We already have the highest per capita emissions profile in the world—we still have that dubious honour—and yet we have such potential to turn that around. When I put that to the minister, I just got the talking points. I got this obsession with gas. Apparently gas is a transition fuel. Well, nobody believes that. It's not, in fact, the case. It is almost as dirty a fuel as coal. It wrecks farmland. It endangers groundwater. It often happens without First Nation people's consent. It is not a good way forward when we have reliable, clean, renewable alternatives that create more jobs and don't wreck the land. Obviously the renewable sector doesn't donate enough to this government, or the opposition, to get more support. It's pretty tragic that that's what has got to happen in order for science based, evidence based policies to eventuate. We live in hope of the government lifting its climate targets ahead of 2030 so that we can actually address the climate emergency and come out of this economic and health pandemic stronger, and with a long-term future we can be proud of. Question agreed to. NOTICES 51 NOTICES Presentation 51 15:32 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I shall move: That the provisions of paragraphs (5) to (8) of standing order 111 not apply to the following bills, allowing them to be considered during this period of sittings: Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Extension of Coronavirus Support) Bill 2020 VET Student Payment Arrangements (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill 2020 I also table statements of reasons justifying the need for these bills to be considered during these sittings and seek leave to have the statements incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The statements read as follows— SOCIAL SERVICES AND OTHER LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (EXTENSION OF CORONA VIRUS SUPPORT) BILL 2020 Purpose of the Bill The Bill: allows for the extension of the temporary COVID-19 Supplement to continue to be paid to all current recipients (including students and new apprentices in receipt of Youth Allowance) until 31 March 2021; allows for the temporary COVID-19 qualification rules for JobSeeker Payment and Youth Allowance that are associated with the payment of the COVID-19 Supplement to continue in their current form until 31 March 2021; provides that the temporary COVID-19 Supplement and the temporary COVID-19 related exemptions from the ordinary waiting period, newly arrived resident's waiting period and seasonal work preclusion period cannot be extended beyond 31 March 2021; permanently ends the temporary COVID-19 exemptions from the liquid assets test waiting period and assets tests, from 1 January 2021; allows certain specified provisions of the social security law to be temporarily modified by the Minister by disallowable legislative instrument until 31 March 2021 ( or until 16 April 2021 in relation to modifications to the nil rate period); introduces a discretionary power under the social security and veterans' entitlements assets tests to extend the principal home temporary absence provisions where a person, for reasons beyond their control, cannot return to Australia within the allowable absence period; and permits JobKeeper information provided to Services Australia on or before 28 March 2021 to continue to be used after that date. Reasons for Urgency The Bill must be passed during 2020 to permit the COVID-19 Supplement and temporary modifications to social security law to continue in their current form until 31 March 2021. VET STUDENT PAYMENT ARRANGEMENTS (MISCELLANEOUS AMENDMENTS) BILL Purpose of the Bill The Bill amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to implement measures to assist the Commonwealth to resolve outstanding matters that arose under the former VET FEEHELP scheme, and introduce measures that will further facilitate closure of the scheme. The Bill also amends the VET Student Loans Act 2016 to improve administration of the VET Student Loans program. Reasons for Urgency Passage for the Bill in the 2020 Spring sitting period is sought in order to give the sector sufficient notice that the Commonwealth will cease paying amounts of VET FEE-HELP to providers unless those amounts are reported by specified deadlines. This lead time is necessary and intended to influence the behaviour of providers to finalise data reporting, ensure that providers have sufficient notice of the change, and to manage perception of the change. Failure to give reasonable notice to providers may cause them to miss the specified deadlines and be unexpectedly out of pocket. Presentation 52 CONDOLENCES 58 CONDOLENCES Guilfoyle, Hon. Dame Margaret Georgina Constance, AC, DBE 58 15:32 The PRESIDENT I0Q It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death on 11 November 2020 of the Hon. Dame Margaret Georgina Constance Guilfoyle AC DBE and a senator for the state of Victoria, from 1971 until 1987. I call the Leader of the Government in the Senate. 15:32 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I move: That the Senate records its deep sorrow at the death, on 11 November 2020, of the Honourable Dame Margaret Georgina Constance Guilfoyle AC DBE, former Senator for Victoria and former Minister for Finance and Minister for Social Security, places on record its gratitude for her dedicated service to the Parliament and the nation, and tenders its profound sympathy to her family in their bereavement. Earlier this month, we lost a Liberal Party and an Australian icon. We lost another woman who, in Australia, had made an extraordinary and leading contribution to shape the modern Australia that we live in today. Dame Margaret Guilfoyle was the first woman in cabinet with a ministerial portfolio in an Australian government, the first woman from this place—the Senate—to serve in cabinet and the first woman to hold a major economic portfolio within the Australian government. She was a trailblazer, a pioneer, and her legacy has helped to encourage future generations to follow in her footsteps. Dame Margaret was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1926, one of three children, to Elizabeth and William McCartney. Two years later, her family packed up their belongings and migrated to Australia, settling in Melbourne. At age 10, Dame Margaret's father passed away, leaving her mother to raise three young children alone. She would later reflect in life that this experience helped shape her views that a woman must be capable of independence, seek education, and that they should have the same political, economic and social rights as men. Dame Margaret was educated at Fairfield state school and Westgarth Central Business College. By age 15, she was working as a secretary while studying accountancy at night at Taylors Institute of Advanced Studies and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. By age 20, in 1946, Dame Margaret was a qualified accountant and chartered secretary working at the Overseas Corporation Australia, a firm that specialised in promoting Australian exports. A few years later, on 20 November 1952, Dame Margaret married Stanley Guilfoyle, a fellow accountant, with whom she had three children. The Guilfoyles were active members of the Liberal Party, joining the South Camberwell branch in the 1950s. Dame Margaret undertook various roles within the women's section of the party, where she formed close relationships with Dame Ivy Wedgwood, her mentor, Dame Elizabeth Couchman and Edith Haynes. Upon her retirement in 1970, Dame Ivy, Victoria's first female senator, encouraged Dame Margaret to stand for preselection to replace her. Dame Margaret followed that advice and went on to defeat 20 candidates and secured the second spot on the Liberal Senate ticket. Nearly all of those opponents in that preselection race were men. Her Senate election bid was successful and, on 1 July 1971, Dame Margaret entered the Australian parliament as a Victorian Liberal senator. In her first speech to the parliament, during a budget debate, quite fittingly, Dame Margaret displayed her financial and economic skills, analysing infrastructure costs and touching on mining industry matters, as well as expressing opinions across matters of the environment, pollution, population and funding for the arts. Dame Margaret was especially passionate about the arts and a strong advocate for the development of an Australian children's film foundation which would create content that would enrich the lives of Australian children for many years to come. The foundation was established a number of years later in 1982, and Dame Margaret would go on to serve as a director of the foundation for over a decade, from 1989 to 2003. In opposition, Dame Margaret served in a number of roles, including as opposition spokesperson on the media and on education. A few short years later, in 1975, with the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the appointment of Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister, Dame Margaret was made Minister for Education. Through that 1975 election campaign, Dame Margaret handed down the coalition's education policies and, of note, Joan Kirner, the then head of the Australian Council of State School Organisations, would later praise Dame Margaret's policies and the role which they played in supporting sound education policy in Australia. After the coalition victory in December 1975, Dame Margaret moved to the position of Minister for Social Security, a portfolio she would hold for five years. A reshuffle in 1976 saw Dame Margaret promoted to cabinet and, in so doing, becoming Australia's first female cabinet minister to serve with portfolio. During her time in social security, Dame Margaret is well recorded in history books as having worked hard to shield her portfolio from various spending cuts, engaging in fierce battles with then Treasurer Philip Lynch. Indeed, as she herself described: I think perhaps the nicest headline I ever had during my time was the one in a Sydney paper that said, 'Minister unhelpful'—unhelpful in cutting the programs that coherently gave income security to millions of people … and maybe unhelpful in trying to persuade other ministers that there were essential matters that needed to be built upon and not destroyed from time to time. The welfare of women was central to her, and she reminded colleagues often that 83 per cent of the payments made through her then department were made to women. Dame Margaret also oversaw major reform of the National Child Endowment Scheme. Renamed 'family allowance', it was paid directly to mothers and provided greater benefits to lower income families. She also ran the Office of Child Care and presided over a major expansion of government support for preschool, child care and after-school care. In 1980, Dame Margaret was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Later that year, following the election, she was moved into the Finance portfolio. Having spent the last years defending her portfolio from cuts, she was tasked with the responsibility of looking for savings. As Minister for Finance, Dame Margaret was known for her strong financial expertise and sound understanding of economic matters. She was appointed to the razor gang, as it was known colloquially, and, indeed, was given by the then Prime Minister an expanded role as finance minister in the scrutiny of budgets. Then adviser to Prime Minister Fraser and later cabinet minister in the Howard government David Kemp, a fellow Victorian, noted of Dame Margaret in her role as finance minister in a budget setting and as a cabinet minister: She had a tremendous gift of making a strong political point very simply. She would be able to convince the Cabinet what would fly and what wouldn't, what they could get away with and what they couldn't, and what debate would be really tough to them if they wanted to take it on. Dame Margaret was a strong believer in the importance of independence for women, a tenet strongly related to her own childhood experiences. Of note, Dame Margaret made clear that she had no desire to hold the status of women portfolio. She saw from the example that she set for the women who would follow her and the difference that she could make in critical portfolios that those actions would have the greatest impact on future generations of Australian women. Three years after being appointed Minister for Finance, the Fraser government was defeated at the 1983 election. While Dame Margaret stayed on to serve as shadow minister for taxation, when the coalition failed to win the 1984 election she requested not to be included in the new shadow cabinet and moved to the backbench. In June 1987, Dame Margaret retired from the Senate. In her final speech to the parliament, she noted that when she first entered the chamber there were only two female senators, herself and Dame Nancy Butterfield, who represented my great home state of South Australia. Dame Margaret and the groundbreaking women who served before and with her championed the equal participation of women in this parliament. In her own words: Equal participation of women in the Parliament, in the whole of community life, can only lead us to a better understanding of humanity and to the fulfilment of the aspirations that we would have for a civilised society. In 2019, the Senate reached gender equality in terms of representation. In part, this was achieved because of trailblazing women like Dame Margaret, who noted that it was important not that she was the first woman to hold a number of roles but that she was not to be the last to have the opportunity. It would be 30 years after Dame Margaret left the finance ministry before another would step into that portfolio—the Leader of the Opposition in this place, Senator Wong. After her retirement from politics, Dame Margaret served in a number of roles, including chair of the Judicial Remuneration Tribunal, deputy chair of the Mental Health Research Institute and the Infertility Treatment Authority, president of the Royal Melbourne Hospital board of management and a member of the National Inquiry into the Human Rights of People with Mental Illness. In 2005, Dame Margaret was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia for significant contributions to public life in Australia in support of hospital and health administration, social justice and education, to young people as a role model and to the Australian parliament. Dame Margaret holds a special place in the history of our nation. She was known as a formidable and capable cabinet minister who was dedicated to improving the lives of everyday Australians. In the words of the late Susan Ryan, another pioneer and advocate for equality who we also lost this year: If anyone's performance should have established that a woman's place was in the Cabinet, it was Margaret Guilfoyle's. To Dame Margaret's husband, Stan; her children, Georgina, Anne and Jeffrey; and her grandchildren, Hugo, Jennifer, Oliver and Elizabeth: on behalf of the Australian government and the Australian Senate, we offer our deepest condolences. 15:44 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia I rise on behalf of the opposition to express our condolences following the passing of the Hon. Dame Margaret Georgina Constance Guilfoyle AC, DBE, former senator and minister, at the age of 94. I begin by expressing our sympathy to her family and friends, in joining with the government in this condolence motion. Dame Margaret Guilfoyle was one of the highest-ranking women to have served in an Australian government. She entered, and succeeded in, politics at a time when there were few other women in parliament, let alone around the cabinet table. Participating not at the periphery but at the centre, she would be a minister for the life of the Fraser government, briefly in education before moving to social security and then to finance. She was the first woman to be Australia's finance minister. It took 27 years, and five governments, before my appointment brought the next. Dame Margaret earned a reputation as a highly capable administrator, setting a standard that was a benchmark for those who followed. Born in Belfast in 1926, Dame Margaret emigrated to Australia with her family two years later. She was not a child of privilege. Settling in Melbourne, the death of her father when she was 10 was a lesson in resilience. Her mother had to bring up three children without the support of extended family, which for Dame Margaret became a formative experience and perhaps led her to recognise the value of education and career for women. Leaving a state school at 15, she combined work and study and ultimately qualified as an accountant and chartered secretary. Of course, at this time, post World War II, there was a shortage in this profession, which helped her to establish a career where women would otherwise have faced an even greater number of barriers. Later she would point to her capacity to manage a career and family as evidence of her ability to manage a family and political life. Along with her husband, Stanley Guilfoyle, with whom she had three children, she joined her local branch of the Liberal Party and was active in the women's section of the party in particular. She benefited from the mentoring of several feisty senior women, who themselves had played a significant role in the formation of the party and who had a reputation for not suffering any nonsense from their brethren. She would be preselected to replace one of them, Dame Ivy Wedgwood—to whom my colleague Senator Birmingham referred—the first woman to represent Victoria in the Senate, from a field of 20 candidates. After her election, and taking office in this place in July 1971, Dame Margaret quickly established herself by pursuing committee opportunities that aligned with her professional expertise. She entered a chamber in which there was only one other woman, Dame Nancy Buttfield from South Australia. She recognised her role in following the legacy of her predecessors from Victoria but also, as only the seventh woman to be a senator, in being what she described as a 'voice for the women of Australia'. Her first speech demonstrated the breadth of her interests. She addressed economic concerns but, perhaps more significantly, articulated the changing nature of people's attitudes towards what was important in their lives. Noting that Australians had enjoyed great material prosperity in the postwar years, she observed that the nation was changing. She sensed more people were recognising that material progress alone did not necessarily lead to contentment, and there was a restlessness and questioning of previously important standards and values. She argued selflessness needed to be brought to the preservation of our natural resources and that the arts were a necessary outlet for developing imagination, sensibility, perception and intelligence, and an enrichment for all the people. In 1974 she entered the shadow ministry as spokesperson on the media. When Malcolm Fraser replaced Billy Snedden as Leader of the Opposition, in March 1975, he appointed her as shadow minister for education, in relation to which she had responsibility for preparing the opposition's policy in what was a politically tumultuous time. As Senator Birmingham outlined, it was an effort that earned attention and respect. After the dismissal of the Whitlam government, Mr Fraser appointed Dame Margaret education minister in his caretaker government. She would be the third woman appointed to the ministry in Australia's history but the first to be given a substantive portfolio in cabinet, running a government department. Her stay was brief. After the election that followed, she would shift to social security. After a six-month hiatus from cabinet, she returned in June 1976 and remained for the next 6½ years. As Minister for Social Security she had to balance the desire of the conservative government to contain expenditure with the necessity of ensuring the welfare system was administered with humanity. Often some of her harshest critics—as is often the case—were her own colleagues. One of the key initiatives she oversaw was the conversion of the family allowance from a tax rebate to a cash payment directly to mothers. And in conjunction with Marie Coleman, who to this day, in her late 80s, remains a powerful and consistent advocate for Australian women, she oversaw the establishment of the foundations of the modern childcare sector, with an increased Commonwealth role in day and out-of-school-hours care. When Marie was asked to offer some contribution to this speech, among the many superlatives she used was the word 'doughty', which means steadfastly courageous and resolute. It's a word that's gone out of circulation, perhaps because it describes qualities that may have become a little too rare. Marie recalls Dame Margaret's emphatic pronouncements that social security is not a cost but a way to support the most vulnerable amongst us, to offer civilised support for those who need it. It was an outlook that Dame Margaret practised in life as well as in policy. She would go out of her way to give people the dignity of being heard. Even if she could not offer a solution to someone's problem, she would offer what she could, even if it was only her empathy. Perhaps Dame Margaret's greatest contribution opportunity would come in 1980, when Mr Fraser appointed her as Minister for Finance and she became, in her own words, 'chief accountant for the country'. The Age heralded this appointment as an excellent choice, stating that Dame Margaret was not merely of unquestionable competence but also someone who had shown a determination to see that budget cutbacks were not made at the expense of the poor. Finance put her at the heart of government decision-making for the next three years, and she would be the Fraser government's gatekeeper, maintaining curbs on expenditure in line with cabinet policy and imposing fiscal discipline on ministers and departments. It is, at its core, an often thankless portfolio—as Senator Birmingham is no doubt discovering!—but it is one that is essential, and it seemed ideal for someone who was variously described as meticulous, confident and unflappable. It also put a woman at the heart of economic decision-making. Dame Margaret recognised the role she played as one of the first few women to enter this place and then to hold significant office. But to her the more significant matter was that she would ensure that it was more acceptable in the future for positions of responsibility to be handled by women. In her valedictory remarks several years later she said: It was said that I was the first to hold a Cabinet post and administer a department—that might be true—but it had to be very important that I was not the last. So, as the second—and to date the only other—female finance minister of Australia, I recognise not only the honour of following in the footsteps of women like Dame Margaret and her contemporary, the late Senator Susan Ryan, but also the importance of helping others carry that legacy on. And I hope we're not going to wait too long for Senator Gallagher to become the third woman to serve as Australia's finance minister. Returning to opposition after the defeat of the Fraser government may have been the end of Dame Margaret's ministerial career, but she took seriously her role as a legislator and remarked, upon returning to the backbench, that her object now was to ensure good governance. When she retired in 1987, the then Labor leader in the Senate, John Button, spoke generously about his departing Victorian colleague, describing her as someone who brought 'great skills and intellectual stringency to her role as a minister and dignity and good humour to this chamber'. In fact, Dame Margaret had also been a source of artistic inspiration for Senator Button, with his 1978 work Still Life in the Senate, of which she was the centrepiece, wining third prize in a competition organised by the Warrnambool Art Gallery. In this masterpiece, subtitled The view from the opposition benches, Senator Button placed a photograph of a smiling Dame Margaret surrounded by her Liberal Party colleagues, who were each hand-drawn as a particular type of animal. Acknowledging in a somewhat understated way that he had an uncharitable view of most Fraser government senators, he said that Margaret Guilfoyle was always the most pleasant and answered opposition questions better than most ministers—which, from John Button, was fine praise! After parliament, Dame Margaret took on a number of causes. She showed particular dedication to supporting mental health research, notably as a commissioner in the national inquiry into human rights and mental illness, announced by Human Rights Commissioner Brian Burdekin in 1990, and deputy chair of the Mental Health Research Institute. She was also a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council and a director of the Australian Children's Television Foundation. The latter was entirely appropriate, given that in her first speech Dame Margaret had spoken presciently of the importance of fostering the creation of films with a national identity. She also—and I'm sure others might speak about this more—led efforts within the Liberal Party to increase female representation within its ranks. Speaking at a conference to mark 100 years of women's suffrage in that wonderful state of South Australia in 1994, she emphasised that it was not sufficient to merely increase the number of women in parliament, but that women must be in the cabinet. Remarking that our system is one of cabinet government, she said, 'Unless there are women in cabinet, they won't have the effect on policy development and implementation that they would if they were part of a cabinet structure in which the decisions and policy directions are made.' In light of this, it is still so disappointing that, when this government first came to office, there was only one woman in the cabinet. My genuine hope is that the conservative side of politics could find it within themselves to honour her legacy, of which they should be so very proud, by supporting more women to be here and promoting more women into senior roles. In their tribute in the Herald Sun, Dame Margaret Guilfoyle's family described her as someone who will be remembered for her humour, spark and intellect. They went on to say, 'She achieved much in her public life, based on her abiding beliefs in equity and fairness.' We've farewelled some women who have led the way for this parliament and this nation this year, and Dame Margaret led the way for a generation of women, particularly those in conservative politics. She was an icon for the Liberal Party. We, on this side, particularly the women on this side of the parliament, express our recognition for the role she played in changing this place. We, again, express our condolences at her passing, and we convey our sympathies to her family and friends. 15:56 Senator McKENZIE 207825 Victoria I stand on behalf of the Nationals to offer our condolences and to support the heartfelt words spoken here in the Senate and in the other place today and extend our sympathies to Dame Margaret's family and friends. She was an outstanding parliamentarian and role model, not just because she was a woman, but because she was a tenacious senator, earning and commanding respect in what was then very much a man's world of federal parliament. She was a political ground breaker and a pivotal figure who had a profound impact on Australia and Australians. She was an inspiration for generations, an immigrant, a working mother and an accountant who became, as Dame Margaret herself described, 'the chief accountant for the country' following her appointment as Australia's first female finance minister in 1980. Dame Margaret held four ministerial positions in the Fraser government: Minister for Education; Minister Assisting the Prime Minister in Child Care Matters; Minister for Social Security, her cabinet position; and Minister for Finance. When I recall Dame Margaret, I think of a person who wanted to be judged by her actions, not as someone motivated solely by inequality. She never let an opportunity go, though, to focus on furthering the cause of female representation. As the first woman sent to Canberra from the Victorian Division of the Country Party, now the National Party, she reached out to me on getting preselected and made sure that I had someone that had been there before that I could draw on for advice. She introduced me to a few of my Liberal Party colleagues before I actually got here. As a senator and a minister, all sides of politics agree, Dame Margaret was outstanding. She took committee roles that aligned with her own professional experience. Because of her accounting background, Dame Margaret put her experience to use as a member of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Government Operations and the Public Accounts Committee. It was former Prime Minister and colleague John Howard who said that she had a very good grasp on the detail, which is something all senators need to be across. That is just one thing that is required, especially to be a successful finance minister. For all the headlines focusing on her gender rather than her skill, it must have been a very frustrating period to be a female cabinet minister. What deserves the spotlight was Dame Margaret's tenacity in prosecuting her arguments, done with determination, nous and resolute commitment to the desired outcome. Her advocacy for improvements in child care and the expansion of maternity leave for all women earned her the respect of all sides of politics. There's no doubt that her own work and life experience influenced her politics. As Minister for Social Security, Dame Margaret drew on her own understanding of the human impact of her portfolio. As minister, she was responsible for the most significant reforms to child endowment since the Menzies government extended it to firstborn children in 1949. Under Dame Margaret, tax rebates were removed for dependent children, and she increased the cash amount paid to parents under the renamed family allowance, which was paid directly to mothers. These changes provided a greater benefit for low-income families and addressed key concerns of opponents who argued that child endowment had not kept up with inflation. Dame Margaret did not come from a political family. She lost her father at age 10. She was the daughter of a teacher who raised three children without the support of an extended family. She had a long association with the Liberal Party in Victoria before her election. She recalled her pre-selection challenge as not against men but against the perception of the city-country balance of the Liberal Party representation. In politics Dame Margaret was meticulous, confident and unflappable. For that she was an inspirational role model. Former Labor Premier of Victoria Joan Kirner said in 2003, 'Dame Margaret forged the view that women could be judged equally on political rather than personal terms.' I mention Joan Kirner because it was Kirner who, as president of the Australian Council of State School Organisations, said that Dame Margaret was also the architect of the coalition's education policy. She spoke on a range of issues in parliament, from the environment to her interests in supporting the arts. Whether finance or higher education, Aboriginal health, ASIO and intelligence agencies or drug use and abuse, Dame Margaret was a succinct and clear contributor. My colleague foreign minister Senator Payne described Dame Margaret as 'one who led by example'. For those of us who have the honour and privilege to serve in this place that is as fitting a definition of something to inspire and motivate us all. Vale, Dame Margaret. 16:01 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I rise today to offer the Greens' condolences to the friends and family of Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. Though, of course, we're on opposite sides of the chamber on many issues, Dame Margaret's passion and commitment to promoting women in leadership roles undeniably blazed a trail for all those who have followed and who are to come. An Irish immigrant raised by a single mother after her father's death, Dame Margaret often said that her experiences confirmed—as was cited before by Senator Birmingham—that at any time a woman must be capable of independence. She worked tirelessly to ensure that she achieved this and made space for other women to do the same. When she joined the Liberal Party she was mentored and supported by other female members and encouraged to seek leadership roles. She then spent her career paying that forward. In the time she served in the Senate the number of female senators rose from two to 19. I'm delighted that women now represent more than half the senators in this place. Enid Lyons was the first woman appointed to cabinet. Annabelle Rankin was the first woman to be given a ministerial portfolio. When she was appointed as Minister for Education in 1975 Dame Margaret became the first woman to build on those achievements and to be appointed to a cabinet-level ministerial portfolio. She went on to serve as Minister for Social Security and Minister for Finance. In her social security role she gained a reputation for resisting calls for funding and spending cuts in the portfolio, recognising the importance of providing support to vulnerable members of the community. She oversaw a major reform of the national child support scheme and led the new office of child care within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Working with the director of that office, the inimitable Marie Coleman, who has also been referenced already today, Dame Margaret oversaw a significant expansion of federal government support for the childcare sector and funding for preschool, day care, after-school care and youth refuges. Throughout her career Dame Margaret fought against efforts to pigeonhole her by her gender and to limit her interest to family issues and so called 'women's issues'. Instead she continued to fight on the wide range of social issues that impact all women: access to education and social services, financial security, human rights, mental health and discrimination. Consistent with her commitment to education and development, after leaving the Senate Dame Margaret went on to get a Bachelor of Laws and work in private practice. She continued her commitment to public life as a member of the National Inquiry into the Human Rights of People with Mental Illness, the Mental Health Research Institute, the infertility treatment authority and various not-for-profit boards. She continued her mentoring and advocacy for women, working with Joan Kirner on a campaign to secure more nominations for women in Australia's honours system. This is a project that continues today, but much ground has been made. Like those who came before her, Dame Margaret's career forged a path that, little by little, made it easier for more and more women to see people like them in leadership roles, to know the importance of representation and to put themselves forward. There is still so much to be done to achieve diversity in this place and to get a parliament that actually looks like our community, but we here at the Greens thank Dame Margaret for the doors that she opened along that path. A woman's place is indeed in the House, the Senate and the cabinet. Vale, Dame Margaret Gilfoyle. 16:05 Senator PAYNE M56 New South Wales For the second time in as many months we find ourselves rising to pay tribute to a trailblazer for women in parliament and women in government—firstly the Hon. Susan Ryan and now Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. There have been too many of these speeches this year. I well recall the day last year when, for the first time in our nation's history, the Senate achieved equal numbers of men and women with the arrival then of Senator Sarah Henderson. This was an important milestone for our parliament and for the country. We reached it in large part because women like Dame Margaret paved a path for many of the rest of us to follow. When, in 1970, Dame Margaret was elected to this place, she was only the seventh woman to serve in the Australian Senate. In her long career here, as colleagues have said so well this afternoon—and I acknowledge those speeches with gratitude—she achieved a lot of firsts. She was the first woman senator in cabinet. She was the first woman in cabinet with a ministerial portfolio. She was the first woman ever to hold a major economic portfolio. Not only did she do all of this, but she did it with such extraordinary efficiency that she left everyone in awe. And she won admiration from all sides, as we have seen here this afternoon. But it didn't come easily. In fact, at first she was written off as 'a mother with political ambitions'. When she was appointed to what was known as the joint prices committee, Melbourne's Herald newspaper described her as 'a housewife with a big say on prices'. The Sydney Morning Herald, upon her appointment as shadow minister for education, described her as 'a mother with political ambitions'. When her talent became apparent she attracted other descriptions like 'the Iron Butterfly' and comparisons to 'the Iron Lady' of British politics, also a Margaret. But she never welcomed the title or the comparison. She said the image of a hard woman bothered her. She didn't believe a woman should have to sacrifice her compassion and her empathy to succeed. At the same time, she was not interested in being typecast as a woman with 'a woman's portfolio'. She clearly had her eyes on the bigger goal of leading and reforming social security. She was appointed to that role just before Christmas 1975 and, over the next five years, used it as a platform to pursue her belief in women's equal participation. She said at the time: Equal participation of women in the Parliament, in the whole of community life, can only lead us to a better understanding of humanity and to the fulfilment of the aspirations that we would have for a civilised society. She started programs, as we have heard this afternoon, that made life better for women in Australia. By her own estimate, 83 per cent of her department's payments were made directly to women, including widow's pensions, age pensions, family allowances and disability support payments. She also reformed the national child endowment scheme and presided over a major expansion of government support for preschool, child care and after-school care. When the landmark maternity leave bill was debated, she had argued for the extension of maternity leave to all women, not just Commonwealth employees. And no-one knew better how important it was for women to have choice when it came to how they interpreted their role as a parent. Indeed, without pushing for flexibility in work-life balance in her own career, she would never have been in a position to create it for others. In 1980, Dame Margaret was made the Minister for Finance, becoming what she called 'the chief accountant for the country'. She always believed governments needed to govern for everyone. In her more than two years as finance minister, she came to see that it was through the Finance portfolio that a government's accountability on every issue, from the economy to national security, rested. To paraphrase, she said, 'It was a very interesting time for me as finance minister, having that overall look at the accountability of government, to sit on every cabinet committee dealing with economic matters and with the security of the country, because it is the accountability of government, through the Department of Finance, that is the responsibility of that minister.' I think it is very nice that Senator Wong is here this afternoon to make her contribution as Australia's second female finance minister. Upon her retirement, Dame Margaret reflected that her time in parliament had brought out the best in her, and she did it at a time when, frankly, few believed a woman, especially a woman with children, could or even should serve in this place. People often asked Dame Margaret what it was like being the first woman in her role. She always replied that it wasn't being the first that mattered; it was more important that she was not the last. And I know Senator Jane Hume would have reinforced that this afternoon, were she here. She mentioned that in her social media post last week in acknowledging Dame Margaret's leadership, particularly in Victoria. Seeing how far female representation came over her lifetime was something in which she also took great joy. She once said, 'Since my time as a minister, I have seen women who have been Commonwealth ministers, premiers and chief ministers.' And we know, indeed, we can add to that Governor-General and Prime Minister. As a senator, and as Minister for Women, I feel immense gratitude for the trailblazing path laid down by Senator Guilfoyle. All of us owe her a great debt. She was a woman who made it to the top and then worked to lift us all. I met Dame Margaret from time to time, over the years, through the Liberal Party, and through politics, and I was always struck by her quiet grace, her fierce intellect, her genuine interest in what those of us who had followed in her footsteps as senators in the parliament were doing here, and her fierce continuation of support for the Liberal Party and the participation of women in the Liberal Party. In fact, just last week, Chris McDiven, former federal president of the Liberal Party and the initiator of the Liberal Women's Forum, of which Dame Margaret was the patron, described her to me as a wonderfully warm, kind and supportive person. That will be the memory of many. I believe she'll be remembered not only as the first woman to do so many of the things that she did but as one of the finest, most accomplished, diligent ministers in our nation's history. To her husband, Stan, to her children, to her family, we offer our heartfelt condolences. Vale, Dame Margaret Guilfoyle. 16:12 The PRESIDENT I0Q Being a Victorian Liberal senator, I'm going to take this opportunity to speak on this matter as well. I first met Dame Margaret three decades ago. Everyone who's a member of the Victorian Division would be aware of her status within our party. While we didn't know it at the time, it was actually the 45th anniversary of her first appointment as a minister on which she passed away, on 11 November. The Speaker, also a member of the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party, and I were down at Old Parliament House and regretted that we did not know at the time. It does cause one to reflect on the events of that day and the achievements that Dame Margaret undertook. When she entered office, as others have commented, she entered a Senate with a sole other woman and a House of Representatives with none. But she had no wish to be defined by the then limits placed on many women; she was defined by her determination, competence and expertise. She was elected to the Senate coming from the fierce tradition of Victorian Liberal women that has been mentioned before, such as Dame Ivy Wedgwood and Dame Elizabeth Couchman, many of whom were denied the opportunities that she was presented with and took advantage of so forcefully. At her pre-selection, where she famously beat nearly two dozen other candidates, she was asked how she would manage three children as well as her responsibilities in this place, reflecting the attitudes, sadly, of the times. She responded pointly but politely: I'm asking you to make a decision to give me responsibility to be a representative in the Senate and I would ask that you accept that I have responsibility to make the decisions regarding my family. She served in this place from 1971 to 1987 and saw a dramatic increase in the representative nature of this chamber when it comes to the representation of women. I won't recount all her achievements and biographical information, other than to associate myself with the contributions made earlier today. She chose as her focus matters of finance, areas where she had both a passion and professional expertise. She was not going to have her career defined by notions others had for her role. She sat on the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Government Operations, she joined the Public Accounts Committee, and she served on estimates committees just as they were beginning to make their mark, her election coinciding with their essential creation. As I mentioned, she became a minister in the Fraser cabinet of 1975 and, as others have mentioned, she went on to an extraordinary career as the Minister for Social Security and the Minister for Education. The Hon. David Kemp, himself later a minister, but at that time a senior staff member for Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, described her as follows: She had a tremendous gift of making a strong political point very simply. She would be able to convince the Cabinet what would fly and what wouldn't … She continued to serve until she left this place in 1987. As others have commented, she read law at the ANU afterwards. But she continued to give generous and expert public service on tribunals, boards of inquiry and committees, which benefited from the values that Malcolm Fraser ascribed to her in cabinet: she could be totally relied upon and to think for herself. Her Order of Australia recognised her significant contributions to public life in Australia in support of many areas of public activity, particularly as a role model to young people, and to the Australian parliament. I recently spoke to a long-serving member of this chamber, the Hon. Rod Kemp, who was also a senior staffer to Dame Margaret for five years. He has said: Dame Margaret showed that politics can be conducted with dignity and decency … that politics in sensitive portfolios could be conducted successfully without sordid deals and vested interests. I think this is reflected by the many contributions that have been made following Dame Margaret's passing. Margaret Fitzherbert, a former member of the Victorian parliament and unofficial historian of the Liberal Party about many of these matters, summed her up: She was smart, charming, feminine and worked exceptionally hard. She was a living link to the strong, tough women who helped found the Liberal Party … The party has lost a giant. I urge those with an interest in these matters to refer to Margaret's work on Dame Margaret and that generation of tough women. It may be that my party has some lessons that we need to re-learn. In the passing of Susan Ryan and Margaret Guilfoyle, both sides of Australian politics and both sides of this Senate have lost women who both led by example and championed change, albeit in their own ways. The Senate today, while imperfect, better reflects Australian society for the work that they did. With regard to her contribution to public life in Australia and the parliament of Australia, and with particular regard to her contribution on behalf of the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party, we are grateful for the service and example of Margaret Guilfoyle and extend our deepest sympathies to Stan, who many of us also know, and to her family. 16:17 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria Dame Margaret Guilfoyle, AC, DBE, will be remembered as one of Australia's most significant women. She was committed to her family and she was committed to her country. Dame Margaret was elected as a senator for Victoria in 1970, commencing her term in July 1971. After serving as opposition spokesperson for education and the media, Dame Margaret served as a cabinet minister for much of the Fraser government, commencing in 1975. As we have heard in this condolence motion, she was a true trailblazer. She was the first woman to be appointed an Australian government cabinet minister with portfolio and the first woman to hold an economic portfolio. Dame Margaret ensured that the voices of women and men were heard at the cabinet table and at the highest levels of government administration. One of her most important achievements was her oversight of the national child endowment arrangements, which ushered in the change to cash payments from the previous tax rebate scheme. This proved to be life changing for families on low incomes. And she campaigned for maternity leave for all women, not just for sections of the workforce such as employees of the Commonwealth. Despite the best efforts of others, she never sought to define herself or her work by her gender. She had no interest in being typecast, despite the fact, of course, that after the 1975 election the Liberals and Labor each held only three women in the parliament. Of course, this is in stark contrast, as we have heard from Senator Payne, to my entry into the Senate last year, which was the first time that men and women were in equal numbers in the Senate. Born in Belfast in Northern Ireland in 1926, Dame Margaret's family migrated to Melbourne shortly after that. Tragically, her father died when she was just 10 years old. With her mother now raising three children alone, Dame Margaret said later that she learned that, at any time, a woman must be capable of independence. Dame Margaret married Stan Guilfoyle in 1952 and in the 1950s she became active in the Liberal Party, having joined the South Camberwell branch of the party. What good fortune for the Liberal Party and good fortune for Australia that Dame Margaret became so active in politics. She had a calm demeanour, a razor-sharp mind and a fighting spirit, which was evident from the moment she contested preselection in a field of 20 candidates. When asked who would look after her three children if she became a senator, as we have just heard from the President—it's such a good story I'm telling it again!—she politely responded: 'I'm asking you to make a decision to give me responsibility to be a representative in the Senate and I would ask that you would accept that I have responsibility to make the decisions regarding my family.' Dame Margaret served in ministerial portfolios for child care, education, social security and finance. She was formidable in and out of cabinet. Perhaps her most famous battles were with the then Treasurer Phillip Lynch over his quest for social security cuts and her refusal to accept these reductions in government expenditure. The then Treasurer had labelled her as 'unhelpful', which she wore with a badge of honour. At a conference many years later, she said: … perhaps the nicest headline I ever had during my time was the one in a Sydney paper that said, 'Minister unhelpful'—unhelpful in cutting the programs that coherently gave income security to millions of people … and maybe unhelpful in trying to persuade other ministers that there were essential matters that needed to be built upon and not destroyed from time to time. Dame Margaret's record of public service to the nation, to this Senate for 16 years and to the Liberal Party will serve as a lasting tribute to her memory. My sincere condolences to her husband, Stan, to her children, Georgina, Anne and Geoffrey, and to her extended family and friends. Dame Margaret was an incredible woman of substance, integrity and compassion. May she rest in peace. Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places. BUSINESS 67 BUSINESS Leave of Absence 67 16:22 Senator URQUHART 231199 Tasmania by leave—I move: That leave of absence be granted to the following senators: (a) Senator Dodson for 30 November 2020 to 3 December 2020, for personal reasons; (b) Senator Bilyk from 30 November 2020 to 3 December 2020, for personal reasons; and (c) Senator Carr from 30 November 2020 to 10 December 2020, for personal reasons. Question agreed to. Leave of Absence 67 16:23 Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Western Australia by leave—I move: That Senator Hume be granted leave of absence for today for personal reasons. Question agreed to. NOTICES 67 NOTICES Postponement 67 FIRST SPEECH 67 FIRST SPEECH 16:25 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania On behalf of Senator Ruston, I move: That consideration of the business before the Senate on Wednesday, 2 December 2020 be interrupted at approximately 5 pm, but not so as to interrupt a senator speaking, to enable Senator Thorpe to make her first speech without any question before the chair. Question agreed to. REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS 67 REGULATIONS AND DETERMINATIONS Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Payments and Benefits) Amendment Rules (No. 8) 2020 67 Disallowance 67 16:27 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I move: That Part 3 of Schedule 1 of the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Payments and Benefits) Amendment Rules (No. 8) 2020, made under the Coronavirus Economic Response Package (Payments and Benefits) Act 2020, be disallowed. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that business of the Senate notice of motion No. 2 be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:31]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)

26 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Chisholm, A Farrell, D Faruqi, M Gallacher, AM Gallagher, KR Green, N Hanson-Young, SC Kitching, K McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Polley, H Pratt, LC Rice, J Sheldon, A Siewert, R Steele-John, J Sterle, G Thorpe, LA Urquhart, AE (teller) Walsh, J Waters, LJ Watt, M Whish-Wilson, PS 30 NOES Abetz, E Askew, W Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Griff, S Hanson, P Henderson, SM McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S Molan, AJ O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Rennick, G Reynolds, L Roberts, M Ruston, A Scarr, P Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

MOTIONS 68 MOTIONS Environment: Koala Habitat 68 16:34 Senator HANSON-YOUNG I0U South Australia I move: That the Senate— (a) notes that the biggest threat to endangered koala populations is habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation; and (b) calls on the Government to implement a moratorium on the clearing and destruction of koala habitat. 16:34 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to make a short statement. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator DUNIAM 263418 Since 2014, the coalition government has invested over $26 million on projects supporting outcomes for koalas, ranging from tree planting, propagation of food trees and reconnecting koala corridors. The Morrison government recently announced a further $18 million investment to support this iconic species, and $14 million of this package will be directed to habitat restoration in priority areas, with the remaining funds supporting a national Koala census, health research and wildlife care. All EPBC assessments take into account the impacts of habitat loss on relevant listed threatened species and communities. Published reports on the impacts of the 2019-20 bushfires, including for koalas, are also taken into consideration in the context of each individual assessment. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that general business notice of motion No. 865 standing in the name of Senator Hanson-Young be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:40]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)

27 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Chisholm, A Farrell, D Faruqi, M Gallacher, AM Gallagher, KR Green, N Griff, S Hanson-Young, SC Kitching, K McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Polley, H Pratt, LC Rice, J Sheldon, A Siewert, R Steele-John, J Sterle, G Thorpe, LA Urquhart, AE (teller) Walsh, J Waters, LJ Watt, M Whish-Wilson, PS 29 NOES Antic, A Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Hanson, P Henderson, SM Hughes, H McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McMahon, S Molan, AJ O'Sullivan, MA Rennick, G Roberts, M Ruston, A Scarr, P Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

COVID-19: Repatriation 69 16:42 Senator URQUHART 231199 Tasmania At the request of Senator Keneally and Senator Wong, I move: That the Senate— a. notes that: (i) the Australian Government is responsible for borders, quarantine, and assisting Australians in jeopardy and stranded overseas, (ii) since the Prime Minister capped international passenger arrivals on 13 July 2020, the number of stranded Australians overseas has risen dramatically to more than 36,875, and the number of Australians classified as vulnerable has doubled to 8,070, (iii) Amnesty International Australia has reported that the 'arbitrary cap needs to be significantly increased or removed' and quarantine 'needs to be significantly expanded', (iv) on 10 November 2020, the Senate called on the Government to take urgent steps to help every stranded Australian return home by: (A) increasing the number of permitted arrivals under international flight caps through using Commonwealth resources to increase quarantine capacity, (B) stopping price gouging by airlines flying into Australia, and (C) putting all options on the table to return stranded Australians, especially from places like the United Kingdom, India, the Philippines and Lebanon—including charter flights, and (v) the Morrison Government did not announce any funding or initiative as part of the 2020-21 Federal Budget to respond to the Senate's motion, and has no plan to help every stranded Australian return home; and (b) calls on the Morrison Government to bring our stranded Australians home by Christmas as the Prime Minister promised he would do. 16:42 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to make a short statement. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator DUNIAM 263418 The Australian government is doing everything possible to support Australians who want and need to return. More than 432,000 Australians have returned since 13 March and around 31,900 have been assisted by the Australian government, including on 74 directly facilitated flights. On 17 March, the government advised Australians overseas who wanted to return home to do so as soon as possible by commercial means. In order to manage and maintain quarantine arrangements in Australia, and at the request of the states, the national cabinet agreed to international passenger arrival caps. While critical to the integrity of Australia's quarantine system and safety for the whole Australian community, the caps have restricted the availability of flights for Australians overseas. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has made available a hardship program with further emergency assistance for the most vulnerable Australian citizens overseas. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that general business notice of motion No. 867 standing in the name of Senators Keneally and Wong be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:45]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)

Question negatived.

DOCUMENTS 71 DOCUMENTS Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 71 Order for the Production of Documents 71 16:47 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia I move: That there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the Minister for the Environment, by 3 pm on 1 December 2020, the final report of the Samuel Review into the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. 16:47 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to make a short statement. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator DUNIAM 263418 The EPBC Act requires the government to table the statutory review within 15 sitting days after it's received. The government is currently considering the review and its response, and both will be released prior to the statutory deadline. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 The question is that general business notice of motion No. 872, standing in the name of all Australian Greens senators, be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:49]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)

28 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Chisholm, A Farrell, D Faruqi, M Gallacher, AM Gallagher, KR Green, N Griff, S Hanson-Young, SC Kitching, K McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Polley, H Pratt, LC Rice, J Roberts, M Sheldon, A Siewert, R Steele-John, J Sterle, G Thorpe, LA Urquhart, AE (teller) Walsh, J Waters, LJ Watt, M Whish-Wilson, PS 28 NOES Antic, A Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Hanson, P Henderson, SM Hughes, H McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McMahon, S Molan, AJ O'Sullivan, MA Rennick, G Ruston, A Scarr, P Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

Federal Circuit Court of Australia 71 Order for the Production of Documents 71 16:51 Senator GRIFF 76760 South Australia I move: That— (a) the Senate notes that: (i) the Federal Government's new Federal Court and Federal Circuit Court Amendment (Fees) Regulations 2020 increase the Federal Circuit Court application fee for migration litigants from $690 to $3,330, (ii) this 380% fee hike is disproportionate and inconsistent with other Federal Circuit Court fees set out in Schedule 1 of the Federal Court and Federal Circuit Court Regulation 2012, and even exceeds most (non-corporation) Federal Court fees, (iii) with the exception of bankruptcy applications, all other fees payable for proceedings in the Federal Circuit Court remain under $1,000 for noncorporations, (iv) the Federal Circuit Court can review decisions made by the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs, decisions made by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and 'fast track' reviewable decisions made by the Immigration Assessment Authority, but only to determine whether jurisdictional errors have been made, and (v) the instrument's explanatory memorandum states that 'consultation was undertaken with the Federal Circuit Court of Australia' but it provides no reasons for imposing the high application fee on migration litigants only; and (b) there be laid on the table by the Minister representing the AttorneyGeneral, by midday on 7 December 2020, any documents (including briefing documents, emails, memos, letters, agendas and minutes) held by the AttorneyGeneral, the Attorney-General's Department or the Department of Home Affairs relating to consultation on the instrument, or that relate to a discussion, proposal or request to increase the fee for migration litigants, or that relate to the quantity or reasons for a fee increase. 16:51 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to make a short statement. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 Leave is granted for one minute. Senator DUNIAM 263418 The government is investing $36 million in additional FCC resourcing, including four additional judges and seven judicial registrars, as part of the 2020-21 budget. This will allow the court to resolve more matters every year, including an estimated 1,000 additional migration cases, which responds to the increase in FCC migration filings from 3,544 in 2014-15 to 6,555 in 2019-20. The resourcing will be offset by an increase to the migration application fee, with all revenue reinvested in the court. Currently, the FCC fee for migration matters is significantly lower than the AAT fee, and the new rate is set halfway between the AAT and Federal Court fees. The government does not oppose the production order but will necessarily have to consider any public interest immunity claim, for instance, given this was subject to cabinet processes. The government will endeavour to meet the time frame, and that will depend on the number of documents identified. Question agreed to. MOTIONS 72 MOTIONS COVID-19: Income Support Payments 72 16:53 The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 I remind senators that on Thursday 12 November 2020, after 4.30 pm, a division was called for on a motion moved by Senator Walsh relating to JobKeeper. I understand that it suits the convenience of the Senate for that division to be held now. The question is that the deferred vote held over from Thursday 12 November 2020 be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:57]
(The Deputy President—Senator Lines)

27 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Chisholm, A Farrell, D Faruqi, M Gallacher, AM Gallagher, KR Green, N Hanson-Young, SC Kitching, K Lambie, J McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Polley, H Pratt, LC Rice, J Sheldon, A Siewert, R Steele-John, J Sterle, G Thorpe, LA Urquhart, AE (teller) Walsh, J Waters, LJ Watt, M Whish-Wilson, PS 30 NOES Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Griff, S Hanson, P Henderson, SM Hughes, H McDonald, S McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Rennick, G Roberts, M Ruston, A Scarr, P Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

MATTERS OF URGENCY 73 MATTERS OF URGENCY COVID-19: International Travel 73 17:00 The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 I inform the Senate that at 8.30 am today 21 proposals were received in accordance with standing order 75. The question of which proposal would be submitted to the Senate was determined by lot. As a result, I inform the Senate that the following letter has been received from Senator Keneally: Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The need for the Morrison Government to take responsibility for getting stranded Australians home, including acting on the Halton review recommendation to establish a national quarantine facility when the number of stranded Australians registered with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and wanting to come home has now doubled from 18,800 on 20 August to nearly 37,000 and the number of vulnerable Australians has increased from 4,000 to 8,000 in just five weeks." Is the proposal supported? More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT 112096 I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly. 17:01 Senator BILYK HZB Tasmania [by video link]—One of the values that Australians hold dear is that they never leave a mate behind, yet this is what the Morrison government has done to thousands of Australian citizens and permanent residents—those who have become stranded overseas due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these Australians have been trying to return home for over six months. Once the pandemic stopped the world in its tracks, they heeded the government's advice to stay put if they had employment and living arrangements. As economic conditions deteriorated across the globe, many lost their employment, had to give up their leases and are now stranded in a foreign country with no income and no support. When flights are available, there has been price gouging, with many airlines forcing Australians to purchase business or first-class tickets in order to reserve a seat. Stranded Australians have turned to their government in their time of need. They would expect their government to move heaven and earth to help them, but instead the government has turned its back on them. We know of around 37,000 Australians stranded overseas. This figure has doubled since August, and it keeps on going up as Australians register with embassies, high commissions and consulates. The number continues to rise despite the Prime Minister's hollow promise that he would get these Australians home and out of quarantine by Christmas. As of today, Mr Morrison has only 10 days to deliver on that promise. Does the Prime Minister seriously expect us to believe, with his track record so far, that he will get 37,000 Australians home within the next 10 days? I think not. About 8,000 Australians overseas are considered to be financially or medically vulnerable. This means they are facing the risk of or, in some cases, currently experiencing financial hardship, poverty and even homelessness. Even for those with the means to get by in their host country, many fear that, by the time they get home, they could have lost their homes, jobs or livelihoods in Australia. One of my Tasmanian constituents stranded overseas contacted my office after he had been discharged from hospital following a heart attack. He had been unable to secure accommodation and was about to head to a homeless shelter. Another one who has been stranded overseas for seven months now has told my office that due to poor internet access he is having great difficulty completing the online forms required by Australian government agencies, particularly uploading large documents. His phone provider recently cancelled his SIM card, which has prevented him from receiving the SMS codes required to withdraw money sent by a friend. Particularly concerning for him is that his insurance company recently cancelled his travel insurance because of Australia's ban on overseas travel. It's pretty scary to imagine how many other Australians are stuck overseas through no fault of their own—those without insurance cover who will struggle to access health care if they have a serious injury or illness, including if they contract COVID-19. That's got to be a terrifying scenario for many Australians. Imagine how isolated and vulnerable they must feel. To get an idea of how some of them feel, you need only examine the Hansard transcript from the public hearings of the Senate's COVID-19 committee. Peta, a Melbourne resident who addressed the committee while stuck in Serbia with her family, including her 79-year-old brother-in-law, posed this question to the committee: 'How am I supposed to instil a sense of national pride in my children and friends and people we know about being Australians when you have so poorly let us down?' Peta also told the committee: 'The cap has abandoned my family and it has abandoned our citizens who are overseas. They are not stranded; they are abandoned by the government.' The 'cap' Peta was referring to is the limit placed on international arrivals, and it is one of the main reasons why stranded Australians feel abandoned by this government. Adding to the sense of betrayal is the admission by the Department of Home Affairs that non-Australians with business, innovation, investment and student visas could be taking quarantine places from Australian citizens and permanent residents. Another stranded Australian, Deanne, who was stuck in the UK when she addressed the committee, spoke about the sense of betrayal of being abandoned by her government. She said: 'It just feels like a long-term boyfriend cheating on me. I've given my life to Australia and in my time of need they have dumped me.' Early in the pandemic the government belatedly helped organise some flights for Australians in Wuhan and passengers of the Diamond Princess in Japan, but they haven't done nearly enough to repatriate stranded Australians. In fact, they have spent substantially more taxpayer money chartering flights out of Australia and on lobsters, prawns and abalone than they have spent chartering flights into Australia for Aussies stuck overseas. It has shocked and appalled many Australians that this government has spent over $4,300 an hour on an RAAF plan to help former senator Mathias Cormann lobby for his OECD job—yet they can't task RAAF planes to help get Australians home. Most of the Australians who have been able to return to Australia have done so on their own initiative. Some have come together with other stranded Australians to book and share the cost of charter flights. In doing so, they have undertaken a task that the government should have been doing months ago. There are three simple actions that Labor is calling on the Morrison government to take to help Australians stranded overseas to get back home: (1) increase the caps on international arrivals so that more Australians can return to Australia; (2) stop the price gouging by airlines flying into Australia—it's outrageous that, simply to get home, some Australians are being forced to pay as much as $15,000 in airfares; (3) use all possible flight options to bring stranded Australians home, including working with airlines to increase the number of commercial flights and charter flights and using the fleet of the Royal Australian Air Force. There are thousands of Qantas and Virgin workers currently on JobKeeper and hundreds of plane sitting idle. We acknowledge that Qantas has provided some repatriation flights, but why isn't the government asking the airlines so they can use more of their spare capacity to bring more Australians home? Mr Morrison could also deploy the RAAF fleet of VIP aircraft around the globe. As I said earlier, the government seems to have no trouble tasking an RAAF aircraft to fly a former Liberal minister around Europe—and providing him with eight staff—so he can apply for a job. Mr Morrison has spent months dismissing our calls to use the RAAF fleet to bring stranded Australians home, yet he thinks the extravagance heaped on Mr Cormann is okay. And what was the Prime Minister's glib explanation for this? 'He might get COVID.' Does Mr Morrison not think that the 37,000 Australian stuck overseas might also be at risk of contracting COVID-19 too? A lot of those at risk would be in countries where they've got no health insurance cover. It's unconscionable that the government are putting one of their mates ahead of vulnerable Australians. Mr Morrison keeps blaming hotel quarantine arrangements for his government's lack of progress. He keeps pointing the finger at the states and the territories, because we know he's never to blame for anything. But he is trying to pull the wool over Australians' eyes. He knows that his government could expand quarantine arrangements. He has clear and thorough advice from the hotel quarantine review about how the federal government could do this, including advice to run quarantine under federal legislation and to open up further quarantine facilities such as the RAAF Learmonth base. The Morrison government's failure to take the necessary actions to get stranded Australians home is a dereliction of its duty to its citizens and it's a breach of the citizens' human rights. It's an indelible stain on the record of this government that it has abandoned thousands of Australian for months when they were at their most vulnerable and looking to the government for help. This absolute lack of care and concern for thousands of vulnerable Australians is outrageous. Australia should have a reputation for looking after its citizens abroad, but when turning to Mr Morrison's government, you're on your own. For anyone listening to these proceedings right now who wants to add their voice to the thousands calling on the Morrison government to rescue stranded Australians, I encourage you to sign Labor's petition. You can find this petition online at www.alp.org.au/strandedaussies. (Time expired) 17:11 Senator STOKER 237920 Queensland I acknowledge that the motion we're dealing with now, which was signed by Senator Keneally, reflects a drum she's been banging for some time. I've got to say that with this motion, the pattern that I, and I'm sure many people in this chamber, have observed of Senator Keneally overreaching on matters in the Home Affairs portfolio has reached a new high. If you're a person of my vintage, and you may well be, Mr Acting Deputy President Griff, you might remember Inspector Gadget. When I was a kid I liked Inspector Gadget because he had extending arms and legs that were very handy for his adventures. But not even Inspector Gadget, with his superextending arms, could reach as far as Senator Keneally tries to do so often with her efforts in the Home Affairs portfolio. Overreach is the order of the day when it comes to Senator Keneally. In this motion her overreach is so spectacular that even with his extending 'Go, go gadget arms,' Inspector Gadget would topple over. Let's start with the first example of her overreaching, her reference to the Halton review recommending a national quarantine facility. That's overstatement No. 1. I've got the report and the relevant pages right here and, among a range of matters canvassed in that report, there's a suggestion for the government to 'consider' a national quarantine facility 'in reserve'. The report doesn't say we must establish one now, as Senator Keneally puts it, nor does it say that the current status of demand requires it, but rather it says we should establish one if or when required, should there be a need to scale up services significantly and at short notice. That's a far, far cry from the land of overreach that Senator Keneally inhabits. As we would perhaps expect, her overreach doesn't end there, because Labor, who protest perpetually that immigration detention is cruel, barbaric and wrong now want to reopen immigration detention facilities and put Australian citizens in these facilities. They treat the government as though the government is doing the wrong thing by refusing to reopen immigration detention centres immediately and filling them full of Australians who've been overseas. It is not wrong for the Australian government to canvass and pursue every option to avoid putting Australians in immigration detention, if at all possible. Perhaps Senator Keneally might also like to mix some Australian citizens who've been overseas in with some of the convicted criminals that we have in immigration detention waiting for deportation? Perhaps she'd like to send them in with the other people who are not criminal, but who, nevertheless, are in immigration detention because they are not entitled to be here in Australia? I mean, this is the most harebrained scheme I think Labor has ever come up with. Yet they come in here and argue it as though putting Australians in immigration detention would be some kind of supremely moral position. It truly is a bizarre thing. Then we go to the next one of her spectacular overreaches: pretending that it's the Commonwealth government that is forcing the imposition of caps on the numbers of people who can return to Australia each week. Perhaps that's the biggest dishonesty of the lot—another overreach, with those go-go-gadget arms extending again to the point where every sensible person can see the inspector topple. But of course the smart Australians won't be fooled. They know that the caps are driven by state governments requiring hotel quarantine. They know that that limit means that the number of people who can return has a natural ceiling associated with the number of hotel rooms available, and they know that the vast majority of the heavy lifting on bringing people back has actually been delivered by the New South Wales government, through Sydney airport. Are there other options that could be considered for bringing more Australians home? Well, yes. And is home quarantine perhaps one of them? Perhaps. Maybe more testing and shorter quarantine periods at either end of an international flight might also be worth exploring. But those are matters that lie in the hands of state governments, and the confected outrage that we hear from those opposite is a smokescreen for the reality that the states, overwhelmingly Labor governments, hold the reins on this issue. Maybe Senator Keneally should pick up the phone to one of her Labor mates—maybe Premier Palaszczuk; maybe Premier Andrews or Premier McGowan—and start to negotiate with them a more reasonable attitude. But I'm pretty sure they don't want to throw Australian citizens into immigration detention either—not least because, under the proposition that's being put by those opposite, it would have a whole lot of Australians return to immigration detention for Christmas. To point out the madness of what's being argued by those opposite is not to dismiss the seriousness of the situation. There are Australians overseas who want to return, and we need to do all that we sensibly can to get them back as soon as is possible. We're keenly aware that many Australians face hardship overseas because of global travel restrictions that have arisen because of the COVID-19 pandemic. So DFAT is helping vulnerable Australians. They're doing that by facilitating access to flights back to Australia. Importantly, they're providing financial assistance, where that's required, through what is called the hardship program, because we know that, at a time when the global market for aviation has taken such a big hit, it's just not as economically viable for flights to be as cheap as they were some months ago. So we're providing help for people to meet that higher cost that many are facing. And we're continuing to provide professional and responsive consular assistance to those people who are in need. Many Australians have been able to return. Not 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 or 30,000—we have facilitated the return of more than 432,000 people since the government advised Australians that they needed to reconsider their plans to leave Australia for overseas travel. DFAT has helped over 31,000 Australians to return on over 370 flights, including almost 11,000 people on 74 government-facilitated flights. Ten commercial flights have been facilitated by government just since 23 October, and they've returned over 1,500 passengers—1,583, to be precise. That includes one that arrived in Darwin today from London and a Qantas flight that landed in Darwin on Saturday from Delhi. There is a steady stream of Australians being brought home, and that's happening as soon as it's practical to do so, within the limits that have been set by National Cabinet at the insistence of state governments, because they're the ones that impose this hotel quarantine requirement and they're the ones that face the management associated with imposing that rule. Since 18 September, over 39,600 people have returned from overseas, including more than 15,300 Australians who had registered with DFAT. Of those, more than 3,400 were vulnerable people. We are taking the necessary interest in making sure that people who are in hard situations, whether that's because of their health, whether it's because of their ability to meet living costs in the place they're located or whether it's because of the cost of flights back, get the hand they need. We're doing what we need to do for vulnerable people. And while the global pandemic is far from over, and we don't know when we will return to the normal state of international travel, Australians can be assured that we do very much care about getting them home safely and that at the federal level we are doing everything within our power to make sure that the road home for them is facilitated as swiftly and as safely as possible. 17:21 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria This pandemic has been challenging in so many ways. There's been so much hardship, so much hurt, so much suffering. Not least amongst that hardship, hurt and suffering has been the plight of the tens of thousands of Australians who are stranded overseas. And that number is increasing. It's not surprising, as you see the pandemic having such huge impacts all around the world, that people want to come home. At the COVID committee hearing just on Friday, we heard that the numbers have increased from 18,800, as they were on 20 August, to, just a few month later—despite the number of people who have come home—37,000 Australians who are saying, 'Please, let us come home.' At that hearing we heard DFAT acknowledge what the Prime Minister has been unwilling to acknowledge, and that's that they are not all going to get home by Christmas. On 18 September the Prime Minister said: I would hope that those who are looking to come home, that we'd be able to do that within months. And I would hope that we can get as many people home, if not all of them, by Christmas. It's very clear that that's not going to be the case. In fact, we are going to fall well short of that. I did some quick sums during the hearing last Friday, when we were told that over September, October and November 7,000 people had returned home each month—so, 14,000 throughout September and October. We were told that there's going to be some increase in the number of quarantine spaces over the coming months because there are going to be some flights coming into Melbourne and there are going to be more quarantine facilities in Tasmania and the ACT. But when I asked, 'Well, just how many more does that mean?'—from 7,000 a month, what are we going to get up to, 10,000 or, at a max, 15,000 a month?—I wasn't contradicted. In fact, I would say that the likelihood is that over the coming months—and it's less than a month to Christmas—we're going to be lucky if we get another 10,000 Australians coming home. And of course only half of that 10,000—only about 5,000 of those 37,000 Australians stranded overseas—are actually going to make it home to be with their loved ones by Christmas, because of the two weeks quarantine that's required. So, of those 37,000 people who, in September, the Prime Minister said we'd be trying to get home by Christmas, we're looking at actually only 5,000 being able to get home. In fact, at the rate of quarantine availability, we're going to be lucky if those 37,000 people all make it home by Easter time. They're going to be stuck there for many months longer. This is tragic, because each one of those people is suffering in their own way. People are running out of money; people whose leases have run out have nowhere to stay; families caring for their children are desperately worried that, if both parents catch COVID, they won't have the family or support network to have somebody else look after their children. This is a real risk. If you look at the tragic statistics in the United States at the moment, in North Dakota, one in a thousand people have died of COVID, meaning about one in 10 people have caught it. These are really scary statistics. If you're an Australian living somewhere in the world with that sort of prevalence of this virus, you would be desperate to come home. What also makes this such a tragedy is that there is something that we can be doing. There is a solution to this. We heard on Friday—and it was confirmed—that the limitation is not the number of flights or the number of places on flights; it's the quarantine facilities. It's having spaces available in Australia for people to quarantine. It means that, if you put the resources in, there are facilities all around the country that could be used for quarantine. By putting those resources in, we could lift the number of quarantine spaces tomorrow. This is a federal government responsibility because it's the federal government's responsibility to look after Australians and our borders. As the motion says, the review that Jane Halton undertook recommended establishing a national quarantine facility. There is a role that the federal government could be playing that this government is not playing. I want to acknowledge in this debate the important work of Amnesty International in bringing attention to the plight of those stranded overseas, including through their report, Stories of the stranded Aussies. As that report notes, there is a clear breach of human rights in the Liberal Party's actions to leave people stranded overseas. The report states: The Australian government has an obligation under international law—including Article 12(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and Article 12(4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—to bring these people home. They are not meeting this obligation. We've got a breach of international law and we've got a government that could be taking action but is not taking action and is not meeting this obligation. That takes us to a really important point about this pandemic: it shows where your values lie. It's when the world's turned upside down that hard decisions have to be made. And we've now seen what the Morrison government have decided. They have decided to leave Australians stranded overseas. The Australian Greens believe that universal human rights are fundamental and must be protected and respected in all countries and all places for all people. When you apply a human rights framework to the actions of countries, you can't pick and choose and say that it's okay for some countries to protect human rights and that it's okay for other countries to abuse them. That means that we as a country have to keep challenging ourselves to make sure that we are living up to our human rights obligations. It is our responsibility to call out human rights abuses in other countries, and it is our responsibility to respect the human rights of our citizens. We need to be getting people back to Australia. We need to be acting on black deaths in custody. We need to be not locking up asylum seekers in indefinite detention. We need to be bringing our citizens home. But, while this Liberal-National government claims it values Australians, it has refused to take any ownership of this issue. We just heard Senator Stoker basically saying, once again, 'No, no, it's all a matter for the states.' The Prime Minister has a nose for a photo op; he can sniff out a shiny announcement a mile away if he wants to be part of it. But when it comes to the real issues that people want help with, then, no, it's a question for the state premiers. Meanwhile, of course, they have shown where their real priorities are. Mathias Cormann hardly had time to exit the building before he had a RAAF jet at $4,000 an hour flying him—whisking him—around at great expense, trying to get a cushy job. It really goes to show that it's one rule for everyday people and another rule for the Liberal mates network. I want to be very clear: while the government has let Australia down during this crisis, there is a better way. Quite early in the crisis, we understood that there is a massive need for governments to intervene, to be looking after people and protecting our people. That's why we released our 'Invest to recover' plan. That report recognised that we faced, and continue to face, a pivotal moment. We said that for many people things haven't been easy for a long time, and that the inequality crisis, fuelled by the neoliberal politics of the Liberal and Labor parties, has been supercharged by the current health crisis and its disastrous economic consequences. And, while we rightly focused on responding to COVID-19, the climate crisis that drove the devastating bushfires earlier this year has not gone away. By recognising that this is a pivotal moment, we can take real steps—tremendous steps—which will make a real difference for people, for communities and for the environment. We can intervene. We could invest and bring Australians home by Christmas, if we wanted to. It's not a matter of money; the government are spending $99 billion in giving handouts to their big corporate mates. They could spend the money if they wanted to. This is a moment in time, and the Liberal Party is betraying future generations by not seeing it. They have let down thousands of Australians overseas and left them stranded. It's not good enough. (Time expired) 17:31 Senator GALLACHER 204953 South Australia I too would like to make a contribution to this urgency debate. To start with, I just want to put on the record clearly, as I think Senator Keneally and others have done, that the constitutional requirement for the federal government to oversee quarantine is clear. It's a Commonwealth government responsibility to oversee human quarantine. I think that anyone writing the history of this pandemic with perfect 2020 hindsight is going to see that this was one of the clear failures of this government: not immediately taking action and putting in place across-the-board rules in each state and territory to safeguard quarantine in the nation. If we look at the Halton report, perhaps quite contrary to popular opinion, the incidence of travellers returning and having a positive rate was 0.66 per cent in the two weeks to 30 August 2020. And the rate was as low as 0.3, based on 22 diagnoses of COVID-19 for in excess of 6½ thousand international travellers. We know that one case is capable of effecting community transmission and beginning an exponential growth in the rate of contracting the virus. But I think that when the history is written it's going to be very clear that the Commonwealth had an opportunity—it saw the Ruby Princess and the Victorian experience, and a similar, but smaller, experience in South Australia—where, if there had been one set of rules in the states and territories across the nation in respect of how we were going to treat this quarantine issue then there would have been less failure in repatriating people quickly and effectively. In my home state of South Australia it's a very popular political decision to cease taking any more international travellers until we get our situation firmly under control once again. I know from speaking to many people in my street and in my neighbourhood that it's very popular. They say: 'Oh, we shouldn't bring them back. We should be very hard on them. Why are they over there anyway?' They're over there because that's what Australians do. I gave my daughter a 21st birthday present which was an around-the-world ticket. It took her four years to come home! Fortunately, there was no pandemic in that time but, had there been a pandemic, I would have been moving heaven, earth and everything else to get her home as quickly as possible. I really feel for the people who are stranded overseas in dire circumstances. The other day I read the story of a woman who'd lost her job because of the infection rate in London. She's now couch surfing and desperately trying to get home. It's true: we could bring them home. As Senator Rice said, it's not the lack of planes and seats but the lack of a coordinated approach to quarantine. The ad hoc nature of it and the implications of devolving the responsibility to the states have set us back a hundred years, in my view. Human quarantine is, simply, a Commonwealth responsibility. This government should have done better. At 13 July 2015 we had 637 asylum seekers detained in Nauru RPC. I don't think many Australians would realise the cost of running that RPC in 2015. The figure—from the department—to 30 April 2015 was $350,419,000. To look after 500 people this government was prepared to spend—when you add in the operational costs, the staff costs and the capital costs—nearly half a billion dollars. We have what appears to be a fairly successful operation at Howard Springs in the Northern Territory, where people come in. Early Sunday morning as I drove over to Canberra I heard a woman ring that ABC program, whatever it is—Macca's Australia All Over—and say: 'I'm so relieved to be here, and all my cohort are so relieved to be here. And we're so thankful to be in the Northern Territory in a fairly open environment, rather than in a closed, air-conditioned inner-city hotel.' Most of us in this chamber spend far too much time in hotel rooms. I could not imagine being put in an air-conditioned room with no window and no balcony for 14 days, not allowed out for anything, basically. It would be extremely tough on your mental health—tough on all sorts of things. The government had an opportunity to take control and a constitutional obligation to take control. The Ruby Princess was one area where it failed. As I've said, when the history of this is written it's going to be classified as at least an abrogation of the constitutional position of the federal government. I know that politics are being played around each state and territory. COVID incumbency is a very powerful thing; we've seen that over a couple of elections now. I know that the Premier of Western Australia has been the hardest of all in instituting strong border protection. In WA they faced a High Court challenge and won. Basically, it's not going to change in a hurry. But we've got to think of these 37,000 Australians who probably are becoming increasingly desperate. Australia is a travelling nation. When we get back to having a million Australians overseas at any one point in a year, perhaps we'll need to have a bit of foresight and say, 'If there is a problem, what are we going to do?' Is it just going to be ad hoc? Are we going to allow it just to stumble and bumble along? Clearly, the Constitution written by our founding fathers gave the Commonwealth human quarantine as an obligation, and I think it's very clear that this Scott Morrison government—the Hon. Scott Morrison—has failed Australians in that respect. Contrast this with natural disasters like Cyclone Tracy in Darwin. The place was evacuated in three or four days. They threw everything at it, set a record for passengers on planes. I was working at Darwin airport in those days and saw it firsthand. The government saw Australians in need and did something immediately. If they'd spent one-tenth of what they spent on 500 or 600 IMAs—irregular maritime arrivals—then this problem would have gone away. But that's not the case. We're now looking at people not getting back to their families for Christmas. I think it's a crying shame that the federal government, which has done a lot of good work in this area—I can't be critical of the government on JobKeeper and that sort of thing—has, on the matter of human quarantine, abrogated or failed in its responsibility. That is to Scott Morrison's enduring shame. The history will be written that it was an abrogation of their responsibility, if not a downright failure to meet their responsibility. 17:39 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales If you were to listen to Labor, this government is heartless, uncaring and unfeeling towards the plight of our citizens who are overseas, but nothing can be further from the truth. Labor are very, very loose with their rhetoric and very loose with their facts when they grab at the heartstrings of Australians to paint the Morrison government as a heartless, unfeeling government that is quite happy to see our citizens languish overseas at the expense of all others. As I said, nothing can be further from the truth. From the very get-go, at the beginning of this pandemic, as early as January we were talking about what this may mean for international travel. We closed our borders to people coming in from China very early in the piece. In March our government made people overseas aware that they should seriously consider returning home if there was no requirement for them to stay overseas, and certainly many people did so. Yes, we acknowledge that those who chose not to at the time had their reasons. They may have been in stable employment at the time, their family circumstances may not have allowed it, and we totally accept that. No-one should be derided for having made the choice to remain where there were. Some of those people now want to return home, again for a variety of reasons, and we are working very hard to facilitate that to ensure they can come home. Since March we've returned over 420,000 Australians to our shores. They have returned home. They're back with their families. Indeed, my office has had many phone calls from people thanking our government for helping them to return home safely, without the risk of getting COVID when they get home. Let's not forget, back in March National Cabinet agreed on hotel quarantine for all arrivals. National Cabinet—all of the state governments and the federal government—agreed that hotel quarantine would be the method that we would apply to ensure that people returning to our shores can do so safely, monitored securely to protect our Australians here onshore as well as themselves. Since that time we have been doing just that. The state governments let us know how many that they could deal with safely and effectively. Using whatever processes they chose to use the state governments identified the caps. On that note, I commend the New South Wales government for having a cap nearly three times higher than the other states. We know—and as Senator Keneally knows, because we heard it in the Senate Select Committee on COVID-19—that hotel quarantine is the reason why Australia has been so successful at controlling the spread of the virus and the virus coming into our shores. We also know, unfortunately, what happens if we push our hotel quarantining system too hard and if we don't have effective control mechanisms in place, because we've seen what happened with Victoria and their tragic second wave. Thankfully, that is over, but we don't want to see that again. So we are committed to ensuring that our hotel quarantine system—working with our state governments—is effective and managed appropriately. We also heard, last Thursday at the Senate committee, that the result of Victoria's second wave meant that Victoria shut down their borders completely. They didn't accept any returning Australians, and that had a significant impact on our capacity to re-shore our citizens from overseas. But, fortunately, Victoria are set to handle foreign arrivals again, and hopefully this time with much-needed improvements to their hotel quarantining. This is all to ensure the safety of Australians—the safety of Australians both returning home and onshore. The other thing that Labor says is that we should just open a national facility. Where? Where can we open this national facility? Senator Keneally, last Thursday, suggested we reopen our closed detention centres, such as Port Hedland and Baxter. I never thought I'd see the day when Labor said that we should reopen our detention centres. Believe me, our government has looked at all options, and we have looked at those closed detention centres—detention centres we're very proud to have closed because we addressed other border issues. But Port Hedland and Baxter, in particular, are not currently fit to put people into. You cannot wave a magic wand—this is my message to Senator Keneally and to Australians out there, because this is about managing expectations. You can't present emotion to this chamber and miraculously be able to manage 35,000 people pouring onto our shores with nowhere to go, nowhere to be effectively quarantined, and not risk our population. Of the arrivals that we're currently dealing with, over one per cent of them have COVID. But we are containing that because we have got effective quarantine. The other option that Senator Keneally put forward was Christmas Island—the currently closed areas of Christmas Island. The parts of Christmas Island detention centre that are fit for use at this point in time are being used. There is no extra capacity there. We have worked with the Northern Territory government. We've reopened the Howard Springs facility, which is currently taking 500 people a week, and negotiations are ongoing to expand that. We've also now negotiated with Tasmania and the ACT, who have now, graciously, allowed incoming passengers from overseas within what they believe they can effectively manage. This government is doing all it can. We have facilitated 72 repatriation flights to date. They are flights wholly and solely committed to people who've registered with DFAT. The other point that Labor make is that the list of Australians wanting to return home is growing, and that is true, because there are Australians overseas at this moment and their situations change, so that list will fluctuate. It will grow as people want to come home and it might decline again as things settle down overseas. But to hold to the claim that our government has failed on a key promise—even Senator Keneally's quote from the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, wasn't a promise. He said, 'We hope to have all Australians home by Christmas.' That was those who were on the list on that day. And, yes, the list has grown. But, since that day, we have had more than 35,000 Australians return home, which was a far greater number than that was originally on the list on the day that the Prime Minister said that he hoped to have them return home. So we are very committed to doing all we can to return Australians home in a way that is safe and in a way that ensures we maintain our very good and very strong record on containing COVID on our shores. But my message to everyone listening today is: we haven't forgotten our Australians overseas. We are doing all we can, effectively. 17:49 Senator PRATT I0T Western Australia I rise to support this urgency motion this afternoon because the Prime Minister of our country issued a statement of false hope to the thousands of stranded Australians when he said he would get them home before Christmas. This promise was made to the 26,800 Australians who at the time were registered with DFAT as stranded. That was back in September. The number of stranded Australians who want to come home now stands at some 37,000 and it is quite likely that that number will grow. We have seen 35,000 Australians come home since the start of the pandemic. I think it's a bit rich to say 'we've already got 35,000 people home'. Many of those people came home quickly, as they were instructed to, under their own steam—no thanks to the government's assistance. Of those 26,800 who were registered with DFAT back in September, 14,000 have been able to come home. I know the great joy and the ending of stress and suffering that comes when families are able to be reunited. I have seen firsthand among close friends and family what a difficult and stressful time this has been, with dozens of tickets booked and dozens of tickets cancelled by airlines and with people being bumped from flight after flight after flight. The government has tried to cast some blame on the state governments for needing to be rational about the number of people they can afford to let into each state in terms of safely managing the quarantine provisions. I do understand that some limits have been needed in order that quarantine can be safely managed; but the government said it was organising to prioritise Australians over other people wanting to enter Australia, and our inquiries at estimates demonstrated that there was no such plan to ensure Australians had priority over other people for whom who the Department of Home Affairs has issued a visa. Over 70 international students arrived into Darwin this week, and I know that universities made their own private arrangements to do that so they could be safely quarantined. But I fail to see how the government can use as an excuse the lack of suitable options for quarantine provision around the country—and they failed to make provision for that—when universities, in this case, have been able to make accommodation for those 70 international students to be able to quarantine. Three hundred foreigners—which should have been 300 Australians—were allowed into the country and allowed to take up a place in quarantine by this government when visa holders under the Business, Innovation and Investment Program were issued visas. When we asked in estimates how this was possible, they said that, once they have been issued a visa, it was up to returning Australians—and anyone else who had been issued a visa—to get a spot on a plane and make their way here. Those spots on planes are very, very limited. In fact, the government had no process or procedure for prioritising Australians being able to take those flights. Anyone with a valid visa to Australia was able to hop on those flights. So, when they said that stranded Australians would be at the front of the queue, this was a falsehood. I think many Australians would see it as an absolute slap in the face. It's all very well for this government to blame the states for their caps. With the lack of support—the complete nonsupport—that the Commonwealth has given to creating Commonwealth places, our nation has had to instead rely entirely on the places created by the states. As Jane Halton revealed in her report: 'Travelers can be quarantined under either Commonwealth or State/Territory legislation.' It was highlighted in her report that it is, indeed, a viable option for this government to be setting up Commonwealth quarantine facilities. I simply do not take at face value what those opposite have said: that they've tried and they've looked hard enough at doing that. I know those opposite have raised the fact that Christmas Island is full with its legitimate immigration uses. That may well be the case, but why not move people who don't need quarantining for COVID purposes? There are any number of different options that you could potentially look at in order to get Australians home. There are any number of locations around the country that I think could be viable places in which to conduct quarantine under Commonwealth legislation. And yet, this Christmas—(Time expired) 17:57 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales I speak to the issue of Australians stranded overseas. The health and safety of our Australians, both at home and abroad, is the government's No. 1 priority in these unprecedented times. Global travel and border restrictions that were introduced to curb COVID-19 resulted in a consular emergency unparalleled in its scale and in its complexity. Without these measures, the pandemic would have hit our nation much harder. We recognise that the caps, agreed by national cabinet, are making it harder for people to return. We're keenly aware that many Australians face hardship overseas because of global travel restrictions. Many Australians, though, have been able to return—more than 432,000 since the government advised Australians to reconsider their travel needs. DFAT has helped over 31,000 Australians to return on over 370 flights, including almost 11,000 people on government-facilitated flights. Ten commercial flights have been facilitated by government since 23 October, returning 1,583 Australians to our shores, including a Qantas flight from London that landed in Darwin today with 165 passengers onboard and a Qantas flight from Delhi that landed in Darwin on Saturday with 148 passengers. Since national cabinet met on 18 September, over 39,600 Australians have returned home. Melbourne airport, our second largest, has not been taking international arrivals since July. We're pleased, though, that the Victorian government is now working towards having 1,120 passengers per week arrive on commercial flights from 7 December, with further flights to follow. The outrage that's being feigned by the opposition is rather juvenile in this crisis, particularly since the mismanagement of the crisis has resulted in states remaining closed to travellers. Labor would have you believe that Australians have been abandoned by the federal government, when we all know that it's the Labor premiers running their own dictatorships that have hampered our nation's recovery. We saw what happened when Victoria's Dan Andrews tried to process returned and international travellers and the debacle that followed. Processing quarantined Australians is an important role for responsible leaders. In Queensland, Princess Palaszczuk's desire to close the borders to ensure her own re-election saw Queenslanders and other Australians locked out of their home, and not just the international travellers who wanted to return home. We witnessed families with small children torn apart, the dying denied the right to be with their loved ones in their final moments and the carnage that the closure of Queensland's borders caused among tourism businesses, which has yet to be fully realised. What chance did Queenslanders stranded in foreign countries have? The answer is 'none'. The biggest overreaction has been in WA, where Premier Mark McGowan has traded the needs of travellers, with a personal popularity contest proving more enticing than responsible leadership. It's interesting that now it's Labor demanding a solution to a problem that is truly of its own making. New South Wales has been doing an exceptionally strong job processing international travellers—in fact, it has been holding up the absolute weight of this task for the nation. Its excellent record in managing the health crisis, superior contact tracing and a measured approach to closures means that New South Wales has been carrying the quarantine burden for these failed, Labor-led states. The global pandemic is far from over and we cannot guarantee when international travel will return to a level of normalcy. However, Infrastructure, the ADF and DFAT will continue to work on relocation and will use any spare capacity to get vulnerable clients on board as a priority. We're helping vulnerable Australians overseas by facilitating access to flights to Australia and providing financial assistance, where required, through the hardship program. Our consular staff are to be commended for their efforts during this time. The Morrison government is committed to helping Australians come home as quickly and safely as possible, even in the absence of sensible state Labor governance, and we will continue to do that until all Australians are home. Question agreed to. NOTICES 81 NOTICES Withdrawal 81 18:02 Senator BROCKMAN 30484 Western Australia At the request of Senator Rennick, I withdraw the notice of motion given earlier today relating to scientific methods. DOCUMENTS 81 DOCUMENTS COVID-19: Disability Royal Commission Report 81 Consideration 81 18:04 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia I move: That the Senate take note of the document. When the pandemic first became clear to disabled people and to the entire community there was a great ripple of fear that went through so many communities in Australia, particularly those in high-risk communities: older people, First Nations folks, folks who traditionally don't get good service from the health system at the best of times, and disabled people as well, because we knew that, when times are good, when the system is working as it should, we often struggle to get access to the services and supports that we need and to the health-care services and supports that we need. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the average life expectancy of an intellectually disabled person in Australia in 2020 is 25 years less than that of the average Australian. The primary driver of that differential in life expectancy is the poor health outcomes that intellectually disabled folks experience, and this was before the pandemic. So we, as disabled people, knew that our lives were on the line and our community was at risk and that urgent action was needed. Across this country, disabled people and our organisations got to work, as underfunded as our organisations are and as beleaguered as we are as disabled people. And we were not alone in this. First Nations organisations got together; organisations representing older people got together—regardless of the threadbare funding that is often available for these national peak organisations to do work. We dropped everything that we could to get government to act, to take the steps and actions needed to safeguard the people that we love, because there was a terrifying realisation that dawned among us: that we had been forgotten in the plan—that the pandemic plan that was being actioned with great speed across the country did not include us, that the government was not willing to listen, and that we were being put to the back of the queue and told we were not a priority. All around the world, we could see the impact and the conclusion of this lack of consultation, as disabled people in Italy and in the United Kingdom were told: 'You will just have to do the best you can, because there will not be enough intensive care support to enable you to live.' All these months on, our royal commission has finally delivered its report of the inquiry that it held into the Australian government response to the pandemic in relation to disabled people, and it is damning. It is absolutely damning. It finds, among other things, that no Australian government agency made any significant effort to consult with disabled people during the early days of the pandemic. And I remember that. I remember those six weeks of terror as it dawned upon all of us that we were nowhere in the plan—that, to this government, our role was to do the best we could, and that if we died then that was an unfortunate reality of a global pandemic. I remember the late-night phone calls with advocates across the country as we tried to decide which group to prioritise, which conversation to have, which minister to try to get in to see the next day. It was awful. It must never happen again. Twenty-two recommendations have been made by the royal commission. Twenty-two must be urgently implemented, because we are not done with this pandemic yet. A third or fourth wave may well come over the horizon at any point. And it is unacceptable that the government remains unprepared and unable to include disabled people in the response. Our lives should be valued equally. These recommendations must be implemented. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT F49 Senator Steele-John, your time has expired. Are you seeking leave to continue your remarks? Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Yes. Why not! Leave granted; debate adjourned. DOCUMENTS 82 DOCUMENTS Consideration 82 COMMITTEES 83 COMMITTEES Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee 83 Report 83 18:10 Senator BROCKMAN 30484 Western Australia On behalf of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, I present the report of the committee on the provisions of the National Commissioner for Defence and Veteran Suicide Prevention Bill 2020 and a related bill, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee. MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS 83 MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety 83 18:09 Senator COLBECK 00AOL Tasmania I table an implementation progress report concerning the special report of the royal commission on aged care and COVID-19. I move: That the Senate take note of the report. I am pleased to inform the Senate today that this government is delivering on all the recommendations made by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety in its special COVID-19 report. In Australia 693 people living in aged-care facilities or getting services at home have sadly died. Each loss of life represents someone's mum, dad, grandparent or cherished friend. I offer my condolences to all of those who have been impacted by COVID-19. Today the government has tabled an implementation progress report in keeping with the royal commission's first recommendation. This implementation report shows every step is being taken to ensure the safety and wellbeing of senior Australians. The Australian government has already delivered four of the six recommendations and progress is well under way on the final two. As previously stated, the lead geriatrician of the Victorian Aged Care Response Centre and a member of the AHPPC aged care clinical advisory committee, Associate Professor Michael Murray, said, 'Australia was as well prepared for a significant aged-care outbreak as any country or jurisdiction in the world, with the probable exception of Hong Kong.' Professor Murray, who is also head of geriatric medicine at Austin Health and an Adjunct Associate Professor at La Trobe University's Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care said, 'Despite being as good or indeed the second best, it was not possible to prevent incursion into the aged-care sector or any other vulnerable community during a mass community outbreak.' Prevention of mass community transmission remains the first and best defence for any community and that was the first line of defence under the Australian government's plan. Importantly, it is worth noting that 97 per cent of residential aged-care facilities in Australia have had no residents with COVID-19 cases. We have increased our initial investment in the COVID-19 supplement from $205.3 million to a total of $422.9 million, directly responding to recommendation 2, to support aged-care providers with COVID-19 related costs. This means that aged-care facilities can have adequate staff to keep their doors open to family and friends, ensuring that residents don't become isolated. At the same time, revised visitation guidelines, endorsed by the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, outline how residents can be protected in the least restrictive manner, balancing their health needs with their personal wellbeing. I should also mention the visitation code of conduct, which was developed and led by consumer peaks and the industry. In addition, senior Australians are taking advantage of increased services for advocacy, grief and trauma support. This $19 million investment has produced significant resources, including a dedicated COVID-19 support line for older Australians. The royal commission's special report outlined barriers for aged-care residents in receiving the allied health and mental health care they need. In response to recommendation 3 we're investing an additional $63.3 million to extend allied and mental health services for aged-care residents. From 10 December, extending these services will mean that aged-care residents can now receive up to 20 Medicare subsidised individual psychological therapy sessions with the practitioner of their choice, in line with the services available to everyone else in the broader community. We're also removing barriers and increasing access to essential allied health services for aged-care residents. This means that residents with a chronic disease management plan will have access to extra Medicare subsidised physiotherapists, occupational therapists and exercise physiologist sessions. In recognition of the effect COVID-19 outbreaks have had on many residents in aged-care facilities, we are going beyond the recommendations of the royal commission to support group therapy sessions in affected residential aged-care facilities. This is to rebuild muscle strength and to reduce the risk of falls following periods of lockdown and inactivity. In line with recommendation 4, we have updated the National COVID-19 Aged Care Plan. It is critical to ensure a national approach is taken to protect vulnerable senior Australians. The Australian government has continuously built and adapted the plan since January 2020. As part of that, we have worked side by side with state and territory governments to implement additional infection prevention and control training, and to establish joint approaches to the management of outbreaks. And we stand ready to activate emergency response arrangements when required. Also as recommended, the Aged Care Advisory Group of the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, or AHPPC, which is composed of national experts in aged care, geriatric health, infection control and emergency response, has been made permanent. This committee will continue to inform how to address outbreaks and to update advice for providers. As endorsed by recommendation 5, a robust, well-trained infection prevention control expert workforce is being implemented. This is a $217.6 million investment into residential aged-care providers to employ an infection prevention control lead. And recommendation 6 advocates for the Australian, state and territory governments and infection prevention control experts to work collaboratively. We are continuing to strengthen our preparedness to respond to a rapid escalation of COVID-19 in the aged-care sector, learning from ongoing outbreaks, sharing knowledge and insights and prioritising training and assessments with aged-care providers. To meet this recommendation the Australian government is doubling its contribution under the National Partnership on COVID-19 Response. That means that the Commonwealth government will fund up to 100 per cent of activities undertaken by the states and territories to support aged-care services through infection prevention and control training, preparedness and response. In total, the Australian government has invested more than $1.7 billion in the aged-care sector since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically to deal with COVID-19. While we hope there isn't another COVID outbreak in aged-care facilities, or in home care, we are dedicated to putting everything in place quickly to ensure our senior Australians are protected throughout the pandemic and the COVID recovery phase. This was evident in the rapid and effective response to the recent cluster event in South Australia. We know, and we've seen it so many times, that where there is community transmission there is a risk to aged-care residents in local facilities. The loss of lives in Australia has underlined our fierce determination to ensure that every effort is made to ensure that it doesn't happen again. I'm delighted to report that there have been no active cases of COVID-19 in aged-care recipients in Australia since 28 October. One South Australian residential aged-care facility does have four staff with COVID-19, and they are appropriately in isolation and being cared for. The facility is being monitored closely, with a regular testing regime. The successful shift in the tide for Australia comes as the battle against this virus continues around the globe. That is why we must not become complacent. The Australian government is leading a systematic change in the nation's aged-care sector to deliver an aged-care system that meets senior Australians' needs and expectations. We are committed to building on the work underway and to elevating the key focus of improving the health, safety and wellbeing of aged-care residents, home-care recipients and their families. We will continue to work with our state and territory colleagues, aged-care providers, peak bodies and industry partners to transform aged care and provide Australians with choice and control over the care and services they need as they age. We look forward to receiving the royal commission's final report in February and we will carefully consider all its recommendations, just as we have carefully considered and responded rapidly to the commission's special report on COVID-19. The report tabled today shows holistic, coordinated and considered actions to tackle a critical threat to the health and wellbeing of our senior Australians. I thank the Senate. 18:21 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales I rise to take note of the ministerial statement from Minister Colbeck. I start by making clear that the Labor Party's capacity to respond to the substance of the minister's statement to the Senate is limited. It's limited because the minister has displayed a high degree, an unusual degree, of secrecy around this statement. It is the usual practice, the usual courtesy displayed by ministers in the Senate, to provide a copy of a ministerial statement to the shadow minister in advance of tabling it. I can advise the Senate—and thereby advise the workers in aged care, and the residents in aged care and the families that care for them—that that did not happen. The shadow minister for aged care received a copy of this report at 6 pm by email. In fact, it's been incredibly hard even to work out the purpose of the ministerial statement from the minister today. So allergic are the Morrison government to scrutiny, so fearful are they of scrutiny of their custodianship of the aged-care portfolio and the care provided to our parents and grandparents in aged care, that they couldn't even bother to provide adequate, usual courtesies of giving the statement to the shadow minister prior to giving it here in the Senate today. But why should we be surprised? This is a minister who has turned his back on the scrutiny of this place, a minister who persists in his role despite being censured by this Senate for his mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic in aged care. It demonstrates he's learned nothing. The aged-care royal commission's special report provided the scrutiny that the government clearly needed. Really, it's not just the government that needed it; it's the residents of aged care in Australia who desperately needed it. The staff who work tirelessly in aged care, underpaid and overworked, needed this scrutiny too. And the government's response is important for the families and loved ones of the 685 people, older Australians, who died from COVID in aged care. The government's response will be scrutinised by the opposition. We'll look to see what they've learned, to see if their mistakes will be repeated. The minister and the Morrison government ignored warning after warning and failed to protect for COVID-19 in aged care. They displayed the pretence of a plan. Who could forget the Prime Minister standing up and waving around the Australian health sector emergency response plan for aged care, or what he said. There it is in paragraph 4.1.4: 'The Australian government will also be responsible for residential aged-care facilities'—black and white! The government said they had a plan. The government said they were responsible for aged-care facilities and the maintenance of PPE, of infection control, of workforce protection, of looking after our parents and grandparents in the middle of a global pandemic. They said, in this document, that they were responsible. And then, when we had an outbreak, what did they do? They found someone else to blame. What does Scott Morrison do when he's under scrutiny and pressure? He finds someone else to blame. He tried to pretend all of a sudden that aged care had nothing to do with him; it wasn't a federal government responsibility. Lo and behold, it's a public health responsibility. It's all the states. Just like quarantine, just like the Ruby Princess, just like everything else to do with this pandemic—Scott Morrison has looked for someone else to blame. It's usually a state government, because apparently all the things the Commonwealth is supposed to be doing, under our Constitution and our federal system—border control, aged care, quarantine—are suddenly no longer federal responsibilities. They sit with the states. When it goes right, Scott Morrison is there to take the credit, and when it goes wrong he avoids the blame and finds someone else to blame for his failure. I want to point out to those who might be watching this debate that this week the government tabled another report, the 2019-20 Report on the operation of the Aged Care Act 1997. This goes to the hubris of this government when it comes to aged care. That report failed to acknowledge a single death from COVID-19 in aged-care facilities. We've got an aged-care report on the Aged Care Act 2019-20 and not one acknowledgement of the fact that 685 people died in residential aged care. Perversely, this report congratulates the government on its achievements in infection control, minimising transmission and maintaining a safe environment in aged-care facilities. Talk about patting yourself on the back. That's going to be really cold comfort to the almost 700 families with a loved one who contracted COVID-19 and died in an aged-care facility this year. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety's special report into COVID-19 stated that the Morrison government did not have a plan for COVID-19 in aged care. I noticed the minister got up for his statement today and began with a whole lot of laudatory comments from supposed experts—they may be experts; I don't know them personally. I do know one expert, and that is the royal commission, staffed with experts who were appointed by this government. They're experts in aged care and they've been studying the problem. What did they say? They said the statement in this document—this plan—was no plan at all, and that the Morrison government did not have a plan for COVID when it came to aged care. By the way, let me just acknowledge the remarks of Senator Steele-John earlier, when he said the government didn't have a plan for disability when it came to COVID. He's right. He's absolutely right. Aged care, disability, the vulnerable—the government is leaving people behind, just like stranded Australians. This government is leaving people behind. It is shameful when they're leaving behind our grandparents and our parents—vulnerable older Australians who cared for their children, who built their businesses, who contributed to their community, who fought in wars. These are the people this government is leaving behind to fend for themselves. The royal commission's report into aged care for COVID-19, this special report, stated that there was difficulty for aged-care workers in accessing PPE, there was insufficient infection control training for aged-care workers and there was no surge workforce strategy document. It's not like they didn't have warning. They've had Earle Haven in Queensland; Dorothy Henderson Lodge in New South Wales and Newmarch House. These were all warnings that they didn't heed. To listen to this government and this minister, you'd think they couldn't have possibly imagined ever having to replace an entire workforce in an aged-care facility, but it had already happened a year earlier, and yet they had no plan for it. They did not have any idea how many aged-care staff were working across multiple sites. If there's one thing this COVID pandemic has exposed, it's not just the shocking neglect of the Morrison government when it comes to aged care but also the shocking impact of insecure work—that is, people who do not have job security and who have to work multiple casual jobs. When it comes to aged care, that happens. We know it happens, yet this government had no plan to try and understand the extent to which it was happening—again, a failure to imagine, to anticipate and to plan when it comes to the impact of COVID on aged care. The lessons learnt from the early mistakes in aged care were kept secret for too long. They were not made public in a timely manner for the entire sector to learn and adjust. By the way, I'm tired of hearing how much we are 'learning'—700 dead people later. We should have learnt a lot earlier. I'm also tired of hearing the government say that they've put $1.7 billion into the aged-care sector to deal with COVID-19. Do you know how much they cut out of aged care when Scott Morrison was Treasurer? It was $1.7 billion—the exact same amount. Don't pat yourselves on the back over there that you put $1.7 billion in, when you took $1.7 billion out under this Prime Minister when he was Treasurer. That is the neglect. The aged-care royal commission has an interim report into this government's handling of the aged-care sector, and it is titled Neglect. It talks about people starving in their beds, soiled in their bedclothes with ants and maggots in their wounds. That is what we went into COVID with: an aged-care system in neglect, and 700 people died. For the government to continue to pat themselves on the back is a shame. Neglect is the shame of our aged-care system. 18:31 Senator SIEWERT e5z Western Australia I also rise to take note of the ministerial response and the ministerial statement in response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety's report Aged care and COVID-19: a special report. Government make a lot of the $1.7 billion that has been, they claim, invested in the sector for dealing with the pandemic. Of course, if the sector had been running effectively we wouldn't have needed to inject $1.7 billion. It was quite obvious the sector was not ready to handle a pandemic. It had multiple issues, as is evident from the fact that we've got a royal commission in the first place. Here we have the government saying that they've got an updated plan in response to recommendation 4, which is to 'establish a national aged-care plan for COVID-19 through the national cabinet in consultation with the aged-care sector'. What the government says in the report that has just been tabled, which we've all just laid eyes on, is that there's an updated national COVID aged-care plan. The royal commission clearly knew that in fact there wasn't an aged-care plan, but the government continues with the myth that there was an aged-care plan—that in fact they didn't just rip the cover off the general plan and put on a new cover that said 'aged care'. They've updated that. I hope it's more than just changing the report's title page. The funding that's allocated here, which of course is welcome, is for investment in mental health care and allied health care. The very interesting thing to note here is that the government have now decided they can invest in better access in aged-care facilities. Some of us who have been around this joint for quite a long time have advocated and advocated to extend better access to aged care. First off I'll say: thank goodness it's now been extended. But why, for all these years, have we had the flawed approach of allocating a bit of separate money—which was better than nothing, I will admit—for mental health in aged care, which had to be diverted and then delivered through the different PHNs all around the country and which meant that somebody in an aged-care facility could not get the same mental health support that anybody else in the community could get? Now, all of a sudden—from 10 December—they can get it. But it's only for six months. It finishes in June next year. Then aged-care residents will have to go back to the same-old, same-old where they do not get adequate mental health support. When we look at allied health—and I will preface this by saying I've only had a chance to have a brief look at it—the funding will be targeted to aged-care residents living in facilities which experienced outbreaks, and it will fund initial assessment and an allied health consultation for a six-month period. Again, it's only for six months. My reading of this is it's only for those that had an outbreak. We know many, many aged-care facilities around this country have been in lockdown and they haven't been able to receive visits, supports and the sorts of allied health that they need. On top of that, they don't get proper access to allied health services in any case. Again, it's only for six months. So while the government's making much of all this so-called new money—as was articulated earlier, there's been a whole lot of money taken out of aged care over the years—it's only available for six months. I know the government are going to say, 'The royal commission is reporting in February and therefore we'll be rolling out new services.' But they won't be rolling them out that quickly, folks, because they didn't adequately cover this in the last budget. And, of course, the next budget's not until May next year. What will people do in the interim? They will not have access to mental health services. They will not have access to allied health services. In terms of staffing, we all know that aged care is understaffed. The staff absolutely go above and beyond. They've had to work across multiple facilities, and they will have to continue to do that across Australia. That, again, will be a perfect tsunami, potentially, if we get further waves or outbreaks of coronavirus in our states. We're going to be back to the same-old, same-old situation where we had inadequate levels of staffing and where staff didn't get adequately paid. We could well end up in those same circumstances. We need to make sure that we have a staffing system that ensures that we have four hours and 18 minutes worth of care for residents. We need to make sure that we have the staffing expertise that can deliver clinical care. That is not being delivered in residential aged-care facilities right now. Also in the report is the fact that the AHPPC has set up a subcommittee for aged care. We have been up hill and down dale through the COVID committee trying to get the advice that AHPPC provides. Do you think we could get that? No. Senator Gallagher will tell you very clearly how much we have been pushing in the COVID committee to get access to that advice. It also claims to have consumer advocacy. But the last time I asked about this there were no residents on that committee, nobody with actual lived experience. That is not to cast aspersions on the consumer advocate that's there, but they don't have lived experience. What about, 'Nothing for us without us'? People in residential aged care deserve a voice and deserve to have input into that committee. Just this morning we were talking about transparency when Senator Griff was moving amendments to a bill to actually try and get better transparency for the aged-care sector, yet here we have a body providing advice to the AHPPC that's not transparent and the community can't see that advice. Residents in aged care expect the best-quality care and families expect the best-quality care, not more ad hoc decision-making with bits of money being dripped in here and dripped in there and only going for short periods of time. I'll come back to the issues around mental health services. All the experts are talking about it. Across the board, we have a mental health pandemic. Aged-care residents are right up there in suffering from the effects of the pandemic, particularly in Victoria, but across the country. They haven't been able to see their loved ones, or they've had to see their loved ones through glass, holding up their hands. They've missed birthdays. They've missed so many family occasions. They need ongoing mental health services that aren't limited. They need better access—whatever that looks like after the review—and they need guaranteed access to mental health services, allied health services, clinical care and a staffing level that's guaranteed to provide the best quality care. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. COMMITTEES 87 COMMITTEES Environment and Communications References Committee 87 Membership 87 18:41 Senator SESELJA HZE Australian Capital Territory I move: That Senator Carr replace Senator Urquhart on the Environment and Communications References Committee for the committee's inquiry into media diversity in Australia, and Senator Urquhart be appointed as a participating member. Question agreed to. BILLS 87 BILLS Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Category Standards and Other Measures) Bill 2020 87

Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Category Standards and Other Measures) Bill 2020

First Reading 87 18:42 Senator SESELJA HZE Australian Capital Territory I move: That this bill may proceed without formalities and be now read a first time. Question agreed to. Bill read a first time. Second Reading 87 18:43 Senator SESELJA HZE Australian Capital Territory I table a revised explanatory memorandum relating to the bill and move: That this bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows— The Higher Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Category Standards and Other Measures) Bill 2020 will future-proof Australia's higher education system, cutting red tape and simplifying regulation. The Bill amends the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA Act) to: implement the recommendations of the Review of the Higher Education Provider Category Standards; introduce a measure to preserve and protect the academic records of students whose higher education provider has ceased to exist; and make a small number of other measures intended to improve the regulation of Australia's higher education sector by strengthening the TEQSA Act's administration and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency's (TEQSA) regulatory role. It also amends the Higher Education Support Act 2003 to replace references to 'Indigenous Students' with 'Indigenous Persons'. PCS Review The 2017‒18 Budget included a measure to undertake a Review of the Higher Education Provider Category Standards, which are part of the Higher Education Standards Framework Threshold Standards. The PCS Review was completed in 2019 by Emeritus Professor Peter Coaldrake AO, who recommended amending the Provider Category Standards to clarify and streamline the regulatory framework, to ensure it is fit for purpose for all stakeholders, including students, the regulator, and current and future providers. The Government accepted all ten of the PCS Review's recommendations. The key recommendation of the Review was to both simplify and enhance the categorisation of higher education providers by: reducing the number of domestic university categories from three down to a single category – Australian University; reducing the number of overseas university categories from two down to one – Overseas University; and enhancing the categories for non-university providers by introducing a second category for those providers with a track record of the highest quality delivery and learning outcomes – Institutes of Higher Education and a new category of provider to be called 'University Colleges'. The University College category will introduce a mark of quality and better signal diversity and differentiation in the non-university sector. It will provide an opportunity for the highest quality providers to operate in regional and thinner markets without the burden imposed by the need to undertake research in the university categories. It will offer an achievable and practical transitional pathway for institutions seeking to work towards university status. It will also provide a new pathway for the future establishment of 'greenfield' universities, should a state or territory government or significant Australian or overseas entity wish to establish a new university from scratch. The new provider categories also clarify the obligations of institutions in both the Australian University and University College categories to be active participants in their communities and enhance the employability of graduates through civic leadership and engagement with employers and industry. The new categories also clarify how the quality of research activity will be assessed in the Australian University category, giving more certainty to institutions about the expectations for research quality. The amendments to the TEQSA Act in this bill are consequential to the amendments to the Standards themselves, which will be remade through a new legislative instrument once this bill has been passed. The changes to the Standards have been drafted by the Higher Education Standards Panel, as required by section 58 of the TEQSA Act. The commencement date for the related provisions in this bill will be fixed by proclamation so that they take effect on the same day as the new Threshold Standards instrument. I expect this to be 1 July 2021, so that higher education providers have certainty and time to prepare for any minor impacts expected. Impact Review This bill also enacts a change recommended by the Review of the Impact of the TEQSA Act on the Higher Education Sector undertaken by Deloitte Access Economics in 2016-17. While the majority of recommendations from this review were responded to through a previous bill, an outstanding recommendation to simplify the framing of the Threshold Standards in the TEQSA Act was deferred until after completion of the PCS Review. These amendments will present the Threshold Standards as a single unified framework, instead of four distinct types of Threshold Standards. This will enable the structure of the Threshold Standards instrument to be simplified, making it clearer for providers, students and others to read and use. Student records provisions The recently announced Job-ready Graduates package of higher education reforms included a measure to provide TEQSA with the legislative authority to assume control of higher education student records from a registered higher education provider in the event the provider ceases operations. These amendments will give TEQSA similar legislative powers to those of the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) in relation to providers that cease operating. This is a significant reform that will help current and future higher education students obtain ready access to their academic records in the event a higher education provider ceases to operate. Domain names The bill includes a measure to ensure protection of the word 'university' in Australian Internet domain names, by requiring ministerial consent to use an Australian Internet domain name containing the word 'university' or derivatives. This measure is consistent with existing provisions that protect use of the word 'university' in company and business names and will enable an approval process that previously operated in relation to domain names to be reinstated. A Government amendment to the Bill was introduced in the other place to insert an updated version of Item 29 following further consultation with the Minister for Communications and the domain name administrator for the .au [pronounced "dot-ay-you"] domain space. This amendment is reflected in the Bill now before the Senate and was designed to better align some technical aspects of the provision to the highly automated process the domain administrator uses to manage domain name applications. While the expected application and approval process remain the same, the amended Item 29 ensures the domain administrator can't technically breach the law if a domain name licence is issued through an automated process before the applicant has sought the Minister's consent to include the word 'university' in the name. Domain names are issued automatically on application if the name is currently unused. To administer this new law, some very obvious domain names will be blocked from application – like "university.com.au" and "uni.com.au". Other requested domain names will be subject to review shortly after they are issued. Where a domain name has been issued with "university" somewhere in it and there is no record of the Minister having provided consent, the purchaser will be asked to seek that consent. If consent is not provided, use of the domain name will be suspended by the domain administrator. For most applicants and those who have sought consent up-front there will be no administrative burden at all. Other measures Other measures in the bill to improve higher education regulation will: include reference to the new Australian Qualifications Framework qualification type 'undergraduate certificate' in the definition of 'higher education award'; allow TEQSA to extend the period of a provider's registration or course accreditation more than once, which will help TEQSA manage its regulatory workload better and provide low-risk providers with additional flexibility, including in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; allow review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal of a decision by TEQSA not to change a provider's category if this was requested; and Schedule 2 to the Bill amends the Higher Education Support Act to replace references to 'Indigenous Students' with "Indigenous Persons'. These amendments will confirm the existing arrangement that higher education providers can use Indigenous student assistance grants to assist prospective, as well as existing, Indigenous students. In summary, the measures in this bill will reduce red tape and simplify the regulation and administration of Australian higher education. I commend the bill. Debate adjourned. COMMITTEES 89 COMMITTEES Public Works Committee 89 Membership 89 BILLS 90 BILLS Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020, Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020, Family Law Amendment (Risk Screening Protections) Bill 2020, Biosecurity Amendment (Traveller Declarations and Other Measures) Bill 2020, Broadcasting Services Amendment (Regional Commercial Radio and Other Measures) Bill 2020, Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020, Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020, National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Strengthening Banning Orders) Bill 2020, Services Australia Governance Amendment Bill 2020, Fair Work Amendment (Improving Unpaid Parental Leave for Parents of Stillborn Babies and Other Measures) Bill 2020, Health Insurance Amendment (Administration) Bill 2020, Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus) Bill 2020, Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Supporting the Wellbeing of Veterans and Their Families) Bill 2020 90

Economic Recovery Package (JobMaker Hiring Credit) Amendment Bill 2020

Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Coronavirus and Other Measures) Bill 2020

Family Law Amendment (Risk Screening Protections) Bill 2020

Biosecurity Amendment (Traveller Declarations and Other Measures) Bill 2020

Broadcasting Services Amendment (Regional Commercial Radio and Other Measures) Bill 2020

Education Legislation Amendment (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection) Bill 2020

Higher Education (Up-front Payments Tuition Protection Levy) Bill 2020

National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Strengthening Banning Orders) Bill 2020

Services Australia Governance Amendment Bill 2020

Fair Work Amendment (Improving Unpaid Parental Leave for Parents of Stillborn Babies and Other Measures) Bill 2020

Health Insurance Amendment (Administration) Bill 2020

Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus) Bill 2020

Veterans' Affairs Legislation Amendment (Supporting the Wellbeing of Veterans and Their Families) Bill 2020

Assent 90 Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021, Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 90

Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021

Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021

Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021

Second Reading 90 18:44 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland I'll get through the remainder of my speech in the next seven minutes, having begun just before question time today. I'm sure senators opposite have been waiting with bated breath for me to resume this speech. I aim not to disappoint. What I was talking about prior to question time, when we were debating these appropriation bills, was that there's an alarming tendency in this government—which we're seeing again this week—to clutch at any piece of data that they say indicates that the economy is performing well under their stewardship. As I foreshadowed, we have already seen that this week in relation to what the government expects is going to come out of the national accounts data later in the week. The government is preparing the ground for that data in their intention to show that the recession in Australia is over. We saw a little bit of that from the government in question time today. As I was saying before question time, if we do see this continued pattern from the government in arguing that the economy has recovered and that things are going tickety-boo in the Australian economy, all that will demonstrate is exactly how out of touch this government is with what is really happening out there in Australia. Even the most recent unemployment figures show that unemployment is now at seven per cent, with another 10.4 per cent of the Australian population underemployed. That's over 17 per cent of the Australian population either out of work or seeking more hours than they can find. That's one way of showing that, whatever the government might be saying, in fact many Australians are doing it really tough right now. That old barometer of the state of the economy is empty shops. I do a lot of travelling in my job. In the last couple of weeks alone I've been in Darwin, Rockhampton, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and probably other places that I've forgotten. Everywhere I go, I see empty shops in shopping districts. Even from talking to some of my colleagues today, I know that similar things are going on in their towns and cities right across Australia. So, again, whatever we see and hear from the government about the economy improving, that anecdotal evidence as well as statistical evidence from the Bureau of Statistics shows that in fact at the moment things are really tough for people. People are particularly concerned about what this government's plans are come March, when the JobKeeper payment is scheduled to end, when the coronavirus supplement is scheduled to end and when we also expect to see banks calling in loans from small businesses and homeowners who have been able to defer their mortgage. Already under this government's leadership we're seeing more pain to Australians and to the wider Australian economy than is necessary, because this government has made decisions to exclude so many people from JobKeeper. The government has wound down JobKeeper and the coronavirus supplement too soon, before the economy has fully recovered and in defiance of warnings from the Reserve Bank of Australia and other economic experts. But that's exactly what we're seeing from this government. We saw it again in the budget, which these bills relate to, where the government has made a conscious decision to continue excluding categories of people and categories of workers from government support. Just one example in this year's budget is the government's decision to exclude workers over the age of 35 from the hiring subsidy, which means that nearly a million people who are over 35 and currently unemployed will not be able to attract a hiring subsidy from the government when they seek employment with a new employer. That is obviously going to lead employers to exclude older workers not just from receiving the hiring subsidy but from actually getting a job. We already know from the figures that are coming out of the Bureau of Statistics and other economic commentators that older workers are finding it harder to find work and are languishing on the unemployment queues longer. Yet this government has decided, with this budget, to exclude those older workers from receiving the hiring subsidy—another example of the government's conscious decisions making things worse for people: extending the recession, deepening the recession, prolonging the pain. It doesn't have to be this way. We have been attempting to get the government to reverse course on some of these decisions, whether it be excluding older workers from receiving a hiring subsidy or the decision—made what seems like years ago but was only months ago—to exclude casuals, migrant workers, university workers, council workers, arts and entertainment workers and many other categories from receiving the JobKeeper payment. So it's this government's decisions that are making things worse for so many Australians and making the recession go longer than it needs to. Of course, there were so many other things that were missing from the budget that the country desperately needs from this government. There was no plan for child care, no proper plan for aged care, no plan for energy policy, no plan for the future of JobSeeker recipients—so many things that are essential to the current state of the economy but also to setting Australia up to really rebound in this recovery. And all of those things have been omitted by the government. They seem to be putting all their eggs in the basket of granting tax concessions to business, some of which we support. But that's not enough on its own. There are so many other things that this government needs to be doing and isn't doing to make sure that we do come out of the recession as quickly as possible. And it is a real shame that, in contrast, what this government does is to keep making decisions that are going to make the recession worse. 18:51 Senator CICCONE 281503 Victoria Tonight I'll also add my contribution to the Senate's consideration of the appropriation bills before it, Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 2) 2020-2021 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021. As we know, budgets come and go in this place. Some are of great consequence and some less so. Some budgets serve to illustrate a bold vision for our nation's future, whereas others might instead seek to reinforce our progression down a path already decided. Regardless of what type of budget any budget might be, each one gives us an insight into the character of the government which presents it. Each one tells us a great deal about what the government sees as important. There is no doubt that this is a budget with some big numbers in it, such as the $213 billion deficit this financial year, with a cumulative deficit of $480 billion over the forward estimates. Net debt will blow out to $703 billion this year alone, growing to $966 billion before too long. Gross debt, on the other hand, is forecast to reach $1.7 trillion over the decade. With numbers this large, Australians have a right to wonder and to know where the money is going. What does this government see as important? We know that this budget falls flat in the areas that really matter most. We know that it doesn't go far enough to either protect or create jobs; nor does it illustrate the bold vision that our country desperately needs or form part of a comprehensive plan to secure our nation's future economic prosperity. Last week, I had the pleasure of joining Labor's shadow minister for agriculture and resources, the member for Chifley, out in Gippsland in Victoria. For those who may never have had the pleasure of visiting Gippsland, it was quite an enjoyable road trip, I must say. It is described by many as 'God's country'. The region is famed for the quality of its agricultural products, brimming with lush fields of green where vegetables are grown and cows wander. As part of our travels with the member for Chifley, we met Sallie Jones, an owner of a local dairy farm, Gippsland Jersey. Gippsland Jersey is a small dairy producer with multiple farms across the Gippsland region. It was founded by Sallie with the mission of supporting smaller family farms by paying them a fairer farm price for their milk, sidestepping the major processors. From humble beginnings the business has grown to produce not just milk but cream, butter, yoghurt and other value-added products—and, I would also like to add, ice cream! Sallie even has plans to produce many other fantastic products in the future. I guess this is a great example of small business doing great things for the local community and for the region. I would like to see governments of both political persuasions support businesses like this, especially in the regions. Gippsland Jersey is a quintessential Australian success story. Sal and her team should be very proud of themselves; they have much to offer. We in this place ought to be supporting businesses like Sal's. Businesses like hers should be able to count on the Australian government for support, especially in the middle of a recession. There is so much opportunity in Gippsland and for primary producers. They need to be encouraged to add value to what they produce, to keep the farmland in the hands of Australians and to keep profits in the pockets of regional Australia. Unfortunately, this budget leaves far too many people behind. As I mentioned earlier, budgets speak to the character of the governments that deliver them. We shouldn't be surprised to see a budget that leaves people behind; this government, unfortunately, has always left people behind. If you need more proof of this, go and speak to the many timber workers in my home state—in particular, those who have been impacted by the uncertainty surrounding the Central Highlands Regional Forestry Agreement. I've spoken to these timber workers, I've visited them and I've had a lot to say. Last week, the member for Chifley and I visited Australian Sustainable Hardwoods, a world-class sustainable timber mill in Heyfield. ASH, as it is better known, is a mighty business—world-class, in fact. The scale and sophistication of its operations are something we should all be impressed about. Any Australian who might have the opportunity should go down there and pay a visit. While ASH has worked hard to build itself into the successful business it is today, it has often had to struggle as a result of a lack of support from government and also from my home state of Victoria. After all, it is on the watch of this government that their economic future has been thrown into some doubt—whether it is through the lack of work to shore up the regional forestry agreements or the bungling of the relationship with one of our most important trading countries, which has seen quality Australian timber turned away on the tarmac. One is left to wonder what the folks at Gippsland Jersey and Australian Sustainable Hardwoods get out of the biggest budget blowout in our time. What money is heading their way to support them and to grow their future? Heaven knows this government likes to talk about its economic credentials. As we heard earlier from Senator Watt, even today the government carries on as if there is nothing wrong. Don't we know how they like to tell us they are good economic managers! Tell that to the additional 160,000 people who are going to join the jobless queues by Christmas. Tell that to the 2,000 Qantas workers who are about to lose their jobs. Tell that to the thousands who are going to have their JobKeeper ripped out from under them or the thousands who are going to find their bills hard to meet as JobSeeker is slashed. What little support Australians were able to rely on over the course of this year as we experienced a once-in-a century economic downturn! Far too many have already suffered. We know that the government did not want to implement a wage subsidy and we know they never wanted to raise Newstart to the rate of a livable wage. It was pressure from the community and pressure from Labor and others in this place that eventually brought them to the table. What is the plan for the recovery? That is the question we have all been asking. What's the next step? How exactly is this government going to help Australia bounce back? Well, we know we can count on them for one thing—we can count on them to be there for the announcements. This government relies on these announcements for the headlines. They relish the photo opportunity, the media release, the quick interview and the social media post. What they don't relish is the delivery. What they can't be counted on for is to do the actual things that matter to most Australians—the doing. Take the shortages in our horticulture industry as one example. There is the government—those opposite, both National and Liberal—unveiling a new pot of money and a half-page plan. Day 1, all is well; the announcement is a success, the media mention locked in. Go back on day 2, day 20, day 200—all the flashy subsidies are still there, as shiny as the day they were unveiled, because they have been barely used. The thousands of new workers that were promised turn out to number only in the dozens. But, by the time the roadshow has moved on to the next announcement and the one after, the problems still persist, with the hard work of service delivery left undone. But don't take my word for it. Go and speak to the many farmers in my home state—the broccoli farmers in South Gippsland, the strawberry farmers in Queensland. They'll tell you. Good luck finding the solutions, though, because they can't, and they are desperately needing people to pick the harvest as we enter the next period in summer. You won't find it, because these are Australians that have been left behind. They have a problem that is too hard, one that government would rather be forgotten. And they're not alone. They're not the only ones that the government has left behind. At a time when so many Australians are in need and so many industries need a leg up, this government is missing in action. Last week, I also met with representatives of Gippsland Food & Fibre and visited a local business in Loch, the Loch Brewery & Distillery. The folks there have created a fine local business, set in a very picturesque regional village. And they're a success, starting with a still you could fit on this desk, now having one just about as big as your living room. No-one can say that they're not having a go. They are having a go. They've gone from making beer to making whisky to making gins, and even their own Negroni. But are they getting a go? They are the kinds of people that we ought to be backing, and yet the government can often make their lives harder, with taxation obligations and other measures that get in the way of them doing what they do best. Sure, they've been grateful to have JobKeeper, and many businesses have—a scheme of merit that we, on this side, also supported. But, now, what is the plan beyond JobKeeper? What is the plan beyond JobSeeker? What is the plan for jobs and getting this country back on track, getting our economy moving again? What is the plan for regional Australia? We need a road map going forward, a government with vision and one that isn't afraid to put in the hard yards to get the outcomes our country desperately needs. Sadly, all that's going right now is a shiny media release and a whole bunch of debt. At the end of the day, Australians deserve better, and they really do need a government that's going to be on their side. 19:03 Senator GREEN 259819 Queensland I rise tonight to speak on the appropriations bills and, in doing so, take the opportunity to talk again about this government's budget. As we know, budgets are incredibly important documents. In a recession, in this recession particularly, this budget could not be more important. But it's not just what's written down on paper that matters. In a recession like this, what governments do is important, because governments have a job to do during recessions—to lead the country in an economic plan, to drive investment, to create jobs and to make the most of the opportunities that we know this terrible recession has brought about for our community. It's about action; it's about doing things. It's about rolling up your sleeves and getting things done—delivering on your promises. But we know that, when it comes to delivering promises, the only thing the Morrison government is fast-tracking at the moment are announcements. They have no plan to deliver on these announcements. We know that they made many announcements before the election, when they were asking the Australian people for their votes. And yet those announcements, even in a recession, remain undelivered. The Morrison government has their priorities wrong, and we know that they have underspent so far on housing and on nation-building infrastructure. They've spent plenty of money on advertising what their slogans are and on putting up signs in shopping centres and on bus stops to tell the Australian public that there's an economic comeback on the way. When we strip away the advertising, the slogans and the marketing, we know that we have a very deep recession, a huge amount of debt and record deficits. But we need to know what we'll have to show for it after all this is done. How will this government build our nation back again? At the moment, this budget—this document—does not show the way forward for the Australian people. This government has presided over record unemployment, with a million unemployed, and it's forecast to remain unacceptably high for unacceptably long. Young people, particularly, have been hit hard by this crisis and the government's hiring credit subsidies are not enough to support the secure and permanent jobs that they need in the future. The hiring credit scheme hurts the 928,000 Australians over 35 who have been excluded from the program. The Morrison government has form with failed policies when it comes to targeting youth unemployment. We know that programs like the PaTH program, which was so ineffective, were quietly cut. And 678 older Australians have died in aged care during the coronavirus pandemic, but this budget doesn't include the measures that are needed to make sure there are enough workers on site or enough PPE, or the measures that we need to make sure that it never happens again. I'm really pleased to have an opportunity to talk about this budget, particularly speaking ahead of the minister, because it means that I'll be able to bring to the attention of the Senate and those opposite the one thing in the budget papers that I was really looking for on budget night. I know that, as the budget papers get dropped off around this place, people open them up and scan through, trying to find where the jobs are going to be. Where are the promises? How will we overcome these issues? There was one particular forward payment that I was looking for. As a Queenslander and as a senator based in Cairns, I know that housing is one of the biggest issues for people living in Far North Queensland. It is one of the biggest issues that is holding back economic development and holding back the health and wellbeing of people living in Queensland. So when I looked to find what the remote housing funding commitment was from this government for the many years to come, people wouldn't be surprised to find out that, as I flipped through the pages, I found that page 43 of the Federal Financial Relations Budget Paper No. 3 said that there was nothing for remote housing in Queensland for the next financial year and the one after that, and the one after that. There is nothing in this budget—a recession budget, when we need to rebuild and to create jobs—that will make sure that we deal with the remote housing issue in Far North Queensland. I have stood here many times since becoming a senator, having had the opportunity to travel through Cape York and the Torres Strait and seeing the very desperate need for social housing and for remote housing, and I've gotten angry about it. I've decided to not get angry tonight but just to explain to the Senate, to the minister and to the people sitting opposite—the members of the government—why we need this fixed now. COVID was an opportunity for this government to understand how important it is for people to have a house. You can't isolate from coronavirus if you don't have a house. You can't isolate from coronavirus if you're living in a house with 28 to 30 people. But in our country, in the state of Queensland, under this government, that is exactly the situation we face. We were desperately concerned when there were outbreaks across the country, knowing the full situation about overcrowding in housing, that if a case of coronavirus were to make its way to Far North Queensland and to Cape York or the Torres Strait it would be incredibly difficult to isolate any single individual or family. I've visited places like Yarrabah. I've visited places like Aurukun. I've been to the Torres Strait—all over the islands there. I have visited places in Cairns that desperately need social housing. We need remote housing now. And what did the government do in the budget? Well, they didn't deliver any reoccurring, ongoing funding. Before the election the government went around to people living in Far North Queensland and asked for their vote. They told them that they would deliver $100 million of remote housing to councils directly. They said, 'We will fund $100 million of remote housing.' They didn't say to them at the time that they weren't going to continue to fund remote housing. But now we know that that money is a one-off, and when it's gone there'll be nothing more. Through this budget they have decided that now is the time—during an economic recession, during a COVID-19 health crisis—to wash their hands of Indigenous communities in Far North Queensland that need houses to survive. Do you know how much of the money that they promised before the last election—$105 million—they've actually delivered to communities in Far North Queensland? None of it. Five million dollars of that money has been transferred to the state. We are still waiting on $100 million. Sure, it appears in the budget as a line in small font on a piece of paper. But when you find out what this government has actually done when it comes to remote housing, after all the promises before the last election, after they stood up in Cape York and told people they would deliver housing for Far North Queensland, for the Cape, for our First Nations people—they told them that, and they said, 'Vote for us, because we will deliver housing for you'—they haven't delivered a single cent of that money. Not a single house has been built after that promise over 12 months ago. And during the budget, when the government had the chance to deliver ongoing, recurring funding to make sure that for many generations we would be able to make sure people have housing and that kids are not growing up in a house with 29 other people, what did they do? They washed their hands of this problem. They said, 'Nope, leave it to the states; it's got nothing to do with us.' How many times have they said that during this crisis—that it's a matter for the states? Isn't it depressing, when you've got a federal government that would rather leave important infrastructure decisions—funding for people to survive in housing—to somebody else? Do you know what real leaders do? They stand up and they say: 'I'm going to make a difference on this. I'm going to fix this problem. I have the will, the power and the resources. I'm going to do something to fix this.' But this government just walks away. That's what it's done to people living in Far North Queensland. The minister tonight will give a speech about the appropriations that are in this budget, and he'll talk a lot about the things that the government have done during this coronavirus outbreak. There'll be lots of discussion about jobs, but one of the easiest and quickest ways that you could create jobs in Queensland would be to fund remote housing and social housing for people who really need it. Those construction jobs could be created right now. It's not an issue just for Indigenous councils; all over regional Queensland they need housing. These are the areas that the government say that they support, that they represent and where they go out and tell people, 'We stand up for people in regional Queensland.' Well, they don't. What those areas are saying right now is that they need housing. Mount Isa needs housing. Stanthorpe needs housing. There is nowhere for people to live and yet the Deputy Prime Minister gets up all the time and talks about this idea of regionalisation, that people should go and live in the regions—'Pack up your bags and go and live in regional Queensland.' I would encourage people to do that as well, but when they get there there's a housing shortage. This was the opportunity, this was the document, this was the chance for the government and the members opposite, who say that they stand up for the regions, who say that they stand up for people living in the bush, to do something about the housing situation we have in Queensland—and all across the country, I would imagine. But, instead of doing anything, the government shirked their responsibility and left pages blank in the budget papers. What a terrible indictment on the government that they'll make speeches about how fantastic the states have done and pat themselves on the back for the work of other people but not deliver something as crucial as a house for people to live in. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a parent making a decision to raise a child in a house with 28 other people, knowing that your government promised to deliver housing but walked away at the very first opportunity to do it. At the end of this recession, at the end of this election term, Australians will be wondering, 'What is the plan?' Is the plan to use taxpayers' money to put nice advertising in shopping centres and bus stops when the plan really could be to deliver the things that our community needs right now—not in three or four years and not 10 years down the track but right now? People living in Far North Queensland need houses. This government promised to deliver. When it got the chance in the budget, it walked away from it. That is a terrible indictment on this government. It doesn't care about people. It's leaving them behind. It is a shameful thing to do to a group of people who believed that this government would do the right thing when given the chance. 19:18 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I thank all senators who have made contributions to the Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-2021 and related bills. The appropriation bills, as is customary, seek authority from the parliament for the expenditure of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the last five months of the 2020-2021 financial year and build on the appropriations already provided in the 2020-21 supply acts. Rather than providing extensive remarks in summing up this debate, I point senators to the budget speech and other contributions that highlight the focused priorities the government brings to bear in relation to these bills. The total of the appropriation sought through these appropriation bills is just over $51.8 billion, providing essential support for the continuity of government business through to the end of this financial year, including funding to give effect to our many budget measures focused very much on the continued suppression of the coronavirus and our work through the associated economic crisis to ensure the preservation and growth of investment, trade, jobs, living standards and essential services for Australians. I note that there is a second reading amendment, moved by the opposition, which seeks to make various, probably relatively predictable, political points. I would argue that those points are grossly internally inconsistent as they variously attack the government over the scale of spending but then go on to call for much greater spending in a whole range of other areas. Unfortunately, the timing of consideration of the second reading vote and this amendment is such that the question will be put during the hour when the Senate does not divide. Therefore, in the interests of the timely management of the Senate and of concluding debate tonight without interruption and passing the appropriation bills at the earliest opportunity to ensure the continuity of supply and maintain the essential operations of the government, I can inform the Senate that the government will not call a division on the second reading amendment, but of course I again stress that we resolutely oppose the amendment and do not accept the assertions in the motion. Once again, I thank senators for their contributions and commend these bills to the chamber. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 264449 The question now is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Gallagher be agreed to. Question agreed to. Original question, as amended, agreed to. Bills read a second time. In Committee 95 19:22 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia by leave—In respect of Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2020-21, I move: That the House of Representatives be requested to make the following amendments: (1) Clause 6, page 5 (line 4), omit "$36,809,121,000", substitute "$36,813,567,000". (2) Schedule 1, page 9 (table item dealing with Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio), omit "998,426", substitute "1,002,872". (3) Schedule 1, page 9 (table item dealing with the total), omit "36,809,121", substitute "36,813,567". (4) Schedule 1, page 11 (table item dealing with Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio), omit the table item, substitute: (5) Schedule 1, page 11 (table item dealing with the total), omit the table item, substitute: (6) Schedule 1, page 124 (table item dealing with Australian National Audit Office), omit "29,219" (twice occurring), substitute "33,665". (7) Schedule 1, page 124 (table item dealing with total), omit the table item, substitute: (8) Schedule 1, page 132 (table item dealing with Australian National Audit Office outcome 1), omit "29,219" (twice occurring), substitute "33,665". (9) Schedule 1, page 132 (table item dealing with total), omit "29,219" (twice occurring), substitute "33,665". Statement pursuant to the order of the Senate of 26 June 2000 These amendments are framed as requests because they are to a bill which appropriates moneys for the ordinary annual services of the government. Statement by the Clerk of the Senate pursuant to the order of the Senate of 26 June 2000 As this is a bill appropriating moneys for the ordinary annual services of the government within the meaning of section 53 of the Constitution, any Senate amendments to the bill must be moved as requests. This is in accordance with the precedents of the Senate. On budget night, my worst fears were confirmed when the government denied the Auditor-General his requested budget. The starvation of funds means the number of performance audits conducted per year will drop from 48 to 38—that is, 42 this year, 40 next year and then down to 38. That's a 20 per cent reduction in the number of performance audits that the Auditor-General will carry out. No other agency has copped a 20 per cent cut in outcomes as a result of this budget, but that's what this government has done to one of the most important federal integrity agencies. This chamber has got to save the Auditor-General from being financially throttled. You can't blow the whistle when the government has its hands around your throat. We have to fix this, or else government accountability and scrutiny will be busted. It's worth recalling that the office of the federal Auditor-General is one of the oldest and most important of the government agencies. It was first established by the Audit Act in 1901 and the first Auditor-General, John Israel, took office in December of that year, 119 years ago. Critically, the Auditor-General is an officer of the parliament. That is by design. He's an officer who is there to assist the parliament in respect of oversight. We give him tenure for 10 years and we give him a budget—or that's what we're supposed to do. It's absolutely vital to the parliament's ability to examine and scrutinise the performance of government. Without the information often uncovered by a fully resourced Audit Office, the parliament's scrutiny processes—that is, Senate estimates, committee processes and question time—would be greatly diminished. The government's cuts to the Auditor's budget are a direct assault on the oversight of government. It is entirely reasonable to conclude that the cuts were retribution for the Auditor-General's continued exposure of government maladministration, cost blowouts and the highly questionable conduct of ministers and officials. The Auditor has been responsible for uncovering the sports rorts scandal, the overpayment of 10 times the amount for Western Sydney airport land, the total mismanagement of water within the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, and the repeated cost and performance failures in Defence projects. These budget cuts mean that the Auditor-General will be watching less. He will not be able to probe as deeply. He won't be able to turn over as many rocks to find out what corruption and maladministration lie beneath. While I have no doubt about the independence and the integrity of the Auditor-General, there is no doubt that, in the longer term, the government's strangulation of the ANAO's budget will have a chilling effect on the conduct of inquiries. Independence of the office must be supported by full funding and a guarantee that funding will not be cut according to the political whims of the government of the day. I'll digress slightly to talk about one of the areas in which the Auditor-General conducts examinations—that is, the Future Submarine project. When I bring this up the government cringes, because it's a project on which they've managed to get a blowout of $39 billion and they simply don't know what to do about it. I asked my office to have a look at how much that blowout is costing us per day, and the number comes in at $2 million per day when I amortise it across the 38 years of the project. This request seeks to give the Auditor-General $4.4 million. That's two measly days of Future Submarine cost blowouts. Those on the other side of the chamber simply don't want that brought up in this place. Minister for Finance Birmingham ought to be really concerned about this $39 billion blowout, but those opposite focus on trying to shave $4 million off the Auditor-General. It's just crazy. That's why, as a first step, I will move an amendment to the budget's appropriation bill to restore the funding to the Auditor. This is a vital measure to avoid an immediate contraction of the Auditor-General's vital work. The Prime Minister says that the JCPAA is carrying out a review of the Audit Act and tries to use that as a facade for saying, 'This decrease is okay. We'll look at it in the review.' We don't need a review to understand that the Auditor-General's performance audits are going from 48 down to 38 over the next couple of years and down to 42 this year. I know that because that's what the Auditor-General said at estimates, and he's pretty good with numbers; he knows what he's talking about. In the longer term there will need to be a legislative financial framework in place to ensure that the Auditor doesn't have to look over his or her shoulder to see whether a new budget cut is coming. Let's not forget that these cuts to the Auditor come at a time when there is no federal independent commission against corruption and there's a freedom of information regime fuelled by cavalier FOI claims by officials. I can attest to that through all of the different FOI exemptions that, in my own case, have been overturned over the years. It's an FOI regime that is starved because the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner also has no increase in funding, despite the increases in FOIs and despite the backlog. Many of the basic integrity mechanisms of the federal government are either broken, sidelined, starved of resources or simply not there. We must save the Auditor-General from being financially throttled. We have to fix this or else there will be no one to keep the bastards honest. Thank you. The TEMPORARY CHAIR 264449 Thank you, Senator Patrick. I believe I should have said this when you first made the request for an amendment, but with the concurrence of the Senate, the statement of reasons accompanying the requests circulated for this bill will be incorporated into Hansard immediately after the request to which they relate. There being no objection it is so ordered. Senator Wong, you look to be seeking the call. 19:30 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia Yes, thank you. I have just a few points. The first is on the government's approach to the Auditor-General. As someone who has questioned the Auditor-General both at this estimates and at length across various estimates over many years, it is a critical office for accountability and it is a critical office for the functioning of the Australian democracy. And it has uncovered a great deal of corruption and waste on the part of the Morrison government, the most recent of which was of course the Leppington Triangle but there have been many others—I think the sports rorts were uncovered by the Auditor-General. The Auditor-General ought to be funded properly, despite the 'nothing to see here' that Senator Birmingham engaged in at estimates and in this chamber when the opposition has asked questions. I was interested today to see Julian Hill, the Deputy Chair of the Joint Standing Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, release analysis from the Parliamentary Library confirming that over the next four years the Auditor-General's budget will be cut by 22.1 per cent in real terms since the Liberals and Nationals came to power in 2013. Since we were in government, that's almost 22 per cent in real terms. I'm not surprised, because they're pretty embarrassed. Particularly in the other chamber, in the other place, they've been able to undermine many of the mechanisms associated with the Westminster system. For example, under general standards of Westminster accountability and the accountability to the parliament of ministers, I don't reckon that Mr Taylor would still be a minister. I don't think he'd still be a minister after rocking up and relying on a forged document. And we could go on. So I understand—and I think it's deeply, ethically undemocratic and abhorrent—why the government wants this hidden. It's because it was the Auditor-General and that office which uncovered the Prime Minister's involvement in the sports rorts scandal. That's the first point. And it's also why we moved a second reading amendment which called for this. The second point I would make—and Senator Patrick knows this—is that the Labor Party has a very clear, consistent and principled position that we allow the government of the day to pass its appropriation bills. Senator Patrick comes in here and says, 'We must save the Auditor-General!' I have a suggestion for Senator Patrick. He's already flagged with us that he's going to have a go at Labor for not supporting his request. Well, we've had this position for many decades: the government passes its appropriation bills and we expect the same. But I say to him: I'll tell you what, if you want to come in here and beat your chest about saving the Auditor-General here's an idea for you. You're going to trade your vote away, if you haven't already, on a range of bills this fortnight. Why don't you make this one of your demands? Instead of grandstanding, why don't you actually say, 'If you want my vote on the cashless debit card,' which I understand you might support anyway, 'and you want my vote on all these issues, why don't you actually deliver some funding?' in the way that you kind of dealt with Senator Cormann for votes? Why don't you do that? That will actually deliver funding, much more than a request that you know we will not support. Senator Patrick interjecting— Senator WONG 00AOU We will not support it for the principled reasons that we have had for decades, and you know about the political and constitutional background to that. You know that— Senator Patrick 144292 Only on the third— Senator WONG 00AOU You know that! Senator Patrick interjecting— Senator WONG 00AOU Well, I've made our position clear. We do support greater funding for the Auditor-General. In government, we gave them more, and I as finance minister accepted the importance of funding that entity—unlike this gentleman and unlike his predecessor. So the government should do the right thing. They've managed to undermine so many of the democratic principles and conventions that go to accountability. They ought not undermine the Auditor-General by depriving him of funding to do work that is important. I'm happy to keep making that ask of the government. I'm happy to continue to campaign for it. Most importantly, we will continue to campaign for a Labor government that recognises the importance of this sort of accountability. 19:35 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I rise to speak in strong support of Senator Patrick's amendment to the appropriation bill, which would restore some of the necessary funding to the Australian National Audit Office, and I want to just put a few facts on record. The ANAO sought additional funding from this government as part of the budget process. They wrote to this government—and I know this, because I asked them in estimates—and specifically spelled out that their target audit number of 48 was not going to be able to occur if they didn't have additional funding. The reason is that the costs of the other audits that they're legislatively mandated to undertake have increased and therefore there's less money to go around. So, they made a very modest request for a small modicum of funds to be able to continue at their target audit level. They got no response at all to that letter. They wrote to this government saying, 'We stand on our record; we'd like to be able to do it', and this government didn't even see fit to respond, let alone give them the money they had sought. So, that's the first offence. But it's very interesting when you look at the distinguished and outstanding track record of the Auditor-General and the office he leads in holding this government to account, and all governments to account. That perhaps explains why this government is so desperate to muzzle them and to reduce their audit capacity by 20 per cent over three years. It's sports rorts 1; it's sports rorts 2; it's the 'watergate' scandal; it's the Leppington Triangle scandal. There are a few others here. It is the consistent failure to implement recommendations to make the lobbying code of conduct mean anything and have any implications—another thing that this government has completely ignored. They've also done some really revealing work on our environmental protection laws and a critique of the approvals process, all inconvenient matters for this government. This government has a glass jaw such that, rather than behave like a responsible, democratic and modern government, cop this on the chin and fund this body to do that important transparency and accountability work, they'd rather muzzle it and have it do less scrutiny work. It suits the government beautifully. The other interesting thing is: I wonder what the ANAO have got planned that they might not be able to do 20 per cent of now, thanks to this government not giving them the extra funding? They had been planning to do audits—and now don't know whether they can do them—into a whole range of COVID programs: JobKeeper; the JobMaker hiring subsidies, which had a huge number of loopholes that we tried to fix in this place but, sadly, didn't get the support we needed in order to protect older workers; and the COVIDSafe app. They were going to look at all of that but, gee, they might not be able to now, because they're 20 per cent down on their capacity, thanks to this government not giving them the right amount of funding. They were going to look into the Great Barrier Reef Foundation partnership, another scandalous overallocation of money to a very small and perhaps meritorious organisation that didn't seek the money and, frankly, didn't have the capacity to properly administer the money, when we have actual statutory authorities that are charged with protecting the Reef and are used to doling out that sort of money. That would have been a very interesting audit. We know, with this Senate already having inquired into it, that there are an awful lot of questions that still need answering, but no: this government isn't going to give ANAO the money to do that work. That's now got a question mark over it as well. There was a proposal to look into the whole-of-government Legal Services Panel and how Mr Sukkar's old firm ended up investigating whether or not he had acted with impropriety and the mismanagement of conflicts of interest there. That, too, would have made for a very revealing expose by the ANAO—another inconvenience for the government that they wanted to avoid, no doubt. And there are a range of others, such as Defence's implementation of cultural reform. That's topical this week, isn't it, folks? That's another audit that the Auditor-General may not now be able to do because this government didn't give them the extra money that they need to maintain their output. They're not even asking to increase their output—which frankly they could, because they're doing such great work. They just want to be able to maintain their output. This government won't even give them the funding to do that. There were a few other things they were planning on looking at but now they don't know if they can. There's the administration of the COVID commission. There's been an awful lot of debate over the selection of the folk that sit on that commission and the management of their own conflicts of interest, because many of them are steeped in the gas sector and the other fossil fuel sectors and the conflicts-of-interest rules are very weak and don't apply to all echelons of that commission. The ANAO could have looked into that and made some recommendations about strengthening those processes. But we'll never know now, because that's perhaps one of the audits they can no longer do because they've now got a 20 per cent capacity reduction over the next three years thanks to this government deliberately not giving them the tiny amount of money that they sought. It's not just that the government are not funding the ANAO. This is the same government that, for years, described a federal corruption watchdog as a 'fringe issue'. Then, finally, the Prime Minister saw the light. It was almost two years ago that the government thought, yes, they would do something about it. They've done virtually nothing since. There's been a waffly discussion paper that's got so many loopholes in it it's basically a colander and experts have rightly criticised it. That was then put on the shelf and gathered some dust and they've just trotted it out again with no changes to the last version that they already consulted on. They're now doing new consultations and trying to claim that they're somehow champions of consultation when it's got the same old problems that the last experts said it had when they did the first round of consultation. It's sham consultation to avoid actually establishing a corruption watchdog at the same time as muzzling the most effective transparency body that we have at the minute, thanks to this government's intransigence, which is of course the ANAO and the Auditor-General. This is exactly why we will be strongly supporting these amendments by Senator Patrick and the request for this Senate to allocate a very small amount of funds that the ANAO will do excellent work with. We think there should be a federal corruption watchdog. Actually, this chamber thinks there should be a federal corruption watchdog. In September last year, and thank you all for your support—not you guys, but you guys—we passed a bill for a federal corruption watchdog with teeth. That's actually what needs to happen. Yes, we need to fund the ANAO, but that's not a panacea. We need a whole range of improvements to whistleblower protections and to protections for public interest journalism. We need to get big money out of politics. We need caps on election spending and on donations. There is a whole raft of transparency measures we need. There was a survey, the results of which were published today, that found that two-thirds of Australians think that corruption is indeed a big problem in politics, and a good 20 per cent of people thought that this government was doing very badly at handling corruption. That was a Transparency International Australia report done in conjunction with Griffith University. It makes for some very sobering reading. People can see that the public interest is being sold out to the political interests of those in charge. They can see the influence that donors have on the decision-making process. They can see this government consistently failing to uphold the very basic standards of ministerial accountability that used to mean something in this place. Scandal after scandal gets either pushed under the rug or glossed over. Now the government have the hide to not give the ANAO a tiny increase in funding to continue to do the job that the government won't let anybody else do because, sadly, there are clearly more skeletons in the closet that they want kept secret. This is a very modest request, and I hope that the Senate will consider supporting it. Unfortunately, I am informed that the opposition won't be supporting this amendment either, which is very perplexing because the second reading amendment that we just passed in their name had a reference to the need for a strong and well-funded ANAO. We agree that is, in fact, why we're here and why we're supporting Senator Patrick's precise amendment to deliver that. So I'm a bit baffled as to why the opposition is taking that position. I would urge them to reconsider because, frankly, we've got an opportunity here. This amendment would otherwise pass, is my understanding. We could, in fact, charge the ANAO to continue doing the excellent work they're doing and empower them to do all of the things on their work plan for 2020-21 that they now might not be able to do because this government, and it seems perhaps with the opposition's full support, is happy to starve them of funds. We'll see how the vote goes. But, once again, democracy's for sale and transparency's at stake. But we've got a chance to fix it, so let's do that. 19:45 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia The government does consider the Australian National Audit Office to be a very important national institution and recognises its work as being vital to help ensure accountability and transparency. Its recommendations do assist many agencies in identifying ways to improve public governance and administration. However, the amendments or requests that have been put before the chamber are based on a mistaken premise of there being cuts to the ANAO budget. The Auditor-General himself was asked during budget estimates whether his annual funding had been cut and was clear that there was no change in our budget and forward estimates in the budget process. Asked yet again, he emphasised there was no change from what we were expecting in our budget to what was in it. The government simply moved through, as we'd indicated previously, in terms of the budget allowance for the ANAO. It's notable that on 2 September, over a month before the budget, the Joint Committee on Public Accounts and Audit commenced their 10-yearly review of the Auditor-General Act 1997. The terms of reference include consideration of funding for the ANAO. I know that Senator Patrick referenced this review in his remarks. This is a once-in-a-decade inquiry. It will look at the totality of the ANAO's operations, including its resourcing. Therefore, the government concluded it would be appropriate, in terms of changes to the funding model, for the organisation to look at that following receipt of that review, rather than in advance of it. Indeed, the Prime Minister emphasised this himself when he said: There is a 10-year review currently underway, and, when the government receives the outcomes of that 10-year review, we will consider the resourcing for the ANAO. When we receive that report, the government will make its response in terms of their ongoing resourcing. But I do emphasise that the budget papers show growing appropriation over the forward years for the ANAO across its operating in capital costs, from $68.832 million in 2020-21 to $68.842 million the next year; $68.092 million the year after that; and $69.168 million the year after that. On top of this, the Auditor-General's salary is funded through a special appropriation that also matches salary cost increases over time. The government will not be supporting these requests for amendments. We instead will respond, as I've outlined, to the JCPAA review. We reject the requests that are provided. We would emphasise that if they were received in the House they would be rejected there as well, pending that more informed approach. 19:48 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia I want to respond to some of the statements that have been made around the chamber. I will indicate that I'm very disappointed that Labor is not going to support this amendment. I want to read from the second reading of Mr Julian Hill in the other place. He's a man who I have a lot of respect for, not just as a person but also as the deputy chair of the JCPAA. He's fully informed as to the funding requests of the Auditor-General because they are tendered to the JCPAA at the same time as going to the Prime Minister, as that is a legislative requirement. He says—talking about the government: They've used COVID-19 and this budget to cut the Auditor-General's budget, to silence the independent watchdog. Make no mistake: this is revenge for sports rorts. It's revenge for exposing the corruption, as it now looks, in paying $30 million to a Liberal Party donor for land worth $3 million. The Defence contracting blowouts, the casualisation of the public service—what's the government's response to this? Cut the budget of the independent watchdog that is exposing their rorts, waste and corruption. Who knows what else they're hiding? It's vengeful and it's pathetic. The Auditor-General has been in structural deficit for the last few years because of the accumulation of cuts. They call them efficiency dividends. Let's be clear: for a small agency, that is a cut. The efficiency dividend piles up, year after year, and it's cut after cut after cut. Last year he lost $3.3 million and the year before $4.4 million. We're at the point now where the Auditor-General said to the Prime Minister, who's supposed to look after him—he's an independent officer of the parliament, and the Prime Minister is supposed to look after him—'I can't do it anymore. I can't meet KPIs of 48 performance audits a year without fear or favour.' That's what Mr Julian Hill said in the other place—fully informed as the deputy chair of the JCPAA. He had it absolutely right. I sit here absolutely astounded— Senator Gallagher interjecting— Senator PATRICK 144292 You're probably right. I take that interjection, Senator Gallagher; I'm not astounded, because you do it all the time. You sit in the seats of the opposition party but you don't actually oppose; you just wave things through. Senator Wong stood up and talked about longstanding conventions. I understand about longstanding conventions, I understand about blocking supply, but there's nothing wrong with saying to the government: 'We're going to support Senator Patrick's request. We believe he's right. You know what, you can take it back to the other place and we can get the Prime Minister again to reconsider.' That's not blocking supply, it's just asserting what is right. Senator Gallagher interjecting— Senator PATRICK 144292 No, it is not blocking supply. Senator Gallagher interjecting— Senator PATRICK 144292 I did. I suggested privately that you could simply assert and support me. The government didn't need to know. You could have sent it back to the other place and actually had a bit of a fight. But I know that's a tough ask for you! I am disappointed. I want a strong opposition. I don't want to see a situation where, after the next election, we have even more of the Liberal Party on the other side. I'm actually trying to work with you, but you've got to be a strong opposition before you have any chance of being in government. Senator Gallagher interjecting— Senator PATRICK 144292 We will move to the cashless debit card if you like. There were accusations. I acknowledge what Senator Wong said—that it is often the crossbench that hold everyone to account and it is often the crossbench that use their leverage to get much better things for the public. It would be good if the opposition were able to do that, but it can't. You seem unable to do that. When it comes to the cashless debit card, I haven't given a position on that; I'm simply considering where I'm going to land. You might be very surprised at where I sit in the chamber next week. I haven't made up my mind—and to suggest that I have is simply ill-informed. I urge the Labor Party to be a strong opposition. Australia deserves a strong opposition. Stand with me and stand with the Greens as we stand up for the Auditor-General—one of the few people left who is able to exercise power. Go and have a look at section 32 of the Auditor-General Act. He has extraordinary powers that allow him to gather the sort of information you've been refused at the COVID committee—which, in my view, you have been refused inappropriately. Nonetheless, the Auditor-General has extensive powers. You can't even deny cabinet documents to him. So let's fund him properly. Let's stand up for him. It's one of the few government agencies that seems to be able to actually get to the bottom of things. I'm not asking you to block supply; I'm asking you to send this bill back to the other place and let them reconsider. Maybe Mr Albanese will stand up and mount a convincing argument that will cause the Prime Minister to change his view. You won't know unless you give it a shot. Moving to what the minister said, he talked about the need for a review. Waiting for the review is just a huge furphy. We know what the effect of this budget cut will be. It will be less oversight. That may well suit you, Senator Birmingham, but we do not have to wait for the review to find that out. You could have essentially given the Auditor-General what he wanted and the review could have continued, but instead we will get less oversight. I accept that the budget remains the same, that there wasn't a cut, but I say to you, as the finance minister: don't be spending focused, be outcome focused. The Auditor-General explains that the standard audits he does—the financial audits of the sort that revealed anomalies in respect of the chairman of ASIC's payments—are taking up more time and costing more money, which means the Auditor-General simply can't do as many performance audits. You ought to be outcome focused, Minister. With that, I will now ask the question: what's the basis for the decision of government to only fund the Auditor-General this year for 42 performance audits, instead of the normal 48? What's the reasoning behind that? 19:56 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I thank Senator Patrick. I'm not sure that I accept the 'normal' statement that Senator Patrick has made. Indeed, the JCPAA's assessment and budget day statement of 6 October noted that the ANAO sought to work towards an annual target of 48 audits per annum by 2023-24. So, in that sense, they have identified a target that they wish to reach. The ANAO proposed that its budget be scaled up over a period of time to reach that point. Of course, it is entirely feasible, depending upon the recommendations of the JCPAA and the response of the government, that that target could still be met. In terms of this year's funding allocation, it is, as I've stressed before, what had previously been outlined in budget decisions and forward projections. 19:58 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia I thank the minister for his answer, but I'll just refer to the Hansard from Senate estimates, where Senator Waters asked: Given that, on the status of less funding, you weren't quite able to reach the target of audit reports, what are you anticipating in terms of your ability to reach those targets for workflow in the future? The Auditor-General answered: In our portfolio performance statement we are forecasting that in 2020-21 we will produce 42 audits, falling to 40 in the following year, and then, by 2022-23, down to 38. That is quoting the Auditor-General from the Hansard in response to Senator Waters. Again, I ask the minister: are you of the view that the current budget left unamended, as my request seeks to do, will enable the Auditor-General to do more than 42 audits, and on what basis would you make that claim? 19:59 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I wasn't making that claim. Indeed, I agree that I understand the ANAO has projected a delivery of 42 performance audits in 2020-21. I was emphasising that the ANAO has also advised the JCPAA that it seeks to work towards a target of 48 by 2023-24. That is several years away. The 10-yearly review of funding will be received well within that time frame and well within the opportunity for government to respond to it. The TEMPORARY CHAIR e68 The question is that requests (1) to (9) on sheet 1068 moved by Senator Patrick by leave together be agreed to.

The committee divided. [20:05]
The Temporary Chair—Senator Sterle

13 AYES Faruqi, M Hanson, P Hanson-Young, SC Lambie, J McKim, NJ Patrick, RL (teller) Rice, J Roberts, M Siewert, R Steele-John, J Thorpe, LA Waters, LJ Whish-Wilson, PS 31 NOES Antic, A Birmingham, SJ Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Gallagher, KR Henderson, SM Hughes, H McCarthy, M (teller) McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S Molan, AJ O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Rennick, G Ruston, A Scarr, P Small, B Smith, DA Sterle, G Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.
Bills agreed to.
Bills reported without amendments; report adopted.

Third Reading 102 20:08 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I move: That these bills be now read a third time. Question agreed to. Bills read a third time. Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020, Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2020 103

Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020

Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2020

Second Reading 103 20:09 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia The premise of this legislation is that Australia's national government should be responsible for our international relations. That's a reasonable proposition and it's one we support. If only the leader of Australia's national government, Mr Morrison, took this idea to heart. All the legislation in the world is not going to change the fact that we currently have a Prime Minister who doesn't take responsibility for anything other than political slogans and marketing photo-ops. It is, indeed, past time for Mr Morrison to take responsibility for Australia's foreign relations. It is past time for him to take the action on climate change that enables us to be a partner of choice in our region and to stop leaving a vacuum that others will fill. It is past time for him to show leadership in preparing Australia to manage the impact of a more assertive China rather than leaving it to the most extreme members of his backbench to score cheap points over China and diaspora communities. It is past time for him to take responsibility for diversifying Australia's export markets and the hardworking Australians who depend upon them, having overseen Australia becoming more reliant than ever on China for trade. It is past time for Mr Morrison to do what Mr Howard recommended and seek to engage, leader to leader, with the President of China to make our interests clear. It is past time for Mr Morrison to do what he says he wants to do in this bill, which is to take responsibility for Australia's foreign relations. But I'm afraid Mr Morrison doesn't actually want to take responsibility for it. He wants two things with this bill: to gain another weapon to politically bludgeon state premiers he doesn't like and to create a distraction from the tragic aged-care scandal that was dominating the news when he rushed to announce this new law. He wanted to be able to say, 'Don't be horrified by some 600-plus deaths in aged-care homes,' regulated by his government. 'Instead, look over there to what state premiers are doing, forming partnerships with other countries.' It's the same approach that Mr Morrison takes with another area of federal responsibility—our national borders and quarantine arrangements. Mr Morrison famously said, 'I stopped the boats,' and stood up a federal quarantine facility with a moment's notice in the weeks before an election, when he thought it was to his political advantage. This is the same Mr Morrison who then blamed New South Wales for not stopping the Ruby Princess and now says, 'Quarantine of stranded Australians returning from overseas is the states' problem.' He sits back and points the finger of blame when something goes wrong in state-run quarantine but refuses to take responsibility for standing up federal quarantine facilities, which he could. All this, despite 8,000 Australians being stranded overseas in vulnerable situations and an additional 29,000 desperate to come home. This is the same Mr Morrison who wants to take credit when there's a political point to score when the headlines are good and when the photo op is nicely lined up but who doesn't want a bar of it when there's a risk something might go wrong, which is what we saw in South Australia and Victoria. This legislation may assign responsibility, but only a leader takes responsibility. But, regrettably, when there is so much at stake, Australia has a Prime Minister who wants to play politics for headlines and pose for photo-ops. Yet we are facing some of the most grave strategic circumstances the nation has faced since World War II, an economic downturn more severe globally than any since the Great Depression, escalating competition between the great powers, rising nationalism and waning international cooperation, all of which means we face a less stable, more divided and risker world. Our world is being reshaped and the assumptions we have long held about the stability of the global order and the resilience of our region no longer hold. This means Australia will have to work much harder to secure our interests. We will have to be more self-reliant and more ambitious, and we have to act now to build the world and region we want, one that not only respects sovereignty but also is stable and prosperous. This does require an honest assessment of our own capabilities and a re-investment in all the elements of our national power. It requires leadership, consistency and discipline from our foreign minister and our Prime Minister, leadership to articulate our values and our interests and to advocate them internationally, to explain Australia to the world and the world to Australia. In an increasingly disrupted and complex world, this is more important than ever. Instead, we have a vacuum of leadership, a government that is knee-capped. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that slashed our development assistance and undermined Australia's credibility as a partner of choice in the region, just at a time when we need to be 'the' partner of choice. We have a foreign minister who appears not to like picking up the phone—not to universities or state governments or even to her foreign counterparts. We have a Prime Minister and a government that too often put domestic political interest over the national interest, and nothing in this legislation changes that reality. If there were an amendment that could be moved to compel Mr Morrison to put the national interest over his political interests, I'd be moving it. However, because there isn't such an amendment, instead we will be moving amendments to improve the bill. First we will be moving a second reading amendment calling for the government to redraft the bill and address its flaws. These include the absence of an oversight mechanism for decisions made by the foreign minister under the bill to cancel any arrangement entered into by public universities or state, territory or local governments; the lack of any requirement—subject to appropriate arrangements to protect national security—for the minister to provide reasons for a decision to cancel any such agreements, meaning an entity will have no idea what it should do differently; the lack of a process for review of a minister's decision; the lack of clarity in the definition of key terms in the bill such as 'arrangements'; and the regulatory gap in the bill—private universities, which, for reasons still not explained, will not find any international agreement they engage in subject to scrutiny to assess whether it is in the national interest, while public universities will. So Bond University can go about doing whatever foreign deals it likes, but the University of Western Sydney has to meet a higher standard. There is the lack of clarity on the treatment of the Port of Darwin, a strategic asset leased to a private Chinese company for 99 years under Mr Morrison's watch. That has been conspicuously less subject to criticism by this coalition government than decisions taken by Labor states. There is the lack of clarity on how this new regulatory regime will interact with the existing legislation and guidelines that were to safeguard Australian sovereignty—including FIRB processes, University Foreign Interference Taskforce guidelines and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme—and there are concerns that the bill presents a sovereign risk that will undermine investment and cost jobs. Our amendment calls, as we have been doing for some time now, on the minister to engage in genuine consultation with the Australian entities covered by the bill on the design of the regime. As it stands, the bill puts no responsibility on the federal government to do anything to help entities covered by the bill to play their part in supporting the national interest. You see, they only get told when they get it wrong—just another opportunity for Mr Morrison to do what he does so well, which is point the finger at someone else. Surely it is a core function of federal government to support the Australian entities that need to engage with the world. It takes time, energy and effort to provide the leadership that Australians and Australian businesses and institutions require—the leadership to understand Australia's interests and understand how to weigh competing demands to help them act in a manner that is consistent with the national interest. That's the sort of engagement entities need, but instead the engagement with those covered by this legislation is ad hoc. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. At a time when the world is more complex and when the impact of that complexity is felt ever more keenly in Australia, the foreign minister regrettably does so little—some might say nothing—to help Australians manage that complexity. You see, safeguarding our sovereignty is about more than passing laws. It is about our resilience. It is about the resilience of our parliaments. It is about the resilience of our institutions, our universities and the private sector. It means people need to understand what is happening and they need to know what to do. This is one of the reasons why I have repeatedly asked the foreign minister to allow agencies to brief parliamentarians on our ever more complex, consequential, difficult and challenging relationship with China. She keeps saying she's unpersuaded to do that, but somehow she's persuaded to go a whole lot further with this legislation. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this government is simply not interested in improving the resilience of our institutions and equipping them to manage the risks and opportunities of our international engagement. It is interested in playing political 'gotcha' games when institutions don't succeed in managing these risks. Too often we've seen the Morrison government playing politics with state governments on matters of foreign and strategic policy by chasing media headlines—not by engaging them and actually working through these issues in the interests of all Australians but by having a whack through the media. That's not leadership. What it demonstrates yet again is that this is a Prime Minister not interested in delivering on the national interest. What he's interested in are headlines and political hits on his opponents. I think we'll always remember that Mr Morrison's first attempt at foreign policy was to announce unilaterally that he was moving Australia's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to help win votes in the Wentworth by-election. That was without any advice from our diplomats and security agencies, and without any regard for the far-reaching ramifications for our foreign policy. Everything this man does is about scoring domestic political points. There's always an angle, even in announcing this legislation. The background spin on this bill by the government was that it was a crackdown on the Premier of Victoria, who entered into a Belt and Road arrangement with Beijing. The Morrison government has never explained its own secret Belt and Road deal with China in 2017, a deal which has never been made public and which the government still refuses to make public. Nor has it explained the commercial implications of this legislation; in the midst of a recession, the government can't guarantee that major commercial projects won't be cancelled or jobs won't be lost. And it's not just state governments which have been dealt a hypocritical hand by this government. On Mr Morrison's watch, universities have been encouraged to become more reliant on foreign interests. Cuts to our universities have forced them to attract more overseas students and to increase engagement with foreign entities, and now they face any number of arrangements they have entered into being cancelled by the foreign minister with no explanation and no capacity for review. So it is a bill that claims to seek transparency but it is administered in secrecy—a bill that claims to seek transparency that is administered in secrecy! Labor will seek to increase the transparency for entities affected by the bill. If the government proceeds with this bill instead of withdrawing it and engaging in genuine consultation with affected entities on the design of the regime, re-drafting the bill and re-presenting it to the parliament as soon as possible, we will move substantive amendments in an effort to improve this rushed and flawed bill. We'll move for the minister to be required to table an annual report outlining decisions made under the legislation and engagement with entities covered by the bill to articulate and explain Australia's foreign policy and how entities should engage with foreign entities in the national interest. We'll move to require that this report be referred to the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee for inquiry and report. We will also move that the minister be required to provide reasons to affected Australian entities, and for entities to have the capacity to appeal ministerial decisions to the AAT. And, importantly, we will move for the minister to be required to prepare a report into the lease of the Port of Darwin. I hope, given the expressed desire for this bill to be a bill with bipartisan support, that the minister would want to avoid the very obvious double standard being applied to the LNP decision to lease this critical strategic asset to a foreign company. I welcome the fact that the government has already moved an amendment in the House to fix the lack of definition of institutional autonomy, a concern that we had previously identified. I hope that in the debate in this chamber the government continues to display a willingness to work in a non-partisan fashion to improve the bill by accepting our remaining amendments. Labor supports the stated intention of the bill, but its flaws reflect a Prime Minister who puts his political interests above the national interest. The reality is that it was announced in haste, before it was ready and before affected entities were consulted, just so Scott Morrison could change the headlines from the tragic neglect in aged care—on the same day as his minister walked out on scrutiny here in the Senate. That is not responsible stewardship of Australia's national interests. Labor calls on the government to rewrite the legislation and to focus on delivering robust, carefully written laws, instead of just grabbing the headlines. We look forward to the Morrison government giving this proposed bill further consideration, and invite them to work in a bipartisan way to advance our shared national interest. In conclusion, I move: At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate: (a) notes: (i) the absence of an oversight mechanism for decisions made under the Bill; (ii) the desirability, subject to appropriate arrangements to protect national security, of requiring the Minister to provide reasons for decisions, and a process for review of a minister's decision; and (iii) the lack of clarity in the definition of 'arrangements' in the Bill; (iv) the Minister should make an annual report to the Parliament outlining engagement with entities covered by the Bill, if enacted, to articulate and explain Australia's foreign policy and how entities should engage with foreign entities in Australia's national interest; and (b) calls on the Government to: (i) address the regulatory gap of private universities; (ii) provide clarity on the treatment of the Port of Darwin in the Bill before the Bill proceeds; (iii) make clear how this regime will interact with the existing legislation and guidelines that work to safeguard Australia's sovereignty, including Foreign Investment Review Board processes, University Foreign Interference Taskforce Guidelines and the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, and provide confidence that the Bill does not present a sovereign risk that will undermine investment and cost Australian jobs; (v) engage in genuine consultation with Australian entities covered by the Bill on the design of the regime; and (vi) redraft the Bill and re-present it to the Parliament at the earliest opportunity". 20:24 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria I rise to speak on Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020 and the related bill. This is a major piece of legislation that the government has put forward, with significant long-term implications. The government says these bills are about foreign policy, and they are, but they're also about the issue of addressing foreign interference in Australia. In fact, the Prime Minister himself has framed it in that way by saying that where any foreign government seeks to undermine the sovereignty of Australia's foreign policy by seeking to do deals with subnational governments then Australia needs to protect itself. Let's be very clear: we agree that, where any interference by foreign governments occurs, it is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. We would welcome the opportunity to have a serious, thoughtful debate about foreign interference and how to balance actions taken to protect people in governments from foreign interference, protecting legitimate activity and engagement and protecting people's civil and human rights, including by introducing a charter of rights side by side with such legislation. We didn't have this conversation when the government introduced its foreign interference laws two years ago, and we aren't having it now. My colleague Senator McKim, two years ago, said that that legislation was shoddily drafted and too broad in scope and needed amendments to ensure it was properly targeting foreign interference in our political system, rather than allowing a raft of actions that impacted on freedom of speech and association, catching legitimate dissent in their net. Again today we see hastily drafted, problematic legislation. What's more, there's a distinct lack of clarity about how the legislation before us today intersects and interacts with the 2018 foreign interference legislation. It's also worth pointing out how so much of this debate about foreign interference and foreign policy actually becomes shorthand for a debate about foreign interference by the Chinese government. We think any debate about foreign interference should be a much broader conversation that recognises the risks to Australia by being overly aligned with US foreign policy, and the risk to our sovereignty by having US bases like Pine Gap on our soil, where some of the information and intelligence that flows through is for US eyes only. That debate should include the risks to our soldiers when they're sent in to fight in American wars on foreign soil and the risks to the rights of Australian citizens like Julian Assange, who, upon uncovering evidence about US war crimes, is persecuted, with ongoing attempts to extradite him to the US, where he could face charges that could result in decades in prison. The Greens come to this discussion on foreign policy and foreign interference from a perspective that puts human rights first. That critically includes being able to have a domestic debate where people are free to raise human rights concerns and act to apply pressure on other countries without being subject to threats and intimidation. It's important that we speak out loudly and clearly and take action about human rights abuses by the Chinese government against the Uighurs in Xinjiang or East Turkestan in Tibet, and that we speak out about the attack on democracy in Hong Kong and the Chinese government's ongoing persecution of others, including Falun Gong practitioners. It's also important that we continue to advocate for meaningful action on human rights abuses, wherever they occur—that is, not just in China but in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, African nations, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Myanmar and in the US. It's important that we here in Australia voice our support for the Black Lives Matter movement in America and elsewhere internationally. It's also important that we support a global environment that brings pressure to bear on us for our human rights abuses, with over 400 black deaths in custody since the royal commission and our own indefinite incarceration of asylum seekers. It's important that we have a domestic debate where we're able to do that free of foreign interference, and that we withstand other nations' response to that criticism and stay true to our principles of not just accepting that our major trading partners have appalling human rights records. We must not just turn away and turn a blind eye, as has been the habit of previous governments, and still is. Yes, we have become more vocal about China, but where is the outcry about what's going on in India, in Vietnam, in the Philippines, in Saudi Arabia and in Palestine? It seems it's convenient for us to speak out about China in the current climate, but for other countries who are our allies and our major trading partners, different standards are applied. It is also important that, when we are speaking out about the actions of foreign governments, we do it in a way that doesn't leave the peoples who originally are from these countries subject to stigma here in Australia. At the same time as we are outspoken against the actions of the Chinese government, we must be aware of the potential for this to have an impact on Australians of Asian origin and we must support them against any racist attacks. I want to look more broadly now at what needs to occur if we are to seriously tackle foreign interference, and that's to talk about money, to follow the money—recognising, acknowledging and addressing the risks of foreign interference through corporate influence. For a very long time we Greens have been sounding the alarm about the influence of corporations, and in particular corporate donations, on Australia's political system. We want to see systematic change to address that. We welcome the fact that foreign donations above $1,000 to political parties are now outlawed, but this doesn't rule out money politics from foreign players—far from it. We have companies registered in Australia that can take up the slack and still serve the political interests of their foreign owners. So whether it's domestic or foreign interference on our politics and corporations, and the incredibly powerful and wealthy people behind them, there's one straightforward way of stopping them in their tracks and that's to get this money out of politics. Banning large corporate donations full stop would put an end to their influence on politicians and politics; their pushing of policies, and planet-destroying and people-exploiting developments that are not in the interests of ordinary Australians or people around the world. They are anti-democratic and destructive of our future. My colleague Senator Waters has done incredible work advocating for electoral donations reform. Tightening our electoral donations laws would be a significant step forward. Crucially, I also want to recognise the work that Senator Waters and all of our MPs have done in advocating for a federal ICAC. We're glad that the ALP has followed us on that charge. We think it's crucial. A watchdog with real teeth can make a meaningful difference and we need to see that. It would lessen foreign influence, but it would also address corruption more broadly. We've seen sports rorts, Angus Taylor's 'watergate' scandal, the many other Taylor scandals and too many other scandals to list. That corruption by the Liberal Party is having a corrosive impact on our democracy. It's reflected in data released today by Griffith University and Transparency International. Their report shows Australians increasingly view corruption as either a very big or a quite big problem, rising from 61 per cent in 2018 to 66 per cent. The proportion of those who believe the federal government is handling corruption issues very badly has risen from 15 per cent to 19.4 per cent over the same period. We think there's a lot to be done to address foreign interference, but we do not believe that this legislation before us today is the right way to do it. Part of that reflects a set of concerns about the process to date. There was no regulatory impact statement prepared for this bill. There was no exposure draft released for comment and discussion. The committee process itself was rushed. Most of the state governments did not make a submission or appear before the inquiry. Given how important this legislation is, and how important it is to get it right, we think that is profoundly disappointing. That rushed process is reflected in the fact that the committee heard evidence from Professor George Williams that there could be a challenge to this legislation from a state government on constitutional grounds, that there is a fundamental flaw in the very premise of the legislation that relationships with other countries are purely the responsibility of the Commonwealth. Professor Williams gave very compelling evidence to the inquiry that in fact the external affairs powers are invested in both the Commonwealth and the states. The Commonwealth actually does not have the right to overrule the states in the way outlined in this bill. Given the magnitude of the issues involved and the importance of getting it right it's extraordinary that something as fundamental as that hasn't been clarified before the government seeks to pass this bill. There's a philosophical element too, whether it's appropriate that the Commonwealth should be the sole holder of this role. There's a strong argument that having multiple levels of engagement is actually a much healthier situation. In times like we're in at the moment, when Minister Birmingham isn't able to get his Chinese counterpart to pick up the phone on the escalating trade disputes, there is value to be had in multiple relationships and lines of dialogue, rather than all interactions resting in the hands of the foreign and the trade ministers. And if there is concern that the state governments and indeed universities and local governments don't have the skills to undertake the building of these relationships, an obvious way forward is to build their capacity rather than cutting them off at the knees. You could argue that this legislation doesn't stop those multiple levels of engagement. But which state government is going to invest in developing a relationship and arrangements and collaborations with foreign governments in the knowledge that it can all be overturned, retrospectively, because the foreign minister doesn't think these arrangements are in our national interest? There's no appeal process. It doesn't have to be based on published foreign policy—just the view of the foreign minister that it's not in the national interest. Given that flawed approach, it's unsurprising that we've got a profoundly flawed bill. The bill captures university arrangements in a blanket way, with potential enormous implications for their resourcing. Keep in mind that this is a sector that's been under massive pressure and attacked by the Liberal Party, and I'm sure my colleague Senator Faruqi is going to go into further detail. That's not to say that some of the relationships that universities have entered into have all been desirable. I had a memorable conversation about this bill with one expert who said it's no wonder universities have been entering foreign partnerships without necessarily doing their due diligence or determining whether these partnerships are in the national interest, or even the university's interest, because of the pressures they are under. They're at the top of the list for every vice-chancellor. At the top of the list of their key performance indicators has been developing MOUs with external parties, purely because of the massive decline in public funding. Rather than imposing an unwieldy framework that universities haven't been consulted on, if the government wants to ensure that there is no risk of foreign interference in universities and wants to strengthen their capacity to undertake independent research, then a key step is providing secure, adequate funding. The Commonwealth should adequately fund universities, including increased research funding, a Commonwealth contribution to allow free higher education, and increased funding per student. Let me foreshadow that we will be moving amendments to reflect these concerns. The other fundamental concern that we have with these bills is that they effectively provide an incredibly powerful tool for the foreign minister, with virtually no oversight. In fact, the bills specifically exempt the minister from judicial review and merit review. And I want to be clear that this isn't a criticism of the current foreign minister and to acknowledge the work of her office and her department on a number of difficult consular cases. However, the reality is that once the bill is passed the power sits with whomever the foreign minister may be and provides the executive with a very far-ranging power, without any checks, in perpetuity. We think it's crucial that anything close to the level of executive power provided by this bill has some level of transparency and oversight. Again, I foreshadow that we have a number of amendments to improve the processes set out in this bill, and I hope these amendments will be supported. Let me be very clear. We agree that foreign interference is a serious issue that needs to be addressed, but we think the approach the Liberal Party has taken is rushed and underdeveloped. We will be moving amendments to improve this bill, but we have profound concerns about the framework that is being proposed. In summary, to genuinely ensure integrity and transparency in Australia's political system, the Commonwealth should enact donations reform by banning political donations from the mining, property development, tobacco, alcohol and gambling industries and capping all other donations and make sure they disclose publicly in real time. They should root out corruption by establishing a federal anti-corruption commission and fund universities properly. We want to address foreign interference, and there's a lot we can and must do, but this bill isn't the right approach. I now want to conclude by moving the second reading amendment that has been distributed in my name: Omit all words after "That", insert: ", the bill be withdrawn; and (a) The Senate notes that: (i) the bill as drafted creates a significant new scheme with wide-ranging implications; (ii) no public consultation process was undertaken on an exposure draft bill and there was no regulatory impact statement prepared prior to the introduction of the bill; and (iii) stakeholders have raised a range of concerns about lack of consultation, the compliance burden and impact of this bill; and (b) The Senate calls on the Government to undertake more extensive consultation with the wide range of stakeholders impacted by this proposed legislation". 20:39 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria It is my great pleasure to rise and speak on the Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020, which is an incredibly important piece of legislation. This bill is required because the Commonwealth has responsibility for foreign policy. It has the expertise. Yet there is no current requirement for states and territories to consult properly with the Commonwealth on arrangements with foreign governments. This bill is not about excessive intrusion into the states' and territories' business. This is about providing governments, institutions and the Australian people with confidence that due diligence is given to international arrangements to ensure they are consistent with our national interest and with our values. It is wholly unremarkable that the Commonwealth seeks to ensure that the states and territories consult with the Commonwealth in relation to foreign arrangements. It is a pity, I might say, that this legislation is now necessary. It is necessary because there has been a wide range of arrangements, including between state governments and universities and foreign states, which have caused the Commonwealth significant concern. This bill now puts in place the measures required to ensure that, at the forefront of any arrangement with any foreign state, the national interest is paramount. It also reflects the fact that the Commonwealth, particularly the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has the expertise necessary to assess whether arrangements with foreign governments are consistent with our foreign policy and, therefore, in our national interest. Without appropriate consultation, the Commonwealth has no opportunity to review the proposed arrangements and apply its expertise. Without due diligence, without this consultation, we as a nation risk having a patchwork of contracts, MOUs, relationships and collaborations that could run counter to, or have an adverse effect on, our foreign policy. So what this says to the states and territories and to our universities is that we need to work together on the world stage and speak with one voice. I'm incredibly proud of the many measures that our government has introduced to combat foreign interference and so I do really take issue with the characterisation of the Greens that this is a rushed approach. Nothing could be further from the truth. In recent years, we've recognised and implemented many different measures to reflect the fact that foreign interference can threaten Australians' sovereignty, our values and our national interests—Australia's way of life. It involves, by very definition, coercive, clandestine, deceptive or corrupting activities undertaken by, or on behalf of, a foreign actor and which are contrary to Australia's sovereignty, values and national interests. Our bill is not focused on any particular country and neither have any of our measures. They include: the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Foreign Interference) Act 2018, which criminalised covert and deceptive activities of foreign actors that intend to interfere with Australia's institutions of democracy; the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018, which requires people to register if they engage in parliamentary lobbying, general political lobbying, communications activity or donor activity on behalf of a foreign principal; the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018, which introduced a range of measures, including a register of critical infrastructure assets that gives the Australian government visibility on who owns and controls these assets; and the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform) Act 2018, which restricts political donations from foreign governments and state owned enterprises. In December 2019, the Prime Minister announced the establishment of the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce to disrupt and deter those attempting to undermine our national interests. Another measure is the Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, which aims to provide the public and government decision-makers with visibility of the nature, level and extent of foreign influence on Australia's government and political processes. We've also made very major improvements to our foreign investment and takeover laws so that the Foreign Investment Review Board has the power to assess the sale of critical state owned infrastructure assets to private foreign investors. This was an issue I raised in my first speech in this place. Keeping our critical assets in Australian hands is incredibly important, and now the Treasurer has a range of powers, including the last resort review power, which does give him the power, when he deems necessary, to require the divestment of foreign interests in a business entity or piece of land. The bill before the Senate today aims to ensure that state and territory arrangements with foreign governments are consistent with Australia's foreign policy. Australian public universities established under state and territory legislation and the Australian National University will be required to notify the foreign minister of all existing and proposed arrangements they have with foreign entities, including with foreign universities that do not have institutional autonomy. So this legislation is not about stopping arrangements which benefit Australia. The vast majority of university arrangements will continue as normal. But this will ensure that there is greater transparency of activities between the states and the territories and universities which involve foreign governments, and the Morrison government has now introduced amendments to the bill to describe the circumstances in which a foreign university lacks institutional autonomy, and, under the definition, a foreign university does not have institutional autonomy if a foreign government is in a position to substantially control the university's internal governance, education, research or academic staff. Of course, this issue has been of particular interest in my home state of Victoria, where the Victorian government has entered into a very contentious agreement with the Chinese Communist government, the Belt and Road Initiative. Of course it is very clear, and we have made very clear, that this bill does not target any country, at all. But certainly there have been very serious concerns raised about these arrangements and, once this bill, as we hope, is law, the Victorian government will then be subject to proper scrutiny and accountability in relation to the agreement that it has reached with the Chinese government, because, at the end of the day, this is all about ensuring that, no matter whether it's a state, a territory or a university, any arrangement with a foreign government must be such that it does not adversely affect Australia's foreign relations or is not inconsistent with Australia's foreign policy. Australia faces many challenges across the globe. This bill before the Senate today is another critical step in ensuring Australia's national security and that our national interests are at the forefront at all times. 20:48 Senator AYRES 16913 New South Wales If I heard that last contribution correctly, it has only served to deepen my misgivings about the foundations of this piece of legislation—the real rationale—because, when speakers on the other side of this chamber talk about the agreements that states and territories have entered into, they've only got one state in mind and one institution. There's nothing that senators on the other side or members in the other place have got to say about the agreement that the Northern Territory government reached with a Chinese company to lease the port of Darwin for 99 years. There's nothing about the previous Belt and Road Initiative agreements that the Commonwealth signed in 2017. There's no reflection on the previous comments by the now Leader of the House and other senior members of the government supporting those arrangements. It's only an assault on the Victorian government, with, as far as I can see it, very little foundation sitting behind the political logic of this bill, Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020, and a related bill. As is so often the case, this is a government that misdiagnoses the problem, misconceives the solution and is deeply directionless on such an important issue of national interest. It's an issue that requires consistency in approach. It's an issue that requires more voices, not fewer, coming from Australia. It requires deeper engagement from all levels of government across the public sector and business to business from our private sector, NGOs and people to people. The primacy of the Commonwealth on external affairs is not challenged by anybody in this place. We say that, if the Commonwealth government have a primary role, they should lead and provide leadership. So far, they have been incapable of doing that. So far, they have been incapable of articulating a plan to put Australia in the best position in our region, in the strongest position for our national interest. It should be straightforward to construct a proper understanding of the national interest here. It requires, at all levels of government and in our institutions, a culture of disclosure, engagement and education between the Commonwealth and the institutions, particularly in this period of intensification of regional challenge. But this bill is a ham-fisted effort. It uses a hammer for a job that really requires a Phillips head screwdriver. With the government's track record on these questions, I think we're entitled to a little bit of cynicism about the origins of this piece of legislation. We know from the Senate estimates process that there was no consultation with the organisations and institutions and levels of government that would be affected by the implementation of the legislation. There's no national security requirement for secrecy. It's not necessary to sneak up on Australian universities or the governments of the states or territories or the peak organisations that represent local government. I think there was no consultation because the government hadn't got anywhere close to finishing the job. What drove the announcement of this piece of legislation was not a properly constructed set of national interest concerns but base domestic political expediency. It was done that week because the Prime Minister needed to get the aged-care crisis off the front pages. That should be a matter of deep regret, if they were capable of it, for senators on the other side. As Senator Wong said, the issues that face us in the region are more complex than they've ever been before, more challenging than at any other period since the Second World War and more consequential for the Australian national interest than they've been in living memory. They affect not just our trade and our future security for us and our children; they affect the kind of collaboration and work for mutual gain that should be going on in our region. Instead of a considered, consistent approach led by the senior leadership of those opposite, what we've seen is a race to the bottom in what passes for backbench thinking and backbench adventurism about relations, particularly relations with China. In terms of the states and territories, it's been said that the primacy of the Commonwealth is an unremarkable proposition. It's the absence of the Commonwealth that's the problem; it's the lack of leadership and the lack of clarity that Australia needs. Over the course of the last few years, we've seen a botched, misconceived, ham-fisted approach to our foreign relations. The Prime Minister posed for what I call the Craig-Kelly-member-for-Hughes audience, with that wacky speech to the Lowy Institute about negative globalism, deliberately posturing for some of the characters that inhabit One Nation and some of the elements of the backbench. Minister Payne has suggested that we need to improve the performance of global institutions, but the scale of resources and the scale of the commitment that Australia provides to its embassies and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has dwindled as the challenge got bigger. The suggestion—without any plan, without any means to achieve it, without any acceptance or reading of the geopolitical realities of it—that people with weapons inspection powers should be sent into China, without any capacity to deliver that strategy, was another soundbite foreign policy that led us nowhere. There has been a series of political appointments that give political appointments a bad name in Foreign Affairs. The buffoonery and clownish behaviour of the former Treasurer, Mr Hockey, and Mr Downer hasn't done us any favours at all on the international stage. You can't have any confidence that this government has a proper construction of the national interest in mind when it frames this kind of legislation. It's true that the states and territories have always had a global and external affairs role. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, at the very least—and I'm sure senators would make a claim for Adelaide, Perth and Hobart—are global cities. Sister-state relationships have been critical to growing economic relations and diversifying and growing our trade. The New South Wales and Guangdong Province agreement in 1979 has been critical to the economic development of the state of New South Wales. What I hope not to see as a result of this legislation is less engagement from the states and territories—fewer voices speaking up for the interests of Australians, Australian businesses and Australian communities. I suspect that what we'll see as a consequence of this legislation in terms of the Port of Darwin lease is nothing. I want to see more engagement from the states and territories. Of course, we'll never know what the position of the states and territories would have been had there been proper consultation. They refused to turn up to the Senate processes because I think they saw it for what it was: a shortened up process. Let me come to the universities for a moment. I acknowledge that the explanatory memorandum, and the rules that were issued after the processes of the committee, have whittled away some of the regulatory burden for universities. But it remains the case that there was zero consultation for draft legislation that would have created an obligation for individual universities. To have tens of thousands of agreements registered with the Commonwealth, albeit now whittled down to probably a couple of hundred for each university, is an unacceptable proposition. The government wouldn't do it to any other business—they certainly didn't do it to private universities—but they've foisted on the university sector this wall of regulation, with very little public policy rationale, and it sits against the backdrop of an overwhelming hostility from this government to the university sector. Why not carefully engage and consult? Build from the framework that's already been established in partnership with the universities, the University Foreign Interference Taskforce framework. Pursue the legitimate public and national expectation that institutional resilience, in terms of foreign interference, needs to be defended and protected and grown. Staff should be educated and enabled to participate in foreign engagements in the national interest. We should build a culture of universities and university staff asking questions and encourage more engagement. But the Liberals and Nationals don't understand how universities work. Global collaboration is fundamental to university research. Sharing expertise and research is fundamental to the work that our universities do. To name two things: both the COVID-19 genome sequence and the Gardasil vaccine are the products of deep collaboration and research between Australian universities and universities overseas, including in the People's Republic of China. Of course, the gaping hole in this legislation is that, while there's a wall of regulation for our public universities, the private universities, such as Bond University, are not touched by the legislative framework. There's no regulation for them. I have seen, in the government's response to the committee's report, that there's a prospect that hospitals will be included at this late stage. There's been consultation, there's no public policy rationale; again it's just a case of sucking up to a few elements of the coalition backbench who have demanded this position. We should be dealing with this set of issues from an understanding of the facts. There is increasing great power competition in our region. Over the past seven years, Australia hasn't done the work that is required on regional multilateralism and investment in relationships in the region. The work hasn't been done. There's been a withdrawal—a reduction, a diminution—of the capacity of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in terms of the scale of the challenge we face. There are structural challenges for Australia in the region. If events like today's deeply shocking tweet are any indication, we are likely to face more of these kinds of challenges in the future. There has been an aggressive, unhelpful and unfriendly series of actions in terms of our trading relationships. That requires a thoughtful, critical, strategic response founded on a clear understanding of our place and our role in the region and a capacity to articulate a regional commitment to multilateralism and a cooperative nationalism in the region. Instead, we've got guff from the Prime Minister—I still don't quite know what 'negative globalism' means—a series of unforced errors and no plan for how Australia is going to proceed in the region and approach these great issues of state. Most disturbingly, we've seen a nasty streak emerge in the coalition backbench. I don't think the interventions of Mr Christensen and others have been helpful, I don't think the adventurism of some in this place has been helpful and I don't think recent events in the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee have been helpful. I do think that for a government that says it wants Australia to speak with one voice it wouldn't hurt to have a talk to the backbench and see if they could let it do the talking for a little while in this period of deepening challenge. Instead, discipline is required from the states and territories and the universities. (Time expired) 21:03 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales I rise to speak to the Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020. The Greens will be opposing this ill-thought-out overreach by the government, which comes before us after a rushed and insufficient consultation process. Senator Rice's contribution and dissenting report to the limited inquiry into this legislation reflect the broader terminal issues with this legislation. I want to highlight the impact it will have on the work of our universities. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has carved a path of destruction through the higher education sector this year. He has allowed tens of thousands of jobs to be lost; performed legislative gymnastics to deny universities JobKeeper; abandoned international students to long queues outside food banks; slashed more than a billion dollars each year from core funding for teaching and learning; and more than doubled the fees for some degrees, to create decades more student debt for a generation of young people facing flat wage growth and skyrocketing unemployment. His justification for refusing to come to the aid of university staff whose jobs were being cut by ruthless management was to appeal to the principle of university autonomy. The Scott Morrison of early 2020 would have you believe that the government ought not interfere with the independence of universities. Well, then it suited them financially to ignore universities but now it suits them ideologically to meddle where there is no need for them to do so—and no good will come of it. Across the university sector, staff and university management alike are gravely concerned about this legislation. The extraordinarily broad scope of this bill means that the minister, seemingly on a whim dressed up as concern for the government's conception of national interest, can tear up the kinds of agreements between Australian universities and overseas organisations or governments that underpin vital research and arrangements for joint degrees, cultural and student exchanges and happenings as basic as jointly held academic conferences. The potential and, indeed, opportunity for ministerial overreach created by the bill shouldn't be understated, particularly keeping in mind the tendency for Liberal ministers to meddle at every available opportunity, as they've done in the past with local research grants they didn't like the sound of. It took the government making last-minute amendments to its own legislation to address the question of what counts as institutional autonomy, which was left wide open by the legislation introduced into the other place. But even with the government's own amendments to circumscribe the range of universities and overseas education providers the bill applies to, its scope is still too broad. The bill defines 'an arrangement' as 'any written agreement, contract, understanding or undertaking'. It should be no surprise to anyone that universities have thousands and thousands of agreements that are captured by this definition. Perhaps the Minister for Education was distracted by cutting uni funding while this was drafted and he neglected to mention it to his colleagues. It should come as no surprise that most of the agreements, contracts, understandings and undertakings captured by that definition are entirely mundane and the broader effect will be, as submitters to the inquiry put it, to create a huge administrative burden on both them and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I know that some of that concern might have been addressed, but it is still a big issue. Curiously, while the bill captures public unis it does not extend to other entities that routinely deal with the governments and institutions of other nation states, such as private universities, other NGOs and private corporations. I'm not suggesting it should but indicating how baffling it is that were it not for the Liberals' particular ideological vendetta against public unis it would be entirely unclear why the government chose to include them. With respect to our unis, I note also that they already point to the University Foreign Interference Taskforce that was set up to scope out and address the exact issue this bill is now wading into. The preference of universities, as autonomous institutions that should be free to pursue collaborations and research, is quite clearly to continue their work with the government in identifying and mitigating genuine risks, without allowing the minister to arbitrarily rip up agreements that the coalition doesn't like. I should note, of course, that it's not any old kind of foreign interference in our universities that the government is concerned about. They have no concern about the rivers of gold that weapons manufacturers use to associate their names with the likes of United States studies centres to improve their PR or to promote a sympathetic research agenda. It's selective concern about China that's been driving this from the very start. This picking and choosing of when interference is bad both offends the principle of university autonomy and muddies our foreign policy. If the government were truly concerned about safeguarding university autonomy and protecting against interference then they would have approached the issue holistically, not try to ram through this bill crafted to suit the Liberals' approach to China. We hear the concerns of the university sector about this legislation and its impact. The government's two minor amendments pour a glass of water on a bonfire of this legislation. The problems remaining far outnumber those solved. The only appropriate course is to remove universities from the scope of this legislation. I will be moving an amendment to do so. If the government is genuine about reversing costs and getting into the business of protecting university independence, then reversing their cuts and giving them financial independence is the first necessary step. In complaining about universities' dealings with groups in other countries the government is pointing to the symptom caused by decades of systemic underfunding that they've been the biggest champions and cause of. The Greens' commitment to massive new investment in our unis; lifelong, free university and TAFE for all and building university democracy and the power of staff and students is the solution needed here. This work is only made more urgent by the Liberals' ongoing attacks on our unis. The issues with this bill are not limited to its impact on unis. In the first instance, it simply doesn't do what the government claims it will. They are now talking up the supposed alignment of agreements with the national interest, but when they hit the media to discuss it it's all about imposing the Liberal-National vision of the world on states, territories, local governments and unis in an entirely unprecedented way. At its core it ignores that the country benefits from a plurality of approaches to foreign policy and countless links between our communities and the rest of the world. It is not up to the government, and it never should be, to be the sole arbiter of foreign relations and to dictate every moment of every Australian institution's relationship with global organisations. The consultation around the bill too has been woeful. This is legislation introduced during a pandemic, when the government claims they're too busy to deal with the federal ICAC or the dodgy deals and questionable characters running wild in their ranks. There was no exposure draft, no preliminary consultation and an undemocratically short committee process with only two public hearings into complicated legislation. The government can't explain properly how this will work in practice. The organisations affected haven't been given the time or information to determine its impact, and the parliament hasn't been given the opportunity to scrutinise it appropriately. We shouldn't be surprised at this behaviour from those opposite, but we will add one to the rapidly rising count of major changes they're rushing through as far from the public eye as possible. Universities Australia put it well in their submission: Apart from the inherent issues with the Bill, its workability and the potential to deter the collaboration that is the lifeblood of Australian research, there is a range of outstanding questions. These apply to the Bill, but also to the rules that will accompany it… Further detailed consultation is required with the sector on the core issues with the Bill, as well as the many questions inherent in it. Add to that the questions of constitutional validity, the absurd scope of the proposed framework and the broad or completely absent definitions of key terms in which the implementation turns, plus the lack of the ability to properly review ministerial decisions, and you've got another ideological mess from Scott Morrison. This bill should be opposed. 21:14 Senator STOKER 237920 Queensland I rise to speak in support of Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020, knowing that there have been plenty of examples that show the need for it. A good place to start is the Constitution of Australia, a document that, as a bit of law nerd, I feel strongly about, but the details of which matter a great deal. Section 51 of this document sets out the legislative powers of this parliament, and something that's listed in section 51 is to be the subject of the work of this body to the exclusion of state parliaments. That's an important point for the purposes of this law, because section 51 subsection (xxix) gives this parliament, to the exclusion of state parliaments, the right to legislate on external affairs. Mum and Dad listening at home who may not be as big a law nerd as I am may ask, 'What on earth are external affairs?' External affairs are about Australia's relationships with other countries in the world. It's about foreign relations and diplomacy. And so it's entirely appropriate that the dealings of Australia conducted with other countries be done from the Commonwealth level. That itself shouldn't be a controversial proposition, and yet we had a recent example in the Belt and Road Initiative where the Victorian government decided it wanted to sign up to China's global infrastructure project, a $1.44 trillion soft power initiative of the Chinese Communist Party designed to project its power among the world. In 2018 Premier Andrews decided to sign up to it without the support of the federal government, without consulting the federal government and without providing any notice to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is worth noting that they were the only state government that wanted to sign up to the agreement. It raised a really important question: do they even have the right to do this? In circumstances where we know that the Belt And Road Initiative is all about the ability of the Chinese government to strengthen its ties with particular places and to achieve particular geopolitical objectives, did a state government even have the power in the first place to make that kind of an agreement with the Chinese Communist Party? I'd suggest the conventional position is that they didn't, but the very fact that a state government thought that was something they could do without consultation or without discussion speaks to a need, and it's a need that is met by this bill. I might move on to another example. In several universities in this country there are Confucius institutes. They're joint ventures between Australian universities, particular Chinese universities and Hanban, an agency that is part of China's education ministry. These are funded by the Chinese government and they operate on 13 Australian university campuses. If they simply fulfil the function of helping people to understand Chinese culture and get to know the language then they could potentially be a really good influence. However, we have come to learn that, rather than simply engaging in cultural and language education, they disseminate Chinese Communist Party propaganda, exert undue influence and attempt to outsource our curriculum to Beijing, striking agreements with our universities that allow to them to veto particular subjects, topics and themes from being taught in those universities. So we're dealing with something different entirely. I'll give you an example. The centres have signed agreements explicitly stating that they must comply with Beijing—that is the Chinese Communist Party government based in Beijing—and their decision-making authority over teaching in those facilities. If we take the agreement that was initially signed by the University of Queensland, Griffith University, La Trobe University or Charles Darwin University, it stated that they 'must accept the assessment of the headquarters on the teaching quality at centres'. The way that this played out meant that an economics class funded by the Confucius Institute at the University of Queensland was caught teaching propaganda in which Uighurs and pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong were labelled 'terrorists'. Recently, the University of Queensland named Brisbane's Chinese consul-general in the position of honorary professor without any public announcement and, in doing so, showed the continuation of a tradition of strong influence that university management had told us had been superseded by the second agreement with the Confucius Institute. Last year, in the renewal of that agreement, which I referred to just a moment ago, the UQ committed to those arrangements continuing for the long term. The department of education has implemented a ban on Confucius institutes operating in public schools and, in doing so, they've cited concerns about foreign influence. It's worth noting that, across the United States, institutes of this kind have been shut down in a number of public and private universities. Perhaps I'll go to a further example—the Thousand Talents program. That program is a Chinese government plan to recruit top scientists from around the world. Of itself, and if done in a purely academic arrangement, that need not be a bad thing. It aims to recruit Australian scientists and academics by offering lucrative incentives, but—and here's a significant condition—it obliges recruits to abide by Chinese law. That means that those academics continue to work full time for Australian universities while making frequent trips to China to visit the affiliated Thousand Talents university with which they have made their arrangement. That means they continue to apply for Australian Research Council grants, with the hope that there will be no checks about where that research will end up. It means that their new inventions face the risk of being patented by China, often in secret. And it means that those inventions are often commercialised, with China to reap the economic benefits, often of the Australian taxpayers' investment. That program has been described by the director of the FBI from the United States, Christopher Wray, as a form of economic espionage, with scientists legally signing away their rights to their intellectual property to China at the same time as they remain employed by Australian institutions. Additionally, China sends its researchers to work at Australian universities, and we need to be sure that, when that happens, the intellectual property that's shared isn't at risk. As I said, the Thousand Talents program need not be a bad thing. It's only when the arrangements associated with it are secret or seek to bequeath the intellectual property in which Australians have invested to the Chinese government that we start to see problems. So, when people say this legislation isn't necessary, we can start with the Belt and Road example, but we can flow through many of the others that I've just pointed to. The fact is that the Commonwealth has responsibility for foreign policy. It's got the expertise to deal with it properly and to understand its implications and, yet, at the moment, there is no requirement for the states of this good country to consult properly with the Commonwealth and its departments about the arrangements they intend to make with foreign governments. And I think your average mum and dad in their homes tonight would be shocked by that. They would want to know that, if any government of this country wanted to do a deal with a foreign government, it would be something that those looking after foreign policy in this country would know about. The bill is not about intruding excessively into the territories' and the states' business; instead, it's about providing Australians with the confidence that, when international arrangements are entered into, those who do so are doing it with due diligence, with an understanding of its implications, and to make sure that at all times those agreements are consistent with our national interest and our values. It would have been quite easy for many of those university parties which entered into agreements to establish Confucius Institutes to do so thinking that they were engaging in a perfectly positive exercise, not necessarily understanding that there was the potential for that arrangement to be misused. And so it's important that the Commonwealth seeks to ensure that states and territories respect our constitutional arrangements and, as a consequence, engage in processes that make sure they fully understand what they're entering into before they do so. The Commonwealth and DFAT have the expertise necessary to make sure that state governments, universities and government agencies fully understand the consequences of the agreements they intend to enter into. They have the expertise to help those governments or institutions understand the consequences of doing so, making sure those things are consistent with our foreign policy. That's because, ultimately, it's all about the national interest. It's all well and good for a university to say, 'It was necessary to fund our bills this year,' or for a state government to say, 'We wanted to build this, that or the other'. Ultimately, everything we do as servants of the Australian people in our various parliaments or, indeed, in a publicly funded institution, has to be about the proper service of the national interest. And if consultation doesn't occur in the way that it should then the Commonwealth won't get an opportunity to properly review those arrangements. And if there isn't that due diligence and consultation we risk—it's a very real risk—having a messy patchwork of contracts, memorandums of understanding or well-meaning, but ultimately undermining, collaboration arrangements which could run counter to or have an adverse effect upon our foreign policy. This bill is a call to all of our states and territories and to public institutions like our universities to work together and speak with one voice on the world stage. You wouldn't think that was a particularly controversial proposition. It applies to Australian public universities, not to private ones—that's an important distinction to make. But of course all universities, public and private, are encouraged to be transparent about their arrangements with foreign institutions by taking up the opportunity to consult voluntarily and to publish information about those arrangements on their websites so that both the public and our diplomats can properly understand the foreign policy implications of potential arrangements before they're entered into. It's important that our universities are able to engage freely and fully on the world stage. It's the nature of good research in this era that our universities need to be able to collaborate with other universities. But it's important that when the Australian public makes an investment in research, when it makes an investment in intellectual property, it gets the dividend of that—that it isn't snaffled up by another government with another agenda which doesn't necessarily align with the interests of the Australian people. And it is vital that state governments understand, at all times, not only the constitutional separation of duties which means that the Commonwealth is in charge in this matter but that consultation is key to our foreign policy being consistent nationwide. 21:29 Senator VAN 283601 Victoria I rise to speak in support of the Australia’s Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020 and the related bill which are before the Senate today. Before I go into the details of these bills, I recognise the government's continued commitment to participating in the international rules based order and our ongoing efforts to ensure that Australia's best interests are at the forefront of our thinking. I think it's also important to note that just today we've seen a display of the sort of appalling behaviour that can occur when nation-states feel that they are above the rules based order and resort to belligerence rather than diplomacy. As I've said earlier in this place, Australia has a proud history of helping to found and support various international frameworks, rules and institutions that have evolved since the destruction and carnage of the two world wars last century. Through the work of organisations such as the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, Australia and countries in our region have benefited from the expertise and assistance that those bodies have brought to bear in times of crisis. But I think it is important to remind people how important these international institutions are in providing a stable and prosperous international community. Without them, things such as trade agreements, international aid and responses to health crises would have been difficult to achieve. The capacity to raise standards of living in developing nations, to lift people out of poverty, would also not be possible. Australia, as a trading nation, relies on an open and free world trading system, and that is supported by an international rules based order to maintain peace and prosperity. Without that system, Australia would not have enjoyed 28 years of uninterrupted growth, expanded export markets for both goods and services and an international reputation for low sovereign risk and measured diplomacy. Of course, no system is perfect, and I will not stand here and say that I think all multilateral bodies are perfect. They are not, and some reform is needed and inevitable. That is why it is important that Australia has a consistent approach to dealing with the vagaries of international events through a measured and thoughtful approach to foreign policy. Australia cannot afford to have a fragmented approach to developing foreign policy. International agreements that bind Australia's academia, research and state, territory and local governments to actions that are inconsistent with Australia's foreign policy should not be entered into. If they are, they show naivety, wilful ignorance or blind incompetence in their development. These bills will provide the public with confidence that the arrangements of state and territory entities with foreign governments are consistent with Australia's foreign policy interests. The Australian government, through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has the expertise necessary to assess whether arrangements with foreign governments are consistent with our foreign policy and therefore consistent with our national interest. Without consultation, the Australian government has no opportunity to review the proposed arrangements and apply that expertise. Without due diligence and consultation, we risk having a patchwork of relationships, contracts, MOUs and collaborations that could be counter to or have an adverse effect on our foreign policy interests. The Australian government and our states and territories need to work together on the international stage to speak with one voice. There is no better example of how important this is than in my home state of Victoria. The Andrews government signing up to China's Belt and Road Initiative is just another example of how badly they manage Victoria's interests. Premier Andrews signing up to an international $1.5 trillion initiative without even consulting those who are responsible for Australia's foreign policy is just wilful irresponsibility on behalf of his government. I cannot imagine why a government, let alone its premier, thought that signing a memorandum of understanding with a foreign government without thinking about its impact on Australia's interests was the right way to go. The secretive nature of how this agreement came about, the lack of consultation and the poor way it has been handled since just confirms that this ineptitude is business as usual for the Andrews government. We've seen this ineptitude and secretiveness more recently with the failed hotel quarantine program, resulting in a lockdown that has destroyed Victoria's economy. Just today we hear ratings agencies saying it's a fifty-fifty bet that Victoria will lose its AAA credit rating. As reported in the Financial Review today, an S&P analyst said: We consider the downside risks to Victoria's AAA rating are rising substantially. These bills will establish an approval regime and a notification regime—a regime that applies to the proposed and existing international agreements. If they're proposed, the foreign minister can declare that they will not go ahead. If they're already in place, the minister can declare that they are invalid. State and territory entities wanting to enter into agreement with the government of another country or one of its agencies will be required to notify and get approval from the foreign minister. The state, territory, local government or Australian university which wishes to make an arrangement with a foreign entity must notify the foreign minister of that arrangement. The foreign minister's approval in these instances is not required. However, the foreign minister does have the discretion to declare they are invalid or cannot proceed if they are inconsistent with foreign policy. These laws will ensure that, as a nation, we are consistent in how we deal with the world and that all states and territories conclude foreign arrangements that are only in our national interest. The test is whether the foreign minister is satisfied that an arrangement or its negotiation does not adversely affect Australia's foreign relations or is unlikely to do so, and that it's not inconsistent with Australia's foreign policy and is unlikely to be so. In concluding my remarks, it must be emphasised that these bills intend to address foreign engagement for state and territory governments and their entities. This approach reflects this government's focus on ensuring consistency of Australia's foreign policy and foreign relations across all levels of government. Through our network of academic, economic, trade and security agreements, alliances and membership, Australia draws numerous benefits. Our economic prosperity relies on them, but they must overall be in the country's national interest first and last. Sovereignty can and should outweigh money. Without a measured and thoughtful approach that takes in Australia's national interest when entering into these agreements, we'll find ourselves appearing fragmented, inconsistent and ununited in our approach to foreign affairs. I commend the bill. 21:37 Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS e4t New South Wales Having participated in the Senate committee hearings, the evidence again reinforced concerns I have publicly raised over a long period of time about foreign interference and foreign influence in Australia, most especially from the communist regime in Beijing. These bills, Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill 2020 and Australia's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) (Consequential Amendments) Bill, are part of the suite of measures which the government is increasingly relying upon to confront the insidious and growing threat of foreign interference and foreign influence in Australia. It is important that arrangements of state and territory governments are consistent with Australian foreign policy. The Commonwealth and states and territories need to speak, as has been said, with one voice. This is especially the case when, in relation to China, we are finally recognising that it can no longer be business as usual with the communist regime. Whilst there are a number of other schemes that aim to protect Australia's interests in dealings with foreign entities, they serve different purposes. However, gaps remain. One concern that I have raised repeatedly is the exemption Commonwealth, state and territory and local governments enjoy from foreign investment review. Notwithstanding the proposed major reforms to the FIRB framework, the exemption remains in place except where a government proposes to sell to a foreign government and if the subject of the sale is public infrastructure or where the interest being acquired is a national security business or national security land. These bills seek to deal with another critical gap of facilitating Commonwealth oversight of foreign arrangements entered into by states and territories and their entities. Whilst they are an important step, I do not believe they go far enough. Following the report of the committee, the government has included a definition of 'institutional autonomy'. This is particularly important regarding the university sector. However, I am disappointed that there hasn't been consistency by also including a definition of 'corporate autonomy'. I have repeatedly outlined concerns regarding the operation of foreign state-owned enterprises in Australia, especially where those corporations are operating commercial activities in critical sectors, critical infrastructure, and, more importantly, in sectors where national security concerns exist. Arrangements with SOEs that operate on a commercial basis, including commercial leases, are not the focus of these bills, but these are the very arrangements which have given rise to public concerns. Their exclusion from this legislation affects its very credibility. I think we need to be clear with the Australian public. Arrangements with entities that operate in a democratic framework are not likely to give rise to concerns. It is those entities which operate under totalitarian regimes and have no autonomy that are of greatest concern. I have used the example of Chinese companies where corporate governance is virtually non-existent. Article 19 of China's company law states: 'In companies Communist Party organisation shall, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the Communist Party of China, be set up to carry out activities of the party. Companies shall provide the necessary conditions for the party organisation to carry out their activities.' This puts the CCP front and centre, irrespective of whether companies operate inside or outside of China. A South China Morning Post article of 3 November 2020 outlines Beijing's new plan for SOEs, citing comments by Xi Jinping: They form the economic and political foundation of China's socialist system and are a key pillar for the [Communist] Party's rule. They must be built stronger, better and larger… He added that the 'sector's role cannot be negated or weakened'. Indeed, Beijing calls the shots, no matter how large the corporation. According to recent media reports, Xi Jinping personally made the decision to halt the initial public offering of Ant Group, which would have been the world's biggest, after controlling shareholder Jack Ma infuriated government leaders when he compared the lending practices of state-owned banks in China to pawnshops. A 2017 paper titled 'Mapping the legal landscape: Chinese government-owned companies in Australia' by Professor Tomasic and Dr Xiong, explores the legal contours of Chinese controlled investment in Australia. It is noted that, by 2016, there were 66 Chinese SOEs with 214 subsidiaries in Australia operating across most industry sectors. The Productivity Commission's June 2020 research paper titled 'Foreign investment in Australia' finds our largest FDI sources remain the US, Japan and UK. However it states: Chinese investors have significantly increased their holdings in the past decade, although identifying the precise value is difficult. Data suggest that flows into Australia for which the ultimate beneficial owner is from China are about three times as high as those for which they are the immediate owner, as funds flow through corporate structures in third countries. Chinese investment has grown in the past decade from low levels in 2008 to become Australia's fifth largest FDI investor, with four per cent of total FDI stocks at the end of 2018. The PC states that, in recent years, national security concerns around inward FDI have tended to involve Chinese investors and that, in the past, much of this concern was directed at SOEs or sovereign wealth funds as opaque arms of government, accused of investing for non-commercial or strategic reasons. The PC also states that, more recently, FDI by privately owned Chinese companies has also generated consternation. In part, this is because Chinese law can require all Chinese companies to 'maintain national security' or to support Chinese government security activities. It cites the American Enterprise Institute going so far as to state: … there is no difference in the control the Communist Party can exercise over private firms and SOEs … [so] there is no justification to treat them differently with regard to national security. The PC paper cites examples where Chinese investment has raised national security concerns in Australia, including: the 2018 Huawei decision; the lease of the port of Darwin to Landbridge; the 2016 attempt by the New South Wales government to sell 50.4 per cent of Ausgrid on a 99 year lease to Chinese SOE State Grid Corporation and Hong Kong's Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings; and the March 2009 bid for OZ Minerals by China Minmetals. The PC pertinently highlights the increase in public opposition to Chinese investment. A 2019 Lowy Institute poll found that 68 per cent of respondents thought that Australia allows too much investment from China. The PC also notes that, whereas Australia has previously seen community opposition to FDI during periods of rapid increase in investment from specific countries, namely the US in the 1960s and Japan in the 1980s, this is the first period of rapid increase in investment from a country that is not a democratic country, nor a military ally. Considering the extent of Chinese investment both by SOEs and so-called privately-owned companies, our failure to exclude arrangements with such entities in the bills weakens their credibility. It is the elephant in the room. What is the point of having such legislation when we are excluding from its reach the very entities that are most likely to engage in the very activities that these bills seek to cover? In relation to the university sector, I was especially concerned to note the negative attitude, not only to the bills, but also that the government would even presume to affect the sector's activities through the enactment of these bills. Our university sector, together with a wide chorus of businessmen, have urged us to effectively ignore the communist regime's many excesses in favour of the continuation of the rivers of gold. The outgoing threats by China are symptomatic of the predicament we find ourselves in, noting that years of questionable and defective foreign and trade policy have made us vulnerable to economic coercion. For years, those who have had responsibility for our fellow-traveller foreign policy were prepared to ignore CCP skullduggery so long as the rivers of gold continued to flow. This is a bad business model, and we are now paying the price for not having diversified our trade and instead concentrated one-third of our exports into one market. It defies basic business practice 101! I know that many Australians who have contacted me do not agree with the defence minister's comments on 9 September that there are no security concerns regarding the Port of Darwin. How can one of our most strategic assets in northern Australia—the gateway to Australia—be leased to a company with ties to the communist regime in Beijing? How can this not be a matter of concern? It simply doesn't pass the pub test! There is absolutely no doubt that, were the lease of the port to be considered today, it would be not only subject to FIRB review, but most likely rejected. It is obvious from the Northern Territory submission and evidence at the hearing that there is contemplation of a reacquisition of the port, given the clear reference by Chief Minister Gunner to compensation for declaring arrangements invalid. It is appropriate that the Commonwealth seek to ensure state and territory consultation regarding foreign arrangements. The fact that no state or territory government chose to attend and give evidence is in itself indicative of their lack of appreciation of the need for their actions to be consistent with our foreign policy. I am especially disappointed that my very detailed questions on notice to New South Wales Premier Berejiklian and Chief Minister Gunner were not even responded to. As a senator for New South Wales, I and many of my constituents are particularly concerned about the extensive arrangements between New South Wales and Chinese entities in critical areas like energy, public infrastructure and transport. This is especially concerning given the actions of a number of governments, especially in their dealings with the CCP and its Belt and Road strategy. Whilst promoted as an avenue for providing infrastructure funding, it is basically a debt trap and influence strategy, mostly resulting in debt-for-equity arrangements. As Minister for International Development and the Pacific, I saw firsthand how debt-trap diplomacy operated. Following my public warnings about China's activities, most especially in the Pacific, an international debate ensued about debt-trap diplomacy and the examples in different parts of the world which had left countries and areas with unsustainable debts. In addition, BRI is not about local jobs, with projects usually constructed by Chinese firms with their own labour. Here in Australia we have seen the Beijing drafted MOU and agreements between China and Victoria. The willingness of Premier Andrews to deal with the communist regime in Beijing has rightly earned him the label 'Chairman Dan'. The government has made a number of amendments which have improved the bills and I welcome that. I note that more amendments will be proposed. It is important that we keep an open mind about them so that these bills can be improved further. ADJOURNMENT 118 ADJOURNMENT Australia Post 118 21:50 Senator HENDERSON ZN4 Victoria I rise to raise some serious concerns about the corporate culture which exists in some parts of Australia Post. I had a good dose of this not long after being elected the member for Corangamite, when I rallied against a proposal by Australia Post to cut regional mail deliveries in a manner which would have placed the organisation in breach of its performance standards under its community service obligations. There was a subsequent meeting, convened in Canberra, between coalition members and senators, the then managing director, Mr Fahour, and some of his senior executives. After the formal part of the meeting, I had a private conversation with Mr Fahour. He told me that when I raised these concerns on the floor of the parliament I looked like a horse's arse. I do excuse the language, but that's what he said. Trying to keep my sense of humour, I replied that I thought that I looked like an effective member of parliament standing up for my electorate. When I mentioned this exchange somewhat casually to a newspaper reporter in 2017 as an example of the rough and tumble which women sometimes endure in politics, Australia Post denied this conversation ever happened. A spokeswoman for Mr Fahour rejected the claims, indicating there were witnesses at the meeting and that they were able to support his position. The fact is that there were no witnesses; there was no-one apart from myself and Mr Fahour involved in this conversation and no-one was standing within earshot. What worried me about Australia Post's response was the fact that it was not willing to tell the truth about what had transpired and that the truth did not matter. I did not let this go, and eventually I met with the now former managing director Christine Holgate, who apologised in person but who declined to put that apology in writing. I tell this story because I believe that in any corporation it's not okay to lie, to mislead or to deceive. But, once again, this type of conduct has occurred, and I'm calling it out because enough is enough. For the past four years I have worked tirelessly in advocating for a new post office for Ocean Grove. From 2016 I supported an Ocean Grove business run by Cameron and Heather Waring, who were seeking to establish a licensed post office in the Ocean Grove Marketplace shopping centre in Shell Road. They were experienced post office operators from Point Lonsdale, and yet the Warings were continually told that there was no rationale for a second post office, despite the massive growth in this part of the Bellarine Peninsula. I have to say that Australia Post fudged the numbers to argue its case, arguing that the number of post offices per head of population across the region was more than sufficient. Of course, they averaged out the numbers and took into account that a number of towns, such as Point Lonsdale, Queenscliff and Barwon Heads had much smaller populations and all had their own post offices. Earlier this year, after moving to the Kingston Village shopping centre, which is in the northern part of Ocean Grove, Mr Waring again asked me to take up his case. I convened a meeting with Australia Post and, much to our delight, John Cox, who is the Executive General Manager of Transformation and Enablement, and Mr David McNamara, the General Manager of Post Office Network, informed us that Australia Post had decided to place a community licensed post office at the Kingston Village Square shopping centre. They made it clear that the community licence would be subject to an EOI—an expression of interest—but that the Warings were clearly in the box seat, given that they had a business there, including a Tattslotto agency, at that very centre. On 10 September, I put out a release saying: I am delighted to announce that Australia Post will establish a new presence in Ocean Grove and is seeking expressions of interest for a three-year licence to manage a new site at Kingston Village Shopping Centre. This community licensed post office will improve postal services for the Ocean Grove community … I have been an advocate for the establishment of a second post office in Ocean Grove for over four years, listening to local voices including Cameron and Heather Waring … understand the importance of reliable and accessible postal services to the community. The rapidly growing communities in the Kingston and Oakdene estates of Ocean Grove currently lack appropriate and equitable access to postal services and this announcement represents a great win for the Ocean Grove community. … … … And I thanked Australia Post for finally listening and for making this very important decision. In the Corangamite electorate, parcel volumes have increased by over 90 per cent in the months of April, May and June, compared to the same period last year. So the need now is greater than ever before. Australia Post did publish an expression of interest which did not state that Kingston Village shopping centre was the chosen location. That said, Mr and Mrs Waring relied on the representations by Australia Post that the decision had been made to place the LPO at Kingston Village and had made their submission accordingly. Therefore, there was no requirement to argue as to where the licensed post office should go because that decision had already been made. Last Friday I learned that Australia Post had reneged on its commitment to locate the post office at Kingston Village and Mr Cox is now denying any recollection of this conversation that he had with us. What's even worse is that I had a discussion this morning with the acting managing director of Australia Post, Rodney Boyce, who told me that he was backing his executives' version of events. He reiterated that Australia Post runs its tenders with a great deal of integrity. I took great issue with what the acting managing director told me, because I knew it was untrue. Both Mr Waring and myself were in that meeting when Australia Post said, 'This is the decision we have made.' It goes to the fundamental integrity of Australia Post, it goes to their corporate ethics and it goes to their failure to tell the truth when you see this sort of situation unravel. Australia Post has determined that the tender should go to another group of people who are actually going to operate the business, they say, at the Ocean Grove Marketplace shopping centre. Ironically, this is the same place where Australia Post said, over four years, that there was absolutely no need for an LPO. I do note the Australia Post advertisement for a new managing director and group chief executive officer. One of the points that they are looking for is a managing director who has a strong commitment to first-class business ethics and best-practice corporate governance. For those who are reading the Hansard or who are listening to this debate tonight, this is one person, one business in one small part of Australia, but it matters a lot. This business run by the Warings is now in peril because the business which has won the tender is now applying for a TattsLotto licence which will further undermine the Warings's business. They knew that it was not guaranteed they would get this tender, but they relied on the representations made by Australia Post. It is a breach of Australian Consumer Law to mislead or deceive in trade or commerce, and that's why I am referring this to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for investigation. This is not good enough. Australia Post must act with integrity at all times. I'm utterly shocked that they are now denying a conversation that occurred. Australia Post has not told the truth, and I will continue to hold them to account over this disgraceful behaviour. Nelson Tjakamarra, Mr 120 21:59 Senator McCARTHY 122087 Northern Territory I rise to pay tribute to one of our country's leading artists, who died recently. One of his many pieces of work actually sits out the front of Parliament House as the mosaic that we all see and which certainly visitors from across the country and overseas see when they visit here. I thank the Warlpiri families for your permission to pay tribute to Mr Nelson Tjakamarra. His work is an integral part of this building and, indeed, of this country. Mr Nelson Tjakamarra was a senior Warlpiri man, an elder of the Papunya community in Central Australia. He was born in the bush and lived at Haasts Bluff until his parents took him to Yuendumu for European education at the mission school. His father was a senior Warlpiri law man and Tjakamarra grew up with traditional knowledge and stories that later informed his artworks. Like many young men of the time, he left school at 13 and worked at buffalo shooting, driving trucks, droving cattle and in the Army, before returning to Yuendumu and then to Papunya to settle in 1976. Tjakamarra learned to paint at Papunya, observing the senior men who were the early trailblazers of the Western Desert art movement. He was originally tutored by his uncle, Tjupurrula, but he quickly developed his own style and began painting in earnest from 1983. Tjakamarra became known as the master of depicting several Dreamings in one work. His works were the stories. To him, that was what was important—using the medium of painting to tell and preserve the Dreaming stories. Without the stories, his paintings would mean nothing as far as he was concerned. In 1984, Tjakamarra won the inaugural National Aboriginal Art Award with his painting Three Dreamings. This was only a year or so after he started painting, on his own account, and cemented his reputation as one of the leading talents in the second generation of Western Desert artists. His work was selected to appear in the 1986 Biennale of Sydney, making him one of the first Australian Indigenous artists to gain recognition in contemporary international art circles. In 1987, he was asked to paint a major work to decorate the foyer of Sydney's Opera House and he chose to paint his Possum Dreaming, a story that took more than 18 metres in length to tell. The Opera House is not the only iconic building to feature Tjakamarra's works. A great highlight in his career was in 1988, when he was commissioned to design a 196-square-metre mosaic—and where did that go? Yes, out the front of the forecourt of our Parliament House here in Canberra. The work was based on his Kangaroo and Emu Dreaming. The mosaic is still as stunning today as it was when Tjakamarra designed it. He was presented to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth when she officially opened Parliament House. During 1988 and 1989, one of Tjakamarra's major works, Five Stories, was reproduced on the catalogue cover for the Asia Society's exhibition 'Dreamings, The Art of Aboriginal Australia' in New York. His participation in this exhibition included traditional ground painting and ceremonial dance, which he executed with Papunya elder Mr Stockman. From the traditional to the modern, Tjakamarra was commissioned in 1989 to paint a BMW M3 racing car. During what was seen as a golden period of development and recognition of the Western Desert art movement, Tjakamarra was at the forefront. He played a visible role promoting the movement, patiently answering questions about the Dreaming stories he painted and sharing his knowledge. At almost any landmark occasion in Aboriginal art during the golden years of the mid- to late-1980s, he was to be found patiently giving the same eloquent, heartfelt answers to the media's questions about why he painted this or that picture and what the Dreaming story was. Not only was he a talented painter but he generously shared his culture with the world, breaking down barriers and promoting the richness and beauty of First Nations culture, particularly from his Western Desert home. He was an articulate exponent of Western Desert viewpoints on the internationally famous art movement in which he played such a key role. In 1993, Tjakamarra was awarded the Australian Medal for his services to Aboriginal art. He continued to paint, developing and refining his style while telling his Dreaming story, often in collaboration with other Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists. In 2017, a collaboration with non-Indigenous artist Imants Tillers was unveiled here at Parliament House, where Tjakamarra was happy to see his mosaic work still had pride of place—and, of course, it also features on our $5 note. Tjakamarra said of his work at the time that it was fitting and it was in a place: … where all people come and meet together, just like we do in our ceremonies to discuss and works things out together. May you rest in peace, Tjakamarra. Our sincere condolences go to his family and friends and to all those who've been greatly influenced by this incredible artist. Mental Health 121 22:06 Senator SIEWERT e5z Western Australia I rise tonight to speak on the Productivity Commission's report into mental health and the impacts mutual obligations and other elements of our social security system have on the mental health of individuals and families. Mental health and wellbeing have featured prominently this year. The year started with devastating bushfires that deeply scarred communities and our environment. These fires were followed by the turmoil created by the global pandemic and the impacts of social distancing, isolation and economic uncertainties. Whilst the government has increased investment in a range of mental health initiatives and support services throughout the year, experts are warning of the mental health pandemic that is yet to come. This makes the Productivity Commission's report particularly important, and I'm glad the government has finally released it. The report looks at how our systems are working or not working, as the case may be, and what we need to do better to better support the mental wellbeing of Australians. The report makes a number of very important recommendations and comments. I'd like to focus on the key aspect of the commission's report that I mentioned at the beginning of my contribution, and that's the effect of our income support system on the mental health of both individuals and families. It should come as no surprise that this government's punitive and bureaucratic social security system systemically fails to support people with mental ill health. At the best of times, our income support system causes anxiety and poor mental health. This has only been exacerbated during a recession and while so many people are living with such uncertainty in their lives. The government's refusal to permanently raise the rate of the JobSeeker payment means we will see more and more people being pushed into poverty while our economy recovers. For the 1.4 million people who are currently unemployed or underemployed and relying on the JobSeeker payment, there continues to be a huge amount of anxiety and distress around the future of the coronavirus supplement and how they will continue to pay their bills, put food on their tables and keep a roof over their heads. Living below the poverty line for an extended period of time is known to have a deteriorating effect on people's physical and mental health. The commission noted that people receiving income support were more than three times more likely to have depression than those in paid employment, which is expressed in one submission: 'I'm receiving Newstart, but it is not enough to live on. I'm struggling to pay my rent. I have to choose between food, medicine and paying my bills. Living like this without enough money or support is unspeakably awful. It makes you feel like no-one cares, like you don't matter. I want to see my psychologist, but I can't even afford to do that. I'm in a dark place.' No-one in this country should be forced to make decisions about whether you put food on the table or pay for your medications. Not only does living in poverty make access to meaningful mental health treatments difficult; the system itself exacerbates mental health conditions and creates stress and anxiety for people who are already struggling to make ends meet. The commission also noted the challenges that people with ongoing mental ill health face when trying to enter the workforce. These challenges mean individuals actually require a more tailored approach when it comes to working with employment providers, and not the cookie-cutter job plans that are currently the go. I continue to hear that people are being unsupported by providers who have a lack of awareness and training and who are more interested in churning through participants than genuinely engaging with their needs, their career goals and how best to support them. It is no wonder that the commission found that outcomes for jobactive participants with mental ill health are significantly worse, with 82 per cent spending more than 12 months in the program compared to 64 per cent of the wider jobactive population. The commission also pointed out that the Job Seeker Classification Instrument is failing to accurately place people in the streams they need to get the best support for their circumstances. The JSCI fails to detect mental ill health, resulting in participants being incorrectly streamed and laden with unrealistic mutual obligations that will only cause them more stress and anxiety. As a result, they are more likely to receive demerit points and have their payments suspended. With mutual obligations now being enforced again, I have deep concerns about the increased pressure and anxiety jobseekers with mental ill health will be feeling. It was revealed at estimates that within 30 days of mutual obligation being reinstated, 74,434 payments were suspended by Centrelink. This is almost 75,000 penalties issued in less than 30 days. It was later revealed, during the last sitting of parliament, that the number of suspensions had risen to 250,112—a quarter of a million suspensions. We know from previous Senate inquiries how distressing it can be to receive a notification that your payment has been suspended for failing to meet one of your mutual obligations. The commission noted clearly, and with no uncertainty, that the implementation of stringent mutual obligation requirements for people with mental ill health will aggravate their symptoms and increase distress—the very system that this government is implementing. The targeted compliance framework is an incredibly blunt instrument, allowing employment providers to suspend a payment and creating a cascading effect of distress and anxiety in individuals and their families. This is a punitive and punishing system that fails to treat participants like real human beings, and causes immense damage to a person's emotional and physical wellbeing. We also find ourselves in a situation where we have thousands of people on the JobSeeker payment who have only a partial capacity to work but are not unwell enough, or disabled enough, to have access to the disability support pension. Changes to the eligibility criteria for the DSP in 2012, including the requirement to be fully diagnosed, treated and stabilised, have particularly affected the ability of people with complex mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities to prove their eligibility for the DSP. Many complex mental health conditions are episodic in nature. Treatments and reports from psychiatrists can be very expensive, particularly if you are trying to survive on the JobSeeker payment. And the application process is incredibly bureaucratic, with the whole process of applying for the DSP making it incredibly difficult for people with poor mental health and mental health conditions. The requirement to complete a program of support further complicates the eligibility process and leaves people living in poverty on the JobSeeker payment for an extended and unnecessary period of time—people living with poor mental health being further distressed by the very system that's supposed to be supporting them. The Productivity Commission has made it clear that mutual obligations, the rate of the JobSeeker payment and the DSP eligibility process are all exacerbating the mental ill health of income support recipients. I call on the government to implement the reforms of the Productivity Commission report so that we can begin the work that is required in order to ensure that we have systems in place that support those with mental ill health into recovery and wellbeing so that they can live a good life. We have a system that is literally making people sick and sicker. This has to include reforms to our social security system. I call on the government to permanently increase the JobSeeker payment, abolish the targeted compliance framework and reform the employment services system and the system of mutual obligation. They are not working. They are affecting people's mental health. If the government is serious about mental health reform, they will take these recommendations on board. They will change the system that, as I said, is not helping people but making people sicker. Mental health reform includes all aspects of the system in this country, not just support services or treatment services but the underlying social determinants of mental ill health. It is time for reform across the board. Please, please, I beg the government: take those recommendations from the royal commission on board and change the system. Senate adjourned at 22:16