2021-05-12 46 1 6 Senate 0 1

Wednesday, 12 May 2021

The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Scott Ryan) took the chair at 09:30, read prayers and made an acknowledgement of country.

DOCUMENTS 1 DOCUMENTS Tabling 1 COMMITTEES 1 COMMITTEES Meeting 1 09:31 The PRESIDENT I0Q I remind senators that the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. PRIVILEGE 1 PRIVILEGE 09:31 The PRESIDENT I0Q By letter dated 7 May 2021, Senators Gallacher and Patrick have raised a matter of privilege alleging interference with the Economics References Committee inquiry into Australia's sovereign naval shipbuilding capability. The letter outlines numerous occasions on which the Department of Defence, the secretary of Defence and the former Minister for Defence have declined or refused to provide documents to the committee in response to committee requests and Senate orders. Senators Gallacher and Patrick contend that 'the committee's ability to progress the inquiry has been severely and deliberately impeded by the department'. The letter raises three grounds on which the conduct complained of may amount to an improper interference with the functions of the Senate and should be investigated as a possible contempt. They are: improper interference with the free exercise by the committee of its authority or functions (contrary to privilege resolution 6(1)) disobedience of a lawful order of the Senate (contrary to resolution 6(8)) and refusal or failure to produce documents in accordance with an order of the Senate (contrary to resolution 6(13)). Where a matter of privilege is raised, my role is to consider whether a motion to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee should have precedence in debate. In doing so, I am constrained from considering the merits of the matter. Instead, I am bound to have regard only to the two criteria in privilege resolution 4. The first of these criteria seeks to reserve the Senate's contempt powers for matters involving substantial obstruction to Senate and committee processes, or to the performance of senators' duties as senators. It is clear that conduct of the kind claimed in the letter could substantially obstruct the references committee in its inquiry and frustrate the orders of the Senate requiring the production of the documents to the committee. In that sense, the criterion is met. Whether that conduct as outlined warrants investigation as a possible contempt is not a question for me but for the Senate. One matter for senators to note in making that assessment is that, in disputes about the production of documents, the Senate has generally preferred 'political' or 'procedural' remedies—such as censure motions or debating explanations for noncompliance—rather than seeking to enforce its orders through its contempt jurisdiction. Nevertheless, Odgers' Australian Senate Practice makes it clear that: The principal remedy which the Senate may seek against an executive refusal to provide information or documents in response to a requirement of the Senate or a committee is to use its power to impose a penalty of imprisonment or a fine for contempt, in accordance with the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987. The passage goes on to note, however: … practical difficulties involved in the use of this power— the contempt power— particularly the probable inability of the Senate to punish a minister who is a member of the House of Representatives, and the unfairness of imposing a penalty on a public servant who acts on the directions of a minister. I specifically highlight this latter issue and raise this caution about the treatment of public servants, because Senators Gallacher and Patrick seek to steer any possible contempt investigation to consider the role of the secretary of the department. The second criterion—regard for the existence of any other remedy—recognises that the Senate is generally reluctant to deal with conduct as a contempt where another, more appropriate, avenue for redress is available. Only the Senate can remedy interference in the proceedings of its committees or conduct frustrating its own orders, so in my view this criterion is also met. Whether that remedy should take the form of a Privileges Committee inquiry, or some other form if any, is a matter for the Senate itself. I table the correspondence and call Senator Patrick to give a notice of motion in respect of the matter. 09:35 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia I'm going to reserve my right to lodge the motion. I seek leave to make a short statement of no more than three minutes. Leave granted. Senator PATRICK 144292 I thank the Senate and I thank you, Mr President. I will go very briefly to the circumstances. In September 2019 this Senate referred an inquiry into Australia's sovereign naval shipbuilding capability to the Senate Standing Committees on Economics. In February 2020 the committee requested assistance from Defence, looking for documents describing what Naval Group, BAE, Austal and Luerssen were offering to Australian industry in relation to their bids for work in the naval shipbuilding program. The committee wants to compare what was promised by the various different entities and what was actually contracted by Defence. The committee has agreed to accept those documents in confidence. The Department of Defence refused outright to provide the documents in May last year. The Senate agreed to an order for the production of those documents. The minister sought a PII, a public interest immunity claim, but the Senate refused that claim. I'll go very quickly to the issue raised by the President in relation to the Secretary of the Department of Defence. An order for the production of documents has the same standing as a subpoena from a court. Maybe the Privileges Committee needs to consider whether or not it would be appropriate for a minister to refuse to allow an official to respond to a subpoena from a court. I refer to the High Court case of Pirrie v McFarlane in 1925, where Chief Justice Knox made it very clear that the law of the Commonwealth requires soldiers—and presumably officials—to obey not any command but any lawful command. The Senate has the final say on this and, with indulgence, I'll read a short statement from Erskine May: The Crown of these realms is hereditary, being subject, however, to special limitations by Parliament; and the kings or queens have ever enjoyed various prerogatives, by prescription, custom, and law, which assign to them the chief place in Parliament, and the sole executive power. But as the collective Parliament is the supreme legislature, the right of succession and the prerogatives of the Crown itself are subject to limitations and change by the consent and authority of the King or Queen for the time being, and the three estates of the realm in Parliament assembled. To the changes that have been effected, at different times, in the legal succession to the Crown, it is needless to refer, as the Revolution of 1688 is a sufficient example. The power of Parliament over the Crown is distinctly affirmed by the statute law, and recognized as an important principle of the constitution. That is given effect through section 49 of our Constitution. The Senate is supreme in this matter. It's an important matter. We need to be able to get on with our work. BILLS 2 BILLS Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021 2

Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021

Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021

Second Reading 2 09:38 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021, bills which fund some of the business of government. This isn't about last night's budget; we're in fact talking about bills that are from last year's budget. I want to particularly address one element of that, which is the JobKeeper scheme. JobKeeper was meant to be a wage subsidy, and the government was of course initially very reluctant to introduce such a scheme. It wasn't until queues formed around the block at Centrelink offices around the country as the nation went into lockdown that the government finally ceded to calls from unions, employers, the Greens and Labor to get serious about saving jobs. Within a week, JobKeeper was announced, but it was flawed. The major flaw was that there were no conditions placed on its payment to companies that were profitable, even if their turnover had reduced such that they were still eligible for the scheme. Neither were any conditions placed on its payment to companies that went on to pay bonuses to executives. The parliament did flag those issues at the time but the government didn't heed the concerns raised. In effect, it took advantage of the 'Team Australia' moment and the goodwill of the parliament in wanting to help protect millions of Australian jobs. The government allowed big business to make a profit off the back of a publicly funded wage subsidy. Once again, they delivered for their big corporate mates and mining billionaires. Costings undertaken by the Parliamentary Budget Office show that 65 of Australia's largest companies that were profitable during the pandemic received $1.2 billion in JobKeeper while they recorded profits. Indeed, of the companies receiving JobKeeper, at least 25 paid executive bonuses worth a combined total of $24.3 million, and 60 companies recorded profits over $8.6 billion in the past 18 months—big businesses such as Harvey Norman, who have refused to repay a single dollar of the $20 million in JobSeeker payments they received, despite doubling their profits during the pandemic and paying executive bonuses. The founder of Harvey Norman, Mr Gerry Harvey, said that the JobKeeper payments they received were 'a tiny amount of money'. This is astonishing when you consider that during the pandemic the number of people on income support increased by 100 per cent to over 1.6 million Australians who, I am sure, would not consider millions of dollars to be a tiny amount of money. JobKeeper became 'Profit Maker' and 'Bonus Payer'. Australia's biggest stimulus package turned into one of Australia's biggest corporate rorts. Billions of dollars of public money that was meant to ensure the wages of people whose jobs were at risk has, instead, been used to boost the profits of some of the biggest corporations and boost the wages of their executives. This is obscene, but it can be fixed. At the request of Senator McKim, I move the second reading amendment on sheet 1279: At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate: (a) notes that the 2020-21 Budget delivered the JobKeeper wage subsidy, which saw over $1 billion in JobKeeper payments paid to companies that made a profit or paid executive bonuses; and (b) calls on the Government to require companies with an annual turnover of more than $50 million that received JobKeeper payments, and in the last 12 months, did one or more of the following: (i) issued dividends, or (ii) made a profit, or (iii) paid executive bonuses; to repay the Commonwealth an amount equal to the amount of JobKeeper payments they received, up to the sum of profits made and executive bonuses paid". This amendment calls on the government to require companies with an annual turnover of more than $50 million that received JobKeeper and also made a profit or paid executive bonuses to repay the JobKeeper payments that they received, up to the amount of the profits they made and the executive bonuses they paid. This is so those big companies and their executive bonuses don't profiteer off JobKeeper. It's pretty simple, really. Those companies got more than they needed, and they should return it. If anyone is wringing their hands about the effect this might have on corporate Australia—perhaps those on the government side of the chamber—just two days ago the ASX 200 reached a record new high, eclipsing where it was before the pandemic hit. So corporate Australia is doing just fine. Frankly, they are doing even better after last night's budget, where we saw that in the coming financial year there will be $62 billion of public money in handouts to big corporates and mining billionaires. The very least they could do is repay those amounts of JobKeeper that they didn't need, that they turned into corporate profits and then paid out as executive bonuses. These companies can well afford to return that which they should never have been given in the first place. I want to contrast this with the approach that the Australian tax office is taking in trying to recover JobKeeper payments from migrant workers. There was an article up on the ABC yesterday that explained the situation of Hassan Jaber, who was living in Australia on a temporary protection visa. He was driving an Uber to make ends meet during the pandemic. He was asked to pay back almost $30,000 that he'd received in JobKeeper payments. He'd gone to his tax agent and sought advice on whether he was eligible to receive JobKeeper. They had phoned the tax office and spent, reportedly, 35 minutes on the phone to the ATO, who advised him: 'Look, submit the application and if you're eligible we'll pay you. If you're not, we won't.' He then received payment and so naturally assumed that he was entitled to receive that payment, and yet nine months later he got a bill for $27,900 to be repaid by him. Of course, at the time, the Greens were moving to make sure that JobKeeper was provided to so many more cohorts of people than this government ended up providing it to. There were so many people left out of JobKeeper as it was: short-term casuals, migrant workers, those on temporary protection visas and other visas. By some miracle, this fellow ended up receiving the payment thanks to the error of the tax office, and then nine months later the tax office sought to recoup that money from him. Can you imagine the shock in a pandemic, where you have no other support, getting a letter saying: 'Oops. We paid you 30 grand that you weren't entitled to. Now pay it back'? The poor man sought advice again from his tax person. They lodged several objections, and ultimately he did get justice. The ATO recognised that, in fact, it was their mistake and so they would just have to suck it up. But it's very interesting to contrast the approach of agencies going after individuals for receiving JobKeeper when what we see is massive profiteering by big corporates and the payment of executive bonuses in a pandemic where so many other people were tightening their belts. The government is like: 'Nah, we can't be bothered getting them to pay their money back. We're not even going to bother to ask them.' Of course, none of those people have volunteered to give it back either. That's exactly why we're moving this amendment today. We would like this chamber to compel those enormous companies, who earn over $50 million, who paid out executive bonuses and who made profits in a pandemic when they didn't need that JobKeeper support, to pay back the amount that they didn't need, pay back the amount that's equivalent to those profits and those executive bonuses paid. It is only fair. It will be very interesting to see how this chamber votes on that amendment, because it really goes to the heart of the role of government. It goes to whether or not this government will continue to treat taxpayer dollars as corporate largesse as they did in last night's budget when they dished out $62 billion in just the coming financial year in handouts for big corporates and mining billionaires and in, I might add, an increase in the fossil fuel subsidies—yet more new money to prop up fossil fuels in a climate emergency. This budget is completely blind to the climate crisis that we're in. It pays out for the government's corporate donor mates and it's propping up unsustainable industries that are wrecking the economy, damaging nature and threatening the future of our community. So, how the government, in particular, votes on this amendment will be very interesting for all to see. Big corporates who are making huge profits should not have been given JobKeeper in the first place. There should have been parameters placed saying that, if you were making massive profits and paying executive bonuses, you didn't need taxpayer support. They, not people who drive for Uber to try to make ends meet, should be required to pay it back. The contrast couldn't be more distinct. I note that, if we were to get the money paid back by those billionaires and big corporations for the JobSeeker that they received even though it turns out they didn't need it, it would be about $1 billion, which is about the same amount as was cut from universities last night. So much for JobKeeper. Of course, universities weren't eligible to get the support that they deserved. They were already copping a big walloping from not having as many international students contributing to their coffers, and then they weren't eligible for JobKeeper. They have last so many jobs already. If billionaires like Gerry Harvey were required to pay back the unethical amounts that they received through JobKeeper when they didn't need it, we could keep some jobs in the tertiary sector. There's a nice synergy there in those figures. That is just one suggestion. So many other good things could be done with that billion-odd dollars that could be recouped from big corporates and mining billionaires who didn't need the help then and sure don't need the help now. They didn't need the help last night when they got an extra $62 billion in handouts. This government delivers once again for its big corporate political donor mates. It's an insult that those that already have more than enough means are getting yet more help from this government when we saw last night nothing for social housing in the budget and a 10 per cent cut to university funding. And still wages will be declining in real terms. This government, despite crowing about job creation, glosses over the fact that you can be considered to be in employment if you've got one hour of work. So it's all smoke and mirrors again with this government, in a pre-election budget last night where it's clearly trying to buy support and buy back the trust of the Australian people. But, frankly, I think they have lost it. I cannot wait for the day they lose government, and I'm sure so many other Australians feel the same. Corporate Australia got largesse from the taxpayer funded schemes like JobKeeper. That scheme helped to keep a lot of people in work; that's why we supported it. But, where companies used that taxpayer money to subsidise their own profits and to subsidise executive bonuses, what a waste of public money! When this government made it so hard for people who needed support to get it and made so many people ineligible for JobKeeper, it is unconscionable that it allowed big companies to rip off the Australian taxpayer by getting support that they did not need. The least the government could do would be to get those companies to pay it back, and that's why our amendment on sheet 1279 requires exactly that. Those big companies should not have profiteered off the taxpayer in the first place. We are now in a position to fix that. We could use that money to actually keep jobs in sectors that had funding cuts last night, like the tertiary sector. The university sector has already lost so many jobs. It could do with some more support. It could do with vastly more support. This could be a first down payment. So we urge the government and the opposition to look favourably on this amendment and to require those big corporates to pay back the money that they didn't need. We are so glad that JobKeeper worked to keep so many people in jobs. That's why we voted for it. But it was misused by those enormous corporations, who then paid themselves record profits and record executive bonuses. It makes the Australian public sick. We can fix this, and that's exactly what the government should do today in voting on our amendment. 09:51 Senator CAROL BROWN F49 Tasmania Well, yesterday may have been budget day, but I must say it felt more like groundhog day, because this particular show, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, is now in its eighth year and, sadly, the acts are getting a little tired; the lines are starting to wear pretty thin. We may have had a revolving door of treasurers and prime ministers, but the song sheet hasn't changed: talk, talk, talk and promise, promise, promise, showing an announcement over here and a few dollars over there, with commitments made and promises dealt up. But where is the delivery? Where are the lasting legacies of achievements left behind, for all of the glitz and glamour? After eight years, is there anything concrete to show after the curtain comes down? Sadly, in this space, this government has a pretty consistent track record. It's a well-worn path they've trodden for the past eight years: overpromise and underdeliver. They like to make big, flashy, showy announcements, but, when it comes to the follow-through, they're nowhere to be seen. In fact, they like announcing things so much they don't do it just once. They don't make an announcement or a commitment just once. No, they do it once, they do it twice and they do it again and again, over and over—the same announcement of the same commitment for the same project, year in, year out, again and again. But do they actually deliver on their commitments? No. With each reheated reannouncement, the project time lines get pushed further out and the dollars are pushed further into the out years—so far out, in fact, that it's basically a permanent commitment to the never-never. The reality is that, when it comes to infrastructure announcements in particular, this government and this Prime Minister simply can't be believed, because, no matter what allocation of funds is provided in these and other bills, and no matter what the Treasury briefs out in the newspaper drops, we know they will fail on delivery. That truth is available for everyone to see in black and white in the budget papers and MYEFO. What we can see from those documents is that the Morrison government averages an infrastructure underspend of $1.2 billion a year. In fact, in the last financial year, they underspent on their promises by $1.7 billion. So forgive me for showing some scepticism when the government decided to drop their road funding commitments to Tasmania's local papers at start of the week. The headline looked good. It sounded like the government were doing something, but scratch the surface ever so slightly and you find the truth: another prebudget infrastructure nonannouncement by the Morrison Liberal government following a now familiar pattern after eight years of this government—promise big, fail to deliver. In fact, in a remarkably brazen attempt to pretend they were actually delivering for Tasmania, the Morrison Liberal government have reheated and re-announced commitments to roads in Tasmania that they made in their first term in office. They've certainly got some gumption, because they actually attempt to pass off their failure to deliver after eight years in office as a brand-new promise, backed in with new money. But it's all a mirage—a fraud, in fact—perpetrated on the people of my home state by a Prime Minister best known for his marketing spin. Talk, talk, talk is all we ever get from Mr Morrison. That's all with ever hear from the Prime Minister, but what has he actually delivered for Tasmania? Have we seen the progress on the Bridgewater Bridge? What about the much-hyped new bridge across the Tamar? Remember that? What about the River Derwent ferry service, the Hobart underground bus mall, the fix for the Cooee Crawl and the much-promised and greatly needed fix for notorious sections of the Bass Highway from Marrawah to Wynyard and all the way to Launceston? What's happening to the transit corridor through Hobart's northern suburbs? Has a single cent been spent from the Urban Congestion Fund to tackle Hobart's worsening gridlock? No. Where is the extra lane on the Southern Outlet? They finally dug a hole at the Hobart Airport roundabout, a project that was supposed to be finished by now. Haven't they stuffed that up? What a bungle. Speaking of bungles, they ripped money out of Tasmania's rail freight funding to pay for the Burnie Port shiploader, and even then they didn't fund it properly. They have now had to tip more in because they stuffed it up the first time, yet astonishingly they have once again tried to pass that stuff up off as a new commitment for Burnie—extraordinary! People on Tasmania's north-west coast will believe it when they see it, because all we ever get from this government and from this Prime Minister is talk, talk, talk. That's all we hear. The Cradle Mountain master plan—they make a promise and then it's delayed—is another stuff-up. They can't even pretend to make a much-needed commitment towards the Arthur Highway or the Tasman Highway from Sorell to Scottsdale. For some reason, the Tasman Peninsula and the east coast of Tasmania have fallen off the map in the eyes of the Morrison Liberal government. Yes, Mr Morrison and his government like to talk a big infrastructure game, but when you look at the detail their promises are nothing more than old announcements reheated like a dodgy chicken burger that's been sitting in the bain-marie. There's no reason to think announcements made last night or briefed out in days gone by will be any different to the countless others that have fallen by the wayside. What Tasmanians need is real infrastructure delivery that boosts productivity, reduces congestion and improves safety across our road network. That isn't what we're getting from the Morrison government, but it would be delivered by Labor. Labor are pleased the economy is recovering from COVID, but we need to ask: how good could Australia's recovery be? The economic situation we find ourselves in is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Australians, and we don't want to miss a single opportunity. That's why we can't afford more of the repeated failures of this government. Australians need government to seize the day, make bold decisions and then deliver on them. That's why an Albanese Labor government would deliver national reconstruction that squarely focuses on jobs—not just any jobs but good, secure jobs that working families can rely on, underpinned by fair-paying conditions and supported by better and cheaper childcare that working families can depend on. An Albanese Labor government would make commitments that we'd actually deliver on. We'd announce, and then we'd follow through—a concept that seems quite alien to the Morrison Liberal government—because we want Australia to be a country that makes things and supports local jobs, including in manufacturing. Under an Albanese Labor government, nobody will be held back; nobody will be left behind. Under an Albanese Labor government, budget day will be a day when Australians can finally look to their government to deliver on their promises—not like this government and their budgets, which are just all talk, talk, talk and no delivery. 10:00 Senator SIEWERT e5z Western Australia I rise to make a contribution to this discussion on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. As expected, last night's budget included some money for our domestic vaccine rollout, including money for workforce, administration, monitoring, reporting, distribution, logistics, storage and communication. While this is welcome, we are far from the appropriate approach when we deal with both vaccines and quarantines here in this country and also in our global contribution. The government has missed a significant opportunity to right its wrongs and the wrongs of a number of other nations around the world. We should be showing our neighbours that we are here to help and that we are supportive during this pandemic. Last year the government committed to dedicated funding for the Covax Facility. Covax is an important agreement that aims to distribute vaccines to those who need it most. It represents a landmark agreement between nations, where governments from every continent have chosen to work together to ensure vaccines are available to the most vulnerable everywhere—at least, that's the theory. This year the government has refused to commit any additional funds to Covax in the budget. Australia's lack of additional funding for Covax was a serious missed opportunity and sends the wrong message to those in desperate need of vaccines. Across the world, we are seeing big pharma and wealthy nations engage in what's been termed as a vaccine apartheid. While one in four citizens of rich countries have received a vaccine, just one in 500 in the poorer nations around the globe have. We've already seen big pharma pay out $26 billion in dividends and stock buybacks to their shareholders. This would have been enough to vaccinate 1.3 billion people. It's extremely important that we ensure that the lower GDP countries around the world are vaccinated not only because that is the right thing to do but also—and I will keep repeating this—because nobody is safe until everybody is safe. This is an investment in people, because we should be doing it. But, if you want to look at it from a selfish point of view, it's also making sure that Australians are protected, because it is absolutely essential that everybody is vaccinated. If we just go down the vaccine apartheid approach, where the wealthier nations can all get vaccinated, those in the lower GDP countries who aren't vaccinated will foster the development of further strains of the virus. What does that mean? It means the vaccines have to catch up and we are potentially not protected from some of those variants that are generated, perpetuating the need to keep our borders closed and perpetuating the pandemic. Any way you look at it, it's the right thing to do. We're extremely disappointed to see there have been zero commitments by the government to support a TRIPS waiver. Since last year, over 100 low- and middle-income nations have been calling on the World Health Organization to waive intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines and products. Last week we saw President Biden show leadership by announcing the support of the United States for the waiver. The Morrison government should be following suit and should be contributing to the global discussion and supporting the waiver of intellectual property rights on COVID vaccines to ensure that we enable an equal distribution of the vaccines. We've also, of course, seen the flawed domestic vaccine rollout. We have seen nothing allocated by the government, and the federal government refuses to acknowledge that it has a key role in quarantine in this country. It continues to push it off to the states and territories. There is the investment in Howard Springs. I have to say, of course, that expanding that investment is welcome, but we can't just rely on that facility. We need facilities in other states. It is a federal responsibility. Reach out the hand, work with the states and territories and ensure that we have quarantine facilities, because we are going to need quarantine facilities in this country for the foreseeable future. It is absolutely essential that we have top-quality quarantine facilities that actually meet the best standards—that we finally truly address the issue of aerosol contamination and spread. Although some of the words are now being mouthed, the actions aren't being taken. We still don't have the guidelines fixed, we still don't have a national standard to deal with ventilation, and we know that we don't have all of the states and territories making sure that their hotel quarantine facilities are up to date. We still have states and territories, my own state being one of them, where positive COVID cases are actually in the same facility—such as a hotel—as those who are, fortunately, negative. These are the sorts of things we need to sort out in this country. Where is the federal government's leadership? Nowhere. We need to get serious about ensuring we have these facilities so we can bring home the tens of thousands of Australians who are still overseas—in particular, of course, those who are at high risk. I refer to the current situation going on in India, which I did briefly talk about in the Senate yesterday. This is not the appropriate way to be supporting Australians overseas. We need to make sure that we are putting on enough flights to enable those in India in particular—9,500 people, of whom 950 are vulnerable—to return home. At the moment the government has only committed to bringing 450 home, because there are only three committed flights, with a possibility of another three, which may then ensure that at some stage by June we get all of those vulnerable people home—the 950. But what about the rest of those Australians and permanent residents who are currently facing the dire situation in India? We're also, of course, seeing the government not being transparent about vaccine doses and the deals that it's signing. The health department complain that we've recently had them in front of the COVID committee four times in as many weeks. Well, one of the reasons that we have to have them there is that they don't fully answer the questions, they don't fully answer the questions on notice and they hide behind cabinet-in-confidence. Another reason is that we keep seeing problems with the vaccine rollout, for example. On Friday, we had to have a hearing to address the issues with India. The government only recognised when a question was asked that there are 173 unaccompanied Australian minors in India. So my question to the government is: when would you ever have paid attention to that if it were not for the COVID committee asking those questions? So, yes, as far as this member of the committee is concerned, we will keep asking departments, particularly the health department, to come and answer questions so that Australians get answers about the botched rollout of the vaccines. We still haven't had a satisfactory answer to why we haven't signed an agreement with Moderna, for example. Now Australians have to wait for more Pfizer doses to become available. Although there's been a further deal signed for more doses, we're not getting them until towards the end of the year—hence the hope that we will be able to get all Australians vaccinated by the end of this year. Government say they have provision for the purchase of additional vaccine doses, including mRNA vaccines, but there are zero details about how much funding has been set aside or, in fact, when this might happen. I'm so sick of the oblique approach to vaccines which we are facing. It is essential that the public know what is going on. It is essential that there be transparency and accountability on this issue. We're not seeing a serious commitment by the government to a publicly owned mRNA facility in this country. MRNA vaccines and other mRNA drugs are the way of the future. An mRNA manufacturing facility, a publicly owned manufacturing facility—so that we are not at the whim of big pharma, and that's important as well—is an investment not only in this pandemic but in the future, because mRNA is going to be the leading edge of drug development into the future. The market can't guarantee us access to this revolutionary technology. We need a publicly owned facility. There is leading-edge research being done on mRNA vaccines and technologies around this country. Yes, it's happening globally, but we have some leaders here in this country as well. What is the government doing about negotiations with AusBiotech to ensure that we have a publicly owned facility here that is leading edge and able to do its own research and manufacture those vaccines here? I hope the government doesn't make the same mistakes but looks towards creating this and rethinks working with the private sector—yes, work with the private sector, but make sure we have a publicly owned facility so Australians and the government have control of the manufacture of and the decision-making on those vaccines and other drugs, going forward. We need long-term thinking here. We are in this for the long haul. We've already heard that the borders probably aren't going to be open until sometime next year. That's what the experts have been saying all along, because this isn't over. We are already seeing more variants. The vaccines are all going to have to be developed to address those variants into the future. The pandemic and its effects are not going away any time soon. The Treasurer has acknowledged that. We need to be doing better in how we are responding in terms of vaccines, manufacturing here, openness and transparency and accepting the science of this pandemic. And that's one of the things I'm concerned about—we aren't, and aerosol transmission is a perfect example of that. We've still got varying standards around the country. We still do not have best practice in some places. Government have made various announcements about what they're going to do—for example, testing of passengers coming to Australia through third countries. That still isn't happening. When it is going to happen? If that's not happening—and other sorts of things they're putting in place—once they start the repatriation flights from India, can they guarantee us that they have that sussed so that those flights do start on time and the best possible practice is in place? If they haven't started elsewhere, they need to guarantee that they are going to be doing it for those Indian flights so that people can come home when this stupid ban ends—which should be ended now. Those Australians and other people coming home from India need to be assured that those things are all in place so they are safe and people in Australia are safe. We have a long way to go with this pandemic. The government needs to fully acknowledge that and get these things right. 10:15 Senator McDONALD 123072 Queensland I rise to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2020-2021 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. I cannot begin to tell you how proud I am to be a part of a government that continues to deliver for regional, rural and remote Australia. It is in these parts of the country that we grow food and fibre, and mine the resources that build schools, hospitals, roads and inner-city places. Most importantly, it is an amazing place to raise your family—whether it's the sense of community or just living under the brilliant stars of the southern sky. The investment in regional, rural and remote Australia is critical to the wellbeing of this nation more broadly. Among a number of other things, appropriation bills Nos 3 and 4 contribute to the Morrison-McCormack government's heavy investment into rural and regional Australia. I'd like to touch on a few of the things I am most excited about that have made the most significant change to our communities. The first one is the Building Better Regions Fund, an additional round of new funding of $200 million. In round 5, $100 million was allocated to tourism related infrastructure, while maintaining an additional $100 million for broader community infrastructure and investment, bringing the total investment in this program to $1 billion from 2017-18 to 2023-24. The BBRF supports regional and remote communities by funding investment-ready infrastructure projects that create jobs, that drive economic growth. It funds new or expanded events, strategic regional plans or leadership and capability-strengthening activities that provide economic and social benefits to these regions. Local governments and incorporated not-for-profit organisations are eligible to apply. In Queensland we have the Qantas Founders Museum and the Stockman's Hall of Fame in Longreach and the Australian Age of Dinosaurs in Winton. Longreach and Winton are just two examples of communities that have built world's best practice, world's best assets. If you haven't been to Longreach or Winton to see those incredible exhibits then you have missed out on something. I urge you to hire a car or book a plane and get out there. Whatever way you can get there, get there. The next one is the Regional Recovery Partnerships—$100 million of new funding over two years from 2020 to 2021. The partnerships will coordinate investment with other levels of government to support recovery and growth in 10 regions: the Snowy Mountains, Hunter and Newcastle and Parkes regions in New South Wales; Cairns and Tropical North Queensland, Gladstone and the Mackay-Isaac-Whitsunday regions in Queensland; the Gippsland region in Victoria; Kangaroo Island in South Australia; the south-west region of Western Australia; and all of Tasmania. The partnerships seek to back in existing regional plans by developing targeted initiatives with contributions from all levels of government to deliver jobs, economic recovery and economic diversification. For the Stronger Communities Program there is $22.7 million in new funding in round 6. The SCP provides funding of up to $150,000 in each of the 151 federal electorates. Members of the House of Representatives will continue to use their roles to identify key locally driven projects, with available funding of between $2,500 and $20,000 for eligible projects. In recognition of the ongoing impacts of the COVID pandemic on communities, applications submitted in round 6 by all incorporated not-for-profit organisations and/or incorporated trustees applying on behalf of a trust will be exempt from the normal 50 per cent co-funding requirement and will be able to apply for funding of up to 100 per cent of their eligible project costs. This is extraordinarily significant because we are talking about communities where the councils are required to provide key infrastructure and often have a very small ratepayer base to develop that from. The removal of the 50 per cent co-contribution at this time is an incredible acknowledgement of their challenges. In Queensland, differently to other states, shire councils have to provide things like sewerage. This is not a requirement in other states, and it means that in small and very remote communities, where there might be as few as 350 ratepayers across a vast area, the councils are required to maintain roads, sewerage and other amenities—pools, for example—that make such a difference to the lifestyle and livability of these remote and regional towns. Guaranteeing Medicare: the Rural Health Multidisciplinary Training Program infrastructure will receive $50.3 million in additional funding. The existing network of 16 university departments of rural health, which are funded under the RHMT Program, will be expanded. These networks provide training to students across a range of health disciplines, including nursing and allied health, and offer innovative learning opportunities in settings such as aged care, disability, rehabilitation services, child care, schools and community facilities as well as Aboriginal community controlled health services. This package provides for capital works as well as recurring funding. The capital works programs invest funding through purchases of housing for student accommodation and through building works to add teaching facilities to aged-care services. And, of course, last night we heard the Treasurer talk about additional commitments to supporting aged care across the nation. That's a really important announcement, because we know that, in regional communities, if there is not an aged-care facility then families end up moving away from those towns. Aged care is an important part for rural communities. I could go on all day about the incredible announcements under so many of these packages. The Mobile Black Spot Program, the Building Strong, Resilient Regional Leaders initiative, the Recovery for Regional Tourism program—these are all incredibly important projects that go, as I said, towards the government's agenda of investing in the regions; investing in rural and regional communities; and, most importantly from my point of view, being a senator based in Townsville, investing in the northern Australian agenda. There have been a number of commitments that continue to build on the government's commitment to northern Australia, and I know that those commitments will be paid back to the Australian people, to Australian taxpayers, in spades. Examples are irrigation and agriculture projects, and mining projects that are facilitated by things like CopperString 2.0, a transmission line that will provide a connection for renewable projects as well as existing power infrastructure, allowing us to be connected in a reliable way and reducing electricity costs, one of the things that really cripple business in northern Australia. In addition to those kinds of projects, the government has made financial commitments to local roads and community infrastructure. Local governments in Queensland benefited from the additional $202.4 million from January this year, 2021. These are critical projects, as I have already touched on, because local government is—dare I say it—the most important level of government in this nation, the one that is closest to communities and understands the real challenges of living in rural, regional and remote parts of Australia. Most exciting, particularly for those of us who live in the far north, is the commitment to water projects. Within Queensland itself, the Australian government has committed more than $516 million to 28 water infrastructure projects through the $3.5 billion National Water Infrastructure Development Fund. The investments include $176 million to build the $352 million dollar Rookwood Weir project, $42 million to build the $84 Emu Swamp Dam and $11.6 million to modernise the $28 million Mareeba-Dimbulah Water Supply Scheme, which provides more than 8,000 megalitres in new water for irrigators, creates more than 260 jobs and boosts the value of production annually by $20 million. In that region, the incredible agricultural blossoming that's happened since the construction of the dam in that region now measures around half a billion dollars of produce each year. If you haven't been to Mareeba, I encourage you to get there. Visit the deli that showcases regional produce. It is a wonderful community that highlights a diverse range of peoples that came to this country during the development of that region. There is $790,000 towards the $1.58 million Warwick recycled water project, which supports drought resilience by supplying recycled water for primary producers. Importantly, in the north there has also been $30 million to support the construction of the Big Rocks Weir. This is only a relatively small water project. It's 10,000 megalitres, but it will change the community of Charters Towers because it provides not only security for town water supply but also additional irrigation water for the irrigators in that region. Sadly, despite the community supporting this project for at least 30 years, despite the council being a proponent, despite the urgent need for commitment to water security for that town, unfortunately, the Queensland government has now called it in to the Coordinator-General, and we will continue to play politics with a water project that is so small in the scheme of things but so important to town security for water supply that it really beggars belief that we should be still kicking this project around. There's $180 million to support the construction of the Hughenden irrigation scheme, including $10 million provided for the completion of a detailed business case for the project. In addition, there's been $75 million to support the Queensland government, which is responsible for building these water projects. For any senators who don't understand the separation of power for water resource plans and water allocations, under the Constitution those are the states' responsibility to deliver. The federal government has delivered 22 feasibility studies, including $24 million for the Hells Gates Dam Project, which includes the Big Rocks Weir that I already spoke about, and $10 million each for the Urannah Dam and the Lakeland irrigation area business case projects. These projects are critical because in the north part of Australia we receive metres of rain each year—rain that is not captured or managed and that would allow us to develop the sorts of crops in agricultural precincts where Australia is known as leading the world: the trial crops that have been run by the CSIRO and the departments in new cropping varieties, including existing crops such as cotton, which now uses less and less water and less and less pesticide and fertiliser. It is recognised now as a fibre that is fully traceable and the product that we should be wearing as a completely renewable product. In North Queensland we have the opportunity to grow vast amounts of this product in both dry land and areas like Etta Plains around Julia Creek or further north, up around Mount Garnet and in that region. In Georgetown recently, at the terrific forum organised by the Etheridge Shire Council and Mayor Barry Hughes, there was a great discussion of CSIRO's work, also funded by the federal government, that had demonstrated the availability of suitable water, land and sunshine, and of course the demand for our products that are recognised as world's best. This is an opportunity for Queensland and North Queensland to be developing, because we know that in these parts of Australia, regional, rural and remote, we grow the food and fibre and we dig out the resources, but, most importantly, we have innovative, exciting communities that are a great place to raise a family and to live. A government senator interjecting— 10:30 Senator AYRES 16913 New South Wales I'm delighted to get a cheer from the other side. It was obviously directed towards me, and I'll probably start to get used to it after a while. I should thank the last speaker for her contribution. It's only the modern National Party, really, that comes in here—after spending years apologising for projects that are announced with enormous buckets of money for dams that are never built, having spent years apologising for this hoax that's perpetrated on regional communities—at every budget breathlessly announcing more promises for more water infrastructure, promises that will never be kept. The announcement is for $560 million. Does anybody on earth really believe that the Morrison government, having made another announcement about another series of dam infrastructure projects, will ever build one? I don't want to spend too much time on the Treasurer's performance last night, but it was one of the most lacklustre ones. You would think that a government that was announcing this much spending would really have their heart in it. I can see that the Treasurer and the Prime Minister have no difficulty executing this enormous political backflip, after having spent more than a decade telling the Australian community that debt and deficit were a crisis. As bold as brass, they're in the joint next door saying there's no problem. We're a trillion dollars in debt, with nothing to show for it—no reform, no infrastructure, no fixes to the big issues that face the Australian community—but here they are. It goes to Gough Whitlam's maxim that politics for the tories is like the art of rowing: you look in one direction but go in the other. That's okay for the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. It's not okay for the coalition backbench. Every time you turn a corner, you can hear a group of coalition backbenchers finding this subterfuge, this deception, this hypocrisy, very difficult to swallow. It was an absolute snoozefest last night. The only thing that kept me awake during the Treasurer's performance was the hypocrisy. It made me reflect upon last year's budget, a budget that was similarly aimless. Good elements of the budget were the government committing to the proposals that Labor had made through the course of the year, particularly around the JobKeeper and JobSeeker increases that were Labor proposals. I remember, vividly, the former leader, in here, scoffing at Labor's proposals for wage subsidies to keep workers connected with their employers. Three weeks later, they were doing it. What was the centrepiece, though, of the October budget? It was JobMaker. Does anybody remember the Treasurer, in his contribution last night, spruiking the achievements of the centrepiece of the 2020-21 budget, JobMaker? I don't think he will. The Treasurer and the Prime Minister promised Australians that 450,000 new jobs would be the product of that scheme. At the back end of a recession, a commitment to produce 450,000 jobs—more jobs than was required out of the Working Nation scheme at the back end of the recession in the 1990s—was a grand promise that should have filled regional communities full of hope for the jobs that were to come. What was delivered out of that promise? Well, in March, 609 jobs. By the time we get to this week, just around about 1,100 jobs out of 450,000 jobs—0.02 per cent. A 450,000 job promise; 0.02 per cent delivery. It's become the maxim that will define this miserable government: all promise and no delivery, all about the announcements and the marketing and the spin and never about the delivery for Australian households and Australian families. And where is it? Where is the JobMaker program in this year's budget? It's not up the front. It's in page 292 of the Regional Ministerial Budget Statement, literally four pages towards the end. That is political cowardice, and it will define this government. The budget is just a political budget of course. It's absolutely not designed to fix the structural problems that the Australian community faces. After eight long years of chaos and self-interest, complacency and bungling and failure, what we have from this government is a political budget that is designed to paper over the cracks of eight years of failure. It is a shameless attempt at a political fix. It's not the genuine reform that we need. What do we see this week? It's a very welcome development that sections of the Australian economy have bounced back faster than any economist or any commentator predicted. It's good to see. While we do see some shopping strips where shops are closed, where some sectors of the economy that need the government's support aren't getting it, it is welcome to see in aggregate terms some improvement. What you see from the Morrison government is taking credit for the achievement of others. It's as if welcome news has got anything to do with what this government's done, with any reform that the government's conducted, with any attempt to address the underlying structural issues. No. Where there have been achievements, they have been achievements of the Australian people. Where there has been good work on the pandemic, good work on public health, it has been the work of the state governments—much of it undermined, much of it criticised, much of it politicised by those opposite, none more so than by the Prime Minister, who in his callous disregard for the public interest, poured scorn on the efforts of premiers to try and get control of the quarantine failures of the government. Is there anything in this budget about quarantine? Nope. Still the government pushes away responsibility for quarantine and border control. Bystanders usually don't get in the way, but somehow this government manages to be both bystander and get in the road and subsequently take credit for whenever it is that things go well. Beyond the hype and the headlines, there is very little in this budget for ordinary Australians. Australians on modest incomes will get a modest tax cut, but they will get a tax hike after the election. There is nothing in this budget for families who've been held back by the Morrison government's failure to have a strategy on wages. In fact, baked in to the heart of this budget is an assumption that real wages will continue to be held back, and that means for many households real wages and household incomes will go backwards. While house prices rise and rents rise, wages for most Australians will continue to fall, and there is no strategy in this budget to deal with housing affordability and housing availability. There is no strategy to deal with falling wages and to deal with wage growth. That is the problem that is at the heart of this budget: it is all about the politics and not what's going to have an impact on the lives of ordinary Australians. There's no plan on wage growth. The previous Leader of the Government in the Senate, former Senator Cormann, said that falling wages, a brake on wages growth, was a design feature of this government's approach to wages. There is no strategy in this budget to fix that problem. You can see it when you look at the government's halfway-house approach to aged care and child care. You would think that the impact of a royal commission interim report entitled Neglect would cause those opposite to reflect on the impact of the budget cuts to aged care that they delivered in 2014, which crippled the capacity of the aged-care sector to deliver decent care to elderly Australians. These people have worked for decades in the Australian economy. They have held the country up. They have contributed, and we owe it to them to make sure that they spend their final years in care in comfort and dignity. You would think that a report entitled Neglect could wake up even the miserable hearts of those opposite, causing them to reflect a little bit. What do we see? We see a halfway house on aged care. There's nothing in terms of wages for aged-care workers. You can fund all the training for aged-care workers that you want, but until you lift the wages of aged-care workers, until you improve their position in the labour market, you won't see the number of Australians working in aged care that you need to see. You can fund all the packages that you want, but you won't see the arrival of skilled workers committed to the care of elderly Australians. You won't see people go to those jobs to be paid 20 bucks an hour. This is true of child care too. Last year, these characters opposite poured scorn on Anthony Albanese's commitment to delivering universal child care. We said, correctly, that providing universal child care was an important commitment for labour force participation, particularly for women, although child care is not just about women; it is about young men and about the welfare of children as well. We said that it was a productivity initiative. This government poured scorn on both the proposal and those two claims. What did we see yesterday? Mr Frydenberg was out there talking about productivity and labour force participation, but with a scheme that will help less than 25 per cent of the families that the Albanese Labor proposal would help. There's nothing in terms of meaningful tax reform—no energy policy, no improvement. Energy prices have gone up almost every year of the term of this aimless government. There have been 21 different energy policy frameworks and no security for investment in cheap energy for the grid. Affordable housing: there is no plan for housing and homelessness. There is an explosion in regional New South Wales, particularly in big towns such as Dubbo, Tamworth, Nowra, Albury and Wagga, of people sleeping rough. Families with young kids in the Hunter Valley are sleeping in tents. They have been forced out because the cost of rental housing continues to rise while household income continues to fall. Purchasing housing is out of reach for most ordinary Australians. What is there in the budget? There's nothing really, except a sound grab, a cruel hoax, that says, 'We're going to fund 10,000 single parents who can get a housing deposit of two per cent.' I don't believe them. I don't believe that this government will ever deliver on that meagre, tiny promise. It is a cruel hoax. It won't touch the sides of the housing affordability problem that is out there. What are we seeing in infrastructure? Big announcements that are actually big cuts. There's a $3.3 billion cut to infrastructure spending in the fine print of the budget papers. Why is that? Why is there such a big gap between what the government says it will do and what it does do? People are learning there is no relationship between what the Prime Minister says and what actually happens—no relationship between what the Prime Minister announces and whether, in the real world, anything actually happens. That's what's going define this budget as much as it defines this government. 10:45 Senator SHELDON 168275 New South Wales They're the masters of marketing spin. They'd have you believe that the federal budget is a story about the Australian economy making a comeback. The Treasurer would have you believe that, through them spending $100 billion and plunging the Australian economy into a record trillion dollars of debt, the years of economic mismanagement by successive Liberal governments are behind us. But, if you read the fine print of the Morrison government's budget—the Ts and Cs—you see that real wages for Australian workers are forecast to decline in 2021, in 2022, in 2023 and in 2024. That means that the amount of money that Australian workers will take home this year and in the next three years, accounting for inflation, will go down. The middle class in this country will start to shrink. Our incomes will shrink along with it. This is not a new phenomenon for the Morrison government. For five consecutive years before the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia suffered through record-low wage growth. Under this government, Australians have suffered through years of stagnant wages, and now they'll have to suffer through years of wage cuts. What sort of economic recovery is that? The Morrison government's only plan for years of stagnating or declining wages is to rack up record debt. Even then, the Morrison government is serving up to Australian workers—to the Australian middle class—a wage cut. Do not believe the Prime Minister's spin that this wage cut for Australian workers is as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, because the Prime Minister has for years, going back to his time as Treasurer, been delivering record-low wages growth for Australians. We know why this is happening and we also know how to fix it, but the Morrison government is too ideologically blind to do what must be done. Years and years of stagnant or declining wages are the direct outcome of years and years of attacks on unions, years and years of attacks on workers' rights to come together and collectively bargain for their wages, years and years of attacks on the ability of unions to inspect books and expose wage and super theft, years and years of inaction on the rampant exploitation of migrant workers, and, of course, years and years of inaction on sham contracting and the exploitation of gig workers, casual workers and labour hire workers. Some of these people are getting paid as little as $6 an hour, undercutting what used to be good, fair-paying and often unionised jobs—middle-class jobs. Of course, this government has no plan to deal with those inherent problems for hardworking Australians. For eight years Liberal governments have done nothing about these issues. Now, at the eleventh hour, with a trillion dollars of debt the Morrison government is hoping it can indiscriminately throw money around and fix them. The budget forecast says it all. After years and years of stagnant or declining wages, the Morrison government has spent $100 billion only to deliver more years of declining wages. Mr Acting Deputy President, you don't have to take my word for what the government's strategy and ideology are. The former Minister for Finance Senator Cormann himself said that low wage growth is 'a deliberate design feature of our economic architecture'. Low wages are the Morrison government's plan for this economy. They have been for years; Minister Cormann said it himself. And we know now that low wages will be the plan for years to come. The problem the Morrison government is now running into is that Australian workers are not being paid fairly. When Australian workers have little money in their pockets and when the Australian middle class is shrinking, it means that middle-class Australians do not have the spare money to spend. When the Australian middle class has no money to spend, then there is no money there to stimulate the economy. This is the story of the sorry situation that the Morrison government now finds itself in. It can spend $100 billion of taxpayers' money and the economy remains a disaster. So what do the Australian middle class get in return for another four years of stagnant and declining wages? They get a one-off tax cut to see the Morrison government through an election and then a tax hike on top of their wage cut. The only real tax cut in this budget that isn't just a piece of cynical pre-election marketing is a tax cut to the super wealthy. Unlike the Australian middle class, the super wealthy get a permanent tax cut. That makes it clear who the Morrison government is really looking out for. If you believe the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, aged care is supposedly a big winner in this budget. Let's look at the fine print and see what the real story is. The budget is supposed to be a response to the aged care royal commission, but, if you had to rate their response, it would be a pitiful two or three out of 10 at the most. Why do I say that? I say that for a very clear reason: the royal commission recommended very clearly that, to provide the care that older Australians need and deserve, the sector needs to have additional funding of $10 billion a year and a massive overhaul of workforce pay and conditions. I have been speaking to aged-care workers this morning and hearing about the devastating pressures that are on their employment—work that is directly procured and paid for by this government with no strategy or plan for that workforce that goes beyond minimal numbers. Let's just make this point, which one of the workers made very clearly to me only an hour ago, about the deficient numbers that have been talked about in terms of training: when you come into an industry that pays only $21, then those people just don't stay. So, in actual fact, we're paying for training that's going to be a waste of money because we're actually not going to be able to have the people we train stay in those jobs. When people come and see the sorts of pressures that are in that industry, regardless of their love of care and desire to be in a caring industry, their capacity to raise a family and have a middle-class life is economically impacted by this government's direct ideological strategy of suppressing wages. There is no better example of this than aged care. We've heard the government announce only $3.5 billion a year, which is only one-third of what is needed and only one-third of what the royal commission into aged care said was needed. To this, there is no meaningful commitment to the pay and conditions of the carers who literally are the care in the sector. The heart of the aged-care sector is not the buildings and it's not the operating companies. There is no care without the workers. There was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lift up the workers who do the most difficult, stressful, intimate and essential work of looking after older Australians, and this government once again has failed. Let's look at what this budget has to offer to two critical Australian industries: aviation and tourism. Essentially nothing. Buried in those budget assumptions is the government's cataclysmic vaccine rollout failure. That failure means that international borders are assumed to be shut until mid-2022. The Prime Minister had one job. He outsourced quarantine to the states and he abandoned aged care to the ravages of the pandemic, so he literally had one job. That job was to get the vaccine rollout right, and he failed. Now we see the horrific consequences for pilots, flight attendants, engineers, baggage handlers, ground crew, catering staff, security guards and many more at our airports around the country, not to mention the thousands of tourism businesses that rely on international visitors and will struggle to keep their doors open and their workers employed for a few months, let alone until mid-2022. What's particularly disturbing is that the government's own report says mid-2022. They made the assumption that, in October this year, the aviation industry would be back up and flying. There'll be no announcement of new funding until that period. Let's just look at this whole strategy for how, supposedly, international tourism will start to come back. Key industry bodies are saying it will not be until 2023. We've got skilled workers who are being lost from this industry because they've been made redundant by companies that have received billions of taxpayers' dollars from this government, with no obligation to keep those workers connected. Look at Qantas: right in the middle of the pandemic they laid off 2,500 workers who could have been receiving JobKeeper—and not a peep from this government. Well, in fact there was a peep: there was yelling of abuse from those on the opposite side at those 2½ thousand workers whose jobs were outsourced, saying they were just too middle class, that their wages could raise a family, that the companies that had won those contracts were getting paid less and that those middle-class jobs were gone. Well, this government saying the middle class is greedy is outrageous—particularly after they've spent billions of taxpayers' hard-earned dollars on these companies that, along with this government, have so dismally failed this industry. Of course, we're a country that relies heavily on aviation. What we needed was a rescue package for the aviation sector with a focus on secure jobs and skill retention. Instead, we are facing a skills Armageddon in this lifeblood Australian industry. We've seen the contempt that the coalition has for good Australian jobs. They're apparently happy to abandon this industry, these workers and their families. But, when the industry finally reopens, the current, the power, needed for this industry to reopen will be greatly diminished. You can't have an industry that lays off hundreds of pilots. You can't have an industry that lays off engineers for aircraft. You can't have an industry that hasn't done the hours and days required to train people to do the screening at our airports, which is of national security importance. Those people don't just come out of thin air—they need to be trained; they need to be skilled. So the government will be trying to turn the power back on for the aviation industry, and of course there will be no electrons coming through because those people will be out of the industry, as they've been made redundant. This government has failed to have a plan for how the aviation industry can get back into the air. There are so many examples of this government abandoning industry and workers and their families. We saw that with those dnata workers who were so dismally abandoned by this government—many thousands of workers in the food delivery sector of the industry. Quite clearly, if we are going to talk about powering up the skills of our workers then we have to deal with the massive skills shortage we face, as we face a huge exodus from the aviation and tourism industries, with many workers already bleeding out to retail and logistics jobs—some of them even going to rideshare jobs. Of course, they're rideshare jobs that have no minimum standards, as this government says they're too complicated to give. It seems to be okay for other countries to work out how working people in those sectors can have minimum standards; in New York, in Seattle, in California, in the UK, in various countries in Europe and in parts of Asia they have. But, no; it's too complicated to work out how we can actually give decent jobs to Australians. But what happens with this patchwork, particularly in the tourism industry, when these skilled workers go, is that we won't have the power to switch on the industry; we won't have the electricity coming through. What we've seen is a series of patchwork jobs on aviation. And now this government has very little to show for the $4.5 billion in assistance given over the past year. There was devastation for the industry, no future plan, yet we spent $4.5 billion. Despite putting billions into the coffers of the airlines, we have seen 10,000 jobs lost and more outsourcing. If you had a plan to decimate the airline and tourism industry and drain the skills from Australia, you couldn't do much better than what this government has done. If that was the intention, this government has done a great job of it. There is nothing in this budget that will fix that challenge. This budget delivers a wage cut for Australians. This budget fails to deliver for the sectors that Liberal governments have repeatedly abandoned over the last eight years, such as aged care and aviation. Clearly, this budget fails to deliver any sort of economic recovery. 11:00 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia Today I'd like to speak to Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2020-2021. This appropriation bill relates to the allocation of $12.4 million to the Office of the Special Investigator to investigate potential criminal matters identified in Inspector-General Brereton's report in relation to war crimes committed by Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. The matters which will be investigated by the Office of the Special Investigator are of a most serious nature. They go to the alleged commitment of war crimes by our special forces in Afghanistan during our nation's longest conflict, one that is drawing to a close. We have seen, through the work of Justice Brereton, many terrible, terrible crimes come to light. Within that report we've also seen a contention which, from the beginning, we in the Greens have clearly suggested is untenable. The contention is that knowledge of and responsibility for these crimes is limited to ranks below that of officer. When the Brereton report was published to the world, the Greens were very quick to call attention to what seemed to be the ridiculous idea that such activities as were outlined in the report—the war crimes; that is what they are—could have been committed without the knowledge of senior commanding officers. In the subsequent months since the publication of the Brereton report, it has indeed come to pass that the cultural activities referenced in the Brereton report, particularly the illegal imbibing of alcohol and the use of limbs of enemy combatants as trophies and playthings, were indeed something participated in by officers of our ADF. It is vitally important that this investigation is properly funded—that it is given the resources and access needed to undertake its work. What is at stake here is nothing less than justice for those whose lives were ripped apart by the actions of serving members of our ADF, who were participating in a security action in Afghanistan undertaken under the pretence of protecting and supporting the people of Afghanistan. Let's be very clear: the war in Afghanistan was a complete failure. We should never have participated in this military engagement. It was without strategic direction almost from the beginning and it has seen the loss of countless lives and the diversion of resources which would have been spent better either here in Australia or as part of international efforts to address humanitarian issues. We are also as a community now forced to confront, through the revelations of the Brereton report, the reality that individuals who have been elevated to a supreme position of moral leadership within our community may well have committed some of the most heinous war crimes, the most heinous violations of the laws of war, that have been committed not only in this nation but in the history of nations within recent times. We are forced to contend with the possibility that we may be forced to journey soon to the Australian War Memorial, that space which has been elevated to the closest thing we possess that might be considered a secular national shrine, and take down pictures of individuals who are currently honoured there, post their conviction for the commitment of some of these crimes. It may soon fall to this parliament to make decisions about what actions we will take in holding politically responsible the serving defence ministers of the day. Make no mistake: the office of the special investigator will have the responsibility of pursuing individuals for the commitment of these crimes. But that is not where the responsibility must end. It must be held there: individuals that pulled the trigger, individuals that lied, individuals that took actions that covered up—they must be held responsible and so too must the senior levels of command, all the way up to the top. General Burr and General Campbell must be held responsible and so too must the various defence ministers that served over that period of time. All must be held responsible for their part in these crimes. After a long period of existing in the shadows of these instances being spoken about, first as whispers, then as conversations, then as confidential statements, there must now be full transparency. There must be full accountability. These crimes must never, ever be enabled to be perpetrated again. The seriousness of them must never be excused, because they have taken the lives of people, they have shattered families, they have stained our institutions. We must in this moment find the courage to look clearly in the mirror of Afghanistan and study the reflection, lest we accidentally recommit ourselves to the same cycle of violence that led us to this conflict. There are some in this place that are welcoming, propagating, promoting, very dangerous narratives, speaking of the drums of war and, in so doing, beating them themselves. They are claiming false historical analyses, planning career moves, looking for their opportunity, their space, to make a name for themselves as they whip up dangerous rhetoric. What Brereton gives us the opportunity to do—and it is an opportunity that we must grasp—is to look clearly at the reality of war, to look clearly at the crimes that have been committed, to look clearly at the political mistakes that were made, to hold all accountable for their action and inaction and to ensure that these crimes are never, ever committed again. I thank the chamber for its time. 11:10 Senator KIM CARR AW5 Victoria The government's spin machine would have us argue that this was a budget about the future recovery. In fact, if you look at the detail of the budget, you see that it's nothing to do with recovery; it's about the government preparing its election strategy. This is a budget that's really about getting the government through the next election, not about getting the country through the next 10 years. The budget reflects the political judgement of the government trying to overcome a series of problems of its own creation and seeking to persuade the Australian public that it doesn't really need a long-term strategy; what it needs to do is re-elect a group of Liberal politicians. What we have is no strategy, no coherent plan about the investment in science, no investment in research, no investment in the industrial capabilities of the nation and no approach that would lead us to have any confidence about building Australia's industrial capabilities to forge a stronger nation past this pandemic. There is no understanding of what it takes to have the skills, to have the resources and to build sovereign capabilities in manufacturing to secure the future of the nation. This is a budget of wasted opportunities. This is a budget that has no substantial investment in the future of higher education or in science and research and only tweaks at the edges of various little programs to say, 'Oh, we've attended to this problem or to that problem.' There is no attention whatsoever to, for instance, the substantive questions about the 32 per cent drop in research and development by private sector companies, which is reflected in the 2015-16 science tables and which the government itself, through its department of industry, acknowledges as the actual research and development expenditure by business. There is no attempt to deal with the substantive strategic approaches that its own reviews have highlighted—for instance, the 2016 FFF review about what could be done to develop a long-term strategic vision for the nation. If we turn to the universities, we see that this is a government that once again is silent when it comes to our public institutions such as the universities. The small handouts, I acknowledge, are there for the private higher education providers, but for the universities it's a $400 million reduction, a reduction that saw the loss of 17,000 jobs from our universities. And there are some revenue falls in the order of $2 billion. What we're seeing is the government forcing upon the universities no plans in terms of future research funding. At least there were, in the last budget, measures to have temporary support with a billion dollars in research funding; that, of course, is not continued in this budget. What we see is a glimmer of hope, some would say, about the measures such as the half a million dollars a year over two years for a PhD completion for industry placements. Do you know what that amounts to? It amounts to 36 PhDs in a country and economy of this size. Thirty-six PhDs—that is the sort of measure this government claims is its contribution to try to understand how serious our problems are. When we deal with the issues of our science program we note, for instance, that it's where the universities are major contributors to our research effort. They undertake some 35 per cent of all research in Australia, which makes them amongst the highest in the world in terms of the OECD figures. They perform some 43 per cent of all the applied research in this country. They, in fact, provide more research support than the private sector from industry. They provide some 90 per cent of all the discovery—that is, the basic research in this country. Now, it's a pretty fundamental proposition: you cannot have commercialisation of research without the development of basic new discoveries. There can't be commercialisation without new discoveries. But this is a government that seems to have lost sight of that simple proposition. It's a simple proposition that anyone who has any real understanding of the way in which higher education works, how research policy works, how we actually talk about understanding the relationship between the government of this country and such an important sector as our tertiary higher education sector—what it should be doing in the circumstances such as this. You would have thought that with the amount of money this government is throwing around to secure its own political survival it might have been able to develop some understanding in the time. What have they done instead in terms of science innovation? They put Mr Porter in charge. They reckon they can hide him in plain sight to try to deal with the difficulties the government have faced on that front, rather than develop the types of coherent programs that are actually needed to secure the future of our industrial capabilities in this country. I would have thought this was an opportunity that's gone begging, an opportunity where the government should have been able to address the fact that our universities are facing this revenue shortfall of some $2 billion, rising to $3 billion. The government should have faced the fact that 17,300 jobs have been lost, as the universities said would be lost. Rather than reducing the support for universities, one would have thought the government might have paid attention to what the cost is to the university system of such blatant neglect. Professors Frank Larkins and Ian Marshman at the University of Melbourne's Centre for the Study of Higher Education have reviewed the annual reports of Victorian universities, and have tabled that in the state parliament. They've indicated that 7,500 jobs have been lost in the last year in Victorian universities alone. That's a total of 14 per cent of their staff. The cuts have been heavily concentrated amongst casual staff and staff on fixed-term contracts. They're the staff in the lowest incomes. They're the staff with the least protections in employment. Three universities, RMIT, La Trobe and the uni of Victoria, have cut staff in excess of the loss of revenue. Professor Larkins and Professor Marshman expect there will be more job losses. How many more will depend on how long the borders remain closed. We know the situation is very simple: international education is worth an enormous value to this country. We see that in terms of the long-term investment to the universities. We have as a parliament, across the board, said to the universities, 'We're not going to be able to fund you to the extent you need.' This has been on a bipartisan basis since the late eighties. We've said, 'You have to rely on your own sources of income to make up the difference.' Now, because of the pandemic, the situation has arisen that international student numbers have dried up. So the universities are now faced with a situation not of their own making but of a policy decision that this parliament has made. They've been left in a very parlous position. And what do they get in terms of support from this government? Nothing. They get, in fact, reductions. They get hostility. They get abuse. And that's not just in terms of financial support; it's attacking them for their international connections. On the one hand universities have reductions in funding, but on the other hand other government agencies and companies, like ASPI, are able to secure funding with no qualms, no competitive tendering, no arrangements made for a proper assessment, no peer review of their research and no performance appraisals. They produce low-quality, non-peer reviewed research, which, of course, is then used on the front pages of various Murdoch newspapers to run assaults on academics and to run McCarthy smears. Circumstances have arisen where ASPI now has some 35 per cent of its funding from the Department of Defence, 32 per cent from various other federal agencies, and then other funding is provided for various events that it undertakes, all without any questions being asked—and, of course, it gets substantial sums of money from foreign governments. It is allowed then to use that money to attack the universities because of their alleged associations with other governments. This is a tap that's not turned off, but, when it comes to the public universities, we see a very, very different approach indeed. We note the situation in other science agencies. There is minimal support there. There is minimal support for ANSTO and some capital moneys for the CSIRO and for the other science agencies. It is very much at the edges. But, with the cultural institutions, there is money for just about every one of them, except the National Archives. There is not an extra cent there, despite the fact that the National Archives are now faced with a situation where they are clearly in breach of their statutory obligations because they're not able to fund their activities, where extraordinarily significant historic records are under threat. What has the government done in response to this? Nothing. Why? How do they explain that? How can they provide even an elementary explanation of their failure in that regard? What, there are no votes in the National Archives? Or is it just part of our history that we don't mind seeing wasted, demolished, removed? I think it is an extraordinary dereliction of duty. Given the amount of effort that has been put into the Tune review, I find it an amazing proposition that the National Archives are not able to be provided with any support, particularly in the context where every other cultural institution under the Commonwealth's responsibility is able to secure support. But there is nothing for the National Archives. So I say in general terms that this is a government that, frankly, is only interested in securing its future, not securing the future of the nation. This is a government that is not seeking to address these fundamental problems like, as I say, the fact that the percentage of our gross expenditure on R&D, at 1.8 per cent, is roughly half that of our major competitors. We see a situation where the People's Republic of China are increasing their R&D to the point where they will be able to double their efforts within 10 years, but we are languishing behind countries throughout this region because we have no coherent plan, no strategy to deal with what the government says is its interest in building a national capability. We have no strategic plan to be able to develop the manufacturing capabilities of this nation. Surely we should have understood this when we went into the pandemic and we couldn't even get enough face masks made in this country, we couldn't build the ventilators, we couldn't build the elementary and rather simple devices needed to secure the health of this nation. We can't now see anything from the government to demonstrate that they've learned anything from that failure, and yet we've got our competitors around the world grasping the opportunities that present themselves, and they are dealing with these problems in an entirely different way. This government is obsessed with marketing, with electoral fortunes, with ensuring that it is able to overcome political problems by throwing large sums of money at any particular matter. It has no plan, however, for the long-term future of the nation and has no real interest in institutions like our universities, the National Archives or the many other agencies that we require to build that future and secure the capabilities that the nation desperately needs so that we can ensure prosperity for the people of this country and can ensure that we do take our rightful place amongst those international competitors that are clearly moving ahead of us in leaps and bounds. 11:25 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia Firstly, I'd like to thank all of those senators that have contributed to this debate. These additional estimates appropriation bills seek authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. Passage of the bills will ensure continuity of government programs, commencement of new activities agreed by the government since the 2020-21 budget and the Commonwealth's ability to meet obligations for 2020-21 as they fall due. Details of the bills were considered in the additional estimates process. I commend the bills to the Senate. Question agreed to. Original question, as amended, agreed to. Bills read a second time. Third Reading 17 11:27 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I move: That these bills be now read a third time. Senator Steele-John interjecting— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e4t I'm advised, Senator Steele-John, that under 115(4) that they've been examined as part of the estimates process, and so unless there are amendments circulated as part of the committee of the whole, the process we've undertaken is the appropriate process. Question agreed to. Bills read a third time. BUDGET 17 BUDGET Advance to the Finance Minister 17 In Committee 17 11:28 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I move: That the committee approve the advances provided under the annual Appropriation Acts for the year ended 30 June 2020. Question agreed to. Resolution reported; report adopted. BILLS 18 BILLS Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021 18

Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021

Second Reading 18 11:29 Senator McALLISTER 121628 New South Wales I appreciate the opportunity to make a contribution to the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021. I want to start by stating Labor's strong opposition to the government's management of this piece of legislation. This chamber functions on norms and principles, and the rules and processes of this chamber are there not for our advantage but to facilitate the business of the Australian people. That's not the approach taken by the government today. That's all been thrown out the window. This is a government that is willing to play games on a bill that is complicated and that might impact on the lives of ordinary Australians but is not being dealt with through the norms and principles that we ordinarily observe. Before each sitting week, a document titled Draft Legislation Program for the Senate is circulated to senators and staff and outlines the week ahead. It allows the parliament to adequately prepare for debate on bills that will be before this chamber. This week, that document, the Draft Legislation Program for the Senate, was circulated very late—very late, indeed—on Monday morning. Was this bill on it? It was nowhere to be seen. In fact, the very first time that opposition senators heard that it would be coming on for debate today was last night. This is a complicated bill. It is Labor's view that a bill of this kind ought to be referred to a Senate committee for examination—not a long examination, but enough time to get into the detail. That is what the Senate is here for. This is a house of review. It's a place where we inspect, interrogate and clarify aspects of legislation before we make them laws. I think everyone in this place would acknowledge that the collaborative nature of that process often means that real shortcomings are identified in that process and remedied before bills pass into law. Labor took this position, a very straightforward position, to the responsible assistant minister, the member for Tangney, Ben Morton, and he gave us his word that this bill would be referred to a Senate committee for inquiry. Imagine our surprise today when the bill is listed for debate, to be pushed straight through. Apparently, this minister's word means absolutely nothing. So we've been ambushed here today by the Morrison government, who've gone back on their commitment and tried to jam through a piece of legislation with no prior warning and against all of the norms and processes of this place. What is all of this for? Those opposite apparently—and it is for them to explain this—consider the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021 'an urgent matter'. Well, that will utterly confound all Australians. What does this government actually think is an urgent matter? Apparently not bushfire recovery—that's not urgent. The summer of 2019-20 was one of the worst bushfire seasons on record and yet those opposite, the Liberal government, have not spent a single cent of their Regional Recovery Partnerships fund to help communities rebuild after bushfires. Stopping cruise ships from entering Australia at the start of the pandemic may have been considered urgent. But, no, the Ruby Princess was allowed to arrive duly in Sydney because the federal government failed to do their job. The result was hundreds and hundreds of active COVID-19 cases spilling out into our community. It's not urgent, apparently, to bring stranded Australians home. There are 40,000 Australian citizens suffering around the world, many of them in India, because Scott Morrison has refused to implement a proper national quarantine program. And it's certainly not urgent to vaccinate Australia. Our vaccine rollout has been such a failure that we are left staring in envy at countries like Mongolia, El Salvador and Suriname, whose governments got right what our government has got so very, very wrong. So what on earth is so urgent about this bill? It is so urgent that the government didn't know that it was a priority on Monday, or even yesterday morning or yesterday afternoon, but it is something that became very, very urgent last night. It is something that was so urgent that they would lie to the Labor Party, go back on their word and break the norms and processes of this place to ram it through. What is it that is so urgent? They won't tell us. They won't tell me, they won't tell Labor and they won't tell the Australian people. That is the problem with this government. It's all a game to them. They don't keep their promises, they don't follow the rules and they don't deliver. Scott Morrison is not on your side. Scott Morrison is all about himself. He doesn't really care about you or your family. He's not interested in what you want or need. He's not on your side. He's only in it for himself, and the Morrison government have pulled a very shonky manoeuvre here. They didn't warn the chamber this bill would be brought on this week. They lied to Labor when they agreed that this bill would be referred to an appropriate Senate committee so it could be investigated. If they can't run the Senate, what hope is there that they can run the country? If the Morrison government can't tell the truth on a bill like this, how can you trust a single word—a single word—in their budget papers? If they can't tell you on Monday what they're doing on Wednesday, how can you have any confidence in their COVID vaccine rollout or their COVID recovery plan? The proof is in the pudding, because we have seen what they deliver over eight long years. The truth is you know you can't trust them, because eight long years of this tired, stale Liberal National government have shown that they have nothing to contribute. They are nowhere and they stand for nothing. They are big on tricks. But you need to ask the question: why would they go to such lengths to lie and obscure what their agenda was this week? What is in this bill that requires hiding? What is in the fine print that they want to jam through the parliament before it can be discovered by senators on a legislation committee? What is in store for Australian workers? If it's Scott Morrison's idea, you know it can't be good. The Prime Minister has spent over a billion dollars on advertising. That is a billion dollars on self-promotion from an adman Prime Minister who would celebrate the opening of an envelope if he could. He loves a big photo-op. He loves a big announcement. So why is he so quiet on these details? Why are they being rushed through? The reality is that this is a Prime Minister who is all about himself. He doesn't really care about you or your family or your livelihood. When things go well—and admittedly it is harder and harder to catch him on such a day—he is the very first to take credit, but when things go wrong, he doesn't take charge or responsibility. Bushfires? Straight to Hawaii. 'Don't hold a hose, mate.' COVID-19? Well, that's for the premiers to deal with. Vaccines? The EU's fault. If this bill is so wonderful, why is it being jammed through like this? What is in this bill that he doesn't want to advertise? If this were good news for the Australian people, we'd know about it. The management of this bill suggests otherwise. Scott Morrison is not interested in what you want or need. He's not on your side; he's only in it for himself. He would rather play games with the chamber than be upfront about whatever scheme is being cooked up here today. Part of our frustration stems from the fact that Labor does not want to dismiss this bill out of hand. Labor supports the principle, of course, of allowing workers to move around the country in pursuit of work and having their qualifications recognised. We acknowledge that all states and territories have provided consent to the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill, including Victoria, which has stated that this provides significant reform, and we also acknowledge the concerns of unions, including the ACTU, who have flagged that this bill may have unintended consequences and cause issues for workers because of a lack of national standards. That is why we want to send the bill to inquiry. Labor seek to be cooperative on any measure that makes it easier for Australians to secure good jobs, including giving workers the opportunity to move around the country and maintain the ability to work in their chosen profession or trade, but we have to ensure that there are no unintended consequences that would negatively impact workers or the standard of work that they perform. That's why we will be moving a second reading amendment in this place to refer the bill to the appropriate committee for inquiry, as we were promised by the Morrison government, and if they won't let us investigate the nuts and bolts of this bill then we will be forced to oppose it. I repeat again, in closing, our strongest condemnation of the actions of the Morrison government here today, and I ask the crossbench to carefully consider our amendment and to support it so the Senate can do its job. I move: Omit all words after 'That", substitute "the Bill be referred to the Education and Employment Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 9 June 2021, with particular reference to concerns raised by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee, and whether the legislation will: a) act as a disincentive to states and territories harmonising rules and regulations relating to occupational registration and/or licensing of occupations where significant jurisdictional variation exists, b) restrict existing licensing and registration authorities from adequately performing their functions, and c) reduce consumer protections, public safety and the work health and safety of workers by replacing existing mutual recognition arrangements of occupations that require licensing and/or registration with the proposed automatic mutual recognition arrangements". 11:39 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales I rise to speak on the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021 on behalf of the Greens. From the outset I'd like to indicate that the Greens will support the referral to the inquiry so that the extensive issues with the legislation can be given due consideration, as Senator McAllister just told us in very clear terms. Frankly, the government has an opportunity here to fix those extensive issues that have been highlighted by so many across the board before the Senate actually considers this legislation again, so, if the government has any sense, they would really consider referring the bill to the inquiry. I understand that that was an agreement that was already had and somehow the government has reneged. That's not a surprise to me at all. I do want to go to the crux of the bill as well and just highlight again to the government why this needs to go to an inquiry and why there needs to be more scrutiny than just a few hours notice of this bill coming up. No-one in the sector actually knew that this bill was going to come up today either. As my colleague Adam Bandt reflected in his contribution to this bill in the other place: It takes a particular kind of arrogance and incompetence to take a really good idea and turn it into something that's a potential threat to people's safety— That's what this bill is at the moment, and that's why it needs to be taken off the table. It needs to be relooked at. We need to go back to the table, rewrite this bill and make it something that is useful and helpful to people, not a potential threat. But, of course, regrettably, here we are. This is where we find ourselves. It's so typical of the Morrison government that they would strike upon a principle everyone supports—being able to take your qualifications and work in other states—and find a way to make it a deregulating race to the bottom that creates more risks than it does rewards. In voicing our opposition to this lazy, wrong-headed attempt at implementing mutual recognition and in my capacity as education spokesperson for the Greens, I want to particularly highlight the risks the legislation in its current form poses to teachers around the country. In their analysis of the bill that the government rushed through the House of Representatives in March and is now rushing through the Senate today, teachers and their union identified no fewer than seven critical issues with the automatic mutual recognition processes that the bill establishes. First, it creates a burdensome duplicate mutual recognition process. The appeal of automatic recognition is that it is just that—automatic. But the system the government has set up means that mandatory vulnerable persons and public protection checks will have to apply to teachers before they can rely on mutual recognition, checks which are vital and form a part of the existing non-automatic mutual recognition arrangements. So what's being created here is, in the Australian Education Union's words, 'a parallel, costly, confusing and redundant regulatory burden on teachers and the education sector.' Second, the automatic recognition process in this bill foists the burden of these checks onto the jurisdiction where a teacher is trying to work while forbidding them from raising fees related to that teacher's registration and not offering any new funding to support these checks. The practical consequence of this is state teaching regulators, instead of pursuing their important work of enforcing child safety and professional standards, will be obliged to divert resources into checks that they aren't funded to perform. Over time this will only erode the core work of these agencies. Next, the AEU notes that where an automatic deregistration is cancelled or suspended for any reason, including innocuous reasons such as a teacher choosing to cancel their registration, the teacher regulator responsible for oversight of that ADR must notify all other state and territory regulators, including regulators unrelated to where a teacher teaches or intends to teach. What does this mean for teachers and their state and territory regulators? It means that, instead of a careful system that ensures vital information relevant to child protection and professional standards is shared between jurisdictions as appropriate, we will end up with regulators producing endless, copious reports that occupy resources and provide little signal amongst noise to the receiving regulators. Fourth, because an automatic deemed registration under the proposed scheme won't appear on searchable teacher registration databases, the Liberals are creating a situation where individual principals and school administrators will have to manually investigate whether there are any conditions or red flags on a prospective hire's registration in another jurisdiction. This is not something that we should be expecting individual schools to do. Naturally, it gives rise to the risk of it not being done with due diligence, and it is, of course, something that a more carefully considered scheme could have dealt with. Fifth, teachers are concerned that the powers granted to the federal, state and territory ministers to decide whether or not teachers are subject to the scheme will: … inappropriately expand the role of Ministers in the governance of the education profession, bypassing the appropriate state and territory regulators, and politicising the regulatory function. Sixth, this bill creates a race to the bottom in terms of professional standards between jurisdictions. We should have a national focus on lifting teaching standards and creating consistency between jurisdictions of registration requirements, like fees and professional development. Instead, this bill leaves open the possibility of a worker who hasn't cut the mustard in one state going shopping for a state with lower standards that will let them register, before moving straight back to the state that has higher standards. Once again, it's clear that the government hasn't appropriately thought through how this will work in practice. Finally, teachers rightly identified this as a missed opportunity for positive reform. We should be on a unity ticket in this place calling for safe and efficient movement of teachers between states to address shortages and ensure we have the staff needed to support students and families wherever they may be. It is incredibly frustrating that, instead of a targeted scheme to achieve those goals that have been voiced time and again by teachers and state registration bodies, the government has brought us here today, and to this. In light of these concerns raised by Australia's teachers, I will be moving an amendment in the Committee of the Whole to exclude them from the operation of the mutual recognition processes established by this bill. I hope the chamber will support this sensible step for teachers, if this bill actually does go ahead today. I hope it doesn't, and I hope it will be referred to an inquiry. I also hope that the government will take the opportunity to do the real work on improving existing mutual recognition arrangements before coming back here with suitable legislation. Unfortunately, it would be small comfort if the problems with this bill that I've identified today were applicable only to teachers and if excluding them would actually fix the bill. Regrettably, the same issues affect other professions that will be regulated by the bill, as the Greens raised in the other place and as the ACTU and its member unions have made abundantly clear throughout the legislative process so far. The Greens will oppose the bill, but I do hope that the government sees sense and refers this bill to an inquiry. 11:48 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland It's great to be able to stand up and talk on the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021. It's quite interesting to hear what the Labor side have to say about it, Senator McAllister. It's about tradies and it's about workers. It's about being able to go across the borders and do work in times of national disaster or if they have to move across for other reasons, such as a housing boom in an area. It gives them that ability. I can't understand why they're not supporting the workers of this nation. Is it because the unions are pushing you and telling you they're not really happy with it? Is it going to affect their membership? Is it going to have an impact on the unions? Is that the real reason behind you putting up this objection? You say it's going to affect lives. My estimation of the bill is that it is going to assist people to move more freely across the borders to access work. Another thing you haven't said is that this has been passed by the national cabinet—that is, the state governments and the federal government. Labor in Queensland and Labor in Victoria have supported this, and you're saying: 'We should know more than what they know. We need to send this to an inquiry. We need to know about the nuts and bolts of all of this.' All I ever hear about in this place is getting rid of the red tape. This is about getting rid of the red tape, and you're putting up a barrier because you want to give your input. No, I tell the Labor Party, it's all about the unions. You want to appease your unions. You're not worried about the workers out there that need to get on and get the job done, instead of filling out forms. It's got nothing to do with their work ethic. They have the ability, they've passed their courses, they have qualified to be able to do the jobs. When we have national disasters in different states, they should have the ability to cross the borders. We are one nation, and they should be able to cross the borders and go and do their jobs. After the comments today, I just shake my head at Labor; I really do. It's all about appeasing your cohort, the unions, to ensure that you're trying to do their job for them. It's not too often a bill comes before the Senate with bipartisan support from both Labor and the Liberal government. But, in this instance, the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021 has managed to unite both sides of politics. National cabinet should be congratulated on finding some common ground on this bill. In my home state, we've seen a significant housing boom off the back of people fleeing COVID-prone states, not to mention the natural weather events that happen from time to time throughout Queensland and require considerable manpower to repair and rebuild. It's for this very reason One Nation has taken a favourable stance on supporting Australia's tradies, who up until this point have faced a level of difficulty or red tape, as most people would commonly refer to it, venturing across state borders to work on job sites. I strongly believe this bill will also assist rural and regional communities that are struggling to attract tradespeople to complete jobs in those regions. Throughout the last 12 months, I've seen hailstorms rip through Central and South-East Queensland, which have resulted in tens of thousands of insurance claims for new roofs and various other repair works. The truth is there's so much work in these regions that we've required tradespeople, including plumbers, electricians and builders, to come across the border from other states to get families back in their homes so their lives can return to normal following these natural events. I'm pleased to note that the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021 does not seek to water down the state's laws and conditions. Tradespeople will be subject to disciplinary actions and compliance surrounding each of their trades, which will prevent rogue operators. The amendments will also block tradies from evading workplace health and safety, environmental protection and animal welfare conditions. The automatic mutual recognition of trade qualifications will benefit over 168,000 workers, which has the potential of increasing economic activity by up to $2.4 billion over the next 10 years. I'm only disappointed this bill does not and cannot amend the Heavy Vehicle National Law, which would reduce the regulatory burden on truck operators. Australian truckies should know that I did raise this issue with the government in the hope this bill could rectify the majority of problems our transport industry faces. But, unfortunately, the bill will only apply to truck licences that transport explosives. We have a lot of work ahead of us in the transport space. But after speaking with Ben Morton, the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and others within government, they have assured me that they're happy to continue working with me and One Nation to reduce red tape in this area. So, you see, this is going to actually help 168,000 workers with the potential of increasing economic activity by $2.4 billion over the next 10 years. Why would Labor oppose that? I will go back to what I asked, if Senator McAllister will tell me: how much input did the unions have to this to ensure that you had to send it to an inquiry? Surely, the facts speak for themselves. There's no need to send it to an inquiry. We just need to pass it, let common sense prevail and let the workers of Australia get on and do their jobs. It's fearmongering again from the Labor Party. That's all it is, and the theatrics of the whole lot of them, saying that this is going to have an impact on workers in Australia. No. it may have an impact on the unions, but not on the workers of Australia. So One Nation will gladly support this bill. Congratulations to the government, working with the national cabinet and premiers of the states, who know what is happening in their states. 11:54 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I thank all senators for contributing to the debate in relation to the Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021. In particular, I acknowledge the speech and the comments made by Senator Pauline Hanson. As you said, Senator Hanson, this bill is the culmination of efforts by the national cabinet, the Council on Federal Financial Relations and officials from the Commonwealth, states and territories. You are indeed correct that the bill is a culmination of that. As you know, Senator Hanson, in December 2020, the Prime Minister, state premiers and the Northern Territory Chief Minister signed an intergovernmental agreement to implement a uniform scheme for mutual recognition from 1 July 2021. That is this year, of course. Automatic mutual recognition or AMR, as it has been referred to, will deliver an estimated $2.4 billion in economic activity over the next 10 years. The Mutual Recognition Amendment Bill 2021 will save licensed workers time and money when they want to work in other states. It is important to address some of the comments that have been made by Senator McAllister on behalf of the opposition and Senator Faruqi on behalf of the Australian Greens. It is important that we pass the bill today for the scheme to commence on 1 July, as agreed by the national cabinet, state premiers and the Northern Territory Chief Minister. We need to do this to cut red tape, to keep the economy moving and, of course, to provide job opportunities for the 168,000 workers who will benefit from automatic mutual recognition each year. Australians living in a cross-border region will benefit every day, and communities will be better supported to respond and rebuild following natural disasters. I foreshadow that the government will move minor and technical amendments to the bill to ensure that the scheme will be implemented as intended. Again, to address the comments made by Senator McAllister and Senator Faruqi, the government does not agree that a Senate inquiry is necessary. That is because the bill that we have presented to the Australian Senate already reflects extensive public consultation. The Commonwealth, state and territory governments have worked collaboratively—and I commend the assistant minister Ben Morton on this—to develop and deliver this important reform from 1 July this year. These governments have committed to working together on implementation, with the Morrison government announcing $11 million over three years in the 2021-22 budget to support the implementation of these important reforms. Industry groups, unions and regulators have all expressed broad support for the intent and the framework of automatic mutual recognition. Their feedback has improved the bill to strengthen oversight by regulators and to protect workers and the public. Automatic mutual recognition will make it simpler, quicker and less expensive for business and registered workers to operate across Australia. It will help to better use the skills of the Australian labour force. I just reconfirm for the Senate that, as Senator Hanson said, this bill is the culmination of efforts by the national cabinet, which is literally state parliaments, not all of the same political persuasion; the Council on Federal Financial Relations; and officials from the Commonwealth, states and territories. As a result of the work that has been done between those bodies, the Prime Minister, state premiers of both political persuasions and the Northern Territory Chief Minister signed an intergovernmental agreement to implement a uniform scheme for automatic mutual recognition from 1 July 2021. With those comments, I commend the bill to the Senate. The PRESIDENT I0Q The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator McAllister be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [12:04]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 29 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Carr, KJ Chisholm, A Ciccone, R (teller) Farrell, D Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC Keneally, KK Lambie, J Lines, S McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Patrick, RL Polley, H Pratt, LC Rice, J Sheldon, A Siewert, R Steele-John, J Sterle, G Thorpe, LA Urquhart, AE Walsh, J Waters, LJ Watt, M Whish-Wilson, PS Wong, P 29 NOES Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Hanson, P Hughes, H McDonald, S McKenzie, B McLachlan, A O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Rennick, G Reynolds, L Roberts, M Ruston, A Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 12:11 The PRESIDENT I0Q The question is that the bill be read a second time.

The Senate divided. [12:11]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 33 AYES Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Hanson, P Hughes, H Lambie, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Patrick, RL Rennick, G Reynolds, L Roberts, M Ruston, A Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 27 NOES Ayres, T Brown, CL Carr, KJ Ciccone, R (teller) Dodson, P Farrell, D Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC Keneally, KK Lines, S 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 Walsh, J Waters, LJ Watt, M Whish-Wilson, PS Wong, P 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.
Bill read a second time.

 12:13 The PRESIDENT I0Q Senators, before I move to the committee stage, I've just received a request from a senator—in this case, a minister—to bring someone into the adviser's box who relies upon a service animal. I understand this has not happened before, but, with the concurrence of the Senate, I plan to allow that. Honourable senators: Hear, hear! In Committee 24 12:14 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, what is being done to address the concerns of electricians that this bill will undermine the work health and safety of electrical workers? 12:15 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia At all times, the relevant law of the state or the Northern Territory must be obeyed. If a state government has an issue with electricians, under the scheme it is actually able to exempt them itself. 12:15 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales As I said in my speech on the second reading, the teachers are really concerned about the implications of this legislation, which is being rushed through. Teachers have raised concerns about the different curriculums in each state. What is being done to ensure that teachers are aware of the various curriculum requirements of each state and are being supported to teach them when they're teaching in a state they are not registered in? 12:15 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia Under mutual recognition, a teacher can teach in another state, but, again—and I know you will be moving an amendment in relation to teachers—my understanding is that, based on the feedback, teachers were supportive of this bill. But, again, under the bill you are able, as an individual state, to exempt a category of industry. 12:16 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, have you read the submission from the Australian Education Union? 12:16 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia The bill received broad support. There will always be those who don't necessarily support a bill. But, as I said, the bill itself has received broad support. But, in any event, to go more specifically to the issue that you have put on the table: if a state believes that teachers should be exempt, it is able to exempt them. 12:16 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales In the AEU submission, the teachers have raised concerns that this bill will effectively cut funding for state teacher registration bodies because they will have to divert funds to the burdensome parallel registration obligations under this bill. Has the government analysed the cost this bill will bring for teacher registration boards? 12:17 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I will again go to the comments that I made in my summing-up speech. This bill has been agreed to by national cabinet, the Council on Federal Financial Relations and officials from the Commonwealth, state and territory governments. As a result of that agreement, this bill has been brought forward. 12:17 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales That doesn't answer my question. Has the government analysed the cost this bill will bring for teacher registration boards? 12:18 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I am advised that the Commonwealth government has not done that, as we do not have that level of detail from the states. But, again, what I would say is that the bill is the culmination of efforts by national cabinet, the Council of Federal Financial Relations and officials from the Commonwealth, states and territories, and, as a result of that work, this scheme has been agreed to, and they have agreed that it will be implemented as of 1 July this year. 12:18 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, could you explain the effect of the government's amendments that were circulated just half an hour before this bill came on for debate? 12:18 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia Senator Faruqi, I assume that you are referring to the amendments that I referred to in my summing-up speech, when I said that the government is moving minor and technical amendments to the bill that will ensure that the scheme will be implemented as intended. We are simplifying the exemption provisions to provide greater certainty to workers, business and regulators and to ensure a smooth transition. Removing the word 'particular' from the criteria for a five-year exemption will clarify that conditions causing a significant risk do not have to be unique to the state declaring a registration to be exempt. Businesses will also have greater clarity during the transition period, with state ministers no longer required to renew a temporary exemption declaration six months into the rollout. The government is also proposing technical updates to definitions in the bill, to ensure consistency with state legislation relating to the Mutual Recognition Act 1992 and to allow time for the legislative processes to be completed. The government is updating the commencement date to be a day fixed by proclamation. As I said to you, though, they are minor and technical amendments. 12:20 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, you're giving up on your own July 2021 deadline through these amendments—that's what I understand. When does the government anticipate the states will implement this? 12:20 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I am instructed, from 1 July this year. 12:20 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, what is being done to address the concerns of construction workers that this bill will undermine their work health and safety? I understand that you said that state laws apply, but their concern is that this bill actually undermines that. 12:21 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia Senator Faruqi, thank you for that acknowledgement of my previous answer in terms of state safety laws applying, and, should a particular state wish to exempt, in this case, construction workers, as you have put before the Senate, it is able to do so. But I also do have some additional information that I can provide to you. Automatic mutual recognition builds on and improves the existing mutual recognition arrangements by maintaining existing protections in place nationally and in each jurisdiction. Workers must hold a substantive registration in their home state. Workers must comply with the laws of the state they are working in and satisfy financial public protection requirements. Workers will face oversight and disciplinary action consistent with the locally licensed workers, which could include financial penalties and licence suspension or cancellation. Under automatic mutual recognition, a second state can also require workers to first notify the regulator that they intend to work in its particular state. This protection enables regulators to communicate expectations for interstate workers where needed. Where there remains a significant risk, state ministers—and I think we've already discussed this—can exempt specific registrations for a renewable period of up to five years from automatic mutual recognition. This targeted approach ensures the economic benefits of automatic mutual recognition flow to workers, businesses and consumers, but, at the same time, addresses significant risks where they arise, and in this case you put before the Senate—construction workers. Automatic mutual recognition will also assist regulators to quickly share information with regulators in other jurisdictions, including where they actually take disciplinary action against licensed workers. In terms of the funding, the Australian government have now announced $11 million over three years in the recent budget to support the initial implementation of the scheme. This includes $7.5 million in funding that is being provided through the Business Research and Innovation Initiative, to find solutions to information-sharing challenges faced by the states and territories. This fills a gap in the current arrangements with regulators so they'll be better able to target and manage their compliance and enforcement activities, focusing on high-risk occupations and activities. Businesses and consumers will benefit, as noncompliant workers will not be able to access automatic mutual recognition and, therefore, will not be able to work in another state. I hope that information assists you. 12:24 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Minister, just coming back to teachers for a couple of more questions: because automatic registration isn't listed on a typical register, this bill creates a situation where individual principals and school administrators will have to manually investigate whether there are any conditions or any red flags on a prospective hire's registration in another jurisdiction. I'm just wondering if that seems reasonable to you. 12:25 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia Senator Faruqi, I am instructed that local laws apply, so if there is, for example, a public teacher registration, another teacher would need to register on that. by leave—I table a supplementary explanatory memorandum relating to the government amendments to be moved to this bill, and I move government amendments (1) to (11) on sheet TT120 together: (1) Clause 2, page 2 (table), omit the table, substitute: (2) Schedule 1, item 3, page 4 (line 21), omit "1 July 2021", substitute "the day this definition commences". (3) Schedule 1, item 3, page 4 (line 22), omit "1 July 2021", substitute "the day this definition commences". (4) Schedule 1, item 9, page 5 (after line 28), after the definition of mutual recognition principle, insert: mutual recognition matters has the same meaning as in the Mutual Recognition (New South Wales) Act 1992 (NSW). (5) Schedule 1, item 11, page 6 (lines 3 to 11), omit the definition of pre-adoption State, substitute: pre-adoption State means a State (other than a Territory) that is a participating jurisdiction, but which has not done either of the following: (a) before the enactment of the Mutual Recognition Amendment Act 2021, referred the mutual recognition matters to the Parliament of the Commonwealth to the extent of the making of laws with respect to those matters by making express amendments to this Act; (b) adopted this Act, as amended by the Mutual Recognition Amendment Act 2021. (6) Schedule 1, item 16, page 8 (lines 1 to 12), omit subsection 5(4), substitute: Definition of participating jurisdiction (4) A participating jurisdiction is: (a) a State (other than a Territory) for which there is in force an Act of its Parliament that, for the purposes of paragraph 51(xxxvii) of the Commonwealth Constitution: (i) refers to the Parliament of the Commonwealth the power to enact this Act as originally enacted; or (ii) adopts this Act as originally enacted, whether with or without subsequent amendments; or (b) a Territory (being the Australian Capital Territory or the Northern Territory) for which there is in force an Act of its legislature that: (i) requests the Parliament of the Commonwealth to enact this Act as originally enacted; or (ii) enables this Act as originally enacted, whether with or without subsequent amendments, to apply in relation to the Territory. (7) Schedule 1, item 87, page 30 (line 29), omit "particular". (8) Schedule 1, item 87, page 31 (line 34), omit "States;", substitute "States.". (9) Schedule 1, item 87, page 32 (line 1), omit "until the end of that 6 month period.". (10) Schedule 1, item 87, page 32 (lines 4 to 9), omit subsection 42T(2). (11) Schedule 1, item 87, page 32 (lines 14 to 21), omit all the words from and including "earlier" to the end of subsection 42T(5), substitute "earlier a declaration under subsection (1) is repealed at the end of 12 months after this section commences". 12:26 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia Labor is disappointed that these government amendments were only circulated this morning, giving us insufficient time to properly consider their effect. As such, we have no choice but to oppose them. Question agreed to. 12:27 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales by leave—I move Greens amendments (1) and (2) on revised sheet 1285 together: (1) Schedule 1, item 87, page 17 (line 30), omit "This Part", substitute "Subject to subsection (4), this Part". (2) Schedule 1, item 87, page 18 (after line 5), at the end of section 42C, add: Exclusions (4) This Part does not apply to: (a) a teaching activity; or (b) a building, maintenance or construction industry activity; or (c) an electrical occupation activity. Note: A consequence of this Part not applying is that there is no automatic deemed registration under section 42D. (5) In this section: building, maintenance or construction industry activity means building, maintenance or construction work authorised to be carried on under an occupation that requires registration under State building, maintenance or construction licencing legislation. electrical occupation activity means electrical work authorised to be carried on under an occupation that requires registration or licensing under State legislation. teaching activity means teaching work authorised to be carried on under an occupation that requires registration under State legislation. 12:28 Senator FARRELL I0N South Australia I indicate the opposition supports the amendments moved by the Greens. 12:28 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales I want to make a quick comment just to say again that the rushed nature of this bill is pretty despicable. There was absolutely no need to do that, but we have revised our amendments, given the very short period of time, to make sure that teachers as well as workers who are engaged in building, maintenance or construction industry activity or in electrical occupation activity are actually excluded from the operation of the mutual recognition processes established in the bill. This reflects workers' and unions' concerns with their inclusion in this government's slapdash scheme. 12:28 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia The government will not be supporting the Greens amendments. I am now noting the updated amendment (2) put before the Senate. This would completely, totally and utterly exclude these people, and as such people working in these industries would not be able to avail themselves of the copious benefits that we have been through of automatic mutual recognition. It also fails to properly understand the fact that if any particular state does have any concern, they themselves are actually able to put in place an exemption. The CHAIR: The question is that Greens amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 1285 be agreed to.

The committee divided. [12:33]
(The Chair—Senator Lines)

 29 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Carr, KJ Chisholm, A Ciccone, R Dodson, P Farrell, D Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC Keneally, KK Kitching, K Lines, S McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Patrick, RL 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 32 NOES Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Hanson, P Hughes, H Lambie, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Rennick, G Reynolds, L Roberts, M Ruston, A Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 12:36 The CHAIR 112096 The question now is that bill, as amended, be agreed to.

The committee divided. [12:37]
(The Chair—Senator Lines)

 33 AYES Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Hanson, P Hughes, H Lambie, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Patrick, RL Rennick, G Reynolds, L Roberts, M Ruston, A Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 27 NOES Ayres, T Brown, CL Carr, KJ Ciccone, R (teller) Dodson, P Farrell, D Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC Keneally, KK Lines, S 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 Walsh, J Waters, LJ Watt, M Whish-Wilson, PS Wong, P 0 PAIRS

Bill, as amended, agreed to.
Bill reported with an amendment; report adopted.

 Third Reading 29 12:40 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I move: That this bill be now read a third time. The PRESIDENT I0Q The question is that this bill be now read a third time.

The Senate divided. [12:44]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 33 AYES Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Canavan, MJ Cash, MC Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P (teller) Duniam, J Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Hanson, P Hughes, H Lambie, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Patrick, RL Rennick, G Reynolds, L Roberts, M Ruston, A Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA Stoker, AJ Van, D 27 NOES Ayres, T Brown, CL Carr, KJ Chisholm, A Ciccone, R Dodson, P Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC Keneally, KK Kitching, K Lines, S 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 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.
Bill read a third time.

 NOTICES 29 NOTICES Presentation 29 12:49 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia I give notice that on the next sitting day I shall move: That the following matter be referred to Standing Committee of Privileges for inquiry and report, having regard to the matters raised by Senator Patrick in correspondence tabled by the President on 12 May 2021: (a) whether any conduct of the Secretary of Defence, the former Minister for Defence, Senator Reynolds, or any other person amounted to an improper interference with the Economics References Committee inquiry into Australia's sovereign naval shipbuilding capability; and (b) if so, whether any contempt was committed in respect of those matters. STATEMENTS BY SENATORS 30 STATEMENTS BY SENATORS Rotary International 30 12:50 Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS e4t New South Wales Senator Molan was to have spoken today on the centenary of Rotary in Australia. Given Jim's absence, I am happy to undertake this task in his stead. I know that Rotary is an organisation that he and other colleagues value, and they would no doubt associate themselves with my comments today. When Paul Harris started Rotary 115 years ago, I am not sure he imagined that there would be a club in nearly every country and that Rotary would become the largest non-religious organisation in the world, with over 1.2 million members in approximately 31,000 clubs in more than 166 countries. Just 15 years after the formation of Rotary in the US, clubs were formed in Australia and New Zealand, and so Rotary is now celebrating its centenary here this year. In Australia and New Zealand, Rotary has over 32,000 members across 1,284 clubs. Rotarians are committed to the values and spirit of Rotary, values in action that transcend political and cultural boundaries and foster global understanding and respect. And what a year to be celebrating 100 years of uniting people from all continents and cultures who take action to deliver real long-term solutions to our world's most persistent issues. Making a positive difference to the life of one person is a good thing; making a difference to hundreds or thousands, a community or a country, is another thing altogether. And this is what Rotarians do. Rotary harnesses and develops a values based, action orientated style of responsibility and leadership. They develop leaders who have the spirit of community at heart, those who are committed to supporting those who need support in their community. This year and beyond is all about sharing Rotary values, knowledge and expertise to make the world a better place. Rotary commands enormous respect from government, business, politicians and the broader community in what its members do and how they do it. Rotary delivers more and adds great value to almost everything its members do. They give of their time and of themselves as Rotarians. Developed and nurtured over 100 years by living their values every day through their actions and support for communities, Rotary has built strong trust and confidence and worldwide recognition. Through this, Rotary has been invited to participate in global initiatives that have fostered peace, changed the world, helped communities and families and fundamentally made a difference to the unique lives of millions of young children, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and much more. On Friday 10 July last year, the Governor-General, His Excellency David Hurley, and Mrs Linda Hurley officially launched Rotary's centenary year in Australia at Government House in Canberra. During the one-hour event, the Governor-General and Mrs Hurley took part in the passing the baton ceremony. To celebrate 100 years of Rotary in Australia and New Zealand, Rotary is reflecting and celebrating the past, but more importantly looking into the future, with many new projects that deliver real long-term solutions. Two major projects that were launched at the event were EndTrachoma and Rotary Give Every Child a Future. Australia is the world's only developed country with trachoma, an infectious eye disease that can be prevented with good hygiene practices. Rotary wants a trachoma-free Australia by 2021, its 100th birthday. Rotary Give Every Child a Future will give life-saving vaccines to 100,000 children across the Pacific and ensure generations of children and women are protected against cervical cancer, rotavirus and pneumococcal disease. We are all living through an unprecedented time of upheaval, uncertainty and fear. It is the very global nature of COVID that is driving global collaborations. Even during this period of global pandemic, Rotary in Australia and New Zealand have projects running through our wide geographic community in water, literacy, education and health. Rotary is probably best known for its longstanding global collaboration to eradicate polio through the purchase of the polio vaccine and support of social mobilisation to perform immunisation campaigns. As the driving force for more than 30 years, Rotary have spearheaded the efforts to end polio worldwide. Alongside other partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, they have achieved a 99.9 per cent reduction in polio cases. Rotary members have contributed $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protecting more than three billion children in 122 countries from this paralysing disease. Today, just two countries, Afghanistan and Pakistan, continue to report cases of wild poliovirus. Rotary remains committed to ending polio and will raise $50 million per year, with every dollar to be matched with two additional dollars through an agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With the infrastructure Rotary has helped create to end polio, they have built a lasting global health legacy that is now used to reach millions of children to treat and prevent other diseases. This established work on polio is the precursor to Rotary's current work on ending trachoma in Australia and providing life-saving vaccines across the Pacific. Rotary brings together a global network of volunteer leaders dedicated to tackling the world's most pressing humanitarian challenges. Its work improves lives at both a local and an international level. As we look forward to Rotary's next century of service, I am confident it will continue to deliver real, long-term solutions to the world's most persistent issues. Each year, as I indicated, Rotary contributes millions of dollars and volunteer hours. Rotary promotes educational resources and initiates dialogue about environmental sustainability. Rotary has planted over 1.2 million trees, and continues to do so, to support and lead the sustainability movement in our local communities. As we know, carbon dioxide is plant food. Plants and trees absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen; therefore, planting more trees is a very good idea. Rotary clubs across Australia are uniting in their desire to assist families whose lifestyle is at risk due to prolonged drought. Clubs are raising money for drought affected farmers and farm communities to stay viable. Last month, along with my colleague Dr Fiona Martin, the member for Reid, I was delighted to attend a dinner to mark the investiture of the new Rotary charter of the Rotary Club of Iron Cove. The Rotary Club of Drummoyne was chartered in 1952. It recently expanded its footprint to include Leichhardt and Balmain. To reflect this, the club adopted the new name Rotary Club of Iron Cove. The new president, Oscar Jones, was presented with the new charter by District Governor Warwick Richardson. At the same time, the club recognised the dedicated service given by so many of its long-time members. I would like to use my remaining time to look at Rotary's activities in some of my patron seats. The Rotary Club of Wetherill Park is located in the federal seat of McMahon, where I recently opened a satellite electoral office. Rotary Club of Wetherill Park, like many of the chapters of Rotary Australia, consists of dedicated, community minded local people with a passion for community service and volunteering. The club recently staged a successful golf day and raised funds for the Autism Spectrum Australia, Wetherill Park, organisation. Currently, it is looking into undertaking a project to upgrade facilities at Braeside Hospital, Fairfield. This will provide patients and visitors with a more pleasant experience at difficult times during their life. Additionally, the Rotary Club of Holroyd, as part of this year's Australia Day celebrations, acknowledged the work of frontline and emergency workers—individuals who during floods, fires and COVID gave of themselves to their community. In a small yet meaningful gesture, the Holroyd club delivered more than 20,000 lamingtons to aged-care facilities, police stations and fire brigades. Rotary District 9675 encompasses much of south-western Sydney and the Illawarra, where my electorate office is based. It contains amazing community-spirited people from different backgrounds willing to serve. I would like to take the opportunity to name just a few of those Rotary chapters and their volunteers: Campsie, Corrimal, Dapto, Granville, Holroyd, Illawarra Sunrise, Liverpool, Liverpool Greenway, Liverpool West, Kembla, West Wollongong, Wetherill Park, Wollongong. Australia has, for the last 100 years, been a better and richer place because of Rotary and Rotarians and the contribution that they have made. It is a unique organisation with an exciting and inspiring future. Member for Bowman 31 13:00 Senator McALLISTER 121628 New South Wales Yesterday coalition MPs voted to keep the member for Bowman in the parliamentary roles that he had promised to stand down from. The fact that Mr Laming has gone back on his commitment to stand down is yet a further indictment of him, but it says something about the character of the Morrison government that he was supported in his endeavours by so many of his colleagues. The stories about Mr Laming's conduct that have been reported are disturbing. They show a pattern of behaviour that ordinary Australians would consider unacceptable and would find uncomfortable. Indeed, that is exactly the word that the women who have been subjected to his conduct have used. An academic who was contacted by him, ostensibly about her work, said, 'I began to feel very uncomfortable.' She's not alone. A woman who sat next to him on a flight said: I was deeply uncomfortable. I felt like I was trapped next to someone who was just being completely inappropriate, irrespective of their job, being completely inappropriate. A woman who was on an official trip with him said: When we when we met a new group or went to a new location, it was only the young women he asked for phone numbers … not the men. It was humiliating, I found it extremely embarrassing and stressful. To see it again and again and again and again. A teenager who was approached by him in a Taco Bell said: If it was any other person, I would have thought that was a bit weird for a middle-aged man to ask a 19-year-old to add them on Facebook. It wasn't a very comfortable situation. It just felt very forced and I sort of had to engage with it. I felt very creeped out. These stories came out after it was revealed that Mr Laming had engaged in a campaign of inappropriate online behaviour against two of his constituents. The Prime Minister claimed he found the comments Mr Laming had made to the two women 'disgraceful', and at that time said that they were unacceptable to him. The Prime Minister may have claimed that he found the comments unacceptable, but he can hardly claim that he found them surprising. The former chair of the local branch has said publicly that he tried to warn a senior member of the Queensland state executive about Dr Laming long before the preselection. Mr Edwards said: We took a two-page document in and said we have a major problem with this bloke. He popped it in the safe and said leave it with me. I never followed it up and we never heard anything more about it. Why was that? Mr Edwards suggests: I guess because there was only a one-seat majority at the time, and in Canberra they were worried about the repercussions. Well, that decision was years ago. It's part of the reason that Mr Laming is still in the parliament. The problem is that the political protection of Mr Laming continues to this day. When the parliament was last sitting and the public pressure was on, the media pressure was on, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister's office said: At the Prime Minister's request the Member for Bowman issued an unreserved public apology. Since then, Mr Laming has basically retracted most of that apology, and the parts that remain are very far from being 'unreserved'. Mr Laming used the first day back in parliament to claim he had been misrepresented. What about the online behaviour that the Prime Minister said was disgraceful? Mr Laming now says it is 'work that I've done on Facebook in responding to comments of others'. It's reported today that Mr Laming has gone even further in an email to constituents. Unbelievably, he has again attacked the two women that he apologised for harassing over Facebook and apparently accused them of trolling. What about the photograph that he took of a young woman bending over at work? According to Mr Laming, that was 'an utterly, utterly entirely appropriate workplace photo'. It is, sadly, unsurprising that Mr Laming has acted in this way. It is entirely consistent with years of conduct and it suggests that his empathy training has not made an ounce of difference. What we should be angry about is that there have been absolutely no consequences for him. If anything, he has been rewarded, because, after all of that, yesterday coalition MPs in the other place voted to keep him as chair of a parliamentary committee that he promised to stand down from. Mr Morrison has put coalition MPs in a terrible position by asking this of them. Dr Katie Allen has said, 'What Mr Laming has been doing is completely outrageous.' Meanwhile her colleagues were asked by Mr Morrison yesterday to keep him as Chair of the Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training. Senator Henderson has said: 'It's a matter for him as to whether he wants to leave the Liberal Party. I am uncomfortable'—there's that word again—'about him sitting in the party room.' That's where he is sitting, and he is sitting there because Mr Morrison has decided to support Mr Laming rather than supporting the female members of his own party. It may be necessary for those decent female members and, perhaps, some of their male colleagues to do more than make a few remarks in the media, because Mr Laming is clearly waging a war to stay and he, apparently, has very senior support. Faced with the choice between Dr Allen, Senator Henderson and Mr Laming, it is very clear who Mr Morrison has chosen. They're not the only women that Mr Morrison has abandoned. I met Sheena Hewlett, one of the women who Mr Laming was harassing on Facebook. Ms Hewlett told me that she is scared that the harassment will continue. At the rally last weekend, Mr Laming was apparently there, watching—watching a rally about his own conduct. Ms Hewlett said, 'I'm scared about what he will do after this.' As I said, today it's reported that Mr Laming has already acted. He's already attacked Ms Hewlett and another of his victims, Ms Russo, in an email to his constituents. What has been the response from the PM? Absolute silence. Under media pressure, he's happy to say, 'This is disgraceful; this is unacceptable.' Words are cheap, aren't they? The Prime Minister's actual decisions and his actual instructions to members of the Liberal Party and the National Party show what conduct he is willing to accept. This is what he thinks is appropriate. There are real-life consequences of allowing this man to continue in his position of power and to continue to offer him political support and political cover. Mr Morrison, our Prime Minister, has a responsibility to protect women like Alix Russo and Sheena Hewlett from continued harassment. This is a test for him. This is a real test, because, as long as Scott Morrison continues to accept Mr Laming's vote, this government cannot be taken seriously when it comes to the treatment of women. International Relations: China 32 13:08 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria Virendrasinh Bhosale is a sailor who, in December last year, was in a ship packed with Australian coal sitting waiting off the Chinese coast. He missed his five-year-old son at home. 'Every night I dream about him and I wake up crying in bed,' he said. It's easy to talk about the geopolitics, but the reality is that the relationship between the Chinese and the Australian governments has an impact on millions of people—here in Australia, people in China, and people who are trapped in the middle like Virendrasinh. There is Uighur Australian Marhaba Salay, who is worried sick about her sister in Xinjiang, who is one of the thousands of Uighurs who have been arrested by the Chinese government on trumped-up charges and one of the millions who have been detained. There's Osmond Chui who was a very insightful witness before a Senate committee, where he was attacked by Senator Abetz. In Osmond Chiu's words: Instead of being asked about complex issues facing multicultural communities or how Australia could benefit from a more diverse Parliament, I was asked by Senator Eric Abetz to "unequivocally condemn" the Chinese Communist Party. … I may have Chinese heritage but I'm Australian. I was born here and my family has been here for half a century. This is my home, the only home I have ever known. Then there's Alister Purbrick from Tahbilk Winery in Central Victoria, who lost a quarter of his business when Chinese authorities put tariffs of more than 200 per cent on his wine exports to China. There is no doubt that the Australia-China relationship is complex and that it matters for people's lives. The Australian Greens believe that, in its international relations, Australia should promote peace, democracy, ecological sustainability, equity, justice and human rights. This applies to our relationship with China as it does for every other country of the world. First and foremost, the Greens believe that we should take a human rights centred approach to that relationship. Under Xi Jinping, oppression in China's authoritarian state is increasing. In Xinjiang we've seen the horrific cultural genocide undertaken against the Uighur people, with the detention of up to a million people, forced labour, reports of systemic rape and the widespread destruction of and damage to thousands of mosques. Tibetans have been persecuted for over 70 years by the Chinese government, which has imposed severe restrictions on religious freedom, speech, movement and assembly and has detained and tortured Tibetan political prisoners. In Hong Kong, in violation of international law, the Chinese government has jailed opposition figures for protesting, it has targeted newspapers that take a pro-democracy stance and it has unleashed police brutality, including pepper spraying, tear gassing and beating protesters. A human rights centred approach to China means that the Greens will continue to speak out strongly against these abuses and call on the Chinese government to uphold human rights across China for all people. We will continue to call for full, unfettered access for human rights observers, and we will continue to urge the Australian government to do likewise. We will continue to advocate for targeted sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses, as we do for other jurisdictions. We urge the Australian government to fast-track the development of Magnitsky legislation to provide a framework for this to occur. I want to move on to our foreign policy. Australia needs an independent foreign policy, and that should include renegotiating the US alliance. Hitching our wagon to the Trump administration reduced our credibility in the region and undermined our reputation as an honest broker. A human rights centred approach to our foreign relations also means rejecting militarism. The Australian government should not seek to contain China through an increase in our military spending. It is counterproductive for ministers, public servants and warmongering members in this Senate and the other place to ramp up the rhetoric. It escalates tensions and it must be avoided. Our ultimate goal in the region should always be the attainment and the maintenance of peace. War is the worst possible outcome to resolve geopolitical tensions and end human rights abuses. It seemed like Peter Dutton was determined to throw his weight around 10 minutes into being defence minister. The only result was to make an already tense relationship with China even worse. Peter Dutton's role is to keep Australians safe, but his aggressive posturing against China is instead putting us all at risk. An independent foreign policy would strengthen our ability to work bilaterally, multilaterally and through institutions to promote human rights. In particular, multilateral cooperation can strengthen Australia's approach on vital issues like targeted sanctions. Crucially, much of Australia's work on the international stage can be strengthened if we improve our domestic policies. While we continue to turn a blind eye to the ongoing injustices and racism suffered by our First Nations peoples and ignore calls for truth-telling and for treaties, while we jail innocent asylum seekers and refugees indefinitely, when we criminalise Australians seeking to return home, we are vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy on the world stage. The Australian government can talk about the rules based order in as many white papers, policy statements and major speeches as it likes, but until we walk the talk, we are continually undermining our credibility. Strong multilateral relationships should mean that we can draw on trade relationships with other countries if China punishes us with trade embargoes. In fact, it makes a lot of sense to reduce our unhealthy reliance on China and shift away from an extractive economy based around digging things up and sending them overseas. We could, and we should, be building an economy with a strong domestic manufacturing sector, powered by renewables like green hydrogen, as well as knowledge based industries. However, we should be open to continue working with China on areas of shared interest, particularly relating to strong action on climate change and environmental protection. We've spent a long time in this place debating measures to address foreign interference. The best way to counter undue influence in Australia's political system, whether that be from foreign governments or big corporations, is to get money out of politics. We also need a federal ICAC with teeth that can properly investigate allegations of impropriety and corruption by Australian elected officials. Our universities deserve funding to be able to function effectively on their own without relying on businesses or foreign governments. We must support Australians of Chinese heritage here at home. We must never conflate the Chinese government with Chinese people or Chinese Australians. We must be loudly antiracist and fight all attacks against Australians of Chinese heritage, including attacks from those within this chamber calling on Chinese Australians to pass loyalty tests. We must support those people being persecuted by the Chinese government here in Australia who are fearful of speaking out because of the impact that it may have on family and friends back in mainland China. Transparency and shining a spotlight on alleged and suspected foreign influence are the most effective and optimal ways of addressing these issues. However, we should note that China isn't the only government that engages in political interference. We should be criticising all attempts at foreign interference—not having selective debates on this issue. In particular, we need leadership from government in fighting racism here in Australia. The increased focus on, and criticism of, China has stoked and fuelled anti-Chinese racism. I particularly want to acknowledge the work of the Asian Australian Alliance, Per Capita and others in their antiracism work. Asian Australians must be able to participate freely in all aspects of Australian society without fear of stigmatisation and abuse. As part of that, we call on the government to formally condemn anti-Asian hate crimes and to fund a national antiracism strategy. A human rights centred approach to policy is not easy. To genuinely adopt it requires complying with international human rights law in our domestic policies, embracing the change we need to respond to the climate crisis, and adopting different strategies bilaterally and multilaterally. But we must do it if we are to live up to our potential as an active, engaged member of the international community, including in our relationship with China. Cashless Debit Card 34 13:18 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia A significant period of my professional life, and now in parliament, has been dedicated to the cashless debit card program and working to improve the employment outcomes for disadvantaged people across Australia. I've seen the difference that both the CDC and a job make in the lives of individuals, their children, families, and the strength of communities in which they live. I've seen what it's like for someone who gets their first fortnight's salary deposited into their bank account. I've seen the change in their demeanour when they come home after a day of work, knowing that they're supporting their family and contributing to their community. I've seen what happens when, all of a sudden, families can participate in all the wonderful things that 21st-century life provides. It changes them. It creates opportunities, and, importantly, it's contagious. As a government, we can be, and should be, backing the same outcomes for more families reliant on welfare. The cashless debit card is a circuit-breaker; it's not a destination. But it's working. For many, it's the critical first step in helping them get ready to enter employment. It's designed to rein in alcohol abuse, drug use and gambling, which take hold of far too many individuals on welfare payments. It helps to get them back on track and positions them to take up training and a job. If you listen to the loudest voices, in this place and online, what you'll see are hordes of academic and social media activists hell-bent on trying to undermine the ability of trial site communities to determine their own futures. Based on the loudness of these voices, you'd think that if you were a supporter of the cashless debit card, like I am, you'd be run out of town if you went to visit one of these communities, but that couldn't be further from the truth. If you actually get out onto the ground in these regions, like I have, and spend time with them and listen to them, what you see is a completely different story, and that's because they can see the change that it's making. Shop owners will tell you that they're seeing a noticeable increase in people purchasing groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables and items for school lunches. Locals will tell you that school attendance appears to be increasing and participation in kids' sport is going up, and the figures of how many transactions have been blocked on items like alcohol, gambling and attempted cash withdrawals demonstrate just how much money, which would usually be spent on these things, is flowing back into the community. For example, in the Goldfields alone we're talking $2.5 million. That's an additional $2.5 million which would have been spent on blocked items that can be diverted to spending on bills and on all the types of things that support the families and individuals on welfare. It's important to note as well that this is just the value of the declined transactions at merchants that would sell these products, not the full value of money which would have been diverted from changed behaviour—people who don't buy those products because they already know that they can't. These results are exciting because they are just the start. To bolster the impact of the card and the wraparound services which support it, the Morrison government announced a $30 million job-ready package for trial site communities, which I am very proud to be leading. My primary focus has always been, and remains, getting people into meaningful, long-term employment, especially in regional and remote Western Australia, where much of our economic growth comes from. I unashamedly proclaim myself to be the senator for jobs. That's my big focus here. I've seen the difference that a job makes in someone's life, and, as I said, the cashless debit card is not a destination. It might be proving to be a more responsible delivery of welfare payments, but it's not the destination that we want for people that aspire to greater things for their lives and for their families. Every person, no matter where they are in this great country of ours, should have the best possible opportunity to share in the fruits of our economic success, and this $30 million package will go some of the way to ensuring that those who most need the support get the services that they need on the ground. The support that this program provides will be targeted. It will be tailored as much as possible to each individual and to the community in which they live. Every community has different challenges. They have different needs, different industries and different jobs, training and skills demands. We know that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this challenge. It requires a grassroots and granular approach, and I'm confident that the work that we are now doing will pay dividends for these communities. Measures may take the form of additional wraparound services to assist participants to stabilise their lives, courses to improve skills, such as financial planning, or specific training opportunities to ensure that participants have the skills to capitalise on the employment opportunities that exist within the community. We're engaging with employers, finding out from them what skill requirements they have. These are employers that are prepared and willing to provide these opportunities, but they must make sure that individuals have the skills so that they can be productive, so that they can go about their work with the skills that are necessary to complete their jobs and, importantly, to operate safely. That's why training is so important. The rollout of this package will take all of this into account and actually deliver what each site would want to see. We're listening to the people on the ground and working with them to plug the gaps that locals have too often fallen through. There are so many silos that are involved in all the different services and the range of programs that people engage with. What we know is that long-term unemployed people have actually mastered the art of slipping through the cracks, and there are too many gaps that exist between all the different services and programs that are delivered. What we need to do is to make sure that there is a cohesive, connected system that enables someone to address their barriers to employment, trains them for jobs that actually exist and connects them with employers so that they can take up that meaningful employment. These are the opportunities that we're creating. I'm not sitting here in my Parliament House office, coming up with great ideas and telling people what they need or should be doing, and nor is Minister Ruston. We're actually getting out and listening to people and working to deliver what they want to see and what they believe will work for their regions. Along with the cashless debit card, this approach is well received. What isn't, though, is the loud voices of keyboard warriors on social media and on universities campuses, who actually haven't taken the time to engage with communities or genuinely understand where they're coming from, because, if they did, they would see that these communities have tried everything. Many of the challenges that they face are not particularly new. What we're doing, in partnership with them, is providing them with the tools that they need to make the change that they want to see in their regions, to empower them, in their home towns where they and their families live and, often, have lived for many generations—communities that they are intensely passionate about improving. As a government, we have an obligation to taxpayers and to those on welfare to ensure that Australia's social security safety net is delivered in a responsible way. The cashless debit card should never be a destination. Welfare should not be a lifelong sentence, nor should it be the foundation for social or societal issues to develop. So, along with providing welfare payments, we should also be giving people the tools that they need to get off those payments. For some of these regional and remote communities, the challenges—which, in some cases, have been around for generations—will require a bit of out-of-the-box thinking and a new approach. So this further investment will help communities to bridge the gap between welfare and work, putting the measures in place that they believe will work on the ground for locals. It's targeted and it will represent what locals have been telling us they need. So I thank the Prime Minister and Minister Ruston for putting their confidence in me to steer this program, and I commend the government for taking this approach. The future of these regions and the program is exciting. Kimberley Aboriginal Women's Council 36 13:27 Senator LINES 112096 Western Australia I've no doubt that Senator O'Sullivan is very genuine in the comments that he makes, but the policy direction from this government on the cashless debit card is completely wrong, and it's an absolute shame that Senator O'Sullivan didn't have the privilege of attending the women's roundtable that I, along with Senator Siewert and Senator McAllister, attended last week in the Kimberley, because the kind of deficit model he's talking about—that deficit approach—was completely rejected by those women. I challenge him to contact the Kimberley Aboriginal women and ask them for a briefing, because what they put forward over the three days that we attended was completely opposite to where he was just saying the government is going. That three-day event that Aboriginal women, on their own, put together, because they want to actually pursue a strengths based approach—we didn't hear that from the government today—was attended by over 100 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, including 85 from the Kimberley who gathered in Broome for this history-making roundtable meeting. Women from as far away as Halls Creek, Kununurra, Fitzroy Crossing, Balgo, Beagle Bay and Derby, as well as groups from the NPY Women's Council in Alice Springs and Waminda Aboriginal corporation in Nowra on the New South Wales coast, were there. It was such an honour—and I am sure that I speak for Senator Siewert and Senator McAllister—to be invited to attend this event and observe the historical moment where the Kimberley women decided that they needed their own council. I want to thank Janine Dureau, a Nyikina woman from Derby; Jodie Bell, a Butchulla and Jagera woman from the south-east of Queensland who has lived most of her life in WA; Mary O'Reeri, a Nyul Nyul descendant living in the Beagle Bay community on the Dampier Peninsula; Brenda Garstone, a Jaru woman; Cissy Gore-Birch, a Jaru and Gija woman; and Kia Dowell, a Gija woman from Warmun. I thank the organisers, Bec Harnett, a long-time worker with the Straight Talk program; Vanessa Elliot, a Jaru woman; Michelle Deshong, who draws her connection to the Kuku Yalanji nation; Cherie Sibosado, a Nyikina and Bardi woman from the west Kimberley region; Vicki O'Donnell, a Nyikina Mangala woman from Derby; Emily Carter, a Gooniyandi Gija woman; Nini Mills, a Yawuru and Bunuba woman; Sheryl Carmody; Raiyana Pavan; Rene Kulitja and Nyunmiti Burton, who are directors of the NPY Women's Council; and Cleone Wellington, Lisa Wellington, Kristine Falzon and Hayley Longbottom, the executive team from Waminda. Throughout the three days we had the privilege of hearing from June Oscar, AO, a Bunuba woman from Fitzroy Crossing and of course the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission. Commissioner Oscar presented on her ground-breaking report, Wiyi Yani U Thagani—and I apologise for my pronunciation—which means 'women's voices'. That report, released in October last year, was part of a three-year initiative that saw Commissioner Oscar and her team travel the country, speaking with over 2,000 First Nation women and girls from 50 locations in urban, regional and remote Australia. This was the most inclusive consultation process of its kind, hearing from senior elders, girls who ranged in age from 12 to 17 years, women in prison, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, sister girl or brother boy. The report is an expansive whole-of-life report exploring issues through a well-overdue First Nation gender lens, ranging from justice to child protection, health, social and emotional wellbeing, service delivery, housing, disability, access to country and economic participation. It is presented from a strengths based approach, which was the theme running through the three days for the whole of the roundtable. First Nation women know what needs to change in their communities and have the experience, the knowledge and the wisdom to make it happen. This was stage 1. Stage 2 will be the implementation of the recommendations and responding to and exploring how that can be done. Of course, the Kimberley women are now seeking funding from the state government in WA and indeed from the federal government, and what they told us very clearly was they want their own table. They don't want a seat at the table. They want their own table, and they want government to listen to them. They no longer want things done for them, which is what we heard from the last senator. They know how and they described how mainstream systems and structures have marginalised their voices for generations and how these current systems take a punitive and interventionist response to issues associated with inequalities and conditions of poverty, and if we think that government policy is benign and has no bearing, there was example after example given of how government policy directly discriminates and does damage to Aboriginal women, families and men. So we know through government policy—and the cashless debit card is a good example—that issues of social harm, trauma, rates of child removal and incarceration are actually made worse. The resounding call from women and girls during the roundtable and Commissioner Oscar's consultation process was the need to embed First Nation gender justice and equality across all policy domains, from government to organisational levels, and that gender lens and that equality is very different when you hear those women speaking with their powerful voices about how they describe the gender lens and equality. This is the only way to combat and overcome the inequalities and intergenerational harm and trauma. It will only be achieved through real structural change and systemic reform on a large scale that is based on what First Nations women are saying. The disappointing part of this is I haven't heard the government talk about Commissioner Oscar's report at all. It is groundbreaking. Thirty years ago was the last time anyone put a report together. It has been presented to government. I don't think there has been a response. I have had a look; I can't find one. So, just like Respect@Work, we find a significant piece of work done by a First Nations woman with First Nations women throughout this country, and what do we get from the government? Silence. No response. That is disgraceful. Yet now we have the government championing yet another new direction with the failed cashless debit card. The government has had that report for six months. I would happily put on the record if I am wrong that they have somehow responded, but I haven't seen that response. Of course, what we saw in last night's budget was no new funding for closing the gap. Again, we had this great delivery from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mr Wyatt, saying, 'This is what we are going to do; we are going to change the landscape.' Where is the follow-through? Silence in the budget—not one cent. So if it hasn't been included in Australia's most important financial statement, what is the government's commitment to closing the gap? Where is the government's commitment to listen when women come together in such numbers to say clearly, 'This is how we want to be responded to'? It was really, again, another privilege for me to sit and see those women present to the Western Australian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Stephen Dawson, in such a strong and powerful way. The minister was given a very clear pathway to follow. As the women said over and over again: 'We don't want a seat at your table. You need to come to our table.' That is what we saw Minister Dawson do—come to their table, which last week was up in Broome. One of the goals of the roundtable was to establish the Kimberley Aboriginal Women's Council, an incorporated, representative body that will work on behalf of Aboriginal women across the Kimberley. And the women got there, so stage 1 is now done, but it will need funding. It will need the government to say, 'We support this.' Budget 37 13:37 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I remind the Senate and all Australians that 24 years ago Pauline Hanson warned that Australia was heading to a place that we would not recognise as Australia. The media devoted much attention to the immigration aspects of her comments and completely missed the substance. Today, we have arrived at the place Pauline warned us about. Australians are living with restrictions on association, restrictions on speech, restrictions on movement and restrictions on protest. We even have mandatory face coverings. Our federation has broken apart. We have seen border checkpoints between states. The phrase 'papers, please' which has defined tyrants throughout history is now life for everyday Australians. Our police are arresting law-abiding citizens in their homes for the crime of organising a peaceful protest. Our police are forcefully arresting journalists for the crime of reporting that protest. Dictators have been overthrown for less. In the famous words traced to French, English and American philosophers Montaigne, Bacon and Thoreau, our leaders today had nothing to fear but fear itself, and they chose fear. The premiers and the Prime Minister have surrendered power to unelected bureaucrats with medical degrees, who have shown themselves incapable of seeing the big picture, incapable of using the data. While social media are calling COVID restrictions on businesses a 'war on capitalism', it is much, much more sinister. Corporate Australia have record sales, record profits and have paid themselves higher dividends and bonuses. The Liberal-National government sent JobKeeper to the same companies that used the money to pay themselves yet more dividends and bonuses. Now with this budget, the company tax clawback has been extended to 2023-24. Companies making a loss in 2023-24 can claim that loss against tax paid in 2018-19, and the government will give a refund—the taxpayers will give a refund. Let many explain the concept of taxation to the Treasurer. The government is not supposed to take the tax paid by corporate Australia and give it back to them. This money was supposed to pay for the things that define Australia as a caring society: Medicare, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, childhood education and social security. The Treasurer cannot give corporate tax back and then borrow the money to pay for recurring expenditure, yet that is exactly what this budget does—debt, debt and more debt to pay for profligate spending, seemingly with no thought to the next generation that will be left to pay for it. This is a budget of which Labor would be proud. I talk often about the Liberal-Labor duopoly. Even their budgets are now looking the same. As a result of coronavirus measures, the world's 400 richest people have increased their wealth by over $1 trillion. We do not need to add our taxpayer funding to their wealth accumulation. Much of this wealth is money that was once spent in local communities, in local hardware stores, in community supermarkets, gift stores and greengrocers. Now many of those have been forced to close. Online growth has gone to Amazon, whose owner is the world's richest man. The real outcome from coronavirus measures has been the largest transference of wealth from small business to the elites in Australian history. We expect this sort of thing from the Liberal Party and their sell-out sidekicks, the Nationals, but Labor has embraced the politics of fear and cronyism in Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria. Shame on them. Only One Nation is committed to restoring a fair go for working Australians. As our motions on the national curriculum today and degendered language in the last sitting show, One Nation will continue to defend Australia as a faith based nation committed to family and community. One Nation continues to champion the natural environment. We continue to fight for clean air, to fight for clean water, to fight for clean food and to fight for clean medicines. With leave worshipping of the sky god of warming to Labor, the Greens and, sadly, now the Liberal-National Party, with their final act of surrender: policies contradicting science, common sense and nature. With this budget, the government is borrowing money to increase funding for a fake climate emergency. There is no climate emergency, and a gutless pandering to the bed-wetters on the Left is not in the best interests of Australians. This budget has a black armband view of Australia's future. The projections for the contribution to gross domestic product from agriculture are based on the assumption that lower rainfall will return and agricultural output and exports will decline. According to the government's own research, a drought like this last one has happened 10 times in the last 1,000 years. It was not climate change 1,000 years ago, and it is not climate change now. Cold weather has now overtaken the northern hemisphere, with widespread crop failures, reduced harvest and higher prices. This will not change over forward estimates. Natural climate cycles have given our farmers a wonderful opportunity to grow our agricultural sector and exports here in Australia. Foreign influence and ownership in Australia has reached crisis levels, and this budget does nothing about that. Our ports in Darwin, Melbourne and Newcastle and much of our power grid in our major cities are now in the hands of a hostile foreign power. Those owners have publicly professed their loyalty not to Australia but to the Chinese Communist Party. This budget makes no provision for the cost of buying these contracts back, so one can assume that the government does not intend to act to restore Australian sovereignty over our strategic assets. Our armed forces are incapable of waging war against any serious challenges. Our subs are in pieces. Only one sub is combat-ready at this moment—one. The budget continues the new subs project, despite the cost rising to an estimated $200 billion and delivery pushing out past 2030. On the bright side, though, Australia is advancing our space capacity. Later this year, an Australian designed and manufactured satellite will be launched into orbit from an Australian designed and manufactured rocket, using an Australian launch facility. How amazing is that? This is proof that it is time to get the government out of people's lives and let free enterprise and Aussie ingenuity fix this mess, starting by withdrawing from the United Nations and their sovereignty-sapping, wealth-sucking, industry-killing conventions that make Australia less, not more. One Nation's alternative budget will recover the freedoms, opportunities and living standards that Australians once enjoyed. One Nation will cancel the submarine contract and purchase nuclear powered submarines off the shelf to expedite delivery and recover our defensive capability. One Nation will terminate the clean energy fund and the department of climate change while honouring agreements already in place. Every year the Liberals, Labor and Nationals climate and energy policies cost Australians an additional $13 billion above their electricity costs. The Liberal energy minister recently admitted he is afraid for future electricity prices and terrified of losing reliability and stability, and rightly so; he should be, thanks to the policies of the Liberals, Labor and Nationals, starting with Prime Minister John Howard in 1996. One Nation will abolish all energy subsidies for fossil fuel—that is, hydrocarbons—except the diesel fuel rebate, and all subsidies for renewables will end so that free enterprise can build reliable base-load power of whichever type they consider the most efficient. This will restore our productive capacity by breathing life into our devastated industries. One Nation will allow doctors to prescribe Australian medical cannabis to anyone with a medical need. One Nation calls for a national taxation summit to reach agreement on how our taxation system is failing everyday Australians and businesses and destroying our country and to arrive at solutions based on proven principles. This budget increases the number of public servants by 5,000 over the next 12 months. One Nation will freeze employment numbers in the federal public service and re-allocate staff away from virtue signalling and pork-barrelling projects into productive pursuits that care for the people of Australia and serve the people of Australia. One Nation will reduce immigration such that our net population growth becomes zero. This will allow infrastructure like roads, hospitals, schools and housing to catch up with the avalanche of migrants that Labor and the Greens, and the Liberals and Nationals have let into our country over the last 20 years. A net zero population policy will actually allow around 80,000 migrants to still come in each year to replace the 80,000 roughly who leave each year. We would expect 10,000 of those 80,000 incoming to be refugees. This contrasts with a peak arrival rate under Labor, the Liberals and Nationals of 275,000 new migrants annually pre-COVID, 3½ times our stable number. The reduction in demand will take the heat out of the housing market and give our everyday Australians some relief from the extreme inflation we are seeing in housing, education, aged care, child care and medical expenses. One Nation has a vision and is preparing a plan that will turn northern Australia into a growth engine for the whole country, offering a new future for Australia based on agriculture, mining, value-adding and, more importantly, community, getting back to Australian values and economic fairness. (Time expired) Forestry Industry 39 13:47 Senator McKENZIE 207825 Victoria Today, the drums of democracy are beating loudly for our native forest industry as this week the full bench of the Federal Court upheld the appeal of VicForests against the action by Friends of Leadbeater's Possum following the years of uncertainty Justice Mortimer's finding created for the industry. But, although the drums are beating, they're yet to find a rhythm. We need to use the democratic processes available to us in chambers just like this, through the Senate, to give certainty to our native forest industry and to help them find that rhythm. That's exactly what a private senator's bill before the Senate at the moment seeks to achieve: certainty for the native forest industry to help them get back into business, to stay in business whilst upholding stringent environmental standards, which renewable timber industry harvesting provides in this country. We need to be very proud of this industry. We lead the world in timber harvesting that is subject to the most stringent environmental standards, so we can all have confidence that we get the balance right, the triple bottom line that we've been seeking to achieve for so long. To balance the socioeconomic outcomes from native forestry has always been the intent of the interaction between regional forest agreements and the federal EPBC Act. And that is what the Federal Court ruling this week vindicated—that forestry operations that are subject to a regional forestry agreement, which is an agreement with state governments, are outside the remit of the EPBC Act, not because they're not subject to stringent environmental regulation but because they are subject to strict environmental regulation that is written into the regional forestry agreement. It is the state governments' job to manage and ensure that that occurs, so that they are working cohesively in line with the EPBC Act. This is a framework that many, many timber regions in this country have operated under for over two decades. This framework upholds the Commonwealth's strong environmental expectation and delivers for the environment, whilst allowing for the sustainable harvesting of timber and creating thousands of jobs. But while green law-fare has been able to be played out, forestry operations have ground to a halt. We have seen that from militant environmental organisations making false claims and seeking to use the court system to stop the lawful operation of businesses in the timber harvesting industry, so putting regional jobs, regional economies, at risk for the sake of their ideology. It doesn't just mean that we can't get the timber that we need. It means there are no sustainable jobs, and these jobs are the ultimate in sustainability. There's no sustainability for the regional communities those jobs support, and those jobs are not just made up of forest harvest workers. There are haulage drivers, timber mill workers and high-tech advanced manufacturing jobs in the timber industry. The industry is world-class, something that we should be celebrating, and I'm looking forward to heading down to visit ASH, in Heyfield in southern Victoria, next week. The cost is the livelihoods of hardworking people and their families, the demise of regional towns and the loss of investment confidence in the industry that produces the ultimate renewable product, timber. I know those environmental extremists don't want to hear this, but for every single tree harvested in this country, one is planted. Yes, they take a long time to grow, but look at the products that you get, look at the timber in this place that we work in. It is beautiful Australian hardwood. The implications of the ambiguity that Justice Mortimer's decision created are far-reaching. Bunnings stopped selling timber logged by VicForests, claiming that the timber was illegally logged. The unanimous decision by the Federal Court this week makes that an absolute furphy. Imagine if Bunnings were forced to close their warehouse on the back of a judge misinterpreting the intent of some bizarre consumer law that slammed their doors shut without a whimper. The outcry would be huge: no more Sunday snags for fundraising barbecues, no more support for local communities. This is parallel to the damage caused by the extremists who seek to undermine our forestry industry. We're talking about tens of thousands of jobs being in jeopardy, people having to find work in industries other than forestry and skilled workers being lost. What the amendment to the EPBC Act that's before the Senate seeks to do is to make certain that the relationship between the EPBC Act and the regional forestry agreements that has operated without a whimper for two decades remains, is not put in jeopardy by the decision of Justice Mortimer, who, I might say, is a good friend of Bob Brown, no friend of the forestry industry, as my Tasmanian colleagues would understand. The delivery of certainty of resources, access and supply for industry, ecologically sustainable forest management are the things that are covered by the RFAs along with an expanded and permanent forest conservation estate that provides protection for Australia's unique forest biodiversity. Those things are actually written in to the regional forestry agreements. But if you listened to these environmental extremists, you would think that the forestry industry's only intent was to chop down every single tree in this country and never plant another one. That is simply not true. The Department of Agriculture's own document states, 'RFAs implement the Australian and state governments' commitment to ecologically sustainable forest management.' Fact. We need to stand up for this important industry and to be able to say, hand on heart: 'Yes, you have a future protected from the waging of green law-fare against you. You have job security. Invest in the forest industry. Invest in your regional community. Invest in regional advanced manufacturing.' According to the ABC, Australia is in the midst of a timber shortage. The timber industry is even calling for an extension to the government's HomeBuilder scheme because one of the primary barriers is access to timber to actually build houses to meet the demand. I was in Echuca on Friday. They want to expand. Everyone is rushing to the regions. We think it's fantastic. We can't wait to welcome you all out to where we love to live and where you can raise a family and have a great career, but we want you to have a house. We can't build those houses unless we have access to timber. How can anyone in this place think it's okay to shut down our forest industries? It would mean we would have to import timber; the blood of orangutans would be on our hands. It is very well and good for people to come into this place and take the high moral ground, but it is not fact based. When we import timber, we cannot be assured of its sustainability and its environmental credentials, as we can with timber that is harvested within our own community. I was really chuffed by an article about timber in the Economist, which stated: 'There's no other building material that has environmental credentials as exciting and as overlooked as wood. The energy required to produce a laminated wooden beam is one-sixth of that required for a steel one of comparable strength.' Well, hello! Someone needs to tell the Greens. We've got a renewable resource; we can replant it. It takes less energy to produce and that means less coal burned and fewer emissions, yet we are cutting off our nose to spite our face once again. The article says: 'It's a great insulator. Wooden buildings contribute to negative emissions.' Someone had better tell the Greens party. Further, 'A softwood timber frame provides nearly 400 times as much insulation as a plain steel one of the same thickness and over 1,000 times as much as one of aluminium equivalent.' Look around you in this place and everywhere we work in this building. The timber used for the floorboards, the doors in our offices and our desks is not plantation softwood timber. It is beautiful Australian native hardwood. It's tough, it's sustainable, it's renewable and it's beautiful. We need to be proud of this product and use it more rather than try to shut the industry down and use some European-introduced softwood pine as a substitute for our beautiful mountain ash, red gums et cetera. It's not just the National Party that's on the bandwagon. No. My good friend Michael O'Connor from the CFMMEU is right behind my private senator's bill. As the Labor Party senators make their way into the chamber, I would really encourage them to support the blue-singlet workers, like my father—not white collar—in the Australian timber industry— Senator Wong interjecting— Senator McKENZIE 207825 I can only speak for my father, Senator Wong—to actually support the real workers in regional Australia, our forest industry. Budget 40 13:57 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania This budget is truly an underwhelming document, filled with promises that have no realistic chance of delivery. It's has been called the budget of nondeliverables, and I think it's a budget synonymous with the movie Deliverance. It's an absolute horror show of empty promises. Does this government really believe that Tasmanians are going to be so gullible to believe that $322 million is going to be delivered in infrastructure spending in Tasmania over an eight-year period? Well, they won't, because they know that not even a quarter of that is going to be delivered before 2025. This is a budget that is on the never-never. It is big on promises, empty on delivery, just like the two previous Morrison-Frydenberg budgets. If you look at the detail of infrastructure spending in Tasmania, you see that Tasmania can expect to get only $96.2 million over the forward estimates or the next four years. That means that Tasmania will see only $4 million of this infrastructure spend in 2021-22. I can't believe that they realistically think we are that gullible. They will follow this up with $17.2 million in 2022-23, $20.3 million in 2023-24 and, as I said, if these people are still in government by 2024-25, there is an extra $55.7 million. That, as we know, is tricky accounting. It's drip-feeding taxpayers' money into much-needed infrastructure in Tasmania. This is a budget of smoke and mirrors, nothing more, from the spin doctor himself. Those opposite want to hold onto taxpayers' money instead of spending it, and yet this is after Mr Morrison has said on many occasions that it's the people's money. If that really is the case— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! It being 2 pm, we will move to questions without notice. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE 41 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE Budget 41 14:00 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Birmingham. I refer to page 37 of Budget Paper No. 1. Can the minister confirm that, despite spending of almost $100 billion and the racking up of a record $100 trillion in debt, the wage price index and consumer price index forecasts on that page show a cut to real wages? 14:00 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I thank Senator Wong for her question. Indeed, this is a budget where it's been clear for some time in relation to the information provided by the Reserve Bank and Treasury in their analysis about what it would take to see pressure in relation to real wages growth—they've updated— An opposition senator interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X A Labor government would give you many things, but it certainly wouldn't give you more jobs. It certainly wouldn't give you more jobs across Australia. Opposition senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X It certainly wouldn't give you a stronger economy. It certainly would give you, though, probably, higher taxes. Senator Wong interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Sorry; I was just responding to the interjection, Senator Wong. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, on a point of order? Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X I was just responding— The PRESIDENT I0Q I must take Senator Wong on the point of order, Senator Birmingham. Senator Wong 00AOU The point of order is direct relevance. I asked a very specific question about a table in the budget papers which demonstrates that, despite them racking up a trillion dollars in debt, real wages go backwards, and I've asked the minister to confirm that. The PRESIDENT I0Q Interjections are always disorderly. It helps if ministers are not interjected upon so that they are not tempted to respond to them. I remind the minister of the question. I urge senators to remain silent and allow the minister to answer it. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Thanks, Mr President. Before I was interrupted by those opposite, I was pointing out that the Reserve Bank and the Treasury had indeed provided updated information in relation to the NAIRU, the effective rate of full employment at which you expect to see wages pressure increase in the economy. The updates that they released and provided indicated that it was necessary to get unemployment sustainably below five per cent—indeed, closer to 4½ per cent—to see that type of pressure build, particularly in what is the low-interest-rate, low-inflation environment that we face at present. What the government have outlined in our economic plan, in our budget, is a very clear plan to deliver stronger employment growth that achieves lower unemployment outcomes—that meets those types of provisions and expectations that the Reserve Bank and the Treasury have outlined to drive unemployment below five per cent and to achieve that in sustainable terms. That's something that hasn't been achieved in this country for a very long time, but we are well placed to achieve that now. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, on a point of order? Senator Wong 00AOU The cut to real wages in the budget—that's what the question was about. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, I've allowed you to restate part of the question. I'm reluctant to get so— Senator Wong interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q I'm reluctant to get so specific in determining direct relevance that a minister, when asked a question of this nature, cannot be talking about employment and its impact upon the economy. I think the minister, with respect, is being directly relevant. I can't instruct him how to answer a question. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Thanks, Mr President. As I was outlining, we're following not the views of the Labor Party there but, indeed, the advice of economic experts at the Reserve Bank and the Treasury about how best to achieve jobs growth that will then lead to the unemployment outcomes that can drive wages growth. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, a supplementary question? 14:03 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia How much longer will Australians have to wait to see an increase in their real wages? 14:03 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia We have been seeing real wages growth. Let's not accept the premise of that question, which was that somehow wages have not been growing. They've been growing. They've been growing, of course, in a record-low-inflation environment, a record-low-interest-rate environment. We also have seen Australians, though, live through a global pandemic, live through the biggest disruption to the global economy since World War II. Fortunately for Australians—unlike those across much of the rest of the world—they've enjoyed policy settings and successes, right across this country, that have kept their jobs safe and secure, that have actually achieved an outcome of seeing more Australians in work today than was the case when we went into the pandemic. Twelve months ago nobody would have thought that was an achievable outcome—to have more Australians in work today than at the time the nation was slipping into recession. But there is absolutely still more to be done, and that's what our budget plans outline—to keep growing jobs, which we can— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, a final supplementary question? 14:05 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia How is it that you, as finance minister, and this Prime Minister have delivered a trillion dollars in debt but a budget which ensures that real wages go backwards? 14:05 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia We're absolutely proud, as a government, to have delivered successive budgets that have kept Australians safe and secure. Our budgets, our plans and our policies have saved the jobs of Australians, have saved businesses across Australia, have created an environment in which Australians enjoy far greater economic security than nearly anywhere else around the world. I know those opposite want to pretend that we live in some sort of alternate reality world, but you need only to go and look. Go and look at the European Union and see a double-dip recession occurring in that part of the world. Go and look elsewhere around the world and try to find another country, another developed economy, where jobs have recovered to the extent to which they have in Australia. Go and find another country where businesses have survived at the rates they have in Australia. We have much to be proud of in this country. Our government won't let those opposite talk it down. We are determined to keep backing Australian businesses to drive the jobs growth for all Australians. Budget 42 14:06 Senator CHANDLER 264449 Tasmania My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham. Can the minister inform the Senate how the Morrison government's 2021-22 budget sets out a comprehensive plan to secure Australia's economic recovery and build for the future? 14:06 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Last night we did deliver a budget that sets out the next stages in Australia's recovery plan, the next stages in our plan to make sure we keep Australians safe—safe from the threats of COVID-19 to their health, safe from the threats of COVID-19 to their jobs and their economic security. Equally, it's a plan that lays out how we will continue to grow the economy over the long term and drive further economic growth, productivity growth and jobs creation for Australians and, of course, how we will deliver on our promises to fund the essential services that Australians rely on. Even in the face of a pandemic that has knocked our economy and parts of the world for six, we're seeing remarkable resilience across Australia. We're seeing consumer sentiment at its highest in 11 years and business conditions reaching record highs—all of that after the first recession that Australia had faced in 30 years, caused by the COVID pandemic. Most countries are simply still struggling to get back to the starting points they had at the pandemic, but we've managed to get Australia back to the point of having more people in work than had been the case. That gives us the opportunity to deliver on our commitments to invest in essential services: $18 billion for aged-care services, more than $2 billion for mental health services and over $13 billion honouring our promises to fully fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme. This budget delivers key measures that will turbocharge the economy further, continue to drive economic growth and investment and create jobs into the future, including extra tax relief for low- and middle-income earners as part of, of course, our sweeping tax reforms delivering lower income tax across the board. There is the extension of the temporary full expensing measures to make sure we get businesses going, new apprentice places—100,000 of them being supported by additional government support programs—and $110 billion of infrastructure to build the country stronger. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Chandler, a supplementary question? 14:08 Senator CHANDLER 264449 Tasmania Can the minister outline some of the major job-creating measures in the 2021-22 budget? 14:09 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Our measures will help to create some 250,000 further jobs over the next two years. Having taken employment in Australia to a record level, now we're going to see, under these budget settings, a further 250,000 additional jobs created. Since the last budget, almost half a million jobs have already been created, and this will see jobs growth of 750,000 across Australia. We're investing a record $6.4 billion this year in skills and training support to make sure that Australians get the skills they need to secure the jobs of the future. We're doubling our commitment to the JobTrainer fund, supporting more than 450,000 new training places to upskill jobseekers and young people, and, importantly, there's an additional $2.7 billion to extend the Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements program. Boosting apprenticeships will support more than 170,000 new apprenticeships and traineeships across Australia. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Chandler, a final supplementary question? 14:10 Senator CHANDLER 264449 Tasmania Can the minister outline how tax relief and other measures will support families and businesses and drive investment in our economy? 14:10 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia The Liberal and National parties will always be the parties of lower taxes—lower taxes that we are delivering through our income tax cuts, lower taxes that we are delivering through an extension of the low- and middle-income tax offset for another year, supporting 720,000 hardworking individuals across my own state of South Australia and 10 million across Australia altogether. We're the party that's making sure we back Australian business to bring forward their investment decisions through the full expensing measures and the temporary loss carry-back measures that are in place. By our bringing forward those expenses and those investment decisions, Australian businesses will be creating more jobs. Australian businesses will be investing in their productivity and their competitiveness, which will make sure— Senator Ayres interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X And it's been working, Senator Ayres! I'm happy to say Australian businesses have been doing that, which is why we've extended this program. We've extended it because it's helping to deliver the jobs for Australians. (Time expired) Budget 43 14:11 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Birmingham. Can the minister confirm that last night's budget reveals that gross debt will reach $1.2 trillion in 2024-25? Can the minister confirm that he will be responsible for the highest level of debt in Australia's history? 14:11 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Indeed, the debt figures are published transparently in the budget papers. The debt figures are there for all to see. Importantly, under this budget net debt across each of the 10 years of the medium term comes in lower than had been forecast in last year's budget. What we're able to deliver across this budget is investment in essential services for Australians whilst ensuring that we keep debt at levels below what had been forecast in last year's budget. That's a dividend from sound economic management. That's a dividend from being able to create more jobs across the Australian economy. That is a dividend from having created the right environment—through tax incentives, through incentives for Australian business, through incentives for Australian households and through sound management—to be able to see recovery across our economy. Senator Wong interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X I hear Senator Wong talking about the iron ore price. Of course this budget, like all our preceding coalition budgets, takes a conservative approach in relation to things like assumptions around the iron ore price. Once again—if Senator Wong hadn't realised—in the budget we project iron ore prices declining to $55 per tonne. It's a conservative approach to give confidence to the budget papers. Senator Wong interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Senator Wong wants to talk to me about debt now. I was here but I'm not sure where Senator Wong was last March when everybody over there was saying we should extend the JobKeeper program or the sky was going to fall in. This lot were calling for more spending just a few months ago. When we showed the judgement and the strength to phase out that program, we were proven right. (Time expired) Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Yesterday we managed to hear the other place. I'm hoping we don't return the favour. Senator Gallagher, a supplementary question? 14:14 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory What is the dollar figure for peak gross debt, and in what year will it be reached? 14:14 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Over the forward estimates, gross debt is expected to reach a within-year peak of $1.220 billion or 50.9 per cent— Opposition senators: Trillion! Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Yes, $1.22 trillion or 50.9 per cent of GDP in April 2025. Gross debt, as the budget papers make very clear, is expected to stabilise in the medium term at around 51 per cent of GDP, compared to around 55 per cent in last year's budget— Senator Gallagher ING A point of order on direct relevance: we didn't ask for the percentage; we asked for the dollar figure for peak gross debt. I know he's having trouble saying the word 'trillion', but I've asked what the dollar figure is, not the percentage. The PRESIDENT I0Q I've allowed you to restate the question, Senator Gallagher. I was listening carefully to the minister's answer and, despite interjections, I think I heard about half of it. I've allowed you to remind him of the question. Senator Wong, before you get to your feet, I was struggling to hear the minister and all the answer; there was so much noise in the chamber. I've allowed Senator Gallagher to remind the minister of the question. The minister, in my view, from what I heard, was answering it. I'm not going to instruct him how to answer a question, but I am going to listen carefully to what he says. And I'll ask senators to remain silent so that I may rule if people raise subsequent points of order. In my view, from what I heard, he was being directly relevant. Senator Birmingham. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X In the first question I faced today, the opposition asked me the question premised on the basis of $1.7 trillion. Senator Wong 00AOU A point of order on direct relevance: it was a very simple question asking for peak gross debt in dollar terms. The PRESIDENT I0Q The minister, I think, spoke for seven seconds then. It was a factual question; it does not allow— Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order on my right! Order on my left! The first principle I have is that I cannot instruct the minister how to answer a question. The second principle is that this was a straight, factual question, so it does not allow for commentary, and I do not believe the minister was providing any commentary. I believe he was addressing the issue of gross debt. I am reluctant to instruct a minister, if they are being very specific to the question in my view, to get to the point of how to answer a question. I cannot instruct a minister to provide a particular number, fact, statement or observation to the chamber. There is an opportunity to debate the merit of answers afterwards. I believe the minister was constraining himself to the directly relevant issue raised by the question. I can't instruct him any further than that. Senator Birmingham. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X As I was indicating before, the opposition, in the first question that they asked today, referenced $1.7 trillion in relation to gross debt figures. What we see in relation to the medium-term projections is that gross debt is projected to stabilise at lower— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Gallagher, a final supplementary question? 14:18 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory In the first question we used the figure $1.2 trillion, so I'm not quite sure where $1.7 trillion comes from. The supplementary question is: can the minister confirm if Senator Canavan is correct when he says, 'We have a higher debt to GDP than we have ever had since the end of World War II'? Is Senator Canavan correct? 14:18 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Indeed, we do face, globally, the biggest economic disruption since World War II. So it is not surprising that, in responding to the first global pandemic in a century, in responding to the biggest economic disruption to the world since World War II, in responding through programs like JobKeeper—which those opposite argued should have been bigger and lasted for longer, yet now they come in here with great hypocrisy and seek to criticise the level of debt—we would face those circumstances. An opposition senator interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X I am addressing specifically the question that was asked and the quote that was there. It is clear that, across the world, there's been a significant increase in government debt. Australia has now managed to deliver a budget that sees a reduction in what was projected as government debt than was expected last year. (Time expired) Budget 45 14:19 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales My question is to the Minister for Women's Economic Security, Senator Hume: Can the minister outline to the Senate how the Morrison government's 2021-22 budget is securing Australia's recovery by supporting women to further participate in the workforce? 14:20 Senator HUME 266499 Victoria I thank Senator Hughes for her question and for her enduring commitment to women's economic security. The Morrison government is proud to be making a record investment of $1.9 billion towards the economic security of Australia's women in this year's budget. This is part of a broader $3.4 billion package of targeted measures that will also improve women's safety and their health and wellbeing. Our measures have been designed to give more women more choices and more chances to participate in the workforce and secure their economic security, while they are working and also into retirement. We know that a comprehensive system of child care is the key to helping women return to the workforce and participate in the workforce, which is one of the best ways to ensure that women are economically secure. When you remove barriers to women's workforce participation, all Australians reap the benefits. It's estimated that increasing women's workforce participation by just five per cent will increase Australia's real GDP by $20 billion over five years, and all Australians will benefit from a more prosperous Australia. It's not just women with children who benefit. Around two-thirds of women in the workforce with children under two use grandparents for informal support, and around a third of women use grandparents as their only support. By making child care more affordable and more accessible, we're also freeing up older women to return to the workforce to increase their lifetime earnings and to secure their economic future. Women's workforce participation hit a record high of 61.8 per cent in March, but we know that it can go further. That's why we're investing an additional $1.7 billion in child care, building on the $10.3 billion that we already provide every year. We're removing the childcare subsidy's annual cap, with increased childcare subsidies available to two or more children, benefitting around 250,000 families. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Hughes, a supplementary question? 14:22 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales Can the minister inform the Senate how the government is supporting women in work, including Indigenous women? Opposition senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Before I call Senator Hume, again I'm going to ask for silence during the question. I would prefer silence at all times, but, particularly during the question, I will insist upon it. Senator Hume. 14:22 Senator HUME 266499 Victoria The Morrison government is acutely aware of the unique needs of Indigenous women. That's why this women's budget statement provides $77.4 million in dedicated funding to improve Indigenous women's economic security. We've committed $13.9 million over four years to establish an early-stage social enterprise foundation. This foundation will provide capacity-building and financial support dedicated to social enterprises that are on the ground in Indigenous communities right now. We know that partnering with these organisations is one of the very best ways that we can improve the economic security of Indigenous women and support them into work opportunities, because of the unique insights that grassroots organisations can provide. Additional funding of $63.5 million over four years will support additional places for Indigenous girls' academies, which support young Indigenous women into their studies, increase their year 12 attainment, and provide— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Hughes, a final supplementary question? 14:23 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales Can the minister advise how the government is supporting women's economic security for their retirement? 14:24 Senator HUME 266499 Victoria The Morrison government knows that women's economic security in their retirement is particularly important. We're focused on improving the retirement outcomes for women by increasing superannuation coverage and making our system fairer. By removing the $450-per-month threshold for superannuation eligibility imposed by the Labor Party when superannuation began in 1992, we are ensuring that women who are working part time or in multiple jobs are accruing superannuation for their future. We're also extending access to the downsizer contribution and removing the work test to improve superannuation's flexibility. We know that more women than men make voluntary contributions to their superannuation accounts at all stages of their lives. This is the key element to the retirement income system working better for women. This government's reforms remove barriers to the superannuation system and facilitate those voluntary contributions so that all women can bolster their own super on their own terms when they're able to do so. (Time expired) Budget 46 14:25 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Birmingham. Minister, the two great economic challenges of our times are the breakdown of our climate and growing wealth inequality. In your government's budget, these great challenges have been either left unaddressed or deliberately made worse. Knowing that climate change will make fires, droughts and floods more frequent and more intense, how can you possibly justify the tens of billions of dollars of public subsidies your government is handing over to billionaires and big fossil fuel corporations to continue polluting our atmosphere with carbon? 14:25 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I thank Senator McKim for his question. Like those opposite, he must have missed the pandemic that seems to have had a rather profound impact in relation to economic security right across the world. Senator McKim, I would contest the fact that there isn't something else right here, right now that is, indeed, creating challenges for economies, including Australia's, around the world. This budget is framed very much, first and foremost, on the premise of continuing to keep Australians safe and secure in the management of the pandemic and, of course, in relation to their job security as well. Opposition senators interjecting— Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X I would also suggest that Senator McKim, when he raises climate change, may wish to look a little more thoroughly through the budget papers in terms of the measures that are there to ensure we address emissions reduction. There is $1.2 billion in this year's budget to establish Australia at the forefront of low-emissions technology, innovation and commercialisation, particularly pursuing international partnerships, a high-integrity carbon offset scheme in our Indo-Pacific region and support for four additional clean hydrogen export hubs, bringing our support there to a total of five. There is also support for Australia's hydrogen industry overall, support for the development of carbon capture technologies and hubs and support for the national soil carbon innovation challenge. Let me also address Senator McKim's question about inequality. The greatest path to be able to achieve greater equality is by creating more jobs across our economy, by getting workforce participation to its highest possible levels and by achieving the maximum in terms of workplace participation. And that's what our government has proudly achieved, being able to drive pre-pandemic workforce participation to record highs and now seeing record numbers of Australians in jobs, which is the fastest way to address— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Order, Senator Birmingham. Senator McKim, a supplementary question? 14:28 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania There was no mention of the $51 billion of public subsidies to fossil fuel in this budget. Minister, why are you continuing to hand out billions of dollars to the big corporations and billionaires to allow the continued destruction of our environment? Why does your government's budget continue to favour coal, gas and oil over renewable energy? And how can you possibly justify handing billionaire Andrew Forrest tens of millions of dollars of public subsidies for new gas projects during a climate emergency? 14:28 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia It sounds to me, if I take a wild guess at what Senator McKim is conflating into what he's calling 'subsidies', that Senator McKim is wanting us to ensure that Australian farmers are paying higher taxes in relation to the fuels they use. I can tell Senator McKim, that's not something that a coalition government will do. A coalition government will not be jacking up the taxes that Australian farmers pay in relation to their fuels. We will not be rendering our resources industry less competitive than the rest of the world. These are important parts of our current economic architecture and our future economic architecture as well: providing jobs, providing more opportunities for Australians now and into the future, driving our export earnings potential. We're doing that in an environment where we are also investing in new technology opportunities. We have seen phenomenal growth in relation to the renewable energy sector, and you can see by our measures in this budget that we're investing in the next wave of emissions-reducing technologies too. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator McKim, a final supplementary question? 14:29 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania Still no mention of the $51 billion of fossil fuel subsidies in this budget. Minister, according to the budget projections, real wages will go backwards over the next two years. With housing affordability once again getting worse, why has your budget ignored social housing yet again? Why are you instead trying to trap single parents into subprime mortgages? Is this budget an admission that the government wants to keep wages low and drive house prices even higher? 14:30 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Let me completely refute the suggestion by Senator McKim that somehow our government is trying to 'trap single parents into subprime mortgages'. What our government is proudly trying to do is give single parents a greater opportunity of homeownership. That is a proud Liberal value. That is something that has stretched through the Liberal and National parties throughout the history of our parties—to help encourage homeownership in Australia. In this budget, we are proud to try to make it easier for young Australians to buy their own home, to make it easier for single parents to be able to buy their own home, to make more available more family homes by encouraging older Australians to downsize at the right stage in their life to be able to do so. Far from entrapment, these are opportunities that we are creating for greater financial sustainability for Australian families. (Time expired) Budget 47 14:31 Senator ANTIC 269375 South Australia My question is for the Minister representing the Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business, Senator Cash. Minister, what is the Morrison government doing to secure Australia's recovery by skilling Australians for jobs today and into the future through its 2021-22 budget? 14:31 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia I thank Senator Antic for his question. The budget that was handed down last night sets out the next stage for the Morrison government's economic plan to get Australia and Australians through COVID-19. One of the measures that we are investing in is in terms of businesses being able to take on further apprentices and trainees. We brought down a budget that backs people who want to become an apprentice or trainee but also provides that mechanism for a business to actually take them on. On this side of the chamber, on the government's side, we know that governments themselves don't create jobs; we put in place policy frameworks. The policy framework that the Morrison government puts in place enables businesses out there to prosper, grow and, in this case, create opportunities for apprenticeships and traineeships for more Australians. What we saw in last night's budget was the government committing to extending the boosting apprenticeship commencements wage subsidy with an additional $1.5 billion. Colleagues, we are now extending out this incredibly successful program to 31 March 2022. Under this program, to date 140,000 Australians have been able to enter an apprenticeship or traineeship; 140,000 new apprenticeships and traineeships have been created since this program was created. With the further funding that we announced last night in the budget, an additional $1.5 billion, this program will now deliver approximately an additional 170,000 apprentices. That is because the Morrison government understands that you need to put in place that pipeline of skilled workers and provide businesses and Australians with the opportunity to bring on and to undertake apprenticeships. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Antic, a supplementary question? 14:33 Senator ANTIC 269375 South Australia Minister, how is the government supporting women in getting apprenticeships in non-traditional trades? 14:34 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia The Morrison government is focused on seeing more women go into apprenticeships and trades. Why? Because we know that once you have actually undertaken an apprenticeship or traineeship, you have a skill for life. What we saw with last night's budget was our continued commitment to seeing more women take up an apprenticeship in non-traditional trades, with training support provided for 5,000 places. The Morrison government is also guaranteeing in-training support for women who take up apprenticeships in industries such as building and construction. As the former skills minister, I've been passionate about seeing more women pursue careers in non-traditional trades such as working with the building and construction industry and, in particular, with great women leaders in the building and construction industry—for example, Denita Wawn, who leads the Master Builders association. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Antic, a final supplementary question? 14:35 Senator ANTIC 269375 South Australia Minister, how is the government supporting digital businesses to take on staff and gain skills needed in a digital economy? 14:35 Senator CASH I0M Western Australia What we're seeing with the digital economy is that it is creating new opportunities for Australians to both upskill and reskill into roles that, say, two decades ago, 20 years ago, did not actually exist or were in their infancy. That is why last night what you saw in the budget was an investment of around $10.7 million to trial new digital skills cadetships. This is all about helping Australians to develop high-level digital skills in fields such as cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, data analytics, game design and animation. This investment will provide four industry-led pilots to develop new and innovative ways to increase the number of Australians with high-level digital skills, through cadetships. The Morrison government understand the value of apprenticeships, the value of traineeships, and the value of creating opportunities for women to enter into non-traditional trades. We were backing in those commitments in the budget. (Time expired) Defence Procurement 48 14:36 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Defence. After a two-year FOI battle with the defence department, the Information Commissioner granted public access to the total build and sustainment costs for the future submarines as offered by Naval Group in its tender response. The defence department has appealed that decision in the AAT, and Naval Group have requested to be, and have been, joined to the proceedings. There are now seven lawyers involved, fighting one Rex Patrick. We now find out that the taxpayer is paying the legal costs of Naval Group, a $5.1 billion foreign company. Who approved this? Why was it approved? And are there any caps on the legal fees that we pay for foreign entities? 14:37 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I thank Senator Patrick for his question. Defence tabled a response to a Senate estimates question from Senator Patrick in relation to this matter. The question, as Senator Patrick has indicated, relates to Defence's application to the AAT against a decision of the Information Commissioner that Defence should provide certain information. Defence considers this information as being confidential information under the terms of the contract for the competitive evaluation process and, accordingly, not for public disclosure. Defence is represented by the Australian Government Solicitor in these proceedings and is co-joined by Naval Group in appealing against the Information Commissioner's decision. Naval Group has engaged its own legal representation. Defence and Naval Group have lodged affidavits and statements of facts, issues and contentions. Both have also lodged responses to the statement of facts, issues and contentions lodged by Senator Patrick. I understand the matter is set for hearing by the AAT on 8 and 9 June. In regard to the payment of legal costs, Defence has, as indicated in the answer to the question asked by Senator Patrick, assessed that those costs related to these proceedings may be allowable and reasonable under the terms of the Strategic Partnering Agreement between Defence and Naval Group. Naval Group Australia, it should be noted, has been established for the purpose of delivering the Future Submarine program, which is funded by Defence, and the matter before the AAT relates to information provided by Naval Group for the purposes of that Future Submarine program. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Patrick, a supplementary question? 14:38 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia The answer to the question on notice advised that the payment of the legal expenses was agreed to in the Strategic Partnering Agreement, yet the disputed material relates to a contract that played out well before Naval Group were even selected as the partner. On what basis would the Commonwealth grant this retrospective cost indemnity, and how far back does that indemnity go? 14:39 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia As I just advised, from the information provided to me by Defence, Defence has assessed that the costs relating to these proceedings may be allowable and reasonable under the terms of the Strategic Partnering Agreement. The documents that are being sought relate to the Future Submarine program, for which Naval Group Australia has been established, which is a program funded by Defence. On those grounds, Defence have assessed that it is consistent with the terms of the SPA. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Patrick, a final supplementary question? 14:39 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia With regard to the government paying Naval Group's legal bills, is it just a contractual arrangement between Naval Group or is it something that all large defence primes get—the taxpayer paying their legal bills? How many small to medium companies get the benefit of the taxpayer paying their legal bills if a dispute arises? 14:40 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I give Senator Patrick the assurance that in equivalent circumstances under consistent contractual terms they'd be consistently applied. Budget 49 14:40 Senator MARIELLE SMITH 281603 South Australia My question is to the Minister for Finance, Senator Birmingham. When asked this morning whether references in the budget papers to vaccinating the entire population by the end of the year mean all Australians will be vaccinated by 31 December, Mr Morrison said: No. There are assumptions that go to the rollout. They are not policy settings. What assumptions underpin the budget? 14:40 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia Many assumptions underpin the budget. Assumptions underpin the budget— Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Wong, on a point of order. Senator Wong 00AOU Direct relevance: it is about the Prime Minister's statement today on vaccinations and the vaccination assumptions. It is the Prime Minister's own words. I would ask— Senator Ruston interjecting— Senator Wong 00AOU Would you like me to read the question again, Senator Ruston? It was asked about vaccinations, and I would ask the minister to be directly relevant to that fact. The PRESIDENT I0Q The minister had been speaking for seven seconds, and I think I heard more words from some interjectors than I had from the minister in those seven seconds. The preamble to the question was about vaccines. The final words I have, and I'm happy to be corrected, are: 'What assumptions underpin the budget?' If I misheard I'm happy to be corrected. I'm definitely not going to rule on direct relevance seven seconds in when the minister has referenced part of the question in his opening statement. I will listen to his answer. I'll remind the minister of the question. Senator Birmingham to continue. Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X Budget Paper No. 1, page 36: The key assumptions that underpin the economic forecasts are set out below. Outcomes could be substantially different to the forecasts, depending upon the extent to which these assumptions hold. The first phase of Australia's vaccination program commenced in late 2021, as it says, with most priority populations having been vaccinated. It is assumed that a population-wide vaccination program is likely to be in place by the end of 2021. The assumptions go on in relation to the containment of localised outbreaks of COVID-19, in relation to the management of domestic activity restrictions, in relation to the operation of state boarder restrictions, in relevance to temporary or permanent migration movements, in relation to inbound and outbound travel restrictions. Of course there are many other assumptions that do inform the budget papers, as I was saying at the outset. In relation to vaccine availability, it is no secret that the world has faced a shock in elements of the vaccine rollout, particularly in relation to the AstraZeneca vaccine, and in Australia the advice that we've received from health authorities is to limit its application to those over 50. That has obviously had a change in the rollout schedule and expectations. Nonetheless, our government has procured around 170 million doses of vaccines that can give Australians confidence that throughout the course of this year we will receive the vaccine doses that will enable Australians to have the choice to be vaccinated, and we will urge all Australians to follow the health advice and to be vaccinated in accordance with this advice. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Smith, a supplementary question? 14:44 Senator MARIELLE SMITH 281603 South Australia Mr Morrison said: No. There are assumptions that go to the rollout. They are not policy settings. What are the policy settings related to the vaccine rollout? 14:44 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia The policy settings that relate to the vaccine rollout are the billions of dollars that our government is investing in procuring those vaccines in the contractual arrangements that we have pursued with the states and territories, with Primary Health Networks and with GPs across the country that are providing more than 5,000 potential points of vaccination across the country now, that have achieved more than 2.7 million vaccine doses being administered to date and that will see continued distribution of vaccines across Australia throughout this year and no doubt into next year as well. We can see around the world that other countries are now taking the steps of assessing vaccine applicability to children. Those are considerations that obviously our health experts and regulators will give, which will no doubt, if they decide to approve, necessitate further changes to the vaccine program over time to come, in addition to potential for further booster doses. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Smith, a final supplementary question? 14:45 Senator MARIELLE SMITH 281603 South Australia Minister, why are the vaccine rollout assumptions that underpin the budget not consistent with the policy settings related to the vaccine rollout? 14:45 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia I reject that question. Opposition senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X That is not the case. Senator Wong interjecting— Senator Keneally interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator Wong! Senator Keneally! Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X That is not the case, and I won't accept the verballing of the Prime Minister from those opposite either. What is in the budget under the assumptions is indeed just that—assumptions. Those assumptions, though, are consistent with the government policy settings, which have entered into contracts around the world to secure around 170 million doses of vaccines for Australia, to ensure that we have that supply, that we have the distribution network that can enable, as indeed the budget assumptions say, a population-wide vaccine program to be in place by the end of 2021. They're the assumptions on which the budget is built. The policies enable that possibility to be delivered, and our focus is on delivering it. (Time expired) Budget 50 14:46 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management, Senator Ruston. Can the minister please explain how the biosecurity package contained in this year's budget bolsters our commitment to protect Australian agricultural industries and regional communities? 14:47 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia I thank Senator Davey for her question about this really, really important issue that confronts Australia's farming sector. The government is investing $850 million in this budget as a commitment towards supporting our agricultural sector to get to $100 billion worth of farmgate value. Part of the critical pillar in this is obviously supporting biosecurity, and over $400 million will be invested in biosecurity measures to make sure that we keep Australia's agricultural sector safe from the incursion of foreign pests and diseases, because we know that agriculture continues to be one of the economic powerhouses of this country. Despite things like the impacts of drought and floods and bushfires and the COVID pandemic, we still, as a country, rely immensely on our agricultural sector. Keeping Australia free from pests and diseases is one of the most important things that we can do to make sure that we support Australian agricultural producers, because we know that biosecurity matters to them. It matters to them because the hard work they've done to gain market access could be compromised by pests and diseases. They know that they get a premium price for their products overseas because of our clean, green reputation. We know that even the small outbreaks that have happened in Australia can have devastating impacts, including, more recently, the over $2 billion that it has cost us to deal with African swine flu. We know that, for instance, if foot-and-mouth disease ever came into our country, we'd be looking at a $50 billion cost to our agricultural sector over the succeeding 10 years. So we are absolutely stepping up our resolve, our commitment, our funding to make sure that we combat, where we can, the incursion of pests and diseases into our country, because we stand side-by-side with our agricultural producers. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Davey, a supplementary question? 14:49 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales Can the minister further outline any other investments in biosecurity and export services and their ongoing role in reducing threats to our livestock, crops and our environment? 14:49 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia We're investing in lots of things, but we believe that technological solutions, such as the groundbreaking trials to screen biosecurity offshore and the development and implementation of modern, innovative detection systems like 3D X-ray machines and algorithms are much, much more likely to be able to target where risks are likely to be higher. Our announcement confirms our longstanding commitment that we will continue to invest record amounts of money to keep Australian agricultural producers doing what they do best—that is, producing fantastic clean, green Australian produce. We know that on average every year 2.5 million shipping containers arrive in Australia, along with 19,000 commercial vessels and 60 million mail items. Supply chains are becoming more complex and biosecurity risks are challenging and spreading regionally and globally. That's why we are making the investment that delivers for import and export services to ensure the movement of goods is safe. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Davey, a final supplementary question? 14:50 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales Can the minister please update the Senate on how these investments will assist Australian agriculture and support Australians as we continue to secure Australia's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic? 14:50 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia Our strong biosecurity system enables our agricultural sector, but it protects our way of life in Australia. Australia's biosecurity system protects the $53 billion in agriculture's fishery and forestry exports and 1.6 million Australian jobs across the entire supply chain. So the suite of biosecurity measures that is contained in this budget is just one of the initiatives that we are putting in place to boost the economic recovery and complement the reforms that we are implementing across our entire biosecurity system to make it the most modern, efficient and effective system and to make sure we keep Australia and Australians safe. Recently, modelling from the University of Melbourne said that the net present value of what we are seeking to protect through our biosecurity systems over the coming years is $314 billion, and that means that this is about a $30 return on investment for every dollar that we invest in biosecurity. It makes absolute common sense. The PRESIDENT I0Q Order. Senator Keneally. COVID-19: Vaccination 51 14:52 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Health, Senator Colbeck. This morning, this minister said: 'I expect some Australians will still be getting vaccinated next year.' On what date will Australians be fully vaccinated and how many doses per week need to be achieved to meet this target? 14:52 Senator COLBECK 00AOL Tasmania I didn't make any statements with respect to vaccination this morning, so it's somewhat difficult for me to respond to something that the opposition are alleging I have said. The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator Colbeck, I've got to take a point of order from Senator Keneally. Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! I've got to listen to the point of order. Senator Keneally LNW My apologies—that is my fault. I take responsibility here, Mr President. My question was actually to Minister Birmingham. There was a typo on my paper. I apologise. The PRESIDENT I0Q I'm afraid that is not something I can resolve. It was a question to— Senator Keneally LNW I am happy to direct the question to Senator Birmingham— The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Keneally, I appreciate you accepting the error was on your part, but the question was directed to the Minister representing the Minister for Health, so I must allow him to continue. He's commenced his answer. Senator Colbeck, have you concluded your answer? Senator COLBECK 00AOL No, Mr President. I'm very happy to assist the House with some information with respect to the vaccination rollout. As of close of business yesterday, the national number of vaccinations was over 2.8 million, with 76,379 in the previous 24 hours. In aged care, we have given 215,000 doses, and that's 126,923 first doses, 89,040 second doses, and 55,700 doses supporting staff— The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Keneally, a point of order? Senator Keneally LNW This point of order is relevance. The senator doesn't have to explain Minister Birmingham's comments, but he could answer the question, which was: on what date will Australians be fully vaccinated and how many doses per week need to be administered to achieve this target? Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order! Senator Keneally, there was a quotation that you—I accept, erroneously—put to the minister in your question. I can't rule in this circumstance that talking very specifically about vaccination numbers is not directly relevant, but this is, I think, a unique circumstance in addressing direct relevance in a question. The minister is constraining himself to specific numbers. I believe that to be directly relevant, given the circumstances. Senator COLBECK 00AOL The government will continue to grow and develop the vaccination rollout in accordance with the growth in supply which we all accept has been one of the things that we've had to manage through the pandemic. We did not expect that 3.1 million doses of vaccine wouldn't be available. As more vaccine becomes available, we'll make more vaccines available through the nearly 5,000 outlets that we have available for Australians to achieve their vaccination. Of course, it is a voluntary process. It is not compulsory for Australians to be vaccinated. We are offering vaccinations progressively to all Australians based on the approvals of the TGA. At this point in time, we actually don't have globally a vaccine that's approved for use for younger people. Particularly in Australia, we don't have a vaccine that is approved for use for younger Australians—people under the age of 18. The Labor Party clearly don't understand the process of the development of the vaccine rollout. They continue to try to undermine— (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator Keneally, a supplementary question? 14:56 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales On what date will Australians be fully vaccinated? 14:56 Senator COLBECK 00AOL Tasmania As I have said—if the Labor Party had been listening to my answer to the last question—vaccination is a voluntary process. We don't yet have in this country a vaccine approved for people under the age of 18 because the TGA has not yet approved one. If the Labor Party don't understand those simple fundamentals about the vaccine process and about the safe application of the vaccine process that we are rolling out, I actually feel quite sorry for them. We will continue to build the vaccine rollout with the availability of new vaccines that will look after Australians at a senior level, those who are over 50 who have access to the vaccine now, and those in the— The PRESIDENT I0Q Order, Senator Colbeck. Senator Keneally, a final supplementary question? 14:57 Senator KENEALLY LNW New South Wales The Morrison government has broken promise after promise: to administer four million vaccinations by the end of March, to vaccinate all of phase 1a by the end of Easter, and to vaccinate six million Australians by 10 May. On what date will all Australians who want to be vaccinated receive their vaccine? 14:58 Senator COLBECK 00AOL Tasmania The Labor Party seem to live in this parallel universe where they completely forget that we did not receive 3.1 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccine that we were expecting. They neglect to tell the Australian people that, based on health advice, we had to reset the vaccine rollout to provide AstraZeneca vaccine only to people aged 50 and over, based on health advice. They live in this parallel universe where they continue to undermine public confidence in the vaccine rollout when we want to maintain confidence in the vaccine rollout because it is important that Australians front up and get a vaccination as it becomes available to them in the category that's open to them. We will continue to responsibly build and grow the vaccine rollout with vaccine availability and ensure that Australian have access to safe and high-quality vaccines. Budget 52 14:59 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia My question is to the Minister representing the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, Senator Reynolds. Can the minister outline to the Senate the Morrison-McCormack government's record $110 billion infrastructure rollout announced in this 2021-22 budget and how it will secure Australia's recovery? 14:59 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia I thank Senator O'Sullivan for the question and for his passionate support for the development of infrastructure right across our great state of Western Australia and, indeed, nationally. Despite what those opposite say, the Morrison-McCormack government is continuing to secure Australia's recovery with a record investment in infrastructure as part of the 2021-22 budget. This is continuing to support and secure jobs. It is driving growth and helping rebuild Australia's economy from COVID-19, which is still far from over. So not only does the $110 billion 10-year infrastructure pipeline form part of the recovery plan; it is helping secure Australia's world-leading economic recovery. This record investment in infrastructure is delivering, actually delivering, nation-building infrastructure projects and water security to inland Australia. It's not only meeting our national freight challenge but also getting Australians home sooner and safer. This investment builds on the significant projects that the Morrison government has already delivered for Australia. Let me remind all in this chamber of some of those projects that have been delivered: the Pacific Highway to Ballina extension, $3.7 billion; the Ballarat light rail upgrade in Victoria, half a billion dollars; the North-South Corridor Darlington upgrade in South Australia, over $200 million; the Bruce Highway and Mackay Ring Road in Queensland, approximately $400 million; and, a bit closer to our home, Senator O'Sullivan, the Great Northern Highway, the Muchea to Wubin upgrade in Western Australia, $275 million. This $110 billion rollout—I will say it again; this $110 billion rollout—includes an additional $15.2 billion in new commitments. So, far from a cut, it is additional spending. 15:01 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia Can the minister inform the Senate of the flow-on in jobs as a result of this $110 billion infrastructure investment? 15:02 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia Indeed I can, and very proudly so. This government has a very proud record of delivering major infrastructure projects right across our nation. In fact, more than 220 projects are currently under construction right around our great nation. These projects are supporting over 100,000 Australian jobs. The $15.2 billion in new commitments to infrastructure projects will support an additional 30,000 jobs across Australia, which has never been more important. This budget is funding projects including: $2 billion for the Great Western Highway upgrade—Katoomba to Lithgow—in New South Wales; $2 billion to deliver the Melbourne Intermodal Terminal; $400 million additional funding for the Bruce Highway in Queensland; $237.5 million for Metronet in Western Australia; and $161 million for the Truro bypass in South Australia. The PRESIDENT I0Q Senator O'Sullivan, a final supplementary question? 15:03 Senator O'SULLIVAN 283585 Western Australia Can the minister outline how the $110 billion infrastructure rollout is driving economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic? 15:03 Senator REYNOLDS 250216 Western Australia Indeed, I can. I still had such a long list of projects that this government is delivering, I didn't get through them all. This infrastructure rollout above all else means local jobs in local communities right across Australia. For example, the new Intermodal Freight Terminal in Melbourne will support both the Victorian and, importantly, our national freight networks, creating up to 1,350 jobs during peak construction and a further 550 jobs during peak operation. The additional $1 billion for the highly successful $2.5 billion Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program is also successfully delivering local projects that matter to local communities right across our nation. That again means local jobs, not just direct construction jobs but jobs that flow right through local communities. This funding is also supporting around 3½ thousand jobs, taking the total jobs supported by this program to 9,000. This is what good government looks like. (Time expired) Senator Birmingham H6X Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper. QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS 53 QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS Budget 53 15:04 Senator URQUHART 231199 Tasmania I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) today relating to wages growth. Senator Wong's question concerned wage stagnation that the government that Senator Birmingham is part of has presided over for eight long years, wage stagnation which this budget predicts will continue. In fact, the budget that the Treasurer, Mr Frydenberg, brought down last night represents a real wages cut and is an admission of failure by this government. Even after spending $100 billion and racking up a trillion dollars in debt, the wages of Australian working people will still go backwards in this government's budget, which is a pretty extraordinary admission of failure. After everything Australian workers have been through together and particularly after the last year of struggle, the thanks they get from the Morrison government is a cut in real wages. It's a stunning outcome from the budget and not an outcome which this minister should be proud of in any shape or form. Yet, he responded to questions today with the smugness and spin that we've become accustomed to from this government, which is quite happy to make all sorts of announcements and walk away from the consequences for ordinary Australians. That's what this government does: announcement, announcement, announcement, re-announcement, re-announcement, re-announcement. But they walk away from the consequences of their actions in budgets that affect ordinary Australians. We've seen the same shirking of responsibility from the Morrison government in the response to the horrific bushfires. We've seen it with the floods. We've seen it with recovery from natural disasters. We've seen it with quarantine and the vaccination rollout. We've seen it in aged care. We've seen it in that litany of failure with the vaccine rollout. They've continued to fail to act in the best interests of working Australians. We've seen a failure to take any responsibility and a failure to act. Labor has said all along that part of the task at hand is getting unemployment down but also addressing underemployment. People can't find the hours of work that they need to support their loved ones. We know, and this minister knows, that, until that's addressed, we won't get wages growth. The minister knows very well there are other issues which are preventing people from getting good, secure, well-paid jobs. Then we have the industrial relations system, the childcare system, skills and training, concentrated disadvantage—a whole range of issues which haven't just been ignored over the last eight long years of this government but have been actively made worse. Having racked up all that debt and spent all that money, Minister Birmingham and his government are missing a massive opportunity to set the economy up for a future where working people actually get a slice of the action when it comes to this economic recovery. It's simply not a recovery if Australian workers are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. Deloitte Access Economics has forecast that workers could be waiting for up to five years for wages growth to return to two per cent. Two million Australians are either without a job or don't have enough hours, and wages are stagnant. What is very, very clear is that this government is using the pandemic to continue to lock in low wages and insecure work, and it has every intention of continuing that mission. What we can look forward to under this government is a patchy recovery that's defined by even weaker wages growth, following record low wages growth under the Liberals prior to the pandemic. What we all know is that wages growth has been too slow for too long. With the current condition of our economy and the policies to repress wages presided over by this government, unemployment may need to go very low before wages growth hits acceptable levels and starts to feed through into inflation. This government has presided over a repression of wages in this country for eight long years. Huge numbers of jobs have been casualised and pushed into labour hire; there have been relentless attacks on unions, the offshoring of jobs, constant arguments for tiny or no increases in the minimum wage and a wages policy to crush the wages of its own employees that just beggars belief. What we need is real vision, not this pathetic rabble that responds to newspaper headlines and has no coherent plan for the country. (Time expired) 15:09 Senator HUGHES 273828 New South Wales I just look at those opposite over there, and clearly they weren't paying attention in year 7 economics. There's a book that perhaps they should have a look at called Economics for Today. It's a year 7 textbook. It might help them understand a little principle in economics called supply and demand. When you work on reducing unemployment and workers become harder to come by, it actually means employers will pay them more. Do we need to have a little talk about inflation as well? When last year we were in the midst of a global pandemic, when businesses were closing down and shutting their doors and all the states were locking up their borders, that made it harder for people to maintain their jobs. So what the Morrison government did was ensure that people could still put their kids in child care by making it free. When we look at inflation figures and all of a sudden lots of costs that families normally endure no longer have a cost, that means there's a thing called lower inflation. We get lower inflation. When we look at what that means to wages in the year where we get higher inflation, that means it kind of looks like real wages are going down, but in effect they're not; it's just being covered by the return to what we could call a more normal rate of inflation—around three or 3½ per cent—rather than zero, as was experienced during the 2020 pandemic pretty much across the globe. Let's talk a little bit more about job creation. I know those opposite get their wages primarily from the unions and they're probably on a scale indexed every year, so they go up more on confidence rather than capability, but let's never let that get in the way of a promotion within the union movement. For those of us that live in the real world—the 80 per cent of people who are employed by small and medium-sized businesses—wages are determined by how successful the business they own or work in is. How tough it is for employers to get staff, because if it's harder to get a staff member, you normally need to offer more money or an inducement to get them to come and work in your business. Again, for all of those who didn't pay attention: supply and demand. When the demand for workers is greater and the supply is shorter, wages will go up. Last night, in the budget, we saw what the Morrison government is doing to ensure that the Australian economy keeps powering on. We are best placed in the world with our recovery. We have a health situation where the virus has been suppressed—not the McGowan strategy of completely extinguishing it but the suppression strategy we undertook at the beginning, which has been successful—and businesses are thriving and we're starting to see life, in a lot of ways, go back to pre-COVID conditions. We want to make sure that that economic growth continues. We want to make sure that businesses are able to continue expanding and employing more people. How are we going to do that? We're going to ensure that things like the instant asset write-off continue into the future so that we continue to see the capital markets, so that we see people investing in machinery for their businesses or tradies buying a new ute. We're making child care more targeted when we talk to low- and middle-income families, so we're going to make it easier and more affordable for people to take on additional days of work. It's the Morrison government that's focused on seeing businesses grow, it's the Morrison government that's committed to ensuring Australia's economy comes back and it's the Morrison government that is putting Australia and its workers first. We have seen that when over 99 per cent of businesses that employ over 11 million workers write off their eligible asset, those businesses that traditionally suffer during times of downturn have in fact thrived. If you go out to WJ Matthews in Moree, a fair few headers and tractors have been bought, but that normally wouldn't have happened. That's a significant number of jobs for a country town. Guess what? It's pretty tough to get a mechanic out there. Supply and demand, guys; that's how you keep the wages growing. 15:14 Senator CICCONE 281503 Victoria It's always good to hear my good friend on the other side of the aisle, Senator Hughes, talking about numbers and economics, as if the Liberal Party are the only ones that can understand such concepts. But what they fail to understand is the very question that Senator Wong asked today of Senator Birmingham, who is meant to be the Minister for Finance in relation to page 37, These were very simple questions with respect to cuts to real wages. When you do look at the numbers and you do look at the figures in Budget Paper No. 1 on page 37, it is very clear that there is a cut from 1.8 down to 1.25. That is simple accounting. I don't know what you want to call it, Senator Hughes, but that is very simple maths when it comes to very clear cuts to real wages for Australian workers by this federal government, the Morrison Liberal-National government. Let's not forget that: black and white, on page 37. Yet they couldn't answer that simple question—three simple questions, in fact—that Senator Wong put to Senator Birmingham. It took a while for the government to finally acknowledge: yes, $1 trillion of debt. Who would have thought? I remember going to uni, studying economics, and never in my wildest dreams would I ever have imagined being in this place confronted with $1 trillion of debt and growing. Senator Ruston 243273 You missed the pandemic, did you? Senator CICCONE 281503 I did not miss the pandemic, Minister. It is just amazing when those opposite try to lecture us on this side that they somehow are better economic managers than we are, but quite frankly the record speaks for itself. Once again what we've had is more spin than substance, and we know that this budget that was handed down last night is by no means a budget whose purpose is to support working people. Nor is it a budget that does what it takes to usher forward the recovery of the Australian economy from the pandemic, and this should hardly be surprising. After eight long years under the Liberal-National government, we've all become rather used to budgets like these. One only has to look at the flop of last year's budget's JobMaker scheme, with the headline of 450,000 new jobs. Where are they, Minister? Come on: 450,000 jobs—where are they? Yet the budget is forecasting that we maintain migration levels at 160,000, so this government's priority is bringing more foreign workers into this country rather than supporting local Australians in finding work. Unemployment is at around five to six per cent, and that will fluctuate. Senator Ruston interjecting— Senator CICCONE 281503 It will, yet this government has no incentives encouraging those people to find work. There are lots of businesses around the country right now who are screaming blue murder. They need workers. They need help. What are the incentives for getting those people into a job? It feels like this budget is all about trying to make sure that we can get migrants into this country—cooks, chefs, nurses. Are we really not in a position to train our young people for these jobs? Senator Ruston 243273 Did you miss the training stuff? Senator CICCONE 281503 Don't you worry, Minister; I'll be going through this and I'll be making my contributions in this place and making my views well known about this government's lack of history of supporting traineeships, because what we've seen is a cut, not an increase, in support. You've taken $400 million out of universities—come on!—at a time when we need to be upskilling people. Senator Ruston 243273 You're not this stupid; stop it! Senator CICCONE 281503 Come on, Minister. We know the facts: 12 months on we know that the JobMaker scheme, originally funded for $4 billion, has actually delivered only $100 million of that amount, and only 2.5 per cent of what was spruiked has actually made it out the door. I don't have much time left, but I did also want to touch on the fact that household debt in Australia is at scary levels. We are looking at household debt of around 185 per cent when you look at the ratios. How on earth can people pay off their debt when this government keeps cutting wages of Australian workers? You are, and shame on the government. 15:19 Senator SMALL 291406 Western Australia I think the Labor Party have jumped ahead a couple of steps, because, when we talk about wage growth in Australia, that obviously implies that someone has a job, and thanks to the economic stewardship of the Morrison government through the most calamitous economic event to beset this nation since the Great Depression, 75,000 more Australians are in work than were in work in March 2020. So I think, to set the record straight today, it's worth cutting through the spin that we hear from those opposite and going back to where this nation was in March last year. At that time, Treasury feared that unemployment would reach 15 per cent and that the economy would contract by an incredible 20 per cent. That would have taken two million Australians out of work, Senator Ciccone—not in terms of giving them a wage cut but throwing them out of employment entirely. In fact, in the first few weeks of the pandemic, we saw almost a million Australians lose their job or be stood down with no hours to work. How far we have come! Now 13.1 million Australians—or 75,000 more than at the start of the pandemic—are in work. That represents an unemployment rate of 5.6 per cent, which happens to be lower than that bequeathed to us by the Labor Party. Let's not forget that their big-taxing, big-spending agenda had more Australians on the unemployment queues than the economic stewardship of the Morrison government. What does that actually deliver for Australians? Aside from the enjoyment of the benefits of work, such as connectivity to their communities and the ability to contribute to their families, that 5.6 per cent unemployment rate and a trajectory towards full employment increases the pressure in the labour market that will naturally drive wages growth in this country. So, once we see the economy continuing to recover from this global pandemic and once we see even more Australians in work, which is the fervent hope of everyone over here on the government benches, we will see higher levels of wage growth and higher levels of prosperity. And, ultimately, it is those healthy and wealthy societies like ours that concentrate on delivering services for the most vulnerable in our communities. At the end of the day, it is the sort of economic comeback that we see here in Australia today that pays for the increases in NDIS funding and that pays for the increased funding to record levels for our aged-care sector. That is the achievement of a strong economy. The Prime Minister, the Treasurer and those in the Morrison government don't talk about a strong economy for the sake of it. We're not obsessing over the numbers on page 37 of Budget Paper No. 1 and trying to find something to quibble over. Instead we're focused on the lived reality out there in the Australian community and improving it for future generations of Australians. That's the achievement that we see here today. Whilst the economies of the UK, France and Italy contracted by eight per cent last year, and Japan and Canada contracted by five per cent, Australia's economic contraction was limited to just 2½ per cent, and we are returning to growth in the 2021-22 financial year. Incredibly, we're talking about GDP growth of 4.25 per cent in the financial year ahead. That is the benefit of the Morrison government's economic stewardship, and that is what will deliver wages growth in Australia going forward. The outcome that we see today was driven by stronger growth in private sector wages, which increased by 0.7 per cent to be 1.4 per cent higher than they were a year ago. So the wage price index in Australia has increased to be 1.4 per cent higher than it was a year ago. But the Morrison government isn't done yet. No, we're not resting on our laurels after delivering the strongest quarterly outcome in private sector wage growth since March 2014 and, in fact, the second-best quarterly result under this government. We will continue to manage the economy, promote full employment, keep Australians in work, and deliver for those most vulnerable Australians, who rely on a strong economy to provide the safety net that they depend on. 15:24 Senator WALSH 252157 Victoria We asked Senator Birmingham a very simple question today, a question that Australians want an answer to: how long will they have to wait for a pay rise under this government? They are still waiting for an answer to this critical question, and they are waiting for some evidence that this government even cares about their wages. We can find some evidence for the Australian people to help answer this critical question, which we asked today on their behalf, in this government's pathetic record on wages. There have been eight long years of record low wage growth under this government. Low wages are a deliberate design feature of their economic plan. Today Australians are expected to believe that Australia is coming back, as the Treasurer said last night—coming back while their wages are falling behind. There is no recovery from this pandemic that leaves workers behind. There is no recovery that lets Australians' wages go backwards. There is no recovery without good, secure jobs for Australian workers. The government needed to deliver that plan this week, and they failed. Australians are still waiting for answers to their questions: When will we have good, secure jobs under this government? When will we have a pay rise under this government? When will we even have an answer to these questions from this government? Beneath the gloss of last night's announcements, there was a very clear message to the workers of Australia: the Liberals love low wages. They love Australians having low wages. According to them, low wages are a deliberate design feature of their economic plan. Under this budget, real wages for Australians go backwards. It is not good enough. It's not good enough for workers who have been waiting years for a pay rise but who have, instead, seen wage growth slow, going to record lows under this government. It is not good enough for the essential workers, who have carried the nation through this pandemic. The thanks they get for that from Scott Morrison and the Treasurer is a cut to their real wages. It is not good enough for the low-paid workers of this country and the growing number of people in insecure jobs, who find it harder and harder to make ends meet. Labor knows and Australians know that there is no recovery when workers are left behind. We know that the Liberals' happy place is attacking wages. They have been doing it for years. They were coming after workers' wages earlier this year with their nasty IR bill. The budget speaks for itself on wages. You only have to go to page 9 to see that wages for working people will fall even further behind and won't even keep up with inflation. After all of this, after the government announcing spending of $100 billion and racking up a trillion dollars in debt, Australians will not see a pay rise under this government. Let's be clear about what this means. Real wages are continuing to fall, and the government will not be putting any more money into the pockets of working Australians. They have no plans to get wages moving. What an admission of failure. How many times did the Prime Minister go out to try to thank essential workers and shake their hands during the pandemic? Those low-wage workers—the supermarket workers, the cleaners, the early childhood educators, the delivery drivers—proved themselves to be essential day in, day out. Who does the Prime Minister think will suffer the most from wages falling behind even further? Those essential workers, who got us through 2020 with their hard work. That is the thanks that this government gives them. Question agreed to. Budget 57 15:30 Senator McKIM JKM Tasmania I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Birmingham) to a question without notice asked by Senator McKim today relating to the fossil fuel sector. In question time I asked Senator Birmingham repeatedly about the budget's public subsidies to encourage the burning of fossil fuels, and he consistently failed to acknowledge that point. He dissembled, he changed the subject and he answered questions that weren't asked, but what he did not ever mention was the $51 billion of direct subsidies—public funds—in this budget allocated to encouraging the burning of fossil fuels. To state the absolute bleeding obvious, our climate is breaking down around us. It's going to be catastrophic for billions of people. We have mere years to prevent the worst effects of the climate catastrophe, and every single day counts in our response. What did we see in the government's response yesterday? Handouts for fossil fuel companies. We saw favourable treatment for billionaires to encourage more environmental destruction and the ongoing burning of coal, oil and gas. This is a budget put together by climate criminals. And they can't say that they didn't know, because, at the same time that they are giving $50 billion plus of public subsidies to encourage the burning of fossil fuels, they are intervening to insure homes that are becoming uninsurable because of climate change. The government is offering a token amount of money for responses to disasters, like droughts, fires and floods, that we know are going to be more common and more intense as a result of climate change, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, the destruction of forests and land clearing. They are all things that this government puts public subsidies into. The government are the arsonists, and they're trying to claim that they're the fire brigade! As if paying billionaires directly to open up new gas fields to implement the burning of gas weren't bad enough, the government are also refusing to make billionaires pay their fair share of tax. Australia's billionaires increased their wealth by $90 billion last year, in the middle of a global pandemic, when so many Australians were doing it tough, and they have not been asked to chip in a single cent of that obscene growth in their wealth to help us fund the services that Australian people want: better hospitals, better public education, better public transport systems, better disability support—just to name a few. Meanwhile, on the government's own projections, wages will go backwards in real terms for the next two years. Let's think about that: wages are to go backwards in real terms for the next two years. This is not a bug. This is not an unintended consequence of this budget. It is a feature of this budget, because the major donors to the Liberal and National parties want to keep wages low so they can keep making obscene profits and keep dodging their responsibility to fund the essential public services that Australians want and expect from their governments. Wages are going backwards in real terms because that is exactly what the government want. And that is because their major donors, in this regime of institutionalised bribery that is called political donations in this country, want wages to shrink. The other side of that coin, of course, is house prices spiralling out of control. Again, that's not a bug. That's not an unintended consequence. It's a feature. You're pricing a whole generation of young people out of the housing market and you are deliberately causing wages to go backwards. Shame on you all. Question agreed to. NOTICES 58 NOTICES Presentation 58 15:35 Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS e4t New South Wales On behalf of the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation, I give notice of my intention, at the giving of notices on the next day of sitting, to withdraw notices of motion proposing the disallowance of 15 legislative instruments, as set out in the list I have provided to the Clerk. I advise the chamber that the list will be circulated to senators with today's notices. 15:35 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia 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 various bills, allowing them to be considered during this period of sittings. I will also table statements of reasons justifying the need for the bills to be considered during these sittings and seek leave to have the statements incorporated in Hansard. Withdrawal 58 15:36 Senator URQUHART 231199 Tasmania by leave—I withdraw business of the Senate notice of motion No. 2, in the name of Senator Pratt. Presentation 58 CONDOLENCES 62 CONDOLENCES Peacock, Hon. Andrew Sharp, AC 62 15:36 The PRESIDENT I0Q It is with deep regret that I inform the Senate of the death, on 16 April 2021, of the Hon. Andrew Sharp Peacock AC, a former minister and member of the House of Representatives for the division of Kooyong in Victoria, from 1966 to 1994. I call the Leader of the Government in the Senate. 15:37 Senator BIRMINGHAM H6X South Australia by leave—I move: That the Senate expresses its sadness at the death, on 16 April 2021, of the Honourable Andrew Sharp Peacock AC, former Leader of the Liberal Party and Minister for Foreign Affairs and former Member for Kooyong, places on record its admiration and appreciation for his service to the Parliament and the nation, and tenders its deep sympathy to his family in their bereavement. The Hon. Andrew Sharp Peacock, 'the colt from Kooyong', was a great Australian and a loyal icon and servant of the Liberal Party. A larger-than-life man with the charisma to match, he served his nation devotedly across a lifetime of public service. Born in Melbourne on 13 February 1939, Andrew studied at Scotch College before going on to study law at Melbourne university. He got his start in politics early, joining the Liberal Party as a teenager. In 1965, at the age of 26, Andrew became the youngest ever president of the Victorian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia. Just a year later he was elected to parliament, in the 1966 by-election caused by the resignation of the Rt Hon. Sir Robert Menzies in the seat of Kooyong. The constituency of Kooyong would return Andrew to the seat at a 12 further elections. All up, Andrew served 28 years, five months and 15 days as the member for Kooyong. About 10 of those years were spent serving as a government minister. Despite his young age upon being elected to parliament, Andrew's rapid ascendancy continued swiftly. After Andrew had been just a few years in the parliament, then-Prime Minister Gorton appointed him to his cabinet, in 1969, as the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Army, during the Vietnam War. Andrew was aged just 30 years old at the time. He also held responsibility for a variety of portfolios, serving as Minister for External Territories, Cabinet Minister, Minister for Environment, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Industry and Commerce, under Prime Ministers Gorton, McMahon and Fraser. As Minister for Foreign Affairs, he discharged the role with distinction and won the respect of Australia's close allies, especially in the immediate region. Andrew leveraged his strong and sincere relationship with the people of Papua New Guinea to help oversee its transition to full self-government and independence. His role in Papua New Guinea's independence cannot, and should not, be overstated. The Papua New Guinean government later made him an honorary Grand Companion of the Order of Logohu, their highest honour. Following the defeat of the Fraser government in 1983, Andrew took the reins of the Liberal Party as its leader and as Leader of the Opposition. When then Prime Minister Hawke called an early election in 1984, Andrew Peacock was a clear underdog. However, he was widely credited with outcampaigning Hawke during a long campaign and, certainly, with reducing the margin of the Hawke government at the time. In his second stint as leader, Andrew led a strong campaign in the 1990 election, narrowly achieving a majority of the vote, but was narrowly defeated overall. At a speech on the occasion of Andrew's 80th birthday in 2019, he reflected on those battles, the Liberal leadership and, particularly, the contest for the prime ministership. He said: Unlike most of my colleagues I did not hunger for the job as prime minister. I truly was more interested in what we were doing than the post itself. I wanted good posts. I wanted to be the foreign minister, but being prime minister was not the central orient; it wasn't the central purpose to what I was doing. I mean it was still important and disappointing to lose … I don't want to put it down, but I wasn't sitting there like some do plotting to be prime minister. It wasn't in my nature. My friend, former minister and former senator for South Australia, Amanda Vanstone tells me, in reflecting on Andrew Peacock, that he rose above the slings, arrows and disappointments of politics. She said that he did not let bitterness infest him. It is an important lesson and legacy that Andrew leaves for all of us who pass through this place. Indeed, Andrew continued to approach politics and public life with dignity and an unmistakable toughness, matched by his sense of humour and typically affable manner. Amanda also told me of a classic story of how one night, by then in the new parliament, Andrew sat watching other people. She recounts: He said if someone pushed the cork into an empty bottle he was sure he could remove it without breaking the bottle. Like a fly fisherman teasing the water he drew them in. 20 bucks per person was the bet. Amanda credits herself as being lucky not to get sucked in. Others were not so lucky. She said that he scooped the pool and collected his cash after managing to extract the cork—one of many party tricks—and much amusement formed around the room. She hasn't yet explained to me exactly how the trick is achieved. In similarly fond reflections of Andrew Peacock as someone able to impart a good sense of humour, sometimes even at his own expense, former Leader of the Government in the Senate Robert Hill recounts a memory that he had of Andrew. He said: He was always fun. I remember at a meeting in Athens someone was giving a boring speech. Peacock looked at me, pulled out a set of keys and dropped them on the table. He then looked at me and said, 'Shirley's', with a mischievous smile. Robert, though, went on to say that, beyond the charm and style, Andrew Peacock had a substance—focused on sensible, practical public policy outcomes, directed to benefit those who most needed the support of government. Robert said, 'It's why I thought he would make a good prime minister.' As those personal stories from those who knew Andrew will reveal, he was authentic and humorous but he had his heart in the right place and a head for good policy. He will be remembered fondly by those on both sides of the political aisle as a man who approached politics with dignity and toughness. After his formal political career ended in 1994, Andrew continued his public service as a distinguished and successful Australian ambassador to the United States. As former Prime Minister John Howard said of his appointment of his former political rival as ambassador: I welcomed the opportunity of appointing him as Australia's ambassador to the United States in 1996. He discharged that role with much distinction. His knowledge of American politics enabled him to provide special insights regarding our most important ally. Australia lost a man who brought flair and style as well as high intelligence to his years in public life. I know that the current Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Payne, would wish to be here if she could to speak of her dear friend, her former employer and one of her mentors, in Andrew Peacock. It's notable that she is out walking in the steps of Andrew as our foreign minister today, representing our nation overseas, and I know that Marise looks forward, and will value the opportunity, to reflecting on Andrew more formally on another occasion. Andrew Peacock was a great man—a great Australian who gave much to our nation, and a great liberal. On behalf of the Australian government and the Senate, I extend our sincerest condolences to Andrew's wife, Penne, and his three daughters, Ann, Caroline and Jane, and the thanks of a grateful nation for the service that he gave. 15:45 Senator WONG 00AOU South Australia I rise on behalf of the Opposition to express our condolences following the passing of the Hon. Andrew Sharp Peacock AC, and I convey, at the outset, our sympathy to his family and friends and particularly acknowledge my counterpart, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who I know has had a long association with him since her earliest days working in politics. Andrew Peacock combined substance and style, and he advanced liberal causes throughout a three-decade career as a parliamentarian and later as a diplomat. He was present during important moments in our history and in world history, from our engagement in Vietnam and the independence of Papua New Guinea to leading the Liberal Party to two elections and, of course, as Australia's Ambassador to the United States. That he never became prime minister is, for some, a great shame, but he accomplished a great deal in his career, both inside and outside the parliament, and, on our side, he will always have respect for the stature he gave classical liberal values and for the force with which he advocated them internally and publicly. He put liberalism at the centre of the Liberal Party, even when that meant having difficult battles with those leading the growing movement toward hardline conservativism. I hope that reflections on his passing inspire those of more classically liberal persuasions to find their voice and renew his legacy. Andrew Peacock's early life quickly turned to politics. He went to the University of Melbourne, where he completed a Bachelor of Laws degree, but, of course, the pull was always towards a different vocation. His political interests saw him unsuccessfully contest a House seat in 1961, and he became the youngest ever president of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party in 1965. Just a year later, still well before he was 30 years of age, he succeeded in obtaining a seat in parliament following the retirement of Robert Menzies, and so the parliamentary career of the 'Colt from Kooyong' was born, and the colt, indeed, bolted from the gate. He would attain ministerial office before the decade was out, serving as Minister Assisting the Prime Minister and Minister for the Army under Prime Minister Gorton and then under Billy McMahon, who added Minister Assisting the Treasurer. There were obviously undoubted challenges serving as army minister as the Vietnam War grew in unpopularity. These were probably compounded by serving alongside Malcolm Fraser as defence minister, with debate between them a portent of how the relationship between the two would continue to play out. In 1972, Prime Minister McMahon made Mr Peacock minister for territories, which included Papua New Guinea, and for his efforts in supporting Papua New Guinea he would later be appointed a Grand Companion of the Order of Logohu. When Mr Fraser became Prime Minister in 1975, he appointed Andrew Peacock as his Minister for Foreign Affairs, and, as my colleague Senator Birmingham has said, it is probably for this position that he is perhaps best remembered. His capacity to move in international circles with a great deal of ease, building alliances and friendships, served him and our nation well. He was a trusted voice for the nation on the world stage. He understood that among the roles of the foreign minister is to explain both the world to Australia and Australia to the world. His liberal values guided his approach, and he sought results based on these principles. In his role in supporting a newly independent Papua New Guinea, he continued a strong friendship with Sir Michael Somare, whose passing we also recently marked in this place. Other key foreign policy challenges he confronted in our region included the developing relationship with China, the fallout from the war in Vietnam, the Indonesian incorporation of East Timor and the rise of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. On Cambodia, Australia's recognition of Pol Pot's regime in what was then known as so-called Democratic Kampuchea was a source of division within the Fraser government and of particular disagreement between Mr Fraser and his foreign minister. Mr Peacock was strongly opposed to recognition, a matter he argued in cabinet and in the House of Representatives, as well as with the Prime Minister directly. His arguments with Fraser became especially heated when evidence came to light of the torture and death of two Australians, David Scott and Ron Dean, at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Mr Peacock's principled stand against a regime that committed atrocities on an abominable scale was a statement not only about the monstrous nature of the violations taking place, something he had warned about previously but also about the fundamental duties of a national government towards its people. He stated, 'Our primary duty was to our own bloody citizen,' words still relevant today. Mr Peacock found himself on the outer following his public disagreement with Mr Fraser, and his opposition to recognition of Pol Pot's regime was a matter he highlighted when changing from foreign affairs to the industrial relations portfolio following the 1980 election and when he later resigned from the ministry in 1981. He unsuccessfully challenged for the leadership but would return to cabinet in 1982 for a brief period as Minister for Industry and Commerce. The election of the Hawke Labor government in 1983 and the return of Labor governments at the next four federal polls in an unbroken period of government that would last until 1996 saw Andrew Peacock spend the remainder of his parliamentary career in opposition. It also paved the way for the battle between two adversaries in the same party: Mr Peacock and John Howard. This tussle between wet and dry, between two individuals committed to different visions for the Liberal Party and for the nation became a defining alternative political narrative for nearly a decade and involved a constant tug of war over who was leader. Mr Peacock led the Liberals to losses in 1984 and 1990. During the latter campaign, his capacity to be Prime Minister came under significant attack, but it is worth noting that during that election the coalition received, to his credit, more than 50 per cent of the vote, and he accepted that result with the spirit in which our democracy should be conducted. Andrew Peacock resigned from parliament in September 1994, and he was appointed to serve as Australia's ambassador to the United States. He found himself as our representative to one of our key allies as the Clinton administration grappled with changing dynamics in geopolitics following the end of the Cold War, including the 1998 Kosovo War. In 1997, he was recognised for service to the parliament, to politics and for the formulation and implementation of defence and foreign policy when he was appointed as a Companion of the Order of Australia. Andrew Peacock had a precocious political life and a prodigious career. He was widely commended for his performance in key posts, including minister and ambassador. Whilst the ultimate political expectation many held for him of the prime ministership was not fulfilled, he nonetheless had a distinguished period of service to our nation. But he described his greatest defeat as the loss in the 1974 Melbourne Cup by a horse he part owned, saying: She came second and she was favourite, but she got caught in the shadows of the post. That was a shattering blow. Unfortunately, this might have been something of an analogy for his own career—although it says something that he thought that was his greatest defeat. John Howard reflected following his passing, 'Australia lost a man who brought flare and style as well as high intelligence to his years in public office.' Andrew Peacock set new standards in Australian politics. I close by again expressing, on behalf of the Labor Party, our condolences and deepest sympathy following his passing to his family, friends and party. Question agreed to, honourable senators standing in their places. BUSINESS 65 BUSINESS Leave of Absence 65 15:54 Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Western Australia by leave—I move: That leave of absence be granted to Senator Henderson for today, due to electorate duties. NOTICES 65 NOTICES Postponement 65 15:55 The PRESIDENT I0Q I remind senators the question may be put on any proposal at the request of any senator. COMMITTEES 65 COMMITTEES Allocation of Departments and Agencies 65 15:55 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania At the request of Senator Ruston, I move: That the order of 13 February 2020, allocating departments and agencies to committees, be amended as follows: (1) Under Economics, omit "and Small Business". (2) Under Education and Employment, omit "Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, excluding Industry, Science, Energy and Resources but including Small Business". Question agreed to. BUDGET 65 BUDGET Consideration by Estimates Committees 65 15:55 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania At the request of Senator Ruston, I move: That the order of the Senate of 2 December 2020 relating to estimates hearings for 2021 be amended so that cross-portfolio hearings on Indigenous matters and on Murray-Darling Basin Plan matters be held on Friday, 28 May instead of Friday, 18 June 2021. Question agreed to. MOTIONS 65 MOTIONS Holocaust 65 15:56 Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Western Australia I advise that Senators Rice, Keneally, Ciccone and Wong have added their names to general business notice of motion No. 1098 relating to victims of the Holocaust. I, and also on behalf of Senators Abetz, Hughes, McLachlan, Griff, Kitching, Rice, Keneally, Ciccone and Wong, move: That the Senate— (a) notes that: (i) 7 to 8 April 2021 marked Yom HaShoah for Jewish communities across Australia and around the world, a solemn event held to honour and remember the victims of the Holocaust, (ii) commemorations focused on the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre later this year, and (iii) Babi Yar was the first and most documented 'open-air shooting', where 33,771 Jews were executed by the Einsatzgruppen on the northern outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine between 29 and 30 September 1941; and (a) acknowledges Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry's commentary: '[T]his year's Yom HaShoah event on the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union will mean a great deal to every Australian Jew of Soviet descent. More than that, it will mean that through these acts of remembrance and education, in some small way, we have thwarted the killers who sought to obliterate not only Jewish life but any memory that our people ever lived and died'; and (b) reaffirms Australia's commitment to never forget those who perished in the Holocaust and to ensure that it is never repeated. Question agreed to. BILLS 66 BILLS Biosecurity Amendment (No Crime to Return Home) Bill 2021 66

Biosecurity Amendment (No Crime to Return Home) Bill 2021

First Reading 66 15:56 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia I move: That the following bill be introduced: A Bill for an Act to amend the Biosecurity Act 2015, and for related purposes—Biosecurity Amendment (No Crime to Return Home) Bill 2021. Question agreed to. Senator PATRICK 144292 I present the bill and 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 66 15:57 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia I move: That this bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill. Leave granted. Senator PATRICK 144292 I table an explanatory memorandum and I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows— Today I introduce the Biosecurity Amendment (No Crime to Return Home) Bill 2021. This Bill will stop the Minister for Health from banning, for biosecurity reasons, overseas Australian citizens and permanent residents from coming home during a declared human biosecurity emergency. Importantly the Bill addresses the current situation criminalising Australians in India from returning home by repealing the current determination. However, the Bill does not stop the exercise of other existing powers under the Biosecurity Act 2015 to require persons to quarantine or arrive at a particular destination or require other measures necessary to protect the Australian community. It simply stops the Australian government abandoning Australians in a time of crisis. I appreciate that there will be many Australians who think or say "tough luck, you left and now you shouldn't be able to compromise the health of the entire Nation by letting Australians return from a COVID hotspot". I'm not here to criticise that position, it's driven by fear and uncertainty—fear of the unknown and the uncertainty of everything we know and don't know about COVID. But let's not lose our compassion and humanity for our friends and neighbours either… Last week it was revealed that there are 173 unaccompanied Australian citizen children in India. That's 173 kids far from home without their mum or dad who are now stuck in a scary situation as a result of the Minister's decision. And there are also 9500 Australians, in India, still waiting to come home with 950 of those listed as vulnerable. What is important to remember is most of these Australians have been stuck overseas for MONTHS - they have all been trying desperately to come home. But travel bans and the cancellation of flights has meant that for many it has been impossible to just get a seat on a flight. Whatever the Commonwealth has been doing—it's obvious it hasn't been doing enough. A combination of international travel bans and insufficient quarantine has compounded the problem. The remedy was simple—ban all overseas travel, have sufficient quarantine capacity and arrange enough repatriation flights. More than a year into the pandemic, the quarantine and repatriation work has not been done. But it's all a little late for that now—9500 Australians, in India, can't get home and that really is a shameful place for Australia to be. We need to be doing it better. It is a responsibility of the Australian Government to assist Australians who are in difficulty overseas, not to criminalise them for coming home. And certainly, any such decision to do so should properly be the decision of the Parliament, not some faceless official drafting an instrument and getting a Minister to sign it into law. It's illogical, callous and heartless that this Government can grant an exemption and allow an individual to travel overseas on compassionate grounds and then later thinks it's acceptable to leave them stranded overseas. Isn't that perverse? Yes, you can go—but just don't expect to be able to come home any time soon… A single Minister should never have the authority to outcast an Australian from coming home—it is improper and immoral. This Bill will prevent that ever occurring in the future. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Senator PATRICK 144292 I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted; debate adjourned. Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021 67

Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021

Reference to Committee 67 15:58 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I move: That the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021 be referred to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 15 June 2021. 15:58 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT I0Q Leave is granted for one minute. Senator DUNIAM 263418 The statutory review of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility informs the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021. More than 122 face-to-face meetings were conducted across nine locations in the north, and engagement with over 100 different entities occurred during the review from July 2019 until late 2020. The Select Committee on the effectiveness of the Australian Government's Northern Australia agenda then also extensively considered the NAIF reforms and recommended this legislation, which gives effect to the reforms recommended by the review, be passed by the parliament as a priority. A further committee inquiry is unnecessary. 15:58 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT I0Q Leave is granted for one minute. Senator GALLAGHER ING The opposition will be opposing this motion moved by Senator Waters to send the bill to the committee. The NAIF is due to cease operations on 31 June this year. To delay the passing of this bill would jeopardise the NAIF extension and therefore risk the remaining $2.2 billion in funding which the NAIF is still to allocate to projects in northern Australia. To allow this to happen would be reckless. Communities and businesses in northern Australia deserve the opportunity to put their hand up for those remaining funds, and Labor won't stand in their way. We support the NAIF and we support the extension. The PRESIDENT I0Q The question is that the motion moved by Senator Waters be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:04]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 9 AYES Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC McKim, NJ Rice, J Siewert, R (teller) Steele-John, J Thorpe, LA Waters, LJ Whish-Wilson, PS 34 NOES Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Carr, KJ Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fierravanti-Wells, C Gallagher, KR Hanson, P Hughes, H Hume, J Lambie, J McAllister, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Patrick, RL Rennick, G Roberts, M Ryan, SM Small, B Smith, DA Stoker, AJ Urquhart, AE (teller) Van, D Watt, M 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 MOTIONS 68 MOTIONS Forestry Industry 68 16:06 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I advise that Senator Ciccone and Senator McKenzie have added their names to general business notice of motion No. 1092, relating to Victoria's forestry industry, and I ask that it be taken as a formal motion. The PRESIDENT I0Q Is there any objection to this motion being taken as formal? An honourable senator: Yes. The PRESIDENT I0Q There is an objection. COVID-19: Quarantine 68 16:06 Senator SIEWERT e5z Western Australia I, and also on behalf of Senator Faruqi, move: That the Senate— (a) condemns the Federal Government's travel ban on citizens and visa holders returning home from India as racist and punitive; (b) recognises that people who call Australia home in India and the Indian community in Australia felt abandoned by their Government when it criminalised their return home from COVID-ravaged India; (c) acknowledges that there are 9,500 citizens and permanent visa holders in India who would like to return home to Australia, including 950 vulnerable people and 173 unaccompanied minors; (d) notes that the Government is not bringing people home fast enough, as planned repatriation flights are estimated to bring 1,000 people home, at most, by the end of June; and (e) calls on the Federal Government to immediately revoke this racist travel ban, invest in additional quarantine facilities, and announce its plans to bring the 9,500 Australians home from India quickly and safely. 16:06 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT I0Q Leave is granted for one minute. Senator GALLAGHER ING I think we have tried to work with the Greens to amend this motion, but unsuccessfully. For the record, if the intent of this motion by the Greens party is to express support for the Indian-Australian community, we support that intent. If the intent is to oppose the jailing of Australian citizens for returning home then we support that intent. But this motion goes further than that, and that's why Labor cannot support the motion. The motion would see the Senate override the advice of our medical experts, which is not our role. The only way we can bring home the 40,000 stranded Australians, including those citizens from India, is for Scott Morrison to finally roll out the vaccine here in Australia and accept his responsibility to safely expand Australia's quarantine capacity so that all Australians can again call Australia home. 16:07 Senator HANSON BK6 Queensland I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT I0Q Leave is granted for one minute. Senator HANSON BK6 One Nation will not be supporting this motion. I feel very offended that they used the words that this is 'a racist travel ban'. It is based on the fact that India is suffering under a pandemic, and no-one will disagree with that. The fact is, decisions have to be made as to what is in the best interests of Australia and how to bring people back into Australia based on a pandemic. Over a period of time here in Australia, we have found that the premiers of states, at the drop of a hat, for one COVID infection, close the borders, which affects businesses and people in their jobs and communities. If we allow people to come into the country from a country that does have the pandemic, we are going to have to deal with that, if we can, and we've seen what's happened in the hotel quarantine accommodation. All I want to say is that to say this is racist is belittling the people of Australia, and I think it's disgusting that you put it that way as it's not based on fact. (Time expired) The PRESIDENT I0Q The question is that motion 1094 be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:10]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 9 AYES Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC McKim, NJ Rice, J Siewert, R (teller) Steele-John, J Thorpe, LA Waters, LJ Whish-Wilson, PS 33 NOES Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Carr, KJ Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fierravanti-Wells, C Gallagher, KR Hanson, P Hughes, H Hume, J Lambie, J McAllister, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Patrick, RL Roberts, M Ryan, SM Small, B Smith, DA Stoker, AJ Urquhart, AE (teller) Van, D Watt, M 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

 Beef Week 69 16:13 Senator CANAVAN 245212 Queensland I ask that the names of Senators Watt and Chisholm be added to general business notice of motion No. 1101 relating to the Australian beef industry and ask that it be taken as a formal motion. The PRESIDENT I0Q Is there any objection to this motion being taken as formal? Honourable senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT I0Q There is. I'll add that to the list. Indigenous Australians 69 16:13 Senator THORPE 280304 Victoria I move: That the Senate— (a) notes that: (i) across the country governments are implementing extremely punitive youth justice legislation that will further criminalise and target young people, particularly First Nations young people, (ii) on an average night in the June quarter of 2020, about half of all imprisoned children were First Nations, despite making up approximately 5% of the overall youth population, (iii) often this legislation has been enacted without proper consultation and engagement with Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, medical professionals and human rights and youth justice organisations, (iv) particularly in the Northern Territory, the recommendations of the Royal Commission into the Detention and Protection of Children in the Northern Territory have not been fully implemented, and (v) it is time to take a new evidence-based approach to youth justice, by redirecting money away from prisons into stronger, caring, self-determined communities; and (b) calls on the Commonwealth to work with governments across the country to: (i) abandon regressive approaches to criminal justice and instead implement justice reinvestment interventions to youth offending, including culturally safe diversion, restorative justice programs, family and community support and culturally safe health, education, and youth support services, and (ii) consult widely, particularly First Nations people, to implement culturally responsive systems that keep communities safe and families together. 16:14 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT I0Q Leave is granted for one minute. Senator DUNIAM 263418 While the Commonwealth is unable to set the individual approaches of states and territories to their criminal justice systems, the Morrison government is committed to engaging with all Australian governments by working in partnership with Indigenous Australians through the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and the justice policy partnership to address the drivers of Indigenous incarceration and improve justice and community safety outcomes for Indigenous Australians. 16:14 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT I0Q Leave is granted for one minute. Senator ROBERTS 266524 Pauline Hanson's One Nation supports this motion. Firstly, honesty is essential, so let's be blunt. This applies to kids of all skin colours. The current catch-and-release policies are failing. Incarceration fails can turn juvenile offenders into hardened criminals. The foremost responsibility is community safety, to keep people safe from derailed juveniles. The root cause, though, is at a community level and involves the whole family, because the root cause is dysfunctional families abusing kids, neglecting kids and allowing kids to wag school and roam the streets. Elders in white and black communities have lost their influence. Solutions, though, need to be rigorous and not feel-good pandering. We need proper, tough, rigorous programs like boot camps that care and that develop meaning and purpose, such as Three Big Rivers, Hard Yakka, Black Rock and what they're trying to do now in Townsville at One Community One Standard. We support this motion. The PRESIDENT I0Q The question is that motion No. 1093 be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:19]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 31 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Carr, KJ Chisholm, A Ciccone, R Dodson, P Farrell, D Faruqi, M Gallagher, KR Hanson, P Hanson-Young, SC Keneally, KK Lines, S McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Patrick, RL 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 Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fierravanti-Wells, C Hughes, H Hume, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Rennick, G Reynolds, L Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

 Australian Curriculum 71 16:21 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland I seek leave to amend general business notice of motion No. 1095. Leave granted. Senator ROBERTS 266524 I move the motion as amended: That the Senate— (a) notes that: (i) the 2014 review by Donnelly and Wiltshire into our National Curriculum recommended more emphasis on our Judeo-Christian heritage and the role of Western civilisation in contributing to our society, and (ii) the 2021 review of our National Curriculum de-emphasises our Judeo-Christian heritage; and (b) further notes: (i) that our customs and laws are based on our Judeo-Christian heritage, and (ii) that an Australian curriculum should include the origin of our customs and laws; and (c) resolves to include in our National Curriculum our Judeo-Christian heritage. 16:22 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales I seek leave to make a short statement. The PRESIDENT I0Q Leave is granted for one minute. Senator FARUQI 250362 The last thing we need right now is One Nation's reactionary meddling in important and carefully considered proposed changes to the Australian Curriculum. We've seen this before on curriculum matters with their paranoid transphobic ranting about indoctrination in our schools. Last year it was One Nation's attempt to rewrite the curriculum to teach climate denialism and harmful conservative ideas of gender and sexuality. Now they're worried about the overwhelming whiteness of the curriculum being dialled down just a notch. Australia is a highly multicultural country with a rich history of First Nations custodianship and care. It is entirely appropriate and essential that this is reflected in the Australian Curriculum. We should be teaching all students the truth of invasion, genocide and colonialism. The PRESIDENT I0Q The question is that the motion moved by Senator Roberts, as amended, be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:25]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 31 AYES Ayres, T Brown, CL Carr, KJ Chisholm, A Ciccone, R Dodson, P Farrell, D Faruqi, M Gallagher, KR Hanson, P Hanson-Young, SC Keneally, KK Lines, S McAllister, J McCarthy, M McKim, NJ Patrick, RL 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 Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Chandler, C Colbeck, R Davey, P Duniam, J Fierravanti-Wells, C Hughes, H Hume, J McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Rennick, G Reynolds, L Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Stoker, AJ Van, D 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

 Tasmania: Economy 72 16:26 Senator URQUHART 231199 Tasmania I ask that general business notice of motion No. 1099 be taken as formal. The PRESIDENT I0Q Is there any objection to this motion being taken as formal? An honourable senator: Yes. The PRESIDENT I0Q There is an objection. Forestry Industry, Beef Industry 72 16:27 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I seek leave to move general business notices of motion Nos 1092 and 1101 together and that the motions be determined without amendment or debate. Leave not granted. Senator DUNIAM 263418 With regard to general business notice of motion No. 1092, I add the names of Senators Ciccone and McKenzie, and I table statements relating to motions Nos 1092 and 1101. I move: That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent general business notices of motion nos 1092 and 1101 being moved together immediately and determined without amendment or debate. Question agreed to. 16:28 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia by leave—In accordance with standing order 100, I'd like my name recorded as a 'no'. 16:28 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I move: GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 1092 That the Senate— (a) notes the decision of the full Federal Court of Australia to unanimously uphold the appeal from VicForests against the action taken by the Friends of Leadbeater's Possum that sought to undermine the forestry industry; (b) further notes the judgement is a big win for Victoria and Australia's native forest industry and supports the long-held position of this Government and the industry, and that Regional Forest Agreements provide a framework that achieves environmental, economic and social outcomes for our native forests; (c) acknowledges that the Australian forest industry uses world-class sustainable forest management practices and supports the employment of more than 52,000 hardworking Australians making it an industry that deserves to be celebrated; and (d) condemns the green groups that continue to use the courts to try to decimate the livelihoods of working Australians. GENERAL BUSINESS NOTICE OF MOTION NO. 1101 That the Senate— (a) notes that: (i) the triennial Beef Week, organised by Beef Australia, was recently held in Rockhampton to showcase our world-leading beef industry, (ii) the event promotes and advances a sustainable industry and involves producers, scientists, chefs, students, exhibitors, businesspeople, and families, (iii) the historical role of Beef Week is to exhibit our produce to international industry leaders and the facilitation of new trade and export opportunities, (iv) the Liberals and Nationals in government contributed $3.9 million to the 2021 event which will inject more than $100 million into the Capricorn region's economy, and (v) the Australian beef industry is worth more than $15 billion to the Australian economy, involving over 45,000 producers, and exports the second highest quantity of beef in the world; and (b) commends Beef Australia for: (i) running a COVID-safe event that still attracted more than 100,000 visitors from across Australia, and (ii) its role in promoting the Australian beef industry internationally; and (c) congratulates all producers and exhibitors at Beef Australia 2021. 16:28 Senator SIEWERT e5z Western Australia by leave—I ask that the motions be put separately because we're voting differently. The PRESIDENT I0Q I will put them separately. 16:28 Senator RICE 155410 Victoria I seek leave to make a short statement in relation to general business notice of motion 1092. Leave not granted. Senator RICE 155410 by leave—I table a statement in relation to general business notice of motion No. 1092. 16:28 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland I seek leave to make a short statement in relation to general business notice motion No. 1101. Leave granted. The PRESIDENT I0Q I will put the motions separately, in accordance with the request of Senator Siewert. question is that motion No. 1092 be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [16:30]
(The President—Senator Ryan)

 49 AYES Abetz, E Antic, A Askew, W Ayres, T Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Carr, KJ Chandler, C Chisholm, A Ciccone, R Colbeck, R Davey, P Dodson, P Duniam, J Farrell, D Fawcett, DJ Fierravanti-Wells, C Gallagher, KR Hanson, P Hughes, H Hume, J Keneally, KK Lines, S McAllister, J McCarthy, M McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S O'Sullivan, MA Paterson, J Polley, H Pratt, LC Rennick, G Reynolds, L Roberts, M Ryan, SM Seselja, Z Sheldon, A Small, B Smith, DA (teller) Sterle, G Stoker, AJ Urquhart, AE Van, D Walsh, J Watt, M 9 NOES Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC McKim, NJ Rice, J Siewert, R (teller) Steele-John, J Thorpe, LA Waters, LJ Whish-Wilson, PS 0 PAIRS

Question agreed to.

 16:32 The PRESIDENT I0Q The question now is that motion No. 1101 be agreed to. Question agreed to. Tasmania: Economy 74 16:33 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory I seek leave to move motion No. 1099 standing in the name of Senator Polley and that it be determined without amendment or debate. Leave not granted. Senator GALLAGHER ING I move: That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent me from moving motion No. 1099. Question agreed to. 16:33 Senator PATRICK 144292 South Australia by leave—In accordance with standing order 100, I'd like my name recorded as a 'no'. 16:33 Senator GALLAGHER ING Australian Capital Territory At the request of Senator Polley, I move: That the Senate— (a) notes: (i) over the past 20 years, Tasmania's gross state product per capita has been on average one-quarter less than Australia's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, (ii) Tasmania consistently has one of the highest underemployment rates and the lowest participation rates in the country, (iii) whilst structural factors do contribute to these circumstances, with Tasmania having the oldest and most rapidly ageing population in Australia, there is slack in the system, (iv) the loss of manufacturing jobs in Tasmania, and the subsequent rise of employment in tourism and health services has contributed to a trend of workforce polarisation and a skills mismatch, (v) a shortage of apprenticeships and skills is costing the Tasmanian economy and is one of the largest constraints to growing business and industry, and (vi) increasing year 12 attainment, vocational education and the number of Tasmanians obtaining university degrees will work towards improving participation rates and re-skilling the workforce, dramatically improving GDP, industry composition and overall wellbeing; and (b) urges the Federal Government to promote manufacturing in Tasmania and to also direct resources to improving education attainment and improving the skills of Tasmanians by investing in TAFE. Question agreed to. 16:34 Senator DUNIAM 263418 Tasmania I table a statement relating to the motion. The PRESIDENT I0Q That concludes the discovery of formal business. BUSINESS 75 BUSINESS Leave of Absence 75 16:34 Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Western Australia by leave—I move: That Senator Henderson be granted leave of absence for today on account of electorate activity. Question agreed to. MATTERS OF URGENCY 75 MATTERS OF URGENCY Budget 75 16:34 The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x I inform the Senate that at 8.30 am today 26 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 Thorpe: 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 2021-2022 Federal Budget fast-tracks climate collapse, pouring more new money to the coal, oil and gas industry." Is the proposal supported? More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT e5x 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. 16:35 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland At the request of Senator Thorpe, I move: That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency: The 2021-2022 Federal Budget fast-tracks climate collapse, pouring more new money to the coal, oil and gas industry. It is a disgrace that the 2021-22 federal budget fast-tracks climate collapse by pouring more, new money into the coal, oil and gas industries. That's exactly what last night's budget did. As if the fossil fuel sector wasn't already getting enough public support, with fossil fuel subsidies running at almost $9 billion a year, last night it got a whole new bucket of subsidies added to the existing, already obscenely large bucket of subsidies. I am going to go through the figures for each of the indefensible amounts of public money that have been given to these big corporations and mining billionaires that are wrecking the planet and making life more difficult for all of us. Last night's budget did absolutely nothing to help the transition to 100 per cent clean, renewable energy, which would create more jobs and might help us save what is left of the Great Barrier Reef. Not only was there a complete absence of climate action; this government is actively funding climate collapse. The obscene amount—billions of dollars of public money—is utterly reprehensible. We saw last night a pre-election sweetener that failed to make billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share of tax, whilst fast-tracking climate collapse. Instead of taxing the billionaires, we've got stage 3 tax cuts locked in. Instead of making the big corporations pay their fair share, the budget is full of corporate welfare. Instead of investing in planet-saving, nation-building infrastructure, the government handed billions to fossil fuel companies, further accelerating the climate crisis. To go to those fossil fuel subsidies that I talked about, there's $1.1 billion in new money to oil, gas and coal. Next year it goes up to $11.4 billion, and over the forwards there's a total of $51 billion—that's billion with a 'B'—in public money going to fossil fuel corporations. That is one of the biggest handouts to the fossil fuel industry in a federal budget ever, and we are in a climate crisis! Honestly, you could not design a worse policy, a worse use of public money, than to prop up polluting industries that make the climate crisis worse. They are pocketing all sorts of corporate largesse, and one in three already pays no corporate tax. Meanwhile, the government just vetoed giving public money to a windfarm with a battery backup for reasons that remain known only to the minister himself. They've got an active war on giving public support to clean energy, but they are falling over themselves to give more public money to fossil fuels. It flies in the face of every single climate scientist on the planet. It flies in the face of desperate calls from the community, particularly from the young, for urgent climate action to protect the future. And it flies in the face of the calls from everyone in low-lying areas where saltwater incursion is making it hard for people to grow food and where natural disasters are increasing in severity, frequency and destructiveness. You just could not design a worse approach. There are some new absolute doozies that the government has come up with. It's not enough that they give cheap fuel to the likes of Gina Rinehart and other big mining billionaires. And can I put on record that we do not object to the diesel fuel rebate for farmers. It has always been our policy not to object to that. I think Senator Birmingham tried to make an issue of that earlier today, so I'll take the opportunity to correct the record. That is only about an eighth of the fossil fuel subsidy, I might add. So we've still got cheap diesel to the likes of Gina and we've got various concessional excises on aviation gas and aviation turbine fuel. The gas-fired recovery gets $31 billion. The government are in bed with oil, gas and coal and they're trying to champion gas as the solution. No! Wrong way! Gas is a fossil fuel. You've often got to wreck farmland to get to it. You've then got to use more energy to liquefy it for export, where it bumps up the price for domestic gas consumption. It has no saving grace whatsoever. The fact that the gas companies make massive donations to their political parties is not enough for those opposite to sacrifice our collective future and a liveable climate. For shame! But, yes, there's $31.9 billion for a so-called gas-fired recovery. There are various other fossil fuel subsidies. There is accelerated depreciation. There is a deduction for coal, oil and gas exploration. You are now paying them to do their job so that while they wreck the climate they can make squillions in profits but not pay tax. 'What a great idea!' said no-one ever, except you lot, who take their massive donations. There is 'Advancing Australia's Gas-Fired Recovery'. There is something called 'Strategic Basin Plans', which, when you look at the fine print, means trying to open up the Galilee and the North Bowen to gas. I thought you were trying to open it up for coal, but now you want to open it up for gas as well. The First Nations mobs are not going to be impressed. They haven't given their consent to your attempt to extract coal from those regions, let alone your attempt now to speed up gas extraction. They are just some of the old fossil fuel subsidies. There's a whole list of new ones that the government have added. There's an additional $1.1 billion in subsidies. They want to accelerate carbon capture and storage. It's like a unicorn—and I'll say sorry to my kids, who might still think they're real—it's just never going to happen. If private industry want to use their own money to try to make it work, they should go for it, but why on earth should they get public subsidies rather than reducing their emissions and transitioning to clean energy sources? There's money for gas industry road upgrades in the Northern Territory. Again, I know a few First Nations mobs who are desperately underwhelmed at that suggestion. Unfortunately, I've run out of time. The list of fossil fuel subsidies is so long that seven minutes has not been enough for me to go through all of them. The government are once again just doing the bidding of oil, coal and gas. They don't give a damn about the climate or the community. 16:42 Senator ABETZ N26 Tasmania Good environmental stewardship is something that we in the coalition believe in and believe in exceptionally strongly. It makes sense, and that is why we are delivering. We are delivering, for example, with our plan which beats our Kyoto targets, and we are on track to meet and beat our 2030 target in relation to the reduction of CO2 emissions. But something I won't subscribe to is scaremongering and the sort of language that suggests we are facing climate collapse. This has been the mantra for decades on end, with prediction after prediction coming in as false and unsubstantiated. For example, Madam Acting Deputy President, how often have we heard from the media in this country that Maldives is about to disappear under the water? Indeed, if we were to believe the predictions we would believe that Maldives had disappeared and that the population had had no drinking water for the past 28 years. The predictions being made 28 years ago were that this was about to happen. Well, they've kept on for those 28 years. Even more interestingly for those who might be listening and wondering what has happened to Maldives, which is under such existential threat of climate change and is sinking under the water, a question on notice to Foreign Affairs provided me with this information: We understand from publicly available information that a number of infrastructure projects have been undertaken in Maldives in recent years, including bridges, airports and tourism-related infrastructure. Who on earth would invest in these things if they believed they were going to disappear underwater tomorrow or the next day? What is more, these include the ongoing expansion of Velana International Airport. The government of the Maldives further announced in 2019 that not one, not two, not three, not four, but five new airports would be built, in a country that is allegedly going to disappear underwater. That prediction has now been made year after year—28 years ago all of that was supposed to be happening—yet people are still confident in investing in the Maldives with not one but five new airports and new hotels. Who on earth would be making such an investment if they honestly believed that their investment would be underwater within the next few years? But we as a government believe that it is appropriate to look at the issue of good environmental stewardship, not with hyperventilation and false predictions, dealing not with ideology but with technology, asking the question: can we clean up the atmosphere? The answer is yes. Can we do that in a responsible, measured way? Yes, hence we have been able to beat our Kyoto targets and we are on track to meet and beat our 2030 target. How do we continue to do that? By looking at technology and seeing what can be done if we can invest some of our funding for this purpose. We have a $20 billion fund called the Technology Investment Roadmap, and that will deliver for us the technology needed so that we can meet our targets without mugging our economy. At the end of the day what we have to accept and realise is that if we want to maintain and keep our standard of living we need reliable, affordable energy, and something that this nation has not done so well over the last two or three decades has been to invest in base-load energy. I for one believe that if you are genuinely concerned about the environmental matters of CO2, chances are nuclear energy would be and should be an option for consideration—nothing more, just consideration. But to say we will not look at a technology for only one reason, ideology, is to sell our fellow Australians short. What we need is to look at all technologies and consider what is the best and most affordable. The reason that Australia is a First World economy is not that we have no regulations. Some would argue we are overregulated. It is not that we have cheap wages in comparison to the rest of the world. Some might argue they are relatively high. We are blessed to be able to have those relatively high wages in Australia. Or is it that we are so close to other markets in the world? No, it is not. The thing that has allowed us for so long to be a First World economy has been the ability to have cheap, reliable energy. In the 1990s we had some of the cheapest energy in the world. Today we have some of the most expensive energy in the world, and then we wonder why it is that manufacturing has decamped from Australia and gone elsewhere. Well, energy is a vital component in manufacturing, and the market will undoubtedly speak in relation to that. The country of my birth in recent times, I understand, which has been so reliant on renewable energy, had a problem with a heavy snowfall. All the solar panels were covered, and when there are heavy snowfalls, there is usually no wind. Guess what? They had to import energy from France made with Australian uranium. What that teaches us is that renewable energy, nice as it might be, cannot deliver the base-load energy, unless you have the blessing of a whole lot of hydro power like we do in my home state of Tasmania. Honourable senators interjecting— Senator ABETZ N26 Of course the Greens are interjecting. You will remember this, Madam Acting Deputy President Polley: the Greens wanted to stop hydro dams in the early 1980s. Do you know what their alternate energy supply was going to be? A coal-fired power station in the Fingal Valley, so said Bob Brown, the former Leader of the Australian Greens. It was on the front page of the Mercury sometime in October. Sure, Senator Whish-Wilson finds that an inconvenient truth, but that is the reality. If you keep on believing the nonsense of the Australian Greens, such as that which is incorporated in this motion, you come to the situation where you deny good, reliable base-load renewable energy such as hydro and, in desperation, you grasp at anything and you suggest a coal-fired power station. Thank goodness they did not build a coal-fired power station, because Bob Brown and the Greens would have been betwixt and between. Could they be demonstrating against the coal-fired power station that they had actually wanted and argued for publicly? So I say to the Australian Greens and to my fellow Australians who might be listening in to this debate is that what we need is good, sound, considered policy. Here we have a government that is investing in my home state of Tasmania with Battery of the Nation, investing in an enhanced Snowy Mountains scheme and seeking to enhance our capacity to harness gas, which is a very important transition fuel as we seek to reduce our CO2 emissions. We have heard this idea that we are in climate collapse for decade after decade after decade, and every prediction after every prediction has failed. That does not mean that we should not be good stewards of our environment, and we as a government are. I remind people in this place that the first minister for the environment was in fact a Liberal minister. We are committed to the environment and we continue to be committed to the environment but we are also committed to our fellow Australians—their jobs, their livelihoods—and the capacity of our nation through our manufacturing and economic base to be able to provide the moneys needed for NDIS, for health, for education, and for law and order. You have to have a complete policy suite and that is exactly what the Morrison government is delivering. 16:52 Senator LINES 112096 Western Australia It is another day, it is another year of the Morrison government, and we have heard it all before. It is 2021 and the climate deniers on the back bench of the Morrison government are the same climate deniers who were there with the Turnbull government and they are the same climate deniers who were there with the Abbott government. When will this debate stop? Whether it is Prime Minister Morrison handing around the lump of coal in the parliament and declaring that coal is his 'friend', whether it was Prime Minister Abbott carrying on and saying that Labor's pricing on carbon would make a leg of lamb $100 or whether it was Mr Turnbull, who pretended to actually be someone who did support a positive policy on climate change—but the backbench roped him in again—the Morrison government, or the conservatives in this country, are never going to deliver the clean energy future that Australians deserve and Australians are calling for. They are never going to do it because that handful of backbenchers have them well and truly around the neck and refuse to let this country move forward. That is what it has come down to—a tiny handful of backbenchers who are holding Australia to ransom. It is not so much what was in the budget but what wasn't in the budget. I have personally gone to great lengths to buy an electric vehicle—something those opposite won't support at all. Who could forget, at the last election, Senator Cash and the Prime Minister telling tradies that they were going to stand there and not let Labor take their utes away. Electric cars have an enormous capacity, but the choice in Australia is minimal because the federal government is doing absolutely nothing to promote electric vehicles in this country. There was not one word, not one sentence, not one dollar in the federal budget committed to electric cars. Yet in Europe we see all sorts of subsidies being offered. The cheapest electric car on the Australian market at the moment is the MG. At 44 grand, it's out of reach of most Australians, and shame on the Morrison government for keeping it there. Shame on you. If your budget had some vision and some plan, we could be producing electric cars in this country. But, no, those Neanderthals on the back bench just want to deny there's any change in our climate, that we actually need to do things urgently. They are supported by the Pauline Hanson One Nation Party. A handful of people are holding this whole country to ransom. Quite frankly, shame on you. There is another thing that the Morrison government won't tell you the truth about. They always parrot: 'We're agnostic about power delivery. We just want to ensure supply.' What nonsense. They are not agnostic about power delivery. We know where their heart lies, and it's not with renewables and it's not with wind. I remember when we had that ridiculous inquiry into wind turbines. They were once again pandering to their backbench and a handful of Independents in the Senate at the time who thought that producing energy from wind was somehow the devil's work. What nonsense. We spent months conducting a trumped-up inquiry just to keep their backbench in line. They're cooking the books on the data, because they keep saying Australia will reach the Paris targets. But do you know what? The rest of the world and most Australians don't believe them. How embarrassing it was recently. Thank goodness that, with the election of Mr Biden in the US, those opposite have had to tame their rhetoric a little bit. We saw the pathetic comments and speeches made by Mr Morrison, trying to pretend that somehow we are world leaders. Most Australians know we are not world leaders. It wasn't lost on the world leaders in the room that Australia is down the bottom, again because of a handful of backbenchers who just refuse to see the reality of what's in front of them, who have no interest in leaving a better world for their children and their children's children, who just want to put their head in the sand and pretend that somehow this is all going to go away. We have seen Australian business get on with it. I was up in Karratha recently visiting Yara, who really are doing a lot of work with hydrogen. In the last week or so, I will admit, Mr Morrison suddenly discovered hydrogen. Apparently we are going to have hydrogen hubs all over the place. But, before last week, no. I guess it's pretty hard to sit in the parliament with a lump of hydrogen; it's much easier to sit there with a lump of coal, because that's what your backbenchers want to see. But at least he's moved a little bit on that. When I talk to business leaders, when I talk to people in mining, they are quite annoyed, because it's those in the government who are holding them back. The government pretend to be there for business. They're there for the big miners. They're there for big business. Yet, with their antiquated, backward, bottom-of-the-world environmental policies, they are holding back business in this country. Business does want to forge ahead, it does want to put electric trucks on the road and it does want to cut its emissions, but where are the incentives from the government? They are not there. And what was in the budget? Very little. If you've got a plan and a vision for this country and where it's going, it certainly wasn't there last night—no vision, no plan for our future; no clean, green technologies advanced; nothing, because that backbench just holds you down, holds you back. All we're hearing from Mr Morrison now, who apparently is agnostic about where our power comes from, is that there will be a gas led recovery. If he were truly agnostic, you would be looking at every innovation; you'd be holding your head up; you'd be looking to the world leaders about what they're doing on climate and how they're reducing their energy costs. I remember when Prime Minister Abbott said that repealing Labor's price on carbon would save people $550 a year on their electricity bills. When are you going to fess up and say that just wasn't true? We've seen electricity costs spiralling out of control for many consumers. I'm thankful that, in Western Australia, we're not part of the grid mess. It's nearly as bad as the Murray-Darling Basin, the mess you've made of electricity in this country. But that's what the Prime Minister said—that people would be $550 a year better off. What a nonsense. It's simply not true, like the $100 leg of lamb, like the towns that were going to disappear off the map, according to the climate sceptics opposite. I mean, come on! It is time that someone on your front bench, one of your ministers, actually stood up to that handful of climate deniers and said, 'We are not going to allow you any longer to hold Australia back.' There is a whole clean energy future out there that I certainly want for my grandchildren. It's a little like marriage equality. It was young people who led that debate, because they were sick and tired of older Australians saying to them, 'It's never going to happen.' I can tell you that my granddaughter, Charlee, who is 17, and my grandson, who is 22, can't believe the sort of rhetoric that you come out with. They're ordinary, average kids, but they are concerned about their future, the future that you are denying them because of your clinging to old-fashioned, outdated ideas because a handful of your backbenchers won't move. It is the young people in Australia who are more and more questioning what on earth you are doing, because it's their future that you're denying; it's their future you're holding back. They want a clean, green future, and, just like with marriage equality, they just don't know where you are heading with this, and they don't agree with you. 17:03 Senator WHISH-WILSON 195565 Tasmania I was reflecting on the fact that it was actually nine years ago this week that I got preselected to replace Dr Bob Brown in this place. I came into parliament as a young senator who had been a campaigner on marine conservation, who had been a campaigner on climate change. I taught the economics of tackling climate change at the university. This is something I thought deeply about. But I was reflecting on the fact that, if you had told me then what I know now, what I have seen in the last nine years, the changes to this planet, to our oceans, to our coastlines, to our country—which I have observed and which have been put into the scientific literature—I wouldn't have believed it. I simply couldn't have fathomed the magnitude of how much things have tipped in our climate in the last nine years. At James Cook University this week some of the most respected coral scientists in the world collaborated and said that we've got the briefest of windows to take radical action on climate change, or by 2050, they estimate, 94 per cent of the world's coral reefs will be disappearing. In the last five years alone, we've lost half the coral cover on the world's single biggest organism, the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists didn't predict it was possible to even have back-to-back bleachings, mass coral bleachings, until 2050, but we've had three in the last five years and six in the last 20 years. They didn't happen until 1998. There were none recorded in history until 1998. My home state of Tasmania—and your home state, Acting Deputy President—has recorded the biggest marine heat wave in human history off our coastlines. We've lost our giant kelp forests. I'm getting sick and tired of talking about it in this place, trying to bring it to the attention of the people opposite the chamber and those out there that deny the changes to our climate. It's not just a Greens problem or an environmental problem; it is an economic problem as much as anything else. First and foremost, it is a political problem because it is a political failure that has allowed this to happen. On my car ride in this morning I saw the Extinction Rebellion protesting out the front here with a truck. They had a sign saying, 'If we do nothing, we risk everything.' I can say 100 per cent, with no doubt in my heart, that we do risk everything in our oceans if we don't act now. We risk everything. We risk our fisheries. We risk our coastal communities. We will be bringing up kids who will not see what we have seen while we've been alive. Funnily enough, after I was pre-selected, I wanted to have a holiday before I started in the Senate. I took my kids snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef in 2012. It's unrecognisable now. We don't understand the impacts it's having on our ecosystems. That reef system is connected to the forests and it's connected to the climate and the weather in those areas. Everything is interconnected and it is changing so rapidly. David Attenborough, reflecting on his life on this planet and how we tackle the climate emergency, made the comment, 'We cannot be radical enough.' Was there any radical action in this budget? No. Was there any action on climate change in this budget? In the face of this mounting evidence, was there any action at all? Not a thing, except more money for fossil fuel companies, more money for oil and gas projects, more money for coal-fired power stations, more subsidies for big polluters. It's got to stop. We have to change and we have to act. I'm getting fed up with this, and I know so many Australians are getting fed up with this. Where is the action? This is the biggest challenge we face as a nation and as a planet, and there is nothing in this budget at all to tackle it. Nothing. Why? We have to act. If my party and my colleagues are the only ones in this place that continue to bang the drum, well, so be it. We are not going away. There is a federal election, and we will deal with it then. 17:08 Senator RENNICK 283596 Queensland The great Franklin Roosevelt once said that there's nothing to fear but fear itself, so it's good to speak to this urgency motion. For the record, I don't support any subsidies at all to any type of energy. Twenty years ago we were fed the neoliberal line that if you privatise the energy market, the market would fix itself. I can assure you that the market hasn't fixed itself, despite governments basically shovelling subsidies into all sorts of energy. We've heard a lot about the fossil fuel subsidies, which I don't think are all that high at all. I'll go into the renewable subsidies: there's $10 billion for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation; $5 billion for the Snowy Hydro, which purely exists so we can have a big battery for solar and wind; $3½ billion for the Climate Solutions Package; $2½ billion for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency; and another $1½ billion for the Grid Reliability Fund which got pulled and is now used for gas and things like that. Long story short: at just the federal level there's $20 billion in subsidies for renewable energy. Then we've got the state subsidies, whereby we have the ridiculous proposition that the Queensland state government, for example, is paying foreign renewable providers for their energy, undermining our own home-grown coal, which is basically free and owned by the Queensland people. Kogan Creek Power Station actually sits on the coal mine, and coal gets funnelled straight up the conveyor belt, and it's all free because it's owned by the Queensland people. That used to generate about $1 billion to $2 billion in profits for the state government every year, and now last year it lost a billion dollars because it kept getting turned on and off. So there are lots of things I think that we should address. I think we've got 10 energy agencies just at the federal level. The whole energy market is completely ruined, and there needs to be a discussion about whether or not we nationalise all the base energy and start again, because it's out of control. I just want to jump onto this other point here: there is no climate collapse. There is no climate science. The field of science that we are dealing with is called thermodynamics and it's existed for about 200 years. The first theories were created by a brilliant young French engineer, Nicholas Leonard Carnot, who came up with, believe it or not, the second law of thermodynamics, which is that the entropy of a system always increases. Unfortunately he died at an early age from cholera, so we don't have his papers. But we move on to the English scientists who took up his work, who were of course James Joule and William Thomson, who later became Lord Kelvin and who was the first scientist appointed to the British House of Lords. They came up with the first law of thermodynamics, which is that energy is neither created nor destroyed; it's just transformed or transferred. These laws matter. Heat is basically transferred in three forms: it's either radiation, which is what we're dealing with when we talk about climate science; convection; or conduction. I want to talk about conduction first, because conduction is the main form of heat transfer in the atmosphere. Effectively, the rule that applies to that is the second law of thermodynamics, and I'll explain it to you. If we have half a glass of water at 10 degrees Celsius and half a glass of water at 20 degrees and we pour one into the other, we know, if there's no heat loss, it will average out at 15 degrees Celsius. What I want you to do is to turn those cups upside down or on their side, and effectively that's the way the atmosphere works. The atmosphere is basically one big pressure gradient driven by temperature differentials. The greater the temperature differential, the faster the convection will be. We see convection in many forms. We see it in the wind. The other major form of convection is what's known as evaporative cooling, and that's where we have a change in temperature from a phase change—for example, the heat will hit an ocean, and the water will evaporate and go up as water vapour. When it gets to a point in the atmosphere where it cools and gets to its condensation point, it will then condense again and fall to the ocean. That's effectively a cooling process, hence why it's called evaporative cooling. It doesn't just happen in the ocean. If you exercise, for example, you might sweat. That's also known as evaporative cooling, and that is the major form of heat transfer on planet Earth. We get most of that around the equator, where there are these massive convection cells where the heat rises. It has to be said that carbon dioxide does increase radiation in the atmosphere. No-one is denying that. But what's very important is to actually quantify that amount of heat, the direction of the heat and how that process works. In order to understand that you need to go back to other laws of physics. The first one is obviously E equals MC squared, whereby 600 million tonnes of hydrogen are burnt a second and converted into 596 million tonnes of helium and four million tonnes of energy. Some of that four million tonnes of energy comes to planet Earth here in the form of a photon. If the photon was created in the inside part of the sun, it will have low energy and come here as infrared radiation. If it was created at the edge of the sun, it will come here as ultraviolet radiation, and ultraviolet radiation has a lot of energy, and that's why it causes skin cancer. It can hit a molecule and knock an electron straight out of its orbit, and that will ionise the atom, which is when it becomes oxidative and starts causing cancer and things like that. What's important to understand with carbon dioxide in terms of radiation is that it has four vibrational frequencies. The first frequency is found at 2.8 microns, and that refracts incoming infrared radiation, so that's not actually adding to the heat at all in the atmosphere. The second vibrational frequency is at 4.3 microns, and that particular frequency has no dipole moment. That means it's not electromagnetic, and so it neither absorbs or emits. Then we get to the two degenerate modes at 14.8 microns. This is where, basically, carbon dioxide absorbs and emits heat. One of the big myths we hear in climate science is that carbon dioxide traps heat. That is an oxymoron. Heat is kinetic energy, the energy of motion, so every person, every molecule, on this earth will basically absorb and radiate heat. If we were to turn the lights off in the chamber now and put an infrared light on you, we'd all be glowing red. What's interesting with the 14.8 micron is that we need to use Wien's law of displacement to determine at what temperature that will radiate. Long story short, the formula for that is 2,888 over the frequency of the vibration, which is about 15. So it will radiate at 192 degrees kelvin, which, if you convert back into degrees Celsius, is negative 80 degrees Celsius. So carbon dioxide does emit heat at about negative 80 degrees, so you've got to go somewhere up about 10 or 15 kilometres in the atmosphere to get carbon dioxide to actually refract heat. The amount of heat that will increase as a result of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is very marginal, because let's not forget that, while you might have 430 parts per million of carbon dioxide, it's not the biggest greenhouse gas absorber in the planet. The biggest greenhouse gas absorber in the planet just happens to be this thing we call H2O, which is water or water vapour. That, at about 75 degrees humidity and 25 degrees Celsius is about 15,000 parts per million. So, if we add another part per million, the increase in heat is what's described as a negative logarithmic scale. For example, if I had 10 patty cakes and I got another cake, it'd increase by 10 per cent. If I had 100 patty cakes and I got another patty cake, it'd increase by one per cent. So gradually the rate of change—and those of you who understand your calculus will know what I'm talking about—diminishes. So the whole thing about radiative heat is overblown, because most of the heat transferred throughout the atmosphere is through convection and, if it isn't through convection it will be through conduction. That is where if one molecule absorbs a photon, it heats up, bangs into another molecule and passes energy to that other molecule. Now, we'll apply the first law of thermodynamics there, so basically the energy gained by one molecule will be lost by the other molecule—you cannot increase the overall energy in the system. So, long story short, there is nothing to worry about at all. We're not going to have a climate collapse any time soon. The first time you would expect to see a climate collapse is in about three billion years time, when the sun starts to burn out. It'll start to blow up into a big red blob, and it will gradually come out. It'll consume Venus and then Mars and then planet Earth. But you haven't got to worry about that, because life on earth will probably come to an end in about a billion years time, when all the hydrogen is slowly evaporated out of the earth and water will cease to exist. And, as you all know, when water ceases to exist, it's kaput for all of us. 17:18 Senator THORPE 280304 Victoria I must say, Senator Rennick, that was some speech you gave there of exactly what we're dealing with in this country, and that's climate deniers. Senator Rennick interjecting— Senator THORPE 280304 I'll get on with my speech, and I do rise to speak on this matter of absolute public urgency today, because this place cannot ignore the climate collapse and destruction of country that is happening now on this climate-denying government. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have lived sustainably on this land forever—not 200 years, not 250 years, forever, Senator Stoker. We have songlines across this country that connect us to each other, to our culture, water and sky. We are the caretakers of these lands. Protection of country is at the very core of our culture and connection to the land and sea. Our people are not from country; we are country. The First Nations people of this country have always understood a fundamental thing that this government simply doesn't understand. Our people understand that when it comes to protection of country, everything is connected—everything. Our relationship to lands, waters and sky is inseparable from our understanding of what it means to be a First Nation person. Our people have sustainably cared for these lands and waters for thousands and thousands of generations. We did this by learning from our elders and passing down our knowledge. Our people aren't consumers; we're custodians. We didn't treat the land like something to own, we didn't mine our country and we didn't frack our country. Generations of our people would take care of country and community. They weren't driven by selfish values of wealth and power. That's what the colonisers brought here to this very place. It's all about power and money and greed. While these colonisers have been here for a tiny fraction of time, our people have been on these lands for thousands of generations, and we're faced with the biggest challenge we will ever face—that is, the climate crisis. In last night's budget we found out that the government will be handing over $1.1 billion of taxpayers' money to burn the planet even more, to give money to the oil and gas and coal industries, to dirty coal, oil and gas barons that are responsible for the destruction of our climate and our country. This government will do whatever their big corporate mates and the mining lobby ask them to do. That's because the reality is the Liberal Party, the National Party and the Labor Party take dirty donations from developers and mining companies and big corporations. This party does not do that, because we have integrity and we make decisions that are based on protecting and connecting with our country and our communities. Last week I was in Borroloola at the McArthur mine. That's where I saw with my own eyes what the desecration of country for grubby, easy profit is doing to our lands and our local communities. These resources are pulled up out of the ground by the big mining corporation—Glencore in this case, one of the dirtiest ones going—who have absolutely no respect for traditional owners. Big miners across this country divert and suck up water. They mine our lands for coal, for gas. Then our climate gets drier, hotter and more extreme. Our lands suffer, our waters are poisoned and they dry up—so much pain for so little gain. Right now we are at a turning point in this country. Colonisers came. They've done so much destruction, extraction and damage to our people, the first people of these lands, in only just over 200 years. That's what they've been able to do. The decisions we make in this place today will have impacts for every single generation to come—every single child, their children, their grandchildren. The decisions made here today will impact their lives and their livelihoods. But I'm not sure whether the government actually thinks that far forward; t's about what they can take now—look after their mates now, stay in power now, forget about future generations. The good news is the solution to the climate crisis is here. It always has been. First Nations people have solutions to heal this country. We can't even get a seat at the table, and we all know what that looks like. We, the original sovereign people of these lands, have known it all along. When we care for and protect country, country cares for and protects us. We must protect all the living beings belonging to these lands and waters because we share this country with them too. It's not just an animal or a plant or a tree; we are connected spiritually and physically to these living beings. We can grow our renewable, sustainable energy, clean energy, from the wind and the sun; we've got plenty of that. We can protect our ancient, precious cultural heritage, instead of desecrating it for a quick buck. We can enjoy our lives in harmony with our planet and with plenty of energy if we get our energy from clean sources, if only this out-of-touch climate-denying government would get out of the way. We're running out of time. Climate deniers need to face the facts. They need to get with the program and they need to understand why we're having extreme weather events, before it's too late. I know that you have your climate-denying scientists that will back whatever climate-denying words you want to use, but the reality is you are putting your children's children in extreme danger. Maybe you should think about that for a moment and think about what that means for your family, but also think about the economic impacts that this is going to have on this nation; start thinking in the way that you think about looking after yourself or making a quick buck, because climate action will help you do that. 17:26 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I'll discuss collapses already underway, and none of them involves a climate collapse—firstly, the economic collapse. In the name of unsubstantiated climate alarm, the Howard-Anderson Liberal-Nationals government, starting in 1996, colluded with the states to deceitfully bypass the Constitution to steal farmers' property rights to comply with the UN's Kyoto protocol. It concocted Australia's first major party emissions trading scheme, a carbon dioxide tax to comply with UN dictates. It introduced the Renewable Energy Target, which has grown to now cost Australians an additional $13 billion each year, every year in their electricity costs, again to comply with UN dictates. In the name of climate, our electricity prices have risen artificially from the world's lowest to now be the world's highest. Manufacturing has collapsed. We no longer make cars; we make fewer household appliances; and we make no manufacturing tools, which are crucial for our security. Agriculture is being hammered. The Liberal-National energy minister, Angus Taylor, openly states he has fears for electricity prices, reliability and grid stability. Under this budget's dreamy forecast, bets on hydrogen and continued subsidisation of expensive unreliables like wind and solar, we're enduring a manufacturing collapse and we face economic collapse. The second collapse is the collapse of science. Here are some facts. Firstly, on Monday 26 September 2016 the CSIRO confirmed that it has never stated that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and said it never will. So why do the Greens push policies for economic collapse? Why have Liberal-National and Labor governments enacted policies over 2½ decades for economic collapse? Secondly, on Wednesday 10 May 2017, in this building, the CSIRO admitted that today's temperatures are not unprecedented. That means we didn't cause the current mild cyclical warming that ended around 1995. So why did the Greens push policies for economic collapse? Why have Liberal-National and Labor governments for 2½ decades driven economic collapse? According to NASA satellites, global atmospheric temperatures have been essentially flat with no warming for more than a quarter of a century. Despite China, despite India, despite America, despite Europe and despite Russia producing record quantities of carbon dioxide, higher human production of carbon dioxide has not increased temperatures. So why do the Greens push policies for economic collapse? Why have Liberal-National and Labor governments driven for the last 2½ decades economic collapse? Following the global financial crisis, most nations were in recession during 2009. In 2020, as a result of government COVID restrictions around the world, nations were again in recession. In both recession years, the use of hydrocarbon fuels fell and human carbon dioxide production fell, yet in both recession years atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continued increasing. Nature alone controls the carbon dioxide levels, so why do the Greens push policies for economic collapse? Why have Liberal, Nationals and Labor governments driven economic collapse for the last 2½ decades? The Bureau of Meteorology data on cyclones in Australia show no trend in cyclone frequency, severity or duration. There's no climate catastrophe. The most severe drought in the last 120 years was the 1920s to 1940s drought. The next worst was the Federation drought in 1901. There is no climate catastrophe. Floods, bushfires, snowfall and every other climate factor show no change, just natural cyclical variation. There is no climate catastrophe. It's been 601 days since my latest challenge to the Greens to present the data on which they base this nonsense and to debate me on the climate science and the corruption of climate science. Finally, there's no unprecedented global warming. There's no climate change. There's no climate catastrophe. There's no climate collapse; instead, we have a collapse of science. The collapse of science led to an energy collapse that caused an economic collapse. Welcome to the Greens nightmare that is now the Liberals, Nationals and Labor nightmare. This is what happens when data is ignored and, instead, governance is based on unfounded opinions, personal and party political agendas, cronies, headlines, fear, emotions, UN policies, party donations and serving vested interests. And who pays for this atrocious governance and for these climate lies? We the people pay. (Time expired) 17:31 Senator STEELE-JOHN 250156 Western Australia The climate crisis, and we are in a climate crisis, sits alongside the continued existence of nuclear weapons on our planet as the two greatest threats to the peace and wellbeing of our human community. This is the reality of the moment in which we live. This is the reality of 2021. For the nations, particularly for the island nations, of our Asia-Pacific region, climate change is not a far-off abstract; it is a present reality, as it is for the fire-ravaged communities of Australia, as it is for the farmers, as it is for all those whose lives and livelihood depend on the land. It is something observed by people who in their lifetimes have seen changes in their environment around them, in their communities, and it is something that is observed by those who can trace their connection to country back hundreds of generations. This federal budget presented another opportunity for action—action to create a sustainable, safe and inclusive future for everyone, action to create safe sustainable jobs, and action to support those currently working in fossil fuel industries to transition to new renewable clean industries. These were all of the potential opportunities on the table which the Morrison government could have taken. Yet what this budget has revealed is a government interested in only one thing—serving its corporate donors, who yesterday filled this place like lice scurrying about trying to find and identify just exactly what they got for all those donations and all those dinners, going through the budget line by line, identifying exactly what they got for their time. It was revolting. A whole bunch of them were grinning with the additional $1 billion the government has decided to give to the fossil fuel industry every single bloody year over the next four years. You know what? I've had so many of these debates in this place over the last four years, where the Greens have contributed science and evidence. This movement has spent decades—the community has spent decades—putting forward detailed plans stepping out exactly how we do this and all of the reasons why. Young people have driven ourselves into the ground trying to get the attention of the major parties and trying to get them to act. We have struck, we have disrupted and we have given our time. Young people so often make the journey to Canberra or to their state parliament and make the case for their own future. The reality is—and I am reminded of it by nights like last night—that the problem isn't that you people don't know that climate change is a thing; the problem is that you don't care. You don't give a damn. You'd rather go to a dinner with a miner or the pokie industry or a gas merchant or the owner of Harvey Norman than take action on climate change and safeguard our future. That disgraceful disregard is exactly why the young people of this country, come the next election, will vote you out of office, and good riddance to the lot of you. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 217241 The time for the discussion has expired. The question is that the motion moved by Senator Thorpe be agreed to.

The Senate divided. [17:41]
(The Acting Deputy President—Senator McGrath)

 9 AYES Faruqi, M Hanson-Young, SC McKim, NJ Rice, J Siewert, R (teller) Steele-John, J Thorpe, LA Waters, LJ Whish-Wilson, PS 28 NOES Askew, W Bragg, AJ Brockman, S Canavan, MJ Chandler, C Ciccone, R Davey, P Dodson, P Duniam, J Fierravanti-Wells, C Gallagher, KR Hughes, H McDonald, S McGrath, J McKenzie, B McLachlan, A McMahon, S Paterson, J Polley, H Rennick, G Roberts, M Small, B Smith, DA Stoker, AJ Urquhart, AE (teller) Van, D Walsh, J Watt, M 0 PAIRS

Question negatived.

DOCUMENTS 84 DOCUMENTS Consideration 84 COMMITTEES 84 COMMITTEES Scrutiny of Bills Committee 84 Scrutiny Digest 84 17:44 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania I present Scrutiny Digest No. 7 of 2021 of the Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills, dated 12 May 2021, and the committee's annual report 2020. Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee 84 Delegated Legislation Monitor 84 17:45 Senator FIERRAVANTI-WELLS e4t New South Wales I present the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation Committee's Delegated Legislation Monitor No. 7 of 2021 and move: That the Senate take note of the report. In December last year I warned the chamber that the Biosecurity Act provided the government with sweeping powers to make laws, including placing travel bans on Australian citizens. I advised that these laws are exempt from disallowance. Parliamentarians are prevented from scrutinising and, if necessary, disallowing them. If the significance of the committee's concerns and warnings in this regard was not clear before the events of the last few weeks, it should now be abundantly clear that the committee's position has been truly vindicated. Last year the committee called on all parliamentarians to carefully consider their responsibility, as lawmakers and representatives of the people, to ensure rigorous oversight of delegated legislation made in times of emergency, particularly where it limits personal rights and liberties or overrides laws made by the parliament. It is clear to us all in this place that this is more important than ever. As I foreshadowed, this chamber has found itself in the position where it is unable to consider whether it would be appropriate to disallow the determination made by the Minister for Health and Aged Care that prevents people, including Australians, from entering Australia if they have been in India. The power to make these determinations under the Biosecurity Act and the maximum penalty of five years imprisonment or a fine of $66,600 for breaching them have been features of the act since it was passed in 2015. This penalty applies to any determination made under section 477 of the act. It applies not only to the ban on Australians returning home from India but also to other measures, such as the ban on Australian citizens and permanent residents travelling overseas and a whole series of other things. This is a piece of legislation that was passed by the Senate without any debate at all on these human biosecurity emergency provisions. Primary legislation relating to times of emergency should be subject to rigorous parliamentary scrutiny. During these times, governments are more likely to implement extraordinary measures that encroach upon individual rights and liberties, making parliamentary oversight all the more important. It is important for senators to recognise that we provide all governments, not just the current one, with the powers to make these determinations under the biosecurity law. We provided all governments with the power to impose five-year imprisonment for breaching any requirements they see fit to make within the scope of the act. The India travel pause determination shows us that these powers are being used in ways that we did not comprehend when the act was passed in 2015. The point is not to make a policy comment on this legislation or the actions of the health minister or those who were delegated power under the act. The point is to raise the issue of parliamentary scrutiny. Without the ability to scrutinise, the parliament cannot make policy judgements, or even technical judgements, on proposed law. The Constitution tasks the parliament with ultimate law-making authority. While the parliament may delegate some of these powers to the executive, this does not absolve the parliament of responsibility for those laws. Exempting delegated legislation from disallowance undermines the parliament's constitutionally mandated role. It has significant consequences for the democratic foundations of our system of government. The committee recommended in its interim inquiry report in December that such instruments made under the Biosecurity Act should not be exempt from disallowance. I remind the chamber that these determinations can override any provision of any—yes, any—other Australian law. It is totally unacceptable that such significant measures can be made during times of emergency with no effective oversight or control by the parliament. This is not an isolated occurrence. Our concerns about parliamentary oversight of delegated legislation made during emergencies are not limited to this particular emergency or the actions of any particular government. For too long, parliament and governments of all political persuasions have contributed to a system of laws, procedures and practices which diminish parliament's capacity to oversee executive lawmaking. Delegated legislation made during COVID is just one example of this much broader issue. Parliament cannot perform its democratic role if primary legislation continues to leave significant matters to delegated legislation that is exempt from disallowance. There is a concerning increase in the number of laws which are made by the executive via delegated legislation. And even more concerning is that approximately one in five of these laws are not subject to disallowance. In its final inquiry report tabled in March, the committee recommended that the Senate endorse changes to its standing orders to allow the committee to scrutinise instruments that are exempt from disallowance. These proposed changes will come before the Senate on 16 June. The high number of exempt instruments, including especially the India travel pause determination, shows why it's imperative the Senate adopt these changes next month, so that in the future the committee can scrutinise such measures if it so chooses. It is time for the parliament to reassert its constitutionally mandated role. The Senate's agreement to adopt the recommendations of the committee's inquiry will be an important first step in ensuring we preserve our democratic values. This also brings me to a timely reminder for all senators. We are still in a declared state of human biosecurity emergency. This emergency declaration has been in force since 18 March 2020 and has been renewed every three months since that date. There's no limit on the number of times a human biosecurity emergency period can be extended, nor is there any requirement for the Governor-General or the health minister to inform parliament of an intention to extend the period or provide a justification for the extension. The committee has been clear: the government must propose amendments to the Biosecurity Act so that declarations of human biosecurity emergency are subject to disallowance. I would also like to draw the Senate's attention to the committee's comments regarding a range of legislative instruments made in the Treasury portfolio, which modify the operations of provisions of the Corporations Act 2001 and other acts of parliament. As I previously explained, not only do these instruments alter the operation of primary legislation made by this parliament, they are intended to remain in force for substantial periods of time, ranging from five to 10 years. This contravenes the committee's longstanding expectation that instruments which modify or exempt persons or entities from the operation of primary legislation should cease to operate no more than three years after they commence. A shorter sunsetting period is essential to ensure that there is a minimum degree of regular parliamentary oversight of such instruments. Since October last year, the committee has been corresponding with the Treasurer to resolve its scrutiny concerns regarding each of these instruments separately. The committee has given notices of motion to disallow each of the instruments in order to provide it with additional time to resolve its scrutiny concerns. To resolve these concerns, the Treasurer undertook to engage with the committee on an ongoing basis. The committee thanks the Treasurer for his engagement in relation to this systemic issue. In light of this ongoing good-faith engagement between the committee and the Treasurer, the committee has resolved to withdraw the disallowance notices of motion in place on the instruments. However, if this systemic issue is not resolved, the committee will not hesitate to move to disallow Treasury portfolio instruments of concern in the future. With these comments, I commend the committee's Delegated Legislation Monitor 7 of 2021 to the Senate. Question agreed to. Intelligence and Security Joint Committee 86 Report 86 17:54 Senator PATERSON 144138 Victoria I present the advisory report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (International Production Orders) Bill 2020 and move: That the Senate take note of the report. I am pleased to present the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security's report, Advisory Report on the Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (International Production Orders) Bill 2020. In brief terms, this bill seeks to append a new schedule 1 to the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 to introduce an international production orders regime. The international production orders regime will allow Australia to enter into an agreement with a foreign country to facilitate access to telecommunications data in the investigation and prosecution of serious crimes. The bill has been introduced against a backdrop of growing technological advancement that challenges the ability of our law enforcement and intelligence bodies to combat serious human trafficking, drug crime, child sexual abuse and terrorism. The current mutual legal assistance process cannot keep pace with our law enforcement agencies' efforts to combat these serious crimes that impact the safety of all Australians. The committee supports the bill and the overarching outcomes it is trying to achieve. However, in consideration of the bill, the committee considered there were opportunities to be more prescriptive in how a designated international agreement may be made and how the international production orders scheme will operate. The committee has recommended that the bill be amended to incorporate conditions that qualify an agreement to be a designated international agreement, including that an agreement must include: protections around the data of Australians, including the use, handling and disclosure of information; that production orders must comply with the domestic laws of the relevant foreign country; that a production order may be issued if the information could not be reasonably obtained through other less intrusive methods; and that information obtained through an international production order cannot be provided to a third-party government. To make the agreement with a foreign country, the committee has recommended that the bill require that the foreign country must demonstrate: firstly, respect for the rule of law; respect for international human rights obligations and commitments; clear legal procedures governing the use of electronic surveillance investigative powers; and, where the country has the death penalty as an available punishment for an offence, the country must provide Australia with assurances about the non-use of its information in such cases. The committee has recommended the bill clarify designated international agreements will be published and tabled in the regulations subject to parliamentary scrutiny and subject to a period of disallowance. The committee has also recommended that the bill provide that a designated international agreement may be extended for a period of three years without going through the parliamentary treaty process if renewal or extension is proposed without amendment to the agreement. Noting the potentially intrusive nature of the powers, the committee has recommended that the ability to apply for an international production order should be appropriately limited to senior officers within relevant law enforcement agencies or the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The committee made additional recommendations to enhance oversight of the use of the powers by the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, and to facilitate the sharing of information between the Australian designated authority and these oversight bodies. The committee has recommended that it revisit the provisions of the bill whichever is the earlier of three years following the enactment of the first agreement or five years after the commencement of provisions of the bill. The committee recommends that, following the implementation of its recommendations, the bill be passed by the parliament. I commend the report to the Senate. Question agreed to. Report 86 17:58 Senator PATERSON 144138 Victoria On behalf of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, I present a statement on the committee's review of regulations re-listing Jaish-e-Mohammad as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code. I move: That the Senate take note of the report. I rise today to present a statement on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security's A review of regulations re-listing Jaish-e-Mohammad as a terrorist organisation under the Criminal Code Act 1995. Relations that specify an organisation as a terrorist organisation cease to have effect on the third anniversary of the day on which they take effect. Organisations can be relisted, provided the minister is satisfied on reasonable grounds that the organisation continues to directly or indirectly engage in terrorism or advocate the doing of a terrorist act. Jaish-e-Mohammad was listed in 2018, and the regulations to relist them were tabled in the parliament on 23 February 2021. The committee's review examines the minister's decision to relist this organisation. Section 102.1A of the Criminal Code provides that the committee may review a regulation which lists or relists an organisation as a terrorist organisation and report its comments and recommendations to each house of the parliament before the end of the applicable 15 days sitting disallowance period. This statement serves this purpose and is being presented within the required period. In determining whether the regulations relisting this organisation should be supported, the committee reviewed the merits in accordance with the Minister of Home Affairs' explanatory statement, ASIO's statement of reasons for the organisation and other publicly available information. In its deliberation, the committee determined that Jaish-e-Mohammad has links to extremist groups, maintains operational links with other groups operating in Jammu, Kashmir and Pakistan and has ties to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. JEM is directly engaged in preparing, planning and undertaking terrorist attacks and has publicly advocated terrorist attacks online and through rallies and religious sermons in Kashmir. JEM has historically conducted attacks indiscriminately to achieve its objectives, including targeting foreigners. It would consider Westerners, including Australians, to be legitimate targets for attack. This organisation remains a real threat to Australia. There is strong evidence that it continues to engage in terrorist activities that are targeted at countries with Western values. In examining the evidence that has been provided, the committee is satisfied with the relisting processes and considers that they have been followed appropriately for this organisation. The committee therefore supports the relisting of the organisation under division 102 of the Criminal Code in order to protect Australians and Australia's interests, and finds no reason to disallow the regulations. Question agreed to. Law Enforcement Committee 87 Report 87 18:01 Senator DAVEY 281697 New South Wales On behalf of the Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement, I present the committee's report Public communications campaigns targeting drug and substance abuse, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee. I move: That the Senate take note of the report. 18:01 Senator POLLEY e5x Tasmania I rise to speak on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement report Public communications campaigns targeting drug and substance abuse. Drug use in Australia is on the rise. The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission reported that over the past decade, while the Australian population increased by 13 per cent, the number of illicit drug seizures increased by 77 per cent and the weight of the illicit drugs seized nationally increased by 241 per cent. Statistics such as these highlight why illicit drug use in Australia is a growing concern for not only law enforcement but the broader society. There is an ongoing need to reduce the number of people who use drugs in the first place and also to have robust harm-minimisation strategies in place for those people who are drug users. It is important not to stigmatise these people but to give them the appropriate pathways to seek help. The harm related economic impact of the use of alcohol and drugs is significant, in the tens of billions of dollars, and often has wide-reaching impacts throughout the community, from personal health, crime, premature death, road accidents, workplace accidents and productivity to domestic and child abuse, not withstanding the harmful impacts caused internationally by drug manufacturing and trafficking. To combat this issue, the committee set up an inquiry to determine the effectiveness of different approaches to drug use campaigns to reduce demand for illicit drugs and to harm-minimisation strategies. The inquiry included evaluating stock advertising and the use of campaigns aimed at various audiences. It also looked at research and evaluation methods used to plan, implement and assess the effect of such campaigns. The committee also looked at identifying best-practice approaches to designing and implementing campaigns, including social media, digital channels and traditional advertising, to guide Australia's approach to drug demand reduction. Finally, it inquired into the efficacy of the current and past national drug strategies in achieving demand reduction through public communications campaigns. What was clear from the submissions and from the public hearings is that there are many different facets to drug problems in Australia and this requires a layered approach to minimising the considerable harm that illegal drugs cause to the community. A focus on harm reduction and community based approaches to drug minimisation will be most effective at curtailing substance abuse in Australia. This report hands down four recommendations, which I urge the government to act on. The first recommendation is that the federal government implement a new communications campaign via the National Drug Strategy that will support law enforcement agencies' efforts to reduce current and future illicit drug demand. The National Drug Strategy 2017-2026 is a 10-year framework that aims to reduce and prevent the harmful effects of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. This is the seventh iteration of this strategy since it was first introduced in 1985. Like previous iterations, this strategy includes targeted communication strategies as a method to achieve its overall aim of reducing drug related harms. However, the last campaign activities associated with this strategy were in 2018. With the dissolution of COAG and its subsidiary arms, the new national cabinet and various committees do not include a specific council that brings together health and policing bodies to discuss illicit drug issues. This has been highlighted as a concern throughout the inquiry, considering that there have been reports of increased problematic drug use during COVID-19. The work of this strategy was found to be effective, but the time is ripe for us to take further action now. The report also recommends that the government establish a formal mechanism commensurate with the council under COAG that is able to give federal and state law-enforcement bodies a strong, equal voice in developing policies and strategies to reduce illicit drug demand. The report also makes recommendations about future communication campaigns to reduce use illicit drug use and drug related harm. Public communications campaigns have been used in Australia for many years to disseminate information about health and to persuade people to change their behaviour. A prominent example is the Grim Reaper ads which aired over 30 years ago. This utilised shock advertising to gain attention and as a catalyst for encouraging additional thought and comprehension. Some might argue that it still is. What was found throughout the inquiry was that the best practical approach to public communications campaigns on drug use will recognise people who use drugs as people first, without using images of them or drug use as part of the shock advertising campaigns. A core aim of any public campaign regarding drug use must aim to reduce the stigma around drug use and people who use drugs, encourage harm reduction practices and promote avenues to seek help if desired. What was noted in the hearings and in several submissions is that shock advertising on its own is not effective. There were assertions made that shock advertising has been overused in Australia and potentially has lost its high impact and emotional response. This is not to say that it doesn't work at all, but it has changed. The personalisation of media means that shock advertising needs to take a collective approach and requires a societal shift that is refocusing the message to be one of social harm versus individual harm. Further, an emotional response does not need to be dictated by shock advertising. There are other means by which we can do that. For example, the social impact of behaviours is something which we can leverage for younger people to pay more attention. I think we can also remember the 'pinkie' road safety campaign. The key is getting people to think about how your friends, family or even a potential love interest would look at you if you were speeding. Trying to evoke a similar emotion can be effective at changing behaviours, especially for younger people. This demographic is important when you consider that 80 per cent of first-time illicit drug users are between the ages of 15 and 21. Careful attention must also focus on stigmatisation of drug users in marketing campaigns, as this can have the opposite of the desired effect on the individual and actually prevent them seeking help. However, this requires balance, as a negative stigma can also be an important tool in regulating behaviour. That is why it's important to advocate for strong law enforcement strategies to be an integral element of any antidrug campaign. We must also support a comprehensive communication arm, with specific focus on younger people, with a specific safety message. It is important for law enforcement to be closely connected to their community and to have a community focused model. To curtail the problem of increasing illicit drug use in Australia, there must be a holistic approach towards a harm minimisation and reduction strategy. Funding needs to be made on an ongoing basis, with multiple arms. Spending on mass media campaigns on its own is a waste if it's not accompanied by community programs, school programs, treatments and other types of drug and alcohol supports that are focused on reducing harm. There also needs to be ongoing research into the effectiveness of addiction treatment programs in reducing drug related crime. What we have seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic is that public health messaging can be effective, especially from a law enforcement perspective, but it must focus on authenticity. This comes with messaging which also has groups and communities on board. You cannot do this in isolation. It has to be a holistic approach if we're going to reduce the harm and the increase in the use of illicit drugs, alcohol and tobacco in this country. Question agreed to. Treaties Committee 89 Report 89 18:12 Senator DEAN SMITH 241710 Western Australia On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the 195th report of the committee. MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS 89 MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS Women's Budget Statement 2021-22 89 18:12 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia On behalf of the Acting Minister for Women, Minister Ley, I table a ministerial statement on the Women's Budget Statement 2021-22. 18:12 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I move: That the Senate take note of the document. I rise to speak to the tabling of the Women's Budget Statement, which at least this year is less of a glossy booklet than it was last year, when it was belatedly published several hours after the budget. At least this time there is a proper booklet. But unfortunately it bears no resemblance to a women's budget impact statement, which used to be delivered as part of the budget until Tony Abbott axed it in 2014. I believe he was Minister for Women at the time, so he was really kicking goals there for women, as he did so well in that role! What the women of Australia actually deserved was a women's budget impact statement to be applied as a gender lens on decisions that were taken prior to things ending up in the budget and a gender lens applied to then assess the impacts for women of the budget. That would have been a true women's budget impact statement. That is what we still do not have and have not had since 2014, when Tony Abbott got rid of it. Nonetheless, I want to take the opportunity to respond formally on the record to some of the components of last night's so-called women's budget—jumping the shark a little bit there, because in fact it's been described as all icing and no cake, and many of the budgetary measures, some of which are positive, only last a handful of years and then rapidly drop off. But that's not the worst of it. I want to start, firstly, with domestic violence funding. We know that domestic violence is at an epidemic level, with one in three women being affected by it. The figure is one in five for sexual violence. It's horrific and it's everywhere. We're starting to talk about it more and more and, sadly, more and more people are reporting that that is what they're now facing. We know it's not just physical violence; it's emotional violence. Something called coercive control is getting a good amount of attention. It's a huge problem. For many, many years the frontline service response sector folk have been crying out for support so that they don't have to turn women away. We've heard horrific stories from various different people, whether they be crisis accommodation, women's shelters, legal advice or other services to support women when they flee violence. Year after year they have said that they don't have enough funding to help everyone and that they are having to turn people away. They don't want to, but they simply don't have the resources to help everyone. So, when we heard rumours that there might be an increase in funding for frontline response services, we took some hope from that. But, sadly, although at first blush what we saw last night might seem good, in that the funding has been doubled, even after that doubling of funding, it is still one-quarter of what the sector has asked for so that they can help everyone that reaches out to seek their help. I don't think that's going to fly. Women aren't stupid. We remember the events of this year, and for many years we have known that the sector is drastically underfunded and that far more attention is needed on the issue. So delivering one-quarter of what's required is not good enough. More and more women keep dying. This is deadly serious in every sense of the word. For the government to think they can do a little bit but not go the whole way is just not okay. It's not like they're short of dough, because in fact there was $62 billion in handouts for big corporates in last night's budget. There was $51 billion in fossil fuel subsidies over four years in last night's budget. They're not short of money. It's about where they're allocating it. They've chosen to once again underfund frontline domestic violence services. They have chosen to champion that they've doubled a deeply inadequate amount, which is still inadequate; it's a quarter of what's required. That's our main objection to this budget—that it talked a big game but it is underdelivering for women. There's a little bit more money for child care, but people are going to have to wait quite a while for that. And there are very prescribed criteria to get the benefit, and it's a pretty marginal benefit at that. The Greens think that early childhood education should be free. It should be available and accessible and free to all kids, who desperately need that early childhood education to set them up for a great and hopeful life, to help aid workforce participation. But it's very interesting that we're told that child care belongs as part of the women's spend. Well, yes, we bear a disproportionate amount of the care load, but it shouldn't be that way. It's a bit 1950s, folks, to be pitching it as a women's measure when in fact it's a measure for families. Anyway, that is yet more 1950s rhetoric from this government. There was a welcome announcement—a very small one, but a welcome one—to scrap the threshold of $450 a month for superannuation. If you earnt below that amount, your employers didn't have to pay you super. Of course, that further compounded the retirement income equality gap. We know that women retire with, on average, just less than half of what their male counterparts do. Removing that threshold is a small step in the right direction. But where is the superannuation on paid parental leave? There was a budget leak saying that that would be in there. Women take a lot of caring gaps from the workforce. Adding super to PPL has been a longstanding ask and would have been a very effective addition to that welcome scrapping of the $450 threshold. There's been no explanation of why that leak wasn't followed through on. We don't know. Everyone thinks it's a good idea, yet this government has not come to the table. The other thing the government has not come to the table on is decent funding for respectful relationships education. This government wasted $4 million on a 'milkshake' consent video, which was rightfully pilloried for being bizarre, confusing and actively harmful to the message about consent. They managed to waste $4 million on that, but, in this budget, there's not a single cent for recognised, expert-drafted respectful relationships education. Our Watch—which is the national primary prevention agency, the peak body, the experts—have designed, piloted and evaluated as successful a respectful relationships program that's been rolled out in Victoria and in Queensland. It works. That would have been an ideal opportunity for this government to redeem themselves after the horror that was the milkshake video—the abomination of that six minutes pouring $4 million down the drain while actively worsening the issue. But, no, there was no funding for respectful relationships in last night's budget. What another missed opportunity. JobSeeker, which, sadly, women disproportionately receive, again, is below the poverty line. We were told that we're supposed to be happy with a 57c increase a day. No, that's not enough for people to live on. Women are disproportionately relying on JobSeeker, and this government once again is letting them down. But perhaps the biggest gap in the budget last night for women was a complete absence of investment in housing. We're in a housing crisis in this country. And it's not just a housing crisis in terms of crisis accommodation; it's a housing crisis for transitional housing and for long-term affordable housing. There is no affordable housing at any of those stages of someone's needs. The fastest-growing cohort of homeless people in Australia used to be women over 55. After COVID, it's women over 45, yet this government has not a cent to invest in public housing or to seriously boost crisis housing. If you want economic stimulus and if you want to create jobs, build people homes. There is no better way to stimulate the economy and generate the jobs that you claim to care about and to fix the housing crisis at the same time. But, no, this budget simply retains, I think, $8.5 billion for the negative gearing and capital gains perks. In fact, I think that's just the capital gains component. There are massive handouts to investors who own five or six homes, but there is absolutely nothing on public housing and this weird two per cent approach to loans for single parents. No single parent I know has got a spare two per cent for a home loan deposit. It would be 10 grand if you're lucky and you can find a cheap house. It's not going to happen. This budget is an attempt to distract women from this government's appalling track record. They are trying to sell us a pup. It's not enough funding for the things that are needed, and the women of Australia deserve better. I seek leave to continue my remarks later. Leave granted. NOTICES 90 NOTICES Presentation 90 18:23 Senator HANSON-YOUNG I0U South Australia by leave—I give notice that, on the next day of sitting, I will move a motion in relation to Catherine House. COMMITTEES 90 COMMITTEES Northern Australia Committee 90 Membership 90 18:23 The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 281558 The President has received a letter requesting changes to the membership of a joint committee. 18:23 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia by leave—I move: That senators be discharged from, and appointed to, the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia as follows: Northern Australia—Joint Standing Committee— On 18 May 2021— Discharged—Senator Siewert Appointed—Senator Thorpe On 19 May 2021— Discharged—Senator Thorpe Appointed—Senator Siewert On 28 May 2021— Discharged—Senator Siewert Appointed—Senator Thorpe On 29 May 2021— Discharged—Senator Thorpe Appointed—Senator Siewert On 8 June 2021— Discharged—Senator Siewert Appointed—Senator Thorpe On 9 June 2021— Discharged—Senator Thorpe Appointed—Senator Siewert Question agreed to. BILLS 91 BILLS Health Insurance Amendment (Prescribed Fees) Bill 2021 91

Health Insurance Amendment (Prescribed Fees) Bill 2021

First Reading 91 18:24 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia 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 91 18:24 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia I 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— I am pleased to introduce the Health Insurance Amendment (Prescribed Fees) Bill 2021. The Bill amends the Health Insurance Act 1973 to remove the requirement for new specialists and consultant physicians to pay a prescribed fee when applying for recognition for higher Medicare rebates. The current pathway to recognise a specialist or a consultant physician in the Act requires a medical practitioner who has gained fellowship with a specialist medical college to apply to Services Australia for access to higher Medicare rebates. As part of this process the medical practitioner is required to pay a prescribed fee of $30, via cheque or money order, to have their application processed. During the COVID-19 crisis it became evident that this method of payment was impacting specialist and consultant physician recognition for the purpose of Medicare, as neither method of payment was efficient or practical during movement restrictions and in-person service closures. As a result, patients of new specialists or consultant physicians may not have been able to receive higher Medicare rebates when they were entitled to. Implementation of the Bill means a prescribed fee will no longer be required to accompany an application form for higher Medicare rebates for new specialists and consultant physicians. This removes the cost to specialists and consultant physicians and the administrative burden to Services Australia of processing the fee. The cost of upgrading the method of accepting payment was assessed by the Government as being far in excess of the revenue generated by the application fee, and therefore the Government is removing the requirement to pay the fee at all. Streamlining the process for new specialists and consultant physicians to gain access to higher Medicare rebates removes red tape for medical practitioners and allows for a simpler, more efficient administrative process for Services Australia. Debate adjourned. COMMITTEES 92 COMMITTEES Membership 92 BILLS 92 BILLS Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021 92

Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021

Second Reading 92 18:25 Senator WATT 245759 Queensland I rise to speak on the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021. Labor has a long history of supporting development in northern Australia. In fact it was Labor that appointed the very first Minister for Northern Australia, under the Whitlam government. The governments of Chifley, Curtin, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Gillard and Rudd have all contributed heavily to the development of northern Australia. More recently we supported the 2015 report, Our north, our future: white paper on developing northern Australia and the initiatives in it, including the star of the show—the $5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, better known as the NAIF. It was clear at the time and remains obvious now that the north, which has been neglected for so long, needed a leg-up to achieve its full potential. While Labor supports the northern Australia agenda and the NAIF, that doesn't mean we shouldn't look at ways to improve it. It is the job of an opposition to scrutinise government policy, hold it to account for its failings and suggest improvements. When it comes to the NAIF, for many years we have been making many constructive suggestions about how it can be improved. Rarely have we seen a program that has so wholeheartedly failed to deliver what was promised. That is from a government that is notorious for making announcements that it doesn't deliver. The fact is, the NAIF is shamefully behind schedule and has woefully underdelivered on what the Morrison government promised it would do. It must be an embarrassing day for the government to have to come cap in hand, admitting that it has wasted five years, and ask for more time to get the NAIF working. It's a bit like a student back at school having to ask for an extension on a class project because they spent too much time talking about what they were going to do and showing off in class, rather than sitting down and getting it done. In fact, the NAIF has been such a flop it's now widely referred to as the 'no actual infrastructure fund'. While I know it's a big disappointment to people on the other side of this chamber, it's even more of a disappointment to communities in the north who were once excited by the opportunities it promised. For those who haven't had the pleasure of spending time in northern Australia, the region is vast and geographically remote, but it's also home to a number of world-class leading businesses and industries. It is bursting at the seams with opportunities in traditional industries like agriculture, mining and tourism, and in emerging industries like renewables, hydrogen, tropical science and many other things. As outlined in the government's northern Australia agenda, the NAIF was supposed to offer loan support to projects across Northern Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory as an alternative to traditional bank loans. We know that it can be tough to get business loans in remote regions, and sometimes traditional banks don't appreciate the value of out-of-the-box innovation—the kind we want to see more of in the north. There are organisations from Townsville to Darwin and across to Karratha and everywhere in between that are leading the world with innovations in mining, agriculture, health, education and sustainability. These smaller unique projects which have had a hard time getting a bank loan were hoping to find a partner in the NAIF. Unfortunately, for many this hasn't proved to be the case to date. That's because, in the six years since it was announced, the NAIF has comprehensively failed to deliver what the government promised. If there's one thing this government is good at, as I say, it's making an announcement. Any time there's a headline to be had, there they are, ready to cut a ribbon. But there's a long way between announcement and delivery, and this government seems to drop the ball every time. The NAIF, sadly, has become just another example of this habit of the Morrison government. We see media release after media release about projects the NAIF has approved or how much they say they'll spend from the NAIF. But when you look at how much has actually got out the door and into communities it's a completely different story. As I mentioned before, the NAIF is so shamefully behind schedule that it has now had to ask for more time to get the job done. When the coalition government established the NAIF, it promised to invest $5 billion in five years. Instead, now it's expected to take double that or maybe even more. When the NAIF appeared before Senate estimates at the end of March, it revealed that, of its $5 billion budget, only $314 million had actually been released. That's about six per cent of its budget that has been released after five years. In my home state of Queensland, the NAIF has released only $56.7 million. I really think that people in North Queensland and northern Australia generally would have thought they'd see more come out of the NAIF by now. As I say, it means that, at this point in time, only six per cent of funding has got out the door in the time in which 100 per cent of the budget was supposed to be spent. So there's still 94 per cent of the NAIF's funding to get out the door and into northern Australia. At this rate, it will take nearly 80 years to release the full $5 billion that was promised to northern Australia via the NAIF. That money is no good sitting in a Canberra bank account. We need to get those funds out to businesses in northern Australia so that they can start building infrastructure, employing locals and improving services in the north. It's good that the Morrison government will have more time to fix its mistakes, but with this track record it's fair for communities to be sceptical about the government picking up its act. Even when the NAIF does approve a project for funding, this government's prejudices are blocking it from proceeding. Only last week it was revealed that the Minister for Resources, Water and Northern Australia, Minister Pitt, had personally intervened to veto a NAIF loan to a $380 million renewable energy project near Cairns in Far North Queensland. The NAIF board had approved this project. They'd finally found a project that was worthwhile to invest in. It was going to create jobs and do lots more for North Queensland. But Minister Pitt quietly overturned it. This is, as I understand it, the very first time a minister has used this power. Minister Pitt told the head of the NAIF, via a letter, that the approval of this project was inconsistent with the aims of the federal government. Killing a $380 million project and the jobs that it would have brought to Far North Queensland is a new low for this government. This project would have delivered 250 jobs in North Queensland as well as delivering more reliable and affordable power, which would have actually generated more jobs in more industries. Far North Queensland economies have been hit particularly hard by the COVID pandemic, especially with the closure of international borders. Now is not the time to be ripping the rug out from under new jobs for locals. This is an embarrassing move by this government. Its own prejudices against renewable power and the jobs it can create have led to it overturning a NAIF-approved loan to a company. It is embarrassing that we've got a minister who will put his own prejudices ahead of the region that he claims to represent. It's embarrassing that we've got a minister who would rather stick his head in the sand than fund good, clean, cheap energy projects that could deliver jobs to regions that need them. I might say, I look back on the fact that when Senator Canavan was the Minister for Northern Australia he at least allowed funding for solar farms and other renewable projects to go ahead. In fact, the biggest loan that the NAIF has approved is for a renewables project in North Queensland. But it would seem that under Minister Pitt that kind of thing has no future because of his own prejudices against those kinds of projects. It is a deep shame, and it's people in Far North Queensland who are missing out. When these NAIF powers were introduced to the parliament, it was claimed that they would only be used to ensure that projects contrary to the national interest would not be funded. Ripping the rug out from under 250 energy jobs in Far North Queensland is not in the national interest. This government's prejudice against renewables is costing jobs and lower power prices and is holding regional Australia back. The NAIF is plagued by enough problems in getting money out the door, without having to manage a minister who quietly goes around knocking off projects that he doesn't like. As I mentioned earlier, Labor has been making constructive suggestions about what can be done about the NAIF for a number of years now. While the decision to overhaul the NAIF via this legislation is encouraging, the fact is this government has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do it. I've said before that it's easy to lose count of how many reviews and rehashes of programs the government has announced for northern Australia in the last few years. It's taken four reviews in as many years, two Senate inquiries and countless calls from Labor for the government to agree to make any changes to the NAIF operations. All of this inaction has meant people are still waiting to get any real results—that's if they haven't already given up and taken their projects interstate or overseas. Finally, at the end of last year, the Morrison government agreed to come to the table on some long-overdue reforms. Labor hopes, when implemented, these reforms will be a step in the right direction. However, after the games we saw from Minister Pitt last week, Labor will be putting forward some amendments of our own to safeguard the NAIF from ideological whims of the minister of the day. People in northern Australia can't afford to see the next five years roll by and still be no better off. Scott Morrison, the Prime Minister; and Keith Pitt, the minister, must stop talking about it and start getting money out the door. Looking at the legislation as it has been proposed by this government, Labor supports the proposed extension of NAIF for another five years, beyond its current expiry of 30 June this year to 30 June 2026. I've spoken to business, community leaders and others in the north about this, and many still hold onto the hope that the NAIF can fill an ongoing market gap in accessing finance in the region. There are project proponents interested in seeking funds through the NAIF. Let's hope the government makes better use of the next five years and gets behind them. Labor also supports the proposal to expand the activities eligible for financial assistance beyond the construction of northern Australia infrastructure to the development of northern Australia economic infrastructure. This change is consistent with much of the feedback received by the Senate inquiry into the effectiveness of the Australian government's northern Australia agenda—that the NAIF should support more smaller projects. The inquiry repeatedly heard from stakeholders across the north that the NAIF was not accessible to smaller projects, and, while big ticket infrastructure projects are always important, often smaller projects have the largest impact on communities in the region. This legislation will also allow the NAIF to lend directly to project proponents, rather than directing funding through state and territory governments as it currently does. The biggest criticism of the NAIF, both from Labor and people in the north, is the length of time that it takes to get money out of the door to projects. Labor wants to see the money hitting the ground faster, and hopefully simplifying the administrative processes will assist this. I might just say that, in reaching our position on this bill, we have consulted the Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australian governments, none of whom have any issue with being taken out of the process of NAIF loans being forwarded. As I say, we hope that that move will increase the speed at which the government can get money out the door. It's important to acknowledge the concerns raised by environment groups that these changes would remove the ability of state or territory governments to block a project that may have adverse environmental impacts; however, as I say, the three relevant state governments as well as many other groups across the north have given this change the green light. In addition, any project considered by the NAIF would still have to meet existing federal, state or territory environmental and other regulatory processes, and the NAIF Act retains the prohibition on a minister directing the NAIF to fund a particular project. Something that Labor has been calling for, for years now, is for the NAIF to broaden the types of financial assistance available to provide to projects. Currently, the NAIF only provides loans. This bill proposes that in addition to loans the NAIF offers letters of credit, purchase of bonds, guarantees in equity investments. These investment options are consistent with other government financing bodies such as the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. This change could have a massive positive benefit, especially for smaller projects and those led by First Nations communities, which historically have had a much harder time receiving NAIF assistance. As of 25 March this year only two First Nations projects have reached the investment decision stage with the NAIF, and together these two projects only represent one per cent of the NAIF's total funds. This is just not good enough, and it's led to one of the amendments that Labor will be proposing to this bill. I'll just very briefly touch on the amendments we're proposing, because we'll have an opportunity to talk to them at more length later on. Labor has been calling on the government and the NAIF to work on having greater engagement with First Nations communities on the development of northern Australia. The bill attempts to address this by including experience in economic development for Indigenous communities in the list of fields of expertise sought for the NAIF board. Labor supports this change, but we do not believe that this goes far enough. First Nations communities are such an important part of northern Australia but are often completely left out of the discussion by this government. To really address the challenges First Nations projects face in accessing the NAIF, Labor would like to see a dedicated position on the NAIF board for a First Nations representative. Both the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation and Indigenous Business Australia require First Nations members on their boards. We don't believe the NAIF should be any different. Labor would also like to see the Indian Ocean territories included as part of northern Australia. My time is running out, so I'll come back to that at a later point. A further amendment that we are proposing, which is particularly important in light of Minister Pitt's actions, is to encourage the NAIF board to support projects that help Australia achieve net zero emissions by 2050, something that will create jobs and help our environment. There are a range of other amendments that we'll be putting forward, but I'll talk to them later. I also want to flag that I'll be moving a second reading amendment in my name, circulated on sheet 1284. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 247512 Senator Watt, could you move that now? Senator WATT 245759 I move: At the end of the motion, add: ", but the Senate: (a) notes the Government's failure to: (i) deliver what it promised as part of its Northern Australia Agenda, and (ii) get money out the door of the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility; and (b) further notes that the Bill includes amendments that the Opposition has been calling for over a number of years; and (c) calls on the Prime Minister and the Government to: (i) learn from their failures with the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility over the past five years, (ii) deliver the funding they have promised for development in Northern Australia by speeding up the release of funds from the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, and (iii) realise the potential in Northern Australia and re-commit to delivering on their Northern Australia Agenda". 18:41 Senator WATERS 192970 Queensland I rise to speak on this Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill, which, for everybody's mercy, I'll just call the 'NAIF bill' in future. People will remember that when this first was set up five years ago it was at the behest of the National Party and it was a $5 billion slush fund for coalmines and dams. The then Minister Canavan was in charge at the time, and it was pretty obvious that that's what they were seeking. They extracted that commitment from the Liberal government, and, hey presto, we got the NAIF. It's been interesting to watch over the subsequent years. There have been some positive projects that have received funding under NAIF, projects that we would consider environmentally sustainable, job creating and generally good for the region. So it's been fascinating to watch what was initially set up as something to fund dirty projects that would wreck the planet but keep the Nationals happy actually be a force for some good when it funded those positive projects. So we approached this amendment bill with some interest. The bill now wants to extend the NAIF for a further five years, because they actually have had trouble getting the money out the door. Maybe it's because those coalmines and dams are in fact uneconomic and a bad idea, and the private sector sees that and doesn't want to go through with those sorts of developments. But these amendments also want to put a departmental officer onto the NAIF board, they want to remove the ability of state governments to veto funding going to projects in their states and they want to expand the types of funding mechanisms to include equity investments and acquisition of derivatives. The amendments have been promoted as a way of achieving flexibility, but the aim is really clear: the government wants to deliver for its mates. That's what it does best, and certainly what it did in last night's budget. We raised concerns at the time that this would be a bank for fossil fuels, and with these amendments, proposed by the government in this bill we're debating now, that would be locked in. It would be undeniably a bank for fossil fuels. Minister Pitt, who's the minister now, didn't even try to hide his desire that the NAIF be used as a slush fund for the gas industry when he made his remarks last time this was debated, and, in fact, I think it was in the media last week that he boasted about how these amendments would open up more opportunities for Beetaloo infrastructure financing. We know the Beetaloo is a massive gas basin that this government and, I think, sadly, the opposition at the time—I remember an announcement from the then leader Bill Shorten promoting the Beetaloo as a gas extraction boon—now want the NAIF to fund. And it's somewhat ironic—frankly it's hypocritical—because Minister Pitt just used his veto power as the relevant minister to stop funding going to a wind farm with a battery backup. Yet he wants public money to go to opening up a new, massive gas basin, which would turbocharge the climate crisis, when we have alternatives to gas as energy that don't wreck the climate. Minister Pitt wants to use public money to stop renewables. He doesn't want it to fund renewable projects that would've created 250 jobs in northern Queensland; no. He instead wants it to open up a new gas basin. We're kind of used to that from this government. It's fossil fuels or nothing. It's yet another dirty energy fund that is yet another fossil fuel subsidy. It's adding insult to injury, really, because in last night's budget—as I've said numerous times since then—we saw yet more fossil fuel subsidies. So this government is handing out public funds to coal, to oil, to gas—to the dirty energy sector—hand over fist. They cannot get the money out the door fast enough when it is public money for dirty projects. And yet they're blocking funding for clean renewable projects. Minister Pitt has also boasted that the amendments will allow the Commonwealth to bypass the states and take away that veto power. It's very interesting, because the states' veto power was in fact used to block public money going from the NAIF to Adani for one of their coal railways. The Queensland government at the time—who were a Labor government and are still in power in my state of Queensland—felt the force of a really strong public campaign that demanded that they stop public money going to opening up the Galilee coal basin, which, if it was opened up, would be the equivalent of the seventh largest emitter in the world, if it were a country, that basin is so big and so much of a carbon bomb. Full credit to the Queensland Premier at the time, who, under so much public pressure, stopped that funding going to Adani. So it is very interesting indeed to hear Senator Watt say that his party has now consulted with the Queensland government and the other relevant governments, who, apparently, according to Senator Watt, don't want that veto power anymore. Well, little wonder! The Queensland government also love coal—they love opening up new coal basins; they love supporting coal and coal-fired power—so of course they don't want the ability to say no. They want to be able to say that their hands are tied—that they can't stand in the way of this public taxpayer money going to the fossil fuel industries—because, actually, they think that's a good idea. Frankly, I think that says all you need to know about the approach of both of the big parties to spending taxpayer dollars on fossil fuels. We will be moving a series of amendments to try to fix this fund and turn it into a fund for sustainable, job-creating, positive projects to service northern Australia and treat it with the environmental sensitivity and the dignity that the community desires for good development in the north. There have already been some great projects funded under this NAIF. We want to see more of the good projects funded and less of the projects funded that First Nations mobs have not consented to, that are making the climate crisis worse and that don't generate anywhere near the jobs that they promise—as is always the case with the coalmining sector, which, frankly, wants to automate as quickly as possible. We have long argued that the NAIF should consider the federal government's policy commitment to the Paris Agreement. Our current domestic pledges, and the ambition needed to come anywhere close to what the science says is needed to meet international goals under that agreement, without question mean not funding fossil fuel infrastructure. And yet the Morrison government wants to use the NAIF to fund gas pipelines. It wants to open up new gas fields. It wants to use public funds to throw more fuel on the climate crisis. The $51 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in last night's budget wasn't enough for this government! They want this $5 billion slush fund to be able to open up new gas pipelines, roads and new gas facilities. They just want more and more taxpayer dollars for the fossil fuel industries that donate to their re-election campaigns and then often offer them plum jobs when they leave parliament. It's an absolute lark! We will be moving amendments to say that the NAIF should not be allowed to invest in fossil fuels because we are in a climate crisis and we have other alternatives that can provide clean energy that's more affordable, that creates more jobs and that respects the environmental limits of the north. I hope that the opposition has a rethink on their position on that because, when amendments were moved in the House calling for NAIF to not invest public money in new coal, in oil, in gas, they didn't want that. They voted for this fund to be able to invest in fossil fuels, and the government of course voted as well. I hope they have had a rethink on that position because I actually thought they expressed differently at some point, but I will leave it for them to explain their position. The other amendments that we'll seek to move would require the environmental impacts of a project to be assessed as part of the process of deciding whether it's suitable to invest in. That would include looking at the principles of ecologically sustainable development, which includes the precautionary principle, which says: 'If you're not sure you're not going to stuff something up, well, don't do it. If there is a risk of stuffing it up, just hold off.' Our amendments would codify those. We moved those same amendments when this fund was first set up five-odd years ago. We received absolutely no support for them then, and I hope the story is different now. Onto the investment risk, there are proposals for the government to change the modes of funding that can be made available under this facility. Equity investments, which is what is being proposed, open NAIF up to more speculative investing, which would leave the government holding significant risk for the benefit of private companies. Acquisition of derivatives can leave the government with an open-ended unquantifiable liability if a project proponent becomes insolvent. There have been a few examples of projects that NAIF has funded that have then been canned. I will be asking in the committee stage of this bill what has happened to that money, so this is a live prospect. There are some worthwhile small-scale projects including those championed by First Nations that would benefit from broader investment opportunities, and that is exactly why we're moving an amendment saying that only those smaller scale or First Nations operations should be allowed to access this equity funding. Without that amendment, we fear that these government amendments would in fact incentivise speculative investment that could underwrite gas supply and prop up otherwise stranded assets. Given the NAIF's poor governance practices and processes for assessing the risk on public lending, especially risk in relation to fossil fuels and climate change, this is an unacceptable risk. Tighter rules around eligibility for equity investment options introduced by the bill are essential to ensure that the government isn't left carrying the can for unsustainable fossil fuel projects, which is exactly why our amendments would restrict the use of equity investments to projects undertaken by small businesses and Indigenous corporations. Again, I urge the chamber to consider supporting those amendments so that we can get the benefit for those small operators and Indigenous corporations without yet another pathway to subsidising fossil-fuel infrastructure. The bill also proposes to remove the mandatory requirement for infrastructure to stimulate population growth in northern Australia. But removing that requirement will again make it easier for the minister to push NAIF into funding gas infrastructure and pipelines, including pipelines that aren't even located in northern Australia. In terms of the board, requiring the secretary of the department to be a member of the NAIF board undermines any semblance of independence and makes the NAIF directly susceptible to ministerial influence, as if it isn't enough already. The minister's been spruiking fossil fuel projects already and using NAIF to further the government's discredited and dream-like state of a gas-fired recovery. When the NAIF was created, the government said: The expert, transparent and arms-length design of the Board lends credibility to financial markets, while ensuring the Commonwealth invests in projects which are viable, provide public benefit and unlock the potential of northern Australia. When it turns out those investments aren't in fossil fuels, the government tries to regain control of the decision-making process. In the Senate inquiry into the operation of the NAIF, we heard evidence from First Nations and regional communities in northern Australia that the board did need to take a more innovative approach to investment and look beyond the traditional and often outdated and unsustainable projects like mines and dams, yet this bill and this government are stuck in that same tired 1950s mindset. On the veto power, which I touched on earlier, we strongly oppose allowing NAIF to loan directly to entities, bypassing state and territory governments. Previous reviews have in fact raised concerns about the constitutional validity of direct loans, and the government hasn't provided any compelling evidence that those concerns have been addressed. So we're calling for this bill to be referred to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee to allow this issue and other problems with the bill to be examined. This is an opportune time for me to foreshadow that I will be moving a second reading amendment standing in my name. The NAIF's clear function is to grant financial assistance to states and territories for the construction of northern Australia economic infrastructure. That's from the existing legislation. Previous reviews of NAIF identified the need for it to work more closely with state and territory governments, not to completely ignore and go around them. So providing the option of bypassing the states and territories simply increases the federal government's power and takes away a key check and balance. It also puts worthwhile projects at risk where the constitutional validity of the loan arrangement is unresolved. In short, this is yet more public money for fossil fuels, but it doesn't have to be that way. We can amend this facility so that it promotes positive sustainable development in the north. That's exactly why the Greens will be moving the amendment I mentioned. 18:56 Senator McDONALD 123072 Queensland I rise to speak to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021. It's interesting. I have come to this place specifically to support legislation and actions such as this. It is the comments of both the opposition and the Greens that provide resolve and steel in my heart as to why this was the right decision—the fantastical description of northern Australia and the complete lack of understanding of the outrageous control provided by inner-city Greens and people who have no understanding of the potential of northern Australia and the opportunities it provides, of what they continue to deny to the communities in northern Australia, both Indigenous and other. It is enough to make me weep. So I support the amendments that have been brought forward by Minister Keith Pitt, as they are practical and able to continue facilitating the financing of critically important projects in northern Australia. This coalition government is about turbo charging its investment program and agenda for northern Australia, to make it easier for projects to receive funding and to generate economic development and jobs, not just as the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic but into the future. As part of the 2020-21 budget our government announced reforms to the NAIF to provide more flexibility, increase risk appetite and widen the scope of eligible projects. It sticks in my craw that we have members of the Greens—who have left the chamber, of course—who are not prepared to listen to the reality of what is going on. They're not interested in understanding that there was no battery in the proposed infrastructure that was rejected by the minister. There is no reality in their concept that this is a fund that has been established only to fund fossil fuel projects. This is a fund that allows an intervention in the capital crisis that is happening in north Australia. It has been the failure of the market for insurance and, more broadly, the failure of our banking institutions to lend to projects—not just large ones but small ones, like truck stops, housing and other business projects. The proposed reforms seek to address stakeholder criticism of the NAIF regarding it being risk averse and not proactive enough and follow recommendations from the statutory review of the NAIF. I'm going to touch on just a couple of the proposed amendments to the NAIF Act 2016, the first of which is to extend the period of time in which the NAIF can make investment decisions to 30 June 2026. This is critically important, because the government's announcement recently on the re-investment pool, the $10 billion program over 10 years, will facilitate greater investment in the north, which has not been able to happen due to the market failure in northern Australia. It will accelerate lending, allowing the NAIF to lend directly to proponents under certain circumstances. There's been some comment about whether or not the states should have approval points in this process. Remember that, in addition to the state jurisdictions not providing any finance in NAIF approval, not having any skin in the game, there is also an extensive array of approval processes at local government, state government and federal government level. So this suggestion that the NAIF is in any way going to threaten the environmental, cultural or other parts of northern Australia is fanciful. This is a nation that's tied up in so much red tape, so many approval processes, that we could not possibly provide any more opportunity to stop projects than we already do. Senator Waters referred to the precautionary principle. We in the north are very familiar with the precautionary principle. Projects apply for approval and, after seven or eight years, withdraw their application because there is no way through the approval processes of local, state and sometimes federal governments. These changes will allow the approvals process to be sped up, at least for NAIF funding. Remembering that projects have already gone through an approval process and there is no financial skin in the game for the states, projects sit on state government Treasurers' desks for 283-odd days, on average. Guess who pays for that? The project proponents, who are spending money on consultants and on other sorts of approval processes. That is coming out of money that could be spent on the ground to improve businesses and communities in northern Australia. The change in the legislation will also permit the NAIF to establish on-lending partnerships with local financiers to improve access to NAIF finance for smaller project proponents. These partners have the expertise to work with smaller proponents to demonstrate their suitability for NAIF finance and will extend the NAIF's reach to those smaller projects that need added assistance in these economically challenging times. This is an incredibly exciting change. I've got projects lining up. We're racking and stacking projects that will bring jobs and economic prosperity to northern Australia, and they're waiting on these changes to go through the Senate. There is absolutely no way that we should be allowing this bill to be referred to any other committee, when it has been subjected to statutory reviews and to Senate inquiries. The work has been done. We cannot delay these people getting on with terrific projects that will bring real jobs, prosperity and opportunity to our communities in northern Australia. The NAIF was previously restricted to funding physical construction works only. I'm delighted that these changes, the practical changes brought by the very practical minister, Minister Pitt, will allow NAIF finance to be available to additional elements of infrastructure construction, such as equipment purchases or leasing, training and the expansion of existing business operations. These reforms will ensure that the NAIF can take a holistic approach to supporting economic growth and jobs. It might interest members of the opposition and the Greens to know that total NAIF investment is now sitting at $2.9 billion, money that has gone out the door. These are completed projects like the centre of excellence at the Cowboys stadium in Townsville, the construction of the accommodation at JCU, the approval of the hydro project at Kidston. There are projects right across Australia that are going to bring real jobs, real opportunity to the north. Again, it is time for people based in inner-city Melbourne, inner-city Brisbane to stop lecturing those of us who live in northern Australia and are desperate for this opportunity, desperate for this kind of capital availability. We've also talked about empowering the NAIF to use equity finance. Again, I'm not sure what part of what risk means I need to explain to the opposition and the Greens. What these changes to the NAIF will do is they will allow the government to take a stake in some of these investment opportunities, to take a risk and back businesses that will build developments, that will build agriculture and irrigation projects, that will build mining projects, that will build the supporting infrastructure that communities need and want. The Greens and Labor will talk about risk, but they never talk about opportunity because they never put their hands in their own pockets and build something—a job, a project. Instead, that is always left to real people, real conservatives, and this is what this legislation is going to do. We're also strengthening the governance of the board by giving it a greater mix, adding a government board member, making the Minister for Finance jointly responsible for the investment mandate, allowing the NAIF board to delegate decision-making where appropriate, and adding experience and economic development for Indigenous communities to the list of relevant areas for board expertise. We are providing $83.5 million from 2020-21 to 2025-26 to the NAIF for the five-year extension and to implement these reforms. As I said, there has been a statutory review. It commenced in July 2019, it was released in 2020, it made 28 recommendations. This review was extensive, with over 100 entities consulted and 122 face-to-face meetings across the north taking place. I was part of a select committee of the Senate on the effectiveness of the northern Australia agenda. It was chaired by the opposition and it recommended that these reforms recommended by the statutory review be passed by the parliament as a priority. Well, here we are trying to pass the recommendations of the statutory review, and I am delighted to hear Senator Watt talking about supporting these changes to the NAIF. But it is embarrassing to have a shadow minister who doesn't understand the difference between money approved and money out the door, who doesn't understand the way project funds are drawn down in a project, who doesn't understand that sometimes a project can be completed before the funds are drawn down, and yet continues banging on about this in this Senate chamber. It's becoming tiresome. I think we might need to run some sort of workshop, finance 101. While we're at it, we'll do water 101 because I'm tired of being lectured by opposition senators who don't understand that water rights sit with the states. The water resource plans and the water allocations are held by the state governments and that happens under the federal Constitution. The reason that works is that as states we are so parochial. We don't want to hand over approvals for water projects to anybody else. It doesn't matter how much money the federal government throws at water projects—currently we're up to $3.5 billion being available for water projects in this country—and can we build a dam in Queensland? Of course we can't because Labor doesn't believe in water projects. They don't believe in developing the north, they don't believe in opportunity and prosperity for people who live north of Brisbane because they don't understand what it's like. But those of us who do live in that part of the country know the opportunities, know the people, the families, and the communities—people like Senator Matt Canavan, who lives in Rockhampton, and me; I live in Townsville. We know the opportunities. We talk about them at every barbecue and at every meeting. We wring our hands and say: 'Why can't the south understand what could happen if you unleash the potential of the north—the potential of our people, the potential of massive rainfall, and the potential of suitable soils that has been already demonstrated by the CSIRO in multiple studies? Why is it that we continue to have our hands tied behind our back? Why are our children's opportunities removed by second-class education given by the state education departments? Why do we have second-class roads and state departments that don't spend the maintenance money for roads that they have in their budgets? Why do state governments continue to treat anybody in the northern half of Australia as some kind of second-class citizen?' I think they think we are possibly a little bit simple. I think they think we're not smart enough to come in out of the sun, but we know what is possible in the north. These NAIF reforms will help us in part to deliver for Australia, for our families, and for our communities. I commend these changes and I will be supporting them 1,000 per cent. 19:11 Senator PRATT I0T Western Australia The Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility Amendment (Extension and Other Measures) Bill 2021 is an improvement on what has been a very chequered history for the government under the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund. But the improvements we have here do not go nearly far enough, which is why Labor has proposed a series of amendments which we look forward to pursuing during the committee stage of the bill. A range of significant flaws in the bill were addressed in the committee report, but there are also many other areas where we haven't seen the legislation before us go far enough. It's time for action, it's time for jobs, and it's time to see that the $5 billion that's been promised to northern Australia is actually delivering what it's supposed to and what was promised. We can't afford to see in our country yet another episode of the Morrison government overpromising and underdelivering. We need to see the government actually listening to feedback and being more committed than it was last time. We have a government that simply doesn't take on board feedback. It simply shuts down critiques and puts forward its own position. That's not the way to get things done in Australia. Labor, on the other hand, wants to see NAIF work, and we want to see northern Australia reach its potential. There is a veto power that Minister Keith Pitt made use of recently, and Labor believes that is, and has been, a very dangerous tool. We've seen that, when the NAIF Board did approve a renewables project like the wind farm in northern Queensland, Minister Pitt still had the final say. This is not good decision-making. On the one hand, you've got the ideological position of a government and a minister, and, on the other hand, you've got a board—never mind that it's stacked with a number of Liberals—that has made a good economic decision to support a renewable energy project. Still, Minister Keith Pitt seeks to use his veto powers to overturn such a decision. There are renewables projects like the Kidston pumped hydro project near Townsville. Northern Australia is absolutely full of potential for hydrogen, particularly in my home state of Western Australia—hydrogen, solar and wind, and hydrogen projects that are also driven by solar and wind, as well as tidal and other forms of renewable energy. Hydrogen, as well as other manufacturing and industrial processing, can be, and should be, supported by cheap renewable energy. We should have a national northern Australian infrastructure fund that supports those objectives so that northern Australia can harness its natural potential on behalf of the nation. We see a timely amendment in one that would encourage the NAIF board to support projects that help Australia achieve net zero emissions by 2050. This is something that Labor very much believes will create jobs and help our environment. I ask those opposite to think seriously about this: where do you honestly think northern Australia, far from Canberra, is going to find its future? Is it only going to be in fossil fuels? No. We know that it's going to be based on its enormous renewable energy power. Yet, we seem to be beset, over and over, by an ideological obsession from the coalition to oppose a renewable energy agenda, to see this kind of interference taking place in organisations like the NAIF. We want to create jobs and help our environment, but, equally fundamentally, we want a future for northern Australia and its people. In the last 18 months, we've seen a very challenging environment for northern Australia. We've seen drought, fire and floods in the eastern states. We've seen trade embargoes, which have certainly affected Western Australia. We've seen COVID-19. In particular, we've seen significant skills and housing shortages right across the north, be it in Queensland, the Northern Territory or Western Australia. Everywhere I go in Western Australia, there are people struggling to find rentals and companies struggling to find skilled workers. It's been like this for a while. We've cycled through it many times, yet, we find that, particularly in places like Karratha and Port Hedland, this Commonwealth government doesn't want to offer up any solutions. In terms of the amendments and the objective of NAIF, we really want to see NAIF's investments mandate updated. In this sense, it should include a portfolio benchmark return in line with that of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. NAIF loans and equity investments are in for-profit projects. Labor believes that this should be fair and reasonable; we have an expectation that the government has a return on the investment of taxpayer funds in private sector projects. In this context, again, it goes to why we don't actually look to proper commercial arrangements, where we don't have this ridiculous type of veto power. Frankly, many corporations, given what the interest rates are globally at the moment, could choose NAIF or might say to themselves: 'The risk of pursuing approval through NAIF is simply ridiculous. It's not worth it, because not only have we got the normal commercial arrangements; we've also got arbitrary and ideologically informed veto powers, and this is absolutely ridiculous.' Key points that Labor has pursued relate very much to the Indian Ocean territories—that they should also be included in having access to the NAIF, and, critically, that First Nations communities are embedded in the decision-making process. It's a dire shame and a dire problem that they have so often been left out of consultation and other processes by this government. We believe that the change that's in the legislation before us doesn't go far enough. It simply doesn't place First Nations people in a decision-making position over the kinds of projects that they would like to see go forth. For example, we very much believe that First Nations people should have a dedicated person on the NAIF board, a First Nations representative. The Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation and Indigenous Business Australia require First Nations people on their boards, and, in Labor's view, we don't believe that NAIF should be any different at all. ADJOURNMENT 100 ADJOURNMENT Beef Australia 100 19:20 Senator CANAVAN 245212 Queensland I rise to say thanks and congratulations to the Beef Australia committee, who last week put on the best beef week ever. It was a fantastic job from Bryce Camm and his team. Beef week is hosted in Rockhampton every three years, and it's getting bigger and better with every version. Despite all the challenges of COVID, of international travel bans, of random state border closures, the Beef Australia team put on an excellent event in Rockhampton last week. It was extremely well attended—in fact, a record 115,000 people came through the gate at Rockhampton last week, and I know my colleague Senator Susan McDonald was one of those people who joined many other Liberal and National members of parliament there for the celebrations. I should recognise that Senator McDonald has previously been a director of the Beef Australia board and helped run Beef Australia, and her legacy was on show last week. There were 63 tonnes of beef consumed last week. To put that in context, if they were all divided up into a 250-gram rump, that would be 250,000 steaks. Remember those figures: 115,000 people through the gate and 250,000 steaks, so basically everybody had two steaks while they were there at beef week. I think Susan and I probably batted above the average during the week. No-one went home hungry from beef week. There were 3.6 million cattle sold last week at beef week, an enormous number, and there were 5,000 cattle on show. I congratulate all the winners showing their cattle. The carcase comp was run by Nolan, and there were many people who won prizes last week. There was an enormous amount of positivity. I'm sure Senator McDonald would agree with me that one of the great things about beef week last week wasn't just the number of people there—I've never seen Rocky busier. We had traffic jams. My kids were late to school one day because of one. It was amazing to see how many people were around. It wasn't just the people; it was also how positive the outlook is for the industry, which is fantastic to see. Of those 6.3 million cattle sold, the average price of grain-fed and grass-fed cattle is over $2,000 a head, which, from a few years ago, is up four or five times, as Senator McDonald knows, in terms of value. That is obviously playing a big part in terms of the positivity in the industry. There have been challenges there with China delisting a number of abattoirs, but there continues to be such strong demand for the high-quality protein that our cattle industry specialises in, and I think there's great confidence that such demand will continue, providing governments here in this country support our great beef industry. I should also reflect that this month of May, when beef week was hosted, marks 10 years since the Four Corners live cattle documentary which ultimately led to the disgraceful decision of the then Labor government to cut off at the knees our beef industry across the whole country, making a knee-jerk reaction in banning the live cattle trade. It was an absolute stuff up, with almost zero, as we've seen through court documents, consultation or consideration of the impact of such a decision. It didn't just affect the live cattle industry; it destroyed the entire cattle market across the country. It's so great to see that the Labor Party could not kill the cattle industry despite their best efforts 10 years ago. We're back on our feet. We've recovered from that decision, and it's great to see the positivity in the industry now. In fact, last year, in positive news, the Federal Court officially ruled that the Labor Party engaged in public misfeasance as a result of that decision. They ruled in favour of a class action that was taken by live cattle producers, and the government, with urging from Senator McDonald and others from the National Party here, did not challenge that result, and, eventually, those impacted by Labor's live cattle ban will be compensated for that impact. It's such great news to see beef week go well. If you missed out last week, don't fear: there will be another one in three years time—hopefully with international borders reopened. It will be bigger and better again. It has become a great event not just to celebrate the Australian beef industry but to get together not only with our competitors in other countries, like Brazil and North America, but with our customers in Japan, Korea and the Middle East. It's such a great place. Rockhampton becomes the centre of the beef world every three years. Budget 101 19:25 Senator WALSH 252157 Victoria Scott Morrison's budget speaks for itself. It says clearly that Scott Morrison has not listened to the experts in aged care, the dedicated and hardworking aged-care workers. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg boasted that this was the budget for aged care. Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg boasted that this was the budget for women, but they failed to deliver. If they really wanted to deliver on aged care, they should have put good, secure jobs for the workers at the heart of their budget. If they wanted to show women they care, they should have put forward good, secure jobs for this care workforce. The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT 247512 Senator Walsh, can I ask you to address the Prime Minister as the Prime Minister or as the member for Cook rather than as Scott Morrison? Senator WALSH 252157 Certainly. If they wanted to show women they care, they should have put forward good, secure jobs for this care workforce at the heart of their budget. Instead, this government decided to try to take advantage of the goodwill of the Australian women who work so hard in our aged-care sector. This critical, essential sector needs a pay rise. I met with amazing aged-care workers today and I want to share their stories. Aged-care worker Donna said today: 'At the end of the day, I don't clock off and say "I am finished, that's it." I get attached to these people. My heart aches when I see these people deteriorating.' Donna works full-time hours in her aged-care job, and that is not enough. She had to pick up two extra jobs to make ends meet. How is that fair? Full-time hours should be enough. Does the government see these care roles and think that the reward of caring for another human being is enough for women, that they don't need to be paid a decent living wage because they're helping people? Is this government that out of touch? That is exactly what it looks like. Then there's aged-care worker Jude. She has been working in aged care for 48 years. Just over $20 an hour is not enough to reward that level of dedication and that level of experience. What does this government have to say to Jude? Does she not deserve a decent living wage? The government have missed the opportunity with this budget to tell these workers they've listened, that these workers are actually worth more. The government has missed the opportunity to ensure transparency and accountability for where the funding is actually going and the government has missed this opportunity to really reform the aged-care sector for the better, to ensure that the dedicated aged-care workers have good, secure jobs so that they can go to work and give the high level of care to their residents that they would like and that the residents deserve. But the Prime Minister missed that opportunity. He missed it completely. Aged-care workers have to go back to their facilities, having visited us here in Canberra, knowing this government has completely failed them. If this government really cared about aged care, if they really cared about aged-care workers, they would have done something for them over the last eight years. They wouldn't have sat on the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety interim report for more than a year and a half, they wouldn't have waited until the budget to respond to the royal commission final report and they wouldn't have skirted their responsibility for the aged-care sector during the COVID pandemic last year. The government don't care. They don't care about Australia's aged-care sector and they don't care about doing what is needed to get wages moving. If the government want to show Australians that they are serious about a national pay rise, they could have and should have started with this essential sector. Labor knows that the love and dedication of these aged-care workers to their residents does not pay the bills. Labor will put good, secure jobs for aged-care workers at the heart of our response to the aged-care crisis, because there is no solution to the aged-care crisis without good, secure jobs for the workforce. We know that Australians have gone far too long without a pay rise under this Liberal government. Middle East 102 19:29 Senator FARUQI 250362 New South Wales Tonight marks the end of the month of Ramadan, when millions of Muslims across the world fast. This is a month of reflection, charity and spiritual connection. Now we celebrate Eid Mubarak. As I wish Eid Mubarak, I know that so many Muslims around the world are suffering. In India and the subcontinent, COVID-19 continues to ravage our communities. Elsewhere, Kashmiris, Uighurs and Palestinians are suffering under oppression. I rise tonight to express my solidarity with the Palestinian people who, for generations, have had to pay the price of settler colonialism taking their land, homes and lives. My heart goes out to the Palestinian families of Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem who are facing forced expulsions under threat of violence by Israeli authorities. My thoughts are with the 200 Palestinians who were injured on Friday evening, after Israeli forces stormed Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan. It was a brazen attack on one of our most significant spiritual places. What is happening in Palestine is part of a broader spectrum destroying the strength, lives and livelihoods of the Palestinian people. There are over 200,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem alone. Attacks on cultural sites are war crimes. Israeli authorities continue to act in clear defiance of international law. This never was and never will be okay. We must all speak up against the ongoing violence Israel has been perpetrating against the Palestinian people for decades, including in recent days. Silence in the face of the persecution, dispossession and displacement of Palestinians is not an option. To stay neutral or to use weak both-sides language is to choose the side of the oppressor. It's not enough to be shocked by Israel's settler colonial violence against Palestinians. Everyone, particularly politicians, has a responsible to speak out and demand that we free Palestine. A recent Human Rights Watch report found that Israeli authorities have been persecuting Palestinians with oppressive policies that amount to apartheid. The report states that Palestinians have been dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated and subjugated by virtue of their identity. How much longer must Palestinians be subjected to such oppression? For too long, Israel's gross human rights abuses and violations have been ignored by the international community. Palestinians are resilient people who continue to resist the ongoing attempts to remove the memory of Palestine. The decision to violently expel Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah has sparked well-justified anger and outrage in the community. They have delayed the evictions—proof that Palestinians will not give up the struggle until they see a free Palestine. Shamefully, the state-sanctioned violence goes on. On Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force renewed its attacks on occupied Gaza. The bombing claimed the lives of at least 29 Palestinians including nine children, and injured 115 others. As Israel's violence has reached new heights, the freedom movement has been reawakened. Raiding Palestinian homes and sacred places of worship has shown the world, yet again, how shameless Israel is. Today all eyes are on Palestine. The Sheikh Jarrah evictions must not go ahead. Israel's state sanctioned, apartheid violence against protesters must end, and the occupation with it. The Australian government has proved again and again that it is unwilling to oppose or be critical of Israel's government. We have heard no condemnation of the government of Israel's attacks on Sheikh Jarrah residents and the Al-Aqsa mosque. It is time to speak up. Australia must show solidarity with the Palestinians. This week we commemorate the Nakba when, on 15 May 1948, hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed and over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and made refugees. I urge you to join a rally on Saturday to mark Al Nakba wherever you live. The Greens express our utmost solidarity with the people of Palestine and their struggle. I will always, unapologetically and unashamedly, stand for human rights against occupation and in favour of Palestinian rights to self-determination. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Employment 103 19:34 Senator SHELDON 168275 New South Wales I want to take the opportunity to extend 'Eid Mubarak' to Senator Faruqi and to all Muslims in Australia. The Morrison government has said a lot this week about our supposed economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. But what sort of economic recovery is it when the Morrison government forecasts a real wage cut over the next three years? What sort of economic recovery is it when 60 per cent of jobs created in Australia since the height of the pandemic have been casual jobs? What sort of recovery is it when Uber is now the second-largest employer in Australia and pays its workers as little as $6 an hour? The pandemic of insecure work is spreading across the economy. As the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Job Security, I've heard time and time again that the biggest culprit is in fact our own federal government. The Morrison government is financing the destruction of secure jobs across publicly funded sectors like aged care and the NDIS. Sectors that used to offer secure, unionised, middle-class jobs with decent pay, training and career progression are now plagued by insecure work. In the publicly funded NDIS, the Morrison government is promoting the funding of disability gig platforms that treat workers like commodities—platforms like Mable, that styles itself as the Uber of the disability sector. This company spruiks its independent disability contractors, who are then paid below the minimum wage. They're not provided with sufficient training, and Mable takes no responsibility for the standard of disability care that is delivered on behalf of its operations. Of course, that resulted in disaster when the Morrison government paid Mable to provide additional staffing at an Anglicare facility in Western Sydney at the height of the pandemic. Professor Sara Charlesworth of RMIT University provided evidence to the job security inquiry last month. She told us: Mable's staff were found to have been absolutely hopeless coming into Victorian aged-care facilities… They had absolutely no experience. That was an unmitigated disaster. It is the same story in aged care. The job security inquiry heard last month that 90 per cent of the aged-care workforce are either casual or on part-time contracts. Part-time workers are kept on guaranteed weekly hours that are in some cases as low as three hours per week, and they are in a permanent state of uncertainty. As in the NDIS, this has proven to be a disaster for elderly Australians. To quote the aged-care royal commission report, 'Australia's aged-care system is understaffed and the workforce underpaid and undertrained.' The wages and terms and conditions of the bulk of the aged-care workforce do not adequately reflecting the important caring role that these people play. Inadequate staffing levels and training and an inadequate skills mix are principle causes of substandard care in the current system. Again, this is the standard of work that the Morrison government is directly publicly funding. The job security inquiry heard from Tracey Colbert, who has been an aged-care worker for the last 14 years. She said: I work permanent part-time hours. I would love to have permanent hours. I don't know from one week to the next how I'm going to afford to pay for all of my living expenses. There are workers that only get five hours a day. They can't live and support their families… I've had a lot of friends that have left the sector because they just can't afford to make a living, and some of them had two or three jobs. The Australian people have rightly been outraged about the conditions and pay inflicted upon Uber Eats and delivery riders. It's incredibly important we have secure, well-paid and unionised jobs, and they are middle-class jobs in those circumstances. Workers like Tracey still have a responsibility to have a middle-class job. Gender and Sexual Orientation 103 19:39 Senator ROBERTS 266524 Queensland As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I raise a deeply troubling issue for all Australians. We know that feelings arise and pass, especially through adolescence. No feeling is final. Yet children who present with a felt sense of being born into the wrong body are given licence to make irreversible decisions that will affect their brain development and scar and mutilate their bodies. This is the life ahead for too many young people on the transgender highway. There's been an undeniable explosion of young females presenting with gender dysphoria. A hundred years of diagnostic history indicates this predominantly impacted males, yet in just 10 years we have witnessed a social contagion running rampant through our teenage girls—girls with no childhood history of gender dysphoria. In the United States, females requesting gender surgery in 2016-17 quadrupled. In the UK, females presenting with gender dysphoria over the last decade has risen over 4,000 per cent. In Australia, the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne has seen referrals rise from one in every two years to 104 in 2014. In spite of the horrendous outcomes for many of these children—and I've met some—solid statistics are hard to come by. It seems this area of medical practice would prefer to keep their bad news under wraps. Gender dysphoria, as many eminent medical professionals will agree, overwhelming presents with pre-existing mental health conditions. In today's highly politicised environment, when a child shares their distress around comfort with their gender, parents are challenged and even shamed if they attempt to take a comprehensive therapeutic approach to help their child. Instead, parents are labelled abusive and accused of harming their child when they refuse to consent to their child's self-declared transgender identity. Many of us may not remember our own teenage years, but those of us who have raised children through to adulthood will recall our own children going through adolescence. Parents walk a very fine line between nurturing their child's emerging independence and supporting their child's fragility. What we do know is that teens become super sensitive during this time. They hate people looking at them, they often loathe their newly emerging adult bodies or even feel revolted by them. Everything is magnified, and they're easily embarrassed. Being part of a tribe is powerful during this time, and that's a perfect concoction for a social contagion. To make matters worse, the process of neural pruning during this time means their executive function is compromised, which is where we make our most effective decisions. It's irresponsible that we're surrendering these life- and body-altering decisions to our children, putting them on a medical pathway of puberty blockers, sex hormones and irreversible surgery. An adult brain is required to balance the consequences of these life-changing decisions. We're charging our children and, equally abhorrent, our courts with these enormous decisions. It's our children, as young adults, that will left to face the horrendous consequences. The medical pathway for children presenting with gender dysphoria is widely accepted as experimental. There's no evidence that it's safe. This is a call to all parents: your children are being used in an experiment where there's no evidence it's safe and plenty of evidence it's not. Overnight, Sweden's leading gender clinic stopped routine treatment of minors with hormone drugs due to safety concerns, citing cancer and infertility risks. There are concerns around bone density, memory, development of grey matter and cognitive impairment. These treatment are not proven safe, and yet our children can quite easily be prescribed puberty blockers and sex hormone treatment to then land on the operating table for irreversible surgery with grossly inadequate counselling. The counselling instead is left for the parents, for them to come to the terms with the loss of a child of one gender and welcome the emergence of another. There's another Sorry Day coming. That Sorry Day will be for all those vulnerable children that struggle through adolescence, as so many do, and we did nothing to protect them. When we start to accept that boys at 10½ can take puberty blockers, girls at 14 can have double mastectomies, and parents can be criticised and shamed when they attempt to counsel their children against these life-altering decisions, then lunacy, neglect and savagery are prevailing. These children will have every right as adults to turn to their parents, medical professionals, hospitals and the judicial system and demand compensation for our negligence because we lacked the courage, we lacked the will, to protect these children when they needed it the most. Seeing Eye Dogs 104 19:44 Senator RUSTON 243273 South Australia Many people come through this place who've made really significant contributions to the lives of many Australians, but my special guest today takes the meaning of the word special to a whole new level. Today, my special guest was Odie. Odie has dedicated almost all of this life to being Chris's champion. He goes to work with him, he travels with him, he sleeps by his bed. In fact, Odie is Chris's eyes, for Chris is blind and Odie is his seeing eye dog. He was today the headline act in our Pups in Parliament event that showcased the amazing work of Vision Australia. Today, Vision Australia's CEO, Ron Hooton; Chris Edwards; Odie; Olga; Dory; and Bingo joined us here in Parliament House, and Chris really kindly let all of us have an opportunity to spend some time with Odie while he explained to us the importance of seeing eye dogs across the country and tried to share with us the process of education around some of the issues that he and Odie have faced about accessibility while they've been trying to do their job. Vision Australia has supported more than 25½ thousand people of all ages and circumstances since its inception in 1960. The seeing eye dog division of Vision Australia has been a client-driven organisation. Their training is entirely one on one, and they make sure that it's not based on a set training approach but they're reflecting the needs of the person, their clients, and matching the right personality of dog to the right personality of person. The role and mission of seeing eye dogs is to enhance the mobility and independence of people who are blind or have low vision by providing dogs, mobility training and rehabilitation services. But, despite the fact I think absolutely everybody was delighted to meet Odie today, they would never have thought that Odie and Chris would have problems with accessibility. They do face some really significant barriers, as Odie and Chris, and many other Australians who live with blindness or low vision and their dogs, face as they go about their day-to-day lives. Access for seeing eye dogs is enshrined in law in the Domestic Animals Act and Disability Discrimination Act, but, unfortunately, it is all too common to find situations where blind people or vision impaired people with their seeing eye dogs are denied access to public spaces. According to Chris, restaurants and movie theatres are probably the main culprit. But for taxis and ride shares like Uber they also find themselves denied access. That's not to say that all restaurants and theatres or all taxis or Uber or share rides deny access to seeing eye dogs, and we thank every single one of those that do, because that's the right thing to do—in fact, you have to, by law. This is a systemic issue, unfortunately, but we hope through education and raising awareness and, hopefully when everybody sees the fact that Odie sat in this chamber today, in what I like to think is the highest chamber in the land—I like to think the Senate is the elite space in this parliament—it demonstrates we need to have an inclusive society for everybody, whether they live with disability or not. We need to make sure we educate the public about making sure life for people who live with blindness is as close as it possibly can be as for people who don't, and we need to recognise and fully understand the rights of people who live with disability, the rights that are granted to them by law. We are absolutely committed to an inclusive society where people with disability can fully participate to the level they want and can. Our role is to make sure that we give Australians the tools that they need to engage in daily life with confidence and to guarantee that people like Odie—I thought he was so wonderful I thought he was a person—seeing eye dogs like Odie are able to undertake the caring role they do. I want to thank Odie and his mates, and Chris particularly, for taking the time to come and share their experiences with us here today. I thank you, Mr President, for allowing Odie into the chamber, and I'll make sure I give you a little more notice next time. But, as an owner of a beautiful black labrador just like Odie—my Leila is the most amazing animal—I didn't realise, I think until today, that whilst I love my Leila and I love going home because she makes me feel fantastic the role that Odie plays in Chris's life and the role that these dogs play in people's lives around Australia just cannot be understated. So I thank Vision Australia, I thank Chris and Odie and all the others. Today was Odie's last day as a seeing eye dog with an active working life. He's now going to take on the role as Chris's pet, but: Odie, you're always welcome back in the parliament. (Time expired) Senate adjourned at 19:50